Chapter 1235: War Booty

Mo Hua furrowed his brows slightly.

Why did Dao Ting's Fasting Pills end up in the heart of the Great Wasteland?

Did the Bifang tribe seize them?

Or were they captured war spoils, taken by the Great Wasteland Wang Ting's barbarian troops after defeating Dao Ting's army?

Are these Fasting Pills Dao Ting's military supplies?

Mo Hua sniffed the Fasting Pills and shook his head.

There was a faint smell of moldy coarse grain—the quality was far too poor.

He had served as a Dao soldier for a few days and tasted Dao Ting's issued Fasting Pills; these here fell far short of Dao Ting's "military supply" standard.

Moreover, Dao Ting's military supplies bore clear Dao Ting markings.

These Fasting Pills were packed in plain bottles with no markings whatsoever—they could not possibly be from the Dao Troop Office's supplies.

"Then where did these Fasting Pills really come from?"

Mo Hua's gaze darkened slightly; he sensed this must be a major matter, at least the seed of a great karmic thread.

But the clues were too few—he had no way to begin investigating.

Even if one tried to calculate karmic threads, these completely blank bottles offered nothing to calculate.

After pondering for a while, Mo Hua ordered his men to store all the Fasting Pills securely.

For a long time ahead, these Fasting Pills would have to sustain his barbarian troops' rations.

During non-combat periods, one per soldier per day, to stave off hunger.

During combat, three per soldier per day, to replenish some blood qi.

Of course, they were hard to swallow, and prolonged consumption made the intestines and meridians uncomfortable.

But as always: this was a year of famine; having anything to eat was better than nothing—there was no choice.

After settling matters, Mo Hua went to find Seeing Dan Zhu and the others to discuss their next move.

Should they temporarily regroup at this oasis, or press onward to seek another barbarian cultivator settlement?

Mo Hua himself was at a loss given the current situation.

He was now stranded in the desert, lost in fog—he did not know his exact location, the extent of the famine, the condition of other tribes, the overall state of the Great Wasteland, nor how the war between the Great Wasteland and Dao Ting had progressed.

He could only take one step at a time.

But he was the "Lord Wuzhu"—he could not openly admit he had no idea what to do next.

So he gathered everyone together and had them deliberate.

Mo Hua listened from the side, watching for anyone who might offer a good idea—or spark an insight for him.

But the current predicament was beyond human resolution.

After a full round of discussion, until deep into the night, everyone dispersed.

As they left, Lord Lugu glanced back at Mo Hua—his gaze cold and veiled, clearly still bitter over what Mo Hua had done to his elder brother.

But he said nothing.

At this time, famine was severe, survival was difficult; to live, they had no choice but to cooperate.

In many matters, he still relied on Mo Hua, the Lord Wuzhu.

Likewise, he knew well that Mo Hua was a "demon" who manipulated hearts and minds—not easily killed.

Lord Lugu departed.

Mo Hua understood Lord Lugu's thoughts and sighed inwardly.

The Dao is long; if one wishes to advance step by step, if one seeks one's own Dao, one inevitably entangles oneself in debts, grudges, loves, and hates—there is no escaping it.

Yet Mo Hua did not dwell on it.

There were those who loved him, and many who hated him.

And he suspected that in the future, those who hated him would only grow more numerous.

…

In a luxurious guest chamber within the oasis.

This was Mo Hua's temporary resting place.

Outside, the desert wind howled; inside, all was silent. Mo Hua lay on his bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

Capturing the oasis and securing supplies was only a small step.

The next move would determine the fate of these six thousand barbarian troops—and of Seeing Dan Zhu and the others.

One misstep, and all would die; everything would reset to zero.

All his hopes within the Great Wasteland would be nullified.

Mo Hua suddenly felt a heavy weight on his heart.

Feeling down, Mo Hua decided to sink his spirit into his mind sea and practice a bit of array formation—to find some amusement and fill the emptiness and restlessness within.

But after practicing awhile, the piles of blank-bottled Fasting Pills from earlier surfaced again in his mind.

Mo Hua felt something was off about them.

If the Great Wasteland were a chessboard, Seeing Dan Zhu and the others were the pieces.

Now Mo Hua did not know where to place these pieces.

These Fasting Pills—and the secrets behind them—were likely intimately tied to the next move he must make.

With these thoughts weighing on him, Mo Hua lost the will to draw arrays. He rose, lit a brazier in the room, and used divination to calculate the Fasting Pills.

As the flames burned, the demon bone cracked.

Mo Hua glanced at the omen—just as he expected—the omen showed only chaotic, vague, and nearly impossible-to-decipher signs.

Cause and effect—there can be no effect without a cause.

For things one knows nothing about, even the Art of Cause and Effect cannot reveal their origins.

