Longzang

Chapter 450 The first step

After finishing all of Qingming's daily affairs, it was almost dawn.

Wei Yuan picked up a bowl of medicinal soup from the side and drank it. The soup felt like swallowing a piece of burning charcoal, followed by a mouthful of sour and astringent taste, much like eating a raw plum.

As the medicinal soup entered his stomach, Wei Yuan felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. His strong stomach had been corroded, leaving a thin layer. Then, some of the toxins seeped out of his stomach and entered his chest and abdominal organs, while others entered his bloodstream and spread throughout his body.

Wherever the toxins go, the body's tissues die.

With his internal organs damaged, Wei Yuan's vitality erupted instantly, and the activity throughout his body surged. On one hand, he repaired the damaged organs, and on the other hand, he strengthened the existing organ tissues to prevent further poisoning. Suddenly, the excruciating pain was mixed with an endless tingling and itching.

After the excruciating pain throughout his body finally subsided, Wei Yuan felt he could regain his senses and concentrate on his work. At this time, his physical strength had increased slightly.

This bowl of medicine was the first collaboration between Xu Henshui and Sun Yu. It was said to be a cultivation treasure specially tailored for Wei Yuan, and only Wei Yuan could drink it and survive.

This medicine is primarily composed of potent toxins, capable of comprehensively and evenly attacking every vital tissue in Wei Yuan's body, thereby fully activating his physical instincts and enhancing his strength while repairing damage.

Sun Yu was in charge of the poison and medical principles, while Xu Henshui was responsible for optimizing the formula and refining it. Xu Henshui's alchemy skills were indeed extraordinary. After he took action, the efficacy of this medicinal soup increased by 50%. Apart from Wei Yuan, anyone who drank it would die, the kind of death that even a Celestial Lord couldn't save.

This medicine can actually enhance Wei Yuan's physical body once again; it is truly a divine medicine.

However, Xu Henshui inherited the bad habit of the Creation View, and the medicinal soup tasted like swill that had been sitting in the kitchen for several days, causing far more damage to Wei Yuan's spirit than to his physical body.

The initial purpose of developing this medicine was actually to enhance the physical strength of low-level cultivators. Among cultivators, the most numerous are those who cannot achieve the Dao Foundation stage and are focused on body tempering. Sun Yu had long wanted to research a medicine that could improve their physical bodies, as this was the fastest and most effective way for lower-level cultivators to increase their combat power.

After Xu Henshui improved the prescription and refined it, the toxicity increased significantly. So the two of them went to Wei Yuan to test the medicine. After the dosage was increased several times, it finally reached a level that could produce a noticeable effect on Wei Yuan.

The medicine that worked on Wei Yuan would be several times more effective on ordinary Body Forging cultivators. However, Wei Yuan's bowl of medicine could probably poison several thousand Body Forging cultivators to death.

Wei Yuan cooperated with the drug trial because the drug could significantly accelerate the body-forging process of mortals and increase the proportion of body-forging cultivators who could reach the Great Perfection.

After taking his medicine, Wei Yuan continued reading history books, this time searching for the problems and answers regarding the system of promotion based on social status.

Among the four ranks of criminals, soldiers, commoners, and registered officials, the path from criminal to soldier was relatively easy. However, the rank of registered official had many levels and was extremely difficult to advance to. One had to kill 30,000 men in battle to become a general, which meant that the number of generals would not be very large. This was mainly because the court had only granted Wei Yuan two generals, one of which was already occupied by Cui Yu.

Therefore, in this final section, Wei Yuan wanted people to see it but not be able to reach it, hence the absurd military achievement figure of 30,000 killed in battle. However, someone who could truly kill 30,000 in battle was undoubtedly a high-level cultivator of the Dharma Aspect realm, and wouldn't care about a mere general.

Therefore, the core of the entire system lies in the transition from soldier to civilian, and the key is how to motivate people to advance from soldier to civilian. The effectiveness of this advancement path depends on what civilians can gain at this stage and whether it is attractive enough.

