At this moment, Yuan Qingyan was like an ant on a hot pan, pacing relentlessly back and forth in his study, completely at his wit's end. He was not alone; General Xu was seated beside the tea table, conscientiously sipping tea.
"General Xu, it is not that this official is unwilling to help. It is truly that Li... Lord Li is stalling with every excuse in the book, refusing to release grain. What do you say to making do for a few more days?"
General Xu set down his teacup. "Does Lord Yuan believe they are unwilling to provide it, or that they simply cannot?"
Yuan Qingyan felt a jolt in his heart. Words like that could not be uttered carelessly, so he said, "This official does not know either."
General Xu slowly set down his teacup again. "The soldiers cannot fight without meat, not to mention this month's pay is already two days overdue. Lord Yuan, Wei Yuan just dragged several thousand men into his domain. Those are all able-bodied men who have undergone Body Casting. If two months pass and those men become his own, it will not be easy to account for."
Yuan Qingyan gritted his teeth. "They were already short on grain, yet he dared to snatch so many people! This official predicts he will run out of food within three days! It is merely that my colleagues in officialdom do not want to see me achieve merit, which is why they are deliberately tripping us up."
General Xu cut in immediately. "Lord Yuan, please leave out the word 'us.' You and I are not walking the same path!"
A flash of resentment crossed Yuan Qingyan's eyes, yet he could not lose his temper. Because he could not requisition military rations, grumbling had begun to spread among the various generals and captains, and their attitudes were no longer as respectful as in the beginning. This fellow surnamed Xu was at least consistent in his snide cynicism, never acting haughty at first only to become deferential later.
The general surnamed Xu stood up. With one foot already past the study doorway, he turned back one last time. "Lord Yuan, if I were on the verge of starving, this wouldn't be the moment I'd go around snatching people."
Yuan Qingyan actually calmed down. "Thank you for the reminder, General Xu. Right now, I am waiting for word from our intelligence network. There will be news in three days."
The general said no more and pushed the door open to leave.
***
At this moment, many were waiting for Wei Yuan to run out of grain, while Wei Yuan was waiting to harvest it.
After herding several thousand people back into the domain, a mountain of affairs awaited. These six thousand-odd men were all at the muscle stage or above; more than half had achieved Blood Merging, and three hundred were at the pinnacle of Body Casting. All had received systematic military training, and the three thousand-odd led by Wang Ziyan were cavalry. Naturally, Wei Yuan had swept up three thousand warhorses along with them, tripling the number of steeds in the domain in an instant.
Once the people arrived in the domain, the very first task was to snuff out their lingering hopes.
Wei Yuan began by promising that in three years, they would regain their freedom. At that point, those who wished to stay could stay, those who wished to leave could leave, and anyone wishing to bring their families over for a reunion would be welcomed with open arms. But before the three-year mark, none would even think of walking away.
Three years applied to those who enlisted to fight in the army. If someone refused to serve as a soldier, they had to work for eight years to redeem themselves.
As for the means of restraint, it was nothing more than a bowl of medicinal brew. Once swallowed, an antidote had to be taken every month, or death would be exceedingly gruesome. The brew had been concocted by Sun Yu, making it thoroughly dependable.
Those among the captives who had followed all the way to the domain had already resigned themselves to their fate, so there was little unrest. Next came reorganization, registration in the rosters, and picking out individuals with specialized skills.
These were tedious matters, yet of paramount importance. Wei Yuan handled them personally, and by the time he finally finished, he realized three days had flown by.
It was easy to lose track of time amid the hustle and bustle. Only when someone came to report did Wei Yuan realize that the grain in the domain was ripe!
This harvest consisted of mortal grain: a first batch of five thousand mu, yielding just over two hundred jin per mu. Perfected Chuhe had already surveyed the fields and explained that a good deal of venomous blight from the Wu domain still lingered in the earth's qi, capping the first yield at this level. After several planting cycles and once the soil had matured thoroughly, the yield could easily double.
Even so, this single harvest brought in a million jin! Another fifteen thousand mu would soon be ready, promising three million more jin in ten days.
As these fields ripened, a massive surge of spiritual qi erupted, saving Wei Yuan an entire month of arduous cultivation. Wei Yuan finally understood: farming actually yielded two harvests of spiritual qi. One was the steady trickle of daily accumulation, and the other was a single massive burst at harvest time. In total, the two were roughly equal.
Seeing the grain hauled in, Wei Yuan finally let out a long breath. The boulder weighing on his chest had at last been lifted.
Everyone taking part in the harvest beamed with heartfelt smiles. Under any circumstances, food came first. With food in hand, color returned to the world.
The ripening of this first harvest added two thousand full strands of karmic luck to Wei Yuan, among which five hundred were advanced karmic luck! Given Wei Yuan's understanding of karmic luck, this was practically equivalent to people worshipping him as a god.
If he were to switch to divine path cultivation right now, Wei Yuan could advance straight to Scenery Command. Of course, incense aspiration power came swiftly and vanished just as fast. The moment worshippers abandoned him, even as a Scenery Command True Monarch, Wei Yuan would be dragged right back down.
