Chapter 385: No Fuss

As the supplies from within Hanyang Pass were transported back, the eight hundred Dao soldiers also returned to Qingming. After briefly experiencing the life of horse bandits, the Dao soldiers were all very excited, with quite a few harboring the intention of changing their profession.

Little Wei Yuan hurriedly chased them all off to cultivate, not letting their thoughts continue to wander. If the Dao soldiers handed down by the sect were turned into horse bandits, the Master would likely come to purge the sect.

The Cui family sent over more disciples one after another, totaling five hundred people. They, the eight hundred Dao soldiers, and the two hundred domain cultivators were the members of this term's Dao Foundation crash course.

Expanding to fifteen hundred people all at once, Little Wei Yuan felt a bit of pressure.

Regarding the Dao soldiers and domain cultivators, Little Wei Yuan originally had different processing procedures. Simply put, they would get one extra chance—a chance to forge their Dao Foundation according to their own wishes. If it failed, they would then choose the Dao Foundation templates provided by Little Wei Yuan.

But after discussing with the various cultivators of the Grand Void Palace, Little Wei Yuan finally decided to let the Cui family disciples adopt the same procedure, which meant giving them the same extra chance. Although this would consume the remaining limited Qingming Pool water, Little Wei Yuan instinctively felt that maintaining basic fairness within the same group was also very important.

One more Dao Foundation template was provided in this term, which was the flying sword for launching that Little Wei Yuan had just manufactured.

This flying sword had no complex shape and no extra functions; its only miraculous aspect was that its rear section could explode, thereby pushing the front section to accelerate and increase its power. If loaded into a specially made magic tool gun, it would be a high-power flying sword shell.

Precisely because it was plain and unadorned, it further expanded the scope of human-rank Dao Foundations, making another significant contribution to the expansion of the human immortal Dao.

But this flying sword could be forged in multiple numbers, meaning that after forging the Dao Foundation, depending on individual talent, it could be one sword, three or five, or even more.

With Little Wei Yuan's example of "casting a brick to attract jade" before them, the cultivators of the Grand Void Palace had long since racked their brains to study new Dao Foundations. They soon discovered that as long as one was shameless, there was basically no difficulty in developing a new Dao Foundation.

Thus, Yu Zhizhuo brought out the Five-Direction Geng Metal, and Sun Yu obtained the Innate Life-Nurturing Water.

Old Daoist Chuhe originally wanted to create a water-element or wood-element Dao Foundation, but having already obtained the Six-Path Jia-Yi Divine Wood Qi, it was difficult to break the lower limit. So, after pondering for a long time, he developed a Beast-Controlling Immortal Heart. This Dao Foundation was adept at gaining the favor of spirit beasts, making it easier to take powerful spirit beasts as spirit pets.

However, these three were Little Wei Yuan's elders after all, and they still wanted some face; although the new Dao Foundation templates were stronger than the few Little Wei Yuan had developed, the names were conversely much inferior.

After settling these people who were to forge Dao Foundations, the three hundred thousand Xu family members and government army prisoners were also mostly dealt with. Most of those who could go back had already gone back, and those remaining were all without support, totaling two hundred and ninety-nine thousand at this moment.

Little Wei Yuan picked an afternoon to gather everyone together. With three hundred thousand people gathered in one place, it was truly a sea of people. When Little Wei Yuan ascended the high platform, everyone quieted down, knowing that what Little Wei Yuan was about to say concerned their own fates.

Little Wei Yuan channeled his Dao power and added a bit of Dragon Qi obtained from the dragon bone into it. A true dragon naturally possesses dragon might, which is terrifyingly suppressive to lower-level living beings, far more obvious than the Laurel Immortal Tree or the Ice Glass Divine Wood. So, as soon as Little Wei Yuan spoke, those closer to the high platform immediately trembled uncontrollably, and many even collapsed to the ground.

"Look, who is this?"

Two cultivators escorted Xu Chunyuan onto the high platform, and a commotion immediately broke out below. People recognized Xu Chunyuan on the spot, and as it spread from one to ten, ten to a hundred, in the blink of an eye, everyone knew.

