Chapter 407: Humanity

It was the first ever research institute to exist in the Great Realm. Wei Yuan felt that it was acceptable for it to have an impressive name.

However, the group of researchers consisted of only 700 people or so. Although the research teams among the mortals were becoming increasingly specialized as of late, a team of 700 certainly couldn’t be considered large.

The research institute had no specific research focus. They studied whatever came to mind, or whatever tasks Wei Yuan assigned them.

Furthermore, none of the hidden dragons and phoenix chicks who had shone so brightly during the Bao Clan’s secret realm were part of this research institute.

At the moment, the other mortals weren’t paying much attention to this matter. Everyone was busy with their own affairs—some worshiping the gods, others tilling the fields. Only the few hundred who had just been reincarnated through the All-Gate of Reincarnation felt lost, unsure of what they were supposed to do.

With a thought, Wei Yuan transmitted information about the current state of the realm, its surroundings and more to the mortals before assigning them a task: find ways to make money.

Meanwhile, Wei Yuan had finally managed to calm the cat and the ferret. After sending the ferret away on a free roam within the realm of Qingming, he visited the armament workshop and Sun Yu’s place as per usual.

Unbeknownst to Wei Yuan, as soon as he left, Trueman Chu He secretly sought out the Shadowless Flying Ferret and engaged it in an earnest conversation once more. His very opening statement was, “I wish to become your adopted son....”

The ferret did not understand what the term “adopted son” meant, but instinctively sensed that it wasn’t a good term. So, it spat in the old Daoist’s face before slipping into the underground and began roaming wherever. Quite a few treasures seemed to exist beneath this land, so it would have to search slowly and thoroughly.

Although he was rebuffed, Trueman Chu He was a man with an unshakeable composure. Paying no heed to the saliva still covering his face, he began rethinking his approach and cooking up a new speech for the next time he encountered Grandfather Ferret again. This was nothing new to him; back in the day, he hadn’t tamed the cat and the snake right out of the gate either. It had taken a great deal of patient, persistent effort.

The ferret had been strong enough to fight the cat and the snake alone and still gain the upper hand. If he could make it his adopted father, his combat power would instantly double, and he would be able to walk over most Avatars. The next time he ran into Fen Hai, he would have the confidence to affectionately address him as Little Fen or Little Hai.

As for what his fellow humans would think of him if they learned of the adoption, they wouldn’t. After all, none of them understood the language of spirit beasts—who would ever find out the truth?

......

At this time, the armament workshop was thriving. Several new blast furnaces had been erected over the past few months. In order to improve efficiency, Yu Zhizhuo had even built two blast furnaces at the mine shafts beyond the boundary of Qingming.

Because they were erected beyond the domain, they required a new shift of cultivators every half a day. Still, it was better than transporting the ore over 100 li.

Meanwhile, Sun Yu had opened a new clinic in the new city. It already had dozens of apprentices and were poised to expand further.

As for himself, he was now focusing primarily on researching gunpowder formulas. Unfortunately, since Ji Liuli’s departure, he no longer had the means to simulate material properties and dramatically reduce his research time. He could only resort to the old-fashioned method of trial and error, testing new formulas and optimal ratios bit by bit.

Today, Sun Yu carried out hundreds of explosions and recorded the corresponding data every day.

Suddenly, the thought of simulating physical properties gave Wei Yuan a vague idea. He proceeded to spend the entire afternoon at Sun Yu’s clinic, scanning all of his recorded data with his perception. Him reviewing this data was equivalent to the mortals in his Dao Foundation reviewing it.

Before he knew it, the official harvest season had arrived. Wei Yuan temporarily set aside his other work and focused on dealing with the harvest.

This season’s grain harvest was expected to reach nearly 200 million catties. Wei Yuan had already constructed a large number of granaries in preparation. Currently, Qingming could produce one harvest every two months. and assuming that a single person consumed 400 catties of grain per year, this would be enough to sustain three million people. However, Qingming only had a total population of one million at the moment.

However, 400 catties was merely the minimum standard to prevent starvation. That was why Wei Yuan did not stop the land reclamation efforts. His plan for the next season was to expand the amount of cultivated land to two million mu.

