In the first month of spring in the seventeenth year of Hongjing, Wei Yuan stood high above Qingming, observing the qi of the six realms and eight directions. The world appeared peaceful.
The front lines across the realm remained, but the fighting had temporarily ceased.
A full moon hung high in the sky amidst countless stars. Down below, the earth sparkled with clusters of mortal hearth fires, glowing denser and more brilliant than the celestial river above.
By now, Qingming spanned nearly ten thousand li, exceptionally vast. To the east, it had incorporated the three southern commanderies of Jin, as well as the three Ningxi commanderies that had once belonged to the Xu family.
As for Hanyang Pass, that was ancient history. Now situated deep within Qingming's hinterland, it had completely lost its purpose as a border fortress, transforming instead into a bustling hub connecting Qingming to Western Jin, as well as a famous city of historical and cultural renown. The city boasted many sights, such as "Where the Realm Lord Traveled West" and "Where the Realm Lord Hid," among others.
So long as a domain was vast enough, its resources would be plentiful. Qingming possessed immense reserves of stone charcoal—what the outer world called coal.
Following large-scale mining operations, Qingming had designated stone charcoal as an essential guaranteed supply. Every household enjoyed the right to purchase a fixed amount at fair, controlled prices.
Within Qingming, the climate was like summer all year round, so there was no need for winter heating, but every household still needed fire to cook. Once coal production ramped up, Wei Yuan banned the use of firewood throughout Qingming.
In the Nine Kingdoms, ordinary folk would go to sleep as soon as darkness fell, maintaining a routine of rising with the sun and resting at sunset.
Qingming, however, presented an entirely different scene. People worked by day. The ambitious spent their nights studying or practicing Body Casting, while the less driven ate, drank, and reveled. In short, whether ambitious or not, no one could bear to waste the night sleeping.
Thus, even in the dead of night, Qingming was ablaze with lights. Meddlesome scholars dubbed this spectacle the "Starry River on Earth," and its fame spread far and wide.
Nearly a year had passed since Wei Yuan took the Lu clan's ancestral lands. Throughout this year, he had launched no foreign campaigns, instead burying himself in organizing the newly conquered territories.
Managing food, clothing, shelter, and transport for over a billion people was an unimaginably complex undertaking. For an entire year, Old Daoist Chuhe and the rest of the Eight Talents of Jianmu had traversed countless mountains and rivers. Cultivators arriving from the Hall of Jianmu to offer support grew ever more numerous. Everyone worked themselves thin, yet they had only just managed to settle the overarching plan for realigning the boundary stones and barely completed the repositioning across the southern and Ningxi commanderies.
The immense karma generated by resetting the boundary stones was shared: slightly under half was shouldered by hundreds of Hall of Jianmu cultivators, another portion by the thousands of template cultivators accompanying them, and less than twenty percent fell upon Wei Yuan himself.
As for the people's livelihood, over the past year, they had only just cleared the trade routes, allowing Qingming's grain and cotton to reach designated distribution hubs so that the common people would not freeze or starve to death due to shifts in the boundary stones and leylines.
Yet, as boundary stones were continually uprooted, many plots of land suffered complete crop failure, requiring massive quantities of grain to be shipped in from Qingming. Land routes had long been overwhelmed. Fortunately, there were no active wars nearby, so Wei Yuan requisitioned several hundred floating boats and airships to transport grain, averting a human catastrophe.
Across the lands of Western Jin, apart from flying boats that would be deemed wondrous even in the outer world, there was nothing but muddy roads. Even in the major cities, stone paving was limited to the main thoroughfares, and even those suffered from years of disrepair.
In this world, things were either the very best or the very worst. Though cultivators and mortals inhabited the same realm, they seemed like two entirely different species. One gazed toward the outer realms in search of the Great Dao, while the other struggled to survive in the mud. Even if they brushed past one another, their paths never truly crossed.
Today was the first day of the new spring. The harshest winter had passed, and the days ahead would gradually warm. To immortals, this day held no significance. To mortals, it meant surviving another year.
