In the dead of night, Wei Yuan stood atop the main peak of his domain, gazing far into the distance.
To his perception, the northwestern horizon was faintly illuminated by firelight—the location of Shaman City. Yu Zhizhuo had discovered large ore veins around Shaman City, established a mining operation, and constructed over a dozen blast furnaces right at the entrance of the mineshafts. Blazing fires surged straight into the sky, painting the heavens red.
Elsewhere across the domain, certain fields glowed faintly in the night. Those were paddies planted with spirit rice. As spirit rice sprouted and grew, it emitted a subtle luminescence; spread across vast stretches, it looked like a shimmering sea of faint light in the dark.
Lights still twinkled across several cities. More and more cultivators were gathering in the domain cities, and with the boundless vigor that came after Body Casting, many worked straight through the night, hoping only to accomplish a little more so their chances of victory in the next great war might be slightly higher.
The new grain fields were fully seeded now. When the shoots sprouted, Wei Yuan had harvested several thousand strands of karmic luck.
Mortal folk were inherently simple and honest, especially those who had endured years of warfare. Only when they saw tender shoots sprouting from the soil could they envision the day of harvest. These vast swathes of farmland were the hope of survival for countless souls.
Around the herb garden, spiritual qi grew richer by the day, bordering on visible to the naked eye. Perfected Chuhe’s cultivation advanced steadily, a testament to how well the garden flourished.
Wei Yuan felt a sudden surge of emotion. If not for the surrounding alien races, and if there were no lofty immortals high above in the heavens, this land would already be the earthly paradise described in ancient books. Alas, the alien races remained savage, and the immortals remained perched on high. For mortals dwelling upon the earth, immortals were sometimes more terrifying than the alien races.
Under cover of night, figures slipped quietly in and out of the domain, or cast daoist arts whose magical power soared into the sky and vanished in the blink of an eye.
With borders now stretching over a thousand li, completely sealing off the domain was an impossible feat. Moreover, with merchant caravans coming and going in growing numbers, it was impossible to tell whether those message-bearing daoist arts and spiritual talismans were sent by traders or by someone harboring darker motives.
Fire guns and gunpowder could not be kept secret forever; leaks were inevitable. Ever since wiping out Yue Jinshan's ten thousand heavy cavalry, Wei Yuan had prepared himself for the surrounding enemies to devise counter-tactics or even assemble fire gun regiments of their own.
What surprised Wei Yuan, however, was just how slow the Xu family had been to respond. When their three-hundred-thousand-strong army marched in, they had simply proceeded as they always had, deploying not a single specialized tactic against fire guns.
Wei Yuan thought that had he been in command, studying Yue Jinshan’s defeat even slightly would have kept him from fighting so disastrously. Yet the reality was that the Xu family’s army of three hundred thousand had waged an old-fashioned war. From top to bottom, the Xu family resembled an elderly man in twilight—sluggish and stubborn.
Even so, following this battle, while it might not have shaken the whole world, the Western Jin court and common folk were undoubtedly jolted to their core. By now, fire guns and ammunition likely sat on the desks of numerous powerful figures, and imitation efforts in workshops across the land had probably already begun.
Still, this was only a matter of time, and Wei Yuan was well-prepared. In his mind, what mattered most right now was neither the technology of fire guns nor the formula for gunpowder, but the materials written by Xu Wenwu—the authentic accounts of that world beyond the heavens. That was a miraculous world where, despite the absence of supreme personal might, hundreds of millions lived in prosperity.
In the study behind Wei Yuan, stacks of historical records filled the entire room. Lately, he had been reading local gazetteers from various lands, with a relative focus on Western Jin. Having perused these gazetteers, Wei Yuan finally recognized the critical difference between this realm and Xu Wenwu's otherworldly origin: in this realm, ordinary mortals held no value.
Within the Nine Kingdoms of the Great Tang, so long as a person could not achieve Body Casting, an ordinary mortal genuinely possessed not the slightest worth. As Wei Youcai had said back then, land and grain were finite; once the population exceeded a certain limit, people starved. With just over a decade of peace, the population would spring up like bamboo shoots after rain.
Yet once an ordinary person achieved Body Casting—even if they only completed the Sinew and Muscle Realm—a single one could perform the labor of two or three common folk while consuming only half again as much food.
On the battlefield, the disparity was even starker. A dozen armored, weapon-bearing Body Casting warriors could effortlessly slaughter an army of over a hundred ordinary mortals. The larger the armies, the wider this gap became.
When natural disasters struck the Nine Kingdoms and peasant rebellions erupted across the lands, even the most mediocre Body Casting imperial soldiers would dare charge thousands against tens of thousands of peasant rebels—and almost invariably emerge victorious.
Thus, an ordinary mortal without Body Casting was useless, whether as a soldier or a laborer. Specialized laws throughout the Nine Kingdoms granted extensive privileges and conveniences to those who achieved Body Casting; Western Jin had merely taken this policy to an extreme.
If one could not cast their body, they were hardly even welcomed as sacrifices by the Shamans. Only after extensive preparation, fattening, and cleansing could they serve as basic padding in grand sacrificial rites.
Furthermore, countless classics recorded that commoners almost always bore commoners. Consequently, theories of bloodline supremacy ran rampant across various doctrines, to the point that on some noble clans' domains, ordinary folk required the lords' explicit permission even to marry.
Connecting these disparate pieces together, Wei Yuan arrived at a singular conclusion: mortals had no value.
