As the very first research institute within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, adopting a grand, imposing name seemed entirely justifiable.
Yet the entire group consisted of merely six or seven hundred people. While the mortal research teams were branching into increasingly specialized divisions, a team of six or seven hundred could hardly be considered large.
Nor did this institute possess a specific line of research. They seemed to investigate whatever popped into their heads, or whatever tasks Wei Yuan assigned to them.
Furthermore, those brilliant “crouching dragons and fledgling phoenixes” who had made such a splash during his time with the Bao family were not in this institute.
At present, the other mortals paid little attention to the matter. Everyone had their hands full—some worshiping gods, others tilling the fields. Only the several hundred newcomers recently reincarnated from the Gate of the Many Realms wandered about in a daze, uncertain of what they ought to do.
With a shift of his will, Wei Yuan transmitted materials regarding the current state of the domain and the surrounding environment to the mortals, then assigned them a mission: figure out how to make money.
Having finally pacified the cat and the flying marten, Wei Yuan allowed the marten to roam freely within the domain, while he made his customary rounds to the Weaponsmith Workshop and Sun Yu's quarters.
What Wei Yuan did not know was that no sooner had he departed than Old Daoist Chuhe crept up to the flying marten to open earnest negotiations. His very first words were: “This humble one wishes to bow before you as my adoptive father…”
Not knowing what an “adoptive father” was, but instinctively sensing it was no compliment, the flying marten spat right in the old daoist's face before burrowing into the earth to wander. There seemed to be plenty of good things buried beneath this land that required patient foraging.
Old Daoist Chuhe possessed the refined composure to let spit dry on his face without taking offense. He promptly reconsidered his phrasing, resolving to try again the next time he crossed paths with Lord Marten. Taming the cat and snake in those days had hardly been accomplished in a try or two; it had taken extensive, grinding patience.
The flying marten had held the upper hand even while fighting both cat and snake single-handedly. If he could acknowledge it as his adoptive father, Old Daoist Chuhe's combat prowess would double in an instant, allowing him to strut unhindered among dharma idol cultivators. Even if he ran into Fenhai, he would be able to casually address him as “Little Fen” or “Little Hai.”
As for taking a beast as his adoptive father—who else understood the language of spirit beasts to ever discover the truth?
***
Meanwhile, business at the Weaponsmith Workshop was booming, with several new blast furnaces erected over the past few months. To maximize efficiency, Yu Zhizhuo had even constructed two blast furnaces near the mine outside the domain.
Although locating them outside the domain meant rotating cultivators every half-day, it was still far better than hauling ore over a hundred li.
Sun Yu, on the other hand, had established a new medical clinic in the new city. It was already staffed with dozens of apprentices, and he intended to expand it further.
Sun Yu's personal focus remained gunpowder formulas. Ever since Ji Liuli's departure, however, he had lacked the means to simulate material properties, forcing him to revert to the old approach of laboriously testing new compositions and optimal proportions step by step.
Every day, Sun Yu had to carry out hundreds of detonations and record the corresponding data.
The notion of simulating material properties stirred a faint idea in Wei Yuan's mind. He lingered at Sun Yu's clinic for an entire afternoon, using his divine sense to scan every piece of data Sun Yu had logged. Once Wei Yuan had observed it, it was equivalent to the mortals within his Dao Foundation observing it as well.
Before long, the official harvest season arrived. Wei Yuan temporarily set aside other duties to concentrate on managing the yields.
This season's grain harvest was poised to approach two hundred million jin, for which Wei Yuan had already constructed numerous granaries in advance. Qingming could now reap a harvest every two months. Calculated at the standard of four hundred jin of grain per person per year, this was enough to sustain three million people, whereas Qingming's entire population currently stood at only one million.
Yet four hundred jin was merely the bare minimum to prevent starvation. Wei Yuan did not halt the clearing of farmland; his plans for the next season aimed to expand cultivated acreage to two million mu.
As the fields of grain ripened one after another, spiritual energy within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains surged in continuous eruptions. Its concentration rose steadily, and the expanse of fertile soil broadened. Then, one day, Wei Yuan suddenly discovered that the mortals inside were harvesting as well.
Within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the mortals had long opened up many plots across the fertile soil. The crops growing there were mostly grain and vegetables, which had now actually ripened and could be harvested by the mortals.
Had these fields been in the outside world, they would have been classified as spiritual fields, accounting for their remarkably high yields. Looking at the dense, robust stalks of rice, one could tell at a glance that the yield was around eight hundred jin per mu.
After harvesting their grain and vegetables, the mortals actually took them home to cook. For the very first time, curling wisps of cooking smoke rose into the skies of the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
Wei Yuan observed with rapt attention, momentarily casting all other matters aside.
Once the mortals finished preparing the food, they sat down and began eating in earnest. Wei Yuan found it utterly bizarre. When he swept his divine sense over the food, it proved in essence to be pure spiritual energy, fundamentally identical to the stone and soil of the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
Yet the mortals ate with devout relish, savoring every mouthful. One individual was even moved to tears, cradling a bowl of white rice as he sobbed uncontrollably, declaring that he had never tasted anything so delicious in all his days. He vowed to uphold a craftsman's devotion and dedicate his life to the art of cooking rice, proclaiming that should he achieve success in cultivation and ascend the immortal path in the future, he would be known as the “Rice Immortal.”
Wei Yuan felt an overwhelming urge to smite him with a bolt of lightning.
If everyone thought like this, would there soon be a Steamed Fish Immortal, a Roast Chicken Immortal, or even a Boiled Water Immortal?
Setting aside those absurd outliers, Wei Yuan suddenly noticed that the bodies of those who had eaten had grown marginally stronger. Those studying cultivation methods even displayed signs of Body Casting!
