Another matter lay before Wei Yuan. The Xu family had massed troops at Hanyang Pass, cutting off travel and commerce with Jin. Only a trickle of merchant caravans managed to pass through, and their goods were subjected to relentless inspections.
Left with no choice, many caravans were forced to detour through Zhao. This multiplied their journey several times over, turning what should have been highly lucrative cargo into loss-making ventures. Not only had the supplies delivered to Qingming dwindled by more than half, but their prices were several times what they once had been.
Zhao had also enacted a de facto blockade, prohibiting steel, medicine, arrows, and weapons from crossing the border. Later, upon seeing Wei Yuan using displaced refugees to fortify his lines, Zhao had forbidden refugees from leaving as well.
Fortunately, Marquis Ping'an of Zhao had later handed over two hundred and ninety thousand refugees to Wei Yuan to ransom his brother-in-law. Otherwise, Wei Yuan's military strength truly would have fallen just short.
Thus, even though merchants had known all along that a war was raging in Qingming, numerous caravans had been powerless to come and make a wartime fortune. They could only fret in vain, grumbling and complaining bitterly.
Now that the fighting had subsided and the Zhao authorities saw no openings to exploit, they lifted the border blockade and permitted refugees to move freely.
As soon as Zhao lifted the ban, Pacification Commissioner Cui Shutong immediately contacted Wei Yuan. He had already hoarded two hundred thousand refugees and was prepared to sell every single one to Wei Yuan. Feeding that many refugees each day was no small expense; the cost hurt every ounce of flesh on Cui Shutong's body.
With the fighting concluded and Zhao reopening its borders, the Xu family on Pu's side still stubbornly choked off the pass, naturally stoking widespread resentment. Yet the Xu family remained utterly unmoved, showing not the slightest sign of relenting.
Wei Yuan had also been pondering this. Without internal and external trade, Pu's significance as a hinterland vanished entirely. Thus, he naturally could not tolerate the Xu family's closure of the pass. After considering the matter, Wei Yuan decided to apply some internal pressure to the Xu family first.
He ordered his people to pass word to the Zhao merchant caravans: he intended to purchase raw silk in exchange for vast quantities of Shaman spoils of war, buying as much as they could supply, and would also sell ice mulberry saplings to Zhao at discounted prices.
Once this news spread, the major caravans of Zhao acted like wolves catching the scent of blood. They relayed word back home at top speed and began buying and hoarding raw silk on a massive scale, terrified that their rivals might beat them to it.
Zhao's silk and brocade were not as famous as Ning brocade, but the country did produce some raw silk. The season for planting mulberries had already arrived, and the people of Zhao had heard about Wei Yuan buying up silk in Ningzhou on a massive scale. Back then, however, Ningzhou's silk had been abundant and of high quality, sweeping up all the profits, leaving Zhao's sericulturists only able to watch with envy.
Who would have thought that Pu would actually seal its own border pass? This was nothing less than the God of Wealth dropping from the sky. The people of Zhao could not comprehend why Pu would be so foolish as to turn its back on gold, but now that the living God of Wealth in the form of Wei Yuan had arrived, the Zhao merchants had no intention of letting him slip away.
A mere three days later, the Zhao caravans received word from back home. The prominent aristocratic clans of several silk-producing regions had all stepped forward, pledging that as long as Wei Yuan continued purchasing their silk, they would guarantee that Zhao silk was twenty percent cheaper than Jin silk. Furthermore, they would double their mulberry acreage this year and expand it even more the following year.
Since the Zhao merchants came with such sincerity, Wei Yuan was naturally delighted. He not only agreed to their terms, but also granted them several prime plots of land to build merchant guildhouses.
The numerous Pu caravans were both furious and anxious, but when Wei Yuan announced that his initial batch would purchase two million jin of silk, every Pu merchant became utterly restless! An order this enormous should have been theirs to profit from!
A substantial portion of the silk and brocade industry in Ningzhou's eight western counties belonged to the Xu family. Wei Yuan was eager to see whether those blocking the border pass could withstand the pressure from within their own clan.
At the same time, Wei Yuan finally lifted the ban on his looms, beginning small-batch production of the new loom models and test-manufacturing several batches of brocade. Once the samples were produced, Wei Yuan examined them closely and found that the machine-woven brocade was not in the least inferior to ordinary Ning brocade—in fact, its consistency was even superior.
