Mirage demons were easy to settle, but developing believers was another matter entirely. The template cultivators in Qingming were all stubborn donkeys—and educated ones at that, making them extraordinarily hard to hoodwink.
Yet Wei Yuan, capable of managing mirage demons below, was just as capable of handling stubborn donkeys above.
To deal with stubborn donkeys, one had to take a multi-pronged approach: dangle a carrot in front, crack a whip from behind, and hitch them to a millstone. The millstone could not be too light; otherwise, lacking any challenge in their work, the donkeys would lose all sense of purpose and grow weary of the grind.
The millstones also had to be graded into tiers so that fine donkeys were matched with fine stones. A fine millstone was a form of reward in itself; though it offered no material difference to a donkey, it provided immense emotional value.
Factoring in the quality of the millstones was an artificial refinement of the ladder of progress. It ensured that after turning the mill for a period, the stubborn donkeys could see their own advancement and ascent. Without this, if the interval between rewards dragged on too long, most donkeys—save for a few exceptionally obstinate beasts—would slacken and stall. Lastly, one had to leave open an ascension channel for the stubborn donkeys. It mattered little if the channel was narrow, so long as every donkey could see it. Another crucial factor was fairness—ensuring that every donkey had an equal chance, at least on the surface.
Yet what if Wei Yuan insisted on favoring a particular little donkey?
Wei Yuan had pondered this dilemma deeply. He concluded that the best approach was to leave the public ascension channels untouched, quietly carving out a few undisclosed secret paths reserved for his own donkeys. If discovered, one could simply point to the donkey and call it a horse; being a horse, it naturally ought not to share a passage with common donkeys.
However, opening too many secret passages would lead to frequent discovery, which was unacceptable. At that point, the method had to evolve again—such as tailoring a passage's width and dimensions precisely to the build of his own donkey, ensuring no other beast could squeeze inside.
Wei Yuan found these methods exquisite, each solving distinct problems at different stages. Consequently, he established multiple surveillance checkpoints within the Splendor of the Many Realms, specifically to monitor any unauthorized opening of passages, calling donkeys horses, or custom-tailored routes. For whatever reason and in whatever guise, any donkey that had not gone through the public channels yet managed to ascend fell under Wei Yuan's vigilant watch.
Since Wei Yuan had devised every trick in the book, no one else would get away with using them.
After thorough deliberation, Wei Yuan announced a series of measures. First, the Daoist Court introduced a vast wave of new mighty warrior positions, numbering in the thousands. Each post had a candidate pool of over a hundred contenders. One did not need to actually assume the office; simply becoming a senior candidate qualified one to enter the Heaven of Joy and Bliss to undergo body tempering through Buddhist power, thereby thoroughly refining one's constitution, elevating one's latent talent, and broadening one's immortal path.
These thousands of mighty warrior posts were the ultimate ascension channel. The tens of thousands of slots to enter the Heaven of Joy and Bliss for Buddhist power body tempering were the tickets to the final arena.
To enter the candidate pool, one had to pass successive tiers of examinations, with scripture interpretation of the Three Realms and faith verification being two mandatory hurdles. Once successfully appointed to the Daoist Court, position, compensation, cultivation prospects, and blessings would come pouring in, creating a fundamental divergence from one's former life—to low-tier cultivators, it was indistinguishable from ascension.
Beyond the mighty warrior positions, Wei Yuan added one hundred Vajra posts, designated exclusively for dharma idols. Above that was the Arhat position, with an entry threshold of Scenery Command; for now, he released only a single slot as bait.
These were the carrots dangled out front; the whip lashing the hindquarters was just as essential.
First came the mirage demons. Vast swarms of mirage demons poured into this realm to mine, directly displacing the labor of a hundred thousand templates and a million Body Casting cultivators. Mirage demons had minimal demands and gave no thought to dignity; they knew only to bury their heads in toil to earn opportunities to reproduce. Thus, the moment they began working in this realm, the market for Dao foundation energy worsened overnight.
Next, Wei Yuan continuously brought in Liao Clan tribesmen to fill low-level labor positions.
