Longzang

Chapter 580 Ready to Flip the Table

Wei Yuan didn't rush to the workshop immediately because he was still worried about Xu Wenwu. He pulled him aside and instructed him, "Now that you have forged your Dao foundation, you have already entered the path of immortality. The karma on your body has become heavier, so you can no longer act rashly as you did when you were still in the outer world."

This tribulation you're facing this time was triggered by a careless remark, and it's exceptionally severe—this is Heaven and Earth punishing you. If you can't withstand this punishment, you'll perish! Therefore, you must be extremely careful with your words and actions from now on, otherwise, if another tribulation strikes, no one can save you.

In the world of cultivation, luck and feng shui are very important; you need to learn this lesson. Look at me, because I'm well-versed in this, I can say whatever I want without any problems…”

Before Wei Yuan could finish speaking, a cloud of tribulation suddenly appeared above his head, and five bolts of heavenly lightning struck down one after another! Before Wei Yuan could react, he was charred black and blue, and pieces of his body fell to the ground with a clatter.

Everyone felt a blur before their eyes, and Wei Yuan's private collection of storybooks had disappeared a few more times.

Wei Yuan stared blankly at the sky, while Xu Wenwu stared blankly at the charred Wei Yuan. Now he finally understood that in this world, anyone who boasts will be struck by lightning.

Xu Wenwu couldn't help but feel secretly relieved that there was no internet in this world, otherwise there would probably be more than half of the people missing.

Wei Yuan was struck by the heavenly lightning inexplicably, without any warning. Fortunately, the lightning was extremely powerful, its sound reverberating for miles around, but its actual power was not that great. It was only about the same as the lightning tribulation of the Dharma Aspect Ascension Realm, and it only scorched a layer of his skin.

Wei Yuan's body writhed and he was instantly transformed. He then grabbed his clothes and put them on. His current worry was that his robes and storage magic items were of low quality and would be destroyed by lightning tribulation. He had already destroyed two sets in just the past few days.

Wei Yuan, looking completely unconcerned, said to Xu Wenwu, "Take a good look at what I just said. I'll give you a book on feng shui later, so you can take a look at it first."

After saying that, Wei Yuan got up and flew away to the brocade weaving workshop.

At this moment, deep within the Netherworld, Shengxin was pulling along a beautiful witch who resembled an octopus and was considered to have unparalleled beauty by the witch clan, and earnestly said, "...I swear, my feelings for you are absolutely sincere. If I'm lying, may I be struck by five bolts of tribulation lightning!"

The octopus coldly replied, "I don't care if you're sincere or not, the key thing is that you're too ugly and poor!"

She strode away, leaving Sacred Heart behind, silently grieving.

Qingming's brocade weaving workshop is located in a secluded valley, next to the weapon forging workshop. It is heavily guarded, and is personally guarded by Yu Zhizhuo's fellow apprentices.

The workshop was a square building, three zhang high and several tens of zhang long and wide, with reinforced magic arrays on the walls. Qingming lacked large, aged spirit wood, so this was the only option.

Wei Yuan entered the workshop and saw a wide passageway leading directly to the center of the formation. The workshop was set up with the Four Symbols and Eight Trigrams Formation, with two looms placed in each position, and a freight car in the center of the formation.

Yu Zhizhuo opened the carriage door and saw four Dharma seats inside, each occupied by a cultivator who was focused on channeling their magical power into the Dharma array.

Yu Zhizhuo then said, "I have installed the Four Symbols Spirit Rail Array on this vehicle, which is managed by four Foundation Establishment cultivators. It can power all the looms in the workshop and make them run at full speed. A group of four Foundation Establishment cultivators can maintain the array for three days."

Wei Yuan then asked, "Why is the energy supply array placed on the vehicle?"

Yu Zhizhuo said, "When I looked at the information about the outer world, I found that the places where things were produced were called workshops. As the name suggests, there must be vehicles in a workshop. So I designed this magic array that is mounted on a vehicle, and it has indeed been incredibly useful."

"Look, it can store a certain amount of magical power and can be moved at any time. It can simply be placed in a position to provide energy. I'm planning to improve it so that the entire weapon-forging workshop's magic array can be powered by it; that would be much more flexible. The mortals from the outer world are indeed clever!"

