The First Joint Congress

No sooner had he finished speaking than a small incense burner appeared, hovering above the square. A slender stick of incense burned inside it, its pale smoke curling upward into the sky.

For the first few breaths, none of the cultivators in the square stepped forward to sign up. But only a few moments later, quite a number of them rushed out to volunteer, including several Golden Core cultivators.

They really were desperate for spiritual energy!

Once someone had taken the lead, most of the others naturally had no more qualms. The crowd immediately began signing up in droves.

The beginning of any undertaking was always the most difficult. For the Lingxian Sect, there was currently no labor force more cost-effective than these cultivators, who could get the job done with nothing more than a supply of spiritual energy.

Although Lin Xiao and Liao Pantu had achieved some initial research results, they had not conducted enough experiments to confirm the stability of their creations. After all, these items would eventually be used on a large scale by ordinary people, so their safety had to be guaranteed. If unstable performance caused some destructive accident during use, ordinary people would have no ability to deal with the consequences.

Safety was therefore of paramount importance.

After the cultivators at the Fanlong Institute had finished signing up, Yuan Jinsheng also told them that if they discovered any problems during production, or found ways to further optimize and simplify the process, the person who made the discovery would receive a reward in spirit stones.

They could absorb these spirit stones directly, or use them to purchase whatever they needed from the Fanlong Institute’s trade list.

As for the materials used in production, neither these cultivators nor even the cultivators from the Mortal Realm would think much of them, so there was no need to worry about anyone embezzling them.

That was one of the reasons the Lingxian Sect had assigned the first experimental batch-production line to the Fanlong Institute.

Most of the cultivators there had come from the cultivation world. Their knowledge and experience in the four arts of cultivation were naturally far greater than those of the cultivators in the Mortal Realm. For the time being, they were also easier to manage and better able to provide feedback.

With the promise of rewards dangling before them, there was little fear that the cultivators would fail to put their hearts into the work.

Even if a dozen or so of them refused to cooperate, there were still countless cultivators at the Fanlong Institute. And since everyone was being supervised separately, no one could control all of their actions and thoughts.

Thus, the first production line at the underground Fanlong Institute in Xiushui City began operating.

Three months passed in the blink of an eye. After three months of negotiations and project planning, every nation in the Mortal Realm had finally joined the railway construction project, with each country contributing funds in a form it could afford.

When Lin Yun, acting in his capacity as Lord of Xiushui City, convened the First Mortal Realm Assembly together with representative delegations from all seventy-eight nations of the Mortal Realm, this enormous project spanning the entire realm was finally considered officially underway!

The assembly was enough to astonish everyone in the Mortal Realm, from ordinary people and cultivators to states and sects alike.

As the delegations from the various nations entered Xiushui City, each displaying a style entirely different from the others, the scene was recorded in pictures and spread throughout the Mortal Realm in the form of newspapers.

It was the first time the Mortal Realm had ever united so neatly. Ordinary people had never seen anything like it—not even the royal families and officials of the various nations.

It was one thing to have never witnessed all the nations uniting; many officials did not even know much about countries farther away.

The sects, for various reasons, had at least maintained some connections with or awareness of one another. The seventy-eight nations, however, were another matter entirely.

After all, each country bordered only a handful of others.

For a time, many of the delegations that had traveled great distances were too distracted by the novelty of seeing so many other national delegations gathered together to pay much attention to the curiosities of Xiushui City itself.

The newspaper also became an overnight sensation after reporting on the first United Nations Assembly of the Mortal Realm, rapidly becoming popular in every region.

In many places, literate scholars would voluntarily read the newspapers aloud to the local villagers.

Some clever teahouses even arranged for literate storytellers to read the newspapers aloud at set times, explaining the various articles to the gathered listeners as they went.

This gave many common folk a major new source of entertainment.

Many people were not satisfied with hearing the news only once or twice. Whenever they had nothing else to do, they would take a stroll and make their way to a teahouse. Those with money would toss down a few coins for tea; those without would simply linger outside and listen from there.

The newspapers also contained basic agricultural knowledge. They reminded people when it was time to fertilize their fields, and they told stories as well.

There was the tale of a great martial hero who, after spending years wandering the jianghu and sleeping in the open, drank water without boiling it. As a result, his stomach and brain became filled with tiny invisible insects from the water, and the legendary hero eventually died in some unnamed wilderness.

There was also the story of a child prodigy who never washed his hands before eating. He swallowed invisible filth, came down with a high fever during the night, and died young.

And there was the tale of a mysterious master thief who, being too lazy to change or wash his clothes, contracted something called bacteria. His lower body became ulcerated, and he eventually died from the infection.

In short, these stories gradually made the common people pay more attention to personal hygiene.

It was not only adults who enjoyed listening. Children loved the stories too.

Even officials who already had access to official court bulletins enjoyed reading the newspapers. Most of them did not join the common people at the teahouses, of course; they simply bought copies to take home. For the time being, they were the newspapers’ primary consumers.

The newspapers contained little in the way of each nation’s specific governmental affairs, though some broadly beneficial policies were published. For scholars, however, the greatest appeal of the newspaper lay neither in its little stories nor in its public-benefit policies, but in its coverage of the entire Mortal Realm.

Such information had been almost entirely absent from their previous channels of communication.

The newspapers suddenly broadened many people’s horizons from their own small corner of the country to all seventy-eight nations of the Mortal Realm.

By reading about conditions in other countries, they could make more meaningful comparisons and gain a clearer understanding of where their own nation stood.

As for why the newspaper could circulate freely throughout every country, there was a simple reason:

It was called the Xiushui Monthly.

It was not a particularly impressive name, but it served as the newspaper’s passport.

The Xiushui Monthly would not report on sensitive matters such as a country’s military preparedness, national defense, or political policies. It would, however, report on the standard of living among the people in different regions.

It would cover places struck by disaster and places enjoying abundant harvests. It would also report on benevolent civilian organizations and prominent local clans, as well as the good deeds they had performed for the benefit of the people.

Some actions might not bring immediate benefits, but the newspaper would still explain, in the simplest possible language, the benevolence and righteousness underlying them.