Chapter 1229: Spoils of War

Chapter 1228: Spoils of War

Mo Hua’s brows furrowed slightly.

Why would the Dao Court’s Fasting Pills appear deep in the Great Wilderness?

Were they plundered by the Bi Fang Tribe?

Or were they spoils seized by the barbarian troops of the Wilderness Royal Court after defeating the Dao Court’s army in battle?

Were these Fasting Pills military supplies of the Dao Court?

Mo Hua sniffed at one, then shook his head.

There was a faint moldy smell of coarse grain—the quality was far too poor.

He had once served as a Dao soldier and tasted the Dao Court–issued Fasting Pills. The ones before him didn’t even come close to the “military supply” standard. Moreover, all Dao Court supplies bore clear Dao Court markings.

These pills, however, were packed in blank bottles, completely unmarked—impossible to have come from the Dao Soldiers Division.

“Then where exactly did these Fasting Pills come from?”

Mo Hua’s gaze deepened. He faintly felt this was no small matter—at the very least, the seed of a great karmic entanglement.

But the clues were too few, leaving no way to investigate.

Even if he tried to calculate the cause and effect, what could these utterly blank bottles reveal?

After pondering for a moment, Mo Hua ordered all the pills to be carefully stored away.

For the time being, they would serve as rations for his barbarian troops.

When not in battle, one pill per man per day, barely enough to stave off hunger.

During battle, three pills per man per day, to replenish blood and energy.

Of course, they tasted terrible, and eating them too long would upset the stomach and meridians.

But in this famine year, having something to eat was already a blessing—there was no room to be picky.

After settling this, Mo Hua went to consult with Dan-Zhu and the others about their next move.

Should they pause here at the oasis to regroup, or continue marching to seek out another settlement of barbarian cultivators?

Given the current situation, even Mo Hua found himself at a loss.

In this desert, it was as if he were wandering in a fog—unsure of his location, unaware of the famine’s spread, ignorant of other tribes’ conditions, blind to the greater situation in the Wilderness, and even more clueless about the state of war between the Wilderness and the Dao Court.

All he could do was take one step at a time.

Yet as the so-called “Lord Shaman,” he couldn’t admit aloud that he himself didn’t know what to do next.

So he gathered everyone together, letting them discuss and see if anyone could offer a useful idea—or at least spark inspiration.

But the present dilemma was beyond human solution.

The talks went in circles until deep into the night, then everyone dispersed.

As he left, Lu-Gu glanced back at Mo Hua. His eyes were cold and veiled, still brooding over what Mo Hua had done to his elder brother. But he said nothing.

At such a time, with famine raging and survival hard, they had no choice but to cooperate.

In many matters, he still had to rely on Mo Hua the Shaman.

At the same time, he knew well Mo Hua was a “demon” who toyed with human hearts—not so easy to kill.

Lu-Gu departed.

Mo Hua understood his thoughts and sighed softly in his heart.

The Great Dao was long. To keep moving forward, to pursue one’s own Dao, inevitably meant entangling in all sorts of grudges and enmities—often against one’s will. Yet Mo Hua didn’t dwell on it.

In this world, there were those who loved him, and no shortage of those who hated him.

And in all likelihood, the number of those who hated him would only grow.

…

At the oasis, in a lavish guest chamber,

Mo Hua temporarily took rest.

Outside, the wind and sand howled. Inside, it was quiet. He lay on the bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

Seizing the oasis and securing supplies was only a small step.

The next step would decide the fate of these six thousand barbarian soldiers—and even Dan-Zhu and the others.

A wrong step, and all would die, everything reset to zero.

All his hopes in the Wilderness would be destroyed.

A heavy weight settled in Mo Hua’s heart.

Feeling restless, he intended to sink his divine sense into his sea of consciousness, practice formation arts for a while, find a bit of amusement to fill the emptiness and irritation.

But soon, the image of those blank bottles of Fasting Pills resurfaced in his mind.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

If the Great Wilderness was a chessboard, then Dan-Zhu and the others were pieces.

And Mo Hua did not yet know where to place them.

Those Fasting Pills, and the secrets behind them, might well be tied to his next move in this game.

With such thoughts, he lost all mood for formations. He rose from bed, lit a brazier, and used divination to probe the pills.

