Long Time No See

The compensation for template Dao soldiers from the Palace of Grand Beginning was noticeably higher than that of Qingming templates—and not just by a little, but more than tenfold. Even an ordinary Dao soldier from the Palace of Grand Beginning received vastly more than a Qingming template. This was simply inevitable. Qingming churned out over a million templates a year now; where could so many decent jobs be found where they could loaf inside formations and enjoy the cool air? Nowadays, Qingming templates took whatever work they could get, yet far too many still could not find steady jobs and had to patch together odd tasks here and there—a state euphemistically dubbed "independent and flexible." Yet this batch of veteran template Dao soldiers from the Palace of Grand Beginning had accumulated distinguished military records and rendered real service over the years. Although in Wei Yuan's eyes, those merits were not much greater than those of Qingming templates—after all, the northern mountain gate spent most of its time passively taking beatings; without the immortals taking the field, there was no such thing as expanding territory. Over on Qingming's side, Wei Yuan had just conquered the Royal Court of the Sea of the Moon, pushing their territory nearly twenty thousand li to the north. Thus, in the eyes of Qingming's up-and-coming young officers, these veteran Dao soldiers from the Palace of Grand Beginning had neither ability nor achievements, yet raked in an exorbitant sum of money. Wei Yuan handled this problem with far greater caution. His first step was to keep all the veteran soldiers' compensation unchanged while removing them from the Hall of Dao Soldiers. Those willing to enter Qingshui could do so, while those unwilling could take a severance payout and go their own way. When the announcement went out, only a minority chose to leave; the vast majority were willing to enter Qingshui, just as Wei Yuan had anticipated. Once inside Qingshui, however, the tricks were numerous. To begin with, despite holding the same positions and possessing the same cultivation, the veteran Dao soldiers of Grand Beginning received ten times what the Qingming soldiers made. Although Wei Yuan had issued strict orders forbidding anyone from disclosing salaries, such things could never truly be kept secret. Consequently, wherever the veteran Dao soldiers went, they were met with pointed, uncomfortable stares. Once he had successfully transferred every last Dao soldier out of the Hall of Dao Soldiers and obtained an unencumbered immortal treasure, Wei Yuan restructured the Qingshui Legion's pay scale once again. He did not cut it outright; instead, he divided the previously lump-sum stipend into several components, the largest being an allowance for frontline combat. As the name implied, one only received this allowance by actually taking the field to face the enemy. To the Qingming warriors, this was only fair and reasonable—those charging on the front lines ought to earn the most. The veteran Dao soldiers of the Palace of Grand Beginning had no objections either; having fought in bloody battles for years, they acknowledged the principle. For the final step, Wei Yuan instituted a three-year performance review. The primary criterion was defense and enemy kills, while the secondary criterion was the cost per kill. Those who failed would be let go or reassigned to other positions. Wei Yuan intended to use a three-year transition period to resolve the issue of these handsomely paid veterans. If that failed, he still had a killer move in reserve: open competition for posts. Having arranged all this, Wei Yuan felt that Qingshui should be able to get on the right track. He then carried the Hall of Dao Soldiers back to Qingming to refine it, leaving daily affairs in Fenhai's hands. At this time, surrounded daily by eight beautiful assistants, Perfected Hai's passion for work was unprecedentedly high—he wished he could take root in his office chamber. Yet on this day, as he flipped through Qingshui's plans for the next few years, a sudden realization hit him, and he broke into a cold sweat. Doing the math on his fingers, he realized that in three years, the dirty work of laying off these veteran Dao soldiers would fall right on him to finalize! Those veteran template soldiers walked around with their noses in the air; would any of them give two coppers about a mere peak dharma idol cultivator like him? These veteran soldiers would not dare curse the Palace Masters, nor would they curse Xuanyue or Wei Yuan. If they cursed anyone, it would naturally be Fenhai, whose name was on the dotted line. The reason Fenhai broke into a cold sweat was that he knew his personal reputation was not spotless, and those veterans' curses were bound to be utterly foul. Back in Qingming, Wei Yuan began refining the Hall of Dao Soldiers. An immortal treasure like this, which had accumulated thousands of years of karmic luck, was exceedingly difficult to refine. Wei Yuan was not an immortal; under normal circumstances, merely bringing the dao hall to recognize