Within Qingming, Wei Yuan's avatar sat before a massive map, surveying the general trends of the world.
It was now the eleventh month of the twenty-fifth year of Zhaoning. Emperor Zhao's era name remained in general use, but along the border between the State of Wu and the State of Ji, the former Chongyang military commissioner Yuan Zili had risen in revolt. Gathering a host of eight hundred thousand, he seized four frontier commanderies, proclaimed himself emperor of a newly minted state of Yuan, styled himself Progenitor Yuanhao, and adopted the reign title Chuwu.
In the eyes of Wei Yuan, who was well versed in the annals of history, this man was nothing more than a clown leaping on a stage. There was not even any need to dispatch troops against him; a single imperial proclamation rallying opposition would likely prompt the rebel's own generals to present his severed head.
Yet, viewed through the lens of overarching worldly momentum and the torrential currents of time, the man's actions held immense significance. He was the very first to claim the title of emperor in the twilight years of the Great Tang, and the first to raise a reign title of his own. Even a power as formidable as Southern Qi still adhered to the Zhaoning era name, and Qingming's own internal calendar continued to use it as well.
A dike of a thousand li collapses from an ant's burrow; a mighty, towering fortress crumbles from a single breach.
Once this thin paper barrier was punctured, the last shred of dignity belonging to the realm's universal sovereign was cast into the dirt for all to trample.
Setting aside the world beyond heaven, Wei Yuan's focus was currently split between north and south—the Liao domain and the Mountain Folk.
To the north, the original territory of Great Khan Silver Moon equaled roughly four Qingmings. Swallowing it in a single gulp had given Wei Yuan a glaring case of indigestion. The boundary stones he held were insufficient to cover even five percent of the land. Expanding any further north would add over a hundred thousand li to logistics routes alone. Furthermore, a hundred thousand li in the Liao domain was unlike the human domain: once flying vessels entered the Liao territory, their efficiency plummeted drastically, their flight range shrinking by two-thirds. Land annexed without the means to assimilate it was virtually indistinguishable from land not held at all.
Wei Yuan had no choice but to rely on a magnetic pull strategy. Using the former Three Rivers Khanate as a rear base, he erected major cities in both the ancestral lands and the Frost Silver Grassland, drawing the northern Liao folk southward. They migrated from one metropolis to the next, ultimately settling around the northern peripheries of the Three Rivers Khanate.
Only by getting the Liao folk to settle down could a steady, endless stream of Liao karmic luck be cultivated.
To the south, Hule Gao'en had realized he was on the verge of being sidelined and knew Wei Yuan had grown displeased with him. He had thrown everything he had into the fight, waging war with ever-greater ferocity and resorting to increasingly brutal methods. Wherever his forces marched, scorched earth spanned a thousand li.
The conflict among the Mountain Folk was a holy war, a blood feud spanning hundreds of thousands of years. In such fighting, restraint and tolerance were entirely foreign concepts; both sides wished for nothing less than the total extermination of their foe, eager to dig up their enemy's ancestors from their graves and slaughter them several times over.
Hule Gao'en's troops constantly invented cruel tortures, unleashing them not only on enemy captives and heretics, but also on traitors from their own ranks.
Military advisor cultivators accompanying the army had long sent secret dispatches back to Qingming, warning that Hule Gao'en governed his forces purely on faith and terror. This was no professional military assimilated into the Qingming mold; left unchecked, Hule Gao'en would inevitably turn this army into his private retinue.
Yet, after careful scrutiny, Wei Yuan discovered that Hule Gao'en was simply employing the traditional holy war methods of the Mountain Folk—pushed to an absolute extreme.
The other two armies Wei Yuan had sent south followed Qingming's customary doctrine: conquering territory while attempting to harvest the karmic luck of the Mountain Folk. Qingming possessed a mature system for gathering luck, one every campaigning general knew by heart. Formulated by Wei Yuan over decades of bloody conflict against foreign races, this methodology had proven remarkably effective in both the Shaman Domain and the Liao domain. At present, for instance, Liao luck had already caught up with shaman luck, becoming a vital source of Wei Yuan's karmic fortune.
Yet this system fell completely flat in the lands of the Mountain Folk.
Whenever Qingming forces conquered a region, they registered the populace, distributed grain and provisions, and restarted civic labor and production.
Yet though grain flowed out continuously, almost no karmic luck was reaped in return. Warriors of the Bloodline faction routinely hid among civilian households, posing as family members, only to strike from hidden corners and plunge daggers into the backs of Qingming soldiers.
