No Longer Easy to Fool

When he received these two reports, Wei Yuan's eyes darkened. He felt that those two fellows knew far too much and ought to be silenced. Judging by the current state of affairs under heaven, attacking the State of Zhao was completely out of the question, while fighting Western Jin was unnecessary—Wei Yuan's territory was already larger than that of the King of Jin, and his share of Western Jin's state fortune was steadily flourishing. Eastern Jin had grown well-behaved and thick-skinned; not only was there no legitimate pretext to attack them, but Qingming now actually had to help them hold off Northern Liao. Thus, when Wei Yuan looked at the map, he realized that he had already practically swallowed up Great Tang's northwestern corner. Peaceful days had lasted for a while, and now Qingming had reached a point where internal concerns and external threats emerged in endless succession. The internal concerns were particularly acute: from top to bottom, the people yearned for war. As the realm lord, Wei Yuan could hardly go against the popular sentiment. Yet before considering victory, one had to consider defeat; what Wei Yuan first had to determine was whether they could win. So Wei Yuan mobilized the Splendor of the Many Realms and conducted multiple rounds of deductions, and the results completely defied common sense. Even so, to soothe internal sentiments, Wei Yuan still issued orders to begin mobilization and form new legions. At the same time, he ordered the various Northern Frontier garrison forces to draw upon their elites and assemble a hundred-thousand-strong legion under Xiaoyu's command to assist Eastern Jin in stabilizing their defense line and resisting Northern Liao. Wei Yuan then redeployed multiple units toward Western Jin's northern frontier, preparing to launch a counteroffensive against the Liao Clan from this direction. Western Jin's original northern border army had by now fully refitted with Qingming weaponry; their strength was nothing like in the past, and their defensive line was as solid as iron, rendering Northern Liao's repeated annual assaults entirely fruitless. Since the war was to be fought, Wei Yuan had no intention of backing off lightly. He therefore released several tasks concurrently, the core of which was the development of Northern Liao's lands. The Liao domain was dominated by the metal and earth elements, with a bitterly cold climate. Aside from meat, every variety of grain produced locally was inedible to humans. The Liao Clan's staple food was a broomcorn millet called bitter Li broomcorn millet, each grain the size of a peach and containing an extraordinarily tough peach silk within. If mortals ate it, they could not digest the peach silk at all and would soon die from pierced intestines and stomachs. The Liao Clan, however, could digest it naturally; in fact, the grain's essence lay precisely in these tough threads. For ten thousand years, humanity's general posture had been defense in the north and offense in the southwest and south. The main reason was that while the Liao domain covered a vast expanse, to humanity it was an utterly barren wasteland—occupying it served no purpose, not to mention that on open plains, human forces simply could not match the iron cavalry of Northern Liao. Therefore, the task Wei Yuan assigned this time was how to utilize the overflowing metal and earth qi in the Liao domain. This series of orders immediately caused a stir across Qingming. People spread the word in excitement and rejoiced, thrilled that their realm lord had finally begun conscripting troops and preparing for war. Thus, within a month, Wei Yuan gained an extra thirty-odd million points of human luck, making him truly understand the power of a popular tide. *** The Tang Court, Imperial Palace. Over a dozen people were crowded into a small warm chamber, every single one of them a heavyweight capable of summoning wind and rain in the imperial court. The regent, the King of Jin, stood before a desk, looking at the map spread out in front of him. A Grand Secretary said, "Your Majesty's ploy has succeeded. Northern Liao has indeed marched south. And that Wei Yuan, wild with ambition just as expected, wants to seize this opportunity to push north! Right now, he is already mobilizing a grand army; according to our intelligence, he intends to conscript one million new troops this time." The Minister of War sneered and said, "Waging wanton warfare and exhausting his military will surely lead to no good end!" Another veteran official stroked his beard and said, "Precisely! When an army marches, ten thousand taels of immortal silver vanish like smoke. Judging from the new army we secretly formed using Qingming's methods, the cost of maintaining a ten-thousand-man legion is fifteen times that of the traditional imperial guards! Wei Yuan raising a million-strong army is equivalent to conscripting fifteen million men in the past! Unless it is a war of total extermination, there is no way he can sustain so many troops." Someone suddenly burst into hearty laughter, but after just two chuckles, the door slammed open with a bang, cutting the laughter short. Bursting in was a