Wei Yuan began to engage in profound introspection: how had such a widespread, uniform cognitive bias arisen? Why had so many cultivators placed themselves on the opposite side of him?
Obviously, it was the vast multitude of cultivators who were in the wrong. Wei Yuan could never be mistaken.
The real issue, however, was why they had made such a blunder and how to prevent them from making similar mistakes in the future. That was the crux of the matter. Wei Yuan was well-versed in historical texts; even without consulting the Splendor of the Many Realms, numerous solutions came to mind at once. The most common was to deploy an extensive network of secret agents throughout the mortal world to ferret out acts of defiance, bypassing every level of bureaucracy to report directly to Wei Yuan.
Of course, this method came with a few minor drawbacks.
For instance, whoever ran the secret police agency would inevitably use it to browbeat court officials, monopolizing power until they effectively stood below one person and above ten thousand. In time, it would become hard to say who truly stood below whom. The person at the very top was easily sealed away inside the deep palace, hearing only that the situation was splendid all around, unable to listen to the voices of the common people even if he wished to leave the palace walls.
Under such a mechanism, the number of genuine rebels captured would never match the number of wrongful arrests—it would barely amount to a fraction of them. As more people were "mistakenly arrested" under all manner of pretexts, the ranks of rebels would only swell.
The second method was essentially the Academy's way: proscribing the hundred schools and revering only Confucianism, replacing millions of diverse thoughts with a single doctrine so that only loyalty and filial piety remained in the hearts of the realm's people. Naturally, that reduced the number of rebels.
Yet this easily gave rise to a colossal civil bureaucracy that likewise isolated the supreme ruler from the populace. In truth, it was hardly different from the first approach, save for sounding far more respectable.
Such a massive body of civil officials could never remain purely loyal to the sovereign and devoted to the realm. They embezzled what they could and seized what they pleased. Moreover, scholars were quick-witted, possessing far more sophisticated methods than rough warriors.
From the perspective of an entire nation, the graft and extraction of civil officials grew to become the lion's share of national expenditure in the later stages, emptying the state treasury and plunging the populace into starvation. No matter how blindly loyal or filial someone was, on the brink of starvation, they would turn into a rebel just the same.
Furthermore, this very method was what Wei Yuan had used against Northern Qi and the State of Song, systematically refined into "storing wealth in officials." Wei Yuan was naturally not foolish enough to plunge a blade meant for stabbing others into his own chest.
The final method was simply to keep the populace completely illiterate, never leaving their home counties for their entire lives, knowing nothing beyond their own villages. Stretching their imaginations to the limit, they would merely speculate whether Wei Yuan farmed with a golden hoe or a silver one; naturally, they would never oppose him over an honorific title.
Weighing every possibility, Wei Yuan realized that none of these paths led to a good outcome. If one truly wished to solve the issue once and for all, keeping everyone under heaven illiterate was indeed the most effective route. In the end, establishing even a single schoolhouse within a hundred-li county would be seen as an act of extraordinary imperial benevolence.
Cultivation, of course, would be entirely out of the question. Possessing enough physical strength to till the fields was plenty; why would anyone need to be so strong? As Wei Yuan himself often said: when a man carries a sharp blade, the urge to kill arises naturally. If everyone were allowed to build a Dao foundation, wouldn't they all end up rebelling?
Thus, the myriad statecraft doctrines ultimately converged into four words: keep the people ignorant, keep the people weak. Mastering those four words naturally brought long-lasting peace and stability.
Unfortunately, alongside humanity, there were alien races in this world, and humanity itself was divided among the nine states. So-called long-lasting peace achieved through such means was, in the end, nothing more than a road to national ruin. Following the deduction to its conclusion, Wei Yuan could only let out a sigh. Every one of these methods ran directly counter to his lifelong ideals; he truly could not bring himself to implement them. Let them bestow whatever honorific title they wished; he wouldn't use it for now anyway.
Wei Yuan believed that one day, the myriad cultivators would recognize their error and realize they had misunderstood their Realm Lord.
Of course, Wei Yuan was not sitting idly by. Within the Splendor of the Many Realms, there were now dozens of secret islands, each with differing environments, where every living creature was born with a single conviction: overthrow the Creation Immortal Venerable.
Thus, these beings dedicated their entire lives to this grand cause, devising countless schemes in the face of desperate straits—many of which were so ingenious that they opened even Wei Yuan's eyes.