As for Great Fortune, it would only be contributed by someone who had cultivated a Primordial Soul; for ordinary mortals, advanced karmic luck was the limit. In extremely rare instances, karmic luck might coalesce on its own, but that was an anomaly.
Watching the busy figures across the fields, Wei Yuan felt that same heartfelt joy. All the plots resembled a golden sea, rippling in golden waves that brightened the entire domain.
Just then, Cui Yu soared into the sky, shouting at the top of his lungs to urge those who had finished harvesting to rush to the adjacent fields. He had already led crews to clear new land; once treated with dao arts, the freshly harvested grain could serve as seed and be sown immediately.
Having lived through days of counting every single grain of rice, Cui Yu refused to wait even a day longer. Several disciples of Perfected Chuhe began treating the seeds on the spot, while Cui Yu led workers to sow them.
Cui Yu's drive was fiercer even than Wei Yuan's. He had carved out a full hundred thousand mu for the second parcel of new fields. When they had cleared that wasteland, working day and night without pause, the Body Casting progress of over ten thousand people had surged forward by a tremendous leap.
Originally, this work should have fallen to Xiaoyu, but he had been away for some time. All duties were now split among several individuals, with Cui Yu shouldering the lion's share. Surprisingly, Wang Yu took on the rest. Though raw and inexperienced at first, he had improved by leaps and bounds under Cui Yu's diligent guidance.
Wang Yu usually accompanied Wei Yuan on campaign, yet whenever he had free time, he helped Cui Yu manage the mortals, balancing both duties seamlessly. That also meant he lived like an ascetic, with scarcely any time left for cultivation.
Wei Yuan did not interfere much, letting them have free rein.
Yet this field had ripened considerably earlier than anticipated, and the rest were maturing ahead of schedule as well. After examining the fields and inspecting his Primordial Soul, Wei Yuan finally realized that ever since his Yin-Yang Dao Foundation manifested, Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains seemed to have found resonance, its spiritual nature slowly rising. Qingming was affected as well; its Jia Wood Life-Mystic power had grown stronger, boosting the growth rate of all spiritual plants within the domain.
Wei Yuan felt more worry than delight over this. The stature of the Yin-Yang Dao Foundation was simply too exalted; he could not even be certain whether it truly belonged to him. Wei Yuan had been tormented by Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains for years, and now that he had finally found a direction and everything was just getting on track, he naturally wished for no new variables.
Right at this juncture, the Marquis of Xiang's messenger arrived, inviting Wei Yuan to meet seven days later at a desolate little temple in the northern reaches of Bianning Commandery, where a fortuitous opportunity awaited.
The map of the entire Shattered Lands was etched into Wei Yuan's mind, and his footprints had traversed most of the region, yet his memory of northern Bianning Commandery was of an impassable mountain range devoid of human habitation. Who would build a temple there?
Still, some time remained, so Wei Yuan waited a few days more until he received his new gun before setting out.
To keep his appointment with the Marquis of Xiang, Wei Yuan did not bring a large entourage, inviting only his master and Eldest Senior Sister along.
The meeting place lay some four thousand li from the domain, well beyond the boundary of the immortal sword's seal. As Wei Yuan understood it, given his master's reserved, repressed nature, after stifling sword qi for so long, letting it loose all at once would likely shake heaven and earth.
As for the new firearm in his hands, it had been forged through the joint efforts of Yu Zhizhuo and Sun Yu over three days and three nights. Throughout the process, Xu Wenwu had stood by offering suggestions and continually refining the design. Once it was finished, Xu Wenwu had even slept holding it for an entire night, falling just short of throwing himself into the furnace like a legendary master smith from a storybook.
Fortunately, while Xu Wenwu was an ignoramus, Yu Zhizhuo and Sun Yu certainly were not. Throwing oneself into a forge did nothing except add impurities; perhaps it added a bit of carbon, but the proportions were impossible to control, so one was better off without it.
Thus, Xu Wenwu settled for sleeping beside the divine weapon for the night, maxing out the sense of ceremony. At first, Yu Zhizhuo and Sun Yu assumed the fellow was merely fooling around, but after that night, the new gun actually displayed all manner of miraculous properties! The shock to the two senior cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning was extraordinary. Thoroughly baffled, each went back to cram knowledge on feng shui and karmic luck—though that was a story for later.
Apart from those wonders, according to Sun Yu, the gun was also infused with the next-generation version of the Demonic Soul-Eroding Incense, named the Demon-Melting Soul-Extinguishing Incense. Sun Yu had warned him repeatedly: the moment this gun fired, it would create an irreconcilable blood feud, the kind without the slightest room for compromise.
Wei Yuan understood completely. After all, severing someone's path to the Dao was vastly more vicious than cutting off their livelihood.
And so, accompanied by two companions and one gun, Wei Yuan set off to keep the appointment.
He felt very bold—not the least bit afraid of death.
Chapter 259