When a person was in desperate straits, liable to die at any moment, and suddenly arrived at an earthly paradise, obtaining the warmth, food, and plenty they had dreamed of, such drastic emotional upheavals could yield karmic luck.
And at such a time, was one supposed to give them dignity? No, it was to teach them obedience, to let them know that as long as they were compliant, everything would be fine, and that being a good child would allow them to live happily and simply. That was the easiest way to harvest karmic luck.
Allowing the refugees to think for themselves—setting aside whether they even had the capacity—those prone to independent thought not only lacked karmic luck, but were also elements of instability. Not only did they disbelieve in saviors themselves, they would even urge those around them not to believe either.
This was the conclusion Wei Yuan had reached after reading through a stack of historical records and several missionary texts circulated from the Great Treasure Radiance Pure Land. In short, to obtain karmic luck, one could not allow them to think; simple-minded refugees were good refugees.
Wei Yuan sprang to his feet and immediately assigned a series of tasks to the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World: design residential quarters for commoners, specifically multistory buildings. For such a simple task, feedback arrived in an instant, offering more than a dozen blueprints right off the bat.
Wei Yuan directly discarded the designs that were too plain or elegant, recalled the style of the Wei Family Compound from his childhood, and picked the one that resembled it most. If you asked refugees to imagine a royal palace, they couldn't; what moved them most was still the grand mansion of a local landlord back home.
Thus Wei Yuan chose an old-fashioned scheme furnished entirely with heavily lacquered mahogany furniture, handing it straight over to Yu Zhizhuo with orders to swiftly arrange for several sets to be built in Zhike Town. Yu Zhizhuo didn't quite understand, but since Wei Yuan needed it urgently, he made arrangements immediately. For a master craftsman of the Dharma Idol realm like him, such work was far too trivial. He split up the assignments and distributed them on the spot, and in less than a day, ten sets were erected in Zhike Town.
Right on the heels of this, the first batch of over thirty thousand refugees arrived.
The moment they stepped into Qingming, the refugees immediately felt refreshed and invigorated, vitality surging within them, while many lingering aches, pains, and ailments vanished without a trace. The sky was remarkably deep and azure, the sunlight extraordinarily warm and gentle; immersed in such a world, they didn't even feel quite so hungry anymore.
Next, a towering memorial archway appeared before them. Hundreds of fully armored soldiers guided the refugees, dividing them into several lines to pass through flanking both sides of the archway. The soldiers told the refugees that only registered residents of Qingming who had reached commoner status were qualified to pass directly beneath the archway. The refugees accepted this naturally, taking it as only right and proper.
As they passed along the sides of the archway, cultivators handed each refugee a small steamed bun. This bun wasn't even enough for a single mouthful, but cultivators repeatedly announced that once they registered and joined Qingming, they would be given a large steamed bun.
Immediately afterward was registration on the drill grounds. Once registered, each person received a wooden plaque and a large steamed bun, with their name inscribed on the plaque.
Since these refugees all intended to join Qingming, an extra procedure was spared, and everyone was taken to the next site to bathe.
Wei Yuan had long since ordered four large pits dug, cast with cement, and fitted with pre-laid inlet and drainage pipes. The water in the pits stood three feet deep; the Wu domain was sweltering hot, so the water required no additional heating.
The refugees all had to strip off all their clothes before being herded into the water to bathe. The water carried a pungent scent of herbs. Once they entered, a pit of clear water turned into murky broth in the blink of an eye.
Each large pit could hold four to five hundred refugees at a time, allowing two thousand refugees to wash clean every incense stick of time. After each batch stepped out of the pits, they were issued a set of new clothes. In order not to soil their new clothes, the refugees scrubbed themselves very thoroughly.
Once a batch finished washing, the four bathing pits would have their water replaced. The clothes stripped off by the refugees were piled together in one place and set ablaze. Yet to Wei Yuan's surprise, after only four or five batches had washed, the drainage pipes in three of the four pits actually clogged.
This made Wei Yuan realize once again how unreliable delicate engineering could be. He simply deployed several dozen Dao Foundation warriors, who, once a bath was finished, used Dao arts to blast the dirty water away into the air and draw in fresh water. Such divine methods unexpectedly netted Wei Yuan quite a bit of karmic luck ahead of schedule.
Dressed in their new clothes, the refugees lined up in ten columns to tour the residences of Qingming's commoners.
Ten grand mansions freshly rushed to completion—heavily steeped in the style of the Wei Family Compound and bearing the distinct personal flair of Wei Youcai—left the refugees dizzy with awe. One after another, they remarked that this was exactly what the mansions of prominent families back in their rural hometowns looked like.
These mansions were each split down the middle with an avenue running through the center; the refugees walked along the avenue, cutting straight through the compounds. Meanwhile, a soft, breathy female voice echoed repeatedly from the air: "In Qingming, as long as you become an ordinary commoner, owning a home like this is not a dream..."
Wei Yuan was watching enraptured from midair when he heard Cui Yu remark sarcastically beside him, "Not a dream, but a fantasy."
Wei Yuan glared at him. "Why are you undercutting me?"
Cui Yu pointed below and said, "A courtyard ten zhang square—are you sure you can give one to every single commoner?"
"The courtyard is just background. So are the gardens and main hall," Wei Yuan replied, without batting an eye or missing a beat.
To be precise, everything in the compound was a backdrop, similar to the blue skies and white clouds in advertisements from the world beyond heaven; only the tiny wing room was real.
After exiting the compounds, cultivators handed each refugee a steaming bowl of medicinal soup, followed by an oily flatbread rolled with meat for each person. Then, designated personnel led them off to open military farming colonies, dropping heavy hints left and right that the fields they cleared might one day belong to them.
Keywords like "in the future" and "might" were automatically filtered out by the refugees.
With painted pies in their heads and real flatbreads in their hands, the refugees were finally led before Wei Yuan's statue to kowtow in gratitude. This step drew sidelong glances from the Palace of Grand Beginning cultivators, but Wei Yuan had thick skin. Counting the steady influx of azure qi, he grinned from ear to ear, naturally paying no mind to petty worldly prejudices.
This final step hadn't been Wei Yuan's own idea. Rather, while he was organizing the series of procedures and ceremonies to welcome the refugees, Monk Peacock had materialized out of nowhere and said to him, "If the King Buddha wishes to reap karmic luck, the simplest and most direct method is nothing other than erecting a statue and guiding the refugees to kowtow in worship, letting them know whom they ought to thank. That harvests karmic luck the fastest and in the greatest abundance."
When it came to harvesting karmic luck, the Great Treasure Radiance Pure Land was, after all, the professional, with a heritage spanning at least over a hundred thousand years. Thus, Wei Yuan took Monk Peacock's advice quite seriously, even if he felt rather embarrassed by it, and firmly insisted that Peacock refrain from calling him King Buddha.
Peacock said, "If the King Buddha dislikes that, Great Joy Bodhisattva works as well. Oh, and if you don't wish to put up your own statue, erecting a few dharma idols of the Great Joy King Buddha works just the same; in the end, you'll still be the one receiving the karmic luck."
Wei Yuan decided it was still better to put up a statue of himself.
Chapter 600