Especially when it comes to matters of grand scale: the fewer "causes" one knows, the vaguer the "effects" calculated, and the more unreliable those calculated effects become.

"Where exactly did these Fasting Pills… come from?"

Mo Hua tossed the brazier aside, lay back on the bed, and closed his eyes in thought.

"Mass quantities of identical pills require a systematic, mature Daoist production process to manufacture them on an assembly line…"

"This must have been produced by the large alchemical workshop of some major sect or great clan."

"Since this is 'Daoist industry,' there must be some uniform… industrial traces?"

Just as when I established large metallurgical and alchemical workshops in Xiancheng, I stamped each pill and spirit weapon with serial numbers and Xiancheng's seal to indicate origin and batch.

Not just Xiancheng—Shancheng's metallurgical workshops also use these standardized marking methods.

As a skilled array master who had deeply participated in Daoist production, Mo Hua never inquired into these details, but through constant exposure, he understood the inner workings perfectly.

"Batch numbers, and marks similar to 'trademarks'…"

Large-scale production in the Nine Provinces could never do without these two things.

Fasting Pills are a category of pills.

The pills themselves leave no marks or batch numbers.

But the bottles holding them certainly do.

To conceal these batch numbers and production marks, were all these large quantities of Fasting Pills packed in 'blank' bottles?

But 'blank' bottles are themselves a kind of mark.

Ordinary blank bottles are never truly blank—they always carry faint script or cloud patterns.

These pure white bottles, with not a single character or pattern, and in such vast quantities, must have been specially forged—to conceal their origin.

This matter concerns the Great Wilderness; the forging of these bottles could not possibly have been outsourced, or secrecy would be impossible.

Mo Hua frowned in deep thought.

If I were in charge of this task…

I am a steward of some great power, urgently needing to forge blank bottles to hold Fasting Pills.

Then most likely…

I would not build a new metallurgical production line, because the cost would rise. Bottles for Fasting Pills are not worth that expense.

Instead, I would… temporarily reconfigure an existing metallurgical production line to specialize in forging these blank bottles.

That is, these bottles were forged by temporarily altering a production line within some power's industry.

Mo Hua's heart jolted sharply.

He immediately leapt from the bed, summoned Elder Bachuan, and ordered:

"Quickly, gather some hands—turn every single bottle containing Fasting Pills over, and look for 'defective' ones."

Elder Bachuan looked utterly bewildered, unsure what Lord Wuzhu intended.

But Lord Wuzhu's divine powers were vast—his actions needed no justification.

"Yes."

Elder Bachuan said, then went below to gather a few men and, as Mo Hua instructed, laid out every single Fasting Pill bottle seized during the day in the great hall.

Then he led the barbarian soldiers, examining each bottle one by one.

Though spiritual sense could inspect them, its visual representation differed and easily missed details.

So Mo Hua ordered everyone to use both eyes and spiritual sense together to search for flaws.

Thus, after turning over bottles through the long night, they finally found several 'defective' bottles.

The bottles themselves were not 'defective'—only in minute details did each bear slight 'flaws,' leaving traces of glaze brushwork.

This was because Daoist industry inherently has a 'defect rate.'

No matter how perfected a metallurgical industry becomes, it cannot avoid producing defective items.

And from the principle of arrays, this is easily explained.

Metallurgical industry structurally follows a 'forging' process, but once industrialized, its underlying logic is controlled by 'arrays.'

Arrays govern its workflow, its variables, its materials, its fire control, and more.

But array operation is never perfectly smooth—it inevitably encounters disruptions and chaos, producing objects that fail to meet 'standards.'

The same applies to these Fasting Pill bottles.

Besides the production process, these bottles also bear another set of 'engraving' arrays, similar to magnetic imaging.

This 'engraving' array automatically uses glaze and other materials to inscribe text or marks onto the bottles, indicating origin and batch.

Whether to engrave patterns, characters, or nothing at all—all is determined by this 'engraving' array.

Now, this 'engraving' array has been temporarily altered, its array pattern set to 'blank.'

Hence, this metallurgical production line generates vast quantities of bottles bearing no marks whatsoever.

But as Mo Hua knew, every metallurgical industry has the concept of 'defective items.'

A single operation of the 'engraving' array may proceed without issue.

Ten, a hundred operations might still run flawlessly.

But once it runs thousands or tens of thousands of times, errors must occur.

These errors cause the 'engraving' array, set to 'blank,' to malfunction and involuntarily 'engrave' patterns.

And when it malfunctions, the patterns it engraves are never random—they must be ones it has engraved before.

Like a man who has spent years drawing a tree.

Now suddenly he is told to stop drawing, and merely trace empty paper.

In the short term, he can manage.

But as time went on, he would occasionally have his brain "glitch," habitually drawing one more tree.

These sheets of paper that suddenly glitched and had trees drawn on them were the "defectives."

