Chapter 184

Chatting with Sun Yu, Wei Yuan was still inspired and had a new plan. He asked Ji Seeing Ji Liuli to design a formation for gathering Qi and nourishing Yin, and then set it up in several places with vigorous vitality within the border domain. Immediately, Wei Yuan ordered people to dig countless shallow pits seven feet long, two feet wide, and two feet deep in these formation areas.

These pits were arranged neatly, looking like a dense graveyard at a glance; in reality, they were a graveyard, and the formation set up was also a formation to improve the Feng Shui of a graveyard. But this graveyard was set in a place of vigorous vitality and was constantly gathering Qi and nourishing Yin souls; over time, it was prone to corpse transformation.

Wei Yuan didn't prepare this batch of graves for the dead, but for the living. Commoners who took the sleeping drug and lay in the grave pits could maintain their body's vitality to the maximum extent. After Wei Yuan and Ji Seeing Ji Liuli discussed it, lying down once could allow them to go fifteen days without eating or drinking, and then they could get up for a meal and lie down for another fifteen days.

Wei Yuan dug fifty thousand grave pits in the first batch, preparing to put all the old, weak, sick, and disabled into them, so that the entire border domain's grain reserves could last for twenty days.

Now, Xiang Xiaoyu had already organized manpower to reclaim land on a large scale, opening twenty thousand mu in the first batch, planting human-realm millet and wheat. Millet and wheat seeds were easy to obtain; although the yield wasn't high, they grew the fastest, taking only three months from planting to maturity. And in the Qingming border domain, millet and wheat grew even more rapidly, maturing in two months.

In two more months, the border domain would be able to harvest the first batch of human grain, but Yuan Yuan Qingyan simply wouldn't give Wei Yuan those two months. Even with the grave pits dug for people to sleep in, they were still forty days short in time.

Wei Yuan wasn't anxious either, just burying his head in training troops, while simultaneously having each city commander identify the strong men among the commoners, organize them separately, and send them to the army in batches. The army wasn't just for drilling; most of the new troops were sent to work in various mines and workshops, training during their spare time. Only those with a foundation in Body Forging would be organized into regular units and drilled day and night.

After the arrival of the eighty thousand people from Quliu Town, the original eight-thousand-strong cultivator unit had already expanded to twelve thousand. Actually, it could have been expanded to twenty thousand in one go, but Wei Yuan couldn't afford to feed that many soldiers, and other places in the border domain also needed people to work.

Now, within the twelve thousand, ten thousand could reach the Body Forging perfection after being empowered, and fifteen hundred could break through to the Dao Foundation. There were now over three hundred Dao Foundation cultivators in the unit; Wei Yuan selected two hundred to form a cavalry unit, and the remaining hundred-plus were assigned to various hundred-man teams as officers.

The number of people Wei Yuan could empower with his Ten Thousand Miles of Heshan had already increased to two hundred, with an empowerment magnitude of about one-fifth of what Wei Yuan empowered himself with. Now that he was constantly empowered by Qingming, Wei Yuan felt the empowerment of the Ten Thousand Miles of Heshan was limited.

But that was for Wei Yuan; for ordinary knights, it was a huge improvement. Even if it was only one-fifth, it was enough to increase their strength by fifty percent.

It was just that the empowerment of the Ten Thousand Miles of Heshan couldn't break through the Dao Foundation, and coupled with the limited number, all the core cavalry Wei Yuan selected were Dao Foundation cultivators.

These two hundred knights were each equipped with heavy armor and long weapons, plus their own magic treasures, and then each was equipped with two steel pipe guns.

It is said that the high-level cultivators of the Grand Void Palace had long discovered that gunpowder was easily affected by dampness, and since the steel pipe guns needed to be loaded with at least half the gunpowder, reloading was simply unrealistic, so they simply used oil paper to seal the muzzle after loading the gunpowder, so they didn't have to worry about dampness and could store them for a long time, using Dao power to ignite them when used.

According to the standards of Xu Xu Wenwu's world, this was actually a large bullet two feet long and as thick as a fist, which needed to be held in the hand and fired by rubbing the primer.

Over the next two days, Yuan Yuan Qingyan sent two more teams of envoys, all of whom were intercepted and killed halfway by Cui Yu and Feng Feng Tingyu, leaving none alive.

The border domain was silently accumulating strength, while Yuan Yuan Qingyan was furious.

