Chapter 626: Wu Family Fortress

Wu Tie slaughtered Xiang Zhan with a single strike, striking extremely fiercely.

"Lotus", a beautiful character, just like the "Jade" in Wu Tie's initial fief Jade Prefecture.

Lotus Prefecture, true to its name, is likewise near Green Hill City, formerly the land where the Great Jin Divine Kingdom's dragon rose, one of the most central of the over a hundred prefectures; within its borders the land and water are rich, the climate mild, the earth veins extremely thick and nourishing, thus it produces strange flowers and exotic herbs, many rare spiritual medicines.

The Three Kingdoms have a Pharmacopoeia, recording over a million kinds of rare and common medicinal materials; discarding the worthless common ones, the precious spiritual medicines listed in the Pharmacopoeia that are produced in Lotus Prefecture account for over eighty‑five percent.

An auspicious feng shui treasure land, like a treasure basin, a prosperous prefecture.

Lotus Prefecture was also a treasure land directly managed by the Great Jin Divine Kingdom's royal house; this time the Linghu clan seized the realm, and to reward merit, Linghu Qingqing openly handed over Lotus Prefecture, enfeoffing the Xiang family, whose military strength was extremely strong.

However, the Xiang family are utterly inept at management; after Lotus Prefecture came into their hands for just a few months, the owners of the big and small merchant guilds and the big and small medicine mountains had already lost about half, and the taxes Lotus Prefecture paid each month basically dropped by about ten percent each month.

Therefore, Wu Tie threatened and struck fiercely; Xiang Zhan then generously compensated Wu Tie with Lotus Prefecture.

In any case, for now it seems that Lotus Prefecture held by the Xiang family cannot bring them much additional profit.

Wu Tie, and even his attendants know, this blow struck at the Xiang family's vital point, forcing them to bow and submit; they could not bear the blame for delaying military affairs, so Xiang Zhan happily used Lotus Prefecture to redeem his clansmen.

But this grudge is now settled.

The Xiang family have never been good‑tempered, and the Xiang family people have never been good‑tempered.

Wu Tie humiliated their clansmen, extorted an entire prefecture's fief from them, beat their current clan chief, and even killed Xiang Zao, one of the Xiang Family Five Tigers of this generation.

This is a settled grudge.

Once the Great Wei Divine Kingdom's full‑scale attack passes, the Xiang family will sooner or later settle accounts with Wu Tie.

"Well, wait for them to recover…" Wu Tie laughed, shaking his head, standing on the Four Spirit Warship, looking down upon the lush, verdant land of Lotus Prefecture.

"They won't be able to recover." Bai He stood beside Wu Tie, gently shaking her head: "Your Imperial Grandfather will not let them recover… beside Linghu Qingqing there are others who will not let them recover either."

"So this Lotus Prefecture is now my territory?" Wu Tie laughed brightly: "It just connects with my Jade Prefecture fief, making ten prefectures joined together; I like this neat and tidy feeling. If it were all scattered enclaves, governing would be difficult."

Bai He laughed lightly; she flicked her long sleeve, the thick spiritual water mist below parted left and right, a stalk of extremely tender Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass broke free from a heap of thick moss, its roots and stems intact flew up into the sky and landed in Bai He's hand.

Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass, in the Pharmacopoeia it is a top‑grade treasure medicine, able to greatly strengthen blood and qi, fill the essence, specially treating all kinds of deficiency; when used to make pills, there are dozens of body‑tempering spirit pills used exclusively by generals in the Embryo Storage Realm that require Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass as the main ingredient.

The Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass in Bai He's hand is three chi six cun tall, indicating this stalk has had three hundred sixty years of heat; on the market it is worth thousands of gold, and if bought with origin crystals it would need dozens of origin crystals.

Such Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass, in the forests below, averages two or three stalks per fen of land; the density is not great but certainly not small. This stretch of forest extends for hundreds of li, and the number of Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass stalks with sufficient age is certainly more than a hundred thousand.

This is a precious medicine worth hundreds of millions of gold.

The Green Hill Divine Kingdom levies heavy taxes on spiritual medicine trade; for each stalk traded, the Household Palace Tax Bureau takes fifty percent of the transaction value.

In other words, if the Xiang family knew a little about management, this very patch of forest planted with Nine‑Xu Blood Fungus Grass could contribute hundreds of millions of gold in taxes, enough to support a force of tens of thousands of elite troops.

"What a treasure land—once the Xiang family comes to their senses they will surely quarrel with me over Lotus Prefecture… so let them not recover." Wu Tie laughed even more brightly: "Princess, please entrust all the medicinal herbs of Lotus Prefecture to the Bai He Merchant Guild."

Bai He smiled faintly and nodded calmly.

Wu Tie's development needs funds; Bai He, Sima Wuyou and their operations certainly need money.

Bai He, as a high‑ranking princess, personally running the Bai He Merchant Guild is precisely for this reason.

