Longzang

Chapter 553 Insurance
Wei Yuan stared at the thriving orchid, looking at it from left to right, as if he could discern a flower within it.

This orchid is truly a beautiful flower.

A large forest has all kinds of birds, and with many rare plants, there are bound to be unexpected surprises from time to time.

This fairy orchid is clearly exceptionally adapted to the Netherworld, one could even say it's naturally suited to grow here. Its arrival in the Netherworld is like a mouse falling into a rice jar; it can rummage around freely and eat its fill with just a few words.

Xianlan continuously absorbed the power contained in the Nether Crystal, then expanded her own domain, replacing the original Netherworld.

Wei Yuan suddenly realized he had made a mistake: the Immortal Orchid had replaced not the Netherworld, but a kingdom!

It's equivalent to replacing the original kingdom of Shuli with another kingdom. Although the territory is very small, it is essentially the same as a kingdom.

Strangely, the realm created by this immortal orchid is closely connected to Wei Yuan's mental world, like a sub-world that spreads out from his mental world. Wei Yuan can not only perceive the immortal orchid's realm as if he were in the human world, but he can also manipulate it to a limited extent as if he were in the human world.

Wei Yuan's heart stirred, and the first thing he did was to dig out the Nether Iron.

So he tried to sense it, and sure enough, his understanding of the properties of the Nether Iron became much clearer. If he had seen the Nether Iron through a thick veil before, now that veil had been removed.

Although the power of the Celestial Orchid's domain was weak, it could still slightly affect the environment, lowering the melting point of the Nether Iron by half a percent. Don't underestimate this half percent; just this small reduction significantly reduced the difficulty of smelting, allowing the Dragon Eagle to go from going all out to being more relaxed, and increasing its mining speed by half.

At this moment, the other immortal orchids in the mortal realm became restless and all demanded to leave. However, seeing that this immortal orchid was far from reaching its expansion limit, Wei Yuan decided to wait and returned to Qingming.

At this moment, in the azure sky, Yu Zhizhuo had gone from excitement to numbness, and facing the pile of millions of kilograms of Nether Iron in front of him, he began to ponder the meaning of life.

As a genius of the Heavenly Crafts Hall, Yu Zhizhuo was naturally familiar with the prices of various rare materials. What he was pondering now was that, ignoring the matter of Yu Jing, his current worth was equivalent to only three or four pieces of iron ore in front of him. Why was he less valuable than a pile of broken stones?

Wei Yuan understood Yu Zhizhuo's feelings at this moment, but there was nothing he could do to help. There were still tens of millions of kilograms of ore in the mortal world that hadn't been taken out yet. If they were all taken out, Yu Zhizhuo's Dao heart would probably collapse.

Wei Yuan has another important matter to attend to upon his return: he will be in charge of this month's Dao Foundation Training Class.

The candidates have now been selected. Among them, more than 4,000 people obtained the Foundation Building qualification after their families were promoted to commoners, more than 1,000 people had already accumulated enough military merits, plus 500 members of the Cui family and 500 members of small families and forces.

The great war with the Rain Kingdom caused the total amount of Qingming military merits to skyrocket, and a large number of criminals skipped the ranks of soldiers and jumped into the ranks of civilians.

Wei Yuan had already mastered the Dao Foundation training course, completing it all in half a day. He had consumed over five thousand strands of azure energy, and then the realm gained another eight hundred Dao Foundations, bringing the total number of Dao Foundations in the entire Azure Netherworld to six thousand.

The proportion of Qingming who successfully forged their Dao foundation this time was quite high. The core reason was the series of battles. Almost all of these candidates had fought their way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Regardless of their innate talent, their mental state was at least first-rate and formidable.

Of the 800 newly added Dao Foundations, less than 100 were either self-selected or combat-type Dao Foundations; the rest were production-type template Dao Foundations. Wei Yuan specifically promoted the Immortal Sword Pseudo-Sun and Ten Directions Glazed Golden Fire, two fire-type Dao Foundations, resulting in over 300 being successfully cultivated, including over 100 Immortal Sword Pseudo-Suns.