The only brocade capable of outmatching machine-woven brocade was handwoven brocade crafted by master artisans. Such brocade featured constantly varying patterns, its quality hinged upon the craftsman's own aesthetic mastery, rendering each piece unique.
Ningzhou did possess several grand masters. The brocades they wove were paintings and calligraphy in their own right, each imbued with distinct artistic grandeur. Brocade woven by peerless grand masters even carried its own karmic luck, something machine-woven brocade could never rival.
Yet master craftsmen were exceedingly rare. Only officials ranked commandery prefect or higher had any hope of affording a piece or two of their work; even county magistrates could only sigh in longing.
When Wei Yuan was testing the looms, Feng Tingyu came running at the first whiff of news, and from then on, she stayed right by his side, refusing to leave.
It was evident she had a deep love for beautiful things, doting upon the freshly produced machine-woven brocade. And the master's woven brocade that Wei Yuan had brought out for comparison captivated her so completely that her eyes went wide and fixed upon it.
Seeing her delight, Wei Yuan said, "Do you like it? If you do, once I finish testing here, I'll give it to you."
Feng Tingyu leaped with excitement, her massive peaks swaying only slightly. "Then I want to try it right now!"
Wei Yuan could not fathom how one tried on an entire bolt of uncut brocade, so he said, "Go on, then."
Feng Tingyu seized Wei Yuan by the hand and flashed away to a secluded corner—evidently a spot she had picked out in advance.
She unfurled the bolt of Ning brocade. Then, the muscles all over her body rippled like water, and her garments actually slipped off on their own, revealing her entire body before Wei Yuan!
Though she looked petite, her physique was shockingly explosive, with several key proportions defying all common sense—the parts that ought to be large were exceedingly large, and those that ought to be slender were remarkably slender. One could only say body cultivators were capable of what ordinary mortals were not.
Wei Yuan stared blankly for a second, caught between laughter and tears. Taking the length of cloud brocade, he wrapped Feng Tingyu up in it, examined her earnestly, and remarked, "Not bad. It suits you well."
Feng Tingyu pursed her lips, clearly feeling things were not unfolding as she had imagined. She wriggled vigorously out of the cloud brocade, only to be bundled up again by Wei Yuan.
After several such attempts, Feng Tingyu had merely shown off her figure a few more times, yet each time, Wei Yuan promptly bundled her back up.
Wei Yuan was now at the dharma idol stage, commanding the crushing superiority of a higher cultivation realm, and his own dharma physique was no weaker than Feng Tingyu's. Thus, she had little room to struggle against his hands.
After a few tries, Feng Tingyu gave up struggling and asked in confusion, "Why don't you want me?"
"We'll talk about that once you actually like me. Not now," Wei Yuan replied.
"Huh? Does this sort of thing require liking someone? I always see senior brothers and sisters in the hall hooking up casually, only to split up in the blink of an eye. Then they get together again, and split up again. Is that liking someone?"
Wei Yuan had also heard rumors about the disciples of the Hall of the Bright King. Body cultivators were uninhibited by nature and chafed at constraints, and those who cultivated the physical form to the extreme were all the more untamed.
Yet the disciples of the Hall of the Bright King were not licentious; they were simply straightforward and direct. When they loved, they loved passionately; when they parted, they parted cleanly and decisively. With so many cycles of love, hate, union, and separation strung together, to outsiders it looked virtually no different from wanton debauchery—and in practice, it came down to about the same thing.
Therefore, Wei Yuan could not really answer Feng Tingyu's question, and could only say, "When you like someone, you will naturally know. Now put your clothes back on."
Feng Tingyu cast the cloud brocade aside and stood naked atop her garments. The clothes then seemed to take on a life of their own, crawling up her body piece by piece. However, compared to the crisp swiftness of their removal, the process of dressing was much more leisurely, giving her another chance to showcase her figure.
Feng Tingyu suddenly asked, "Does physical attraction count as liking someone?"
Wei Yuan froze. "What do you mean, physical attraction?"
"It means I can feel that my body really likes you. Every single part likes you. Oh, a few spots like you especially much—do you want to feel—"
Wei Yuan sighed and gave Feng Tingyu a firm rap on the head. "It only counts if you like me in here!"
