Early morning was a wondrous time. When the first ray of sunlight shone through the window, Xiaoyu felt as if he had awakened within his own courtyard back in the ancestral lands. The events of yesterday felt like a grand dream, already drifting into the distant past.
Gathering his spirits, he stepped out of the bedchamber and was surprised to find an Eight Immortals table already laid out in the main hall. Upon it sat four varieties of breakfast refreshments alongside a pot of fine tea.
In the study, a massive stack of official documents had been brought in. Xiaoyu flipped through them casually, finding that they all concerned the current development of Yong'an City, along with several pressing government affairs in urgent need of attention.
His spirits lifted immediately. Hurriedly finishing his breakfast, he set to work.
At that moment, Wei Yuan was within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, attending to the backlog of Qingming affairs. He made a point of adding an order to renovate the Yong'an City Lord's Manor. After a bit more thought, he instructed someone to notify Xiaoyu to attend the rollout ceremony for the new freight truck.
The ceremony took place at the Weaponsmith Workshop. Today, the workshop encompassed an entire territory stretching over a hundred li across, partitioned internally into seven or eight functional sectors.
And this was merely the headquarters. Various factories and mines were scattered across the outlying regions as well. Over seven thousand cultivators tempered their Dao Foundations here, flanked by fifty thousand Body Casting craftsmen and five hundred thousand mortals.
The new engine was the size of a small house, so the truck naturally could not be small either. Each side boasted ten wheels—two in the front and eight in the rear—all fitted with dual tires. A single tire stood as tall as Wei Yuan. The vehicle's total height neared three stories, and it stretched fifteen zhang in length.
Confronted with such a colossal monstrosity, Xiaoyu was naturally shocked beyond measure, though Wei Yuan and the others took it entirely in stride.
Yu Zhizhuo then invited the assembled cultivators to board the truck, personally demonstrating its performance. The vehicle was equipped with both a weight-reduction formation and a wind-riding formation. Normally, the engine propelled it along the ground, but over rugged terrain it could take brief flight, leaping a hundred zhang in a single bound.
The truck possessed a cargo capacity of up to five hundred thousand jin and could cruise at high speeds on rudimentary roads wide enough for two carriages abreast. Merely twenty such trucks could satisfy the daily logistics of an army of a hundred thousand.
Crucially, it could travel ordinary roads, and over identical distances, its freight cost per thousand li was less than a tenth of a flying boat's. Flying boats consumed high-grade spirit jade, whereas this truck mostly consumed qi-replenishing pills fed to the Dao Foundation cultivators driving it, plus their three daily meals.
After inspecting the entire vehicle, Wei Yuan decided on the spot to produce an initial run of one hundred.
The truck could be further modified for countless other uses. Wei Yuan had already calculated that if he assigned a few trucks to run scheduled routes between Qingming and Bishui, as well as between Qingming and Hanyang Pass, the investment would pay for itself in less than half a year.
Next came the final segment of the ceremony. Wei Yuan produced a banner inscribed with four large characters—"Behind Closed Doors Make a Cart"—and presented it to Yu Zhizhuo. Yu Zhizhuo displayed it before the crowd, then ordered it framed for the office in the new workshop, while having the four characters inlaid above the gate of the truck workshop as well.
The ceremony was brief yet rousing, met with thunderous applause from the entire assembly.
Standing upon the dais, Xiaoyu watched Wei Yuan and Yu Zhizhuo theatrically hand over the calligraphy. A sudden realization dawned on him: while everyone beneath the stage found such ceremonies utterly tedious, the people up on stage felt exceptionally grand. No wonder they never seemed to tire of it.
And since Xiaoyu was currently up on the stage looking on, he found that it wasn't half bad. He wouldn't mind doing this a few more times—perhaps next time, he would be the center of attention.
Facing the audience, Wei Yuan beamed brilliantly, deliberately freezing in place for ten seconds so everyone could behold his dashing bearing. This shameless bit of posturing netted him over a hundred strands of azure qi, leaving him thoroughly satisfied as he concluded the ceremony.
These days, Wei Yuan devoured karmic luck of every size, never turning any away; it was the foundation upon which he staked his life and fortune.
Xiaoyu discreetly sent a voice transmission to Wei Yuan: "Has development really reached such a level already?"
Wei Yuan replied, "Do you still remember Xu Wenwu? Some time ago, I fished up a world fragment that bore a striking resemblance to the Outer Realm. I absorbed a great deal of memory and knowledge regarding the Outer Realm from it, organized everything, and placed it in the library. If you wish to read it, you can simply do so while asleep at night."
"What about Yong'an City's administration...?"
"The Hall of Political Affairs handles most of it nowadays. Familiarize yourself with things first. Deal with whatever you can, and hand whatever is difficult over to the Hall of Political Affairs. I've already instructed them to gradually route matters for your review. Once you're accustomed to it, you can take over approvals."
