Chief, don't hit me in the face

Chapter 4: The Power of Wisdom!

The development of world civilization has spanned many eras—from the earliest prehistoric times to the Steam Age and then the Information Age—and now we are in the Yuanqi Age! Just as ancient people would have regarded steel machinery as monsters and been unable to comprehend what an “electric brain” was, modern people would likely be unable to understand the Yuanqi civilization. Tribal architecture in this era does not rely on traditional construction methods but is divided into three main components: the Core, the Keel, and the Hollow Stone. When a building core is placed into the Dominion Tower and a prayer ritual is performed, a type of Yuanqi aggregate is generated; these are known as “slave workers.” “Dragon Bones” is a collective term for certain materials; the “Slave Workers” use them to construct the building’s main structure, to which “Hollow Tower Stones” are then attached. These stones, much like coral, absorb elements from nature and grow on their own, which is why constructing a building was so convenient during the Primordial Energy Era. “What level is this core?” In the Tribal Era, buildings were classified into different tiers; the higher the tier, the more powerful and versatile their functions. Xia Ye examined the stone slab with great anticipation: “This is a relic my father carefully treasured—it must be quite powerful, right?” “I don’t know!” Xia Lingyue shook her head: “But it seems it can summon heroes!” The function of the Hero Altar is to provide the tribe’s heroes with a place to rest, train, and compete—in short, it keeps the heroes in peak condition at all times! “What?” Xia Ye was taken aback. He’d heard that a few powerful tribes possessed rare Hero Altars; by offering sacrifices, they could summon heroes who didn’t belong to this era. “Could I actually summon Daji or that busty black Joan of Arc? To warm my bed? No, wait—to follow me as I conquer the world?” “What did you say?” Xia Lingyue hadn’t heard him clearly. “I said I’m going to become a really awesome hero!” Xia Ye wiped the cold sweat from his forehead—he’d almost let the cat out of the bag. “You’re not just going to be a hero—you’re going to be a wise tribal chieftain. All right, put those things away. You can take them with you when you participate in the Blood Survival Trial!” Having confided the secret to her younger brother, Xia Lingyue felt a huge weight lifted off her shoulders. “Sis!” Actually, Xia Ye had a secret of his own: he was a college student from the 21st century. One Friday during winter break, while traveling in the Zhangjiajie Nature Reserve during the off-season, he suddenly received a text message. “The world is about to end. Run! Go to a place with lush vegetation and hot springs!” Xia Ye thought it was a prank, but two hours later, that mysterious spore virus began spreading like wildfire. No one was spared. To this day, Xia Ye still vividly remembers the agony—as if his very soul were being sucked out—when the spores parasitized his body, taking root and sprouting. His last glimpse of the world was of countless tourists falling into the stream with terrified screams, their bodies completely transformed into plant matter. Then, hundreds of millions of years passed—the landscape had changed beyond recognition! Xia Ye felt as if he had returned to the fetal stage, his consciousness a blur, until one day, a clap of thunder roused him from his long slumber. Raindrops the size of broad beans pelted his body, soaking Xia Ye through and through. This was by a spring-fed stream in a desolate forest. Not far from Xia Ye stood a towering ancient tree, its age unknown, with branches and leaves so dense they resembled a giant umbrella reaching toward the sky. Yet now, it had been split apart by a bolt of lightning, and raging flames burned fiercely—even the heavy rain could not extinguish them. Xia Ye fell into the stream, and just as he was about to drown, a thick arm pulled him out. Perhaps because the mysterious spores had drained his nutrients, or perhaps due to the effects of hundreds of millions of years on his body—or maybe because of the nourishment from the primordial energy—Xia Ye’s body had shrunk back to the size he had been at age five. As he came to understand this world, Xia Ye’s memories began to slowly return, and he felt fortunate. So many tourists had fallen into the stream and turned into plants, and as the landscape changed, only the area where Xia Ye was remained nourished by the spring water, allowing him to grow. In the end, if he hadn’t been struck by a