This kind of practical knowledge, the deep integration of array formations and artifact refining, ordinary people might not understand, but Mo Hua was very familiar with it.

In Mo Hua's hands were a few bottles he had carefully selected.

These few bottles were blank, but in the details, there were some very faint, very light traces.

There were leftover brushstrokes, and some birds.

At a glance, a normal person wouldn't pay any attention; even if they noticed, they wouldn't know what these things were.

In mass production, no one would have the leisure to inspect things like this.

But for an "insider" like Mo Hua, the meaning was completely different.

Mo Hua dismissed the attendants, returned to his room, and began to work backward from these patterns, reverse-deriving the "array formation," reconstructing exactly what array formation had been used to carve these patterns.

The "engraving" array formation was used for drawing pictures and carving characters; the principle was very simple.

It was just that there were quite a few types of this kind of array formation, and Mo Hua needed some time to try and verify them one by one.

But for Mo Hua, who had done research on the even more difficult and complex principles of secondary thunder array patterns and the calculation of "array flows," this workload wasn't really that big.

Half a shichen later, Mo Hua had reconstructed the array formation used to engrave the patterns on these "defectives."

In other words, it was also the array formation on a certain artifact-refining production line, specifically used for "engraving" with colored glazes.

Mo Hua constructed this set of array formations, then tried to let it generate "patterns" without restrictions.

The generated patterns were all printed by Mo Hua onto sheets of white paper.

As spiritual power circulated, the engraving array formation began to operate.

One after another, complex patterns were printed onto the white paper.

There were patterns of wealth and prosperity, of the phoenix facing the sun, of auspicious clouds and blessed patterns, of a hundred years of harmony… and so on, all elaborate and gorgeous patterns.

Mo Hua's brow gradually furrowed.

Just at this moment, the engraving array formation's brushwork shifted, and it actually began to carve a character.

This character was a beautified one; based on the original form, decorated with wood, with brocade as its bones, looking dazzling and beautiful, and its character shape was one:

"Hua" (Hua).

Mo Hua's heart sank.

Hua?

What does it mean?

Is this some sect, or perhaps… some clan?

The Hua clan?

Mo Hua frowned, and in a flash his heart skipped a beat, suddenly recalling the noble and beautiful woman in gorgeous, beautiful Hua robes whom he had once seen in the Great Desert City, at the demon-fighting arena, the one who had even made Young Master Tuoba act like a "simp."

Young Master Tuoba seemed to call her "Young Lady Hua"?

That beautiful woman was someone from the Hua clan…

The Hua clan was connected to the Great Wasteland.

Then does that mean, the cultivation production line that refined these bottles and Fasting Pills was also entirely the Hua clan's?

Mo Hua's gaze grew somewhat deep.

If these Fasting Pills were the Hua clan's, why had they ended up in the Great Wasteland?

Were they snatched by the tribes of the Great Wasteland?

No… it didn't look like they were snatched…

It looked more like the Hua clan had "sold" these Fasting Pills to the Great Wasteland?

Mo Hua took out a Fasting Pill, held it to his nose and sniffed it, smelling a cheap odor, his brow tightly furrowed.

The quality control of these Fasting Pills was truly terrible.

In the Nine Provinces, they were clearly of the lowest pill grade; if the Hua clan were a great clan, they absolutely wouldn't refine such shoddy Fasting Pills.

The only possibility was that they had deliberately refined these "shoddy" Fasting Pills, with the purpose of selling them to the Great Wasteland.

These shoddy Fasting Pills were the "Great Wasteland Special Edition."

They were meant for the people of the Great Wasteland. Therefore, no matter how shoddy, it didn't matter, as long as eating them didn't kill anyone.

Anyway, there was no mark of the Hua clan left on the medicine bottles, so no one knew these pills were refined by the Hua clan.

The shoddier they were, the higher the profit.

But… why only Fasting Pills? Why not sell anything else, only Fasting Pills?

Because…

Mo Hua's pupils contracted.

Famine!

Under a famine, Fasting Pills were no longer simple supplies; they were life-saving things. No matter how shoddy a Fasting Pill was, as long as it could be eaten and save lives, it was a treasure.

The Hua clan hoarding so many Fasting Pills, were they trying to… relieve the disaster?

How could that be?!

They probably wanted to, in a year of famine, sell these hoarded Fasting Pills at an astronomical price.

Even the shoddiest Fasting Pills were enough to make the various great tribes, facing hunger and life-and-death predicaments, pay an extremely steep price.

Mo Hua drew in a slight breath of cold air.

Here in the Great Wasteland, beliefs were chaotic, forces were complex, and the tribes were powerful; to conquer them by force was impossible, and to rob them was even harder.

If military force couldn't conquer, then use trade.

Taking advantage of the famine, refine large quantities of Fasting Pills, sell them to the Great Wasteland, and earn exorbitant profits.