The flames licked at a demon bone, cracks spreading across it.

He glanced at the hexagram—just as expected, it showed only jumbled, ambiguous symbols, hard to interpret. Cause and effect, after all—without a clear cause, no effect could be found.

For things one knew nothing about, causality alone could not reveal the roots.

Especially matters of grand scale—the fewer the known “causes,” the murkier the “effects,” and the less reliable the results.

“These Fasting Pills… where exactly did they come from?”

Mo Hua tossed aside the brazier and lay back down, eyes shut, thinking.

“To mass-produce this kind of pill, you need a complete, mature cultivation craft, a proper assembly line for alchemy…”

“This must have been refined in some great sect or powerful clan’s large-scale alchemy workshop.”

“And since it’s an ‘industry,’ there should be standardized… production marks.”

Just as back in Tōngxiān City, when he had set up large refining and alchemy businesses—they would imprint serial numbers and the city’s mark on their products to indicate origin and batch.

Not only Tōngxiān City, even Gushan City’s refining businesses had such practices.

As a skilled formation master who had taken part in such production, Mo Hua knew the inner workings well, even if he rarely concerned himself with the details.

“Batch numbers… and something like a ‘trademark’…”

For large-scale production in the Nine Provinces, these two things could not be absent.

Since pills themselves could not hold marks, the bottles would carry them.

To hide those identifiers, these Fasting Pills had been packed into “blank” bottles.

But blank bottles themselves were a kind of mark.

Ordinary bottles were never completely blank—there were usually faint inscriptions or cloud patterns.

These utterly pure-white, markless bottles, produced in such quantity, had to be specially made to cover things up.

Such bottle refining wouldn’t be outsourced—too hard to keep secret.

Mo Hua frowned.

If he were in charge of this…

As the steward of a great power, suddenly needing to refine blank bottles for Fasting Pills…

Most likely…

He wouldn’t build a new production line. Too costly. For pill bottles, it wasn’t worth it.

Instead, he would modify an existing line, diverting it temporarily to produce these blank bottles.

Which meant: these bottles came from a preexisting refining industry, one whose line had been temporarily altered.

Mo Hua’s heart suddenly jolted.

He leapt from bed and summoned Elder Ba-Chuan, commanding:

“Quick! Gather men and overturn every single Fasting Pill bottle we collected—search for any ‘defective products’!”

Elder Ba-Chuan was bewildered, unsure what the Lord Shaman was after.

But the Lord Shaman’s powers were beyond doubt.

So Elder Ba-Chuan did as told, gathering people to lay out all the confiscated Fasting Pills in the grand hall.

Then, with the soldiers, they examined each bottle one by one.

Though divine sense could check, it might miss subtle flaws.

So Mo Hua ordered both eyes and divine sense to be used together.

After searching half the night, they finally found several “defective” bottles.

The bottles weren’t broken, but in minute details bore faint flaws—traces of glaze strokes.

Because in any industrial craft, there was always a “defect rate.”

No refining industry, however perfect, could avoid producing defective goods.

From a formation perspective, this was easy to explain.

Refining on an industrial scale was governed by formations—controlling processes, variables, materials, fire, and so on.

But formations never ran flawlessly. There would always be glitches, disruptions, resulting in items that didn’t meet “standards.”

These pill bottles were no exception.

In addition to the production process, they were inscribed by another formation, akin to a Primordial Magnetic Imaging array, that automatically imprinted glaze patterns or marks to denote origin and batch.

Whether carving patterns, words, or nothing at all—it all depended on this “engraving” formation.

This formation had been altered to produce only “blank.”

Hence, the line produced large quantities of unmarked bottles.

Yet Mo Hua knew: every refining industry produced “defects.”

A formation might run fine once, or ten times, or a hundred.

But run it thousands, tens of thousands of times, and errors were inevitable.

When errors occurred, the “blank” setting could fail, and the formation would revert to inscribing patterns it had once engraved.

Like a man who always painted trees.

If told to stop and just trace nothing on blank paper, he could—at first.

But after long enough, his hand might slip, and he’d sketch a tree again out of habit.

Those slips were the “defects.”

Most wouldn’t understand these technicalities of formations in industrial refining. But Mo Hua did.

He now held several such bottles.

Seemingly blank, but faint traces marred their surfaces—strokes, birds, flowers.