Yu Zhizhuo discovered that these tribesmen were practically born miners. Even though every Liao tribesman working in Qingming required regular medication and specialized protective artifacts when descending into the shafts, the overall cost remained vastly cheaper than a template miner—amounting to less than a tenth of a standard template's expense. The mirage demons and Liao tribesmen squeezed out a portion of Body Casting cultivators, and those displaced Body Casting cultivators pushed upward, usurping positions shared between templates and Body Casting laborers. Combined with the spread of the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body, the number of templates produced at Qingming's annual Dao Foundation Grand Ceremonies surged, leaving the templates to find that decent positions were growing harder to secure by the year. Thus, every time the Daoist Court released a batch of posts, everyone fought frantically, competing with every trick imaginable; voluntarily slashing one's own wages had already become the lowest, most desperate measure.
In this manner, utilizing a multifaceted strategy, Wei Yuan selected hundreds of thousands of candidates within Qingming in a short span. Countless youths, striving to qualify as candidates, unwittingly became believers of the Three Realms Dao lineage.
While reinforcing his internal domain, Wei Yuan turned his gaze toward Eastern Jin.
Eastern Jin bordered Northern Qi, and Xu Youyi of the Xu family inclined toward governance through non-action. Consequently, Buddhist temples abounded and monks walked every road, making it a Pure Land stronghold second only to Northern Qi.
Previously, court ministers in Eastern Jin had repeatedly proposed constructing more Buddhist temples and vigorously promoting Buddhism. However, the King of Jin was well aware of the conflict between Qingming and the Pure Land, and with Qingming's blade resting against his throat, he met all these motions with stall tactics and perfunctory excuses.
Once Wei Yuan solidified Qingming internally, he designated Eastern Jin as a new battlefield, preparing to clash head-on with the Pure Land to vie for believers and Buddhist adherents. This was also a rehearsal for an all-out campaign against the Pure Land.
Wei Yuan did not directly demand that the Eastern Jin royal family purge the Buddhist temples or eradicate the Pure Land, nor did he mobilize the numerous scholars and upright literati he had planted in the imperial court. His first action was dispatching a large number of cultivators deep into every corner of Eastern Jin to gather intelligence and survey ley lines, laying the groundwork for the comprehensive struggle to come.
During the year Qingming spent consolidating its interior, the foundational work in Eastern Jin was completed. Wei Yuan knew the distribution of Pure Land influence across Eastern Jin like the back of his hand; every small monastery housing more than three monks was marked on his maps. One could say Wei Yuan understood the Buddhist cultivators of Eastern Jin more deeply than the Bodhisattvas and Arhats themselves.
The Pure Land believers in Eastern Jin differed little from those elsewhere, centering their practice on tranquility and non-action. While scraping together a basic livelihood, they observed vegetarianism, paid homage to the Buddha, lived without conflict with the world, and sought inner serenity and liberation to secure rebirth in the Buddhist Pure Land in the next life.
Wei Yuan had prepared similar conversion methods, but he had no intention of employing them. He ultimately devised a comprehensive strategy aimed squarely at that very concept of tranquility. Wei Yuan intended to pit material abundance against quietist tranquility, contending for the grassroots believers and digging up the very roots of the Pure Land faith.
The first large-scale undertaking was the establishment of multiple Three Realms Temples along the floating roads traversing Eastern Jin. The principal Buddha seat in these temples was left empty, enshrining primarily Ushering Miaoyue Bodhisattva. These temples were situated at major traffic hubs and throughout cities of all sizes, serving as footholds for the forthcoming series of operations and key nodes for converting faith.
Once the Ushering Bodhisattva was enshrined, Wei Yuan grandly unveiled a reincarnation service. Any believer of the Three Realms Dao lineage who passed faith verification and died within a hundred li of a temple could reincarnate into Qingming, enjoying the freedom to eat meat, enhanced innate aptitude, deep literary erudition, invincibility in battle, and various other joys of abundance. Following that, taking aim at the vegetarian diet of Pure Land followers, Wei Yuan spent several months developing an entirely new industrial meat.
