Confucian and Taoist Cultivation Starting from the Equipment Slot

Time passed slowly, and in the blink of an eye, the Wendao Official Road was officially opened.

That day, Chen Zhuo also came to the city gate from afar to watch.

The first to arrive were trucks that were tightly wrapped up.

The goods were being escorted by a group of soldiers whose uniforms were printed with the word "prohibited".

"The Imperial Guards of the capital!"

Chen Zhuo recognized them at a glance.

The Imperial Guards protected the capital during wartime and escorted various valuables during peacetime.

"Who knows what's being transported in the carriage? These things don't look ordinary at all," some busybodies murmured nearby.

"Hey, you might never see these things in your entire life."

"Do you know who's escorting these things? The Imperial Guard!"

"The Imperial Guard will not be used to escort items that are not of great value!"

This commotion drew whispers from those nearby.

Even Chen Zhuo was curious about what exactly was being transported inside.

The escorting convoy sped into the city, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Just as Chen Zhuo was about to leave, he was surprised to find that at the very end of the convoy was something that resembled a palace.

It floated quietly on Wendao Road, following at the very back of the procession.

Chen Zhuo keenly noticed that the Imperial Guards around him were subtly protecting him.

It's even more important than that shipment.

"Has some important figure come to Qingshan County again?"

Chen Zhuo shook his head and stopped paying attention.

Such important figures are beyond my current reach.

He walked quickly through the outer city and turned at the intersection of the new city's market area.

Walk along the blue brick wall surrounding the College of Arts to the main gate.

Before he even entered, he noticed that the College of Arts was completely different from usual.

Two more Imperial Guards appeared at the gate, their armor bearing the same "禁" (forbidden) character as the escorting convoys at the city gate.

They merely checked Chen Zhuo's academic token before stepping aside to let him pass.

Along the short passageway from the main gate to the front of Minglun Hall, there were more than a dozen carts with their horses unloaded.

On the cart were stacked wooden crates, each half a person's height, with seals affixed to the lids. The seals bore the double stamps of the Imperial Academy of Literature of the capital and the Ministry of Rites of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

Several laborers from the College of Arts were carefully unloading wooden crates from a cart.

Standing nearby was a captain of the Imperial Guard, holding a list of sealed items with serial numbers. He would mark off each box he moved.

He kept muttering, "Handle with care, this box contains special lamp oil, you can't afford to pay for it if you spill it."

Chen Zhuo turned sideways and walked around the cart.

The bluestone steps at the entrance of the main hall were also piled with wooden crates that had just been unloaded.

Some of the boxes had their lids open, revealing neatly stacked, finger-thick, specially made oil lamps inside.

The bottom of the lamp is engraved with a ring of extremely fine runes, and the lamp oil is a pale gold color with a slight glow.

This is Wendao lamp oil, which does not consume oxygen when burning and releases pure Wenqi (a type of energy).

During the long night, the Academy must use the lamp oil for maintaining the array plate sparingly each month.

Now, these lamp oils are piled up on the steps like grains in a granary, each box labeled with a red tag that reads "Appointed by Zhengjing Academy of Literature".

Before he could recover from the sight on the steps, he saw Gu Qing'e emerge from a small side door next to the main hall.

She was holding a wooden box with the words "Fragile, Do Not Crush" scrawled on it in charcoal.

Gu Qing'e's eyes lit up immediately when she looked up and saw Chen Zhuo.

"Junior brother! You've come at the perfect time!" She shoved the wooden box into the hands of a servant next to her and ran over quickly.

"This batch of goods has just been unloaded; it contains special supplies for the imperial examination for scholars."

For example, high-grade blank talisman paper, standard ink sticks, and grading monitoring talismans directly allocated from the Imperial Academy of Literature in the capital.

These are all high-quality products that you can't buy in stores!

