North of the royal capital of the State of Ji, a Zhenbei Army encampment went up in roaring flames. Routed soldiers fled in battered disarray, every one of them wounded. All the armaments, grain, and fodder stockpiled in the camp were reduced to ashes.
At the same time, the exact same scene was playing out at an encampment east of the city. Ji soldiers repeatedly splashed fuel over tents and armories before tossing torches to set them alight. Many Zhenshan Army soldiers were not yet dead when the flames caught them, leaving them writhing on the ground in ceaseless, agonized shrieks.
Wang Zhi patrolled the camp, slaying with a single sword strike any Zhenshan Army cultivators who were feigning death.
As soon as the fire took hold, Wang Zhi led his troops back toward the city. The fuel they had splashed was specially crafted by Qingming; water could not put it out at all. Once it caught fire, the entire camp was doomed.
By the time reinforcements from the Zhenshan Fief finally rushed to the scene, they saw the city gates swing open as Sun Chao'en personally led a detachment out to meet the raiders. Lacking any assurance of victory, the relieving Zhenshan troops could only watch helplessly as the two forces merged and withdrew into the city.
Inside the central command tent of the Zhenshan Army, Li Zhi received the report and seized a jade cup, intent on smashing it against the ground.
Yet halfway through his swing, he slowly lowered his arm. This was hardly the first time such a thing had happened. Flying into a rage accomplished nothing, and he was running out of jade cups anyway.
The royal capital of Ji was vast in scale. With loyalist relief forces pouring in from across the lands, the city garrison now numbered over six hundred thousand. Even counting his new levies, Li Zhi had fewer than two million men under his command. Maintaining the siege was already an enormous strain; sealing the capital off completely was practically impossible.
Wang Zhi and Sun Chao'en were not about to sit idle. They continually launched sorties, destroying siege camps time and again. Sheltered by the city's grand defensive formation, Li Zhi had no way of knowing where they would gather and strike. Except for the southern camp where Li Zhi himself was based, the eastern, western, and northern fronts were all under constant threat of assault.
Under the defenders' relentless attacks, spreading forces across a continuous line of camps dispersed his strength too thinly to hold at all. To bolster defense, each individual encampment grew larger and was garrisoned with more troops. If a camp were even slightly smaller, Wang Zhi would likely swallow it whole before nearby forces could even rush to its aid.
Consequently, Li Zhi had no choice but to fortify his encampments further and pack more soldiers into each. But as a result, the total number of camps fell drastically, leaving the encirclement riddled with gaps through which Ji troops, munitions, and provisions slipped into the city from time to time.
Meanwhile, within the palace of the Ji capital, the King of Ji was hosting a lavish banquet to fete his triumphant warriors. Every officer from the rank of colonel and above who had taken part in the raid was invited to dine within the royal palace.
As the feast began, the King of Ji raised his cup, toasting Wang Zhi first, then Sun Chao'en, before addressing the assembly of officers: "Though I cannot take the field myself to slay the enemy, how could I remain indifferent when you, my beloved ministers, are shedding blood in mortal combat at the front? I have practiced strict frugality; today, I possess no more than eight everyday robes, and what I eat each day is no different from what my ministers eat. Whatever the soldiers in the ranks consume, I consume as well."
Only then did the officers realize there was not a single mountain delicacy or exotic seafood on the tables. The meat dishes were all prepared from canned meats purchased from Qingming, merely cooked with finer care. The only thing that could be called luxurious in this harsh winter was an abundance of fresh vegetables. Yet once the generals tasted them, they discovered the vegetables were also canned goods—rations they had in their own barracks.
After three rounds of wine, the King of Ji asked Sun Chao'en, "How much more of these military provisions do we have?"
Sun Chao'en answered, "Your subject began purchasing and stockpiling Qingming military rations in bulk half a year ago. At a rate that fully feeds every soldier and civilian in the city, our stores will last a year and a half. If we enforce strict wartime rationing on the populace, they will last three years."
The King of Ji's heart settled immensely, as did those of the assembled generals.
Late into the night, the banquet dispersed. The officers felt warmth spreading through their bodies and their spirits alike.
The King of Ji's words still echoed in their ears. Even if no one truly believed the claim of 'only eight everyday robes,' the food served at tonight's palace feast was indeed what ordinary soldiers ate. That a king would share the rations of his men was naturally deeply moving.
The only slight flaw was that the canned food was actually quite delicious, which diluted much of the solemn pathos.
Outside the capital, the Zhenshan Army continued constructing new encampments to tighten the noose. The first month of the siege slipped by in this constant tug-of-war.
Late at night, the moon climbed high, casting its cold glow across the snowy ground and rendering the vista crystal clear.
Li Zhi stood on a high observation platform, gazing into the distance at the capital that loomed like a mountain range. He uttered an almost imperceptible murmur: "When will it finally fall?"
Beneath the same moonlit sky, Wei Yuan looked up at the moon and let out a deep sigh. "When will the common folk of the realm finally grow wealthy? When will they buy up everything I have?"