Because the Qingming forces were viewed as allies of the Prophet faction, they naturally drew the incandescent hatred of every Bloodline adherent. Hule Gao'en's method for dealing with the Bloodline faction was expulsion and slaughter. He drove all Bloodline civilians from their ancestral homes, herding them further south into the territories of other Bloodline groups. Those who refused to leave were executed without mercy—the elderly, the frail, women, and children all butchered alike, not a single one spared.
Qingming's commanders could not bring themselves to do such things. They sought to sway the Bloodline faction through moral suasion, exhausting every effort only to find it entirely futile. The locals took the distributed grain, but the moment governance grew the slightest bit enlightened and lenient, they demanded full deference to their religious law and customs, and even sought to replace Qingming's laws with their holy scriptures. Any refusal of their demands ignited a fresh cycle of hatred.
The more territory they occupied, the more troops the two Qingming armies had to siphon off just to maintain order in their rear. In contrast, Hule Gao'en purged the land wherever he marched, and his military successes quickly surpassed theirs. Moreover, his sweeping purges provided an inexhaustible supply of flesh-and-blood essence, which Wei Yuan used to refine boundary stones.
Every time Wei Yuan studied the map, his gaze lingered on the south for a long time, yet he was starved for a good solution. The ideal approach would be to dispatch Feng Chutang. With Feng Chutang's cunning, an effective strategy would surely emerge.
In truth, Wei Yuan knew the path forward: find several more figures like Hule Gao'en, back one faction until the other was exterminated, and then splinter the Prophet faction to reignite holy war once more. If this cycle repeated three to five times, only a meager remnant of the Mountain Folk would be left.
However, Feng Chutang was currently overseeing the General Coinage Bureau, a post far more crucial than a campaign against the Mountain Folk. That was a battlefield where men were slain without shedding a drop of blood, subjugating an enemy's forces without battle. When Zhang Sheng previously held the reins, the issuance of currency alone had nearly unraveled the once-mighty State of Zhao.
The exchange rate of Qingyuan against immortal silver had now stabilized at one to two, with issuance volumes reaching a hundred times what they once were. Xu Henshui was straining himself to the bone, cultivating over a thousand stalks of immortal orchids, yet it was still not enough to meet demand.
Watching the flourishing prosperity of the Qingyuan, neighboring states grew green with envy. They scrambled to emulate it, minting their own currencies.
The best performer among them was Li Zhi's Zhenshanyuan, which had plummeted from an initial five-to-one exchange rate to eighty-to-one today. The most disastrous was the State of Ji's original Ji gold yuan; upon debut, one gold yuan traded for two Qingyuan, but a mere year later, it took nine million gold yuan to buy a single Qingyuan. Had it not printed the gold yuan, the State of Ji would not have collapsed so rapidly.
Now, with a mere flick of Wei Yuan's intent to induce a slight fluctuation in the tide of the Qingyuan, the wealth of neighboring realms would instantly evaporate by several tenths, puncturing their state treasuries.
Thus, Feng Chutang could not be moved. It gave Wei Yuan a massive headache; while talents were plentiful, exceptional masterminds were forever in short supply.
At present, the only ones capable of breaking the southern impasse and opening a corridor between Qingming and Yizhou—apart from Feng Chutang—were Zhang Sheng and Ji Liuli, neither of whom was suited for such dirty work.
To Wei Yuan's eyes, the realm's situation remained murky and chaotic. He could only sigh, "The world is descending into utter chaos..."
High above the immortal heaven, a hearty laugh rang out: "The realm is settled!"
The Venerable Master's towering figure spanned the horizon like a mountain range. He leaned forward slightly, looking ahead.
In the void before him hung over a dozen immortal heaven realms, diverse in style and distinct in character. Within each realm sat an immortal.
"That we gather here together today is an unprecedented occasion unseen in ten thousand years across the immortal heaven! Every one of you joined in intercepting the Dao thief back then, and we ought to share this common enmity..."
Here, the Venerable Master paused, his gaze sweeping over Xu Youyi and Cui Wantong. Cui Wantong's brows furrowed slightly, displeasure flashing across her face, while Xu Youyi looked entirely innocent, as though she had no idea what the Venerable Master was talking about.
The Venerable Master continued, "The chaos in the world has dragged on for too long, allowing scurrying vermin to seize the opportunity to rise and usurp high stations. Our gathering today comes at the perfect moment to select a universal sovereign for the world, quell this troubled age once and for all, and inaugurate a new dynasty!"
Xu Youyi spoke up, "Then how should Qingming be dealt with?"
The Venerable Master replied indifferently, "Under the whole heaven, every spot is the sovereign's ground. Once the new dynasty is established, Qingming naturally falls within its territorial borders, and all its wealth and subjects shall belong to the new court. How could such fertile, bountiful land ever be permitted to remain the private property of a single clan?"
Chapter 1441