In the early spring of the fourteenth year of Zhaoning, new turmoil swept through the already chaotic native realm. Mobilizing the full strength of their entire race, the Sea Clan stirred up a tsunami ten thousand zhang high, wiping out one hundred thousand li of the Liao domain in the far east in a single stroke. The ten-million-strong army deployed there by the Liao Clan was utterly annihilated, and the fates of ten billion Liao civilians hung in the balance.
One of the Liao Ancestor's cenotaphs lay near the flood zone, and endless swarms of the Sea Clan emerged from the ocean, charging toward it.
This place was one of the spots in the Liao domain where earth pulses converged the most and where the blessings were strongest. Standing upon this land, ordinary Liao warriors had their strength doubled; those at Body Forging perfection could wield the might of a Dao Foundation cultivator, while foreign races drawing near would see their strength suppressed to less than a third of their original power.
Yet even such a massive disadvantage could not halt the Sea Clan. Countless Sea Clan warriors trampled over the corpses of their comrades to storm the home of the Liao Ancestor, paving the road entirely with their own flesh and blood.
Because of the immense distance and the fact that mighty figures had sealed off heaven and earth, even the two immortals of the Grand Beginning Palace only knew that such an event had occurred, remaining completely ignorant of the specific details. If even immortals were in the dark, Wei Yuan was even less capable of peering into the situation.
However, through the channels of the Strength Shamans, Wei Yuan learned that the war between the Shamans and the Liao was still at a stalemate. Of the Twelve Heavenly Shamans, only three remained behind to guard the Shaman Domain while the rest had gone to the front lines. Several years into the war, the Ancestral Shaman had actually intervened nearly ten times, displaying a level of activity second only to when the desolate realm's heavenly pillar had struck.
Jiumu had been at the front lines the entire time, while Tianyu held low status and had access to limited news. Over these years, however, Tianyu had brought vast volumes of orders. At first, he had been somewhat secretive, purchasing raw materials such as steel ingots, alloys, and iron sheet metal. Later, he simply dropped the pretense and placed weapon orders directly, with every weapon specification tailor-made for immediate use by Shaman Clan warriors.
A few months prior, Tianyu had brought another unusual merchant caravan. This caravan had actually delivered several hundred million jin of fresh fish, requesting that they be processed into long-lasting canned goods, after which Tianyu would buy the cans back. This single processing stage yielded a twofold profit.
It turned out that the Shaman Clan's territory was vast, but their transport capacity was extremely limited. Tianyu had gone to the deep rear areas in the west and south of the Shaman Domain to purchase fresh foods like fish in massive quantities, pushing the transport limits to deliver them to Qingming. Here, they were processed into canned goods weighing one ton each. Their shelf life instantly jumped from under a month to several years, whereupon Tianyu hauled the cans to the front line.
In this manner, a fish that went through this process would see its value skyrocket twentyfold by the time it finally appeared on the front line.
Upon receiving word, Wei Yuan arranged a meeting with Tianyu. Under careful questioning, he learned that this was an order Jiumu had given Tianyu: to collect and stockpile as much food as possible.
A war between the Shamans and the Liao could easily drag on for centuries based on past history. The last time the Shamans faced a calamity, the Liao Clan had fought relentlessly for over four hundred years, withdrawing their troops only after the entire calamity ended and the desolate realm stabilized. That war had set the Shaman Clan's national strength back tens of thousands of years.
This time, with the calamity falling upon the Liao domain, the Shamans would surely demand an eye for an eye.
In a war of such scale, the most critical shortage was bound to be grain. Jiumu was prudent and seasoned, and Tianyu possessed a sharp nose; both had begun stockpiling food on a massive scale early on.
The method Tianyu adopted was exploiting time differentials, utilizing Qingming's industrial capacity to turn perishable food into long-storable military rations and stockpiling them. When the need arose, prices might surge dozens of times over.
As the Shamans and Liao clashed and the Sea Clan entered the fray, flames of war raged within human lands as well.
Southern Qi waged war on two fronts, attacking Northern Qi on one side while advancing into the entire State of Ji on the other with ferocious momentum.