Such an arrangement was ideal, and the lingering anxiety in Xiaoyu's heart finally eased.
Originally, upon first arriving in Qingming, Xiaoyu had come to demand accountability. Then Wei Yuan had subdued Xiaoyu's forces without fighting, and Xiaoyu had accepted returning to his old post as the City Lord of Yong'an.
On one hand, it gave Wei Yuan face; on the other, Yong'an City had grown tremendously, and with nostalgia in the mix, reclaiming the lordship was a fine story that would bolster Xiaoyu's reputation.
Yet after yesterday's harrowing day, Xiaoyu's mindset had undergone a subtle shift; he no longer stood upon high. Could Zhang Sheng not govern this core city of Qingming? Could Ji Liuli or Bao Yun not govern it? Feng Tingyu... well, she truly couldn't govern it, Xiaoyu concluded.
Once the ceremony wrapped up, Wei Yuan hurried back to his seclusion to continue wrestling with numbers and curves. The calculations for the second orbit were already seventy percent complete; victory was in sight.
As for the grotto-heaven core intended for the new orbit, Wei Yuan had long prepared it: the very cauldron holding yin spirits that he had seized back in the Northern Borders years ago.
The cauldron's material was of an exceedingly high grade to begin with, and after ten thousand years of being steeped in soul power, it had undergone a profound mutation. It had become supremely yin and frigid, bearing the true intent of despair and the return to stillness. Once nurtured into a grotto-heaven, its attributes would surely be extraordinarily extreme—quite possibly yielding a natural golden grotto-heaven.
With every new grotto-heaven formed, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World gained a measure of perfection, and Wei Yuan's cultivation advanced a great stride forward.
At present, that handful of Wuji Apricot-Yellow Earth had absorbed primal chaos qi for many days and now spanned roughly a zhang across. A water vat rested upon it, surrounded by three mirage demons who were staring at one another in blank dismay.
On this palm-sized patch of ground, even turning around was a chore. Moreover, the environment's attributes proved deeply uncomfortable for water-aligned creatures like them, forcing them to rely entirely upon the innate water qi within the central vat to survive.
Yet uncomfortable though it was, as Scenery Command beings, they were even more unwilling to remain in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. There, the three mirage demons' mindscape worlds were firmly suppressed, as if frozen solid and entirely paralyzed, causing them an unspeakable agony.
By comparison, this tiny patch of soil offered far more ease. Consequently, the three demons had raised no objections when Wei Yuan relocated them here. Besides, this was the core of a new grotto-heaven that would steadily expand; eventually, there would be room to turn around.
After inspecting the interior of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and finding nothing amiss, Wei Yuan went to his dedicated courtyard within the Creation of Heaven and Earth Research Institute, booting up 512 tasks to continue deducing the second grotto-heaven orbit.
Before getting to work, Wei Yuan cast a deliberate glance at Xiaoyu, seeing that he had indeed entered the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and, guided by a staff member, arrived at the institute as well.
The staff member was a plain-looking young maiden. After explaining how to operate the system, she assigned sixteen tasks directly to Xiaoyu.
Handling the task system for the first time, Xiaoyu was inevitably flustered. Even with Star Lord Shaoyang assisting him, managing sixteen tasks by himself left him scrambling, perpetually robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Seeing this, Wei Yuan felt thoroughly refreshed and launched another sixty-four tasks on his own end, working at blazing speed.
On the other side, Star Lord Shaoyang could not stop marveling: "This system is truly extraordinary. It bears some shade of the celestial lords observing heaven and earth. For mortals to construct such a system is simply incomprehensible."
Xiaoyu nodded. "Indeed. This is likely beyond the reach of ordinary cultivators. Even we find it this taxing; if it were Feng Tingyu..."
Star Lord Shaoyang suddenly remarked, "Monstrous prodigies abound in this realm, but perhaps the karmic luck of the entire generation of the Palace of Grand Beginning has congregated here. In a few days, you ought to pay more visits to your elders so I might see what caliber their dharma idols possess."
"You mean..."
"Thanks to you, I haven't won a single battle since descending to the mortal realm! How am I to soothe the frustration pent up in my chest? How about you end your own life and reincarnate to cultivate anew?"
Xiaoyu's face darkened with displeasure. "Do you truly believe my skills are lacking? Can you blame me for losing those fights?"
Star Lord Shaoyang glared right back at Xiaoyu, refusing to give an inch. "Otherwise? Could it be that this Star Lord's skills are lacking?"
Xiaoyu fixed a cold gaze upon Star Lord Shaoyang, speaking not a word, letting everything hang in the silence of his eyes.
Chapter 819