Is this Hua family's plan?

Is the Hua family trying to profit from disaster?

But could it really be this simple?

Mo Hua took out another Qi-withholding Pill, sniffed it, and detected the faint odor of aged grain—this meant the Qi-withholding Pills had been manufactured years ago.

But back then, Da Huang didn't seem to have suffered famine yet?

How did the Hua family know Da Huang would definitely suffer famine?

They predicted that the war between Dao Ting and Da Huang would trigger unrest; unrest would trigger famine; and famine would cause the value of Qi-withholding Pills to skyrocket…

So they bet on this?

But is it really like this?

Mo Hua turned his gaze again to the series of "Opening Fortune" patterns before him.

A production line capable of engraving patterns like "Opening Fortune" and "Phoenix Facing the Sun" indicates that previously produced items were mostly "luxuries"—high-end noble spiritual artifacts.

Yet this luxury production line has been repurposed by the Hua family to manufacture inferior Qi-withholding Pills, proving the Hua family was certain these pills would yield massive profits.

This is certainly not mere prediction or guesswork.

The value of Qi-withholding Pills is directly proportional to the severity of the famine.

The worse the famine, the more valuable the Qi-withholding Pills—even more valuable than luxury goods.

The fact they altered their production line and manufactured such vast quantities of Qi-withholding Pills proves the Hua family was certain, not merely predictive.

As Mo Hua unraveled this step by step, the colder his heart grew.

But… why?

Why was the Hua family so certain that a large-scale famine would erupt in Da Huang?

Why dare they produce and hoard Qi-withholding Pills in advance?

And there was another question:

How did the Hua family transport these Qi-withholding Pills into the heart of Da Huang?

What was the route?

There was still a crucial missing link here…

Mo Hua frowned in thought, then suddenly remembered: this oasis was a "pig butchering scheme," a "gold-sinking den"—but fundamentally, might it be the Hua family's logistics transit station?

If so, there must be…

Mo Hua's pupils shrank; he immediately called Elder Bachuan back and ordered him to lead a full second search of the entire oasis.

This time, focus on sand tables or walls—look for signs of deliberate damage.

After searching for most of the day, they finally found one wall.

The wall was completely shattered.

The oasis had been captured; broken walls were everywhere, so this wasn't unusual—this wall was no exception.

Under normal circumstances, people would glance at a broken wall and move on, paying no attention.

But Mo Hua had specifically instructed them: look for abnormal walls—walls deliberately destroyed.

Over a thousand barbarian soldiers conducted a carpet-style search, ten full passes, before finally finding this wall in a corner of a hidden chamber.

This wall was completely shattered.

Upon close inspection, it had been crushed entirely by Jin Dan power.

This was highly suspicious.

Mo Hua stood before the broken wall, ordered the crushed sand and debris gathered together, pondered for a moment, then began using Da Huang's Spirit Bone Divination to trace back the cause and effect.

He wanted to see what this stone wall looked like before it was destroyed.

But such divination was extremely taxing.

Mo Hua's computational capacity was limited; he could not grasp the whole picture, only piece by piece—dividing the recovered images into fragments, memorizing each shard in his mind, sketching them out, and finally assembling them together.

When his spiritual sense was drained, he rested, then resumed.

After half a day of this, Mo Hua reconstructed the pieces one by one.

Finally, after immense effort and exhausting his spiritual sense, he fully restored the pattern on the wall.

As Mo Hua had suspected, it was a map.

And this was no ordinary map—it was a topographical chart of the entire Three Thousand Barbarian Wastes.

A map of Da Huang's heartland even the Dao Troop Office might not possess.

But what shocked Mo Hua even more wasn't the map itself.

It was the thick lines marked upon it.

These lines advanced along specific trajectories, gradually converging into a massive encirclement, enveloping the core heartland of the Three Thousand Da Huang Wastes.

Others might not understand what these lines meant.

But Mo Hua understood.

In barely a moment's thought, he realized it instantly.

These lines were "famine spread lines."

The map meticulously documented the entire route and progression of this famine in Da Huang.

This famine was secretly orchestrated by his senior uncle.

Mo Hua himself lacked the ability to deduce such a thing.

But the Hua family had it.

This meant…

The Hua family's ancestral patriarch had likely seen through his senior uncle's scheme long ago—and had fully deduced his plan.

They had even calculated when the famine would strike, when it would spread, and when it would converge...

These heavenly secrets, they had seen them.

They had seen the great calamity that was about to occur.

And then they...

Did nothing.

Not only did they do nothing, they actually planned to exploit these divined heavenly secrets, exploit the famine caused by their Martial Uncle, to mass-refine and hoard Fasting Pills, and take advantage of the disaster year to reap enormous profits, to make a fortune off the war and the famine.

There was fighting on the front lines.

They... were getting rich.

(End of Chapter)