The chronicle in Zhang Sheng's hand turned into a rod and came down on Wei Yuan's head with a sharp crack.
As if a basin of ice water had been poured over his head, Wei Yuan's mind cleared instantly. When he recalled the thought he had just entertained, a cold sweat broke out all over his body.
With a slightly somber expression, Zhang Sheng said, "There are too many sundry things within your Dao Foundation, so much so that your Dao heart has been compromised and your mind grew unsettled and dazed just now. While heaven and earth can inherently accommodate myriad things, you now have Yin-Yang added to your sea of consciousness. Yin-Yang verges upon the Great Dao; by itself, it can pull upon your Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, hence your momentary lapse. From now on, you must proceed with extreme caution and press forward even more boldly in your cultivation. Only as your Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains grows ever stronger will it be able to counterbalance Yin-Yang."
"Your disciple has taken it to heart." Hearing Zhang Sheng's words, Wei Yuan broke into another cold sweat. Fortunately, his teacher did not seem to have noticed what he had actually been thinking during that daze. Even Wei Yuan himself found that thought a bit...
Zhang Sheng glanced at Wei Yuan's tall, upright frame and said casually, "Channeling is better than damming. Since ancient times, those who accomplish great things have never let themselves be bound by trifles. That your mind wavered today is not unrelated to those young women. Since meat has been served right to your lips, eat it if you want to. Just remember that such meat has a price—you must not pay a copper less, but neither should you give a copper more."
Wei Yuan said once more, "Your disciple has taken it to heart."
"Go on."
After Wei Yuan left, Zhang Sheng set down the book and looked at his own hands. There was nothing remarkable about this pair of hands—they were merely flawless, equally suited to holding a book or wielding a sword.
It was just that these hands seemed somewhat out of place with Zhang Sheng himself. However, unless one looked with intent, an ordinary person would instinctively overlook them.
Suddenly remembering something, Zhang Sheng's expression darkened.
Wei Yuan had grown up, and it was only natural for a young man to be stirred by beauty and yearn for maidens. What was more, he was exceptionally good-looking and held sway over a territory at a young age, so there was naturally no shortage of fluttering swallows and warblers around him.
With Yin-Yang suddenly entering his Dao Foundation, Wei Yuan's Dao heart was bound to falter. It would take time to mend; deliberately suppressing it would only make things overly forced, so letting nature take its course was best. Wei Yuan did not realize this, but Zhang Sheng possessed an entirely different breadth of vision, which was why he had not punished Wei Yuan for that lapse in focus.
Yet once Wei Yuan had left, Zhang Sheng pondered the matter carefully and realized he had overlooked a detail. When that brat's mind wandered, why didn't he think of Xu Wan'er or Yun Feifei? Failing that, there was Xu Yi and several aristocratic young ladies. If he truly had a death wish and intended to seek life through courting death, there was still Ji Liuli. With so many choices, why on earth was he staring at his teacher's hand?
Zhang Sheng decided he ought to dig out the Disciplinary Code of the Palace of Grand Beginning and leaf through it. It was clearly time to find a few pretexts to tighten the brat's hide.
And yet...
Zhang Sheng glanced at his hand once more, thinking that whatever myriad faults the brat had, his taste was undeniably first-rate.
Returning to his quarters, Wei Yuan circulated his arts according to the Moon Splendor Ten Thousand Facets Chapter, calming his heart and steadying his breath until his thoughts were lucid and void of alarm, restlessness, or fear. Only then did he begin to ponder Zhang Sheng's words—mainly regarding how the meat ought to be eaten.
The meat had a price, not a penny more and not a penny less. That was easy enough to understand: going too far was just as bad as falling short; neither too much nor too little was good.
But was he supposed to eat it or not? Was he to take his teacher's words literally or inversely?
Wei Yuan reviewed every military treatise and stratagem he had ever learned. The art of war said: make the feigned appear real, and make the real appear feigned. It also said: the interplay of the false and the true resides in a single mind. Reading the two maxims together amounted to saying nothing at all.
Thus, Wei Yuan had no clue what Zhang Sheng meant, nor whether he could eat it or not. But his instincts warned him that it would be best not to seek clarification from his teacher.
In truth, Wei Yuan could not fathom why his thoughts had strayed so abruptly back then either. Yet looking back carefully, his teacher's hand and his teacher's person seemed to have nothing to do with each other. If they hadn't literally been attached to the same body, Wei Yuan would never have believed they belonged to the same person.
