Xu Wenwu swallowed the mouth-sealing Dao power in one gulp, and his cultivation advanced slightly.
Without taking time to savor his progress, Xu Wenwu said solemnly, "As the saying goes, 'Before troops and horses move, provisions and fodder must go first!' In warfare, victory or defeat is often decided by logistics! How can you say supplies are useless?"
The moment he said this, silence fell over the surroundings. Ji Liuli asked, "Who is this person?"
Wei Yuan said, "Xu Wenwu. He came from another world, just like the one who founded the Immortal Sect Unified Examination."
Ji Liuli looked dubious. "An otherworldly visitor? Doesn't look like one! Those otherworldly visitors in history were all brilliantly gifted, achieving Scenery Command True Monarch as easily as eating and drinking. How come this guy seems like nothing special?"
Wei Yuan thought for a moment and said, "He's good at raising horses, and I'm currently trying him out on planting trees. As for other uses, I haven't had time to look into them yet."
Ji Liuli immediately said, "Go attend to your business first. Leave this guy to us. Let's see what he actually knows."
Wei Yuan nodded, then said to Xu Wenwu, "Speak what you know, and remember not to lie."
"He won't be able to lie." Ji Liuli hauled Xu Wenwu right in front of her in one swift motion and shoved him onto a chair, saying, "What I love most is when people lie to me, because then I have an excuse to take them apart. Do you understand?"
Xu Wenwu nodded instantly.
Ji Liuli then asked, "Since you're an otherworldly visitor, you must have wanted to dominate the world when you first arrived."
Xu Wenwu was stunned. "How did you know?"
Ji Liuli said impatiently, "You're hardly the only otherworldly visitor. Plenty came before you. Everyone is cut from the same cloth when they first get here: men want to become the sovereign of men, and women want to marry him."
Xu Wenwu had never imagined he wasn't one of a kind; his arrogant bluster was instantly extinguished.
Ji Liuli asked, "What is something from your side that we don't have here, which you could use to lay your first foundation?"
This question was simple. Xu Wenwu had thought about it countless times, so he blurted out, "Gunpowder, of course!"
"Fine. Speak, what's the recipe for gunpowder?"
……
A short while later, Wei Yuan arranged for Yun Feifei to lead some cultivators to set up perimeter alert traps, and had Xu Wan'er take a group of people to chop timber. At present, there wasn't even a decent house in the domain; they needed to at least put up a few log cabins to shelter from wind and rain. Wei Yuan looked up at the sky and saw fleecy clouds drifting overhead. If nothing unexpected happened, heavy rain was likely due tomorrow.
After assigning these tasks, Wei Yuan hurried back to the foot of the mountain peak, wanting to see the results of the questioning. However, given his understanding of Xu Wenwu, they probably wouldn't get much out of him.
At this time, a formation had been laid at the foot of the main peak, isolating the inside from the outside. From outside the formation, one could see the people within, but not hear what was being said. Inside, Xu Wenwu was facing Ji Liuli and Bao Yun, exceptionally excited, talking with eloquence and vigor, waving his arms forcefully from time to time as if exuding the spirit of conquering the world. Meanwhile, Zhang Sheng and Xiaoyu were not inside, but standing outside looking at the scenery. Both of their expressions looked rather sour.
A bad premonition arose in Wei Yuan's heart. He asked, "How did it go?"
Zhang Sheng gave a cold snort and said, "Focus more on serious business in the future, and associate less with bizarre, eccentric people!"
Having been reprimanded out of nowhere, Wei Yuan could only turn to look at Xiaoyu.
Fortunately, Xiaoyu was easier to talk to than Zhang Sheng, and said, "That guy is a total empty sack. At first, he hyped gunpowder up as something miraculous, but when pressed for details, all he knew was that gunpowder is made of charcoal, sulfur, and something called saltpeter. Yet he only knows the word 'saltpeter'—where the raw material actually comes from and how to refine it, he hasn't the foggiest clue!
"He also said gunpowder can be used in many places, like firecrackers, artillery shells, and bombs. But from what I heard, the power of firecrackers and bombs is completely different; they ought to contain two different things, yet he thinks they both just contain gunpowder. That's plainly nonsense!
"Then this guy bragged about something called cement, claiming it was the blood of industry. This time it was even more absurd—he couldn't remember a single ingredient of the formula.
"Finally, he said the most important raw material is called steel, smelted from iron. Though the steel he talked about didn't sound like much—far inferior to the steel we know—when asked how iron is smelted into steel in their world, he was completely clueless again!"
Wei Yuan didn't know what to say either. He had already been through this once before, which was why he was currently utilizing Xu Wenwu's talents in other areas. It was obvious that Xu Wenwu was an unlearned slacker in his own world as well; if he had been born in this world, he wouldn't even have passed the xiucai exam, destined to be an old candidate who failed the examinations all his life.
"I'll go in and listen," Wei Yuan said anyway. With him present, even if Xu Wenwu blew his own horn too hard, he probably wouldn't end up losing his life.
Wei Yuan stepped past the barrier, and Zhang Sheng and Xiaoyu followed him inside after all. After gazing at the scenery for a while, their moods had improved somewhat, allowing them to tolerate the empty sack for a few moments longer.
Within the barrier, seeing more people arrive—especially now that his wise lord had returned—Xu Wenwu's spirits soared. He adopted a profound tone and said, "What I mentioned just now was merely trivial craftsmanship, which I never bothered to study in my spare time. In truth, my main talent lies in poetry! Some time ago, inspiration struck and I composed a new poem."
