By now, dusk had fallen once more over the Qingming domain, and only a small part of the battlefield had been cleared. The human cultivators went back and forth, dragging the corpses of the Shamans back and laying them out in designated areas. It was common knowledge in the Western Territories that the dead Shamans could nourish a domain.
Wei Yuan also found the Western Territories rather bizarre. The Shamans sacrificed humans to heaven, while humans used Shamans to nourish the earth, each preying upon the other. There was an indescribable feeling to such a cycle.
Inside the stone hut, Xu Wenwu was writing furiously, his right fingers long since numb. He could not remember how long he had been at it; all he knew was that he had never stopped writing.
At first, what he wrote was indeed based on what he had seen and heard, but in truth, it was all his life's glorious achievements—such as getting a stellar score of ninety-nine points in the second grade of primary school, or placing in the top thirty of his class on an exam in seventh grade, and breaking into the top fifty again in ninth grade.
Yet he had barely begun writing these glorious feats before they were exhausted. As he kept writing, Xu Wenwu gave free rein to his imagination, letting himself go wild and jotting down whatever crossed his mind. Dormitories, cafeterias, internet cafes, the midnight food stalls outside the school gates—everything made an appearance. He had originally wanted to write about the library, but only after raising his pen did he realize that in four years of university, he had not visited it once and had no idea what it looked like inside.
Writing on like this, the jade paper suddenly flared with light. Today's thirty thousand words were finally complete.
A door reappeared on the stone hut. It swung open, and Bao Yun stepped inside. Picking up the jade paper from the table, she said, "You may rest now."
These words were nothing short of heavenly music to his ears. Xu Wenwu scrambled out of the stone hut, two streams of hot tears streaming down his face.
Bao Yun could not help but chuckle at the sight. Seeing Xu Wenwu head toward the main hall in front of the peak, she called out, "Wrong way. The food is past the main peak, to the right."
"I'm going to walk my horse first!" Xu Wenwu shouted back from afar.
Xu Wenwu felt he had become remarkably dedicated and diligent, yet Bao Yun merely nodded without showing any other reaction.
Of course, he had no way of knowing that over all these years, whenever countless young scions found themselves in Bao Yun's presence, even the most profligate playboy would suddenly turn diligent, sophisticated, and high-minded. Their conversation would elevate to another level, revolving entirely around great world affairs, as if those matters concerned them personally.
Seeing that Bao Yun was about to leave, Xu Wenwu could not resist asking, "With me writing so much, how long will it take you all to read it?"
"By your world's time," Bao Yun replied, "one minute."
Xu Wenwu instantly deflated, thinking bitterly to himself: *If you don't take it seriously, then tomorrow I won't write properly at all!*
Tomorrow was tomorrow's problem. For now, he still had to deliver on the boast he had made. Thus, Xu Wenwu found his horse and began to walk it. By now, he shared a faint resonance with the steed; without even looking, he could vaguely sense where it was, which felt truly miraculous.
Bao Yun took the jade paper to the summit of the main peak. Night had fallen, and everyone from the Palace of Grand Beginning had returned. They divided their divine senses and perused the jade paper together.
A sweeping thirty thousand words—by the measure of that world's time, it took them less than half a minute to read it all.
Wei Yuan's origin soul was already exceptionally formidable, and he was familiar with Xu Wenwu's manner of speaking. Sweeping his divine sense across the page, he automatically extracted the key information, classifying the rest as junk to be set aside for later when he had time to scour it for overlooked value. The entire process took less than ten seconds, extracting two thousand words of pure essence—far exceeding expectations.
The others had their own methods and processed the tens of thousands of words in their own ways.
Only Xiaoyu lacked experience. Caught off guard, he had memorized every single word in his head. Now he was in utter agony, spitting in fury as he hastily purged the junk from his origin soul.
The night passed without incident.
Early the next morning, the battlefield was fully cleared. Wei Yuan marked out an area roughly a li square beside the main peak and assigned the cultivators to reclaim the land, preparing to cultivate the Liang rice unique to the Western Territories.
