Chapter 184: It Is Uncourteous Not to Return a Favor |
After talking with Sun Yu, Wei Yuan gained some inspiration and came up with a new plan. He asked Ji Liuli to design an array that gathered qi and nurtured yin, which he then set up in several locations within the realm where vitality was particularly strong. After that, he ordered the men to dig countless shallow pits within the boundaries of these arrays. Each pit was seven chi long, two chi wide, and two chi deep.
Arranged in neat rows, these pits resembled a dense graveyard at a glance—in fact, that was exactly what they were. The arrays were also designed to enhance the fengshui of these burial grounds. However, since these graveyards were situated in areas of vibrant vitality and constantly gathering qi to nourish yin souls, the dead were likely to rise given enough time.
This batch of graveyards was not intended for the dead, though. They were intended for the living. When mortals ingested the sedative and lay down in these graves, their vitality could be preserved to the greatest extent possible. After consulting with Ji Liuli, Wei Yuan determined that a single session allowed one to go fifteen days without food or water. After waking up and eating a single meal, they could lie down for yet another fifteen days.
For the first batch, Wei Yuan had fifty thousand graves dug, intending to place the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the infirm inside them. With this setup, the realm’s food reserves could last for a total of twenty days.
Xiao Yu had already organized a large-scale land reclamation effort, clearing out twenty thousand mu of land and planting human millets[1]. Although the yield was low, millet seeds were readily available and grew the fastest out of all crops, taking only three months to go from planting to harvest. In the realm of Qingming, they grew even faster and matured in just two months.
In two months, the realm would be able to harvest its first crop of human grain. Alas, Yuan Qingyan refused to give him that two months. Even with the burial tactic, they were still forty days short.
Wei Yuan did not allow himself to succumb to urgency, though. Instead, he focused on training the troops. He also instructed the rulers of each city to identify the strongest and most capable among the mortals, organize them into separate units, and send them to the army in batches. However, the troops did not spend all their time training. Most of the new recruits were sent to work in mines and workshops across the region, training only in their spare time. Only those who already entered the Body-tempering stage were assigned to regular forces, where they trained day and night.
After the arrival of 80,000 troops from Willow Ash Town, the original 8,000-strong cultivator force had expanded to 12,000. In fact, it could have been expanded to 20,000 at once, but Wei Yuan simply could not afford to feed that many soldiers at the moment. There were other areas of the realm that needed manpower as well.
At the moment, after “Life is a Flash” was activated, 10,000 of the 12,000 cultivators could reach the peak of the Body-tempering stage, and 1,500 could break through to the Dao Foundation stage instantly. There were currently 300-odd Dao Foundation stage cultivators within the troops, and Wei Yuan 200 of them to form a cavalry squadron. The remaining 100 or so people were assigned as officers to various hundred-man squads.
Qingming constantly empowered all humans within its domain, so Wei Yuan felt that the boost provided by The Great Realm was somewhat limited. However, that was only from his perspective. For ordinary knights, it was a tremendous boost. Even at just one-fifth of its strength, it was enough to increase their combat power by fifty percent.
However, The Great Realm could not push a peak Body-tempering stage cultivator into the Dao Foundation stage, and its blessing could only be applied to so many people. That was why Wei Yuan selected only Dao Foundation stage cultivators to form his core cavalry squadron. Each of these two hundred cavalrymen was equipped with a set of heavy armor and a polearm, along with their own mystic artifacts. Finally, each cavalryman was issued two steel guns.
Speaking of which, the high cultivators of the Palace of Absolute Beginning had long discovered that gunpowder was prone to moisture. Since the steel guns required at least half of their barrels to be filled with gunpowder, reloading was simply impractical. Therefore, after loading the gunpowder, they just sealed off the muzzle with oiled paper. This way, they wouldn’t need to worry about the gunpowder catching moisture, and the guns would remain usable even after a long time later. When it was time to use them, the cultivator simply needed to ignite the gunpowder using Dao energy.
By the standards of Xu Wenwu’s world, the “gun” was really a large bullet about two chi long and as thick as a fist; designed to be held in the hand and fired by rubbing the primer.
Over the next few days, Yuan Qingyan sent two more delegations of envoys, all of whom were ambushed by Cui Yu and Feng Tingyu along the way. As Wei Yuan had promised himself, he did not leave a single one alive.
While the realm was quietly gathering strength, Yuan Qingyan was hopping mad, literally.
His rage wasn’t due to the successive disappearances of the envoys' delegation, but because he had just discovered that everyone in the three eastern countries—from the highest magistrate to the lowest clerk and soldier—had vanished into thin air. According to the locals who had gone into hiding, they had apparently been abducted by bandits and carried off to the west.