Feng Tingyu pondered for a moment, then said, "If I like you in here, you'll agree, right? Then it's a deal."
"Fine." Wei Yuan did not believe for a second that she would ever truly come to like him; the two of them shared not the slightest resemblance in character. Besides, feelings of affection were not something one could control.
In Wei Yuan's own experience, love was love—it was pure and carried no preconditions.
If one even had to hesitate and think it over, it meant they simply did not like the other person that much. As for notions like modesty or taking time to warm up, those were mere excuses; at the end of the day, it just meant there was no real feeling.
Thus, love at first sight was true affection; feelings grown over time were merely settling.
Judged by that standard, Feng Tingyu's physical attraction truly was a genuine liking for Wei Yuan. It was just that Wei Yuan genuinely dared not tangle himself in any more karma right now, so he had talked circles around her. It had to be said that people from the Hall of the Bright King were extraordinarily easy to dupe; even an upright man like Wei Yuan could not help tricking her a little.
Just as Wei Yuan was about to leave this secluded corner, Feng Tingyu grabbed him again. With an earnest look on her face, she asked, "Aren't you a lecherous monk? Why do you insist that someone has to like you? Are you tricking me?"
"I am not!" Wei Yuan denied flatly, his tone so solemn that he nearly convinced himself, before promptly retreating from that perilous spot.
Once back in the brightly lit workshop, Wei Yuan finally steadied his nerves. Channeling his dao power, he drove the loom, watching as a length of machine-woven brocade gradually emerged from the mechanism. At this rate, it took roughly half a shichen to produce a full bolt of brocade.
A skilled artisan, by contrast, required several days to produce a single piece. By rough calculation, the loom was tens of times more efficient than a weaver.
Ten looms were currently lined up across the hall. Wei Yuan operated all ten simultaneously, watching as ten bolts of brocade were churned out before his eyes.
Though Feng Tingyu knew little about industrial commerce, she was nonetheless astounded by the loom's sheer speed and asked, "Can the Shamans even use up that much brocade?"
"I'm not entirely sure either," Wei Yuan replied.
Wei Yuan did not tell her the truth. The market he intended to conquer with machine-woven brocade in the future was not the Shamans, but Ningzhou's eight counties—and eventually the entire woven brocade market of the human domain.
Having tested the new looms, Wei Yuan stepped out of the heavily guarded workshop and instructed a cultivator, "Notify all merchant caravans that we are now placing a new order for one million bolts of woven brocade. First come, first served, until the quota is filled."
The cultivator accepted the command and departed. Immediately, the merchant street erupted into an uproar as countless caravans scrambled for ways to send word back home.
Every Zhao merchant beamed with joy, while the merchants of Jin wore grim, sunken expressions. With one million bolts of brocade, Zhao could scrape together its stockpiles and have its weavers work around the clock, nearly devouring the lion's share of the order. Yet this prime cut of meat should have belonged entirely to the Pu merchants, having nothing to do with Zhao. How could Zhao brocade ever hold a candle to cloud brocade?
Wei Yuan naturally did not bother himself with the internal squabbles among merchant caravans. With a vast hoard of Shaman spoils in hand, he had more than enough to cover even larger orders.
Wei Yuan planned to sell all the newly ordered cloud brocade to Tianyu. Having sold such enormous quantities of brocade in such a short span, the purchasing price on the Shamans' side had not yet fluctuated, but brocade prices in Pu and Zhao had already jumped by fifty percent, and raw silk prices had skyrocketed several times over.
Wei Yuan ran another deduction through the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Deeming everything foolproof, he summoned Perfected Person Chuwei and sent him on another tour through the eight counties to inspect the progress of ice mulberry cultivation and sell another batch of saplings while he was at it.
With the trade routes blocked, large caravans could not cross, but an individual cultivator could come and go as he pleased. Wei Yuan wanted to pile more pressure onto the Xu family; after all, pressure was far more lethal when it came from within.
In a secret stronghold of the Xu family, a female cultivator stood atop a high platform, looking down at the grounds below.
Beneath the platform, over ten thousand private soldiers stood in neat formations, leveling their fire guns in hand, completely motionless. Sweat poured down the faces of many warriors, yet not one dared twitch. From time to time, someone collapsed from exhaustion, only to be dragged away immediately.
Chapter 562