The Peixian Workshop was originally established by the old Daoist Chuhe, dedicated entirely to producing fertilizer for immortal flora. After more than a year of operation, it had grown to a considerable scale, having hired over three thousand Dao Foundation cultivators in a single go. By now, the number of Peixian cultivators was second only to the craftsmen of the Weaponsmith Workshop, making it Qingming's second-largest industry.
Yet despite the old Daoist's utmost efforts, the demand for fertilizer seemed bottomless. At present, Qingming could achieve saturated fertilization on only ten million mu of land—less than a third of its total arable fields. Constrained by the number of cultivators, production increases could never keep pace with the expansion of cultivated land.
Fortunately, with the aid of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, mathematical calculation had long become second nature. Old Daoist Chuhe calculated that with the current fertilizer output, applying a full quota to five million mu while giving only a fifth of the standard dose to the remaining twenty-five million mu would maximize total grain yields. The latest harvest had already broken past ten billion jin.
Yet the more grain Qingming yielded, the larger its population grew; the larger the population, the faster the expansion; the faster the expansion, the more fields were reclaimed; and the more fields there were, the more fertilizer was required. The cycle had looped right back around.
Furthermore, Old Daoist Chuhe discovered that every field he had personally tilled and every plot that had used his fertilizer established a faint karmic link to him, channeling a trickle of karmic luck into his ledger. While the luck from each individual mu was utterly negligible—unnoticeable even to a Scenery Command True Monarch—a small sum multiplied across vast tracts of Qingming's land was an entirely different story!
Over this period, Perfected Chuhe clearly felt a change in his dharma idol. Vast clearings appeared within the forest, which were subsequently opened into fields of various crops, where the Treasure-seeking Rat rode an immortal sword every day to plant seeds and spread fertilizer. With every bit the crops grew, the old Daoist's cultivation increased slightly.
Never since the founding of the Palace of Grand Beginning had any cultivator forged a bond with several million mu of land. Perfected Chuhe was the first, and he had linked himself to thirty million mu. This was a path of cultivation that rivaled that of the immortal chicken!
Because of this, Old Daoist Chuhe buried himself completely in fertilizer production, racking his brains for ways to ramp up output.
Sure enough, once any undertaking grew too large, unforeseen variables crept in. A sudden explosion ripped through the Peixian Workshop, killing and injuring over a hundred Peixian cultivators and leaving more than a thousand mortal laborers dead or wounded. An exceedingly thick mantle of karmic debt settled upon the old Daoist in an instant.
By the time Wei Yuan arrived, Perfected Chuhe had already cordoned off the site and rescued the severely injured. Sun Yu led a large contingent of fair-faced disciples to the scene and began administering treatment on the spot.
Stepping into the blast site, Wei Yuan saw multiple cultivators laying down arrays under the guidance of Bao Yun and Xiaoyu, striving to reconstruct the scene of the explosion.
The core of the blast was a warehouse belonging to the Peixian Workshop, where hundreds of thousands of jin of fertilizer had been stored. As a result, the explosion had not only leveled the massive warehouse, spanning dozens of zhang across, but had also flattened all structures within a radius of a li. The blast's effects had even reached tens of li away.
Fortunately, the force of the detonation was mortal in nature, carrying very little spiritual energy; otherwise, it would have taken an immortal's presence to reconstruct what had occurred. Under Bao Yun and Xiaoyu's combined efforts, the scene was barely brought back to light. In the projection, a basket of prepared fertilizer had inexplicably discolored and caked into a solid mass.
Unsure how to handle it, several Peixian cultivators discussed the matter until someone suggested smashing and grinding it down so it could be blended into normal fertilizer and used as intended. Everyone agreed that it seemed viable, so they selected a burly cultivator from their ranks. He raised a sledgehammer and struck down with all his might—and promptly wiped out nearly half of the Peixian Workshop.
Watching the replay, the cultivators were left entirely speechless. Then, casting their eyes toward the hundreds of thousands of jin of fertilizer piled in the distant warehouses, Old Daoist Chuhe's face instantly went pale.
Wei Yuan's expression also changed. He took flight immediately, first cordoning off the warehouses and evacuating all Peixian cultivators. Then he entered alone, sweeping his divine sense across the entire facility, and indeed uncovered a dozen crates of degraded fertilizer.
Some of this fertilizer had coagulated into blocks, while other batches were contaminated with impurities like sulfur and oil. When brought out for testing, every single piece detonated with a mere strike. Noticing the strange look on Yu Zhizhuo's face, Wei Yuan asked, "How does it compare to our existing explosives?"
Yu Zhizhuo said, "Slightly inferior to spiritual wood fiber explosives. But the output is astronomically higher—"
Fertilizer explosive was of mortal origin. While shredding spiritual wood into fine fibers and soaking them in quicklime yielded an explosive of tremendous power, it was restricted by the supply of raw spiritual wood. Although long accumulation had built a stockpile of several million jin, how could that compare to fertilizer production, which churned out over a hundred thousand jin a day?
Wei Yuan immediately ordered one hundred thousand jin of the fertilizer removed and handed over to the Weaponsmith Workshop and the two academies for study. Following that were matters of compensation and condolence payments, which were naturally left to the subordinate officials to handle.
Perfected Chuhe had accrued considerable karmic debt and retribution from the disaster, but thanks to his immense protective mantle of karmic luck, the fallout was not catastrophic. Wei Yuan acted promptly, using the Red Lotus Bodhi to channel and siphon away the bulk of the karmic debt.
Now that they knew fertilizer could explode yet could not afford to halt production, the next step was to redesign the protocols for storage and transport at every stage to ensure safety.
