Wei Yuan slowly set down the jade toad in his hand, having finished reading everything recorded within.
This jade-carved golden toad was a legacy vessel containing three Dao scriptures. The cultivation methods recorded inside could lead straight to the late stage of Scenery Command, and offered four optional Great Dao authorities. All four authorities leaned toward the power of the Metal Element, belonging to subordinate Dao domains under Geng Metal. However, the scriptures contained no record of how to attain those authorities, lacking the corresponding section on ascending to immortality. Even so, it remained a remarkably rare collection of Dao scriptures.
The scriptures held unique insights regarding karmic luck. The cumbersome, intricate set of etiquette Hule Gao'en had performed was actually an ancient method of paying homage, extraordinarily efficient at condensing and offering karmic luck.
According to the records, this ancient cultivator hailed from a small state named Southern Liang during Middle Antiquity. In those days, the human realms still adhered to the Human Sovereign's governance Dao, and the emperor was essentially the strongest cultivator of the nation. For that very reason, small states stood in vast numbers across the world—more than a hundred in total—and the largest was at most the size of one of today's Nine Nations.
This ancient cultivator was a subject of Southern Liang who spent one hundred and twenty years climbing to the pinnacle of ministerial rank. Afterward, he attempted to usurp the throne, only to be defeated by the Emperor of Liang and flee into the Domain of the Mountain Folk.
Later, he carved out a cave dwelling within the Domain of the Mountain Folk, which transformed into a blessed land upon his ascension to immortality. For daily convenience, he subjugated a small nearby Mountain Folk tribe, imparted cultivation methods to them, and periodically provided boundary stones for the tribe to trade with the human realms. Slowly, this tribe grew, becoming the predecessor of Hule Gao'en's tribe.
This Mountain Folk tribe had always viewed the ancient cultivator as an incarnation of the One True God, an emissary walking the mortal world, and thus naturally aligned themselves with the Prophet Faction. During the mortal struggle between the Prophet Faction and the Bloodline Faction, the tribe suffered catastrophic casualties. Afterward, word from that ancient cultivator suddenly ceased, cutting off the supply of boundary stones. The tribe gradually fell into decline, migrating several times to escape calamity until they were brought nearly to the point of extinction.
Their enemies' relentless pursuit stemmed not only from the irreconcilable hostility between the two sects, but also from a desire to seize the secret of the boundary stones. Boundary stones could only be used by the human race; though useless to the Mountain Folk themselves, they could be traded with humans for urgently needed supplies, making them treasures of the highest order even to the Mountain Folk.
Hule Gao'en had returned in secret to the Mountain Folk tribal lands. Relying on the many karmic luck treasures he had brought from Qingming, he turned peril into fortune at every turn and eventually located several surviving branches of his kin. By then, every Scenery Command cultivator in the tribe had been slaughtered. Hule Gao'en, with his perfected dharma idol and bright Dao prospects, became the tribe's sole hope, eventually succeeding to the position of Grand Prophet.
Many Mountain Folk tribes practiced the unity of church and state. The Grand Prophet was thus the supreme leader of the entire tribe; by comparison, a chieftain was merely an executor and routine administrator.
After taking command of the tribe, Hule Gao'en learned its deepest secret. In the past, all boundary stones had come from the ancient cultivator's cave dwelling. When that cave dwelling was sealed off, the tribe's source of boundary stones had vanished with it. The jade-carved golden toad was the legacy treasure of that ancient cultivator's lineage: it held the Dao scriptures to cultivate all the way to Scenery Command, and served as the key to open the ancient cultivator's cave dwelling.
Having grasped the entire story, Wei Yuan said to Hule Gao'en, "Then why didn't you go inside the cave dwelling yourself, instead of bringing this item back to me? Once the dwelling is opened, wouldn't your tribe be able to rise again, without needing to rely on me any longer?"
Hule Gao'en dropped flat to the ground and proclaimed in a loud voice, "Your servant harbors no disloyalty! Realm Lord, my loyal heart can be witnessed by the sun and moon!..."
"All right, all right, where on earth did you learn all this?" Wei Yuan said, torn between tears and laughter.
"If the monarch demands the minister's death, the minister cannot but die! Thunderbolts and sweet dew are alike heavenly grace! Wait a moment, Realm Lord, your servant shall plunge through boiling water and tread on fire at once to prove my innocence—"
"Shut up!" Wei Yuan felt a throbbing headache.
Clearly, Hule Gao'en had not mastered proper courtly manners, nor had he learned how to flatter properly, failing to grasp the idioms he was throwing around.
Brought to a halt by Wei Yuan's bark, Hule Gao'en finally realized the fault was his own and quickly moved on to the main point.
The entrance to the ancient cultivator's cave dwelling was clearly situated within that mountain, but the tribe had searched for tens of thousands of years without ever finding its exact location. Moreover, the moment anyone entered the mountain, all sorts of accidents would occur, leaving many dead without ever understanding why. It was unimaginable that for the Mountain Folk, who could scale sheer cliffs by their first birthday, the leading cause of death in that mountain was falling off a precipice and plummeting to their doom.
This came as no surprise. The ancient cultivator was clearly adept in the Dao of karmic luck. Manipulating karmic luck to cause ordinary mountain folk to perish in accidents was merely a minor trick within the Dao of karmic luck. Furthermore, doing so had another advantage: every mountain dweller who plunged to their death died through their own carelessness, ensuring no karmic debt could attach to the immortal.