However, Northern Qi had the aid of the State of Song as well as covert support from the Pure Land, making the fight grueling for Southern Qi, which had to pay a heavy price for every city taken. In the direction of the State of Ji, Southern Qi broke through like splitting bamboo, its armies sweeping through the south and whittling Li Zhi's power down to merely a few commanderies. Yet when attacking the western dozen or so surviving commanderies, Southern Qi met layered resistance, and their rate of progress was slower than Li Zhi's had been.
Neither the State of Zhao's defense against the Mountain Folk nor the State of Wu's defense against the Sea Clan was going smoothly. Before attacking, the Sea Clan inevitably raised tsunamis, leaving thousands of li along Wu's coastline utterly desolate. Expanses of fertile land were submerged in seawater, unable to recover for centuries. The seawater inundation alone severely sapped Wu's vitality.
The State of Zhao, on the other hand, encountered a different problem. Its border armies, renowned for being elite, were suffering retreat after retreat before the Mountain Folk's offensive. In multiple battles, the Zhao troops' morale collapsed before casualties had even reached ten percent—beginning with generals fleeing first, followed by everyone running together.
Such abysmal performance infuriated the King of Zhao to the point that he cursed a blue streak three times a day at morning, noon, and evening court. Generals were dismissed one after another, yet the front-line war remained a festering mess.
Across the entire court, neither civil officials nor military officers could explain why their troops—outfitted in Qingming battle armor, equipped with heavy artillery, fully supplied with ammunition, fed several times better than before, and given double the pay and benefits—repeatedly lost against the exact same Mountain Folk tribes. Just ten years ago, with the same Zhao soldiers against the same Mountain Folk tribe, Zhao forces had won battle after battle, sending Mountain Folk heads rolling.
Even more exasperating to the King of Zhao was that several years ago, a trend of "benevolence, righteousness, and morality" had swept through Zhao from top to bottom. It preached that nothing in existence stood higher than "virtue," and that a sovereign ought to rule the realm through virtue above all else. The very first measure taken was abolishing harsh laws and severe punishments.
Back then, civil and military officials had praised it unanimously, deeming the move to be in accord with Heaven and men, fitting the grand character of the State of Zhao. Thus, under the clamor of countless voices, the King of Zhao revised the laws, drastically reducing the crimes punishable by decapitation until only treason and a couple of others remained. Even generals fleeing battle and civil officials embezzling money were no longer beheaded.
As for extreme penalties like clan extermination, they were pruned almost entirely, preserving only the legal name.
Only years later did the King of Zhao realize: despite repeated defeats on the front lines, the loss of ten thousand li of territory, and the fall of dozens of cities, he could not execute even a single defeated commander!
When he intended to force the execution of several generals who had fled before the enemy, he was met with fierce opposition from the entire court. Some knelt endlessly without rising; some kowtowed until the steps ran red with blood; some rammed the palace pillars directly, cracking the massive columns—and more besides.
The court historians recorded all of this faithfully, glossing over only the reasons why the King of Zhao had flown into a rage and wanted to execute anyone.
If one were to read only the history books, who could guess that Zhao's court was filled entirely with dharma idols? Under normal circumstances, even snapping a pillar in two would leave them with nothing more than a few bruises. How could it possibly reach the point of bleeding profusely from the head and lingering between life and death?
Unable to vent his anger on the military commanders, the King of Zhao turned to the civil officials, intending to uproot these obstructionists first. Drawing upon decades of monarchic craft, he closed his eyes and picked military procurement. Over the past few decades, Zhao had undergone a complete overhaul to equip itself with Qingming military gear; amid the transition between old and new, even an idiot knew how much profit could be skimmed.
Acting with lightning speed and decisive force, the King of Zhao uncovered within just half a month several officials who had embezzled tens of millions of Qingyuan. Converted to immortal silver, that was an average of twenty million taels of immortal silver per official.
Yet these people could not be killed either. Furthermore, under the new Zhao laws, civil officials above a certain rank could not even be subjected to corporal punishment.
Corrupt officials could not be killed, and civil officials could not be flogged or tortured. The King of Zhao was nearly driven into cultivation deviation with rage; it would have been better not to arrest them at all. To make matters worse, several princes were busy cultivating images of benevolence and virtue, strongly urging the King of Zhao not to resort to heavy penalties or lay a hand on educated scholars. Before they submitted those memorials, the King of Zhao had not known they were so stupid.