How was that possible?
Wei Yuan felt utterly bewildered. The spiritual flora within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains were not true celestial plants; they were merely components of his Dao Foundation, taking on a different form just as stone could be shaped into a cauldron. The same held true for these mortals.
If mortals ate food, their physical bodies strengthened—and by a margin that exceeded the substance of the food consumed. Did that not mean the Dao Foundation could devour itself to grow fatter? Where was the extra spiritual energy coming from?
After reading Xu Wenwu's notes, one phrase had left a deep impression on Wei Yuan: the conservation of mass and energy. Upon careful contemplation, this was indeed one of the fundamental Great Daos governing the universe.
How could his own Dao Foundation have strayed from the Great Dao? Wouldn't this be like stepping on your left foot with your right foot to soar higher and higher into the air?
Wei Yuan felt genuinely unnerved; straying from the Great Dao was no trivial matter!
Composing himself, Wei Yuan meticulously scanned every person and every dish, monitoring the origin and path of every trace of spiritual energy. In the end, he finally discovered that these individuals had acquired the capacity to draw in the origin qi of heaven and earth; the additional spiritual energy was actually being gathered by the mortals themselves.
The more spiritual flora grew within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the faster it breathed the origin qi of heaven and earth to generate spiritual power. But because they were parts of the Dao Foundation, their effect was fundamentally to increase the speed at which the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains breathed origin qi—abstractly speaking, there was still only a single gateway.
Now, however, once mortals imbued with spirituality ate their food, each individual became an independent node capable of breathing the origin qi of heaven and earth. Though insignificant compared to the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains as a whole, they were relatively autonomous. With over a thousand mortals present, there were now over a thousand additional nodes absorbing the origin qi of heaven and earth.
After eating, the mortals who practiced cultivation made noticeable progress in Body Casting. They were overjoyed, behaving like zealous devotees who had received an answer from their deity. They promptly began constructing courtyards for their activities and opening up fresh fields in the surrounding fertile soil.
Wei Yuan continued observing the mortals' daily lives while attending to affairs across the domain. The harvest season was dreadfully busy, and its conclusion brought an enormous volume of subsequent tasks—processing and storing grain, plowing the soil in preparation for the next cycle, opening new fields, clearing blighted earth, and much more.
Meanwhile, the mortals in the Dao Foundation followed suit and established two more research institutes. One was named the “Above Chaos Research Institute,” and the other the “Primordial Light Research Institute.” Each name was more extravagant than the last, though Wei Yuan genuinely failed to see any difference among the three institutes, aside from the presence of two crouching dragons and fledgling phoenixes in Above Chaos.
Wei Yuan did not interfere with them, continuing to busy himself with domain affairs. By then, three thousand Dao soldiers from the Palace of Grand Beginning had arrived, the Qinghe Cui family had dispatched another five hundred men, and along with five hundred selected from within the domain itself, the fifth Dao Foundation class officially commenced. The opening lesson covered identifying ores, understanding terrestrial material properties, and tempering one's state of mind—each recruit was tasked with tempering their mental resolve by grinding five thousand jin of ore that day.
Around this time, the mortals' research into material properties bore fruit, recreating inch-gold charcoal within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains for the first time. Inch-gold charcoal was forged by calcining spiritual wood; it burned ten times hotter and longer than ordinary charcoal, producing spiritual flame when lit. It was also the primary ingredient for the new gunpowder.
The material properties of inch-gold charcoal were relatively straightforward. Sun Yu already possessed detailed data and had even drawn structural diagrams. After Wei Yuan fed this data into the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, the mortals endured thousands of failures before finally replicating the charcoal.
Wei Yuan was initially delighted, but he soon witnessed every household in the research team lighting fires to cook meals with the inch-gold charcoal. Previously, they had merely ignited spiritual power for show when pretending to cook.
This time, genuine cooking smoke rose within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
However, the replicated inch-gold charcoal was limited in supply. The research team promptly selected a patch of fertile ground nearby and began cultivating spiritual trees. There were numerous species of spiritual trees within the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, and the mortals selected the Pure Spirit Tree, planting several hundred at once. Where they had procured the saplings remained a mystery.
Only after careful scrutiny did Wei Yuan finally understand: the saplings were just like the objects shaped with the true intent of the Cauldron. The mortals had grasped the existing true intent of the Pure Spirit Tree and pinched stones into the shape of saplings. Up to this point, everything had proceeded along normal, comprehensible lines.
Yet once replanted by mortal hands, the true intent within altered, turning them into authentic saplings. Their defining feature was that they, too, gained spirituality, capable of independently absorbing the origin qi of heaven and earth.
The whole thing was utterly absurd.
Over the ensuing months, land reclamation in Qingming was completed, ushering in another harvest season. Qingming's fifth Dao Foundation class concluded, netting Sky Azure Hall a hundred and eighty Dao Foundation Dao soldiers for nothing. Yet compared to Qingming's steady progression, far more absurd developments unfolded inside the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
More and more mortals took up cultivation, until a genius finally emerged who achieved complete Body Casting in just a few months and was on the verge of attempting the Dao Foundation. A dozen mortals suddenly fell ill, and Wei Yuan, baffled by the underlying principles, was entirely helpless, forced to watch as one person died of severe illness and returned to the Gate of the Many Realms.
Wei Yuan suddenly realized that of the cycle of life—birth, aging, sickness, and death—all that was missing now was birth to complete the full loop.
At that moment, an air of celebration filled a certain corner of the Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. A procession emerged from a courtyard, centered around a bridegroom setting out to fetch his bride.
Chapter 406