Wei Yuan probed from various angles, clarifying everything that could be asked, and then brought Hule Gao'en into Joyful Heaven.
Hule Gao'en's passage into Joyful Heaven was remarkably smooth, without the slightest hiccup—he was, after all, someone who had contributed two strands of karmic luck to Wei Yuan. One could only wonder where the fierce, tyrannical Scourge of the North of former days had gone.
Within Joyful Heaven, Hule Gao'en could speak of a bit more. By spending a bit more karmic luck, Wei Yuan finally completed the last piece of the puzzle. Emerging from Joyful Heaven, Wei Yuan went to Zhang Sheng's residence and placed a map before her. Zhang Sheng glanced over it, and several points of light emerged upon the parchment.
Wei Yuan said, "Everything has been clarified, and several possible entrances to that ancient cultivator's cave dwelling have been calculated."
"Do you want to go?"
Wei Yuan hesitated for a moment. "I... don't know."
Zhang Sheng looked up and placed her hand over the back of Wei Yuan's, her voice turning gentle. "What are you worried about?"
Wei Yuan drew a deep breath. "That grotto-heaven likely holds an ancient cultivator's legacy—a complete legacy! Because this ancient immortal hid deep within the Mountain Folk lands, was adept in karmic luck, and sealed his cave dwelling tens of thousands of years ago, it is very likely he survived the Martial God's Altering of Heaven and Earth and preserved his legacy intact. In our realm, there can hardly be many such legacies left."
"Go on," Zhang Sheng said.
Wei Yuan pondered and said, "Though I don't know the exact details of the Martial Ancestor's grand scheme, observing the causes through their effects shows that over the past thousand-odd years, the number of human children of karmic destiny has surged, and prodigies have emerged in endless succession across every region. Compared to the era before the Martial Ancestor, it is truly a blossoming of a hundred flowers, a hundred boats vying in the current. Talents no longer arise solely from the nobility of the Nine Nations, nor exclusively from prominent clans and venerable immortal sects. Needless to say, right now is the eve of humanity's great flourishing. Without the Martial Ancestor's scheme, very likely neither you nor I would exist, nor would Qingming exist. That is why I have long been reluctant to touch the Martial Ancestor's scheme—I simply don't want to disrupt this situation. Though the Martial Ancestor erased karma and causality, by comparing past and present, one can still discern some of the crucial nodes. For example, ancient cultivation legacies."
Zhang Sheng nodded. "It is one part of it, but not the crux."
Wei Yuan sank into thought.
Zhang Sheng added, "Are you worried that disrupting the Martial Ancestor's scheme will harm humanity's greater situation, and then... you will shoulder infamy?"
Wei Yuan paused, then shook his head. "The former is indeed my worry, but not the infamy. I don't care about reputation in the slightest."
"Then that is fine. In the current situation, the foremost priority is self-strengthening! If you inadvertently disrupt the Martial Ancestor's scheme and cause consequences, we will simply remedy them. If your strength alone is not enough, you still have me."
Wei Yuan felt a surge of warmth in his heart, at a loss for words for a moment.
Zhang Sheng patted his hand gently and said, "There has never been an eternal dynasty in this world, so how could there be a scheme that lasts forever? The Martial Ancestor's game is bound to be broken sooner or later."
"That is true..."
Just then, an attendant entered and presented an official dispatch, saying, "This is the latest plan drafted by the Development Bureau targeting Song. Realm Lord, please look it over."
Wei Yuan took the dispatch, opened it, and examined it closely.
By this time, Qingming had already trained several batches of celebrated scholars. Several dozen had successfully entered official service in Song, while over a hundred more were cultivating their reputations while buying up key industries to hoard wealth for themselves. Seeing that the time was ripe, the Development Bureau initiated the second phase of its plan, which was now fully fleshed out and submitted to Wei Yuan for approval. The core of this phase lay in the words: "Exemption of Officials from Taxation." Put simply, it granted officials of a certain rank and above in Song the privilege of paying no land taxes.
For its initial implementation, the pretext sounded high-minded and dignified: Song's national treasury was depleted, yet redundant and sinecure officials were legion, and their annual stipends alone amounted to an astronomical figure. Thus, the pretense drafted by the Development Bureau was that the officials would share the nation's burdens by voluntarily cutting their stipends, asking only that the state exempt their land from taxes so they could feed themselves.
Reading this, Wei Yuan could not help but slap the table in admiration.
Then he pondered for a moment and added an annotation at the end of the document, including one more provision: "Exemption of Feudatory Princes from Taxation." The gist was that legitimate princes of the Song imperial clan could likewise be exempted from land tax, and this privilege would be hereditary and perpetual.
The beauty of this measure was that even if they clearly recognized the probable consequences, the overwhelming majority of imperial clansmen, nobility, and civil and military officials would still choose to turn a blind eye. The few who refused to drift with the tide would instead become the black sheep.
In this way, in less than three hundred years, it was easy to imagine that most of the arable land in Song would fall into the hands of the gentry clans and the imperial clan. On top of that, the Qingming Development Bureau had preemptively blocked commercial, industrial, and trade taxes, leaving Song's government expenses with no choice but to reach toward agricultural taxes. And by then, the tax-paying arable land might not even amount to thirty percent of the total.
And when the national treasury ran dry and funds were insufficient, what could be done? The Development Bureau had long since devised a countermeasure on behalf of the Song court, which boiled down to these few words: Let the common people suffer a bit.
Chapter 1331