Silver Moon's corpse had been consumed by the calamity, turning his true identity into an enigma. Soon after, Wei Yuan set the matter aside, beginning to take stock of the battle's gains and losses and ponder their next strategic move.
In the final engagement, Qingming had lost one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, more than three thousand template Dao foundations, and nine fallen Golden Cores. It was the most grievous loss of high-ranking cultivators Qingming had suffered in recent years.
The self-detonation of a single Liao Clan peak dharma idol alone had claimed four Golden Cores and over two hundred templates. Even though the template cultivators had been outfitted in heavy armor, their cultivation was simply too low and their dharmic bodies too fragile. Before high-ranking cultivators, they remained utterly vulnerable, falling in swathes.
This had been inevitable sooner or later; it was also the indispensable path for Qingming to achieve victory through sheer numbers.
As the army withdrew south, Wei Yuan returned ahead to Qingming. He transported the hundreds of immortal medicines unearthed from the Ancestral Temple back to Qingming and delivered them to Xu Henshui.
Among this batch of immortal medicines were several supreme treasures over two hundred thousand years old, along with dozens surpassing ten thousand years. These herbs alone would occupy a century of Xu Henshui's time. And once they were all refined, Xu Henshui would gain at least one more true spirit associated with pill crafting.
Wei Yuan could technically have undertaken the task himself, but a true spirit associated with alchemy was far inferior in status to his existing true spirits, and its appearance would increase the difficulty of his ascension by another order of magnitude. According to mathematical principles, the difference between eight variables and nine variables was as vast as heaven and earth. Thus, Wei Yuan had to decline taking on more true spirits. Even if he were to add another, it would have to be someone like Hong Mo—capable of charting her own path and possessing strength on par with hers.
Afterward, Wei Yuan transferred the dozens of adolescent immortal corpses to the Lu Clan Ancestral Mountain and placed them into the World-Refining Grand Array. As luck would have it, the Lu clan's immortal corpses were already mostly refined, so the fresh replenishment of materials came right on time.
With the adolescent immortal corpses gone, the black jade coffins were no longer needed. Wei Yuan dismantled all the black jade coffins, chains, and sealing nails. Capable of suppressing the transformation of immortal corpses into undead horrors, every single one was a rare treasure. Once he had stripped every treasure, Wei Yuan did not even spare the putrid sludge pooled at the bottom of the coffins. After refining it with a wave of his hand, he produced a batch of costly jade phials, sealed a single drop inside each, and sent them off to be sold.
The major trading companies in Qingming suddenly discovered a massive supply of ten-thousand-year corpse water on the market and were sent into an ecstatic frenzy. Such corpse water had an immense variety of applications; no amount was ever enough. In an instant, every commercial house was frantically applying to their headquarters for emergency financial backing.
Judging solely by the harvest from the Ancestral Temple, this campaign appeared thoroughly worthwhile. Factoring in all military expenditures and bereavement pensions, they had still turned a modest profit several dozen times over.
The Qingming army retreated south all the way to the Sea of the Moon, halting only upon reaching the royal court to erect defensive lines on the spot. Wei Yuan, however, had miscalculated in one regard: he had never anticipated actually conquering the Frost Silver Grassland in the first place, which was why he had summoned Chuhe to disperse a payload of plagues that transformed the Silver Sea into a Sea of Yellow.
Now that this territory was likely to become Qingming's own, he had effectively dropped a boulder on his own foot.
Even so, Qingming possessed immense foundations now. Wei Yuan immediately transferred vast quantities of fodder and grain from the Three Rivers Khanate, while sending high-quality Liao horses and livestock from the Frost Silver Grassland southward. The Frost Silver Grassland was sacred ground to the Silver Moon Khanate, requiring certain qualifications to dwell upon. Consequently, the Liao populace there numbered under a hundred million, keeping the burden relatively light.
The inhabitants of the royal court at the Sea of the Moon were fewer still, amounting to only several million. Combined, the two regions held just over a hundred million Liao people, posing little strain on Qingming's grain supply and transport capacity.
Ensuring that the Liao territory under his control had adequate food and warmth, and preventing the Liao populace from starving or freezing to death, was Wei Yuan's baseline.
Yet how long this land could be held remained an open question. In a war between two races, no holds were barred, and Wei Yuan certainly had no intention of showing mercy. He allocated a substantial portion of karmic luck to Chuhe to engineer a new breed of grass.