Nowadays, many rebels in the Splendor of the Many Realms were still tirelessly burying bronze figures and carving stone steles. Even their occasional innovations were merely tricks that those dozens of rebel test islands had long since discarded. To Wei Yuan, the moment these rebels wagged their tails, he already knew whether they meant to bark or offer a paw.
Naturally, these islands were not used solely for domestic pacification. Their greater purpose was to produce various tools for Wei Yuan to employ against the nine states. In Wei Yuan's mind, such maneuvers were mere peripheral details that could never resolve fundamental issues. If he wanted to drive the overall situation forward, he still had to rely on concrete, practical achievements.
***
Sun Yu had just finished resolving a rare and complicated case. As he stepped out of the consultation room, he was cornered by several attractive female disciples. They began speaking over one another in complaint.
"Master, what is going on with this new task that was handed down?"
"We heal the wounded and rescue the dying, but those we save are supposed to be humans! Why are we suddenly being told to save Liao dogs?"
"Treating Liao dogs is bad enough, but researching Liao horses and Liao sheep? Are we veterinarians now?"
Expressionless, Sun Yu walked out of the medical hall and pointed toward several colossal characters glowing in the setting sun atop a distant mountain. They read: Qingming Daoist Medicine Complex. Those large characters had already undergone several versions, changed every few years.
Sun Yu said mildly, "What is Daoist medicine? In the eyes of a healer, all sentient beings are identical. If they ought to be saved, we save them. What difference is there between a Liao horse and a human?"
"But..."
Frowning, Sun Yu said, "I will explain this only once. Are you going to do it or not?"
Gritting their teeth, the attractive female disciples retorted petulantly, "We won't!"
"Fine." Sun Yu nodded, then turned to his assistant and ordered, "Strip them of their posts, revoke their clearance to confidential laboratories, and reassign them to the subordinate clinics."
The female disciples were thoroughly shocked. "Master Sun! You can't do this!"
"Master Sun, our relationship is different!"
"Master Sun, how can you be so heartless? What about our past affection?"
Sun Yu glanced at them indifferently and gave another instruction to his assistant: "Add seven more spots to this year's new disciple recruitment."
With that, Sun Yu soared into the sky, rushing toward the next consultation room and leaving the group behind. None of the female disciples had anticipated such an outcome. Unable to accept it, they broke into heart-wrenching sobs, tears streaming down their faces like pear blossoms in the rain.
The assistant lingered behind, looking at the women with cold mockery in her eyes. "Did none of you bother to see where this Liao domain assignment originated? What, did you think that just because you crawled into Master Sun's bed, you could look down on tasks issued by the realm itself?"
The disciples cried, "There was real affection between us! How could he be so cruel?"
Intertwining her fingers, the assistant smiled faintly. "I speak from experience, so let me give you a piece of advice. In Master Sun's eyes, there is only the Realm Lord and the Great Dao. Those who share his bed are mere passing travelers. If anyone lets favor go to their head, he simply replaces them. There aren't many spots beside his pillow, but there are plenty waiting in line. People like you can be swapped out at any moment."
The disciples stared in disbelief, weeping, cursing, and making dramatic threats of ending their lives.
The assistant's expression chilled. "This mission carries immense significance. Did you truly believe a few pieces of goods like you deserved to receive it? Master Sun intended to carry it out himself and simply credit your names. Now you're asked to handle some preliminary prep work, and you turn up your noses? Fine, that is all I have to say. If you're dissatisfied, you don't even have to go to the subordinate clinics!
"Go hand over your Dao Court duties right now, and do whatever you please thereafter."
Terrified, the female disciples dared not wail any further and hurried away in disgrace.
***
Meanwhile, Wei Yuan divided thousands of divine senses to refine an exceptionally intricate plan. The project comprised hundreds of sub-plans, including the transplantation and cultivation of pasture grasses in the Liao domain, livestock breeding and rearing, diagnosis and treatment of common diseases among the Liao people, and more.
Wei Yuan intended to thoroughly transform the Liao pastoralists' nomadic lifestyle of following water and grass. He planned to optimize pasture grass varieties, replace natural growth with large-scale cultivation, substitute open herding with pen-raising, and simultaneously introduce basic medical care and education across the Liao domain.
Through investigations conducted by multiple reconnaissance teams in the earlier phases, Wei Yuan had gained a solid grasp of conditions within the Three Rivers Khanate's Liao domain.
