The cultivators who had attended Xu Lanshan's Scenery Command Grand Ceremony did not return home immediately; instead, they turned around and headed for Qingming.
Qingming was less than twenty thousand li from the Xu family's ancestral land, taking the cultivators merely half a month to arrive. Having witnessed the Golden Court and Jade Tower Celestial Sky Chaos Tribulation, Wei Yuan found his Dao heart exceptionally lucid and clear, so he returned to Qingming, intending to take advantage of this state of mind and karmic luck to achieve some profound epiphany.
Not two days after his return, he heard that a massive influx of cultivators was pouring in, and it took him a moment of thought to realize where they had come from.
By this time, nearly three months had passed since Hanyang Pass opened. Wei Yuan's own merchant caravans had brought back a hundred thousand refugees, while nearly a hundred thousand more had arrived on their own. In addition, various factions of all sizes had sold over two hundred thousand refugees here, both openly and covertly.
Evidently, many refugees had been seized along the way and shipped to Qingming for cash. Wei Yuan was well aware of this, but he turned a blind eye. Cui Yu had wanted to lead troops out to crack down on the trafficking and abduction of refugees, but Wei Yuan stopped him.
For refugees, making it to Qingming alive was actually a tremendously arduous ordeal.
That was why Wei Yuan had to establish relay stations and deploy merchant caravans specifically to guide them. Meanwhile, to make a profit, those various factions had to ensure that the refugees they captured weren't severely sick or missing limbs when delivered to Qingming—they had to be intact human beings.
Thus, the presence of these factions ironically allowed more refugees to reach Qingming alive.
Trafficking refugees was practically costless, and as a result, the competing factions engaged in a price war, ultimately driving the price down to just one ounce of silver per refugee. At this rate, they were barely turning a profit, which came as an unexpected boon.
However, after calculating transport expenses and road costs, Wei Yuan announced that all refugees would be bought at two ounces of silver each, with no further price cuts. At this, the factions were overjoyed. Many went so far as to raid remote villages to abduct people, and for a time, commoners along the border regions of Jin suffered misfortune.
Still, they had barely been scraping by in the first place; once in Qingming, at least they could eat their fill.
With the steady replenishment of refugees from Jin and Zhao, Qingming's population surged past two million, currently sitting at 2.1 million.
With life stable and food abundant, many commoners had formed families, and around ten thousand women were now pregnant. Over in New City, the young Xu family maidens had undergone another soul convergence—this time at a ratio close to three to one—giving birth to five thousand children in total.
The people who were originally sacrifices bred strictly on command, and they gradually gave birth to four to five thousand more.
New City suddenly had over ten thousand newborns, but their parents were hardly suited to parenthood—at least not those young boys and girls of the Xu family. Wei Yuan therefore built a cluster of communal halls in New City, gathering all the children together to be raised and cared for.
When the communal halls were completed, Wei Yuan went to take a look, only to discover that the growth rates of the sacrifices' offspring and the Xu children were entirely different. Even though the sacrifices' children were several months older, their size could not compare to a two-month-old Xu baby.
This batch of newborns was remarkably robust, with long, slender frames that spoke of fine talent at a glance. Having seen them, Wei Yuan was just about to leave when an older child suddenly dashed past him, clutching a toddler like one would carry a cat.
The two of them, big and small, thundered across the ground like a young elephant rampaging past.
"Halt!" Wei Yuan called out, and the two lawless little rascals obediently stopped in their tracks. The older one was Xu Shiba, and the little one was Junior Sister's reincarnation.
"Why are you two here? Where's your father?"
Xu Shiba huffed. "That fellow neglects proper work every single day. Instead of cultivating properly, all he does is tend flowers and weeds with Old Man Chuhe, acting like he's seventy or eighty years old. The yin qi in that medicine garden is too heavy. I don't like it, and Xiao Ying doesn't like it either."
Wei Yuan looked down at Junior Sister's reincarnation, who was already able to stand on her own and run around on stubby legs, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. The last time he saw her, she had only just been born. Not much time had passed, yet she was already scurrying all over the place—even bamboo shoots didn't grow this fast.
