In the battle at the Jiangliu Sect, with Wei Yuan present in person, there was no possibility whatsoever of Zhang Zhounian escaping. Yet there was no need for Wei Yuan to intervene from the shadows; Zhang Zhounian had taken a hit from the Blood Dissolution Great Method right at the start and was already gravely wounded. Besieged by the formation of Golden Pellet dharma idols, he did not hold out for long before his strength gave out and he was captured.
The strongest combatant, an old man who served as the Jiangliu Sect's sect leader, saw that their patriarch hadn't shown himself after all this time. He naturally understood that an important figure from Qingming must have arrived. Thus, the moment Zhang Zhounian fell, he laid down his dharma treasure, surrendered without resistance, and ordered his disciples to open the grand formation.
He had already fallen into despair, prepared to see his sect's thousand-year foundation plundered bare. Yet to his surprise, these ferocious, wolf-and-tiger Golden Pellets only searched Zhang Zhounian's immortal's cave, seized his private vault of treasures, and even inventoried and recorded every single item right before the sect leader's eyes before taking their captive and departing.
Even after they whistled away into the distance, the Jiangliu Sect's sect leader still felt as though he were dreaming, unable to believe what had happened. How abundant were the thousand years of wealth accumulated by the Jiangliu Sect? With their gates wide open, why hadn't those fellows indulged in a wanton pillage?
Not only had they refrained from looting, but they had also left behind formal receipts for everything they took. They even left word that if it was confirmed these items were not illicit gains, the Jiangliu Sect's sect leader could use the written receipts to reclaim them in Qingming.
The sect leader naturally offered profuse thanks. However, having finally seen off these banes of calamity, he adopted the mindset of parting with wealth to avert disaster and firmly resolved never to go to Qingming to retrieve anything. Still, the items those Qingming cultivators had taken were truly negligible; they genuinely acted as though they were investigating a case, each and every one of them utterly selfless and impartial.
High above in the firmament, Qingxizi was also stunned by what he witnessed. In the end, he could only remark with deep meaning, "The Realm Lord fixes his eyes upon eternity, far beyond what this humble Daoist could ever hope to match."
Wei Yuan merely offered a faint smile. Giving no reply, he drifted away.
A mere Jiangliu Sect was no longer worthy of his attention; using it to establish his prestige was just convenient. Meanwhile, the strict military discipline displayed by the Golden Pellets below brought him great satisfaction.
In the blink of an eye, the news of Qingming's Ten Great Golden Pellets breaching the Jiangliu Sect and capturing a criminal cultivator across ten thousand li spread throughout the cultivation world, becoming more and more fantastical with every retelling. As the rumors continued to swirl, the number of Jiangliu Sect dharma idols supposedly involved skyrocketed from three to a peak of eighteen, while casualties shifted to eight dead and seven wounded. In the end, even the storytellers themselves ceased to believe the tale.
Yet within a matter of days, Wei Yuan harvested over a thousand strands of mysterious Dao Foundation karmic luck and more than a dozen strands of dharma idol karmic luck, proving that the hounds of the Development Bureau had indeed performed a meritorious service. The maiden battle to establish the might of Qingming's Golden Pellets had concluded in resounding success.
This battle had tested the combat power of the Golden Pellets under the new scheme, and the results were thoroughly satisfying. The actual combat power of these cultivators differed little from their measured parameters, and they had essentially performed at their peak, a feat owed to the military cultivators' prolonged training and strict discipline.
However, their opponents' combat strength was far weaker than what had appeared on paper. The three dharma idols had emerged one by one. When Zhang Zhounian came out, he was fierce of visage but cowardly at heart, completely unprepared for self-defense, and ended up severely injured from a single blow. The young cultivator at the early Dharma Idol stage had collapsed, crippled, right from the start.
Furthermore, the Jiangliu Sect's sect leader had possessed no will to fight at all, and his complement of dharma treasures was riddled with flaws. According to Qingming's research, a cultivator needed at least twenty-four dharma treasures across their entire body to achieve true perfection, yet that sect leader possessed a mere four.
Dharma treasures were exceedingly rare, which was the norm across the world. Qingming's solution was simply to outfit them entirely with Dao Foundation dharma artifacts; once a cultivator was fully equipped, they had no shortcomings, and their overall combat power was by no means inferior to an opponent who wielded only a few dharma treasures. Yet an ordinary dharma idol would never do such a thing for one simple reason: they couldn't bear the shame.
On this point, Qingming's researchers had easily grasped their opponents' common mindset. In any case, Golden Pellet dharma idols weren't considered proper people, so there was no loss of face in equipping them with Dao Foundation dharma artifacts.
With the initial battle a success, Wei Yuan returned to Qingming and set about planning the subsequent work. The first initiative was dubbed the Ten Directions Traveling Plan, establishing the World Touring Department within Qingming. A large cohort of Golden Pellet cultivators would be organized into its ranks, traveling across the realm to conquer regions far and wide.
They would primarily operate under the guise of wandering martial artists, penetrating deep into Great Tang to strike against factions hostile to Qingming. The battle at the Jiangliu Sect had already proven that ordinary sects stood no chance against a siege of ten Golden Pellets; even within blessed lands guarded by Scenery Command experts, no force at the Dharma Idol tier could withstand the coordinated assault of ten new Golden Pellets.