Wei Yuan was also impressed, and then continued his tour. All the looms in the workshop were powered by a magic array. The raw materials were ready, and the craftsmen were all prepared, waiting only for an order to start work.

Wei Yuan nodded, and Yu Zhizhuo then ordered the work to begin. The four cultivators sat cross-legged in the center of the array, continuously channeling their Dao power into it. The array patterns on the truck lit up one by one, extending to the workshop floor and then to the looms on the array positions. As a result, the looms began to slowly start operating.

A moment later, the magic array reached its peak operation and began to run stably. These looms had all been recalibrated, and their operating speed was much faster than Wei Yuan had seen last time. Pieces of brocade grew at a visible speed, and the craftsmen filling the looms ran back and forth, extremely busy.

The craftsmen were mainly responsible for feeding the looms with raw materials and collecting the finished cotton.

Wei Yuan watched until the first complete piece of brocade came out of the loom, then calculated the time, which was about half an hour.

Based on this calculation, the sixteen looms in this workshop can produce nearly four hundred bolts of brocade a day, while in Ningzhou, it would take four hundred craftsmen five or six days to do that. The largest brocade workshop in Ningzhou is said to have two thousand weavers, but the craftsmen always have various things to do, so their daily output is only about the same as this workshop.

This workshop is staffed with six Foundation Establishment cultivators and twenty craftsmen. There are no special requirements for the Foundation Establishment cultivators; as long as they have magical power, they are eligible.

It is said that due to the soaring price of silk in Ningzhou, brocade merchants are planning to raise prices, aiming to increase the price of brocade to six taels per bolt. If this price is applied, then the brocade produced in this workshop could sell for two thousand three hundred taels of silver per day!
As for the cost, it's nothing more than the silk, and the maintenance costs of the machines, buildings, and people. The Dao Foundation is for consolidating cultivation. So apart from the silk, the rest can be basically ignored. The entire workshop only consumes a few taels of immortal silver per day.

As Wei Yuan was calculating how much silver he could earn, he suddenly heard several loud bangs. Three looms malfunctioned one after another, one of them even catching fire. By the time everyone frantically extinguished the fire, the brocade they were about to finish weaving was destroyed.

Wei Yuan then realized that this should be the normal state of the workshop, and the result of the calculation just now was only an ideal number.

Yu Zhizhuo, however, felt no embarrassment whatsoever. The cultivators of the Heavenly Crafts Hall were already used to similar accidents. Explosions were commonplace when they forged magical artifacts, often blowing off the roof of the main hall. What was a little fire from the machine?

Yu Zhizhuo then explained the design concept of the workshop to Wei Yuan. His idea was to build all the workshops exactly the same. In this way, the framework structure of the workshop buildings and the materials required for the magic array layout would all be the same, allowing for advance preparation and unified supply. Once the craftsmen were skilled, the speed of building new workshops would also be greatly accelerated.

Furthermore, with the current maturity of Qingming reinforced concrete technology, the construction of large buildings no longer requires the use of spirit wood that is hundreds of years old, and the construction cost has also been greatly reduced.

Yu Zhizhu then asked how many workshops were planned to be built initially.

Wei Yuan estimated that, under ideal conditions, a workshop could produce 140,000 bolts of brocade per year. If fifty workshops were built initially, the annual production of brocade would be 7 million bolts. The total annual production of brocade in the eight prefectures of Ningzhou would only be 10 million bolts.

The key point is that the cost of machine-made brocade is only slightly higher than the price of silk, amounting to no more than one or two taels of silver per bolt. Therefore, this quantity was enough to destroy the brocade industry in most of the eight prefectures.

Wei Yuan then said, "Let's build a hundred first!"

"One hundred?" Even Yu Zhizhuo couldn't believe his ears. This number was ten times more than he had imagined.

“One hundred.” Wei Yuan repeated.

Since we're going to overturn the table, let's do it thoroughly. Wei Yuan not only wants to sweep away the silk and brocade industries of the eight prefectures of Ningzhou and the Zhao Kingdom, but he also has his eye on their cotton cloth industry, which is something everyone needs and that's the real prize.

(End of this chapter)