Little Wei Yuan said, "This person was originally the Hanyang Pass Garrison Commander, and now he also stands here. So, the Xu family cannot save you, and no one can save you! Now, what I want to talk about is the arrangement for you. Under this system, as long as you diligently complete the tasks handed down, you have the possibility of shedding your current status, and perhaps even becoming government soldiers under my command."

Next, Little Wei Yuan announced a new status mechanism. This mechanism had two lines: merit and cultivation. Everyone's starting point was as a "criminal." Criminals were like prisoners, and the punishments for mistakes were extremely heavy; there were dozens of crimes punishable by beheading alone. Once a criminal accumulated enough merit, they became a "soldier." This soldier was not an ordinary soldier, but similar to the prisoner battalions or dare-to-die battalions in the army.

After being a soldier came being a commoner, and after that, being a registered government soldier. This was the status line.

Improving Body Forging cultivation would also bring corresponding preferential treatment; one could take on more tasks, and accumulating merit would be faster. Each Body Forging realm had many exclusive tasks.

If Body Forging reached Bone Forging and one was willing to sign a blood pact, one could directly skip the criminal status and become a soldier.

The merit required for status promotion was different for each level. Promoting from criminal to soldier was not much; if one was diligent and committed no offenses, one could be promoted in at most one year, but from soldier to commoner would take three years, and from commoner to government soldier would take six years.

Little Wei Yuan had not yet refined this mechanism. His initial idea was to first subdivide the criminal stage into more than a dozen stages, fast at the beginning and slow at the end; the first few levels could be promoted in a few days, while later ones would take a dozen days, dozens of days, or even hundreds of days.

There were many similar systems in history books, and Xu Wenwu's materials also mentioned them.

With the new status mechanism announced, all the prisoners became much quieter, and the original pervasive unease dissipated quite a bit. Otherwise, according to custom, if there were suddenly so many prisoners and not enough food, it was very likely that a portion of them would be buried alive. Now with this complex mechanism, it was clear that Little Wei Yuan did not intend to kill them.

The most important task for criminals at the moment was to open up fields. They would work with the newly joined refugees to reclaim wasteland at the edge of the domain. That place was far from the boundary stones, and the heaven and earth transformation had only just begun; the grain produced by newly opened fields might not even reach two hundred catties. However, with enough manpower now, Little Wei Yuan's first step was to open up one million mu of fields before considering anything else.

Then, some among the criminals and refugees who were literate, had achieved success in Body Forging, and were relatively smart would be sent to Yu Zhizhuo to undertake work such as mountain opening, mineral selection, furnace building, and bridge construction.

The remaining people were taken to build cities and dig underground works. Little Wei Yuan always held wariness toward the Xu family, and to be honest, he was not at ease with Western Jin either. If it weren't for the Northern Liao tribe fighting fiercely, perhaps the Western Jin army would have arrived at the domain at some point.

But Little Wei Yuan and the various cultivators also had some disagreements, mainly regarding the nine Clear Spirit Trees Little Wei Yuan brought back this time. Although the Clear Spirit Trees were only spirit plants, they could improve the surrounding heaven and earth environment on a large scale and increase spiritual energy.

According to True Person Chuhe's idea, all nine trees should be planted in the medicine garden, so that a Nine-Palace Spirit-Gathering Array could be set up, greatly increasing the spiritual energy concentration in the medicine garden, and the growth speed of all spirit plants in the garden would increase accordingly.

Others had no objections, only Yu Zhizhuo proposed an alternative plan: the same Nine-Palace Spirit-Gathering Array, if placed in the weapon-forging workshop, could improve both output and quality by one grade. But the cultivators still felt that according to tradition, such spirit trees should be placed in the medicine garden.

However, Little Wei Yuan finally only put three in the medicine garden, setting up a small Three-Talents Spirit-Gathering Array. The effect of this array was only equivalent to twenty percent of the Nine-Palace Array. The remaining six spirit trees were all planted in common fields, especially around a few corrupted plots.

In this way, the expansion of corrupted soil could be suppressed, protecting the common fields, while simultaneously increasing the yield of the common fields. Calculated, one season could yield about two million catties more grain.

Because of this matter, a rare argument broke out among the cultivators.

One of the disagreements was that the cultivators believed that commoners only needed not to starve to death, and being able to let them eat their fill was a benevolent act throughout the world. Such important resources as the Clear Spirit Trees had more urgent uses and should not be used on commoners.

