Wei Yuan had fought one against two and, relying on a multitude of methods, had forcefully slain Great Zhao's Duke of Zhongguo. Although the duke had only been in the early stage of Scenery Command, with this stepping stone, Wei Yuan had formally stepped into the ranks of high-level cultivators through slaughter.
Thinking of the Duke of Zhongguo's end, Wei Yuan could not help but sigh. The path to immortality was perilous; even a Scenery Command cultivator of a generation could fall in the blink of an eye. Not even an immortal had deduced that the duke would perish at Wei Yuan's hands. Otherwise, the Duke of Zhongguo would never have dared to deploy his mindscape world so recklessly.
While he was still lost in reflection, the scenery before Wei Yuan's eyes suddenly shifted, and he found himself sitting in Immortal Monarch Yanshi's small courtyard.
Immortal Monarch Yanshi motioned for Wei Yuan to take a seat, placed a cup of clear tea before him, and only then asked, "What was planted in the lotus pond?"
Wei Yuan stared blankly. "A green lotus, of course!"
That green lotus was glaringly obvious. How could an immortal fail to see it?
"What was planted in the lotus pond?" Yanshi repeated with added emphasis.
Wei Yuan suddenly realized what Yanshi meant. The green lotus was merely the manifest appearance; what Yanshi was asking was what kind of karmic cause and effect the little monk had actually sown.
This question stumped Wei Yuan completely. To him, it was just a green lotus—exceptionally simple and direct. Where did cause and effect come into it? Furthermore, if an immortal could not see it, how could he possibly discern it?
Naturally, Wei Yuan did not dare say this to Yanshi's face. Sitting in the courtyard, he sent his divine consciousness into the Pure Land Grotto-Heaven and stared at the green lotus for a long time, but predictably saw nothing.
Not having received an answer, Yanshi appeared unbothered, as though it was entirely within expectations. "Perhaps the moment has not yet arrived and the heavenly secrets remain unrevealed," he said. "Keep an eye on it. If any thoughts come to you, remember to come and tell me."
Just as Wei Yuan was about to take his leave, Immortal Monarch Yanshi handed him a tea canister and said, "Here are several tea leaves I usually drink myself; take them. Next time you drink tea in front of others, you should drink something of quality, lest you diminish the dignity of our Palace of Grand Beginning."
Overjoyed, Wei Yuan took it. The moment he returned to the mortal world, he opened it to look, only to see seven immortal tea leaves neatly arranged in the box. Wei Yuan was stunned. Didn't this mean he could only drink tea in front of others seven times? That number was rather meager.
His thoughts quickly wandered. He pulled over Chubby Immortal Laurel and had her post a quest in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World under her own name: How to drink tea in front of others without consuming the tea leaves, while still letting everyone know that what is in the cup is immortal tea.
The moment this quest was posted, complete silence fell over the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. Wei Yuan felt as though countless pairs of eyes were staring right at him. But he immediately comforted himself: this quest was posted by Chubby Immortal Laurel, so what did it have to do with him?
Huh? Chubby Immortal Laurel?
However, military affairs were pressing. Wei Yuan kept his mind on the battlefield, having no leisure to study Laurel's figure, and returned to the mortal world.
By this time, he had already ordered several dozen Dao Foundation warriors to each lead a small unit in dispersing in all directions, thoroughly scouting and charting the terrain. He also detached more than ten thousand-man regiments from the army to capture the remaining county seats of Yuyang Commandery and drive out the local authorities.
At this moment, several newly constructed floating skiffs and airships arrived, delivering large shipments of grain as well as specially prepared sand and soil.
This sand had been specially refined by old Daoist Chuhe. Scattering just a few jin evenly across a single mu of farmland ensured that crops would never grow there again—a measure harsher than salting the earth.
Yet while grain would not grow, a type of cotton known as red-stem cotton could flourish. This cotton produced high yields, and its fibers were long and thick, making it far easier to process than traditional cotton while yielding twice as much. The coarse cloth woven from it was not very comfortable, but it won out on sheer volume and low cost. It could also substitute for spiritual wood fiber in manufacturing gunpowder; it was only slightly more expensive than fertilizer explosives, but far more powerful.
It was winter, and the fields had long since been harvested. While Wei Yuan arranged for men to scatter the sand across the fields, he dispatched over a thousand eloquent scholars in commoner clothing to head deep into the countryside and spread rumors from village to village: next year, a natural disaster would strike this land, leaving not a blade of grass standing. Anyone who stayed behind would starve to death, but those who went to Qingming would have meat to eat!
The reason it was called a rumor was primarily that what was striking this place was not a natural disaster, but a man-made one.
Yuyang Commandery bordered Qingming, and the local populace had long heard tales of the paradise-like life there, envying it immensely. Still, life in the State of Zhao had been reasonably peaceful. Most commoners were illiterate and had, at most, visited the county seat in their entire lives. As long as they had a bite to eat and a plot of land to till, they would never consider relocating.
Yet even if they did not wish to move, Wei Yuan had his ways. The scholars spoke with effortless eloquence, describing Qingming as a wonder unparalleled beneath the heavens and on earth, before announcing that arrangements could be made to transport them there. Once in Qingming, every single household would have land to farm.
Naturally, as the price of admission, the villagers had to pay a travel fee. The sum was neither too large nor too small—beyond what an individual could afford, but easily scraped together by a few households.