Wei Yuan pulled Perfected Chuhe aside and examined him thoroughly to verify that the remaining karmic debt was within the old Daoist's capacity to bear before finally relaxing. The immortal chicken also realized the gravity of the situation and split a wisp of divine sense onto Chuhe to ensure timely rescue should the karmic debt flare up.
The time spent alongside Chuhe had been the happiest days of the Flame God's life as a fowl; it naturally could not let this multifunctional humanoid pet die.
After tending to all these affairs, Wei Yuan could not help but wonder: Old Daoist Chuhe's indirect negligence had caused the deaths of a group of Dao Foundation cultivators, bringing down such immense karmic debt and resentment. Yet under the rule of high-ranking sovereigns, the people across various states lived in destitution and starved everywhere—why did those rulers never seem to suffer karmic debt and retribution?
There was no answer to this question, nor was it recorded in any book. Wei Yuan could only ponder it in silence.
Still, Perfected Chuhe's plight served as a sobering warning to Wei Yuan: if he ever acted against righteousness in the future, his end would likely be no better.
On the bright side, this accident had unexpectedly handed Wei Yuan a vast supply of explosives, allowing many past plans to finally be placed on the agenda. Qingming's military power had expanded too rapidly for gunpowder supplies to keep pace; consequently, very few explosives had been allocated for civilian use in the past, forcing them to rely on the manual labor of Dao Foundation cultivators. If Qingming lacked anything else, it certainly did not lack template Dao Foundation cultivators.
Now with an abundant supply of explosives, numerous engineering projects could be set in motion.
According to Yu Zhizhuo's concept, the greatest utility for explosives lay in blasting mountains and mining, making them best suited for the mountain folk's territory. For matters like this, Wei Yuan naturally gave Yu Zhizhuo free rein, while he had a major undertaking of his own: hunting the inner demon.
Having finally sorted out this massive tangle of duties, Wei Yuan was just about to head off to capture the inner demon when he was interrupted again: Hule Gao'en requested an audience.
Wei Yuan felt a twinge of impatience. The fellow had already given up his secrets; by all rights, he was no longer of any use. Going by the historical records, Wei Yuan felt that not boiling the hound after the hunt was already an act of mercy.
Nevertheless, Wei Yuan was still young and possessed enough patience to grant Hule Gao'en an audience.
Seeing Wei Yuan's long face, Hule Gao'en gave a bitter smile. "Men really are all the same! The moment you're done with me, you turn cold!"
Goosebumps erupted across Wei Yuan's skin in an instant, and he snapped, "Shut your mouth!"
If words like that had come from a natural beauty like Consort Yuan, at least half of Wei Yuan's body would have turned to jelly. But coming from Hule Gao'en—a creature grotesque even by the standards of both the Liao and human races—and directed at him, Wei Yuan found it impossible to suppress the urge to kill.
Rebuked, Hule Gao'en replied plaintively, "I'm a woman too, you know. Why can't I say such things?"
*This fellow is female?* Half-believing it, Wei Yuan swept out with his divine sense. Suddenly, he let out a tragic shriek, leaped up in a fury, and tapped out a finger to seal Hule Gao'en's cultivation, shouting, "Guards! Someone, quickly! Drag this thing down and execute it! Hack it into many pieces!"
The attending cultivators standing by had no idea what had happened, assuming their realm master had been ambushed. They immediately seized Hule Gao'en and prepared to haul the prisoner off to the death row cells.
Qingming possessed a method of capital punishment specifically reserved for foreign dharma idols, known as the Impartial Grace.
When a foreign dharma idol like Hule Gao'en was executed, young Dao Foundation cultivators specially selected from the Palace of Grand Beginning would carry out the sentence so that heavenly merits could be shared among them, serving as a means to foster the sect's juniors. Hule Gao'en was in the late dharma idol realm, which warranted at least thirty cuts.
Hule Gao'en cried out repeatedly, "You can't! I haven't finished telling all my secrets! I still need your help, you can't treat me like this!"
Wei Yuan ordered his attendants to fetch spiritual spring jade dew to wash his eyes, while simultaneously having Hule Gao'en hauled back. "Don't say I didn't warn you! You'd better tell me a secret good enough to save your miserable life! Otherwise, for holding up my hunt for the inner demon, I'll carve you up alive!"
Knowing Wei Yuan was genuinely enraged, Hule Gao'en blurted out the secret as fast as possible. After hearing it, Wei Yuan regarded the prisoner with skepticism. "Truly?"
"Absolutely true!"
Wei Yuan knitted his brows and had Hule Gao'en taken away for now. Finally, he had time to capture the inner demon.
Within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, over a dozen arrays stood tall, firmly confining a dozen or so mortals. The immortal flora were trying every conceivable method to identify which of them was the inner demon.
When Wei Yuan arrived, he saw a frail young woman confined within one of the arrays. She appeared delicate and refined, a pitiful figure that would stir pity in anyone who laid eyes upon her. Sitting on her knees in a thin pink gown that revealed a glimpse of delicate shoulders, she was trembling all over.
A humanoid immortal flora stepped into the array and barked, "Under this dousing of demon-revealing water, will the fiend still not show its true form?!"
As the words fell, a cup of chilled water splashed across the young woman's face! She shivered and whispered tremulously, "So cold!" Then she looked back, her large, tear-filled eyes meeting Wei Yuan's gaze—a look that made Wei Yuan's heart quiver.
The Bingli Divine Wood delivered a verdict on the spot: "No need to look any further. This one is the inner demon!"
The male cultivator formed from the Immortal-Devouring Vine disagreed: "She didn't reveal any form even under the demon-revealing water. She's clearly an ordinary mortal!"
"No, she is the inner demon!" the Bingli Divine Wood insisted firmly.
Chapter 957