Shortly past midnight, Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness suddenly trembled as flecks of azure luminescence drifted toward him from all directions!
This was the first time the common people of Western Jin realized that hardly anyone had frozen to death over the past winter, nor had many starved. Wherever Qingming troops appeared, even local officials became reasonable, no longer flogging people to death on a whim and exercising far greater caution before imprisoning or sentencing anyone.
And so, on this New Spring night, countless people of Qingming spontaneously prayed for Wei Yuan. Hundreds of millions of prayers coalesced into points of human destiny, flowing toward Wei Yuan until they amounted to more than ten million units!
Wei Yuan sighed inwardly. These common mortals were the easiest to move. If anyone treated them even slightly well, they would weep with boundless gratitude. Wei Yuan felt he had hardly done anything—merely distributing a bit of grain and handing out some clothes—yet it had earned him the unified prayers of myriad mortals.
Gazing upon the magnificent sight of the starry river on earth, Wei Yuan once again felt that his efforts were meaningful, worthy of the immense power bestowed upon his person.
Yet at this very moment, a thought suddenly crossed his mind: Why hasn't Emperor Jing passed away yet?
Wei Yuan did not understand why such a strange thought would occur to him. What did Emperor Jing's life or death have to do with him?
And yet, an inexplicable premonition told him that Emperor Jing should have died long ago—the moment the heavenly fiends severed the connection to the outer heavens and formally took up residence in Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven, the moment Wei Yuan formally stepped into Scenery Command.
Even if he hadn't died then, Emperor Jing should have passed away when Wei Yuan completed his Spiritual Abode and his true spirit returned to its place. Why had no imperial mourning decree been proclaimed to the world even now?
Wei Yuan pondered for a moment, then shook his head, finding no answer. He suddenly felt a trace of curiosity about just what kind of person Emperor Jing was, sitting upon that imperial throne in the depths of the palace.
***
Inside the Imperial Palace of Great Tang, Emperor Jing jolted awake from a nightmare. He sat up, gasping for breath. Only after his terror slowly subsided did he realize he had been dreaming.
A piercing chill gripped his body, and he realized his clothes were drenched in cold sweat. At some unknown point, the chamber's warming array had stopped, allowing wisps of sinister wind to seep into the room from time to time.
Emperor Jing reached out to feel beside him, only to find the bedding long cold, the person who had shared it gone. Emperor Jing thought nothing of it. In recent years, his concubines would frequently vanish in the middle of the night; some would reappear after a time, while others disappeared forever. He had grown accustomed to it.
Steadying his mind, he found the scenes from his nightmare still lingering before his eyes. In the dream, he was constantly pursued by demons and ghosts, forced to scurry and hide among city ruins. The shrieks of the ghosts still echoed in his ears.
In the dream, Emperor Jing had been running for his life, unable to decipher what the ghosts were howling. But now, fully awake, he finally understood their words: *Why aren't you dead yet?!*
Emperor Jing felt his scalp tingle and his chest tighten, suffocating just as he had in the dream. Just then, a shadow loomed, cloaking him in darkness.
Emperor Jing looked up to see a palace maid who had attended him for years standing before him. She seemed unnaturally tall, blocking the moonlight from the window.
He breathed a sigh of relief. Though he did not know how she had entered, she was at least a familiar face, not a ghost. Emperor Jing prepared to get out of bed, saying, "How did you get in? Well, you came at a good time. Help me change..."
The maid appeared to be saying something, yet Emperor Jing could hear no sound. Irritated, he was about to scold her when he suddenly saw two streams of bloody tears roll from her eyes. A harsh, inhuman roar tore from her mouth: *Why aren't you dead yet!?*
The maid lunged violently, gaping jaws snapping toward Emperor Jing's throat! Her sudden attack startled him into recoiling backward, slamming hard against the bedframe. The moment she drew near, she spontaneously combusted without a breath of wind. Towering flames flared up, reducing her to ashes in the blink of an eye.
This shock rattled Emperor Jing severely, bringing on another wave of cold sweat.