The travel fee was collected by the village. Once the money was paid, they simply waited for transport. Whether for one hundred people or one thousand, the cost remained the same.
Consequently, once a village paid, the entire village would board the wagons together. When the villagers saw the large cargo wagons arriving to transport them, their lingering doubts vanished, and the elderly, the young, the sick, and the disabled all boarded together.
The village chiefs and ward leaders had initially worried about transport capacity and had already persuaded the elderly over fifty to stay behind and await death. To their surprise, when some of the elderly insisted on climbing aboard, the personnel in charge of transport raised no objection. The result was that the families of the elderly wept tears of immense gratitude, while the village chiefs and ward leaders grew thoroughly unnerved, wondering inwardly whether these people were being shipped off to some subterranean furnace to be refined into legendary living-human pills.
Some village chiefs were puzzled and conferred in secret, unable to fathom why Qingming would want these elderly folk who could barely walk. They were scarcely capable of working the fields; keeping them alive was merely a waste of grain. In some impoverished mountain villages with barren soil, elderly people who could no longer labor were often told to head into the deep mountains on their own to seek death.
Pondering back and forth, they could not understand what Wei Yuan was after.
In truth, when Wei Yuan conceived the entire plan, collecting the travel fee was a core component aimed at relocating as many commoners as possible. For these unenlightened villagers, so long as they were coaxed into handing over money, they would grit their teeth and climb onto the wagons to move, stopping at nothing to ensure their hard-earned money did not go down the drain.
Collecting by the village was another component. In any village, some wished to leave while others preferred to stay. As long as a small group scraped together the village's fee, the rest would want to follow along so as not to be left behind alone. There were even a few scoundrels who shamelessly shoved their way onto the wagons; since they had not paid a copper anyway, taking the ride was free profit.
As for the elderly, Qingming was hardly lacking in grain. Wei Yuan's orders were simply to take anyone who could still move. Besides, it was not as though they were being fed for nothing; the elderly could still contribute a bit of azure qi, more or less.
With this simple stratagem, nine out of ten households across Yuyang Commandery stood empty within days. Of the commandery's total population of eleven million, ten and a half million were already on the road to Qingming.
While stripping Yuyang clean, Wei Yuan's main army was not idle either. They swiftly pushed out of Yuyang, dividing into three prongs: the main force bore down directly on the Zhao royal capital, while the other two wheeled out to the left and right in a wide arc, preparing to scoop up two or three commanderies apiece.
At the same time, the floating skiffs and airships shuttled back and forth continuously, hauling massive supplies of canned meat. Wherever the army arrived, they were ordered to cook and eat meat right before the local populace, introducing them to the Qingming Free Residence Plan as they ate.
To put it simply, this plan meant that anyone, regardless of who they were, could stay in Qingming as long as they went there, where they would have meat to eat and land to till.
However, during implementation, the frontline soldiers found the name far too pedantic for ordinary folk to understand, so they altered it to the "Qingming Free Meat-Eating and Farming Plan," which everyone grasped immediately.
There was also a small interlude during the process: the frontline troops complained that they were eating too much meat and that it was far too greasy, clamoring for more fruits and vegetables.
Some soldiers truly could not stomach any more and casually gave their rations to the surrounding Zhao commoners. The people were overwhelmingly grateful. As a result, bits and pieces of karmic luck trickled into Wei Yuan's possession from time to time—eight hundred here, a thousand there. Though modest, the steady trickle added up, and it served to make his Dao heart all the more limpid.
Now possessing a different standing, Wei Yuan also had a different strategic focus than in the past. Consequently, he did not head to the front lines. Instead, he remained in Yuyang's commandery seat, sitting in Cui Shutong's study. Picking up a supreme wolf-hair brush Cui Shutong frequently used, he ground down half a stick of ambergris pine-soot ink that Cui Shutong had been reluctant to spend, smoothed out flowered copperplate jade paper reserved exclusively for the King of Zhao, and began calculating formulas, continuing to grind through the eighth chapter of Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm.
Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm had been available in Qingming for some time. Under Wei Yuan's deliberate design, tens of thousands of mortals had read it one after another. Yet up to this point, not a single person had managed to conquer the eighth chapter, including Han Li and Jun Weizhi.
While this brought Wei Yuan a quiet sense of satisfaction, it also made him realize that when it came to mathematics, numbers did not matter.
Back then, Ronglong had studied for only half a month, spent another month thinking it through, and penned Preliminary Exploration of the Desolate Realm. Yet Wei Yuan, backed by the tens of thousands in the entire Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, had spent a great deal of time and still could not even digest the eighth chapter.
As Wei Yuan was scribbling on the paper, a sudden intuition struck him. He slowly looked up and saw a young cultivator sitting in the room. With sword-like brows and starry eyes, the man did not look remarkably handsome in any single feature, yet every part of him was magnificent. From top to bottom, inside and out, he was flawless; any angle could serve as a mold for Pan An or Song Yu.
The cultivator sat serenely, holding neither a folding fan nor a teacup, his hands resting casually on his lap, smooth and lustrous as jade. He wore neither jade bracelets nor thumb rings; any ornament would only have detracted from the elegance of those hands.
The cultivator's voice carried a calm gentleness beneath its cool clarity, like a mountain stream melting from a glacier and flowing down the slopes, indescribably melodious:
"I am different from Liumiao of the State of Ji. He had no need for people, but I do. You have already abducted nearly twenty million people and emptied two commanderies. Isn't it about time to rein it in?"
Chapter 982