In this round of breakthroughs, the domain gained another ninety Dao Foundation cultivators. However, everyone who had achieved Body Casting completion had already attempted foundation casting, leaving behind only those who had virtually no hope of casting a foundation.
Overall, the results of the disciples sent by the Cui family were quite respectable, producing fifteen Dao Foundations in total, the most prominent being Cui Changfeng's Heaven Foundation. The azure lotus was not in the least inferior to Cui Yu's immortal sword; who knew what kind of fortune the lad had stumbled into, leaping overnight from a worthless good-for-nothing into a genius.
Had the azure lotus possessed just a touch more miraculous wonder, it would have vaulted into an immortal foundation, making Cui Changfeng the undisputed protagonist of a storybook.
Yet the Cui family's affairs were far from settled. Not a single person who had paid money to stay safe achieved a Dao Foundation; every single Dao Foundation emerged from those who had taken to the battlefield. The trouble was that seventy had gone to the front, and thirty had fallen in battle—a casualty rate that was positively terrifying.
Meanwhile, Cui Changfeng, on whom a fortune had been spent, attained a Heaven Foundation outright. This made it glaringly clear to the Cui family that to cast a Dao Foundation, one either had to risk their life or rely on a wealthy father; relying on one's own efforts was utterly useless.
Cui Changfeng's matter gave Wei Yuan quite a headache as well, so he aligned his story with Cui Yu, insisting adamantly that Cui Changfeng possessed a dormant bloodline talent that merely happened to be awakened in Qingming.
Two days later, a Cui family flying boat arrived in Qingming once more. This time, it was a medium-sized flying vessel measuring a full twenty zhang, carrying two dharma idols on board. A vessel of such scale was difficult to conceal, so its journey had likely already alerted the Xu family.
Yet the Cui family did not care this time.
When the flying boat landed, two Cui family elders ordered their men to unload supplies—the Old Matron's additional compensation.
Wei Yuan tallied the items one by one: 100,000 jin of rice seeds for mortals; 1,000 jin of various basic medicinal herbs; 300 pharmaceutical utensils; 10 ordinary pill furnaces and 5 medium-grade pill furnaces; 2,000 firebricks suitable for furnace linings; 5 types of metal sand, one jin of each; and finally, a sapling of Ruby Lantern.
Except for that last spiritual plant, the rest were mortal goods, bulky and heavy. The most valuable among them were the five varieties of metal sand and the firebricks. These were no ordinary firebricks, but bricks capable of withstanding the True Fire of the Sun at the Dao Foundation level; furnaces built from them were specifically used for melting and refining magical artifact blanks.
Adding just a single grain of the five metal sands would endow an entire furnace of ordinary molten iron with unique properties. They were exceedingly rare, each jin valued at a thousand taels of immortal silver.
Grain, medicine, and iron implements were precisely what Wei Yuan urgently needed. The Cui family was indeed formidable in their handling of affairs, leaving Wei Yuan without a single fault to find.
As for the Ruby Lantern, it was a high-grade spiritual plant whose fruit possessed a slight longevity-extending effect. However, its cultivation conditions were stringent: it had to coil around a high-grade spiritual tree and absorb the tree's vitality to grow.
The Cui family sending this spiritual plant clearly carried deeper implications, given that Wei Yuan had already revealed an intact immortal tree. Coiling around it would increase the spiritual plant's growth speed several dozen times over without having any real impact on the immortal wood. The gap between their grades was far too vast; having a bit of vitality drawn by it was, to the immortal tree, like a mosquito bite to a mortal.
The Cui family disciples boarded the vessel one by one, yet seven or eight refused to leave. They chose to remain behind to participate in the second training cohort, among them the younger brother of the young woman who had cast an Earth Foundation.
The two dharma idol elders did not force them. Instead, they handed Wei Yuan a list, saying that a clan flying boat had already departed and would arrive in a few days. The next flying boat would carry two hundred disciples, and the twenty names on the list were not allowed to die; the rest could be dealt with as he pleased.
Once Wei Yuan put away the list, the elder surnamed Cui told him, "The Old Matron's opinion is that this round was still a bit too tragic. In the future, when Cui family disciples take the battlefield, it would be best to look after them a little more. Keeping the mortality rate within ten percent would be ideal."
"If that's the case, I'm afraid there won't be nearly as many Dao Foundations."
The elder said meaningfully, "The Cui family is not short of a few Dao Foundations."
When he put it that way, Wei Yuan understood. To a behemoth like the Cui family, having a few more or fewer Mortal Tier Dao Foundations with no prospect of advancement mattered not in the least. Not to mention Dao Foundations—even having a few more or fewer rubbish dharma idols would not affect the overall situation.
Wei Yuan nodded to indicate he understood. The elder then asked, "The Old Matron also wished to ask: are there any more azure lotuses?"
Wei Yuan smiled bitterly. "How could there possibly be any more? This time was purely good luck, merely awakening his dormant bloodline."
The elder said, "The Old Matron has one final word. If that tree proves too hot to handle, you can consider our Cui family. When the time comes, a suitable direct-line daughter with a Heaven Foundation from this generation can be chosen to marry you. You may establish a branch family right here, serve as the head of the branch family, and later enter the Council of Elders. Your treatment in every respect will be equal to Cui Yu's."
Wei Yuan said, "Please convey my thanks to the Old Matron for her kind intentions. However, over a mere immortal object, the Palace of Grand Beginning should be able to protect me."