Hence, the policies of every state deliberately suppressed mortal numbers to varying degrees. Some drove them directly to the slaughter of the battlefield, while others conscripted them year-round for grueling corvée labor. A more subtle approach was simply to turn a blind eye to catastrophic famines and disasters, letting a portion starve to death.
Wei Yuan could not help but recall the peasant uprising he had encountered in his early youth. Looking back now, the State of Ji might not have lacked the means to quell it; rather, the authorities from top to bottom had likely indulged it by design. But in Qingming, things were different. Thanks to the presence of Ephemeral Multitude, even the humblest mortals could serve as pillars of strength on the battlefield.
Many who were believed incapable of ever forming a Dao Foundation had succeeded here in Qingming. If that held true for Dao Foundations, why not for Body Casting?
Wei Yuan thought of Fang Hetong's three essays. The two pieces on Establishing Words and Establishing Merit were extraordinary arts for Body Casting. Sadly, Fang Hetong had fallen early, and that Dao Foundation had been lost.
Wei Yuan planned that once Dao Foundations such as the Ten Directions Glazed Golden Fire and the Six Paths Jiayi Divine Wood matured, his next step would be finding a way to lower the threshold of Body Casting, allowing more mortals to cultivate it. Under the shroud of night, the land of Qingming was steadily drawing closer to the world of Wei Yuan's dreams.
***
At a seemingly vacant spot along the domain's border, dao power had partitioned the space, carving out a secluded mini-realm.
A solitary figure arrived stealthily. Just as he looked about, a patch of darkness crept forward, enveloping him. The ground was left completely empty, as though nothing had ever been there.
The figure's vision blurred, and before him appeared verdant hills and clear waters. A middle-aged man sat beneath a tree, holding a wine cup and smiling faintly at him. Yet though the man smiled, there was not a trace of mirth in his eyes.
The middle-aged man spoke in a measured tone, "This place is sealed from heaven and earth. Unless an immortal is present, no one can detect us. There is no need to be nervous. However, when you return, you had best conceal yourself thoroughly."
The figure brought into this realm was wrapped head to toe in a black robe. The fabric possessed the power to block divine sense, clearly no ordinary garment. In a raspy voice, he said, "I risked life and limb to come here. I must see the goods first!"
The middle-aged man's face darkened. His pupils abruptly narrowed into golden vertical slits, and faint scales surfaced on his neck. In an instant, murderous aura flooded the mini-realm, distorting the scenery until it looked ready to shatter at any moment!
The black-robed man said, "It is not that I distrust you; I trust no one right now. There is no need to fly into such a rage over this small request. Let me also remind you: so long as you remain within the domain, karmic luck behaves erratically and can easily slip out of control. You had better be careful. If your whereabouts are exposed, you might not be able to escape."
The strange abnormalities on the middle-aged man gradually receded, though he still looked upon the black-robed figure with instinctive revulsion. He produced a palm-sized box and set it on the table.
The black-robed man opened it impatiently. Inside lay an apricot-sized ruby, giving off an intoxicating, sweet fragrance. At the sight of it, the black-robed man swallowed hard, his aura fluctuating wildly.
Not daring to look too long, he hastily shut the lid, taking quite a while to calm his racing heart.
The middle-aged man waited in silence until the black-robed man had settled down before saying, "This top-grade blood yingluo not only extends life, but also refines the aptitude of you humans. With enough luck, you might even inherit some of the innate abilities it held in life."
"This piece is a bit small... It's not enough."
The middle-aged man sneered. "A single piece like this sells for over five hundred thousand taels of immortal silver among humans! With your meager abilities, would you ever have had the chance to catch so much as a scent of it in your lifetime if not for this opportunity? If you refuse, I will find someone else!"
The black-robed man swiftly tucked the box into his robes. Then he pulled out a pouch and retrieved several everyday items, all of which appeared thoroughly ordinary.
"This is a history book he read. This is a discarded sheet of paper he tossed into the wastebasket... and here is a strand of his hair that fell."
The middle-aged man inspected each item with meticulous care. The black-robed man stood beside him, hardly daring to breathe, wound tight with tension. A moment later, the middle-aged man finally nodded and said, "Sufficient."
The black-robed man let out a long sigh of relief.
The middle-aged man opened his mouth and sucked all the miscellaneous items into his belly, then said, "Find an opportunity to leave. Otherwise, do not blame me for failing to warn you beforehand."
The mini-realm popped like a bubble. The middle-aged man turned into a black streak, vanishing beyond the horizon in an instant. The black-robed man also turned and made his way back toward the domain, blending seamlessly into the night.
***
Inside the study, Wei Yuan put down the history book in his hands and walked over to the stack of books in the corner. While reading, a new thought had struck him, and he needed another volume for cross-reference.
Wei Yuan quickly dug out the local gazetteer and began flipping through it at a brisk pace. Yet he suddenly cast a glance back at the book stack, feeling as though it looked ever so slightly thinner.
Still, he had exchanged for an enormous quantity of historical records, far too many for the study to hold. Moreover, with the strength of Wei Yuan's divine sense, reading something once was enough to commit it to memory; keeping the books here served little purpose. Only obscure gazetteers from minor localities—the kind almost no one ever read—occasionally required him to go back and search, as he had merely skimmed them initially rather than reading word for word.
Once he finished with historical volumes, Wei Yuan usually had them moved to the storeroom for others to consult. Yet apart from himself and Zhang Sheng, hardly anyone read them; only Sun Yu and Feng Tingyu occasionally took a few back with them.
Even so, for reasons he could not place, Wei Yuan felt a lingering sense of unease tonight.
Chapter 352