As the supplies from Hanyang Pass were brought back bit by bit, the eight hundred Dao soldiers also returned to Qingming. Having briefly tasted life as mounted bandits, the soldiers were thoroughly thrilled, many even showing an inclination to switch professions.
Wei Yuan quickly chased them all off to cultivate, refusing to let their thoughts wander further. If he let the Dao soldiers entrusted by his sect turn into mounted bandits, his master would likely come to purge the sect.
The Cui family gradually sent more disciples, bringing their total to five hundred. They, along with the eight hundred Dao soldiers and two hundred domain cultivators, made up the members of this session's Dao Foundation crash course.
With the enrollment ballooning all at once to fifteen hundred, even Wei Yuan felt a touch of pressure.
For the Dao soldiers and domain cultivators, Wei Yuan originally had a different process. Put simply, they were given an extra opportunity: a chance to forge a Dao Foundation according to their own wishes, and only if that failed would they choose from the templates Wei Yuan provided.
However, after discussing it with the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning, Wei Yuan ultimately decided to extend the same process to the Cui disciples—meaning they, too, would receive an extra chance. Although this would consume much of what little Qingming pond water remained, Wei Yuan instinctively felt it was vital to maintain basic fairness within the same cohort.
In this session, one more Dao Foundation template was made available: the launchable flying sword that Wei Yuan had just crafted.
This flying sword possessed neither complex contours nor superfluous functions. Its sole wonder lay in the fact that its rear half could detonate, propelling the front half into accelerated flight and boosting its power. If loaded into a specially made dharma weapon gun, it served as a high-powered flying-sword projectile.
Precisely because of its unadorned simplicity, it once again broadened the scope of the Mortal Tier Dao Foundation, making yet another major contribution to the expansion of the Immortal Dao in the mortal realm.
Furthermore, this flying sword could be forged multiple times. That is to say, depending on an individual's innate talent after establishing the Dao Foundation, one might produce a single sword, three to five, or even more.
With Wei Yuan leading the way, the cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning had already begun racking their brains to research new Dao Foundations of their own. They soon realized that as long as one discarded shame, developing a new Dao Foundation was hardly difficult at all.
Thus, Yu Zhizhuo produced the Five Directions Geng Metal, while Sun Yu came up with the Innate Lifegiving Water.
Old Daoist Chuhe had originally wanted to concoct a water-element or wood-element Dao Foundation, but since Six Paths Jiayi Divine Wood Qi already existed, breaking through the lower limit proved rather difficult. After long deliberation, he worked out a Beast-Taming Immortal Heart. This Dao Foundation excelled at winning the favor of spirit beasts, making it easier to take powerful spirit beasts as bonded pets.
Still, since these three were Wei Yuan's seniors after all, they retained at least a shred of pride. While their new templates were somewhat stronger than those Wei Yuan had designed, their names were considerably less pretentious.
Once those preparing to cast their Dao Foundations were settled, the disposition of the three hundred thousand prisoners of war—comprising both Xu family troops and regular imperial soldiers—was largely complete. Most of those with places to return to had already been sent back; the remaining captives had no one to rely on, numbering two hundred and ninety-nine thousand at this point.
Wei Yuan picked an afternoon to assemble everyone. Three hundred thousand people gathered in one place created a veritable sea of humanity. When Wei Yuan mounted the raised platform, the entire crowd fell silent, knowing that what he was about to say would decide their fates.
Wei Yuan circulated his Dao power, infusing it with a trace of dragon qi drawn from the dragon bone. A true dragon naturally possessed dragon might, whose suppression over lesser beings was terrifyingly overwhelming—far more visceral than that of the celestial laurel tree or the Bingli Divine Wood. Thus, the moment Wei Yuan spoke, those closest to the platform trembled uncontrollably, and quite a few collapsed limp to the ground.
"Look closely. Who is this?"
Two cultivators escorted Xu Chunyuan onto the platform, instantly stirring a commotion below. Someone recognized Xu Chunyuan right away, and word spread from ten to a hundred, and a hundred to a thousand, until everyone knew within breaths.
Wei Yuan announced, "This man was once the Garrison Commander of Hanyang Pass, yet now he stands here as well. The Xu family cannot save you, and neither can anyone else! Now, I shall announce what is to become of you. Under this system, as long as you diligently complete the tasks assigned to you, you may shed your current status and perhaps even become regular troops under my command."