At a glance, no ordinary person would notice. Even if they did, they wouldn’t know what they meant.

Mass production had no time to check such details anyway.

But to an insider like Mo Hua, the meaning was entirely different.

He dismissed everyone, returned to his chamber, and began reverse-engineering the formation from these traces—to reconstruct what had been originally engraved.

The “engraving” formation was simple in principle: drawing images, inscribing text.

Though many varieties existed, Mo Hua only had to test and verify.

Compared to his research into the far more complex Secondary Thunder Runes and array flows, this workload was trivial.

Within half an hour, he had reconstructed the exact formation that produced the “defective” markings.

In other words, the very formation used on that refining line to engrave bottles with glaze.

Mo Hua constructed this formation, then tried letting it generate “patterns” without restriction.

The patterns it generated were all imprinted by Mo Hua onto white paper.

As spiritual power circulated, the inscribing formation began to operate.

One after another, intricate motifs appeared upon the paper.

There were “Prosperity of Blossoms,” “Phoenix Greeting the Sun,” “Auspicious Clouds,” “Centennial Harmony”… and so forth, all ornate, splendid patterns.

Mo Hua’s brows gradually furrowed.

Just then, the brush tip of the inscribing formation shifted, and it actually began to carve out a character.

It was an ornate character, embellished with blossoms and embroidery, dazzling in its beauty.

The word was: “華” (Huá).

(TN: 華 (Huá) a surname or name element meaning “flower, splendor, or magnificent.” 畫 (Huà) — as in Mo Hua (墨畫), meaning “painting” or “drawing”.)

Mo Hua’s heart sank.

Hua?

What did that mean?

Which sect—or perhaps—which great clan?

The Hua Clan?

In a flash, Mo Hua remembered the noble, beautiful woman he had once glimpsed in Desert City’s demon-fighting arena—the one even Young Master Tuoba fawned upon like a dog. She had worn a magnificent embroidered robe.

Didn’t Tuoba call her “Miss Hua”

That beautiful woman… was of the Hua Clan.

The Hua Clan is connected with the Great Wilderness.

Then does this mean—the refinement of these bottles and Fasting Pills, this whole cultivation production line—all of it belongs to the Hua Clan?

Mo Hua’s gaze grew deep.

If these Fasting Pills belong to the Hua Clan, why have they ended up in the Great Wilderness?

Seized by tribes?

No… it doesn’t seem like looting.

More like… the Hua Clan deliberately “sold” these Fasting Pills into the Wilderness.

Mo Hua picked up a Fasting Pill, brought it to his nose, and caught the stench of inferior grade herbs. His brows knit tightly.

These Fasting Pills had atrocious quality control.

In the Nine Provinces, they’d clearly be considered substandard grade. If the Hua Clan is a grand clan, they’d never refine such trash for their own use.

The only possibility—was that they intentionally refined these “inferior” Fasting Pills, for the sole purpose of selling them to the Wilderness.

These inferior Fasting Pills were a “Great Wilderness special supply.”

Made for the tribes here. As long as they didn’t kill people, quality didn’t matter.

After all, the bottles bore no Hua Clan mark; no one would know they came from them.

The worse the quality, the higher the profit margin.

But… why Fasting Pills? Why not sell anything else?

Because…

Mo Hua’s pupils shrank.

Famine!

In times of famine, Fasting Pills were no longer ordinary supplies—they were life-saving treasures. Even inferior ones, as long as they could be eaten, were priceless.

The Hua Clan hoarded such quantities of Fasting Pills—was it to offer relief?

Impossible!

Most likely, during famine years, they intended to sell these stockpiled pills at sky-high prices.

Even the poorest quality Fasting Pills would force tribes facing hunger and death to pay staggering costs.

Mo Hua inhaled sharply.

The Wilderness was full of chaotic faiths, complex powers, and strong tribes. Conquest was impossible; robbery even harder.

If military force couldn’t subdue, then trade would.

Seizing the chance of famine, refining vast quantities of Fasting Pills to sell into the Wilderness, raking in obscene profits—

Was this the Hua Clan’s scheme?

The Hua Clan intended to profit from… disaster itself.

But could it really be so simple?

Mo Hua picked up another pill, sniffed again, and detected a stale grainy scent—proof these pills had been refined years ago.