"Recite it for us," Ji Liuli said, looking intrigued.
Emboldened by her encouragement, Xu Wenwu's poetic fervor flared, and he intoned grandly, "Do you not see the Yellow River's waters coming from the sky..."
Ji Liuli smiled and chimed in, "...rushing to the sea, never to return? Keep going."
How could he continue? Xu Wenwu was shocked out of his wits, stammering and utterly unable to speak.
At this point, Bao Yun said, "Pick a poem you can recite in full, then tell me who the author is and roughly how many years separated you from him."
Xu Wenwu racked his brains. For the vast majority of poems, he only remembered a line or two, and for some, he couldn't even tell whether they were shi poems or ci lyrics. After thinking for a long time, he finally found one: "Before my bed, moonlight gleaming bright..."
As for the year and month Li Bai was born, how could he possibly remember that? All he remembered was the Tang dynasty, plus Noble Consort Yang and Gao Lishi.
Fortunately, Bao Yun was much more forgiving, only asking for a rough range within five hundred years either way.
Luckily, Xu Wenwu roughly knew the Three Kingdoms era, even down to specific years like 198 and 200. Using that as a baseline to project forward several centuries, he said, "Li Bai's era was roughly fifteen hundred years before mine."
Hearing this, Bao Yun said thoughtfully, "The earlier poem, *Bring in the Wine*, first appeared in our historical records six thousand nine hundred years ago. The poem he just recited, *Quiet Night Thoughts*, first appeared three thousand one hundred years ago—a gap of three thousand eight hundred years between the two. All three plagiarized Li Bai, which means the other two were both born after Li Bai, but before Xu Wenwu. However, if their world possessed the power to turn back time..."
Zhang Sheng said, "We need not consider that for now. Turning back time is tantamount to reversing the Great Dao, fundamentally of the same nature as opening heaven and earth. In our world, even immortals can only influence the past, unable to genuinely return to it. In their world, mighty power does not belong to the individual; turning back time is virtually impossible. Even if it existed, it could only involve a select few, not someone like him."
"Why?" Xiaoyu asked straightforwardly with pure innocence.
Zhang Sheng remained patient with Xiaoyu and explained, "In their world, turning back time would inevitably require gathering the power of their entire world. For a monumental undertaking like that, anyone sent back to the past would be meticulously handpicked. He is far too ordinary; such an affair would never fall upon him."
Xu Wenwu finally understood: it meant that for major world-level projects—like flying into a black hole or something—even a suicide mission like that wouldn't fall to someone like him.
After hearing Zhang Sheng's words, Bao Yun nodded. "If we disregard time reversal, it becomes simple. If that world also progresses sequentially, then Xu Wenwu is the most recent otherworldly visitor. In their world, Li Bai died just fifteen hundred years ago. Yet at least six thousand nine hundred years ago, an otherworldly visitor from after Li Bai's time had already arrived on our side. In other words, time flows differently in our two worlds—time on their side must pass far more slowly than on ours."
Ji Liuli's expression turned peculiar as she said, "I originally intended to divine his fortune, but I couldn't calculate his fate at all. However, I noticed a trace of the aura of universal extinction within his soul. That kind of aura normally never appears in a mortal soul. Going by what Yun'er just said, there is actually another possibility: their world has already stagnated, or even been destroyed. And these otherworldly visitors are souls hurled out when their world was annihilated, somehow ending up on our side."
A small, milky-white round bottle appeared in Bao Yun's hand. She said, "Yet that doesn't explain how this thing came over with him."
Ji Liuli said, "I know a bit of alchemy and medicine, so I'll study this bottle of so-called immortal pills later. If we want to understand it completely, we will probably have to wait until people from the Hall of Xuanming and the Monastery of Creation arrive."
Bao Yun shook the small bottle, gave Xu Wenwu a faint smile, and said, "As for the recipe for plastic, we won't bother asking. Even if we asked, you probably wouldn't know."
When Bao Yun smiled like that, Xu Wenwu felt his breath hitch and his heart skip several beats, as if taking years off his life.
In his previous world, big celebrities were only ever seen on screens, which stirred nothing in him. But now, with Bao Yun right before him, the overwhelming presence struck him full force, far beyond what an ordinary person could withstand.
Xu Wenwu, bolstered by courage from who-knew-where, said, "This humble one ventures to ask: does this world know of physics, chemistry, and calculus?"
Bao Yun's eyes lit up. "You know them?"
Xu Wenwu hurriedly said, "I don't know, I was just asking." Thinking for a moment, he added, "I studied them back then, but now I've forgotten them completely."
For a split second, Xu Wenwu thought he caught a dangerous glint in Bao Yun's eyes, though it also felt like an illusion.
Ji Liuli, Zhang Sheng, and Bao Yun exchanged a silent glance. Had otherworldly visitors not been immune to soul-searching, Xu Wenwu would have already met his fate by now. Historical texts had long recorded that attempting to search the soul of an otherworldly visitor had only one outcome: the soul would scatter to pieces with nothing gained. Even if an Immortal Monarch took action, all they would see was sheer chaos.
Xu Wenwu had no idea that his loose tongue had nearly doomed him beyond redemption. At this moment, only resentment burned in his heart: *Why the hell are all the transmigrators humanities majors?!*
Chapter 132