This variety of rice grew rapidly, requiring a damp environment and abundant water. Under normal circumstances, it matured in only three months. The harvested Liang rice contained a faint trace of spiritual qi, making it the most common staple for impoverished cultivators in the Western Territories.
Ordinary cultivators did not merely need food; their appetites were vastly greater than ordinary people. Though there were not many people at present, once Wei Yuan began recruiting the second batch of cultivators, the military rations retrieved from the secret vault would no longer suffice.
Once the Shamans' offensive quieted down for the time being, Wei Yuan planned to send people to Quliu Town to purchase emergency grain, which would bridge the gap until the newly planted crops could take over.
A plot roughly a li square was about five hundred mu, and a single harvest of Liang rice could yield ten thousand jin. Within the Qingming domain, the maturation period could be cut to a month and a half, and with a touch of Jia Wood Life-Mystic, it could be accelerated even further.
Liang rice was merely the most elementary spiritual food. An ordinary Body Casting cultivator needed to eat at least five jin a day to sustain their cultivation needs; if they trained diligently, even ten jin might not be enough. By this calculation, in a month's time, Wei Yuan would be able to sustain a force of around a thousand cultivators. With more hands, they could reclaim even more spiritual fields.
With a second Great Shaman slain, the Shamans would undoubtedly lie low for a while. Wei Yuan had no intention of wasting this precious lull. After organizing the land reclamation, he set out alone to scout the movements of the Shamans. Bao Yun and Eldest Senior Sister were each responsible for another direction.
Wei Yuan was scouting the route toward Quliu Town. A large human population lived there, making it unlikely for an army of the Wuyu Clan to appear from that direction; thus, it was relatively safe.
Bao Yun and Eldest Senior Sister chose the southwest and northwest, respectively. Naturally, those two directions were far more dangerous, with a much higher likelihood of encountering the Shamans. However, neither woman was an ordinary figure; even if they ran into a Great Shaman, they would likely escape unscathed.
Bao Yun's Seven Marvels Treasure Tree isolated heaven and earth, serving as a supreme Dao Foundation for concealing her traces. The lizard Great Shaman had not even realized that Bao Yun had secretly planted a seed within him, which spoke volumes about her ability. Therefore, Bao Yun took the southwest—the direction most likely to uncover Shamans—in hopes of locating their strongholds in the Shattered Lands.
In Ji Liuli's northwestern direction, there were also large Shaman tribes, though their tribal homelands lay much farther away than those in the southwest. A Shaman outpost could still appear there, but the odds were somewhat lower.
Although Ji Liuli lacked the uncanny concealment methods of Bao Yun, she hailed from the Hall of Heavenly Secrets. Even though she cared only for fighting and killing, there were plenty of Heavenly Secret arts and feng shui techniques related to combat.
For instance, before setting out, Ji Liuli had blessed herself with several Heavenly Secret arts, drastically reducing her presence between heaven and earth. If she were to walk past an ordinary person without disguise now, she would leave an impression not of a passing human, but of a crawling ant—easily overlooked.
Since Zhang Sheng and Xiaoyu's strength would be halved once they left the domain, they stayed behind to guard the base and see if any fools dared approach. Zhang Sheng's sword formation had suffered a setback in its debut, falling just a hair shy of slaying a dharma idol, so all four of his swords were itching for a fight.
Yun Feifei and Xu Wanyi were busy rushing up and down, burdened with endless trivial chores.
When Xu Wenwu woke early in the morning, he watered the tree first, then walked into the small stone hut on his own to begin a new day's journey.
Today, however, the brush was different from yesterday's. When he picked it up, it felt incredibly light, almost weightless, and moved according to his will. Overjoyed, Xu Wenwu wrote like the wind, remarkably evoking the feeling of typing on a keyboard.
Yet a brush still lacked a bit of a keyboard's soul after all—missing that overbearing satisfaction of slamming down on the keys.
Chapter 139