This breed grew at an astonishing pace, yielding a harvest every month. As livestock fodder, its yield exceeded traditional pasture grass more than tenfold. Furthermore, Chuhe had invoked his innate divine ability to incorporate an extra element into the grass. Once the Liao livestock tasted it, they would never relish any other pasture for the rest of their lives, finding all other fodder completely tasteless.
The grass produced immense yields and was rich in nutrients; the cost was that it depleted the land's fertility with terrifying speed. In a single year, it could render a pasture barren, and within three years, fertile loam would turn to desert.
Chuhe completed its cultivation in just a single month, though the chromatic glow of merit upon him was practically exhausted. Seeing this, Wei Yuan temporarily shelved his plans for other projects, intending to let Chuhe pursue his own interests over the coming years to replenish his merit.
That it could dissipate Chuhe's merit spoke volumes of the grass's ruthless nature. In some sense, it too could be considered the will of heaven.
The moment Wei Yuan acquired the seeds, he immediately dispatched personnel to scatter them across the entire Frost Silver Grassland. The execution of this task was arranged with great care: Wei Yuan deployed over a hundred thousand templates at once, assigning each person only a tiny plot. Once they finished scattering their share, they had to return immediately, with no one permitted to do even a sliver more.
Wei Yuan knew full well that this act inflicted grievous harm upon the Liao Clan's heavenly harmony. He himself had nothing to fear, but these templates were fragile. If their merit and karmic luck suffered too severe a deficit, an ordinary carriage crash upon their return could easily cost them their lives.
While Wei Yuan was occupied in the Liao territory, deep beneath the continent of Splendor of the Many Realms, another cavernous space was hollowed out. Blood-vitality roiled within this chamber, and below lay an expanse of a blood sea!
This purgatory of a blood sea was also a harvest from the campaign against the Liao. The resentful souls and blood-vitality of all Liao fallen across the successive battles had been gathered here.
Altogether, nearly two million elite Liao cavalry were collected within, enough to craft three more boundary stones.
Following Silver Moon's demise, the Liao Clan made no move whatsoever. For several months, there was no retaliation, nor did anyone come to reclaim the lost territory. It seemed the pressure of the war between the Shamans and the Liao was growing ever more dire.
At the easternmost edge of the Liao territory, along the coast of the East Sea, a dark red sun had just risen above the water, its light so dim it resembled dusk.
Upon a watchtower atop the sea cliffs, a Liao soldier stretched lazily as he stepped onto his post. Yawning, he cast a glance at the murky yellow sun, and his drowsiness instantly vanished by half.
Looking out toward the sea, he suddenly froze, his body rigid as he slowly stepped backward.
The ocean was impossibly tranquil. The water was set firm like a mirror, devoid of waves, lacking even the faintest ripple. The soldier's vision was sharp; perched in the watchtower atop a hundred-zhang cliff, he could clearly discern his own reflection.
There were no clouds in the sky, and no wind upon the sea. Yet that mirror-smooth sea was slowly curving, the waters in the distance rising upward.
The Liao soldier let out a cry of terror, stumbling down the watchtower steps. Moments later, a plume of beacon fire shot into the sky!
Across the entire East Sea, over a thousand beacon fires flared to life at that very instant. The warning sped deep into the heart of the Liao domain, reaching the Golden Tent Royal Court in less than a day.
To the west of the Liao territory, Wei Yuan was buried in organizing the newly seized ten thousand li of land. He could not fathom why the Liao Clan had yet to launch a counterattack, but abandoning such vast territory for Wei Yuan to do with as he pleased was an unmitigated blunder on their part.
Wei Yuan surmised that the immortal-tier figures of the Liao domain believed the land could simply be conceded for now. After all, the Human Clan required boundary stones to claim territory. Without sufficient boundary stones, taking however much land was pointless; they likely treated it as merely placed in Wei Yuan's temporary custody.
Yet through all-out research and development, Qingming's templates—who knew what was packed inside their heads—had already hammered out a comprehensive strategy spanning every facet of governance, encompassing dozens of major categories and thousands of granular policies.
To fully implement this suite of policies would take a mere three years. The Liao territory would still be the Liao territory, but it would be transformed from a land of nobles and high cultivators into a land of common mortals and low-tier cultivators.
After a few years under these policies, the Liao domain would be so thoroughly depleted that grasslands would turn to gravel and vegetation would face near extinction. The fertility drained would not stop at the surface; even three hundred zhang beneath the soil, it would be so barren that a cockroach would starve.
All told, so long as this land remained in Wei Yuan's hands for three years, it would end up as though an Immortal Lord had just emerged from it.
Chapter 1390