As one plot of grain fields after another ripened, the spirit qi within the Great Realm kept gushing forth in surges. The concentration of spirit qi kept rising, and the area of fertile soil expanded even further.

One day, Wei Yuan suddenly discovered that the mortals within his Dao Foundation were also harvesting. In the Great Realm, the mortals had long since tilled many mu of land on the fertile soil. Most of the crops planted in these fields—grain and vegetables—had actually ripened and could be harvested by the mortals.

If these fields were located in the outside world, they would probably be classified as spirit fields. It was why their yield was incredibly high. Looking at the dense, thriving rice plants, it was clear they were going to yield around 800 catties per mu.

After harvesting the grains and vegetables, the mortals actually took them home to cook. Thus, for the first time, wispy plumes of cooking smoke rose within the Great Realm.

Wei Yuan watched them intently, so much so that he temporarily set aside all other matters.

He saw that after the mortals had cooked their meals, they actually began to eat them with great earnestness. Wei Yuan found this to be very strange. When he scanned the food with his perception, he discovered that its substance was really spirit qi—essentially the same as the rock and soil of the Great Realm.

Despite this, the mortals ate their food with the utmost seriousness, savoring every bite. Some were so moved that tears welled up in their eyes. Wei Yuan saw a mortal clutching a bowl of white rice as they wept uncontrollably, declaring they had never tasted anything so delicious in their lives. He even vowed to devote himself to the art of cooking for the rest of his life, and if he ever succeeded in cultivation and ascended to the path of immortality, he would become the Rice Immortal.

Wei Yuan desperately wanted to strike him with a bolt of lightning.

If everyone thought this way, wouldn’t there eventually be a Steamed Fish Immortal, Roasted Chicken Immortal, or even a Boiled Water Immortal?

Setting aside the few absurd individuals, Wei Yuan suddenly noticed that those who had eaten had actually grown a little stronger. Those researching how to cultivate were even showing signs of body-tempering!

How was this possible?

Wei Yuan instantly felt confused. The spirit plants in the Great Realm weren’t immortal plants. In fact, they were essentially a part of his Dao Foundation—it was just that their form was different, like how a rock was transformed into a cauldron. The same logic applied to these mortals as well.

Not only did eating food cause these mortals to grow stronger, it was to the extent where their growth actually exceeded the nutritional value of the food they consumed. Essentially, it meant that his Dao Foundation was consuming itself and growing fatter as a result. How was this possible? Where did all the additional spirit qi even come from?

There was one phrase in Xu Wenwu’s materials that had left a deep impression on Wei Yuan: the law of conservation of energy. When he thought about it, he discovered that it was indeed one of the fundamental Great Dao governing the workings of the world.

And yet, his Dao Foundation had deviated from the Great Dao. To give an example, it was like stepping on his right foot with his left, only to soar higher and higher as a result!

At this point, Wei Yuan was genuinely feeling a sense of panic. Deviating from the great Dao was no trivial matter!

After regaining his composure, Wei Yuan meticulously scanned everyone present and every dish, monitoring the source and flow of spirit qi in each one. Finally, he discovered that these mortals somehow possessed the ability to absorb worldly origin qi, and the excess spirit qi was actually being applied to the mortals themselves.

The more spirit plants there were inside the Great Realm, the faster they could absorb and release worldly origin qi to generate spirit qi. However, these plants were part of the Dao Foundation. Essentially, their presence enhanced the speed at which the Great Realm absorbed and release worldly origin qi. To put it more abstractly, there had always been only one single point of entry and exit—until now.

By eating their meals, the mortals had transformed themselves into nodes capable of absorbing and releasing worldly origin qi. Although each individual node was utterly insignificant compared to the Great Realm, it was relatively independent. Over 1,000 mortals had eaten a meal at the moment, so he now had over 1,000 independent nodes capable of absorbing and releasing worldly origin qi in his Dao Foundation.

After eating, the group of cultivating mortals who had made progress in their body-tempering were ecstatic, like fanatics who had just received a response from their deity. They began constructing their own living quarters and clearing new fields on the fertile land surrounding them.