half-grown boy dressed in an imperial yellow robe embroidered with rolling dragons. Suddenly seeing a room packed with people, he froze in fright. The King of Jin waved his hand and said, "Go play somewhere else." The child nodded obediently, stepped outside, and shut the door behind him. Soon after, the giggles and squeals of palace maids drifted in from outside. The King of Jin withdrew his gaze, turned back to the man from before, and asked, "Why were you laughing?" Having been interrupted, the general had lost his dramatic momentum. Fortunately, his skin was thick enough as he forced out, "I merely laugh at Qingming's lack of strategy and Wei Yuan's lack of wisdom! Rich though Qingming may be, it cannot withstand such squandering. From this, it is plain to see that Wei Yuan is young and inexperienced; under his rule, Qingming is bound to collapse sooner or later!" At these words, the officials chimed in with agreement. A civil official remarked, "Qingming is, after all, a land of abundance. Once Wei Yuan and Northern Liao cripple each other and that land is left without a master, we must enfeoff a pillar of state there to guard the realm's gate for Great Tang!" The officials immediately nodded, their eyes gleaming as they began discussing potential candidates for enfeoffment. Right at that moment, someone hurried in and said urgently, "Urgent military intelligence from Qingming: the quota of new troops being conscripted by Qingming has been confirmed—it is two million!" "Two million?!" The officials stared at one another in disbelief. Then someone burst into wild laughter, exclaiming, "Militaristic folly, utter militaristic folly! Truly seeking his own destruction! Heaven blesses our Great Tang!" *** Within the Splendor of the Many Realms, Wei Yuan stood dealing with the never-ending stream of administrative duties. At the moment, Qingming's foremost priority was conscripting the new army and forming expeditionary legions. Military affairs were never trivial; tugging a single thread moved the entire tapestry. Thus, creating this new army touched upon every facet of Qingming. As Wei Yuan revised the draft while collecting feedback from all quarters, he let out a sigh, nursing quite a headache. He had formulated the plan himself, yet once published, it was met with a flood of scathing reviews. The deafening cries of opposition were impossible for Wei Yuan to ignore. Wei Yuan tapped open a transmission marked top secret, and an image of Yu Zhizhuo materialized before him. Wearing a helpless look, Yu Zhizhuo laid a heap of numbers directly before Wei Yuan and said, "This is the quantity of ammunition that will expire and need to be decommissioned over the coming year. See for yourself!" Wei Yuan's divine sense was now swift as lightning. In a single glance, he swept across tens of thousands of data points, arriving at a conclusion a few breaths later: to expend all of this ammunition would require an army of five million men fighting three medium-intensity wars. Wei Yuan sighed and muttered to himself, "Two million... really was too few after all." After hesitating for a moment, Wei Yuan reluctantly issued a new order: conscript another million new troops. Unsurprisingly, the release of this order brought another torrent of backlash. Even the hounds of the Development Bureau voiced their discontent; public opinion could not be suppressed in the slightest, and the karmic luck Wei Yuan had accumulated dropped continuously. Under these circumstances, Wei Yuan had no choice but to order the forces deployed toward the Shaman Clan into motion to seize forward bases. Only when word spread that the army was already on the move did the clamor within Qingming subside somewhat. For days on end, Wei Yuan was run ragged, feeling more exhausted than ever. It was precisely because he could handle nearly thirty thousand tasks simultaneously that he could keep a firm grip on the pulse of Qingming's every movement; yet it was also precisely because of this that he keenly understood how crushing the real pressure truly was. In the past, whether in Great Tang or the Nine States, monarchs sat high above. Intelligence had to be filtered through layer upon layer, such that by the time it reached the sovereign, it had either been completely distorted or delayed by months, if not years. Therefore, for a monarch to know the truth was as hard as scaling the heavens; what they saw was merely the world the officials wished them to see. Now Wei Yuan could see reality clearly, but he found himself somewhat envying the Emperor of Tang and the sovereigns of the Nine States. Though those rulers could not see the real world, it did not really matter. They simply handed down an imperial edict, and the common folk dutifully obeyed. Yet Qingming was nothing like that. Through decades of Wei Yuan's unremitting efforts, ninety percent of those born in Qingming were literate and could read, while those who had graduated from advanced academies accounted for a full tenth of the population. At this point, Wei Yuan could say without the slightest hesitation: the people of Qingming were enlightened. Once the people were enlightened, they were no longer easy to fool.