The new loom was named Tianmen, and at present, it was still only a prototype. The entire research team comprised eleven Golden Dan and over seven hundred Dao Foundation cultivators, among whom the lead elder was, astonishingly, a template Dao Foundation cultivator.
Wei Yuan quietly pulled up the lead elder's dossier. He discovered the man was exceptionally gifted: in just two days, he had finished reading *Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm*, followed by more than half the writings of Tinghai and Yanshi, and had even penned two articles pointing out two errors in Yanshi's works.
Naturally, those two articles had been quietly expunged from the academic journal by Yu Zhizhuo. In any case, nobody cared what a lowly template Dao Foundation did, and hardly anyone could understand the articles he wrote anyway. The man himself did not care in the slightest; once he submitted the pieces, he forgot all about them, never even realizing Yu Zhizhuo had quietly deleted them.
In the Weaponsmith Workshop, technical skill took precedence over everything else rather than cultivation realm. Thus, that a mere template cultivator could become a lead elder, overseeing a vast host of dharma idols and Dao Foundations, was quite an extraordinary thing. In the Nine Kingdoms and the noble houses, such an arrangement would have been utterly impossible.
According to the original plan, the next step for the Tianmen loom was to develop a derivative model specifically tailored to weave cloth for dharma idol cultivators. However, jumping an entire major realm caused the design difficulty to rise exponentially; the plan alone listed over a thousand hurdles waiting to be overcome.
Yu Zhizhuo made a point of summoning this lead elder so Wei Yuan could meet him. He was a fair-skinned, clean-cut young man surnamed Wen, given name Guantian.
When brought over, his face was openly etched with impatience. Clearly, he could not care less who Wei Yuan was, nor did he have any desire to find out.
Wei Yuan casually asked a few questions regarding the research and development, only to see the lowly Dao Foundation's eyes look back at him as if looking at a fool. Wei Yuan wisely held his tongue and refrained from asking further technical questions.
Yu Zhizhuo cleared his throat, letting out a faint hint of pressure. Only then did the young template Dao Foundation elder mind his tone and phrasing a little, cutting back on the outright personal insults. Even so, he could not entirely suppress them, slipping one in every two or three sentences.
In just a brief span, Wei Yuan's temper flared several times, giving him a powerful urge to throw Wen Guantian into the Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven to be melted down and reforged.
Now, at long last, he understood why True Monarch Xuanyue had accumulated so many enemies, and why everyone lately had been avoiding Tianqing Hall like the plague.
Right at this moment, Wei Yuan fully experienced what it meant to be unable to tolerate someone yet unable to get rid of them. He could hardly slap the young man before him to death, could he? Not only could he not strike, but he also had to maintain a smile on his face, lest future generations find fault with him.
Wen Guantian mumbled incoherently as he explained the research concepts: "...Even if a rock achieves immortality, it's still just a rock... Not to mention those Scenery Command cultivators who can't muster a speck of immortal qi! No matter how vast a mental world they project, it can't disguise the fact that they have baboon brains! Calling them chimps would be flattering them...
"No matter how stupid someone is, they should have finished reading *Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm* by their teens. It's a fine book, though I have no idea which idiot it was meant to accommodate—it's written in such a shallow, long-winded, and repetitive manner..."
Wei Yuan instantly transmitted his voice to Yu Zhizhuo: "What happens if I destroy him?"
"...The research will be set back thirty years."
Wei Yuan said resentfully, "Then you'd better keep a close eye on him. With his pitiful cultivation, he'll be beaten to death the moment he steps out the door."
"The first time I saw him, a mob was beating him half to death..."
"I knew it!"
"The lad really has the flair of your Tianqing Hall. How about you take him under your wing?"
Wei Yuan shook his head at once. "Not a chance. I can't afford that embarrassment! The mouths of our Tianqing Hall are fixed to our fists. When have we ever been mobbed and beaten? It's always one of us beating a whole mob of them!"