Clearing away these wild thoughts, Wei Yuan left his room and headed for the spirit fields. It was time to harvest the millet rice. This was the first batch of spiritual food produced in the domain, well worthy of serious treatment.
Beside the spirit fields, two hundred cultivators had gathered, waiting for Wei Yuan's arrival. The stalks of the millet rice were exceedingly tough; only Body Casting cultivators had the strength to cut them. Their roots were deep and long, sometimes plunging as deep as ten feet. After the harvest, these roots also had to be unearthed, chopped fine, and scattered back into the soil—labor that mortals could not perform either.
Perfected Chuhe sent all four of his disciples into the fields to demonstrate how to strip the grains, how to cut the stalks, and finally how to dig up the roots while loosening the soil along the way.
Cui Yu originally intended for Wei Yuan to say a few words, but amid everyone's eager anticipation, Wei Yuan uttered only two words: "Get to work!"
The cultivators stepped into the fields and set to work at once. More than half of them were actually at the Dao Foundation realm, including quite a few who had only recently advanced.
They had come to toil in the fields to interact with the spiritual plants at close quarters, seeking to comprehend the Dao of Heaven and Earth and consolidate their Dao Foundations.
At that moment, Perfected Chuhe stood beside Wei Yuan, stroking his beard with a smile. "Each mu can yield two hundred jin. An ordinary Body Casting cultivator would consume one jin a day. However, the rice harvested from your field is of superior quality; what was originally unranked has actually become a low-grade spiritual plant. If a Body Casting cultivator merely wishes to maintain their original cultivation pace, one jin every two days would suffice as well."
This tract spanned five hundred mu and yielded a hundred thousand jin of millet rice. It seemed a vast quantity, but with over ten thousand Body Casting cultivators in the domain, each person's share would not be large. Moreover, Perfected Chuhe's figure of one jin per day followed the standards of typical small-to-medium clans; where in the Western Regions would one normally find such conditions? Ordinary Body Casting cultivators were fortunate if they could have a meal of spiritual food once every five or six days.
Cui Yu asked, "How will this millet rice be distributed?"
The aristocratic young masters and ladies gathered around were all looking eagerly at Wei Yuan. Having arrived earlier, they had gone without much spiritual food for a long time, and their pills had been consumed in the first few days. Right now, every single one of them had to rely purely on meditation to cultivate.
In the worldly path of cultivation, both spiritual food and medicinal pills were indispensable. Purely meditating made progress excruciatingly slow, falling far short of advancing by consuming pills all the way. Back then, had Sky Azure Hall not pawned off everything down to the pots and pans to buy pills, Wei Yuan would still be absorbing moonlight right now—and would have had to do so for decades.
These dozen or so aristocratic youths felt that in terms of cultivation, lineage, talent, achievements, or even seniority, they ought to be allocated a substantial share of the millet rice, enough to eat their fill.
In the past, they wouldn't have spared millet rice a single glance; such unranked spiritual food was fit only for household retainers and servants. But now they were in Qingming, where having anything to eat was a blessing.
Wei Yuan had already given thought to the distribution. He immediately said, "Every Body Casting cultivator will receive a portion of this batch of rice. Regardless of cultivation level, divide it equally per capita."
Cui Yu was taken aback, then frowned. "Doing it this way... isn't quite appropriate, is it?"
Wei Yuan replied, "Do not forget Ephemeral Multitude. They are the ones who must charge onto the front lines to fight and kill. A couple more decent meals could give many of them a chance to survive."
Cui Yu gave Wei Yuan a deep look and said slowly, "All right. Let me sort it out first. I'll persuade them."
"Thanks."
Cui Yu waved a hand, then called the aristocratic youths over to a quiet spot to talk things through.
At this moment, Perfected Chuhe said, "If you have some free time, why not come over to my place to sit and have a cup of tea?"
With Perfected Chuhe extending an invitation, Wei Yuan naturally had no reason to decline. He followed the Perfected Person to his newly constructed residence. At present, the dwelling consisted merely of an open pavilion furnished with wooden tables and chairs, surrounded by piles of luggage, much of which had not yet been unpacked.
