After that bout of maneuvering with Cangwu, Wei Yuan returned to the main camp. Naturally, he was unwilling to leave things as they were, resolving to delve deeper into the art of karmic luck angling to see if he could tease out another flaw from Cangwu.
The longer he sparred with Cangwu, the more doubts Wei Yuan harbored regarding the events surrounding his slaying of Liumiao back then.
By now, Wei Yuan could already perceive the subtle differences in strength between immortals of Cangwu and Liumiao's caliber. Liumiao had clearly been even stronger. Yet locking onto Cangwu was nearly impossible for Wei Yuan—how, then, had he managed to lock onto Liumiao back then?
If even the present Wei Yuan could not do it, then that earth-shattering spear thrust back then—which had not deliberately locked on at all, yet landed with its full, unmitigated might—seemed utterly unfathomable. There had to have been a hidden hand working behind the scenes, pinning Liumiao inextricably in place.
Back then, Wei Yuan had merely marveled at how miraculous the technique was, completely unable to discern that Liumiao had fallen victim to foul play. But lately, as the mortal karmic luck Wei Yuan bore surpassed a hundred million, he suddenly began to piece together the secret trap sprung upon Liumiao. He understood how those strands of karmic debt and grievance had formed, how they had resonated and spurred one another on, ultimately unleashing an effect far vaster than their original potency.
In the architecture of that scheme, the grievance and karmic debt had served as negative karmic luck, unraveling the circulation of Liumiao's immortal power through a harmonic resonance with the Heavenly Dao.
Liumiao had frantically channeled immortal power in an attempt to flee, but every effort had been severed midway. The resulting backlash of immortal power had rendered him unable to perform even the most basic spatial displacement, leaving him to take the full, undiminished brunt of an attack forged from a hundred million mortal karmic luck.
As his comprehension deepened, Wei Yuan vaguely seemed to perceive an immense, exquisite machine spanning heaven and earth. Its components interlocked flawlessly, operating with unfathomable complexity, until minute traces of karmic debt and grievance were forged into colossal shackles that locked Liumiao in a death grip.
In his Primordial Spirit form, Wei Yuan gazed upon this gigantic contraption manifested between heaven and earth, lost in thought.
The methods of this powerhouse behind the scenes differed radically from anything Wei Yuan had learned before. Whether in historical chronicles or military treatises, a universal truth was always taught: the more convoluted a stratagem and the more variables involved, the more prone it was to failure.
Yet this great figure's design was incomparably intricate, manipulating the abstruse subtleties of karmic luck like playthings in the palm of his hand. Precisely because it was so complex and precise, anyone unable to grasp the overall tapestry and seeing only fragments would find themselves lost in a fog, with no inkling of what the mastermind intended.
Every immortal possessed extraordinary capabilities and lethal trump cards for self-preservation. Even when a distinct gap in strength existed between two combatants—such as Liumiao facing Immortal Monarch Yanshi—if Yanshi grew even slightly careless, he could still be grievously wounded by Liumiao's ultimate, mutually destructive gambit, which would give other immortals an opening to strike.
Just like when Immortal Monarch Tinghai challenged Xu Wangu to a duel: after years of fierce fighting, Tinghai sustained minor injuries, only to be ambushed by enemies on his way back, falling critically wounded and perishing a few years later.
Liumiao possessed his own lethal tricks and contingency measures, but they were all tailored for dealing with immortals. He had never imagined that after falling into this game, he would be obliterated in a single strike by Wei Yuan—someone who was not even an immortal—and slain so thoroughly that he did not even have time to deploy his trump cards.
Looking up at the colossal machine slowly churning in the void, Wei Yuan grew increasingly fascinated. The mysteries of karmic luck between heaven and earth revealed themselves drop by drop.
A design so vast and delicate had one flaw: it was difficult to relocate.
Wei Yuan suddenly understood why Zhang Sheng's killing tribulation had to unfold in the State of Ji, and why, after gathering mortal karmic luck in Zhao, he himself had needed to travel thousands of miles to Ji to face the tribulation.
The State of Ji was the eye of the temporal storm, where countless great figures had set up their boards and placed their pieces. The threads of karma were so tangled and dense that even if a Sovereign of Men walked the earth again or the Martial Ancestor were reborn, neither could untangle the prevailing karma. And so, seizing this opportunity, that personage had set this grand game, and the target was none other than Liumiao.
What made the design truly ingenious was that unless Liumiao appeared in the designated position, the overall mechanism would remain untriggered. In the end, Wei Yuan had struck directly at the Outsider immortal, and that entity had hastily summoned Liumiao to intercept the blow—unwittingly delivering Liumiao to the exact spot required to trigger the trap. Before even the Outsider immortal could react, Liumiao had already perished.
Now, the grand design unveiled itself before Wei Yuan's eyes, holding him enraptured. By the time he snapped out of his trance, several months had already passed; it was now early spring of the twelfth year of Hongjing.