Yu Zhizhuo rolled his eyes, his meaning abundantly clear: *So you do know about Tianqing Hall's mouths...*
Wei Yuan wisely dropped the discussion and gave a direct command specifying the direction: adjust the research priorities to focus first on developing looms for Body Casting cultivators, then for mortals, and only after that for dharma idols.
Wen Guantian's attitude finally softened slightly. "Mortal fabrics are too fragile and delicate, which does pose a bit of a challenge. I'll need to think on it carefully for a few days. For you to propose this direction means you do have a few bristles on your brush; you're not a complete waste of space. Right, neither of you disturb me again after this. When I've worked it out, I will naturally let you know."
Unable to hold back, Wei Yuan asked, "How many tasks can you process simultaneously right now?"
"One," Wen Guantian answered without hesitation.
"Mm. You should still invest a bit of effort into that area. It can enhance your aptitude and might allow you to advance further on the immortal path." Wei Yuan finally regained a shred of confidence.
To his surprise, Wen Guantian immediately retorted, "Unnecessary! So what if someone can process ten thousand tasks at once? There's no fundamental difference. Ten thousand baboons thinking at the same time are still just thinking about baboon business..."
Wei Yuan instantly transmitted to Yu Zhizhuo: "How about... we just let our research be set back thirty years!"
Yu Zhizhuo drew in a sharp breath. "No! Wait here for a moment..."
With a swift grab, Yu Zhizhuo hoisted Wen Guantian up and sped away in an instant.
Wind rushed into Wen Guantian's open mouth, yet he still refused to stop: "...No matter how many baboons there are, they're still baboons! They can never come up with human thoughts..."
Wei Yuan drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
A moment later, Yu Zhizhuo returned. "I punished him severely! Half a month's stipend deducted, grounded in secluded meditation, and forbidden from stepping outside until he completes his research assignments."
"A half-month stipend deduction?" Wei Yuan could hardly believe his ears. Even for a token show, this was insulting.
Yu Zhizhuo rolled his eyes. "He actually relies on his stipend to survive! He's not like those officials!"
Only then did Wei Yuan realize the truth. For officials of the Nine Kingdoms, a so-called salary was merely a token facade they barely touched in ten thousand years, which was why their fines routinely spanned three to five years of pay. For someone who genuinely lived off his stipend, losing half a month was already a punishing blow.
Wei Yuan could only accept the outcome.
Yu Zhizhuo looked at him curiously. "You've slain immortals before. What does it matter if a young fellow runs his mouth? Why are you so furious?"
Naturally, Wei Yuan could not say that out of all the numbers Wen Guantian could have picked—not a thousand, not a hundred thousand—he had specifically chosen ten thousand. Across the entirety of Qingming, Wei Yuan was currently the only person capable of running ten thousand tasks simultaneously.
Ignorant of the underlying cause and not intending to pry, Yu Zhizhuo remarked with sighing admiration, "The young Dao Foundation cultivators these days are truly incredible. So many talents have emerged, putting forward ideas that are simply unimaginable. Wen Guantian is just one of them; there are at least three or four others on par with him. And that's just in my Weaponsmith Workshop. I hear Sun Yu, Chuhe, and Xu Henshui also have quite a few over on their side."
"That's a good thing!" Wei Yuan's interest was piqued.
"Their temperaments are all more or less like Wen Guantian's."
"Oh. Then you must treat them well and be patient," Wei Yuan replied at once.
"Right, someone else here suggested that we ought to reclassify the industrial divisions beneath the Weaponsmith Workshop, abandoning the precedents of the Nine Kingdoms and tossing all that ancestral rubbish into the trash heap. Categories should be organized according to the supply and demand relationships between industries. Broad classifications should be divided based on the properties of end products, and an annual report for the entire Weaponsmith Workshop should be generated from that.
"That way, the annual report will reveal the flow of all goods and their mutual connections, allowing us to focus support on certain industries with great future promise."