Once they were seated, Perfected Chuhe picked up a teapot and poured a cup for Wei Yuan and himself. The teapot was only the size of a palm, shaped like a knot from an old tree. The tea poured out clear and transparent, with a streak of fresh green darting continuously within the liquid like a swimming fish—truly miraculous.
Wei Yuan raised the cup and drained it in a single gulp. Instantly, a burst of spiritual qi erupted in his abdomen, and his cultivation surged, equivalent to twenty full days of arduous cultivation! Wei Yuan's Dao power was extraordinary at present; for a single mouthful of tea to match twenty days of his cultivation, its spiritual potency was unimaginable.
"Fine tea!" Wei Yuan praised, setting the cup back in place without any intention of asking for another.
Perfected Chuhe nodded inwardly and said, "Young friend Wei Yuan..."
Wei Yuan quickly rose. "I dare not accept such an address from you, Perfected."
Perfected Chuhe made a pressing gesture with both hands to guide Wei Yuan back to his seat, then said, "If I don't call you young friend, I'd have to call you Domain Master."
Wei Yuan could only say, "Whatever you deem appropriate, Perfected."
Perfected Chuhe said, "There is no need for us to be so particular about seniority and forms of address. In any case, this old Daoist has a favor to ask of you."
"Please speak freely, Perfected. If it is within my ability, I will certainly do my utmost."
Perfected Chuhe nodded and said, "I have observed that this domain possesses the power of Jia Wood Life-Mystic. Is that so?"
"Your discerning gaze is sharp as a torch, Perfected."
"Besides this millet rice, all the spiritual plants in the domain show faint signs of breaking through their original grades. That Moon Tree Nightshade is a prime example. This is truly rather astonishing, for Jia Wood Life-Mystic is not supposed to be so miraculous. As for that other nightshade planted upon the Nether Soil, it now faintly bears the likeness of an immortal plant—something Jia Wood Life-Mystic could never achieve."
Perfected Chuhe paused, then continued, "Thus, this old Daoist concludes that this vitality in your domain is not merely Jia Wood Life-Mystic, but a force of a higher order. It is no longer just a trait—it fully qualifies as a divine wonder."
Hearing the old Daoist put it this way, Wei Yuan felt somewhat perplexed instead. The records of Qingming clearly wrote "Jia Wood Life-Mystic." This boundary stone had been refined by an immortal of old; could it be that an immortal was less clear about what he had crafted than a Perfected Person?
Nonetheless, Wei Yuan nodded in agreement, appearing thoroughly convinced.
Perfected Chuhe then said, "I possess a certain spiritual plant. Though its rank is not high, it is exceedingly rare under heaven, and it has hope of breaking through. I could never find a suitable place to transplant it—until I saw that patch of Nether Soil. I require three such plots of Nether Soil, placed right in the herb garden. Consider them rented by this old Daoist. I will pay you one hundred taels of immortal silver per plot each month. How does that sound?"
Wei Yuan froze. A business deal could be done like this? Just three plots measuring ten feet square, and only mixed with a bit of Nether Soil, could earn three hundred taels of immortal silver a month? Was the dirt too valuable, or had immortal silver become as common as dirt?
Wei Yuan hesitated slightly. Such Nether Soil—he could produce thousands more plots of it; he just didn't know whether Perfected Chuhe had the appetite to take it all.
Seeing Wei Yuan not answer right away, Perfected Chuhe added, "Fret not, this old Daoist certainly will not treat a junior poorly. If the things I plant truly make a breakthrough, there will naturally be an additional gift of thanks."
"May I ask what you mean by a breakthrough, Perfected?"
"Just like that one that hasn't sprouted—no, just like the Moon Tree Nightshade will do. Raising its grade would be best, but if not, an improvement in quality or a change in traits would count as well."
*So that's it,* Wei Yuan thought. In the terminology of Xu Wenwu's world, that was called a mutation.
With an idea in mind, Wei Yuan said, "Your junior has a small request. May I take the liberty to ask?"
"Speak without reserve!"
"If you indeed cultivate a variant with an elevated grade, Perfected, I would like some seeds to plant in the domain in the future."
Perfected Chuhe chuckled. "No problem at all! Without your Nether Soil, those few stalks of grass would only have rotted away in my hands anyway."
Wei Yuan was overjoyed, barely able to suppress the upturn of his lips.
With karmic luck and Xu Wenwu on his side, even the most proper spiritual plant would have to mutate submissively in his hands.
Chapter 223