Wei Yuan withdrew a fraction of his consciousness from the web-like grand formation, parceling out enough capacity for several hundred tasks and attaching it to an avatar.
Seated cross-legged in an immortal residence outside the cave dwelling, an avatar of Wei Yuan slowly opened his eyes. He moved his limbs, and Dao power began to ripple over his body, bringing a spark of life into his gaze.
Wei Yuan assessed the body's suppleness and responsiveness, judging its strength to be roughly at early Dharma Idol. This was the limit of power he could draw from his true body.
He stood up, walked out of the house, and rose into the air. This place sat halfway up Ancestral Mountain. Behind him lay snow-capped peaks, while sprawling before him was a great city flanked by scattered villages and towns.
At that moment, blooms of fireworks were exploding above the city below, filling onlookers with joy.
Wei Yuan cast his Qi-Gazing Technique across the vista. The entire city thrummed with vitality and flourished with karmic luck, marred by only a few dark specks. This was just as Wei Yuan expected. The vibrant vitality came from the large numbers of Qingming commoners who had migrated here, as well as the city's original lower-class populace.
The few dark specks belonged to the direct descendants of the Lu clan. Their lands and estates had long been confiscated, leaving them to labor alongside ordinary commoners just to scrape by. Naturally, they harbored bitter resentment.
A few perceptive elders of the Lu clan understood well that this mercy existed only because it was Wei Yuan. Had it been any other immortal, the Lu direct line would likely have been slaughtered down to the last person to pull the weed out by its roots.
Yet understanding was one thing, and harboring resentment was another.
Wei Yuan paid it no mind. The bitterness of a few insignificant figures could be left to fester. If anyone truly tried to cause trouble, thunderous retribution was already waiting for them.
He watched the fireworks for a while, then looked up at the positions of the full moon and the stars, muttering to himself, "It's already the twentieth year of Hongjing? Time really flies... Wait, how could there be a twentieth year of Hongjing?"
Wei Yuan gazed up at the imperial star for a moment and shook his head. Whether Hongjing had a twentieth year or not made no difference to him whatsoever.
Qingming was changing by the day, swelling like an ancient divine beast, steadily growing too vast and unyielding to be restrained.
The floating road extending out of Qingming boasted a staggering transport capacity; it was the highest-grade floating road Qingming had constructed to date.
Wherever it reached, the surrounding thousand li became part of Qingming's core territory, accessible to elite mobile legions within half a day. The surrounding three thousand li constituted its control zone, reachable by heavy-armored legions within three days.
Within ten thousand li of the floating road, all had to live by Qingming's grace. Should anyone dare defy it, an army would arrive and crush them flat without delay.
At times, Wei Yuan found it strange. With such a lethal road expanding, how could those figures above bear to watch in silence? Could it be that they failed to grasp the significance of this floating road? In Qingming, this was already common knowledge taught openly in the higher academies.
As he pondered, a figure suddenly strode through the snow under the moonlight outside the courtyard—it was Xu Wenwu.
With a thought from Wei Yuan, the courtyard gate swung open on its own, and Xu Wenwu walked in. To Wei Yuan's surprise, Xu Wenwu was carrying a food basket along with two bottles of liquor.
"It's New Year's Eve tonight. I couldn't break away to return to Qingming, and thinking you'd have an avatar stationed here, I came over to have a drink and chat with you. In this world, only the two of us actually come from the same place, so we count as fellow townsmen. Of course, if your true body were here, I wouldn't dare say any of this to you." While setting out dishes and liquor on the table, Xu Wenwu rambled on without even looking up.
Wei Yuan sat down at the table, picked up one of the bottles, and examined it. The liquid inside was golden and watery—it had to be the newly developed beer, greatly beloved by mortals with poor alcohol tolerance who still wanted the bold feeling of knocking back drinks.
As Qingming's research capabilities grew stronger, various items from the otherworldly realm had been realized one by one. Beer was among them, pushed through and led to completion by Xu Wenwu alone. To everyone's surprise, it had blossomed into a major industry within a few short years, its sales climbing year after year.
