Volunteer Recruitment

At times like this, Xiushui City would issue a volunteer recruitment notice, calling for cultivators willing to lend a hand with the railway construction.

Of course, these volunteers would not be working for nothing. Xiushui City would specially issue each volunteer a certificate, one per person. The certificates were jointly crafted by the Artifact Refinement Hall and Talisman Workshop of the Lingxian Sect using special methods, making it absolutely impossible for anyone to impersonate the holder. These volunteer certificates entitled their holders to certain privileges within Xiushui City.

For example, whenever one of Xiushui City’s special auctions had items going up for sale, the volunteers would receive a list of the auction items in advance.

Although such privileges were not as directly beneficial as being paid in spirit stones, they were still highly coveted by many cultivators. As a result, recruiting volunteers was not difficult.

Relying solely on the hundred or so people from the Lingxian Sect would never be enough for so many tasks. The sect’s people already had their schedules packed to the brim, with many disciples holding several positions at once. If they put down their current work to deal with the newly proposed railway construction project, it would affect not only the Lingxian Sect but also the progress of transactions between the mortal world and the cultivation world.

Therefore, the only people Xiushui City could call upon for this matter were the Lingxian Sect disciples working at the trade center. After all, most of the trade center’s affairs had already been standardized. Many matters could be handled simply by following the established rules and procedures. It was unlike the sect’s production departments, where a shortage of manpower would directly result in fewer goods being produced.

However, the trade center itself did not have many Lingxian Sect disciples stationed there, so the assistance it could provide was limited. Fortunately, Xiushui City had been steadily recruiting and training employees over the past few years. Thus, although it had suddenly been assigned such a major undertaking, it could at least draw up a workable plan during the initial stages.

Even so, they still had to hurry and recruit more people.

“Master-uncle Lin, how should we recruit people? Are we hiring them for permanent positions, or will the workforce be disbanded once the project is finished?” Xuanyuan Haoyue asked Lin Yun in the city lord’s residence of Xiushui City. Lin Yun was bent over a desk, reviewing various documents.

She held a small notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, ready to take notes at any moment. Although she was already at the middle stage of Foundation Establishment, she could easily remember these matters without writing them down.

In truth, she had simply spent so much time dealing with the people from the Finance Hall that she had come to feel carrying a notebook made her look more professional.

Xuanyuan Haoyue was Elder Liu Chun’s disciple. Because of the confusing hierarchy left over from the previous generation of the Lingxian Sect, the disciples of Qingyun Peak had initially had no idea how they should address many of their seniors. Later, Lin Xiao had simply made the final decision: all the sect’s older members would be considered to belong to the same generation. The disciples of Qingyun Peak were to address every sect senior other than their own master as either martial uncle or martial aunt.

Whether they used the junior or senior form of address depended on the person’s age.

In other words, according to the sect’s seniority system, Lin Xiao’s father, Lin Dayou, and his grandfather, Lin Quan, belonged to the same generation.

The same applied to the elders of the other families.

Because of this, Lin Xiao had been rapped on the head by his own elders countless times in private.

But after cultivating for so long, everyone had long since stopped caring about seniority. It was nothing more than a form of address. Establishing a unified system was mainly intended to make things easier for the new disciples. Aside from teasing Lin Xiao, the elders did not truly take the matter to heart.

Lin Yun looked up and saw that it was Xuanyuan Haoyue. After pausing for a moment, he pulled his mind away from the work on his desk and ran through her question in his head.

“Start with a probationary period. Those who are diligent, reliable, and willing to learn can then be given long-term contracts.”

“But isn’t our factory responsible for building trains? The number of trains we need to make is limited. What will the workers do after we finish building them?” Xuanyuan Haoyue was in charge of recruiting workers this time, and it was precisely because she had considered this issue that she had come to ask Lin Yun.

“That’s not a problem. Building the trains isn’t the end of the matter. We’ll need to maintain them afterward. When the time comes, we can have the permanent factory employees stationed at the various train maintenance depots. Besides, this factory won’t be disbanded after completing a single production run. Once we’ve built the required number, there will always be damaged trains that need to be replaced with new ones. We’ll still need to keep people at the factory.”

“I see… Thank you for your guidance, Master-uncle!” Xuanyuan Haoyue suddenly understood after hearing Lin Yun’s explanation. “Then I won’t disturb your work any longer. I’ll go make the arrangements immediately!”

With that, she bowed and took her leave.

Watching her depart, Lin Yun sighed inwardly.

How could this younger brother of his have so many ideas? They had only just stabilized trade with the various sects and imperial families in every region, and now he was already coming up with something new—another enormous undertaking at that. This time, he wanted to build a transportation network covering the entire mortal world.

Still, once the project was completed, everyone among the common people would benefit from it.

As for his younger brother, Lin Yun did not know whether to call him reliable or unreliable.

With a smile, he shook his head and continued carefully reviewing the documents on his desk.

These were the details recently discussed with the various countries. The general framework had already been settled at previous meetings, but whenever something involved a sufficiently broad scope, more and more problems would inevitably emerge. They still needed to think through solutions to each one, after which they would have to hold another round of meetings to deliberate and discuss them.

Who could have imagined that the farm boy who had still been helping his family work the fields every day just a few years ago would one day become the lord of a city, exchanging letters and official documents with the royal families and sects of the entire mortal world?

In truth, Lin Yun had never had any particularly clear ambitions in life.

His family had once been poor, and the entire village had been poor as well. Back then, everyone exhausted all their strength simply trying to get enough to eat. The elders of his family were honest, hardworking farmers, so he had followed their example and become a hardworking farmer himself.

Then, one day, his younger brother—whom his father and Lin Yun had raised together from childhood—came home and announced that he had established a cultivation sect and intended to lead their entire family into cultivation.

It would have been a lie to say Lin Yun had not been interested.

When he saw his younger brother perform one astonishing immortal technique after another, Lin Yun, who had spent more than a decade in the village without ever seeing much of the outside world, was naturally filled with longing.

Still, Lin Yun had always been steady and reserved by nature. In the end, whether he cultivated or not was left to his family to decide.

Before he knew it, eight years had passed.

In a mere eight years, he had learned to read and write and had become the kind of cultivator he had once believed existed only in stories.

He had transformed from an illiterate farmer’s son into the lord of a city.

As for becoming the lord of Xiushui City, Lin Yun did not feel the slightest bit inflated by his position. To him, it was simply an office, much like the positions he had held in the Lingxian Sect. The only difference was that the duties of this office involved managing Xiushui City.

When he had first taken up the post, he had been nearly overwhelmed by the complicated and enormous workload.

Every time he finally sorted out the matters at hand, established a steady rhythm, and managed to catch his breath, Lin Xiao would immediately come up with another new idea that needed to be implemented.

Although this kind of life was exhausting, Lin Yun was happy that he could help Lin Xiao turn his ideas into reality.