Wei Yuan then proclaimed a new status system. It had two parallel tracks: merit and cultivation. Everyone started as a guilty commoner. Guilty commoners were treated essentially as convicts, and punishments for infractions were severe, with dozens of crimes punishable by beheading alone. Once a guilty commoner amassed enough merit, they would be promoted to soldier. This soldier was not an ordinary trooper, but something akin to a penal battalion or death squad.
Beyond soldier lay commoner, and beyond commoner lay registered imperial soldier. That was the status track.
Progress in Body Casting cultivation also brought corresponding privileges, enabling one to undertake more demanding tasks and accumulate merit faster. Each realm of Body Casting came with numerous exclusive tasks.
If one's Body Casting reached Bone Tempering and they were willing to sign a blood contract, they could skip the guilty commoner tier entirely and become a soldier.
The merit required for each promotion varied. Rising from guilty commoner to soldier took comparatively little; with diligence and good behavior, one could advance within a year at most. Moving from soldier to commoner, however, took three years, and from commoner to registered imperial soldier required six.
Wei Yuan had not yet worked out all the fine details of this system. His preliminary thought was to divide the guilty commoner tier into a dozen or so sub-stages, fast at first and slower later—the earliest ranks could be cleared in a few days, while the later ones would take ten-odd days, dozens of days, or even hundreds.
Historical records contained many similar systems, and they were also mentioned in Xu Wenwu's notes.
With the announcement of the new status system, the captives grew much calmer, and much of the lingering unease dissipated. Under normal circumstances, when suddenly saddled with so many prisoners and faced with potential food shortages, a lord would likely bury a portion of them alive. Now that this intricate system had been introduced, it was clear Wei Yuan had no intention of executing them.
The immediate priority for the guilty commoners was opening farmland. Together with the newly arrived displaced refugees, they would reclaim wilderness along the domain's outer edges. Those lands lay far from the boundary stone, where the transformation of heaven and earth had barely begun, and newly cleared fields might yield less than two hundred jin per mu. But with ample manpower now available, Wei Yuan's first step was to bring a million mu of land under cultivation before tackling anything else.
Next, those among the guilty commoners and refugees who were literate, skilled in Body Casting, and relatively clever would be sent to Yu Zhizhuo to work on quarrying, ore sorting, furnace building, and bridge construction.
The rest were put to work building city walls and digging underground fortifications.
Wei Yuan remained ever wary of the Xu family and, frankly, distrusted Western Jin as well. Had the Liao Clan not been fighting so fiercely in the north, Western Jin's grand armies might have descended upon the domain at any time.
However, some disagreement arose between Wei Yuan and the other cultivators, primarily over the nine Pure Spirit Trees he had brought back. Although the Pure Spirit Tree was merely a spiritual plant, it could drastically improve the surrounding environment over a wide area, elevating the concentration of spiritual qi.
In Perfected Chuhe's view, all nine trees should be planted in the herb garden to set up a Nine Palaces spirit gathering great formation, which would tremendously increase the garden's spiritual qi concentration and accelerate the growth rate of every spiritual plant within.
None of the others objected, except for Yu Zhizhuo, who proposed an alternative: placing the same Nine Palaces spirit gathering formation in the Weaponsmith Workshop, which would raise both production volume and quality by a full grade. Even so, the cultivators still felt that, by tradition, such spiritual trees belonged in an herb garden.
In the end, however, Wei Yuan placed only three trees in the herb garden, laying down a Lesser Three Talents spirit gathering formation. Its effect was merely twenty percent of what the Nine Palaces formation could achieve. The remaining six spiritual trees were planted in the mortal fields, particularly around several corrupted plots.
This setup could suppress the spread of corrupted soil, protect the mortal fields, and increase their harvest. By calculations, it would yield roughly two million extra jin of grain per season.
Over this matter, a rare quarrel broke out among the cultivators.
One point of contention was the cultivators' belief that mortal commoners only needed to be kept from starving to death; allowing them to eat their fill was already considered an act of great benevolence anywhere under heaven. A vital resource like the Pure Spirit Trees had far more critical uses and should not be wasted on mortals.