Wei Yuan sat by the table, raised the bottle, and took a sip. Sure enough, it was just like drinking water.
Xu Wenwu froze mid-motion and stared at Wei Yuan in shock. "Y-You... this is your true body?!"
"That's right." Wei Yuan nodded.
"Uh... you must have important business to attend to. I won't disturb you."
Wei Yuan smiled. "Tonight, I actually don't have much to do. It's fine—finish drinking before you leave. What regnal year is it now?"
"Hongjing! Isn't it already year twenty? What about it?" Xu Wenwu looked thoroughly perplexed.
Wei Yuan looked up at the sky. The imperial star in the night sky shone as clear as ever, so steady it seemed fake.
Ever since visiting the fragments of the otherworldly realm several times, Wei Yuan had once run into Xu Wenwu and jokingly remarked that he too had transmigrated into this world. Xu Wenwu had immediately taken it to heart and regarded Wei Yuan as a fellow townsman.
Afterward, their opportunities to meet had been scarce, so Wei Yuan had forgotten about it and never bothered to correct him.
In recent years, Xu Wenwu had finally found his stride, his cultivation advancing by leaps and bounds. He was also busy handling trade with the surrounding realms, his duties and authority expanding by the day, which gradually gave him more occasions to interact with Wei Yuan.
Seeing Xu Wenwu standing stiffly, wanting to sit yet not daring to, Wei Yuan chuckled. "In the world we came from, there weren't so many formalities. Besides, when we first met, Qingming didn't even exist yet!"
Xu Wenwu finally relaxed a bit and said with a wry smile, "That's true, but for some reason, whenever I see you now, the pressure is mountainous. I just want to stay far away from you."
Wei Yuan blinked. "You can sense the pressure of my mindscape world? Strange, that shouldn't be. How could you have that sort of... wait, you've completed your mindscape world? Manifest it and let me see."
Xu Wenwu turned a deaf ear to Wei Yuan's instinctive Tianqing Hall habit of belittling others and released his mindscape world. The surroundings instantly transformed into a completely different realm, as though they were standing in a bustling downtown district of the otherworldly realm. However, the streets were deserted, and the towering skyscrapers on both sides resembled hollow husks made of nothing more than an outer shell.
It was a city two to three li across, entirely in the style of the otherworldly realm. Not far off stood a plaza, and in the middle of it stood a gigantic silver mecha.
Yet aside from the mecha, the entire city looked merely like a static set piece, far from attaining true spirituality.
Wei Yuan's expression grew solemn. "Your mindscape world is far too large!"
Xu Wenwu was stunned. "Their mindscape worlds span hundreds or thousands of li at every turn, while mine is barely two li..."
"Yours is completely different! Can a modern metropolis from the otherworldly realm be compared to natural mountains and wilderness? A space the size of a palm requires a monstrous amount of spirituality! This mindscape world of yours cannot grow any bigger. Just count them—how many skyscrapers have you built already?
"Every single one needs to be filled with people for you to achieve a perfect breakthrough. Moreover, with an advancement like this, your heavenly tribulation will be several times more ferocious than a normal Scenery Command tribulation! In the eyes of this world's Heavenly Dao, you're practically a scout from the otherworldly realm. If it doesn't smite you, who else would it smite?"
Xu Wenwu took a sharp breath, only now taking the matter seriously, and pledged never to enlarge it further. Only then did Wei Yuan's expression soften.
Xu Wenwu raised his cup, drained it in one gulp, and sighed. "I've been here for so long, and I suppose I've truly embarked on the immortal path. Over these years, as my cultivation deepened and my horizons broadened, I've had a vague premonition that the world we came from has already been destroyed. I even suspect I didn't actually transmigrate, but am merely a wandering memory that happened to awaken inside a body in this world.
"That's why I built my mindscape world like this. It's just... I just wanted to use this method to commemorate the world I once lived in. My parents were there, my classmates were there, and... her..."