The elder spoke slowly, "The Palace of Grand Beginning has vast enterprises and plenty of immortal items—that may truly not be so. Take this dossier for now. It contains information on three direct-line daughters, all possessing Heaven Foundations. Should you have a change of heart, you may choose one among them."
Wei Yuan originally wanted to refuse, but ultimately took the jade paper and put it away.
Seeing this, the elder was very pleased, and boarded the flying boat to depart, leaving behind only the field of supplies and eight Cui family disciples reserved for the second cohort.
After the flying boat left, Cui Yu said, "I thought you wouldn't take that jade paper."
Wei Yuan was utterly bewildered. "Why wouldn't I take it? Taking it doesn't mean I have to read it. Refusing it to their faces would slight your Cui family's honor, and it wouldn't look good for the two Perfected Persons either. Who knows how they might badmouth me once they got back."
Cui Yu clapped Wei Yuan on the shoulder. "I don't know what they'll say when they get back, but what I do know is this: 'The Cui family delivered a dossier on direct-line marriage prospects, and Domain Lord Wei accepted with delight.' Rest assured, in just a few days, those exact words will reach Sister Bao's ears."
Wei Yuan remained unmoved. "Just because I took it doesn't mean I'll read it."
"If you don't want to read it, why did you take it?" Cui Yu countered.
Wei Yuan was at a loss for words, momentarily unable to refute him. But on second thought, why did he even need to refute it? Yet if he didn't refute it, that seemed even worse. In an instant, that sheet of jade paper felt extraordinarily hot to the touch.
Wei Yuan thrust the jade paper into Cui Yu's hands, saying with a dark expression, "Take it!"
Cui Yu tucked the jade paper into his robe and said, "I'll keep it safe for Sister Bao."
With that, the Cui family matter came to a temporary close. Cui Yu and Xu Wan'er led their people to distribute the supplies. Fields also had to be cleared to sow the newly obtained rice seeds.
One hundred thousand jin of seeds was not actually that much—only enough to plant five thousand mu. This amount was not enough to provoke the Xu family, but the seeds sent by the Cui family held a secret of their own. It was a special variety: yielding three hundred jin per mu, the yield was low and the taste poor, but it grew extraordinarily fast, taking only two months to harvest, and could grow practically anywhere without requiring special care.
With this batch of rice seeds, six months from now, Wei Yuan would no longer have to worry about food.
Wei Yuan returned to his quarters. At the corner of his desk lay several sheets of jade paper. He hesitated for a moment before finally picking them up.
Recorded on the paper were the detailed outcomes of the previous battle. The tally had been compiled days ago, but Wei Yuan simply had not wanted to look at it, putting it off until now.
In the previous battle, the Shamans had deployed a total force of 110,000 troops, with 80,000 directly engaged in combat and 40,000 anchoring the center and rear. The Shaman army had sent 25,000 elite troops in waves to attack Xuanwei Six. Wei Yuan's deployment at Xuanwei Six had consisted of 2,000 elites, 5,000 ordinary Body Casting warriors, and 4,000 civilians from the city. In the end, Yun Feifei detonated the underground city at Xuanwei Six, taking both sides down together.
On the surface battlefield, the Shamans had deployed 60,000 troops in waves, losing 27,000 dead. Wei Yuan had deployed 20,000 Body Casting warriors, 5,000 elites, and 500 Dao Foundation cultivators here, ultimately losing 11,000 dead.
The Shaman warriors suffered such heavy casualties that their army qi was shaken, preventing Yanxin from drawing upon it to empower himself, which also became the reason for his swift defeat.
Now, the population in the domain was less than 100,000; in a short span of time, over 40,000 had died in battle.
The first batch of cultivators who came to the domain had essentially died off once over; most of the main force Wei Yuan currently commanded had achieved breakthrough after entering the domain.
Coming to Qingming from Quliu Town and elsewhere was not merely about getting a full meal. People were no longer eroded by the Wu domain; their living environment was at least warm and dry, sparing them from contracting all kinds of bizarre ailments. Moreover, thanks to the ceaseless nourishment of Jia Wood Life-Mystic, many who had been plagued with sickness gradually recovered, and people whose Body Casting progress had stalled began advancing by leaps and bounds once more. Only thus did Wei Yuan gain a vast influx of newly minted Body Casting cultivators.
Within Qingming, there were now fewer than a thousand elderly folk over the age of fifty. All of them had survived years of torment in the Shattered Lands, and every single one was a Body Casting cultivator. In the Shattered Lands, anyone unable to achieve Body Casting rarely lived past thirty; only those who reached Body Casting completion stood a chance of surviving past fifty.
Yet when this group of elderly entered Qingming, they had already been on the brink of the grave, their bodies riddled with decay from erosion, their cultivation not even one-tenth of what it once was.
Yet since Qingming's founding, the Shamans had already lost 100,000 warriors on this land, more than half of them elites, along with six or seven Great Shamans fallen. Such battle achievements were, if not ten times greater than those of the Western Jin's newly established Ningxi Prefecture, at least three to four times as many.
At times, in the depths of his resentment, Wei Yuan could not help thinking that it might have been better to just uproot Qingming and flee back then. Damage to his Dao Foundation could always be slowly repaired, while these Shaman armies would have been enough to sweep across the entire Western Regions, slaughtering every official, high and low, who had come from the Western Jin to establish prefectures and commanderies, along with the more than one hundred thousand Jin soldiers holding their positions without lifting a finger.
Yet had he done so, the millions of people stranded in the Shattered Lands would have all become dead souls.
Chapter 241