Only now did the King of Zhao understand that back then, the civil officials had pushed so hard for lighter sentences purely for their own sake. Where among them was anyone acting for the state or the people?
With domestic governance hamstrung and the front lines crumbling, the civil and military court was completely at a loss. The solution they came up with was actually intercepting reports of front-line defeats so the King of Zhao would remain in the dark!
Thus, from the front line came minor victories every three days and major victories every five days, with an assortment of Mountain Folk eliminated every day. A few Mountain Folk tribes were wiped out multiple times over in Zhao's battle reports within less than half a year. Yet amid countless major and minor victories, nothing could conceal the reality that the front line was falling back step by step and cities were being lost one after another.
During this period, only a few cases of treason on the front line were brought before the King of Zhao. Without exception, every case involved the city garrison officers revolting, leaving the castellan with no choice but to fight his way out of encirclement and flee back alone.
Having seen too many such cases, the King of Zhao knew precisely what was going on.
Needless to say, in all these cases, the castellans had abandoned their posts first. The abandoned garrisons had mounted resistance on their own, only to be framed for treason.
As for why they had to be branded traitors, it was primarily an excuse not to send reinforcements. Otherwise, if they were truly rescued and brought back, wouldn't that expose the truth of the castellans fleeing without a fight, compromising the broader situation?
Thus, in quiet contemplation at midnight one day, the King of Zhao found himself utterly helpless and took up his brush to write a letter to the Sixth Princess. The letter was filled with laments and bewilderment, unable to understand how a fine, mighty State of Zhao had degenerated into such a state.
The Sixth Princess naturally did not understand either, but she knew who would, so she forwarded the letter to Wei Yuan. After reading the letter, Wei Yuan immediately summoned the head of the Development Bureau, tore into him with a barrage of curses, and demanded to know why, when they were ordered to sow discord in Eastern Jin, Southern Jin, Qi, Song, and the like, they had directed their efforts at the State of Zhao without any rhyme or reason.
The cultivator in charge of the Development Bureau was also thoroughly helpless. He replied that the various doctrines promoted by the Development Bureau were never targeted at Zhao, and they had barely sent anyone there. Everything happening within Zhao was entirely due to people in Zhao spontaneously resonating with those ideas and then vigorously promoting and magnifying them.
Many of the scholars trained by the Development Bureau had not been in Zhao at all initially; it was various high-ranking Zhao court figures, princes, and princesses who had invited them over with sweet words and lavish pay. Once they arrived, they held one event and lecture series after another, and from top to bottom, Zhao flocked to them like sheep.
The Development Bureau was naturally aware of Zhao's ties to Wei Yuan and had analyzed the phenomenon, reaching the conclusion that Zhao's welfare was too generous, and there were simply too many people with full bellies and nothing better to do.
Qingming actually had even better welfare than Zhao, yet the Development Bureau's doctrines could find no traction in Qingming.
With so many people trained by the Development Bureau, it was inevitable that a few harboring hidden motives would wish to stay in Qingming. The clever ones wrote about the sights, sounds, travelogues, and biographies of Qingming's various regions and sold them outside the realm. The less clever ones dreamed of becoming grand masters, trying to preach the newly acquired doctrines within Qingming.
The clever ones earned money from outside the realm and spent it in Qingming, giving the literary circles of the Nine States a good brainwashing along the way, losing neither face nor fortune. The not-so-clever ones had a rough time of it; they found that the doctrines they had learned could not be peddled at all. Even if they tried to act the grand master in a roadside teahouse and pontificate on statecraft, passersby would shoot them down, leaving them utterly tongue-tied.
After running into walls repeatedly, these less clever masters had no choice but to follow the Development Bureau's guidance and head into the Nine States to seek their fortunes. After all, only by going to the Nine States could they receive subsidies in immortal silver.
Fortunately, once the masters arrived in the Nine States, they immediately discovered that people were exceptionally gullible—no, that money was exceptionally easy to make. They needed only fabricate stories about how the Realm Lord of Qingming halted the Great Array of the Heavenly Constellations for several hours just to save a few sparrows, and the tales would sell like wildfire. Eventually, the subsidies provided by Qingming became practically negligible.