The maid was gone, as though she had never existed. He summoned the courage to step down and inspect the spot. Sure enough, there were no traces left behind; the towering flames had not even scorched the bed curtains.
"An illusion after all..." Emperor Jing muttered to himself. Seeing that it was still early, he prepared to lie back down. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the faint moonlight reflecting on the floor, where a thin layer of ash had gathered. In that ash lay half a footprint!
Emperor Jing was a Dharma Idol cultivator; he instantly recognized it as the footprint left behind by the maid!
He froze. He knew he would likely never see that maid again, and before long, he would forget about this entirely.
Only the nightly nightmares never failed to arrive.
He collapsed weakly onto the bed, lying down in his sweat-soaked clothes with a helpless, bitter smile. Perhaps in the entire world, only he knew what kind of life the Son of Heaven of Great Tang endured every day.
***
The sun rose as usual.
When Emperor Jing entered the grand hall, the civil and military officials cried out wishes for his eternal longevity, paying no heed to his haggard, pale complexion. After he sat down, the Regent King of Jin took his seat nearby.
Emperor Jing's pupils contracted slightly. Someone had placed a platform beneath the King of Jin's seat, making it only barely lower than the imperial throne itself. The King of Jin was tall and straight-backed; sitting there, the top of his head actually rose a sliver higher than Emperor Jing's.
The officials acted as if blind to this.
A surge of fury, grievance, and bitterness welled up in Emperor Jing's chest!
Rising higher than the Son of Heaven was absolute usurpation! The court was packed with Dharma Idol cultivators, and Scenery Command experts were not few. How could they fail to see it? Yet not one spoke a word! Under Tang law, every one of them was a rebel who deserved to be executed ten times over!
Yet after that flash of anger, Emperor Jing could only smile bitterly in secret. What kind of man was the King of Jin? Ever since becoming Regent King, he had systematically replaced all key court positions with his own people. By now, the Empress Dowager and Empress were completely stripped of power, their authority confined within the deep palace. They could only drown in regret, unable to change a thing.
Did a man like the King of Jin truly need to engage in childish games like sitting a head taller?
No, of course not. The King of Jin did not need such petty tricks to test the officials' loyalty. What he wanted was to openly declare four words to the entire court: *The trend is set!*
Emperor Jing handled state affairs mechanically, deciding minor matters and deferring major issues for further deliberation, with a proficiency that broke his own heart.
In the imperial court, everything was a major issue.
Among a series of weighty affairs, Emperor Jing's attention was suddenly drawn to several memorials. All of them requested the appointment of new Military Commissioners.
Emperor Jing was somewhat curious. The institution of Military Commissioners had historically been the source of chaos and the downfall of dynasties. Normally, establishing even one required prolonged deliberation. At present, the Military Commissioners of Great Tang were essentially self-appointed warlords who merely went through the motions with the imperial court, such as the Military Commissioner of Qingyang, the Military Commissioner of Yizhou, the Military Commissioner of Xianghan, the Military Commissioner of Zhenshan, and so forth.
He glanced at the proposed locations and noticed they were all in the west, essentially locking down the eastward advance from the western frontier and southern domains.
Emperor Jing feigned ignorance, setting the memorials aside according to routine, waiting to read and review them carefully in the evening.
***
In the spring of the seventeenth year of Hongjing, Wei Yuan received five consecutive imperial gazettes, all imperial decrees establishing new Military Commissioners. Three of them were situated along the border between Jin and Zhao, blocking his eastward advance.
Wei Yuan was initially taken aback, then grew puzzled, unable to fathom the imperial court's intentions. Did they truly believe that a few random figures who had appeared out of nowhere could safeguard the borders, pacify the people, and contain him?
Wei Yuan had long heard of the Regent King's capability. How could the man not understand that the realm's Military Commissioners were divided into only two kinds: Wei Yuan, and the rest?
Days later, Wei Yuan issued a manifesto to the world, declaring his intention to enter the capital for an imperial audience.
The entire realm was shaken.
Chapter 1161