This meat was centered around a small portion of lean guinea pig flesh, combined with worthless scraps such as pig, cattle, and sheep offal, skin, and tripe. It was bulked up with generous amounts of starch and white sugar, blended with fats and spices, minced, churned, salted, and boiled until cooked, before being congealed, sliced into firm blocks, and wrapped in stiff paper produced exclusively in Qingming.
Eating just under half a jin of this meat could sustain a grown man through a full day of heavy labor. Its greasy texture suited the palates of common men performing hard physical toil. More importantly, it was extraordinarily cheap—real meat made up less than twenty percent of the block, and with Qingming's subsidies, its final production cost was virtually equivalent to vegetables and fruits. The original formula had been rejected by Wei Yuan three times for a single reason: it was not cheap enough. In the end, the craftsmen had no choice but to swallow their pride, discard their consciences, and finally produce a meat that rivaled the price of rice, greens, and fruit.
Meat of this quality had no market in Qingming's major cities, but introduced to a realm like Eastern Jin—where commoners barely saw meat thrice a year—it struck like a tidal wave!
The Three Realms Dao lineage did not prohibit meat; on the contrary, it actively encouraged it. Without meat, the common people could hardly build strong constitutions, and achieving Body Casting in the future would prove exceptionally difficult. Thus, once the industrial fast-ration meat debuted, Wei Yuan placed it for sale in the Three Realms Temples, bundling it directly with faith and worship. Anyone who visited a Three Realms Temple, paid homage, and completed the prescribed rituals could purchase a jin of meat for the price of rice.
The news that meat could be bought for the price of rice and vegetables spread like wildfire, its speed rivaling a dharma idol in full flight. Upon hearing the news, villagers from neighboring counties and hamlets would rather walk for days on end just to pay homage at a Three Realms Temple.
Just like that, flying boats packed with blocks of fast-ration meat sailed along the newly completed floating roads into Eastern Jin, while immense quantities of cheap meat filtered along roads and paths into every village and corner of the realm.
The Three Realms Dao lineage spread hand in hand with these neatly packaged blocks of meat. During this period, many Pure Land monks and devotees stepped forward in an attempt to halt the expansion of the Three Realms faith tethered to the fast-ration meat.
Yet impoverished lands bred unruly folk, and unruly folk wouldn't listen to reason; anyone daring to stand between them and their meat would get beaten senseless, even if it were their own father. Consequently, many monks were beaten bloody, and their temples were torn to the ground.
Reality proved that serene non-action was no match for grease-dripping mouths. Under the assault of Wei Yuan's cheap industrial meat blocks, the Pure Land Dao lineage fell back at every turn, forced to retreat and defend only its most devout core of believers.
Sweeping through the grassroots of Eastern Jin with industrial meat was merely Wei Yuan's first step. The second step was deploying the Myriad Tribulations Imperishable Dharma Body cultivation method, paired with corresponding Body Casting elixir pills, to sweep through Eastern Jin's Body Casting cultivators.
Anyone who completed worship according to the prescribed rituals received the scripture heritage free of charge and gained the qualification to purchase cultivation pills. Those of devout faith who passed verification could receive free cultivation guidance from Qingming cultivators stationed at the temples and purchase accompanying pills at cost price. As for Body Casting cultivators who truly lacked the coin to buy medicine, it mattered not—they could build roads and dig mines for Qingming, substituting labor for pills.
The first step fed them full; the second step made them strong. Pitting comfortable living and vigorous capability against serene non-action was Wei Yuan's strategy. From the outset, Wei Yuan made no effort to conceal his moves, rolling them out with immense fanfare.
Under current Pure Land doctrine, Buddhist adherents were mostly inept at production; even when they labored, it was through primitive tasks like gathering firewood and tilling fields, leaving them powerless against Qingming's deluge of cheap, mass-produced industrial foodstuffs. For many unwilling to remain mediocre, rebirth in the Pure Land in the next life could never match achieving a Dao foundation in this one. Wei Yuan wagered that as long as the Pure Land refused to alter its scriptures, it could never withstand his strategy. And this strategy was, in truth, the first step in Wei Yuan's creation of an earthly Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss.
Wei Yuan intended to use this method to uproot the Pure Land's foundations throughout Eastern Jin, ensuring that its Dao lineage would never again cross west of Northern Qi.
Chapter 1325