Ever since Li Zhi ignited the war, the flames of conflict had driven up the various nations' procurement of Qingming military supplies, but that in turn squeezed their expenditures in other areas. Even the shipments of the realm-renowned Qing brocade had dropped by thirty to forty percent.
Within Qingming, idle hands grew increasingly numerous. The latest batch of template Dao foundations was unprecedented in size, yet the proportion finding employment hit a historic low. For the first time, Dao foundation loafers were roaming the streets of Qingming—an utterly absurd sight.
Wei Yuan knew full well that people must not be left idle; once they had nothing to do, trouble was sure to follow.
Yet many of Qingming's industrial goods were already overflowing the warehouses: artillery shells and flying swords piled up like mountains, and grain was so plentiful that even pigs could not eat it all, to the point that someone had suggested brewing it into alcohol—not for drinking, but to burn as fuel.
The floating road to Western Jin was under construction; the one toward Northern Qi had only the final thirty thousand li left to build; and the internal floating roads within Qingming were largely complete, meaning further construction would be pure financial loss. Wei Yuan turned the matter over in his mind, but aside from waging war, there seemed to be nothing left to do.
Such predicaments had occurred frequently in the worlds beyond heaven, and there had never been any particularly good solutions.
Wei Yuan sighed, digging out a proposal from a neglected corner of Splendor of the Many Realms. Back then, he had dismissed the document straight into the cold palace and sealed it away. Who could have thought that in less than a decade, things would already reach a point where it had to be put into motion?
The proposal was titled *A Grand Mansion for Every Dweller*. A difference of just one character, yet a world of difference in substance.
The proposal argued that the foundation of people's livelihoods rested on clothing, food, housing, and transport. Since the people of Qingming now had no worries regarding clothing and food, housing had become the primary concern of the masses. This was why through the ages, scholars and poets had either championed 'a home for every dweller' or cried aloud, 'How could one obtain ten thousand spacious halls?'
Yet ordinary folk across the Nine States could hardly afford to build slightly larger dwellings even with sun-dried mud bricks, let alone purchase a house. The people of Qingming were far better off, but at present the vast majority lived in modular apartment blocks uniformly constructed by Qingming. Since these were low-cost welfare housing, Wei Yuan could never permit people to live too comfortably or luxuriously in them; otherwise, the initiative would deviate from its original purpose.
Thus, while Qingming's modular buildings were far superior to traditional homes in the Nine States, by Qingming's standards they were merely tolerable.
The merit points and Qingyuan accumulated by most people in Qingming were also nowhere near enough to buy a satisfying, spacious estate.
This proposal was devised specifically to provide commoners with grand houses. Simply put, Qingming would lend money to commoners earmarked exclusively for buying homes. The debt could be repaid over thirty, fifty, or even one hundred years. The crucial point was that the houses provided had to be plentiful enough, good enough, and large enough. Floor space was the key; only if the homes were vast enough could the commoners borrow a sufficiently massive sum of money.
How could commoners be made willing and eager to buy grand mansions? The author's answer was to build no small homes at all, while aggressively spreading propaganda that living in a small house was undignified, revealed a lack of capability, made one unworthy of taking a wife, and so forth.
The benefits of this scheme were self-evident. The author believed that over the next ten years, Qingming would inevitably face severe overcapacity, which could be conveniently absorbed through building houses. The massive amounts of printed Qingyuan originally had nowhere to go, so lending them to commoners for home purchases would secure a steady stream of interest, equivalent to collecting rent.
If unruly scoundrels refused to pay their debts, that was simple too: the monk might run, but the temple could not. The grand mansion could not run away; Qingming could simply repossess it, suffering no loss whatsoever.
At the very end of the proposal, the author wrote: 'Fed, housed, and deep in debt—the realm has never seen more obedient subjects.'
Wei Yuan had seen right through its many sinister traps back then, which was why he had withheld and buried it.
Yet ten years had passed, and the present was nothing like the past. Implementing this plan now offered benefits that outweighed the harm. Furthermore, there was one factor the author had failed to foresee, yet one that was profoundly important to Wei Yuan: when the common folk moved into their grand mansions, they would almost certainly contribute another massive surge of karmic luck.
Wei Yuan lifted his brush and revised the plan. Its title changed from *A Grand Mansion for Every Dweller* to *The Qingming Universal Credit Plan*. After a moment's thought, he struck out 'Credit' and replaced it with 'Comprehensive Livelihood Improvement.'
Now, any citizen of Qingming could borrow a sum of money to purchase whatever they wished. If they wished to buy a grand mansion, the amount they could borrow was extraordinarily large. Moreover, to set the commoners' hearts at ease, the plan specifically stated that three generations—grandparents, parents, and children—could repay the loan together. If one generation could not finish paying it off, the burden could simply pass on to their children and grandchildren.
At the turn of spring and summer in the eleventh year of Zhaoning, Li Zhi breached the Ji capital, and the people of Qingming had their grand mansions—even if many of those mansions still existed only on paper.
Chapter 1357