Chapter 348: Ministry of Works Responds

Outside Xingzhou City, the fields on both sides of the official road should have been lush and green, but now they look as if gnawed by an invisible plague, with vast tracts of land showing a shocking grayish blight.

The rice seedlings droop listlessly, their leaf edges curled and yellowed.

The flow in several irrigation canals has become visibly turbid and sluggish, and along the banks pile up foams that seem almost alive, slowly writhing and flashing an ominous blue light, emitting a foul metallic stench that can be faintly smelled even from a distance.

A convoy of carriages and horses came rumbling, breaking the area's dead silence.

At the center of the convoy were several specially made carriages with reinforced frames and shock absorption, loaded with oilcloth-covered crates and oddly shaped instruments.

The dust-covered Zhao Laonian jumped down from the lead carriage; he still wore his signature short jacket stained with various grime, only symbolically draped with a wrinkled official robe over it.

The Xingzhou Inspector Cui Renshi and the local officials who had long been waiting here immediately came forward, every face showing anxiety and hope.

"Inspector Cui Renshi greets you, Minister Zhao!" Cui Renshi bowed deeply, his tone urgent, "You've finally arrived!"

Zhao Laonian waved a hand, skipping pleasantries, his cloudy yet sharp gaze fixed directly on the mutated field.

"Cut the small talk, Commander Cui, lead the way to the worst-hit spot."

"Yes yes yes, this way please!"

The party hurried toward the Li Family Village fields, the area hit hardest not far away.

The closer they got, the more shocking the sight of compacted land and polluted water became.

The Ministry of Works artisans accompanying them needed no orders, already skillfully unloading various tools from the carriages.

There was the exquisitely structured "Soil Composition Speed Analysis Disk" with probes and graduations;

there were glazed bottles and specially made waterskins capable of drawing and temporarily storing water samples;

and there were several copper bases requiring two people to lift, their surfaces etched with a simplified version of "vortex runes"—these were the prototypes of the "Stabilize Earth Disk" still in trial.

Zhao Laonian crouched, grabbed a handful of the grayish soil, rubbed it between his fingers, then brought it to his nose to smell.

His brows knit tightly together.

"This is no ordinary compaction… the vital force in the soil has been almost drained, leaving behind… a kind of cold inertia."

He stood, then walked to a canal rimmed with blue foam, scooped up some water with a long-handled copper ladle, and poured it into a glazed dish.

In the dish the water actually showed an extremely faint, hair‑thin glimmer of dark blue light flashing by, whereupon the blue foam seemed stimulated, writhing more visibly.

"Sure enough, it's a highly condensed sedimentation of Yin Energy!" Zhao Laonian said gravely, "It has seeped deep into the earth's marrow and mixed into the water system—no wonder plants can't survive."

Cui Renshi listened, heart pounding: "Minister Zhao, what… what can be done? Is purification possible?"

"Let's try!" Zhao Laonian snapped, directly directing his subordinates, "Plan One! Erect the Stabilize Earth Disk, limit its range to this field, and activate at minimum power!"

Several artisans immediately lifted a heavy copper base and placed it at the field's center.

The runes on the base were not jade but inlaid with a metal wire of good energy conductivity, the lines simpler than those on the "vortex machine," with a groove at the core.

Zhao Laonian personally took from his carried lead box a fingernail‑sized jade "primer" that had undergone preliminary Fortune Momentum immersion, and carefully placed it into the groove.

"Everyone, retreat ten steps!"

The artisans swiftly withdrew.

Zhao Laonian drew a deep breath, pressed his hands onto the two hand‑print‑shaped zones on the base's edge, slowly mobilized his spirit, attempting to activate the device to resonate with the faint heavenly‑earthly forces around, especially to harmonize with the dynasty's Fortune Momentum.

Only see the metal rune lines on the base light up one after another with a faint, almost colorless halo.

A barely perceptible, gentle ripple spread outward from the base like water ripples.

Where the ripple passed, the field's grayish hue seemed… to fade just a touch? The faint metallic stench in the air also appeared to dissipate somewhat.

But that was all.

The land remained compacted, the seedlings still withered, and the blue foam in the canal merely slowed its writhing, not disappearing.

The effect was minuscule.

"No!" Zhao Laonian shook his head, sweat beading on his forehead, "The power is too low! This bit of resonance is a drop in the bucket—like trying to dry a swamp with a single lamp!"

He signaled to shut down the device.

The rune light faded out.

"Shall we try increasing the power?" a accompanying official suggested.