"What did you say her name was?"
Xu Shiba said to the little girl, "Tell him yourself."
"Yingying. Wei Ying."
A terrible headache washed over Wei Yuan; he could now empathize with what Xu Wenwu had felt back then. "Who told you your surname was Wei? You could also take Dai as your surname—just change your name."
"My name is Wei Ying." The little girl was stubbornly unyielding. No matter how Wei Yuan tried to persuade her, it was useless. Not about to get into a dispute with an infant only a few months old, Wei Yuan could only drop it.
Wei Yuan summoned several cultivators working there and questioned them, learning that the two little ones had been having a grand time in the communal halls. When hungry, they joined the cultivators in the dining hall to eat; when tired, they found a room to sleep in. This had been going on for some time.
The cultivator in charge of the communal halls hailed from the Hall of Xuanming and was essentially a senior martial brother to Sun Yu. The two little rascals frequently came to ask him for pointers on body refinement, and occasionally Feng Tingyu would drop by as well to teach them for half a day.
Feng Tingyu? Only then did Wei Yuan recall that he had not heard from her in a very long time, as though she had vanished from the world. Wei Yuan had spent nearly three months refining pills, and Feng Tingyu had been gone for at least two.
Under normal circumstances, breaking through to Dharma Idol required a period of secluded recuperation. Wei Yuan had been absorbed in pill refining himself and hadn't paid it any mind, but now he realized something was amiss.
Wei Yuan immediately headed to Feng Tingyu's residence. The courtyard gate was shut tight, with a wooden sign standing before it that read: "No unauthorized entry. Throw food directly into the courtyard—the more the better."
Wei Yuan called out twice. Receiving no response, he vaulted into the courtyard, on high alert as he crept cautiously toward the main quarters.
The closer he got to the main quarters, the more Wei Yuan felt like he was approaching a slumbering tiger. A chill ran down his back, and the hairs all over his body bristled slightly. He raised his guard to the utmost, concealed his aura to the absolute limit, and crept forward step by step.
Feng Tingyu was completely different from ordinary cultivators. Normally she seemed careless and perpetually dazed, but once a fight began, she became an entirely different person, naturally producing the optimal response—defending where the enemy must attack, attacking where the enemy must defend.
Back when she was still a mere Dao Foundation novice, she had dared to chase down and hack at a Great Shaman whose strength far surpassed her own, leaving the Great Shaman utterly unable to deal with her.
Now that Feng Tingyu had achieved Dharma Idol, Wei Yuan felt that he had to be cautious.
The room was deathly quiet, without a single sound emerging. Given how keen Wei Yuan's perception was, hearing nothing was simply impossible. Even if there were no breeze or crawling insects, wooden pillars and wooden beds would undergo minute shifts within their grain over time; ordinary people couldn't hear them, but Wei Yuan could.
Yet right now, not even the faintest sound existed. In Wei Yuan's perception, the inside of the room was absolute blackness and absolute silence.
At the last moment, his instinct for danger made Wei Yuan abandon the idea of sneaking inside, choosing to knock on the door instead.
Before his hand could even touch the door, the wooden panel suddenly melted away like snow and ice.
It truly melted, and so swiftly that Wei Yuan didn't even have time to react. Then, from the melted opening, a fair, snow-white little hand shot out, grabbed Wei Yuan by the wrist, and with a whoosh yanked him into the room—so fast it was as though Wei Yuan had never been outside at all.
...
Suddenly ambushed, Wei Yuan wasn't panicked at first. But when he realized that Feng Tingyu's eyes weren't open, panic genuinely set in.
Then the surroundings shifted violently. Absolute darkness engulfed Wei Yuan's vision; the light filtering in through the window seemed devoured by some nameless monster, and not a trace of sound could be heard. Whatever was struck disintegrated like grains of sand.
In that absolute darkness and absolute silence, that petite body—wielding unbelievable strength—coiled around him.
...
A brief moment, or perhaps an eternity—in short, some time passed.
Time was a wondrous thing. It could turn oceans into mulberry fields, and it could also turn a perfectly good house into crumbling ruins.
