Chapter 1249: Long Rainbow

"One."

"Two!"

"Three!"

"Launch!"

With a boom, a huge, long, cylindrical object suddenly took flight, its speed increasing rapidly until it matched the rainbow-transforming speed of a Golden Core or even a Refining Spirit Realm cultivator.

On the other side, a group of people watching the light screen interface were filled with excitement.

"Success, the Changhong No. 1 launch was a success."

"Let's see where it can fly to."

"Can it fly out of Jiuzhou?"

Ma Yuanyi was full of excitement; this Changhong No. 1 was a new generation of rocket they had developed, and they had already developed quite a few previous rockets.

However, they had always been unable to fly beyond the boundaries of Jiuzhou, especially when flying up into the sky toward the starry void; they were always trapped by the gravity of Jiuzhou and unable to break free.

In reality, even for a cultivator in the Refining Spirit Realm, there was only one path to leave Jiuzhou, and that was to obediently go through Liangjieshan, the only passage between Jiuzhou and Nanzhan Buzhou.

Of course, there was also a spring in Donghai that could lead to the Honghuang Sihai, but even the fleshly body of a Heavenly Immortal might be shredded by that spring.

Therefore, one could not fly out of Jiuzhou to the starry void without becoming an Immortal.

Only by reaching the Earth Immortal Realm, where the primordial power within the body transforms into Immortal power, could one 'ascend' and fly out of Jiuzhou into the starry void.

Over these years, the Taoist Sect had been continuously researching Science, never abandoning military industry, and their weapons had evolved generation by generation, becoming increasingly high-tech and more powerful.

Of course, for things like guns and cannons, logistics were more important; after all, even if the power of a single cannon or two was great—even if the missiles developed by the Taoist Sect already had power comparable to a full-strength strike from a Refining Spirit Realm expert—so what?

In today's Jiuzhou, there might not be that many Refining Spirit Realm experts or Taoist cultivators, but there were quite a few military generals who practiced Martial Dao.

Apart from their range, which far exceeded that of a Refining Spirit Realm Martial Artist, the Taoist Sect's missiles did not have much of an advantage.

For the battlefield, they could not act as a decisive factor.

As for artillery, only massive logistics and countless Cannonballs could provide a significant boost to a large army.

This was something the Taoist Sect could achieve, while the other major warlords and the Imperial Court could not.

The Imperial Court and other warlords had also discovered the benefits of the Taoist Sect's Science, especially the power of military industry; on the battlefield, the number of Transcendent soldiers was always inferior to that of ordinary mortals.

Even with the deep foundations of the Liu Han Imperial Court, in reality, the number of Transcendent soldiers they could cultivate was only one or two tenths of their ordinary soldiers.

Cultivating Transcendent soldiers required not only massive amounts of grain but also the provision of resources containing Spiritual Energy.

Most resources containing Spiritual Energy were monopolized by those powerful clans and great families, and ordinary people could not come into contact with them at all.

The Imperial Court would not take out too many such things for those ordinary soldiers; after all, in the eyes of those people, ordinary soldiers were just expendable materials.

They were not worth investing in at all.

Most of those who could cultivate to become Transcendents actually broke through either by relying on their own Transcendent aptitude or by relying on their families to provide money to purchase resources before breaking through.

Because the Imperial Guard of the Imperial Court selected from the families of good standing, most of the soldiers had families that were slightly better off than ordinary people.

After all, these families of good standing had ancestors who were always in the Imperial Guard of the Imperial Court; in the past, the Imperial Court treated the Imperial Guard quite well, with high treatment, so their families, even if not comparable to those powerful clans, were at least much better off than ordinary commoners.

Accumulating generation after generation like this, some families had produced one, two, or several generations of Transcendent soldiers; even if they were only the weakest Divine Strength Realm Martial Artists, the family would still rise a step higher.

After several generations of accumulation, they had also saved up quite a bit of money, and for the sake of the family disciples in the Imperial Guard, they spent a lot of money to purchase those items containing Spiritual Energy to help them break through to the Divine Strength Realm.

However, among Transcendent soldiers, the Taoist Sect had the most; the Taoist Sect was different from other warlords, as they were people-oriented, which destined them not to treat ordinary soldiers as expendable materials.

Therefore, as for Spiritual Energy, as long as it could improve the soldiers' strength, the Taoist Sect would provide it; of course, the military was the most fair, and if your aptitude was good, the level of cultivation you received would be better.

If your aptitude was not good, then you could only make up for it with hard work.

If that really didn't work, you could either switch to the gun and cannon troops, but it would be very difficult to have opportunities for advancement in the body-tempering troops.

The two major categories of the Taoist Sect's army were not exactly clearly demarcated, but the gap between the two was still quite large.

Of course, the Taoist Sect would not favor one over the other; the combat capabilities of the two categories were different, and the methods of dealing with them were also different.

On the side of the Transcendent troops, although not everyone was a Transcendent, those who could join them had extremely powerful physical constitutions, and their personalities were also tougher.

They received more resources, and their consumption was also greater.

But on the battlefield, the tasks they were often required to take on were those of storming fortified positions, facing extremely difficult situations that required them to fight to the death.

Artillery support, and then they would go to storm the enemy's most formidable positions.

Such coordination made the Taoist Sect's army invincible on the battlefield.

The Taoist Sect was already very powerful in artillery troops, and in terms of cold weapon troops, the Taoist Sect was not bad either; the number of Transcendents in the ordinary army reached over thirty percent, and this number was still increasing.

The number of people in the Taoist Sect itself was also the best in the world, the number one in the current age.

After all, the population of the Taoist Sect was now also the largest in the world, and furthermore, not to say everyone was wealthy, but at least eighty percent of the population could eat their fill. This was already very terrifying.

As for the other warlords, the commoners under their rule who could eat their fill were probably less than thirty percent; these years, because they learned some of the Taoist Sect's agricultural techniques, they had increased the grain production in the fields.

There was no other way; for the warlords, grain was of the utmost importance. They did not care about the life or death of the bottom-level commoners, but they could not ignore the grain in the army.

They had to build their armies, which required massive amounts of grain; the larger the army, the more grain it consumed.

Therefore, they had to increase grain production.

This passively allowed many of the commoners under their rule to receive some benefits.

But it could not be compared to the Taoist Sect; after all, the land under the Taoist Sect's rule was mostly state-owned, and while there was private land, it could not be traded. The bottom-level commoners rented the land, and apart from handing over fifty percent, there were no other taxes at all. As a result, at the end of the year, every household had surplus grain.

Therefore, under the Taoist Sect's rule, except for those remote mountain villages where the Taoist Sect could not yet send administrative personnel, there was almost no one starving to death in other places.

As a result, being able to eat their fill, the bottom-level commoners also actively exercised.