Chen Zhuo glanced into the main hall, which was filled with wooden boxes. Even the platform where Song Zhiyuan usually gave his morning lessons was piled up with boxes half a person high.

There are so many of these things that they have significantly elevated the level of Qingshan Academy.

"By the way, senior sister, did you see that moving palace?"

Chen Zhuo suddenly thought of that palace and asked.

Gu Qing'e was taken aback, then realized what was happening.

"That huge, dark blue thing? Of course I saw it! It's so big, and it's floating in the air, who wouldn't see it!"

Gu Qing'e pursed her lips and continued:

"I was just guessing with my senior sister, and she said that it might be someone from the Observatory."

The Observatory has a ship called "Palace of Sky Patrol" in Shengtian Prefecture. It looks similar to what you described. It can sail independently in the depths of the night and is equipped with a textual pulse sensing array.

However, the Heavenly Patrol Hall of Shengtian Prefecture would not be easily mobilized.

She tilted her head and thought for a moment, then added another sentence.

"Whoever it is, they're a big shot."

Chen Zhuo nodded. Whatever it was, it was a big shot, that was all that mattered.

After Gu Qing'e finished speaking, she pulled Chen Zhuo into the main hall.

Inside, the person checking the goods was Instructor Qian Wenbi. He was holding a thick inventory book and checking the numbers of the last batch of wooden crates with the Imperial Guard captain.

His movements were unhurried and deliberate, as calm as if he were reciting scriptures in class.

But Chen Zhuo noticed that his page-turning speed was more than twice as fast as usual. The list that could make this slow-paced old scholar nervous must contain something extraordinary.

After the last box was checked, the Imperial Guard captain withdrew from the Academy with an empty cart.

Song Zhiyuan then walked over from the direction of Yangzhengzhai.

He glanced at the wooden crates piled high on the steps, nodded slightly, and a smile he couldn't hide appeared on his face.

"This batch of goods has finally arrived. From the Zhengjing Academy to Shengtian Prefecture in the Dongshi Region, and then from Shengtian Prefecture to Qingshan County via the official road, this batch of goods traveled through three regions and took several months."

He took out a lamp of literary oil from the wooden box and showed everyone the engravings on the bottom of the lamp. A circle of extremely fine runes shimmered with a pale golden light in the sunlight.

"With the upgrading of Qingshan County, its cultural heritage needs to be expanded accordingly, and expanding the cultural heritage is not something that can be done in a single sentence."

This requires a large reserve of scriptures, cultural artifacts, and cultural resources, which Qingshan County has accumulated for decades, but it is still not enough.

This batch of supplies was pieced together from the stockpiles of Zhengjingyu Academy, Shengtianfu Academy, and two other upper counties in Dongshiyu.

He put the lamp oil back in the wooden box and turned to look at the faculty and students of the Faculty of Arts who had gathered around him.

"The cultural heritage upgrade will last for several days. Apart from the core integration process, which is personally handled by me and several instructors, the rest will also be carried out by me."

Other aspects include the daily infusion of literary energy into the textual lineage, the organization and archiving of scriptures, and the regulation and control of literary energy flow in conjunction with the array plate.

These require all staff members at the level of child prodigy or above to participate in shifts.

His gaze swept across the crowd, lingered on Chen Zhuo for a moment, and then looked away.

Chen Zhuo understood what his master meant.

This is an opportunity, but we don't know what kind of opportunity it is.

The work assignments were quickly finalized.

All scholars of the Academy who had passed the preliminary examination or above were divided into four groups, taking turns to be in charge of the three stages.

The newly arrived scriptures, classics, and literary artifacts were categorized and sorted according to their grade, and entered into the new catalog of the Academy's collection.

They take turns injecting literary energy into the literary context room to help maintain a stable flow of literary energy during the expansion of the literary context.

Several instructors worked together in the underground cultural heritage room of the Academy of Arts to operate the array plate and adjust the fusion rate of the newly added cultural energy with the local cultural heritage.