What's most appealing right now is land. Both the Great Tang and the Outer World place great importance on land. Great Tang history records that the annexation of land by powerful families was the main cause of the dynasty's demise. However, Outer World records show that the concentration of land in the hands of the wealthy doesn't seem to have any significant impact. This is quite contradictory.

In addition, the outer world also has systems such as land communal ownership or restrictions on land transfer. However, Xu Wenwu lacked knowledge in this area, only knowing the facts but not the reasons behind them, so his records were very scattered. It was only through reverse deduction based on his experience in the human world that he was able to form a systematic understanding.

The outer world ultimately went to two extremes: one was public ownership of land, and the other was complete freedom to allow private buying and selling.

Currently, the realm operates under an extreme wartime model where all land belongs to Wei Yuan alone, and Wei Yuan is responsible for everyone's food, clothing, shelter, and transportation.

Wei Yuan had also deduced that with the existence of the human realm's Dharma body, this system could actually continue. At least, Wei Yuan could handle the affairs of over a million people, down to the smallest detail. With his innate ability to hear, there was no room for treachery or laziness.

Wei Yuan took out a piece of paper, wrote down the current system on it, and wrote down the free transfer of land on the other end. After thinking for a long time, he finally wrote down land grant in the middle, and then added two labels: commoners and military merits.

By comparing the systems of the two worlds, Wei Yuan discovered that the free transfer and sale of land was the root cause of the downfall of the Great Tang Dynasty and its successive dynasties, but it did not affect the national fortune of the powerful nations in the outer world. The difference lies in the fact that land production was of paramount importance in the Great Tang Dynasty, but its proportion was quite low in the outer world.

The outer world has no shortage of food. People starve to death simply because they can't afford it, and there's no problem with transporting it.

Therefore, Wei Yuan crossed out the free transfer of land, as this system was clearly beyond Qingming's current capabilities. The wartime policy of having all land belong to the Realm Lord should also be gradually abolished. In this transitional phase, allocating land to commoners became the best way to make a transition.

Wei Yuan, inspired by the real-time optimization of the commoner class system, revised the system. The revised commoners were divided into six levels, naturally requiring more and more military merits for each level.

Wei Yuan then designated a plot of land around each city as land grants. Once a resident of the realm became a Level 1 commoner, they had the right to exchange military merits for one mu (approximately 0.16 acres) of land. Each subsequent level could then exchange for the same amount of land. Reaching Level 6 commoner status would grant a total of twenty-one mu of land. Given Qingming's current six harvests a year, if they only sought to make ends meet, those twenty-odd mu of land could support sixty people.

The land granted could not be bought or sold; if one did not want it, they had to sell it to the military governor's office. This would prevent the problem of large households annexing land during this period. At the same time, Wei Yuan stipulated that the tax paid on the land granted would be 20% of the harvest, and would never be increased.

With the current situation where the rent for ordinary land in the human realm is 50% or even higher, having a plot of land allocated to a family means that the whole family will no longer have to worry about food and clothing.

After further refinement and adaptation through practical experience, this system was deemed feasible. Therefore, Wei Yuan, after careful consideration, drafted a new system, which he planned to discuss and promulgate the following day with the cultivators of Taichu Palace.

Based on the observations of human life, it is likely that in the near future, the common people will soon become the mainstream of the people in the Azure Netherworld.

This group's identification with and loyalty to Qingming will far surpass that of the surrendered soldiers of the Xu family, the government troops, and the refugees recruited in the later stages, second only to the refugees and rogue cultivators who first came to Qingming.

Furthermore, Wei Yuan had considered things more deeply. Only with a stable family business could there be a foundation for large-scale promotion of literacy education and the popularization of body-forging cultivation methods. Only then would Qingming have the opportunity to take the first step towards making everyone a dragon.

(End of this chapter)