Yet this design was too vast and magnificent; Wei Yuan felt he had not grasped even one ten-thousandth of it. Even so, his attainments in karmic luck, heavenly secrets, and geomancy had grown substantially, and even his mathematics had improved slightly. Considering that Wei Yuan's mathematical talent had long since reached its ceiling, making any further progress arduous beyond measure, for it to advance at all meant only one thing: he had simply grown smarter.
With this enlightenment, Wei Yuan instantly spotted the flaws in his earlier scheme to angle for Cangwu. When he had first set the board and baited the hook, he had believed his scheme foolproof, but in hindsight it was riddled with holes.
And so Wei Yuan immersed himself in contemplation to redesign the plan. In the blink of an eye, another month went by, transitioning from spring into summer.
What Wei Yuan did not know was that after returning, Cangwu had reflected on his bitter experience and laid down a massive new bait, determined to lure Wei Yuan out and inflict a crippling blow.
Yet for reasons beyond anyone's comprehension, Wei Yuan had cooped himself indoors for nearly half a year. Cangwu fumed with impotent rage, watching helplessly as the prime window for his great bait expired.
The massive bait Cangwu had laid out was a strand of immortal karmic luck. Though merely ordinary as immortal fortunes went, it was still priceless, equivalent to nearly half a gourd of immortal soldiers. To a child of karmic destiny like Wei Yuan, the allure of immortal karmic luck should have been virtually irresistible, and the angling technique Cangwu employed had been bestowed directly by the Venerable Master. By all rights, it should have been utterly impossible for Wei Yuan to detect anything amiss.
Watching the immortal karmic luck dissipate bit by bit, Cangwu's heart bled, unable to fathom why Wei Yuan had refused to bite.
Wei Yuan had indeed noticed nothing amiss; he had simply been so absorbed in studying heavenly secrets that several months slipped away unnoticed before he reached an epiphany.
Having attained this new understanding, Wei Yuan proceeded to the karmic luck angling formation erected in the provincial capital of Yizhou to inspect the formation diagrams anew.
The rank of the formation diagram itself was not particularly high, equivalent only to the perfection of Scenery Command. Yet backed by his deep pockets, Wei Yuan had casually set up thirty-six grand formations all at once. Layered together under Ji Liuli's supervision, they barely managed to replicate the effect of an immortal formation.
At present, the karmic angling grand formation in Yizhou consisted of thirty-six halls arranged according to the heavenly cycle, each containing a karmic luck formation.
Within the angling grand formation lay multiple Scenery Command treasures, the aura of several immortal plants, and the soul of a Mountain Folk Scenery Command cultivator. Wei Yuan instinctively sensed that throwing a Heavenly Demon into the mix might enhance the effect, but alas, he had only one Heavenly Demon on hand. Diligent, uncomplaining, and bearing an exquisite, familiar countenance, she was simply too precious to sacrifice.
Pacing between the halls of the formation, Wei Yuan pondered the true nature of karmic luck and the crux of the overarching heavenly secrets and current situation.
At this moment, whether it was the Venerable Master's vast grandeur or the subtle, meticulous designs of the heavenly secrets master lurking in the shadows, neither was something Wei Yuan could remotely match. Even Cangwu's true strength far surpassed his own.
As he pondered, a sudden realization struck him. The Venerable Master's majestic momentum, King Buddha's seamless harmony, the heavenly secrets master's clandestine subtlety—all of them were the culmination of pushing their personal strengths to the absolute limit. What about him?
Wei Yuan asked himself: What did he possess that no one else did? The moment the thought surfaced, the answer was immediately apparent.
In an instant, Wei Yuan's mind cleared completely, and he finally saw the road ahead. This path was his and his alone.
As for this Dao path, Wei Yuan had already penned its general principles in the Three Realms Ruyi Sutra. One could say he had carved out a direction in the primal chaos; all that remained was to refine and elaborate upon it.
What Wei Yuan relied upon was hundreds of millions of mortals—hundreds of millions of mortals who were well-fed, warmly clad, and enlightened in mind—and the ever-growing ranks of Body Casting cultivators emerging from them, extending to template Dao Foundations, and onward to future golden cores and dharma idols. From the perspective of evolutionary theory from the world beyond, the human race of Qingming was gradually diverging from mainstream humanity, evolving toward a higher state.
With this realization, Wei Yuan knew how he ought to angle for Cangwu. Previously, he had focused on the quality of the bait, doing everything he could to raise its rank—the standard approach to karmic angling in the cultivation world.
Now, however, Wei Yuan thought: why not play with the quantity of bait? Rather than casting a few strands of perfected Scenery Command karmic luck, why not simply dump tens of millions of mortal karmic luck into the waters?