It wasn't because the envoys had disappeared one after another, but because he had just discovered that all officials, clerks, and soldiers in the three eastern counties had disappeared. According to the local commoners who had hidden, the county magistrates had all been kidnapped by horse bandits, who were said to have gone west.

Upon receiving the news, Yuan Yuan Qingyan immediately smashed everything in his study that could be smashed, and even an antique vase sent by Xu Xu Jingfeng didn't escape his wrath. Finally, with nothing left to smash, Yuan Yuan Qingyan cursed loudly in his study.

Yuan Yuan Qingyan knew clearly that there were no horse bandits; it was clearly the border domain that had sent people to impersonate them!

Wei Yuan's audacity was truly beyond Yuan Yuan Qingyan's expectations and also made him exceptionally furious. In Yuan Yuan Qingyan's view, he had arrived at his post, and Wei Yuan not coming to pay his respects immediately was already a capital offense; now he dared to oppose him repeatedly? What did he rely on? Just because he was a disciple of an Immortal Sect?

Thinking of this, Yuan Yuan Qingyan was even more annoyed, and he recalled the fates of Immortal Sect disciples who had fallen into his hands in the past. As a result, the more he thought, the angrier he became.

Wouldn't it have been better for these people like Wei Yuan to just starve to death in the border domain? Why did they have to oppose him!

Calming down, Yuan Yuan Qingyan called in the people who had gone to the three counties to deliver letters, carefully asking about the local customs, distribution of commoners, and the movement of merchant caravans. After listening carefully, he had a count in his mind, knowing that Wei Yuan might have obtained a million catties of grain. But that was the limit; there was very little grain stored by the people in the Broken Domain. In the past, the Xu family had always relied on grain to control the people of the Broken Domain, so they strictly controlled grain imports, and almost no family had grain for the next day. If Wei Yuan wanted to buy or rob, he could only start with the merchant caravans.

Thinking of this, Yuan Yuan Qingyan gritted his teeth and said, "I'll let you live a few more days."

However, he immediately shook his head: "No, to receive without giving is not polite!"

Yuan Yuan Qingyan called in two Assistant Regional Commanders. These two were reinforcements sent by Chen Dao, who had just arrived today. As soon as the two Assistant Regional Commanders entered the study and saw the mess, they were both startled.

Yuan Yuan Qingyan pointed at the map and said, "You two bypass the old lands of the three counties in the north of the east side. Apart from transporting supplies for the government troops, all merchant caravans are prohibited from traveling. At the same time, you must clear the commoners in the domain, and confiscate all ironware and grain—all of it!"

The two Assistant Regional Commanders were startled again, and one said: "My lord, then the commoners won't be able to survive."

"The people of the Western Regions are like wild grass, very tenacious. They naturally have ways to survive; you don't need to worry about it. If they really can't survive, can't they run west?"

The two Assistant Regional Commanders finally understood Yuan Yuan Qingyan's intention and couldn't help but feel a chill in their hearts, but they didn't dare to say anything and left to carry out the order.

After the two had gathered their troops and left the camp to head north, they dared to speak a little louder.

One sighed: "This lord is indeed not easy to get along with; it's our bad luck to be assigned under him."

!.

The other snorted and said: "Although we can't say we love the people like our own children, we try our best not to disturb them. This man surnamed Yuan does such things; isn't he afraid of retribution?"

"If we weren't so pedantic, we wouldn't have been sent to this place. I heard that Old Zhou was also transferred from the Northern Frontier; he cursed loudly in the camp after getting drunk."

"Old Zhou has a high cultivation base and married a wife surnamed Xu, so he's fine no matter what he does, but we can't."

The two complained while heading north.

At this very moment, Wei Yuan was staring at the map, his gaze lingering around Quliu Town. Yuan Yuan Qingyan had sent two groups of envoys who never returned, yet he still sent a third; from this, Wei Yuan concluded that the lives of his subordinates were worthless in his eyes. Even if all the troops he sent out were killed, this man wouldn't even frown.

Since he wanted to play, Wei Yuan was prepared to play big. But before that, he still had to carefully weigh the combat strength of the Western Jin government troops, especially the Northern Frontier government troops.

Just as he was planning, Wei Yuan suddenly felt something strange and looked out the window.

At this moment, the sun was setting, and the remaining sunlight was like blood, with red clouds filling the sky.

The evening glow was exceptionally red, red like blood, spreading rapidly and coming toward the border domain.

(End of chapter)