The Boundless Sea of Research

He marveled at his younger brother’s one novel proposal after another. Every single one was something he could never have come up with, no matter how hard he racked his brains.

Perhaps that was why his younger brother had been blessed with such an extraordinary cultivation opportunity in the first place.

Lin Xiao truly was different—different from everyone else.

Sometimes Lin Yun would think about how fortunate he was to have such a remarkable younger brother. Lin Xiao could see both what lay before him and what was yet to come; he could dream big while keeping his feet on the ground. He understood the ways of the world, yet still retained an innocent heart.

Though their family had doted on him since childhood, this younger brother of his had never been spoiled rotten. If their mother could see him from heaven, she would surely be delighted.

Lin Yun might not be able to come up with those novel ideas himself, but he could help his brother bring them to life one by one. Watching each new idea gradually become reality was surely the best thing in the world.

With Xiushui City taking the lead, construction of the railway was progressing fairly smoothly.

However, the various countries had reacted quite differently when it came to funding.

Of the initial payment agreed upon for the first phase of construction, fewer than a third of the countries could pay the full amount outright. Some of the rest negotiated installment plans, while others wanted to wait until the first phase was complete before settling the bill.

Over the past few years, Xiushui City had certainly made no small amount of commotion throughout the mortal world. However, most of the benefits had gone to the cultivation community. For ordinary people—especially those living far from Xiushui City—the impact had been relatively limited.

At most, the cultivators in power had benefited, which might have eased the oppression of ordinary people in some regions. In other places, cultivators in need of labor had provided funding to hire workers from the lower classes.

Overall, however, life had not improved by much for the vast majority of ordinary people in the mortal world.

As a result, the national finances of these countries had not improved significantly either.

Aside from a small number of countries that had already been exceptionally wealthy, the only nation to benefit substantially in recent years was the Pusi Kingdom. The Lingxian Sect frequently contributed to disaster-relief efforts and regularly dispatched disciples to provide agricultural assistance throughout Hufang Province and some surrounding regions. They also spread basic agricultural knowledge, leading to a marked increase in agricultural yields across several parts of the Pusi Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the Lingxian Sect had only so many people, making it impossible for them to cover the entire kingdom. Nor could such an approach be replicated by other countries or sects.

Agriculture was the foundation of people’s survival, and this was reflected in the number of workers each country had managed to recruit for railway construction.

The stronger a country’s overall national strength, the more people it had been able to recruit within a short period.

Building a railway was not a short-term undertaking. In fact, it would take far longer than the periods of compulsory service required by the various countries. Thus, for many families, choosing to work on the railway meant losing a strong laborer for at least several years.

For rural families without an ox, losing even one able-bodied worker meant having much less grain to eat that year.

Perhaps they could be persuaded to use their railway wages to buy grain, but to most farmers who had spent their entire lives working the land, purchasing grain with money simply did not feel secure. Grain prices fluctuated constantly—who knew how much grain their wages would be able to buy by the time they were paid?

Food grown on one’s own land was the only thing that truly felt reliable.

Many families that lacked sufficient able-bodied workers did not dare sign up for the jobs. They were afraid that their fields would lie fallow.

To the farmers of this era, money could improve their lives, but grain was the foundation of survival.

Lin Yun told Lin Xiao about the situation. After learning the details, Lin Xiao once again sought out Liao Pantu to discuss research into agriculture.

This time, the two of them did not work on their own. Instead, they went to the spirit-field group and moved into one of the thatched huts beside the fields, where they lived alongside Old Master Lin and the other elders from former Xiushui Village.

The thatched huts had originally been put up beside the fields by Old Master Lin and the others for convenience. However, whenever Mo Yuanjiao came to visit his master, he was always afraid that the thatch on the roofs would be blown away by the wind, so he had casually installed a few reinforcing arrays.

There was a whole row of thatched huts. Lin Xiao simply brought Liao Pantu into Old Master Lin’s hut, set up camp there, and refused to leave. He also filled the hut with a pile of research materials and tools. In the end, Old Master Lin could no longer find anywhere to stand and had no choice but to sleep in one of his sons’ huts.

“Senior, do you know what the biggest challenge in our research this time is?”

Inside the thatched hut, Lin Xiao sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion and placed a furnace half a meter tall in front of him.

A large assortment of bottles and jars had already been arranged around him. At the back of the hut, he had even improvised a simple smelting furnace and forge.

Liao Pantu glanced around the room. Ignoring Lin Xiao’s question, he asked, “What are you doing? Refining pills and forging artifacts at the same time?”

As he spoke, he noticed that Lin Xiao had taken out another stack of the most basic blank formation plates—the sort even Liao Pantu had considered beneath him when he was a novice.

These formation plates were about the size of a meditation cushion. Their materials were extremely cheap, but they could only withstand a limited number of formation patterns. Liao Pantu had used them once several centuries ago and never touched them again. Seeing Lin Xiao suddenly produce a whole stack of them, he was understandably astonished.

“You’re carving formations too?”

Lin Xiao replied, “I want to create something that can comprehensively increase agricultural yields while reducing the burden of manual labor.”

“But don’t we already have all that? The things we’re using in the spirit fields now?” Liao Pantu asked, puzzled.

The sect already had spirit hoes, spirit fertilizer, and various formations for regulating the temperature and humidity of spirit fields, as well as dealing with pests and other problems. Why did Lin Xiao want to make these things again?

Lin Xiao explained, “Those tools are simple enough, but mass-producing them is still somewhat difficult. More importantly, although they’re already quite inexpensive by cultivator standards, ordinary people still can’t afford them as agricultural supplies. So I want to develop products that are extremely cheap—cheap enough for ordinary people to use without difficulty.”

“That’s why the main challenge in our research this time is figuring out how to use cheap materials that can be found everywhere in the mortal world, along with the simplest possible processes, to create a series of agricultural products that can significantly improve productivity.”

Only then would they be able to establish factories in Xiushui City and recruit workers to mass-produce them.

Upon hearing this, Liao Pantu’s eyes widened slightly.

“You want to use mundane materials to create things with the effects of spirit-grade items… No one has ever researched anything like this before.”

Lin Xiao nodded and shrugged. “Exactly. That’s the main challenge of our research this time. What do you think? Interesting, isn’t it?”

Liao Pantu pondered for a moment before slowly nodding. “It is. We can give it a try.”

The two of them immediately hit it off. Lin Xiao turned around and sought out Old Master Lin and the other experienced farmers, asking them to share everything they knew about farming.

At the same time, he had Xiushui City contact the various countries and do its best to promote basic infrastructure such as waterwheels, for which finished designs already existed.

After considering the cost, Lin Yun decided to add waterwheel construction to the list of projects for the cultivator volunteers.

After all, opening railway routes through forests and miasma-ridden regions would inevitably require cutting down trees and clearing mountain paths. Waterwheels, meanwhile, could be made directly from locally available materials.