him as its master would take decades. Fortunately, when in doubt, karmic luck was the answer. By pouring in vast quantities of karmic luck, refining the dao hall would take only a few months. Wei Yuan placed the Hall of Dao Soldiers atop the Qingming boundary stone, intending to refine it directly into the boundary stone so that it became a part of it—and, by extension, a part of Wei Yuan's mindscape world. Only then could Wei Yuan enable the living beings within the Splendor of the Many Realms to descend into dharma bodies in the new world. In the middle of the refinement, Zhang Sheng came to find him. With most of his divine sense still fixed on the Hall of Dao Soldiers to maintain the refinement, Wei Yuan said, "Long time no see." "Don't we see each other every day in the Splendor of the Many Realms?" "That is just a few strands of your divine sense meeting a few strands of mine. In our true bodies, it really has been a long time." Zhang Sheng said, "I have to temper my dharmic body; I can only come out of seclusion after completing a portion of it. Even a patch the size of a fingernail requires years of closed-door cultivation." Wei Yuan naturally knew this and sighed. "The higher our cultivation climbs, the less we see of each other. Sometimes I wonder if pursuing immortality is truly worth it." Zhang Sheng said, "Ancient cultivators walked the Great Dao alone. That we can keep each other company is already a blessing envied by who knows how many. Don't be so ungrateful. I heard you refined an avatar?" Wei Yuan gasped. "Perish the thought! On the surface it is my avatar, but in truth an old fellow from beyond the heavens lived inside it—it is already soiled! Wait until I forge a clean one, then we can have our fun." Caught between tears and laughter, Zhang Sheng said, "Stop spouting nonsense! Who wants to play with you like that? I came to talk about serious business." Wei Yuan's eyes shone brightly. "While we talk, our dharma bodies don't have to sit idle either—" Zhang Sheng said, "I actually came about the tens of thousands of template Dao soldiers in the Palace of Grand Beginning. I saw how you handled the matter. But isn't three years a bit too short?" Wei Yuan shook his head. "Three years isn't too short; it is too long. I know they risked life and limb for the Palace of Grand Beginning, but the templates in Qingming risk life and limb just the same. Put simply, for the positions they hold and the merits they have, they shouldn't be receiving anywhere near that much, nor can the Palace of Grand Beginning afford it. That money could have gone elsewhere—such as training new cultivators or founding academies to enlighten the common folk. Instead, it has all turned into retirement pensions. The situation of our Palace of Grand Beginning can hardly be called good; we cannot indulge in such luxury." "Speaking of which, this is ultimately the two Palace Masters' responsibility." "Indeed. What was originally fewer than a thousand elite positions suddenly swelled to tens of thousands, yet their stipends were only reduced by twenty percent. The two Palace Masters care about saving face, but they can't let the Palace of Grand Beginning go under just to preserve their reputation, can they? If things really came to that, how could they face the Patriarch?" High in Immortal Heaven, Yanshi and Zhu Yan each looked away in opposite directions, like stone statues without a trace of expression. Zhang Sheng sighed. "And so you have to clean up their mess." Wei Yuan said, "Times have changed. The veterans made contributions, but they have also reaped rewards. If I don't step in and make a change, won't it be an utter joke if the grand Palace of Grand Beginning is eventually eaten out of house and home by a bunch of aging Dao Foundations, forcing it to sell off its ancestral heritage?" "Yet many of them are still in the prime of life." Wei Yuan replied, "True, they can still work, but the problem is that the work simply isn't worth this much money—it isn't worth even a tenth of it. If we keep paying that rate, the Palace of Grand Beginning is finished sooner or later. Where under heaven is there a rule that stipends can only ever rise and never fall?" Zhang Sheng nodded. "You have a point. Then how have you been dealing with the veterans in Qingming?" Wei Yuan said, "For those who genuinely risked their lives and earned merit, I give them enough security to lead a dignified life. For those with military achievements, I provide steady security." "That is Qingming, where we have resources to spare. But what if we didn't have that surplus?" Wei Yuan said, "Then for the greater good, sacrifices would inevitably have to be made. Immortal Monarchs and cultivation seeds cannot be sacrificed; they are our guarantee of standing independent in this world. Scenery Commands are the pillars of the sect, and dharma idols are its backbone—neither can be touched. That leaves only Dao Foundations who can be sacrificed, let alone mere templates." Wei Yuan added, "Alright, I have said all that needs saying. What comes next isn't meant for outside ears."