Only then did Wei Yuan realize that the cultivators had long harbored quiet reservations about his habitual inclination to allocate resources toward mortals—a frustration that finally erupted over the distribution of the Pure Spirit Trees.
Even if immortals and mortals were treated alike, opinions differed on whether the domain as a whole benefited more from establishing the Nine Palaces formation in the herb garden or dispersing the trees across mortal farmland. Viewed from that angle, Yu Zhizhuo's proposal became exceptionally compelling.
The breastplates, weapons, and tools produced by the Weaponsmith Workshop were hopelessly oversubscribed; breastplates, in particular, sold out as fast as they could be offered to outside buyers. Enhancements in quantity and quality translated directly into measurable amounts of immortal silver. Using the extra silver to purchase grain would easily buy far more than two million jin.
Truth be told, Wei Yuan could win neither of these arguments. In the end, he had to invoke his authority as Domain Lord and the fact that True Monarch Huangyun had bestowed the spiritual plants directly upon him to bring the dispute to an end.
Wei Yuan could not quite explain why, but by pure instinct, he felt deeply unsettled whenever his own fields did not produce enough grain.
With the quarrel over, harmony returned among the cultivators, and the earlier unpleasantness was promptly forgotten.
Sun Yu remarked, "This Karma Great Curse struck so abruptly. I suspect it was no accident."
Perfected Chuhe's eyes brightened, and he asked slowly, "You mean... there is a traitor?"
Sun Yu nodded. "There is no other explanation. Taking advantage of my recent recovery, I cast hexagrams to divine the heavenly secrets. The omens clearly indicate that the Karma Great Curse is linked to a traitor."
Yu Zhizhuo said, "Investigating this can be simple, or it can be difficult. It will just take some time and resources. First, we raise a great formation to divine heaven's secrets and prevent the traitor from muddling them. Then we interrogate everyone permitted onto the main peak one by one. That will likely yield results. If that fails, we widen the net. There are only about two thousand people in all; we will track them down eventually."
Feng Tingyu suddenly chimed in, "A few people left the domain around that time. They cannot be overlooked either."
The cultivators nodded in agreement, finding her point sound, though her occasional flash of brilliance did not alter their opinion of the Hall of the Bright King.
Wei Yuan had already contemplated this matter repeatedly, so he said, "A traitor may exist, but they are bound to be hidden with great subtlety. If we launch a massive search, we might catch them, but the odds of wrongful accusations are also very high. History is rife with similar incidents, most of which devolved into sensational affairs that implicated countless innocents."
At this point, Wei Yuan smiled faintly. "Besides, even the Karma Great Curse failed to kill me, and there is not much left that can. Even if we ferret out a traitor, what do we actually gain? With so much on our plate right now, there is no need to stir up trouble for ourselves."
The cultivators pondered for a moment. Though reluctant, they ultimately accepted Wei Yuan's reasoning.
***
In Ningzhou, Qianqiu City.
Exhausted to the bone, Fan Donghe stepped out of the Day and Night Hall. The Day and Night Hall was the Xu family's nerve center for intelligence gathering and rooting out traitors, a place whose very name inspired dread. Ever since the day he returned, Fan Donghe had been required to report there daily, enduring hours of interrogation each time.
Fan Donghe was, after all, a dharma idol cultivator with formidable combat prowess, and there was no evidence of him defecting to the enemy. As such, the deacons of the Day and Night Hall treated him with relative courtesy, refraining from torture and allowing him to return home each night after questioning.
Others, however, enjoyed no such privilege. The officers Wei Yuan had released were rounded up the moment the Xu family reclaimed Hanyang Pass. The interrogations centered on a single core question: Why had Wei Yuan let them go?
How could there be an answer to that? The officers gave all sorts of disparate explanations, none of which satisfied the deacons, who quickly turned to torture. Over a thousand officers had been brought back from Hanyang Pass this time, crowding the Day and Night Hall to bursting. With interrogation rooms in critically short supply, four or five men were frequently crammed into a single cell, forced to endure torture together in cramped quarters.
The officers knew full well that this matter could be made large or small, but once inside the Day and Night Hall, it would only ever grow worse. Thus, they mobilized their families with everything they had, desperately seeking a way to grease palms and secure their release. Consequently, the deacons of the Day and Night Hall, great and small, all made a tidy fortune.
Chapter 385