Wei Yuan's thoughts drifted to the world he had truly come from. That place was truly destroyed, leaving behind not a trace of life. Though mountains and riverbeds appeared to remain, in truth the matter that composed them was only one thing: calamity ash.
All at once, Wei Yuan felt a deep resonance of empathy. He silently downed a large cup of beer, only to find that it tasted completely like water, which only intensified his melancholy.
By now, Xu Wenwu's face was flushed, his gaze wandering. He sighed. "Do you know? Back then, I didn't even dare look her in the face. It took days of working up courage just to say a few words to her, even though she was only one classroom away from me. Even now, whenever I think of her, my heart races. I barely dare let my mind wander there..."
Wei Yuan could no longer relate to that in the slightest. Then, noticing Xu Wenwu's flushed state, he asked in astonishment, "You're drunk?"
Xu Wenwu glanced at his cup before snapping out of it. "Ah, four cups in. Yeah, a little buzzed, actually."
Wei Yuan finally understood why the man had gone to such great lengths just to brew beer.
Xu Wenwu gathered himself and circulated his Dao power to suppress the intoxication before saying, "I almost forgot—let's talk business first. The brocade industries in Zhao and Southern Qi have collapsed on a massive scale. Lately, about ninety percent of their workshops have shut down, exactly as you predicted! But how did you know they wouldn't survive?"
Wei Yuan smiled faintly. "How could those princes, high ministers, old ancestors, and exalted cultivators ever care about the lives of ordinary mortals? What interest would they have in how much a mortal household earns in a year, or how much it spends? That's why the moment I heard they were opening brocade mills on a massive scale, I knew they were doomed to fail.
"The reason is simple: machine brocade is vastly cheaper than hand-woven brocade. In the eyes of big figures, it's merely cheap goods; some of them even use it to carpet their floors. They can buy cartloads without batting an eye. But among mortal households in those two kingdoms, practically none can afford machine brocade. At most, they might grit their teeth to buy a tiny piece during the New Year festivals and pass it down as a family heirloom. So when those two kingdoms opened a hundred or two hundred mills at once and churned out over a million bolts, whom were they going to sell that brocade to?
"If they had woven ordinary cloth instead, I might have given them some credit. Regrettably, the King of Zhao and the King of Qi set their sights too high and looked down on common cloth. Little did they realize that goods meant for the lowest tier of mortals are the ones that move in huge volumes—and that is where the real fortune lies."
Xu Wenwu caught on a little, though not entirely. As someone who had come from the bottom tier of that otherworldly realm, the thing he had least cared about was the daily life of the lower class; what he had cared about most were grand continental affairs.
Wei Yuan continued, "Now that they have completely given up, our new machine brocade can be sold to them. If we hadn't let them make a mess of things themselves, they would have blamed us for their failure. In truth, whether I sold machine brocade there or not, their own industry never could have taken off. Their entire market amounted to a few hundred thousand bolts at best, and people only buy new ones after the old ones wear out. How could that sustain an entire industry?"
Xu Wenwu asked, "Aren't Zhao and Southern Qi far wealthier than the other kingdoms? Why are their sales of machine brocade comparable to Western Jin's, when Western Jin has a much smaller population?"
Wei Yuan let out a cold laugh. "No matter how wealthy those two kingdoms are, that wealth never trickles down to ordinary mortals. For those mortals, merely staying alive is enough. Compared to Western Jin, the mortals there live relatively stable lives without starving to death—and that is already considered benevolent governance, haha!
"Moreover, if commoners ever manage to scrape together any spare coin, everyone from kings and grand secretaries at the top down to county magistrates and yamen bailiffs at the bottom will find ways to line their own pockets with it. So while Zhao and Southern Qi are renowned for their prosperity and Western Jin is destitute with its people barely clinging to survival, the real gap between mortal households on either side is nothing more than a single bolt of common cloth and half a vat of unpolished rice. It can't even accommodate a bolt of machine brocade."
Chapter 1194