In the study, Chen Dao picked up a stack of official dispatches and set them before Yue Jinshan.
"Old Yue, there have been eleven fires of various sizes at granaries across the region this past month. Isn't that getting a bit excessive?"
Yue Jinshan said nothing at first, reading through every dispatch in meticulous detail. Chen Dao waited patiently, showing no sign of rushing him.
Only when he had finished reading them all did Yue Jinshan speak. "Seven of those granary fires occurred in Bianning Commandery. Only two involved the frontline border forces, and two others did not even belong to my men."
"You are the provincial commander of Ningxi Prefecture. Are not all the forces here under your command?"
"Since Lord Chen puts it that way, I shall replace those vice generals tomorrow. I must ask Lord Chen to issue a matching dispatch, then."
Chen Dao sighed helplessly. "Old Yue, your methods are still a touch unpolished. Let me speak plainly: Bianning Commandery is garrisoned by your nephew. I hear young General Yue holds absolute sway over military affairs, leaving the commandery governor completely unable to intervene. Out of those seven granaries, at least four were military depots. Does General Yue have no explanation for that?"
Yue Jinshan looked unperturbed and said indifferently, "Which army doesn't have a few granary fires every year? These just happened to occur in the same month. A pure coincidence."
Chen Dao took a sip of tea, his expression unmoved. "And if this governor doesn't believe in coincidences and insists on investigating?"
At last, Yue Jinshan's expression shifted, and he sneered. "Governor, do you truly wish to investigate?"
"Over a dozen granary fires in a single month requires an accounting."
Yue Jinshan scoffed. "Very well. Let me ask you: the fifty thousand border troops I brought from the northern frontier are all accomplished in Blood Merging. They count as elite, do they not?"
"Your troops are elite beneath heaven, universally acknowledged by court and commoner alike."
"A soldier of the Blood Merging realm charges the field during wartime and trains for Body Casting during peace. Every day, he requires meat, milk, and eggs—or, failing that, at least ten jin of military grain. That is not excessive, is it?"
Chen Dao nodded. "Body Casting naturally requires several times what an ordinary person needs. With the spiritual qi here so scarce and lacking supplementation, that figure is perfectly reasonable."
"Since it is reasonable: the court allocated three months of military provisions, but by the time they reached my hands, it amounted to only three jin per man per day. Lord Chen, would you have me turn a three-month defense period into one month, or reduce fifty thousand men to fifteen thousand?"
"General Yue has served in the military for years; naturally, you have your ways of solving this."
"There are solutions, but one's hands inevitably get stained with soot from burning fires."
Chen Dao pondered for a moment. "Yet there are generals whose hands remain clean of soot."
Yue Jinshan sneered. "Lord Chen, I know the generals you speak of. They fall into just two sorts. One sort keeps their hands clean of soot, but stains them with their soldiers' blood. Go inspect their camps—if you can count even half their roster present, I lose! As for the other sort, there happens to be an examination brother of yours among them. Hailing from Four Sages Academy, he writes brilliant, ornate essays; having traded the brush for the sword, he calls himself a scholar-general, a paragon of the upright faction."
The habitually inscrutable Chen Dao gave a faint frown.
Yue Jinshan continued bluntly, "This examination brother of Lord Chen's takes no bribes, pads no payroll, and keeps his sleeves clean of graft—renowned across the realm for his purity. If the court gives him one and a half jin, he distributes exactly one and a half jin. But an ordinary laborer cannot even get by on a jin and a half a day! His soldiers eat only a jin and a half daily, so isn't it obvious they'd end up emaciated as monkeys? And he even has the gall to claim he is 'tempering their will through hardship and starving their flesh and bones'! He guards inland commanderies, so starving tens of thousands of men into monkeys hasn't led to disaster yet. But what if he were reassigned to guard the frontier?"
Chen Dao gave a soft cough. "General Yue..."
Yue Jinshan acted as if he had heard nothing, sneering, "If that examination brother of yours sat in my position, Lord Chen, you'd probably have to sleep in armor every night just to get any rest! With his fifty thousand monkeys, I would need only two thousand elites to slaughter him until he couldn't tell north from south!"
"Let us return to the matter at hand."
"An upright scholar-general, admired by all under heaven. In speaking a few more words, am I not spreading his glorious renown?"
Chen Dao sighed. "General Yue, say no more. That thirty percent of the court's allocated rations reached your hands was already the result of my tireless lobbying. No matter how much my examination brother struggles, he will only ever get fifteen percent."
