Longzang

Chapter 989 Primarily Promotes the Foundation of Dao
The migration of nearly 20 million people to Qingming was a monumental undertaking. Maintaining order and setting up supply depots along the route alone mobilized nearly a million people. Wei Yuan had to deploy his entire second-line army of 500,000 to barely manage to get everyone into Qingming.

Qingming now has a complete and mature process for dealing with the migrant population. First, they are registered in a centralized manner and their health is checked. Then, they stay in a formation that can help them stay healthy and get rid of diseases for an hour to be disinfected. After that, they can be randomly assigned to a city by the local people.

Trucks carrying people waited nearby. Once each city had gathered several hundred people, they would be transported in one truck to the designated location. The receiving cities had already been informed and had designated residential areas and allocated farmland.

Most of the newcomers would migrate to the outer cities, disperse into newly built villages, and reclaim wasteland.

The sheer number of people they managed to attract far exceeded Wei Yuan's expectations, leaving most areas without adequate accommodation. Fortunately, Qingming's construction industry was highly developed, and makeshift buildings were erected rapidly. Initially, these migrants could only live in tents, but a meal of meat soup every other day was enough to quell any discontent.

The twenty million people who migrated from the State of Zhao were of varying quality, but as long as they had enough to eat and sleep for half a year, their physical condition would improve significantly, and many of them would contribute to the health of the people.

After another year, once their bodies have recovered and they are young, strong, and free of hidden ailments, they can begin Body Forging. At this time, more than half of them will contribute their Azure Qi. Three years later, those who have forged their bodies will have a solid foundation and can begin taking elixirs, significantly accelerating their cultivation progress. By this point, most people will have contributed their Azure Qi, and a small number will enter the Body Forging stage, generating a second strand of Azure Qi.

But that's about all the achievements this group has made; their real hope lies in the next generation they produce.

Children will generally start to be born in the second year, and a large number of newborns will appear in the third year. From this year onwards, the aptitude of the children born will improve significantly, and the base number of cultivators capable of body tempering will increase several times.

Amidst the chaos, another major event occurred. The Dao Foundation Ceremony, which had been postponed several times due to the expedition to Ji State, was finally scheduled to take place.

It was the first month of the third year of the Hongjing era. The weather was extremely cold, and the earth's energy was tightly bound. However, a trace of lesser yang was already being nurtured within the extreme yin, and vitality was about to burst forth. It was truly a good time to lay the foundation for one's path.

Moreover, the most popular Dao Foundation template in Qingming right now is Moonflower Sky Mist. Holding the ceremony at this time will slightly increase the success rate of this Dao Foundation. Therefore, Xiaoyu has written more than a dozen letters urging Wei Yuan to start the project. The tone of each letter is more and more mournful, to the point that Wei Yuan gets a headache whenever he sees Xiaoyu's letters.

Everyone is already very familiar with how to hold the Foundation Establishment Ceremony. The cultivators within Qingming have even divided it into phases, based on the different times the ceremony is held, such as Qingming Phase One, Phase Two, and so on.

Each cohort of cultivators addressed each other as "fellow cultivators," harboring a competitive spirit towards those from other cohorts. While the average quality of the earlier cohorts was higher, the later cohorts were far more numerous, leading to fierce competition among all groups. Meanwhile, many scions of powerful families outside the cohort were quite proud of being in the first or second cohort of the Azure Netherworld stage, constantly boasting about it.

The Dao Foundation Ceremony requires Wei Yuan's personal presiding, as only he can activate the power of "Instantaneous Beings," which is crucial for increasing the success rate of Dao Foundation cultivation. This divine skill, capable of turning the tide of battle and defeating the strong with the weak, has now become a stepping stone for newly established Dao Foundation cultivators.

To prepare for the grand ceremony, Wei Yuan returned to Qingming half a month in advance, handling the myriad of affairs brought by the twenty million people while also preparing for the ceremony. Deciding which Dao foundation to promote at the ceremony was of paramount importance.

Now, a single grand ceremony will produce tens of thousands of template cultivators, which is crucial to the future development of Qingming. Therefore, Wei Yuan dares not be negligent. He has to carefully review each newly produced template Dao Foundation to ensure that it is excellent enough before it is included in the recommended list of Dao Foundations for the grand ceremony and announced in advance for cultivators to choose from.

Because of the participation of cultivators from the Zhao Kingdom, which has a strong martial spirit, this grand ceremony saw an additional 10,000 cultivators with complete Body Forging skills participating, bringing the total to over 60,000, setting a new record for the ceremony.

In addition to the existing templates, dozens of new templates have been submitted, most of which are strange and unusual, even unorthodox. However, the existing templates are already quite excellent, making it extremely difficult to achieve a lower standard than them.

But there was still one Dao foundation that made Wei Yuan's eyes light up.

This foundational name is Moon Dance Dao Embryo, continuing the tradition that the more intense the name of Qingming, the lower the lower the moral standard.

This Dao Foundation follows the Taiyin lineage, making it suitable for recommendation at this time. In terms of Dao Foundation alone, it barely touches the edge of the Human-level Dao Foundation; there are still certain thresholds. In this respect, it's nowhere near as good as Yuehua Tianlan. The latter's lower limit is practically buried in the ground.