Qingming now possesses over three hundred Immortal Swords of the Sun. Wei Yuan estimates that if Xiao Yu were to see them, she would be overjoyed and faint from happiness, lamenting that she is not alone in her path.

The proportion of cultivators choosing template-type Dao Foundations in this batch was higher than before, and many, after hearing the introduction, opted for pure production-type Dao Foundations, such as Innate Life-Giving Water, Six Paths Jia Yi Divine Wood Qi, and so on. After their life-and-death battles, they all began to yearn for a stable and peaceful life, no longer needing to risk their lives every day. At this time, a thousand sets of Nether Crystal Heavy Armor and Nether Iron Battle Blades had been forged. After careful selection from the entire army, only eight hundred Dao Foundations were chosen and equipped with the new equipment.

The number of Dao Foundations in Qingming is now several times that of the past, but the proportion of Dao Foundation cultivators who specialize in production continues to increase. Wei Yuan no longer needs to bring all the mobile Dao Foundations to the battlefield as he did when Qingming was first established.

The eight hundred Dao Foundations before us, plus the more than three hundred Dao Foundation captains scattered in various units, are all brave and bloodthirsty warriors. On the battlefield, they can easily take on two production-type Dao Foundations at once.

This unit was attached to the Longxiang Army, but it was one level higher than the ordinary Longxiang Army, so Wei Yuan called it the Longxiang Wall.

At this moment, Wei Yuan was already considering how to counterattack Hongye, so he returned to his residence and inspected the recent achievements of the Research Institute of War Equipment for Equality of All Beings.

Wei Yuan wanted to find something that could replace warhorses, something that could carry soldiers for rapid mobility and, if necessary, charge into enemy lines.

Xu Wenwu had proposed the concept of tanks long ago, but in the eyes of the cultivators, these things were large and cumbersome, making them easy targets on the battlefield. These days, which cultivator didn't know a few iron-slicing techniques or flame spells? Putting aside everything else, flame spells were definitely much more useful than Molotov cocktails.

In terms of defense, a single Superior Spirit Shield is far superior to any tank, and it does not affect the cultivator's flight speed.

So Wei Yuan hadn't held out much hope, but he did see something quite interesting. This thing was far from perfect; its principle was simply a saddle mounted on the spray nozzle, with a ram and protective baffle in front of the nozzle.

In battle, cultivators ride these things, activate the nozzles, and charge straight into the enemy ranks. Their charging ability surpasses even that of heavily armored cavalry. The only drawback is that the mortality rate is relatively high, roughly between 60% and 80%, hence the name 'Cherry Blossom'.

Wei Yuan was both amused and exasperated, but there were some good aspects to the design concept of Sakura, mainly that it was cavalryable.

Wei Yuan then made a note on it, suggesting that, taking into account the concept of the motorcycle from the outer world, and adding flight capability, a new single-soldier vehicle should be developed.

After finally finishing his military affairs, Wei Yuan stretched and went to visit Bao Yun.

It was nearly dusk, and Bao Yun's temporary residence was quiet, except for two cultivators guarding the courtyard, who were chatting idly.

Without disturbing them, Wei Yuan quietly entered the courtyard, intending to see what Bao Yun was doing. As he walked these few steps in the courtyard, Wei Yuan had already thought of countless excuses for himself, such as being worried about her, not seeing her for a long time, not noticing the guards at the gate, and so on.

The study and the living room were empty, and the cultivation room was also empty, so only the bedroom remained.

For a fleeting moment, Wei Yuan felt incredibly lucky… no, incredibly unlucky. He had come to discuss serious business, and who knew she had fallen asleep before it even got dark?

Without hesitation, Wei Yuan pushed open the bedroom door and used his Dao power to eliminate all sound. At the same time, he had already come up with an excuse for his actions—no, a reason: Jianghu people are not bound by trivial matters.

At this time, although Wei Yuan and Bao Yun were still struggling with the issue of their official status, Wei Yuan was no longer willing to let go, so their intimate and ambiguous behavior served as an extra layer of security for their relationship.

In the bedroom, Bao Yun lay quietly on the bed, her breathing even, but her brows were slightly furrowed, as if she was concentrating on something and did not notice Wei Yuan's arrival.

(End of this chapter)