Hearing this, Wei Yuan remarked, "Now that is a talent capable of governing a state! What realm has he cultivated to?"
"A template Dao Foundation from last year, following the Taiyin lineage."
"Why is it that all the talented ones are template Dao Foundations?" Wei Yuan wondered aloud.
Yu Zhizhuo laughed. "A template Dao Foundation under me predicted you would ask that, so he did his homework in advance and came up with the answer. Here is a book he wrote specifically on the subject. Take a look."
Nowadays, when two high cultivators of Qingming exchanged texts, they simply shared an interface through the Splendor of All Realms. Yu Zhizhuo swept over a beam of light. Wei Yuan's gaze flickered across it, and a book materialized before him: *A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire*.
Wei Yuan's reading speed was astonishing now. With a single sweep of divine sense, he had finished the first chapter. It was written in a rather fascinating manner; the opening chapter stated its thesis right from the outset, providing the conclusion first: who was the spark, and whose prairie was to be burned.
Reading to this point, Wei Yuan paused. Even with his current realm, he had to ponder for a moment before he could accept the conclusion that the spark was the template Dao Foundation cultivators, and the prairie to be set ablaze belonged to the immortals.
Everything that followed was argumentation. The second chapter was somewhat difficult, giving him a sensation reminiscent of reading *Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm*; the third chapter was...
Wei Yuan closed the book, staring intently at Yu Zhizhuo. "Did you understand it?"
Yu Zhizhuo's eyes shone brightly. "I got stuck at chapter six. There's one more chapter after that. It'll probably take me nearly half a year to work through."
"So this is a mathematical treatise?"
"Indeed. He used mathematics to analyze all the data he could access, constructing multiple algorithms on his own to arrive at this conclusion: template Dao Foundation cultivators are the broadest base of power to rely upon, and they still have immense room for growth. They simply lack support at present, as well as institutional systems suited to them."
Wei Yuan wore an odd expression. "How did he arrive at the latter half of that conclusion? Template cultivators still have room to rise?"
Yu Zhizhuo's expression was equally peculiar. "That section is indeed strange. When he wrote it, you had just distributed the Dao Foundation Year-End Pills. He gathered several hundred template Dao Foundation cultivators, half with the pills and half without, performed a comparative analysis, and constructed numerous mathematical models to reach that conclusion."
"And that model—did you understand it?" Wei Yuan pressed with a piercing question.
Yu Zhizhuo replied with unperturbed calm, "It's in the final chapter. I haven't had time to look at it yet."
Wei Yuan snorted. Right before Yu Zhizhuo's eyes, a cluster of cyan light materialized in his hand—mortal fortune so dense it could concentrate no further. The fortune then collapsed rapidly and vanished into thin air.
Wei Yuan froze. That cluster had contained fully half a million points of mortal fortune. His original intention was to verify whether the conclusion was correct, while showing Yu Zhizhuo that he did not need to understand so much mathematics.
Yet the half million points of mortal fortune vanished in the blink of an eye, merely nudging the deduction slightly forward, still vastly far from the answer he sought.
Under Yu Zhizhuo's watchful gaze, Wei Yuan kept his composure, not batting an eyelid as cyan light shone once more in his palm—two million this time!
Then five million, ten million, twenty million...
In the blink of an eye, sixty million points of mortal fortune were spent, yet there was still no result! At this point, even Yu Zhizhuo could see something was amiss and wanted to ask, but held his tongue.
After pouring in tens of millions of points of mortal fortune, Wei Yuan could clearly feel the outcome becoming exceedingly sharp, just ahead. Gritting his teeth, he brought out the reserves at the very bottom of his coffer, and another fifty million vanished in an instant!
The conclusion finally emerged: the book was correct.
Yet Wei Yuan was left with an indescribable feeling, unable to tell whether he had discovered this truth or whether his mortal fortune had forged the result into reality.
Chapter 1188