As these Golden Pellet cultivators roamed the jianghu, they would raze shrines and topple temples while establishing their own gathering halls and Dao branches to impart the Golden Pellet path.
The other focal point was the Dao itself.
After deep contemplation, Wei Yuan realized that the threshold for the existing Golden Pellet dharma idol system was still far too high. How had the template Dao Foundations flourished back then?
When Wei Yuan first created the Immortal Sword · False Sun, the term "template Dao Foundation" did not even exist, and those willing to cultivate it were few and far between. It was only after the Great Bright Demon-Subduing Sword burst onto the scene that template Dao Foundations erupted like a gusher, sprouting forth in endless clusters.
Later, as the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning unleashed their wildest imaginations—presenting templates each more shameless than the last—it culminated in the terrifying spectacle of a million Dao Foundations emerging today.
Wei Yuan pondered a question: Why were there so few Golden Pellet dharma idols? Why couldn't achieving a Golden Pellet dharma idol be even easier than forging a Dao Foundation?
The moment this thought surfaced, inspiration surged beyond restraint. Wei Yuan immediately wondered: Why were Golden Pellet dharma idols so difficult to cultivate? Was it because the Golden Pellet was simply too large?
When those Golden Pellets of the Shaoyang path manifested their dharma idols, they hung like blazing suns in the sky. While their presence was formidable, the threshold was correspondingly raised. What if this Golden Pellet were...
Wei Yuan gestured with both hands, but still felt it was too large. He then held up two fingers, gently pinching the empty air, and finally felt that the size was just about right.
With a smile on his face, Wei Yuan issued a research assignment for a new Golden Pellet path, attaching a special requirement: the smaller the Golden Pellet, the better—preferably no larger than a fist.
Evidently, the larger a Golden Pellet—meaning the dharma idol—the greater its prospects. A path that shrank the Golden Pellet seemed at first glance to possess no future at all. Yet on second thought, if one were already cultivating a Golden Pellet dharma idol, what prospects were there to speak of anyway? For such cultivators, their ceiling was already the floor.
The moment the research assignment was issued, it immediately stirred ripples across the Splendor of the Many Realms. Only a moment passed before Wei Yuan received a message from Feng Tingyu, stating that she had an important matter to discuss with him in private.
Wei Yuan felt both delighted and worried. He was delighted at the prospect of meeting her, yet his worry was not about the matter itself, but rather the meeting itself.
A moment later, Feng Tingyu stood before Wei Yuan. Acting decisively, Wei Yuan barked, "No shrouding your head in black mist!"
Feng Tingyu nodded obediently, then took a step forward.
Wei Yuan immediately took a step back and said, "Business first."
"Mhm. Lately, I've noticed that several low-tier cultivators—not necessarily just templates, but also ordinary Dao Foundations and ordinary dharma idols—have written treatises with great novelty, some of which have proven of major significance in hindsight. However, their writing is mostly driven by pure curiosity, leaving their research directions disorganized.
"I looked into the relevant systems and found that the root of the problem lies right there. Writing an important paper and writing an ordinary one makes virtually no difference to them; only if we happen to notice it can its value ever be unearthed. Moreover, these geniuses are mostly unruly and obstinate, remaining utterly obscure until they make their mark with a single astonishing feat.
"Therefore, I believe it is necessary to drastically improve their compensation and provide proper guidance. I've devised a solution: establish multiple journals within Qingming, divided into five tiers from top to bottom. For the highest tier, we can initially set up three publications: *Mysteries of the Two Academies*, co-hosted by the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering; *Heaven and Earth*, dedicated to the Great Dao of the universe; and *Immortal Path*, focusing on methods of immortal cultivation. Publishing an article in any of these three top journals will yield three hundred and twenty merits, whereas a piece in the most basic journal will offer ten merits.
"Whichever field we wish to achieve a breakthrough in, we can solicit more articles in that domain. To publish a paper in the three major journals, those geniuses will naturally invest their efforts into researching that field. These fellows are all stubborn donkeys; coercion won't work, but wherever the carrot is, that is where they will go."
This extensive discourse filled Wei Yuan with deep admiration. He could well imagine that this was equivalent to opening a new arena for people like Wen Guantian, destined to draw countless low-cultivation talents who possessed brilliant minds but lacked innate aptitude to throw themselves forward wave after wave.
The spring of Qingming's academia was already knocking at the door.
Amidst his awe, Wei Yuan naturally did not withhold his praise, heaping hearty compliments upon Feng Tingyu.
Like an innocent young girl, she was overjoyed upon hearing his words. She then unfastened her collar, offering Wei Yuan a look at the source of her wisdom.
Wei Yuan felt an explosion rumble in his mind. For a moment, he found himself utterly unable to express his admiration, his thoughts reduced to a passage of scripture he couldn't quite remember clearly:
*In the Northern Darkness, there is some kind of fish, exceptionally enormous, so huge no one knows how many thousands of li across it spans. The breadth of its back is boundless too. When it rouses and takes flight, it is like clouds hanging from the heavens.*
Chapter 1224