Longzang

Chapter 1039 The Ancestor's Daily Life

The First Dharma Assembly in the World brought Qingming over five hundred Dao Foundation Ancestors, as well as over ten thousand disciples and relatives from all over the world.

Upon entering Qingming, some of the ancestors believed in living in seclusion in the city, so they chose to live in Yong'an and Ding'an. Others believed they should live in seclusion in the mountains and chose to settle in border cities.

Whether they were truly hidden or merely concealed, after arriving in Qingming, they were like a drop of water falling into the ocean, truly disappearing into the shadows.

After settling down, the ancestors discovered that there were Dao Foundations everywhere—in the neighborhood, on the street, and in the backyard. You could throw a brick down the street and hit several Dao Foundations. With so many Dao Foundations, and hearing their disciples calling them "Ancestor" all the time, the ancestors themselves became a little embarrassed, so they quietly changed their form of address.

The laws of Qingming are quite strict and complete. Many disciples of the old patriarchs, when they first arrived, habitually acted like they were running rampant in the village, causing trouble. As a result, they were not only severely beaten by the street vendors who wanted to bully them, but were also arrested and imprisoned.

The patriarch sided with his own people regardless of right or wrong, and made a scene to stand up for his disciples. As a result, he was also apprehended and locked up next to his disciples.

He was arrested in the afternoon, and the verdict came down that evening. It was a lengthy and well-reasoned statement, several pages long.

Given that it wasn't a serious offense and it was his first time, Zhu Jie Fan Hua was given a relatively lenient sentence of only one year in prison. Moreover, after fully compensating the other party, he could offset his sentence with meritorious service.

After being knocked unconscious by a cultivator enforcing the law, the Dao Foundation Ancestor had long lost his arrogance and humbly inquired about how to obtain merit. At this moment, there was no fighting around Qingming, and there was only one way to quickly gain merit: work. If the Ancestor wanted to work, his sentence could be temporarily postponed.

The law enforcement cultivators listed various possible jobs for the ancestor. The jobs varied, but the daily wages were generally similar. So the ancestor chose the most glamorous and respectable job: a power supply array cultivator. Working here for six months would offset one year of his sentence, and the subsequent merits could be exchanged for Azure Essence to improve his life.

Fortunately, their lives had already improved significantly since they first arrived in Qingming, so this need wasn't too high. They discovered that in Qingming, as long as they worked diligently, they could eat meat every meal. Before settling in Qingming, even the direct disciples of the Dao Foundation Ancestor couldn't eat meat every day. Without enough meat, body forging would naturally be slower.

Currently, under the Qingming system, only certain jobs can earn merit points, including those related to powering magic arrays, underground mining, and factories. Merit points can be exchanged for Qingyuan, but Qingyuan cannot be exchanged for merit points. This is to prevent wealthy individuals from simply spending money to reduce their prison sentences.

Minor offenses are punished by law, and money is useless; one must repay with merit. This is the philosophy of the prosperous world, and it is also Wei Yuan's philosophy.

After entering the energy-supplying array, the ancestor found himself surrounded by template cultivators and immediately felt disdain. However, after a day's work, he realized that because he hadn't worked diligently, he hadn't been able to outperform the template cultivators!
This was intolerable. The patriarch still had his pride, so he only slacked off a few times the next day, and still couldn't defeat the template cultivator.

The patriarch was furious; he was finally getting serious!

On the third day, the patriarch didn't slack off, but still couldn't defeat the template cultivator.

The ancestor was taken aback, only to find that the template cultivators were not only focused, but each of them was giving it their all! The ancestor just didn't understand, it's just a job, why do they have to be so serious?
Despite his incomprehension, on the fourth day, the Dao Foundation Ancestor finally eliminated the group of template cultivators and took his rightful place in the ranking. However, from that day on, after returning home from get off work, the Ancestor couldn't even bear to read storybooks anymore.

During this period, the disciples of the patriarch gradually found suitable jobs and immediately started working enthusiastically. When they returned home, they were less interested in reading stories, so they naturally visited the patriarch less often.

The old ancestor was also helpless, after all, it was a good thing that everyone could make a living by their own abilities.

Not long after, the patriarch, who was also the chief disciple at the Foundation Establishment stage, found a job in a factory. Then, the disciples discovered that the cultivation techniques distributed by Qingming were actually much better than those taught by the patriarch, and they were even distributed for free! To learn kung fu from the patriarch, one had to spend three years carrying water, five years chopping wood, and seven years cooking before finally getting a meager fragment of the cultivation technique.