Wei Yuan continued to observe the mortals within his Dao Foundation while attending to various affairs of the realm. The harvest season was incredibly busy, and even after the harvest, there was still a great deal of work to be done such as processing and storing the grain, plowing the land anew in preparation for the next season, clearing new fields, removing the decayed soil, and so on.

Meanwhile, the mortals within the Dao Foundation followed suit and established two more research institutes. One was named Above Primal Chaos Institute and the other Primordial Light Institute. The names were each more grandiose than the last, but Wei Yuan honestly couldn’t discern any real difference between the three research institutes. If he must nitpick, the Above Primal Chaos Institute had a hidden dragon and a phoenix chick among their members.

Wei Yuan chose not to interfere and continued to attend to the affairs of the realm of Qingming. By this time, the 3,000 Dao Soldiers from the Palace of Absolute Beginning had arrived, and the Cui Clan of Qinghe had sent another 500 clansmen. Combined with the 500 individuals selected within Qingming itself, the fifth term of the Dao Foundation class began. The first lesson of the course focused on identifying ores, understanding the physical properties of the earth, and refining one’s mental state. Each student was required to refine their state of mind while processing 5,000 catties of ores per day.

Meanwhile, the mortals had made progress in their research on physical properties, successfully recreating the Inch-Gold Charcoal[1] within the Great Realm. Forged from spirit wood, Inch-Gold Charcoal burned ten times more intensely and lasted ten times longer than ordinary charcoal. When ignited, it also produced a spirit flame. It was the primary ingredient in the new gunpowder.

The physical properties of Inch-Gold Charcoal were relatively simple. Not only did Sun Yu possess an ample amount of data on it, he had even drawn a structural diagram[2]. After Wei Yuan transmitted this data into the great Realm, the mortals experienced thousands of failures before finally recreating the Inch-Gold Charcoal.

At first, Wei Yuan was quite pleased with the success. However, he soon noticed that every household in the research team had begun lighting fires to cook their meals using the Inch-Gold Charcoal. Previously, they had merely used spirit qi to ignite fires as a formality.

And so for the first time, genuine cooking smoke rose within the Great Realm.

Unfortunately, the quantity of Inch-Gold Charcoal they could reproduce was limited at the moment. So, the research team selected a fertile plot of land nearby and began planting spirit trees. There were many varieties of spirit trees within the Great Realm. For this occasion, the mortals chose the Clear Spirit Tree and planted several hundred of the variety at a time. Wei Yuan had no idea where they had even gotten the saplings from.

After careful observation, Wei Yuan finally understood. The saplings were actually similar to those objects imbued with the true intent of cauldron. First, the mortals had studied and grasped the true intent of the Clear Spirit Tree. Then, they used that true intent to shape saplings out of stone. Up to this point, everything was still proceeding along a normal and understandable path.

However, once the saplings were replanted by the mortals, the true intent within them transformed, and the stone saplings turned into genuine saplings. Their most distinct feature was that they had gained spirituality and could independently absorb worldly origin qi as well.

This was utterly preposterous.

Over the next few months, the land reclamation in Qingming was completed, and they welcomed yet another harvest season. The fifth Dao Foundation class was completed, and the Skyblue Hall gained 180 Dao Foundation stage Dao Soldiers for free.

In contrast to Qingming’s stable development, the Great Realm remained rife with preposterous occurrences.

As more and more mortals threw themselves into cultivation, a prodigy finally emerged. It had taken him just several months to achieve perfection in the Body-tempering stage and was about to break through to the Dao Foundation stage.

Besides that, over a dozen mortals had suddenly fallen ill. Unable to fathom the cause, Wei Yuan could only watch helplessly as one of them succumbed to the illness and returned to the All-Gate of Reincarnation.

Suddenly, Wei Yuan understood that of the so-called cycle of life, aging, sickness, and death, only life remained. Moreover, life itself was a cycle.

At that moment, somewhere in the Great Realm, the atmosphere was filled with joy. A group of people emerged from a courtyard, with a groom at the center of the procession. He was on his way to another location to welcome his bride.

1. Refer to chapter 296. ☜

2. I think they’re talking about the molecular structure but for obvious reasons I didn’t dare to translate it as such. ☜