massive bolt of lightning, Xia Ye would have either become part of the ancient tree or suffocated inside it. Xia Wu’an had been a vagrant back then, foraging in this ancient forest; had he not discovered Xia Ye while fetching water, the boy would have already died. After all, in those times of food scarcity, many people abandoned their newborns or even traded their children for food. The fact that Xia Wu’an raised Xia Ye without hesitation was a debt of gratitude great enough to compel him to fulfill this “father’s” final wish! “What?” Xia Lingyue was stirring the rabbit meat in the clay pot to keep it from burning. “I’m planning to go to the Fengjing Ruins!” Xia Ye thought it over carefully but decided not to tell his sister this secret—not because he didn’t trust her, but because he was worried it might put her in danger. “I heard that Xia Wa and the others are going too. Do you want to go together? It’d be good to have each other’s backs!” Xia Lingyue wasn’t surprised. This ruin had once been the main city of the once-mighty Fengjing tribe. It had long been explored many times by heroes from nearby tribes, but to young people, it remained as alluring as a once-famous courtesan. Besides gaining some experience, with a bit of luck, they might even stumble upon a treasure or two. After all, a ruin as vast as Fengjing’s would continue to erode and crumble over time, and it was quite possible that treasures once buried deep within had now been exposed. “I’m Banxia!” Xia Ye said self-deprecatingly. Because he always wore an eye patch over his left eye, the people in the slums called him “Half-Xia”—meaning “half-blind.” On top of that, having been bedridden for years, no one would ever team up with a “wimp” like him! “Hmph, my brother’s the best!” Xia Lingyue pouted, then scampered back behind the door and dug a small cloth pouch out of the ground: “This is what I’ve saved up over the past three years. Use it to buy some gear!” Xia Ye’s eyes welled up; he quickly wiped them to keep the tears from falling. Inside the cloth pouch were thirty-seven knife coins. In this era, ordinary people were still at the barter stage, and Knife Coins circulated only within a limited area, but since they were made of bronze, they were definitely hard currency. One knife coin could buy ten shi of grain. “Shi” was the unit of weight in this era, equivalent to one jin, so Xia Lingyue’s secret stash was, by any measure, a fortune. “Silly boy, it’s all thanks to your wisdom that I was able to save up this money!” Xia Lingyue reached out and ruffled her younger brother’s hair. In other households, even with strong, able-bodied workers striving with all their might, people could barely scrape by. But their family was different—her younger brother had dared to venture out of the city on his own since he was a child, and he always managed to bring back things that others had never seen before. Xia Ye shook his head. He’d loved reading since childhood, and living in an era of explosive growth in knowledge, all it took was a few taps on a touchscreen to become a well-informed expert. Due to the world’s destruction and the collapse of civilization, the common knowledge of the past had long been lost in the river of time. While others were too afraid to touch crabs and sea urchins—let alone know how to eat them—Xia Ye could easily catch a whole basketful. Thanks to his extensive knowledge of wilderness survival, he didn’t have to worry about starving to death, but saving up that much money was absolutely impossible. That’s why Xia Ye would never forget the sight of his older sister sitting in the courtyard, polishing arrowheads by moonlight. After all, for a skilled craftswoman like his sister, sharpening a thousand arrowheads took over a month—and all that work could only be exchanged for a single knife coin! “But that’s still not enough. A tribe needs five basic structures, and we only have the Ancestral Altar and the Hero’s Altar. The rest—the Ruler’s Tower, the Spring Tower, and the Vitality Tower—are nowhere to be found!” Xia Lingyue counted on her fingers, calculating how much it would cost to buy them. “Don’t worry about it. I can go raid them—we’ll fund our battles through battle!” Xia Ye reassured her. As long as they conquered another tribe and demolished their towers, they could bring back resources like cores and dragon bones for their own use. “What nonsense are you talking about?” Xia Lingyue rolled her eyes: “Forget about heroes—you don’t even have any minions. How are you going to tear down their towers? I bet you can’t even climb over a