Yue Jinshan huffed and said grudgingly, "Lord Chen should understand what I mean. If you want to get anything done, your hands must get stained with soot. Refuse to touch blood or soot, and you end up like that examination brother of yours. If there are too many people like him, Western Jin will be finished sooner or later."
Chen Dao pressed a hand to his forehead with a sigh. "General Yue... Very well. There have been too many granary fires, and something must be done, or none of us can account for it. How about this: pick two culprits, and I will handle them. What do you say?"
Yue Jinshan frowned, but drew two dispatches from the stack and placed them before Chen Dao. "These two fellows aren't my men. They just wanted to fish in troubled waters and line their own pockets."
Chen Dao set those two dispatches on the other side of the desk and said slowly, "The court's laws and system were formed over many years and cannot be lightly altered. Under this system, be it soot or blood, hardly anyone escapes without staining their hands with something. But once stained, the law has been broken, and it is only right that someone wishes to investigate. However, whom to investigate and whom to spare—that is this governor's prerogative.
"Just as with this governor's intent to investigate the fires: since General Yue and I had such an agreeable talk today, the candidates were left to General Yue to decide. But next time, I'm afraid I shall be picking them myself."
Yue Jinshan let out a scoff, rose, and departed. Once outside, he slammed the door shut so hard that the entire study trembled, shaking down a thick shower of dust from the ceiling and filling the room with haze.
Yet around Chen Dao, clear qi drifted three inches thick, preventing a single speck of dust from touching him. Sunlight filtered through the swirling dust and settled upon him, graceful and poised with an air of otherworldly detachment—like a white lotus in this murky, sullied world.
Chen Dao picked up another dispatch and examined it closely.
This dispatch was submitted by Yuan Qingyan, the governor of Ningxi Commandery. It stated that intelligence had been received indicating Qingming was short on food and likely to make a move soon. He requested the prefectural capital deploy additional troops to enforce a strict blockade, forbidding even a single grain of food from flowing into Qingming. At the same time, vagrants could be driven toward Qingming to increase its burden.
Chen Dao shook his head inwardly. Over a dozen granary fires, more than a million jin of military grain missing—in all the Shattered Lands, who else could swallow so much food?
Still, Yuan Qingyan was stationed in an isolated corner and knew nothing of this. After a moment's consideration, Chen Dao marked his approval on the dispatch and sent it down to the relevant departments for execution.
***
Wei Yuan returned laden with spoils. The moment he entered the territory, Yu Zhizhuo grabbed hold of him.
"Nephew Wei Yuan, I need your help with an ore vein!"
An ore vein? Both of Wei Yuan's ears perked up.
It could be said that ore veins were the most important matter aside from food. Although Wei Yuan could borrow Qingming's power to probe subterranean earth veins, he could see at most a hundred zhang down. Furthermore, he knew nothing about the distribution of ore veins; in his divine sense, all rocks looked identical, so how could he know which stone contained what?
For Yu Zhizhuo to invite him like this meant there was a significant discovery. Naturally, Wei Yuan would not refuse. After instructing people to receive and stow the seized supplies, he flew off with Yu Zhizhuo.
The two flew toward the north, a region of rolling mountains.
Along the way, Yu Zhizhuo said, "I have been surveying the earth veins over the past few days without much luck, but I discovered an unusual stratum of rock in the northern mountains. If we can punch through it, there might very well be something there. Let me first teach you the basics of earth veins."
Regardless of whether Wei Yuan wanted to listen, Yu Zhizhuo babbled on without stopping, starting all the way back from Chaos dividing into yin and yang. He detailed how various primordial supreme qi mixed and evolved, how they repelled and attracted one another, producing thousands of permutations. And those were merely the primordial changes; by the time the three gave birth to myriad things, the variations multiplied by thousands upon thousands, and that was still an abridged version.
By the time they reached their destination, entered an excavated mine shaft, descended dozens of zhang underground, and stood before a cross-section of rock, Yu Zhizhuo had only reached the third variation, with more than a million still left unsaid.
Before Wei Yuan stood a dim green stone wall, its rock stratum remarkably fine and dense, like an unpolished jade. The face of the rock was roughly three zhang wide and one zhang high, covered in marks from axes, chisels, and blades. In front of the wall were over a dozen Dao Foundation cultivators—a few were Yu Zhizhuo's junior brothers, while the rest were Dao Foundation assistants transferred from the territory.