After dispatching an invincible army to garrison Lotus Prefecture, Wu Tie invited Bai He to return to Anye City; the An Prince's Mansion and the Bai He Merchant Guild signed a comprehensive cooperation contract, entrusting most of the An Prince's commercial resources to the Bai He Merchant Guild for operation.

All of this is open and aboveboard; Wu Tie and Bai He have no intention of hiding anything.

However, a fiefdom's ruler finding a few proxy merchant guilds is very commonplace, including Linghu Qingqing; nobody pays attention to this. For the Green Hill Divine Kingdom, which is fighting on two fronts simultaneously, this trivial matter raises no ripple.

The satisfied Bai He, accompanied by the Vermilion Bird and the Azure Dragon, departed with a fully loaded transport fleet.

In the Bai He Merchant Guild's transport ships were loaded with the vicious prisoners Wu Tie refused to keep, as well as countless special products from Wu Tie's territories; with these resources the Bai He Merchant Guild will rapidly expand, simultaneously bringing rich returns to Wu Tie.

Time flowed like water; in the blink of an eye another half year passed.

The Bai He Merchant Guild's fleet, now much enlarged, ran two more trips into Wu Tie's fief.

With Wu Tie's backing, the Bai He Merchant Guild not only grew in scale, but the armed merchant ships originally used for escort also openly switched to standard military warships, even displaying the shadow of giant god soldiers on them.

Anyway, nowadays many know the Bai He Merchant Guild is Wu Tie's proxy, while Wu Tie holds the Ancient Weapons Office; to protect his interests he secretly equips his own guild with contraband—this is only natural… all the major nobles of the Three Kingdoms do the same.

In the past half year the Green Hill Divine Kingdom has been fighting fiercely in the western and southwestern theaters.

One after another, fully reinforced corps keep pouring into the battlefield, then quickly engage in mutual attrition with the armies of the Great Wei and Great Wu.

Wu Tie has not bothered to inquire about the specific battle results; allegedly the scale of the Mortuary Affairs Division of the military has expanded more than tenfold, and every day countless notifications of fallen soldiers are sent back to their homes, causing countless women, children and elders to wail in grief.

Apart from Wu Tie's ten prefectures which remain peaceful, the whole Green Hill Divine Kingdom has fully mobilized all other prefectures into a state of total war.

The various local governments of the Green Hill Divine Kingdom have begun forcibly registering civilian cultivators, and have instituted the joint‑liability household system; any registered cultivator who dares to flee will have his four neighbors punished together, immediately sentenced as criminals and conscripted to the frontier.

The armories of all prefectures and fiefdoms have been opened, beginning to issue standard armor and weapons to civilian cultivators, and even large‑sized equipment listed as prohibited in the military is being distributed; everywhere militia units are being formed and trained to familiarize themselves with these large weapons.

In the Green Hill Divine Kingdom's armories, large quantities of auxiliary cultivation pills have been distributed; the authorities are striving to raise the cultivation level of civilian cultivators.

Even the martial arts academies run by the military have begun teaching secret techniques surpassing third‑grade, sixth‑grade and ninth‑grade mystic arts, with stronger attributes in all aspects.

Military formations previously inaccessible to ordinary civilians have also been passed down; the militiamen of the organized militia corps now begin to drill these formations in proper order.

At the same time the Green Hill Divine Kingdom issued a policy rewarding childbirth; local governments covertly began giving married women of suitable age some "many‑child pills" and similar secret medicines; taking them on schedule, once pregnant a woman will bear at least twins, at most quadruplets.

Moreover, the Green Hill Divine Kingdom began forcibly ordering men and women of marriageable age to wed.

Girls at fourteen, boys at sixteen must marry, and boys are encouraged to take multiple wives; the order issued by the Household Palace states that if a man marries three or more wives or concubines at once, the local government will give him a subsidy to support his household.

Originally prosperous southeastern prefectures, under official influence, have seen large amounts of cash crops reduced in planting area, replaced by extensive planting of staple grains; the prices of luxury goods such as silk and brocade have been sliding down section by section, while grain prices have silently risen by about thirty percent.

Three months ago Lotus Prefecture also received a secret order demanding that Wu Tie make effective use of all its land, intercropping and overplanting certain special medicinal herbs.

These herbs are all fast‑growing, potent, but their properties are overbearing and mixed; after being refined into pills they leave various impurities that harm the body, leaving hidden injuries—these are low‑grade herbs.

However, these herbs are also the main ingredients for the military's various field‑drugs, trauma medicines, and rapid mana‑replenishing pills prepared for lower‑rank soldiers.

The order demands Wu Tie increase the planting of these low‑grade herbs, and along with it comes a military procurement contract.

The purchase quantity is enormous, astronomical; although the unit price is about thirty percent lower than market price, because of the huge volume, as long as Wu Tie fulfills the contract on schedule he still stands to reap huge profits.

Northwest corner of Lotus Prefecture, toward the direction of Jade Prefecture.

This is the middle of Lotus Prefecture's main mountain range, the Illusory Cloud Mountains; the area has many earth veins, many water systems, great elevation changes, complex terrain, and is most suitable for the growth of rare treasure medicines.

