Backdoor

“I’ve said my piece. Whether you go apply for the job is up to you.” With that, the Golden Core elder rose and walked toward the door. “I’m going, regardless.”

Only Venerable Gui Jia remained in the room, sitting silently in his chair.

The hand resting on the armrest clenched, then relaxed. It clenched again, then relaxed again.

Although working for cultivators from the mortal realm was humiliating, if the other party came from the Ascendant Immortal Domain, then surely they couldn’t be considered mortal-realm cultivators, right?

Then it shouldn’t count as humiliating, right?

Though Venerable Gui Jia had the highest cultivation among all the informants, his Nascent Soul cultivation had been forcibly piled up with external aids. As a result, his foundation was not as solid as that of someone who had advanced through proper cultivation.

In an environment like this, where there was no spiritual energy to sustain his cultivation, he was even more panicked than the others.

But what if that wasn’t the case?

Besides, he couldn’t bring himself to go reclaim wasteland alongside his subordinates and perform the same labor as them.

Venerable Gui Jia was deeply conflicted.

Unfortunately, no one cared about his inner struggle.

The next day, Yuan Jinsheng arrived with a hundred assistants, each carrying a roster, and began calling people out.

There were simply too many informant laborers. To minimize trouble on the first day and arrange everyone’s work as quickly as possible, the City Lord’s Residence had to temporarily transfer a group of veteran employees from other departments to help.

Some of these assistants worked at the Trading Center, while others held positions in various administrative departments of the City Lord’s Residence. Among them were disciples of Qingyun Peak of the Lingxian Sect, as well as many ordinary residents of Xiushui City.

Without exception, they all understood Xiushui City’s rules and the City Lord’s Residence’s way of doing things. They were highly efficient at carrying out orders, making them very reassuring choices to manage and organize this group of informant laborers.

There were more than fourteen thousand informants from Wanwantong in total. Over ten thousand had signed up the day before, leaving just over three thousand still struggling with their decision in their rooms across the fifty buildings, torn by indecision.

Those ten thousand-plus people were divided into one hundred and one teams, each consisting of a little over a hundred people. Yuan Jinsheng and the hundred assistants each took charge of one team.

Under the orders of their respective assistant captains, the large group reluctantly formed lines and followed Yuan Jinsheng toward the main gate of the Cage Court.

The Cage Court had two gates, one at the front and one at the back.

The front gate was where they had entered. It had not opened again since their arrival.

Yuan Jinsheng and the others had entered the interior of the Cage Court directly through a special teleportation passage, so they had no need to use the gate.

They were now heading for the rear gate.

The informants all looked up at the tightly closed gate ahead of them in unspoken agreement.

They wondered whether they would be outside once they passed through it. Would there be spiritual energy outside?

More importantly, would that barrier that unleashed retaliatory attacks still exist beyond the gate?

If they made it outside, would they have a chance to escape?

Before they could reach any conclusions or formulate Plan One or Plan Two, the tightly closed gate opened.

It did not creak open slowly and heavily. In reality, the rear gate was merely a curtain of light. Yuan Jinsheng did nothing; as soon as he stood before it, the curtain rippled, then transformed into a wall of water that seemed to flow continuously.

Yuan Jinsheng turned around and waved toward the gate. “Form orderly lines. Five teams at a time. Teams One through Five, move forward!”

His voice was not loud, but it reached every person’s ears clearly.

With more than ten thousand cultivators moving in an orderly fashion, the process was still remarkably fast. In less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea, they had all passed through the rear gate.

The moment they emerged, their vision suddenly opened up. Unlike the Cage Court, where they had been confined to the same cramped area day after day—an area that was hardly spacious by a cultivator’s standards—even the bright illumination there could not compare with the comfort of the natural world outside.

They had now truly arrived in the wilderness, surrounded by dense forests and towering mountains.

Most importantly, the moment they stepped out, they felt spiritual energy coming from every direction—familiar, rich, and wonderfully refreshing. After being unable to sense spiritual energy for so many days, the cultivators were so exhilarated that they nearly wanted to roll around on the ground.

At the same time, Yuan Jinsheng watched without surprise as several hundred, even a thousand, bolts of lightning of varying thickness descended from the sky and struck the crowd head-on.

The lightning was incredibly precise. Not the slightest spark touched anyone nearby. Whoever was targeted had to endure the full force of the strike.

Yuan Jinsheng stood with his hands behind his back and gave a soft, cold laugh as he looked at the cultivators whose faces had been scorched black. “I advise you to behave yourselves. If you interfere with the reclamation work as a whole, you won’t be allowed out again.”

He shook the roster containing the names of every informant present. “Or perhaps someone still has ideas? Feel free to try. If you truly don’t want to work, I’ll give you a chance right now. Just step forward, and I’ll cross your name off immediately and send you back to the Cage Court.”

Having said that, he swept his gaze across the ten thousand-plus people, but not one person stepped forward beneath his stare. They all stood silently where they were.

The cultivators who had just been roasted by lightning hurriedly used Rejuvenation Techniques and Rejuvenation Pills at the same time. Only then were they able to halt their injuries and barely remain standing.

When Yuan Jinsheng saw that no one was stepping forward, he silently muttered to himself, “A bunch of cowards,” and stopped wasting words on them. He ordered the assistant captains to begin dividing up the land and assigning tasks.

The area behind the Northern Mountain Range was vast—so vast that it could not possibly fit within the original planned boundaries of Xiushui City.

Lin Xiao had already had plans for this area. After all, it lay behind the Lingxian Sect, and incorporating it into Xiushui City’s territory would also serve as a form of protection for the sect.

Although this stretch of barren mountains and wilderness had now been incorporated into Xiushui City, it had been designated entirely as farmland, so it would not consume many of the city’s construction or maintenance resources.

This area was considered the agricultural district. It shared Xiushui City’s protective barrier with the urban district, but the two were separated from each other and did not connect.

Thus, even if the informants did not try to escape, they could not get word out by having people outside pass messages for them.

Other than obediently working, they had no options.

Once they fully realized this fact, the informant cultivators finally abandoned their hopes of finding a loophole. One after another, they took out their magical artifacts and began seriously reclaiming the wilderness.

It was not that they were fools who did not know how to slack off. Rather, every team’s assistant captain stood nearby with a little notebook, watching them closely. Their eyes moved so swiftly that, whether one was a mortal or a cultivator, regardless of how high one’s cultivation was, they truly seemed capable of seeing in every direction and hearing everything around them.

Anyone who was caught obviously slacking would immediately have a mark made in the notebook. They were also told that if they were caught slacking three times, they would be sent straight back to the Cage Court and would never be hired again.

Of course, Yuan Jinsheng had recently been taught many ways of managing people by his own master.

He also knew that after giving someone a beating, one had to offer them a carrot.

He told the cultivators that after work ended each evening, they would be permitted to meditate outside for half an hour before returning to the Cage Court.