In just a few days, this shaft had been dug dozens of zhang deep, and more than one shaft had been excavated. The Hall of Heavenly Craft truly had great expertise in prospecting ore veins.
Yu Zhizhuo said, "This stone wall is actually part of an entire rock stratum. Once we break through it, there might be a pleasant surprise. It's just exceptionally tough, making excavation extraordinarily difficult."
Yu Zhizhuo waved his hand and sent out a blast of sword qi, which surprisingly only cut three chi into the rock face. He unleashed several more strikes, yet only pried loose a chunk the size of a tabletop. An early Dao Foundation cultivator stepped forward with a specially made mining pick and swung with all his might, yet only chipped off a piece the size of a fist.
Wei Yuan had a faint bad feeling in his gut.
Yu Zhizhuo stepped aside and said, "I observed that Nephew's Rushing Water Blade Art that day was boundlessly powerful and particularly enduring, making it ideal for excavating here. Please make a move, Nephew, and drill an exploratory shaft ten zhang diagonally downward first."
From Yu Zhizhuo on down, all the Hall of Heavenly Craft disciples stood up, gazing eagerly at Wei Yuan with expectant faces.
Expressionless, his heart dead as cold ashes, Wei Yuan took up his stance. A halo flashed into view, illuminating the subterranean cavern. A dazzling jet of water surged forth, blasting against the rock wall. Under the grinding cuts of countless water blades, a large hole visibly carved into the stone face, delving deeper and deeper.
"Stop!" Yu Zhizhuo watched for a moment and decisively called a halt.
Puzzled, Wei Yuan stopped. In just the time it took to drink a cup of tea, a hole the size of a water vat and half a zhang deep had appeared in the rock. On the ground lay a pile of extremely fine rock dust, like pale green flour.
Yu Zhizhuo said, "Earth overcomes Water, so water blades are still slightly lacking when carving stone. But Water also engenders Metal; as long as you swap the water blades in your art for metal blades, efficiency will increase tremendously. I have here a modified Metal Blade Art, refined through the generations by our predecessors until its dao art structure is close to perfection. I shall transmit this Metal Blade Art to you now. You need only incorporate it into the structure of your Rushing Water Blade Art—you can even stack several of them."
A moment later, Wei Yuan shot forth another torrent, this one shimmering with specks of golden light. Its cutting and tunneling speed indeed surged, leaving him with enough surplus power to enlarge the tunnel for easier entry and exit. A hole the size of a water vat could only be crawled into headfirst and crawled out of backward; now Wei Yuan widened it enough for someone to crawl on hands and knees and even turn around inside.
With the exploratory tunnel open, the Hall of Heavenly Craft cultivators could crawl inside and scan the surrounding earth-vein structure with divine sense. Once the ore vein was located, they would clear a mining passage to the ore face—the standard prospecting method.
Although he had successfully bored the exploratory shaft, Wei Yuan felt an indescribable gloom in his chest, without quite knowing why.
With no outlet for his frustration, immortal qi suddenly billowed out within several zhang of him. A torrent swirling with pale red petals shot forth, instantly deepening the exploratory shaft by twenty zhang!
Yu Zhizhuo's eyes shone brightly, and he nearly lunged at Wei Yuan, exclaiming in praise, "Magnificent work, Nephew! A true immortal manner! Is there more?"
Wei Yuan said expressionlessly, "None! Even if there were, I wouldn't use it!"
Just now, he had caught the celestial laurel tree off guard to unleash that water blade art suffused with its immortal aura. At this moment, the tree considered itself deeply insulted and was using seven streams of sword qi in unison to curse Wei Yuan.
Yet beneath Yu Zhizhuo's relentless badgering, appeals to righteousness, and tempting offers of profit, Wei Yuan was nonetheless dragged off to another mining zone. Here lay a bona fide ore vein.
That night, dao arts roared till dawn. Wei Yuan swept through thousands of zhang beneath the earth, his Golden Light Water Blade Art curing all obstinate resistance as it cleaved down millions of jin of ore, prompting Yu Zhizhuo to gasp again and again, "The student surpasses the master!"
When the shift ended, a sensible Hall of Heavenly Craft disciple brought forward a money pouch, sweeping away all of Wei Yuan's fatigue and pent-up gloom.
Chapter 247