Yet back then, famine hadn’t even struck the Wilderness.

How could the Hua Clan have known famine was certain to break out?

Did they foresee that the war between the Dao Court and the Wilderness would spark uprisings, which would in turn trigger famine, and famine would make the Fasting Pills skyrocket in value—so they gambled on it?

But was it really just a gamble?

Mo Hua looked again at the stream of ornate “Prosperity Blossoms” patterns.

For a production line capable of engraving noble motifs like “Phoenix Greeting the Sun,” it meant its prior use was for luxury spiritual tools.

Yet the Hua Clan had converted this luxury production line to churn out cheap Fasting Pills. That alone proved they were certain the pills would bring greater profit than luxuries.

This was not mere prediction.

The value of Fasting Pills rose in direct proportion to the severity of famine.

The more severe the famine, the more precious the pills—even more than luxuries.

To overhaul a luxury line for mass Fasting Pill production proved the Hua Clan’s absolute certainty, not guesswork.

The more Mo Hua unraveled, the colder his heart grew.

But… how?

How could the Hua Clan be so sure famine would break out on such a scale in the Wilderness?

How did they dare to begin mass production years in advance?

And another problem…

How were they transporting these pills deep into the Wilderness?

By what routes?

Something vital was missing from the picture…

Mo Hua frowned in deep thought. Suddenly, he recalled—this oasis, dubbed a “pig-slaughter trap,” a “den of debauchery,” was in essence perhaps a Hua Clan logistics hub.

If so, then there must be…

Mo Hua’s pupils constricted. He immediately summoned Elder Ba-Chuan, ordering him to lead men to search the oasis once more.

This time, they were to focus on sand tables, or walls, looking for traces of deliberate tampering.

The search lasted half a day, until at last they found a wall.

The wall was completely shattered.

With the oasis ravaged, broken walls were common, so it hadn’t raised suspicion.

Normally, people would glance once and ignore it.

But with Mo Hua’s instructions to look for intentional damage, they pressed further.

After scouring with over a thousand barbarians in a carpet search, ten full rounds, they finally found a wall in the corner of a secret chamber.

This wall had been crushed entirely—ground to dust by Golden Core power.

That was suspicious.

Standing before the ruined wall, Mo Hua had the sand and rubble cleared. After a pause, he began employing the Wilderness Bone-Divination Art to trace causality backwards.

He wanted to see what the wall had looked like before destruction.

But such divination was taxing.

Mo Hua’s mental power was limited; he couldn’t calculate the whole at once, only fragment by fragment. Each traced fragment he memorized, sketched in his mind, then pieced together.

Whenever his divine sense was exhausted, he rested, then resumed.

After half a day of work, one fragment after another took shape.

Finally, after exhausting his divine sense, Mo Hua pieced together the complete image.

As he suspected—it was a map.

Moreover, this was no ordinary map, but a complete topographic chart of the mountains and rivers of the entire Three Thousand Great Wilderness.

Even the Dao Soldiers Division’s Military Affairs might not possess such a map of the Great Wilderness heartlands, one so complete.

Yet the map itself was not what shocked him most.

Upon it were drawn thick lines.

These lines advanced along certain paths, gradually converging, forming a great encirclement—enveloping the very core of the Wilderness.

Others might not understand what those lines meant.

But Mo Hua did.

In only a moment’s thought, he realized it.

They were “Famine Spread Lines.”

The map recorded the precise routes and process by which famine would spread across the Wilderness.

This famine—was secretly orchestrated by his Martial Uncle.

Such a thing was beyond Mo Hua’s own ability to deduce.

Yet the Hua Clan had them.

Which meant…

The Hua Clan’s Ancestor likely had already discerned his Martial Uncle’s scheme, having deduced it fully with absolute clarity.

(TN: Martial Uncle has been Calculated???)

Even the timing—when the famine would break out, when it would spread, when it would converge—had been calculated.

They had glimpsed these heavenly secrets.

They had foreseen the calamity.

And then…

They did nothing.

Not only did they do nothing—they intended to exploit the knowledge, to exploit the famine caused by his Martial Uncle, to mass-produce and hoard Fasting Pills, profiteering during disaster and war.

At the front, war was raging.

And in the background, they… were getting rich.

(End of this Chapter)