Zhao Laonian immediately objected: "Impossible! This device is still imperfect; forcibly raising the power would easily overload and shatter the runes, and could even worsen the pollution via energy clash—risk too great!"

He walked several more circuits around the field, at times crouching to examine the soil, at times gazing at the overcast horizon, muttering to himself.

"Yin Energy has preliminarily bonded with the earth veins… brute force dispersal only makes things harder……"

"Fortune Momentum resonance… needs a stronger anchor and more precise guidance……"

"Perhaps… we could approach from blocking its further sedimentation and slowly neutralizing it……"

He suddenly stopped, a flash of light in his eyes.

"Commander Cui!"

"Here, sir!"

"Immediately organize labor to dig deep ditches around this area, following the terrain!"

"The ditches must be deeper than one zhang, five chi wide will do!"

"The purpose is not to draw water, but to try to cut off any possible underground Yin‑energy flow paths!"

"At the same time, gather large amounts of lime, plant ash, and… right, are there any smelting workshops nearby? Slag is best! We need the slag that has undergone fiery calcination and carries its own yang vigor dry fervent qi!"

Although Cui Renshi didn't grasp the meaning, seeing Zhao Laonian's firm tone he replied at once: "Yes! The north of the city has a state‑run iron workshop, slag piled like mountains! I'll have men fetch it right away!"

"Good!" Zhao Laonian nodded, then turned to his artisan team, "We'll adjust the plan!"

"The Stabilize Earth Disk structure needs minor tweaks—add a few auxiliary rune arrays focused on 'field stabilization' and 'slow neutralization,' abandoning forcible 'dispersion'!"

"Moreover, based on the Clear Flow Device principle, design several large 'filtration sedimentation pools' to place upstream of the polluted water source, line the walls and bottom with stone slabs engraved with specific runes, add layers of lime and activated carbon for filtration, and see if they can adsorb and precipitate the blue foam!"

Orders were issued one after another; the entire Ministry of Works team and the conscripted laborers from Xingzhou sprang into action.

The chants of ditch diggers, the rumble of carts hauling supplies, and the clink of artisans striking and adjusting tools once again broke the field's dead silence.

Zhao Laonian himself got to work, sketching with a charcoal pencil on the brought‑along drawings, constantly revising the designs of the Stabilize Earth Disk and the filtration pool.

Sweat flowed down his graying temples, dripping onto the drawing and blooming into a small blot of ink.

He was completely unaware.

Time passed bit by bit.

The deep ditch gradually took shape under the laborers' vigorous digging.

After adjustment, the Land Stabilizing Disk was activated again; this time, the undulations it emitted were gentler and longer-lasting, like a warm current slowly moistening the contaminated land.

Although it could not immediately restore fertility to the land, the unpleasant feeling of withering seemed to be checked, no longer worsening.

The first simple Filtration Sedimentation Pool was also built upstream of the canal.

After the murky, bluish water flowed through the pool lined with rune stone slabs and filled with lime and specially made charcoal powder, its obvious blue hue and foul smell actually weakened considerably!

"Useful! Minister! This method works!" an artisan in charge of monitoring water quality shouted excitedly.

Seeing this, the surrounding laborers and officials finally felt a spark of hope rekindle on their formerly desperate faces.

Cui Ren Shi excitedly grabbed Zhao Lao Nian's arm: "Minister Zhao! This is truly a divine technique!"

Zhao Lao Nian, however, showed little joy; he wiped his sweat and gazed at the still compacted land and the water quality that had only slightly improved.

"It's merely a stopgap, treating the symptoms not the root."

The deep ditch and filtration pool can only slow and block.

Even the adjusted Land Stabilizing Disk merely barely holds the situation, checking the further spread of the Bone-Corroding.

"If we want to thoroughly cleanse this land and restore its vitality…… it's hard, so hard!"

He sighed, his gaze turned westward, as if he could see through thousands of mountains and rivers to the hidden hand behind it.

"Unless we can fundamentally mobilize the dynasty's Fortune Momentum on a large scale, carrying out a massive, sustained cleansing…… or else find and cut off the source of the gloomy energy sedimentation."

"Otherwise, relying only on these devices from the Ministry of Works, we can only buy time."

He knew that news from here would soon be transmitted back to Bian Liang.

His Majesty and the Imperial Court need to make further decisions based on his preliminary results here and the still grave situation.

The Ministry of Works' response bought an initial respite in the battle against the Bone-Corroding.

But the true outcome remains far from known.

He withdrew his gaze and once again threw himself into adjusting the equipment and directing operations.

At the very least, before he falls, he must seize as much vitality from the land as possible from the grip of the Bone-Corroding poison.