The current reality for grassroots Liao tribespeople was simple: enduring illness through sheer physical constitution, relying on the heavens for water, grass, and livestock, and depending on fate for how long they lived. The tribes had shaman doctors whose treatments consisted of a chaotic mishmash of herbs, sorcery, blood curses, and rituals, with no one able to say whether any of it actually worked.
The Secret Sect and the golden tent aristocracy did possess extraordinarily advanced healing arts—they could even take a tiny soul fragment, reconstruct it into a complete soul, and reincarnate the person while preserving their memories from life.
Yet such treatment was reserved exclusively for the blue-blooded nobility—the direct bloodline descendants of the Liao Ancestor. Common tribespeople were not even worthy of catching the scent of secret medicines.
Wei Yuan estimated that with Qingming's current standard of pill and medical expertise, merely popularizing a few basic remedies would save tens of thousands of Liao lives. A simple bout of diarrhea would no longer be a lethal threat.
Once cultivated pastures and livestock-rearing bases were established, meat output could surge tenfold. Supplemented by grain shipments from Qingming, this would also change the grim reality where fewer than half of every ten Liao infants survived to adulthood.
Pasture grass improvement was Old Daoist Chuhe's specialty, so Wei Yuan naturally entrusted it to him. As the old Daoist's karmic merit grew deeper by the day, he had recently awakened a new divine ability: spirit plants nurtured by his Dao power had a high probability of mutating in subsequent generations, with the mutations strongly biased toward the traits Chuhe desired.
Healthcare for the Liao populace naturally fell under Sun Yu's purview. Because this matter was directly tied to Wei Yuan absorbing Liao destiny and restarting the dead realm beyond the sky, he attached tremendous importance to it, allocating vast funds to establish a dedicated Liao domain research center.
Assigning the Liao cattle, horses, and sheep to Sun Yu was essentially a way to grant him a share of karmic merit. Doing this well would yield immense merit. Old Daoist Chuhe, on the other hand, had so much merit that he had nowhere left to store it; even the guinea pigs around him were on the verge of attaining the Dao through reflected merit, making any more of it a waste on him.
Besides, the old Daoist was genuinely swamped. After improving spirit rice and mortal grains, he had now grown obsessed with fruits and vegetables. As a result, Qingming's produce was growing larger and sweeter by the day, with pumpkins seemingly determined to reach a thousand jin.
Yu Zhizhuo was also overseeing a vital initiative: the mass exploitation of low-grade mineral veins. The Three Rivers region had numerous mineral deposits. Though their grades were not high, some were exposed at the surface. Certain minerals were unique to the Liao domain and held considerable extraction value.
Wei Yuan had calculated that Liao tribespeople were natural cavalry, and anyone who could serve as cavalry could also work as a miner. A dozen or so ordinary tribespeople could match a single template Dao foundation in labor output, yet employing them required only enough food and drink to sustain their families. Factored together, the cost was a mere tenth of employing a Dao foundation cultivator.
If the workforce consisted entirely of tribespeople, mining would become exceedingly profitable.
Had the environmental disparity between the Liao domain and the human domain not been so vast—such that Liao people would perish within a year of entering the human domain—Wei Yuan would have bought Liao slaves in bulk to fill the mining pits.
Developing the Three Rivers Liao domain was not merely meant to set an example for Yinyue; Wei Yuan was certainly not doing it out of pure charity. Once the livestock facilities were constructed, eighty percent of the meat produced would be shipped back to Qingming.
Sun Yu's research demonstrated that meat from the Liao domain was rich in the powers of Metal and Earth, whereas Qingming had originally been established on the lands of the Shaman Domain, which leaned heavily toward Wood and Water. Consuming Liao meat would allow Qingming's people to balance their five elements through dietary nourishment. Over time, this would fundamentally enhance their physical constitutions, elevating their cultivation foundations accordingly.
Another classified study by Sun Yu indicated that species from the Sea Clan were likewise immensely useful for strengthening the human physique in Qingming. His recommendation was to aggressively import marine species as foodstuffs, while casually bringing in a number of sea maidens to help cultivators maintain clear, uncluttered Dao hearts.
Wei Yuan had always been supportive of Sun Yu's ideas.
In the autumn of the seventh year of Zhaoning, Old Daoist Chuhe brought his work to fruition, successfully cultivating a new generation of pasture grass. Yu Zhizhuo, meanwhile, modified the planting machinery to adapt to the Liao domain's environment. Thus, all was prepared, and numerous construction contingents marched into the Liao domain.
Chapter 1317