fence!” “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Who knows? I might even find a few foot soldiers at the Fengjing Ruins!” Xia Ye wasn’t worried. In this era, there were naturally occurring “structures” that could spawn soldiers—for example, in areas frequently swept by gales, there were wind caverns capable of spawning Gale Soldiers. Catching a single Gale Soldier was a huge score; if he could transplant a wind vortex into the tribe, he’d hit the jackpot—because given enough time, he’d end up with an entire regiment of Gale Soldiers. The Xia Tribe’s Molten Fire Soldiers were among the best even in the State of Zhao and had long been coveted by the chieftains of other tribes. “It’s all about making money, after all!” Xia Lingyue mused, her gaze falling on the charcoal. She shook her head. No, it wasn’t technical enough, nor was there any way to keep it secret; it wouldn’t take long before others copied it. Besides, even if she stockpiled a large batch to sell all at once, this wasn’t a daily necessity. Asking poor people to spend money on this—they’d probably rather go into the mountains and chop their own firewood. The nobility? Their first thought would surely be how to pry the charcoal-making method out of her! “Selling charcoal won’t work. Don’t forget—the nearby forests all belong to Clan Chief Xia. It’s fine for people to chop a little firewood to boil water or cook, but if they start logging on a large scale, they’d better be prepared to be captured by the Xia family and hanged in the execution ground!” Seeing the look in his sister’s eyes, Xia Ye couldn’t resist teasing her. “Actually, even if I could do it, I wouldn’t. The yield from charcoal is too low—you’d work yourself to death all day and still barely make a penny!” Bai Juyi’s “The Charcoal Seller,” written by the hermit of Xiangshan, is a required poem in middle school textbooks, and Xia Ye certainly didn’t want to end up as a pitiful charcoal seller. “Then let’s sell salt!” Xia Lingyue clenched her teeth, her gaze falling on a piece of smoked ham hanging in the corner of the room. Salt is a daily necessity, so it’s always been expensive, but their family had never bought a single grain of it—her younger brother always brought back a bamboo tube full of salt whenever he went out into the wilderness. Xia Lingyue had once been unable to resist her curiosity and had followed him to take a look. It was an abandoned salt mine—many people knew about it, but no one ever ate the salt there because the chunks chipped from the mine walls were far too bitter, and eating too much of it could kill you. My younger brother took a bamboo tube, stuffed it with some charcoal, wrapped it in several layers of burlap, dropped the salt lumps into the water, removed the impurities, and then poured the water into the bamboo tube. He said this was called filtering. After repeating the same process seven or eight times, he boiled the resulting water in a stone pot, leaving behind a layer of granules. Smooth and fine—the sensation of rubbing it between her fingers was an intoxicating pleasure. After Xia Lingyue tasted it, she could never bring herself to eat the salt sold at the market again. “Don’t you think we’re dying fast enough?” Xia Ye toyed with his bronze sword. In any era, salt and iron were strategic commodities, subject to a state monopoly—the coffers of those in power. If ordinary people dared to touch them, they would surely meet a fate worse than death. “Then just sell a little less?” Xia Lingyue sighed, her gaze fixed wistfully on the smoked ham hanging in the corner of the room. She knew full well that the Xia Tribe had fought the Cao clan for over a hundred years over a single salt field—it had cost countless lives to seize it, and even now, heavy troops were stationed there to guard against salt thieves. To make smoked ham—and to prevent the meat from spoiling—one needs a large amount of salt. Even nobles would be reluctant to use that much, yet her family managed to hang two thick wild boar hind legs every winter. The salt used alone was worth over a thousand dao coins—and, of course, this saved them a huge sum on salt purchases. “Don’t worry, I’ve already made preparations!” Xia Ye gave a mysterious smile: “Let’s eat first!” In this world, before he had the strength to defend himself, Xia Ye had always been careful to hide his true self. He was content just to have enough to eat—he didn’t seek luxury. But now, the time had come. He was about to begin his plan for revenge. The sacrifice of his bloodline and his father’s death—these two scores must be settled with the Xia family and the Prince of Zhao!