When Yuan Qingyan received the news, he immediately smashed everything breakable in his study—not even an antique vase Xu Jingfeng had sent had escaped his wrath. When there was nothing left to smash, he began cursing furiously in his study.
Yuan Qingyan knew full well what was going on—these so-called horse bandits were just agents of Qingming in disguise!
Wei Yuan’s audacity had taken Yuan Qingyan completely by surprise, and it infuriated him all the more. In his perspective, the fact that Wei Yuan hadn’t shown up to pay his respects the moment he took office was already a capital offense—and now he dared to oppose him time and again? On what grounds? Did he think he was immune just because he was a disciple of an immortal sect?
At this thought, Yuan Qingyan grew even more furious. He began recalling the fates that had befallen the disciples of the immortal sects who had fallen into his hands—only to grow even angrier as a result!
Why couldn’t Wei Yuan and his lot simply starve to death peacefully in their realm? Why did they have to oppose him?
Once he had calmed down, Yuan Qingyan summoned the messenger who had been sent to the three counties and questioned him in detail about the local customs, the distribution of the populace, and the movement of the merchant caravans. After listening carefully, he had a clear picture of the situation and realized that Wei Yuan might have sacred a million catties of grain.
But that was probably it. Generally speaking, the mortals in the Shattered Realm had very little food reserves. In the past, the Xu Clan relied on grain to control the people of the Scattered Realm and strictly controlled the inflow of grain into the region. Thus, virtually no household had enough food reserves to last beyond the next day. Whether he had employed to obtain the supplies he needed, purchase or plunder, he could only target the merchant caravans.
At this thought, Yuan Qingyan gritted his teeth and said, “You may live a few more days.”
But he immediately shook his head and refuted himself. “No, it would be uncourteous not to return the favor!”
Yuan Qingyan proceeded to call two staff generals into his room. They were reinforcements sent by Chen Dao, and they had just arrived today. When they entered the study and saw the mess, they were both startled.
Yuan Qingyan pointed at the map and ordered, “You two will bypass the northeastern flank and seal off the three former counties. You will bar all merchant caravans from passing except for the supply convoys for the royal army. Besides that, you also will conduct a thorough search of the local populace and confiscate all ironware and grain—all of it!”
The two staff generals were startled once more. One of them replied, “But the people won’t be able to survive, my lord.”
“The people of the western regions are like wild grass—terribly resilient. They’ll naturally find a way to survive, so you needn’t concern yourselves with that. And if they truly can’t survive, can’t they just flee further west?”
Only then did the two staff generals grasp Yuan Qingyan’s intent, and a chill ran down their spines. Neither dared to speak out, though. They simply accepted their orders and departed.
It wasn’t until they had mustered their troops and left the encampment to head north that they dared to speak in a slightly louder voice.
One of the staff generals sighed, “This official is certainly no easy man to deal with. We’re truly unlucky to have been assigned to work under him.”
The other one snorted and said, “We may not love the people like our own children, but we do try our best not to disturb their lives. Doesn’t this Yuan fellow fear karmic retribution?”
“Well, we wouldn’t have been transferred here in the first place if we weren’t so rigid in our ways. I heard that Old Zhou was transferred here from the northern frontier too. Whenever he gets drunk, he would go on a tirade right in the camp.”
“Old Zhou possesses high cultivation, and he married a woman surnamed Xu. He can get away with anything, but we can’t.”
The two men grumbled as they made their way north.
At this very moment, Wei Yuan was staring at the map, his gaze lingering on the area around Willow Ash Town. Yuan Qingyan’s first two envoys had come and never returned, yet he’d still sent a third. From this, Wei Yuan concluded that human lives meant nothing to the man. He wouldn’t bat an eyelid even if all of the troops he had dispatched were slaughtered.
Since he was going to do this, Wei Yuan intended to make it a major operation. But before that, he had to carefully assess the combat strength of the Western Jin forces, especially those who had been stationed in the northern frontier.
Just as he was making his plans, Wei Yuan suddenly sensed something amiss and looked out the window.
The sun was setting, and the sky was ablaze with blood-red hues and crimson clouds.
The evening glow was exceptionally vivid, as red as blood and spreading rapidly toward the realm of Qingming.
1. I briefly considered whether to just omit the word “human” and go with “millets”, but then I realized that there might be a Shaman, Liao, Mountain Dweller, or whatever equivalent. That’s probably why the author specifically put the word here, so I decided to follow suit.