Wei Yuan sat slumped against a broken wall, gazing up at Qingming's night sky, pondering why he had lost to a bundle of muscles. If he couldn't figure this out, an invincible heart would likely remain forever out of reach.
Just then, a leisurely sigh sounded beside him. Feng Tingyu stretched lazily and finally woke up, only to find her house gone.
She turned her head blankly, caught sight of Wei Yuan, and immediately beamed with joy. "Did you tear down my house?"
Tearing down her house made her happy? Wei Yuan knew right away that she wasn't fully awake yet, and said crossly, "Wake up properly before talking to me."
"I've been awake the whole time! Was I sleeping? I wasn't sleeping at all!" Feng Tingyu looked utterly bewildered, yet her two eyes were rolling independently, each looking in a different direction.
Her mouth spoke on its own while her hands adjusted her clothes—one trying to strip them off, the other trying to put them back on. The two hands then got into a brief scuffle. The viciousness of their strikes and the sheer martial technique on display made cold sweat bead on Wei Yuan's brow.
Wei Yuan quietly scooted a bit farther away and softened his tone as much as possible. "Have you finished forming your dharma idol? What is it?"
"It's this..."
In an instant, blackness fell over Wei Yuan's eyes. He could see nothing and hear nothing. He instinctively sprang off the ground, but a small hand seized his foot and yanked him back down.
In the darkness, Wei Yuan wanted to call a halt, but couldn't utter a sound.
...
Another while passed.
Wei Yuan panted heavily, feeling as though a fire raged in his chest, every bone groaning in agony. A dharma body forged with twenty million ounces of immortal silver was actually unequal to the task. When it came down to it, in close-quarters wrestling in the pitch dark, someone who still had to rely on a brain to think was simply no match for someone whose hands and feet could think for themselves.
Now Wei Yuan finally understood: that swath of darkness was Feng Tingyu's dharma idol. Fighting inside her dharma idol the whole time, of course he couldn't beat her. Furthermore, Wei Yuan was certain Feng Tingyu hadn't been awake, because when she grappled at close quarters, she completely disregarded martial virtue—Wei Yuan was still drawing in sharp breaths of cold air from the pain.
Fortunately, Feng Tingyu stretched, opened her eyes again—her large eyes filled with bewilderment—and let out a very gentle, affectionate sigh. Seeing that both of her eyes were now looking in the same direction, Wei Yuan asked cautiously, "Are you really awake this time?"
"Yeah, I'd just lain down to sleep when something woke me up. But why do I feel more tired the more I sleep? My body feels a bit strange too..." As Feng Tingyu spoke, she loosened her clothes to check. As she looked, her expression changed, and she turned to Wei Yuan. "What did you do to me?"
Wei Yuan tilted his head back toward the sky, unwilling to answer her question. He said testily, "Before you came here, didn't your hall master mention whether there was something wrong with the cultivation art you practice?"
"Huh? He never said anything! The hall master is very lazy and often takes stealthy naps, leaving his body to handle business on its own. His body divides up the duty shifts by itself—sometimes it's the face, sometimes the neck, sometimes the chest or butt."
"Even a butt can think?" Wei Yuan was genuinely shocked by this.
"Of course it can! The butt has lots of muscle; it's very clever! Let me tell you, when the hall master thinks with his lower half, he's exceptionally hard to fool!"
Wei Yuan racked his brains trying to recall the Hall Master of the Bright King. In his memory, the man was dashing and graceful, appearing not particularly muscular but rather refined, speaking softly and gently, which had left a very good impression on young Wei Yuan.
Wei Yuan also remembered that True Monarch Xuanyue had taken him to see the Hall Master of the Bright King several times. Every single time was to borrow money, and every single time they succeeded. Thinking back on it now, Wei Yuan faintly sensed that something wasn't quite right.
The Hall Master of the Bright King's condition was likely no secret among True Monarchs. Patriarch Xuanyue must have either befriended a particular body part or discovered which flesh was exceptionally gullible, deliberately choosing to go borrow money when that specific part was on duty—which was why he had never once failed.
Chapter 605