Yet although Qingming did not give much money, receiving silver from the Development Bureau was considered an honor that brought glory to one's ancestors, something that had to be bragged about whenever opening an altar to lecture or dining and drinking at banquets.
The contrast between inside and outside was simply too stark. Thus, successive generations of masters graduating from the Development Bureau's training courses tacitly headed across the borders. After all, the youth of Qingming knew a bit too much, proving impervious to brainwashing.
Once the masters made their fortune, they naturally returned to Qingming to spend it.
After the cultivator in charge of the Development Bureau departed, Wei Yuan began pondering the affairs of the State of Zhao. By writing such a letter, the King of Zhao was plainly telling Wei Yuan: hurry up and resolve this mess for me—after all, your sons have been enfeoffed with eleven commanderies.
Yet while Zhao's predicament would be easy to resolve in Qingming, in Zhao it was difficult. Welfare, freedom, lenient regulations, ruling through benevolence and virtue—all of these were ultimately the price Immortal Zhao Li had paid when he needed human destiny. If one wanted human destiny, these were inevitable costs. Even if Immortal Zhao Li saw that the high welfare was sustained entirely by Qingming's cheap goods in the background, he could only endure it.
The State of Zhao had once attempted to trim welfare, but cutting just a little had led to cries of grievance echoing across the realm. Human destiny plummeted catastrophically, which further caused Immortal Zhao Li to suffer a total defeat in an important duel of dharmic arts. Ever since then, the King of Zhao never again mentioned reducing welfare.
In Wei Yuan's eyes, there were plenty of ways to break Zhao's deadlock, but breaking it while unconditionally maintaining benevolence and virtue was impossible.
Moreover, breaking the deadlock would inevitably cause human destiny to plunge sharply in the short term.
Fortunately, in this world, supreme might existed. Thus, Wei Yuan wrote a reply to the Sixth Princess: "In a matter of such magnitude, why not consult the Immortal Ancestor?"
After sending the reply, Wei Yuan recalled that it seemed he had not heard from Immortal Zhao Li for quite a long time. In the past, whenever that immortal had nothing to do, he loved seeking Wei Yuan out for tea; why was there no word from him now?
However, Immortal Zhao Li's talent lay in pursuing auspicious fortune. Wei Yuan had just slain the Silver Moon Khagan, making him the only one among the various human factions to kick the Liao Clan while they were down. At such a time, it was only natural that Immortal Zhao Li wished to steer clear of him.
Having replied regarding Zhao's affairs, Wei Yuan arrived in the World of Return to Silence and dripped three more drops of yin spring into the domain of vitality. This yin spring carried treasure destiny, which was in truth the destiny of artifacts. The vitality of a world thrived on complexity—the more diverse its components, the better. Wei Yuan had initially added some yin spring to the domain of vitality with an attitude of trying it out, and the vitality had indeed surged tremendously!
However, the domain of vitality remained fragile; yin spring could not be added in large amounts and could only be infused once every seven days. Wei Yuan naturally did not mind the trouble. Now, more than a year had passed, most of the yin spring had been consumed, and the spark of vitality in this place had reached a critical threshold.
As Wei Yuan dripped the three drops of yin spring in, a tiny point of light suddenly flared where the vitality resided!
In this world where even causality was destroyed, this genuinely existent spark of light shone like a radiant sun, incomparably dazzling!
Amidst the glow, a green leaf slowly emerged from the soil. The hazy light upon the leaf flickered between bright and dim as it began to inhale and exhale vitality. This world had long been destroyed, having neither spiritual power nor world vitality. This tiny spark of vitality inhaled and exhaled chaos directly, then breathed out a wisp of utmost refined, pristine qi.
This qi was none other than the source qi that could only exist at the dawn of heaven and earth. According to Taoist scriptures, when the native realm first opened at the dawn of heaven and earth, the qi born of it was the Purple Qi of Primordial Chaos—the foundation for attaining sagehood.
This first wisp of qi descended into Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness, coming to rest at the very core of Splendor of the Many Realms.
Chapter 1391