Originally this belonged to Lotus Prefecture's top‑tier medicine merchant, the Bian family; but over a year ago, after the Xiang family took over Lotus Prefecture, Xiang Yuan—one of the Xiang Family Five Tigers—somehow passed through the Illusory Cloud Mountains; nobody knows what happened that day, but in a single night the Bian family was completely wiped out, their mountain estate spanning dozens of peaks leveled to the ground, not a single tile left.

After the Xiang family ceded Lotus Prefecture to Wu Tie as compensation, the Bian family had already vanished, so this Illusory Cloud Mountains naturally became Wu Tie's private property.

Now, opposite the original Bian family's mountain villa, separated by a great canyon ten thousand zhang deep, on the mountainside opposite, a mountain city stretching nearly a hundred li stands tall and firm.

The mountain city stretches over 180 li from east to west and is over a hundred li wide from north to south; great powers leveled dozens of mountain peaks, clearing this flat tract of land and constructing this mighty city.

Just a few days after the mountain city was completed, large numbers of robed formation masters are busy inside and outside the city, exerting themselves to construct various powerful city-defense formations.

These formation masters were sent over by Gongyang Sanlü on his own initiative.

When Wu Tie previously served as the leader of the Imperial City Military Command, he had newly built an office for the Imperial City Military Command, wanting to find a few qualified formation masters to set up formations for his office; but after searching the entire imperial capital, he could not find a single suitable formation master.

But this time, the Divine Kingdom of Qingqiu is running short of troops on the front lines, its elite units have been wiped out one after another, especially the corps commanded by that lunatic Xiang family, which has suffered heavy casualties.

Helpless, Linghu Qingqing could only order that the costly Giant God Soldiers be sent in large numbers to the battlefield as reinforcements.

Now the Ancient Arms Bureau is in Wu Tie's hands; wanting to take things from him…… Gongyang Sanlü not only has to provide sufficient construction materials for consumption, Wu Tie moreover took the opportunity to propose conditions, causing Gongyang Sanlü to dispatch a batch of top-tier formation masters over.

Tens of thousands of formation masters are busy inside and outside the city; when the mountain city was built, its foundations had already been connected to the earth veins, drawing in massive earth-vein energy. Now it's merely a matter of laying out the pre-designed formation seals properly and merging them with the earth veins to complete the project.

Near this mountain city, dozens of small and medium-sized fortresses have already been completed; farther out in the mountains and forests, there are also hundreds of barracks that are now fully occupied.

Countless gnomes, dwarves, and ratfolk are busy in the mountains and forests, diligently tending the medicinal herbs there.

Large groups of giants trek through the mountain ranges, driving away wild beasts, slaying venomous snakes, while also clearing roads, opening up broad highways in the mountains and forests.

Bands of ox-tribe warriors, wolf warriors, as well as the formidable pythonfolk and dragonfolk warriors, wearing crude leather armor, roam in bands through the mountains and forests. On one hand they serve as supervisors, overseeing the work of the gnomes, dwarves, and ratfolk; on the other hand they patrol the surroundings, strictly guarding against any outsider intrusion.

In the high skies, there are also feathered people with various wings sprouting from their backs, holding longbows and leisurely shuttling through the clouds and mist.

Around these feathered people are large flocks of ferocious eagles, hawks, and pengs, recently tamed warbirds that accompany them; their eyes are like blades, looking down from the high skies onto the earth, so that even a mouse trying to approach within a thousand li of this mountain city would find it hard to escape their detection.

Looking closer, above the sole southern gate of the mountain city hangs a huge gold‑cast plaque, squarely centered, bearing three bold, domineering characters that read—'Wu Family Fortress'!

Likewise, such cities are likewise being built throughout Lotus Prefecture.

Those cities, whether called 'Some Family City', 'Some Family Fortress', or 'Some Family Town', etc., are all urgently constructed by Wu Tie after receiving the secret order, over these past few months.

Around these large and small cities, swaths of brand‑new medicinal fields have been opened up, and countless low‑grade spiritual herbs have been sown.

For these newly built large and small cities, Wu Tie did not employ the original natives of Lotus Prefecture; instead he enfeoffed all of them to the elderly from Marsh Prefecture who have followed him these years.

Take Li Ergouzi, for example—he holds the easternmost edge of Phantom Cloud Mountain, where he has been granted a 'Li Family Fortress', with hundreds of thousands of slaves bought from the Demon‑Suppressing City working his fields.

Only Wu Tie, together with his brothers Wu Jin, Wu Yin, and Wu Tong, know that those newly built cities amount to nothing.

Only the lord of Wu Family Fortress is a direct descendant of the Wu family from the netherworld.

Moreover, the origins and lineage of these Wu family direct descendants, even their household registers, have been fabricated to appear flawless; even their family genealogies and the backgrounds of their ancestors have been made verifiable.

The Wu family direct descendants in this mountain city are entirely legitimate citizens of the Divine Kingdom.

They, as long as they don't foolishly reveal their origins, can walk openly under the bright sky.