Chapter 562: The Dark Side

When Wei Yuan stepped into Wucheng by the Great Lake, he finally realized that the short-term counteroffensive spirit of the Rain Kingdom had been crushed.

At this moment, Wei Yuan stood motionless above the city, utterly unconcerned with ambushes; whenever a Wu tried to strike, he simply reversed his hand and unleashed a Dao technique that obliterated the attacker—so brazenly.

No matter how brazen and arrogant Wei Yuan became, not a single spirit medium appeared.

Thirty thousand troops split into multiple squads, patrolling the makeshift city, shouting orders, driving the Wu out of hiding, and commanding them to gather all their belongings and provisions at the southern city gate, with one hour to comply—those who failed to arrive on time would bear the consequences themselves. The army had no fear the Wu would disobey; once the hour passed, they would set the city ablaze.

Wei Yuan had already summoned his dispersed forces via Dao Foundation warriors, and over the course of the hour, another forty thousand arrived, surrounding Wucheng on all sides.

In an instant, the hour was up; only slightly over six hundred thousand Wu had gathered outside the city, the rest either fled or hid, hoping to escape death.

A flicker of fire ignited in the north, then rapidly spread outward; thousands of human cultivators hurled fire-based Dao techniques in all directions, igniting the entire city.

After years of warfare between humans and Wu, each side had developed specialized Dao techniques targeting the other; this technique, capable of burning continuously even within the Wu realm's environment, was one such example—exceptionally effective at destroying cities, even over water.

The fire line swept from north to south, and soon the whole city became a sea of flames; many Wu burst from their hiding places, only to collapse into the inferno. Some lucky Wu found safe hiding spots, while many perished right where they hid.

Seeing the entire city reduced to ashes, Wei Yuan ordered the captured Wu to be escorted back to Qingming. The distance to Qingming was nine hundred li; those Wu still trapped here were either commoners or slaves, nearly all without cultivation base—nine hundred li was a death march for them.

Wei Yuan dispatched ten thousand soldiers to escort hundreds of thousands of Wu on the march, forcing them to travel without rest, eating only one meal per day. Under such treatment, fewer than one in ten would survive to reach Qingming.

This was an open strategy: it allowed most Wu to die on the road themselves, generating little karmic retribution. As for those few who actually reached Qingming alive, Wei Yuan would honor his promise and give them a chance to live.

Too many Wu naturally alter the heavens and earth over time; thus, excessive numbers became a path to self-destruction.

The canal's waters had gradually dried up; the Wu upstream had cut off the water supply to prevent the human army from advancing along the waterway.

Filling the canal would be a massive undertaking; Qingming was still in ruins, manpower scarce, so Wei Yuan left the canal untouched. A single canal was not critical—winning the war was.

Wei Yuan used a Dao Foundation warrior to assume his appearance and accompany the main force, while he flew ahead alone to Qingming.

He first reviewed the official documents accumulated over the past two days; in just these two days, over two hundred matters had been sent to him for decisions.

With the aid of Human Smoke, Wei Yuan processed documents at incredible speed—two hundred documents were finished in less than half an hour, the most time-consuming part being reading them and writing his annotations.

The new urgent matter now was to deal with land contaminated by Wu poison water. There was currently no better solution than Yu Yu Zhizhuo's method: excavate all poisoned soil, transport it away, and replace it with clean earth from elsewhere. The toxic soil would be piled in a remote location outside the realm for gradual disposal.

Beyond this, immediate priorities were war reparations; long-term priorities were the welfare of disabled soldiers—though only in Qingming did these count as major issues. Or rather, in Wei Yuan's mind, they were. In the Nine States, the standard approach—excluding a few famed enlightened monarchs—was merely to hand out silver and dismiss them; that was already considered benevolent governance. Usually, the disabled were simply sent home; they were burdens everywhere, eventually becoming beggars who perished in the next winter.

The lucky ones who encountered an enlightened monarch received silver—some more, some less—but even the most generous amount only bought a few acres of poor land, after which they were left to fend for themselves. This was already enough to earn a monarch a place in history.

Long ago, under Feng Feng Chutang's guidance, Wei Yuan had learned the correct way to study history; he knew these men could never hold onto such land—any slight market fluctuation would see their few acres seized.

Now, all land in Qingming belonged to Wei Yuan, distributed under the military merit land system; this problem did not yet exist. But this system could not last forever—it would inevitably face land consolidation.

No matter how much grain or land you gave these disabled soldiers returning from battle, they would eventually exhaust it. Wei Yuan pondered long and hard, concluding that the root solution was to give them the ability to sustain themselves continuously.

But that was Wei Yuan's responsibility—to determine whether he could create suitable employment opportunities for them.

Wei Yuan entrusted this matter to Human Smoke, to see what ideas the Dragon and Phoenix talents might propose.

After the documents came the secret reports from various regions. Wei Yuan still had no intelligence network of his own; most of these reports came from Empress Yuan, a few from Sun Sun Chaoen and Li Li Weisheng—sparse and irregular—and finally, from merchant caravans traveling to and from Qingming.

These merchant caravans were well-informed and eager to undermine rivals; for instance, the Jin Kingdom's traders had provided ample intelligence on Zhao Guo.

Today's secret reports included a letter from Xu Xu Jingfeng.

Since being subdued by Xu Xu Waner, Xu Xu Jingfeng had truly reformed himself, cultivating daily with single-minded ambition; he had already reached the late stage of Dao Foundation for some time. Had relations with the Xu family not been so tense, Wei Yuan would have invited him to Qingming to cultivate—perhaps even granting him a chance at a Manifestation.

No error in a single word, a single line, a single character, a single detail!

This secret report focused on only one person: Xu Xu Lanshan.

Xu Xu Lanshan was an extraordinary woman: Dao Foundation at twenty, Manifestation at thirty-five, then she left the Xu family to wander the world—exactly one hundred years had passed. Recently, she returned to the Xu family, having fully perfected her Manifestation, and was poised to break through to the Divine Vision realm.

Originally, Wei Yuan did not care whether the Xu family gained or lost another Divine Vision cultivator.

During this war against the Wu, Feng Feng Chutang secretly devised a plan: she cast a hidden spell and sent hundreds of pregnant Xu women into battle, all of whom died as expected.

Afterwards, Feng Feng Chutang secretly returned to Tai Chu Palace and used its divine treasure to trace karmic threads, discovering that the karmic ties of these pregnant Xu women had all been successfully linked to Xu Xu Wangu. That is, if Qingming fell and all these women died in battle, the resentment and karmic debt of their unborn children would be laid entirely at Xu Xu Wangu's feet.

These were no distant relatives—they were Xu Xu Wangu's own bloodline, his closest kin. The accumulated resentment and curses of tens of thousands of blood relatives created a karmic weight unimaginable—even Xu Xu Wangu could not bear it; he might be dragged down from his immortal throne.

(End of Chapter)