However, what caught Wei Yuan's eye was that the Moon Dance Dao Embryo also possessed a Dharma form called the Myriad Flower Golden Pill!

If a cultivator who practices the Moon Dance Dao Embryo has decent aptitude and exceptional comprehension, the Dao Foundation they cultivate may reach the Earth Rank or even the Heaven Rank. Therefore, it is a high-grade Dao Foundation that can change according to the cultivator's aptitude. After cultivating the Moon Dance Dao Embryo, cultivating towards the Myriad Blossom Golden Core becomes much more efficient. As long as the Dao Foundation reaches the Earth Rank, the probability of cultivating the Myriad Blossom Moon Wheel is as high as 50%, far exceeding the normal level.

The name "Myriad Splendors Moon Wheel Golden Pill" sounded imposing, but after deducing its nature, Wei Yuan discovered that this so-called Dharma Image was actually just a golden pill, enlarged and hung in the sky to imitate a full moon. The golden pill contained pure Yin energy, and then... nothing more.

This pill has extremely low spirituality and no inherent supernatural powers. Its Dharma form can only be cultivated up to the Nourishing Spirit Realm. It has absolutely no possibility of forming its own mental world, and its path to enlightenment ends here.

However, no matter how poor the Golden Core Dharma Form is, it is still a Dharma Form, incomparable to an ordinary Dao Foundation. Furthermore, once one has cultivated the prerequisite Moon Dance Dao Embryo, the difficulty of cultivating the Golden Core Dharma Form will be greatly reduced. This is not merely lowering the threshold for Dharma Forms; it's practically dismantling the door to Dharma Forms altogether!

The ingenuity and cleverness of the design of this path left Wei Yuan speechless with admiration. The designer possessed an extremely deep understanding of the Yin Way, and Wei Yuan even suspected that he had touched upon the Great Dao of Yin.

Looking at the template provider, the signature is: Heaven and Earth Sword Immortal.

There are people who don't want to leave their names? Wei Yuan was also surprised.

If I were to discover such a fundamental principle, I would publish academic papers relentlessly, hold seminars, recruit students everywhere, and have countless disciples. Then, I could become an academician based on this, not only living off it for the rest of my life but also benefiting several generations to come. How many generations depends on how long I live.

However, this person might also be trying to make a name for themselves; there are quite a few cultivators with this quirk.

So Wei Yuan instructed his attendants to investigate the origins of the Heavenly Sword Immortal, and then personally added this path to the Grand Ceremony template library, placing it in the most prominent position for this ceremony, also at the top of the template recommendation list. Not only that, Wei Yuan also personally wrote a recommendation, so that if more people chose to cultivate it, it would also contribute some of Wei Yuan's luck.

Soon, the Dao Foundation Ceremony was held as scheduled, and it was an unprecedentedly grand event. Five prominent families, namely Bao, Xu, Cui, Li, and Xiao, were present. Among the 60,000 body forgings, 10,000 Dao Foundations were finally established.

At this moment, the Azure Netherworld Dao Foundations were as vast as the sea. Although most of them were template-based foundations, the kind that could kill a whole group with a single palm strike, when gathered together, the Azure Netherworld Qi was extremely powerful. Some immortals, observing the Qi, had already seen a faint three-colored light deep within the Azure Netherworld Qi.

The Dao Foundation Ceremony has added several new recruitment professions, each with several specific template Dao Foundations. Sun Yu's medical clinic and Xu Henshui's alchemy temple remain the most difficult to enter.

The medical clinic was filled with handsome men and beautiful women, attracting cultivators like moths to a flame. The alchemy hall, with Xu Henshui, was the top choice for female cultivators. The more striking the female cultivator's appearance, the more she loved chasing after Xu Henshui, screaming with delight.

The old Taoist priest Chuhe has created a new position for a cultivator who opens up new horizons. He has already made a preliminary understanding of the nature of the mountain people's world. This position is to go to the mountain people's territory to reclaim wasteland.

The next job title is "Cloud Sky Roarer," which is actually a sprayer. Considering the terrifying future needs of the transport fleet, this position is recruiting two thousand people.

Just like the names of the Dao Foundations, the big shots in the Azure Netherworld racked their brains to give their professions powerful, domineering, and incredibly cool names in order to attract talent. When they ran out of new names, some big shots started to consider whether to increase the compensation.

Wei Yuan believed that this was a heretical path.

The right path is to patiently guide cultivators, helping them understand the importance of solidifying their foundation. Although the vast majority of model cultivators can only remain at the foundation-solidification stage throughout their lives, that doesn't prevent them from having dreams. At this time, a simple phrase like "miracles can happen as long as you work hard" can invigorate them for many days.

In the first month of the third year of Hongjing, the Qingming Dao Foundation Ceremony was unprecedentedly grand, and the strength of the entire Qingming rose to a new level, gradually embarking on a path completely different from that of the Nine Kingdoms.

In the same month, an unclaimed Buddha statue suddenly disappeared from the Great Treasure Flower Pure Land, causing a commotion throughout the temple. Several Arhats left the Pure Land and went to various parts of the world to search for clues.

(End of this chapter)