As long as there was enough bait, the fish would have nowhere to escape. The fish would bite bait every time it opened its mouth—even taking a breath would be walking into a trap.
This could hardly be called angling anymore.
And in the world beyond, no number of lone fishermen could ever rival a single trawler.
Having discerned the path forward, Wei Yuan no longer viewed Cangwu as a problem. Deciding not to waste time tangling with him, Wei Yuan devoted himself instead to solving the livelihood issues of Qingming and Yizhou, steadily accumulating mortal karmic luck in the process.
Once mortal karmic luck accumulated to a certain scale and the grand, magnificent momentum was forged, nothing in the world could withstand it!
This was an open stratagem: first make oneself invincible, then wait for the enemy to become vulnerable.
Wei Yuan reexamined the people's livelihoods. Qingming had developed significantly by now. Multi-story buildings had risen in towns and villages everywhere, and surplus cement and steel were being channeled into large-scale bridge and road construction, laying the groundwork for a network of thoroughfares running north-south and east-west.
In Yizhou, however, most mortals still lived in shacks. Local production capacity for cement and steel had only just begun to climb, yet with construction underway everywhere, supply fell far short of demand, prompting the ongoing construction of several new large factories.
The bottleneck for factory construction at present was nothing other than the number of template Dao Foundations. The Academy of Sciences had conducted extensive research comparing this to the energy supply systems of the world beyond, ultimately concluding that spiritual qi was a far superior energy source to electricity. In other words, a template Dao Foundation was vastly more useful than a power plant; if one wished to build power plants, one first had to cultivate templates.
Thus, for a region to develop industry, the first thing it needed was a central energy-supply station, with each station staffed by Taiyin Dao Foundation cultivators according to local energy demands.
Beyond the cultivator framework, Wei Yuan had elevated the construction of Yizhou academies to an exceptionally high priority in his blueprint.
After years of construction, academies dotted all of Yizhou, ensuring that every five-year-old child could enroll. They spent their first year on basic literacy and enlightenment, and at age six, their aptitude and bone structure were evaluated for Body Casting. Those capable of Body Casting transferred to Immortal Dao academies for further cultivation, while those who were not remained within the general academy system to receive systematic education.
In Qingming, textbooks underwent minor revisions annually and major overhauls every three years. Blessed by the Flourishing of the Many Realms, breakthroughs across every discipline erupted in a torrent, and the knowledge imparted expanded rapidly. Primary academies for universal education expanded from a one-year program to three years, followed by three years in intermediate academies, and then three years in advanced academies.
Throughout these nine years, the primary academies were completely tuition-free, while the subsequent six years charged only nominal fees, with Qingming subsidizing ninety percent of the cost.
Graduates from the advanced academies, having completed nine years of systematic schooling, were qualified for most positions. Over the course of running general education in recent years, Wei Yuan had made a surprising discovery: once commoners learned to read and write, the karmic luck they contributed increased markedly. Many middle-aged people whose constitutions were past their prime and could no longer achieve Body Casting were nonetheless able to contribute fresh karmic luck once they attained literacy and basic education.
Upon realizing this, Wei Yuan naturally redoubled his investment in education. The Academy of Sciences, drawing upon the scientific frameworks of the world beyond, began reclassifying Qingming's academic disciplines, establishing clear stages of study, and commissioning specialists to compile textbooks ranging from introductory to advanced levels.
When this initiative was first implemented, Wei Yuan felt a faint trembling in the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth. Although no karmic luck flowed in at that moment, Wei Yuan knew that this was a monumental undertaking capable of altering the destiny of countless generations to come.
Yet despite the various subsidies in Qingming, some people still struggled to continue their studies for one reason or another. In particular, after graduating from primary academy, because schooling was no longer free, some chose not to proceed further.
At first, Wei Yuan had been at a loss for an immediate solution; after all, Qingming was developing at breakneck speed and funds were needed on every front, making universal free education unsustainable at the present juncture. But inspired by the roaring success of the Dharma Idol and Dao Base Loans, Wei Yuan decided to issue student loans.
The interest rate on student loans was set at half that of the Dharma Idol and Dao Base Loans, while strict educational thresholds were instituted for official posts at all levels to motivate commoners to study as much as possible. This move proved remarkably effective; applications flooded in following the rollout of student loans. Behind every application form was an individual who could continue their education, and each person who completed their schooling often nurtured the next literate generation.
A grand Confucian scholar had once submitted a memorial to Wei Yuan, lamenting the perils of educating unruly commoners and arguing that virtue should be cultivated before books—meaning they ought to drill the moral dogma of the sages into people before imparting academic subjects.
Wei Yuan paid him no heed.
Meanwhile, addressing the reality that the people of Yizhou had not yet accumulated sufficient wealth to afford the cost of multi-story buildings, Wei Yuan finally introduced a measure destined to define an era: mortgages.
Chapter 1090