Later, the disciples discovered that they could exchange merit points for a large number of powerful cultivation techniques. If they had enough talent, they could even learn the Six Arts of Body Forging from the Primordial Palace!

So, after discovering there was a cultivation method to learn, none of the disciples or relatives came to visit anymore. It took the patriarch quite some time to accept the fact that he had become an ordinary person. Fortunately, the patriarch worked diligently every day, producing an outstanding amount of energy, and thus pocketed a considerable amount of bonuses. As a result, the other model cultivators were also dissatisfied, but they couldn't increase their power output, so they began to work longer hours, determined to wrest the bonuses back from the outsider.

After the massive amount of goods were produced, they were loaded onto flying boats and transported to the Kingdom of Ji, along with the recruited mortals.

In September of that year, as autumn deepened, the territory of the Ji Kingdom welcomed its first harvest season. Wei Yuan attached great importance to this, so he gathered the cultivators of the Taichu Palace and went to the Ji Kingdom together to build their reputation.

For the sake of the cultivation paths of all the cultivators in the Taichu Palace, Wei Yuan has now adopted a three-pronged approach and has developed a complete set of rules. The first is to accumulate prestige and fortune, keeping everyone in a state of being blessed with good fortune for a long time. Over time, everyone's aptitude will improve slightly, and it will be easier to break through the barriers in cultivation.

Secondly, there's the option of tempering one's body in the Desolate Realm. However, the Desolate Realm has extremely high requirements for the quality of one's Dharma Aspect, so Wei Yuan brought back a considerable amount of waste iron and stone from the Desolate Realm to build a hot spring bath. Even cultivators of average strength can temper their bodies by soaking in the hot spring. Furthermore, if the hot spring is well-controlled, even Foundation Establishment cultivators can come and soak.

Suddenly, hot springs for body training sprang up in major cities and were packed every day. Anyone with a little money wanted to soak in them.

Subsequently, the hot springs in Ding'an City and Yong'an City were bought by the Chamber of Commerce at a high price and directly converted into brothels. Business boomed instantly, and wealthy people would go to the brothels to bathe after eating and drinking their fill. The most sought-after talent of the girls changed from singing to scrubbing baths.

Wei Yuan hadn't expected that a few mere stones from the desolate realm could have such an application. After some thought, Wei Yuan also felt that he might have been too controlling and restrictive in the past, resulting in the residents of Qingming seemingly lacking entertainment.

So Wei Yuan decided to see what good applications everyone could come up with, and specially auctioned off a batch of wasteland stone and iron. The result was extremely popular; a hundred cubic meters of wasteland iron actually fetched several million Qingyuan.

The last resort was through elixirs. After twenty years of development, Qingming's medicinal garden finally reached a considerable scale and began to produce large quantities of qualified medicinal materials, with output approaching that of the main mountain's medicinal garden.

With an ample supply of medicinal herbs, Xu Henshui went all out, refining pills pot after pot. And with the support of the Hermit of Alchemy, he finally developed a vast and profound art of alchemy!

This alchemy has a series of prerequisites, such as all medicinal materials must be finely prepared and ground into powder, and some must have their essence extracted.

After the raw materials were refined, Xu Henshui personally used the powerful magic of the Dharma Image to finally refine a three-foot square cube-shaped pill.

Next came the cutting. Xu Henshui found a swordsman and made a cut every centimeter. Thus, a single square pill was cut into a million pills.

When the Hermit of Knowledgeable Elixir made his move, it was a completely different story. He could refine a giant pill nine feet square, which, when cut into pieces, yielded a terrifying 27 million pills!

Now, Zhi Dan Sanren has only increased the cost of raw materials by 20%, but the value of his pills continues to reach new highs.

Xu Henshui's alchemy skills also improved by leaps and bounds, catching up with Danming Ancestor and surpassing other Yujing Ancestors, second only to Zhidan Sanren.

The only drawback of the Yanhai Alchemy Technique is that the pills produced are square, making it easy to cut your throat when swallowing them.

With these three paths, the cultivation paths of the cultivators in the Taichu Palace have been broadened considerably. Geniuses like Wei Yuan, Zhang Sheng, and Bao Yun are, after all, a minority; the vast majority of cultivators in the Taichu Palace are actually at the Foundation stage, with no hope of ever reaching the Dharma Aspect stage. Now, Wei Yuan has set his sights on them, preparing to pave the way for their cultivation.

(End of this chapter)