It was only then that Little Wei Yuan discovered that the cultivators already had complaints about him always tilting resources toward commoners, and on the major matter of distributing the Clear Spirit Trees, it finally erupted.

Even if immortals and mortals were treated equally, from the perspective of the entire domain's output, whether to set up a Nine-Palace Array in the medicine garden or disperse it to the common fields yielded more benefits, there were also disagreements. If viewed from this angle, Yu Zhizhuo's plan became extremely competitive.

The breastplates, weapons, and tools produced by the weapon-forging workshop were completely in short supply, especially the breastplates, which could be sold as many as were produced. The improvement in output and quality could be calculated in immortal silver. Using the extra immortal silver to buy grain would certainly be more than two million catties.

!.

To be honest, Little Wei Yuan could not win the argument on either of these two points. In the end, he had to use his status as Domain Lord, plus the fact that the spirit plants were directly bestowed upon him by True Lord Huang Yun, to end the dispute.

Little Wei Yuan could not explain why either; it was just an instinctive intuition that if the grain produced in his own fields was not enough, he would feel panicked in his heart.

The argument ended, and the cultivators were once again in harmony, forgetting the unpleasantness just now to the back of their minds.

Sun Yu said, "This Great Cause Curse came suddenly; I feel that perhaps it was not accidental."

True Person Chuhe's eyes lit up, and he slowly said, "You mean, there is a traitor?"

Sun Yu nodded, "Otherwise, it cannot be explained. I recently took advantage of the opportunity of my injuries healing to cast a hex to calculate the heavenly secrets, and the hex image indeed shows that the Great Cause Curse is related to a traitor."

Yu Zhizhuo said, "This matter is easy to investigate but also not easy. It only needs to spend some time and resources to first set up a large array to calculate the heavenly secrets, preventing the traitor from confusing the heavenly secrets. Then, investigate one by one everyone who could enter the main peak, and most likely there will be a result. If that doesn't work, then expand the scope; there are only two thousand or so people in total, so it can always be found."

Feng Tingyu suddenly said, "Some people left the domain around that time, and they cannot be let go either."

The cultivators all nodded, deeply feeling it made sense, but they did not change their view of the Bright King Palace because of Feng Tingyu's occasional flash of inspiration.

Little Wei Yuan had already thought about this matter and considered it repeatedly many times. At the moment, he said, "There might be a traitor, but they must be hidden very cleverly. If we search on a large scale, we might be able to catch them, but there is also a high possibility of catching the wrong person. There are many similar things in history, and in the end, most of them became sensational cases, involving a wide range of people."

Speaking of this, Little Wei Yuan smiled and said, "Anyway, the Great Cause Curse couldn't kill me, and there aren't many things left that can kill me. A traitor, even if caught, has no benefit. I feel that there are so many things to do now, so let's not torment ourselves."

The cultivators thought for a moment; although they were still unwilling, they all accepted Little Wei Yuan's idea.

Ning Prefecture, Qianqiu City.

Fan Donghe walked out of the Suye Hall, exhausted. The Suye Hall was a key place for the Xu family to collect intelligence and purge traitors, always making people change color at the mention of it. Since the day he returned, Fan Donghe had to report to the Suye Hall every day to accept interrogations lasting several hours.

Fan Donghe was a Dharma Form after all, with powerful combat strength, and there was no evidence of him defecting to the enemy, so the Suye Hall deacons were still polite to him and did not use torture, and would let him go home to spend the night after the daily interrogation.

But others did not have this treatment. Those officers released by Little Wei Yuan were all captured back the first time after the Xu family took over Hanyang Pass again, and the core of the questioning was only one question: Why did Little Wei Yuan release them?

Where could there be an answer to this question? The officers' answers were naturally varied, and such answers naturally would not satisfy the deacons, so they used torture. This time, there were a full thousand officers captured back from Hanyang Pass, and for a time, the Suye Hall was overcrowded, the torture chambers were simply not enough, and many single torture chambers had to be stuffed with four or five people, everyone squeezing together to be tortured.

The officers knew well that this matter could be big or small, but falling into the hands of the Suye Hall would inevitably only become big and not small, so they tried their best to mobilize their families, hoping to be able to get themselves out. Thus, the deacons of the Suye Hall, big and small, made a fortune more or less.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 386 =====