In a great famine year like this, keeping one person alive and allowing one person eat their fill required no small amount of trouble.
And if one wanted a whole group of disaster victims to have steady meals, it demanded vast amounts of spirit stones and immense resources.
Disaster relief is a bitter task.
Throughout history, whenever relief supplies were provided from all sides, they generally passed through layer upon layer of embezzlement and repeated extortion. In the end, the portion that actually reached the victims was always pitifully small.
Considering this kind of 'wastage,' the resources consumed by disaster relief become an absurdly exaggerated figure.
This is a huge, 'losing' business.
Whether it is the Dao Court, the Earth Sect, the great clans, or other powers, it was all the same.
Any 'businessman' who knew how to keep accounts would never do such a thing.
Therefore, rather than losing money and expending vast manpower and resources to feed these victims, it was better to kill them with a single blade and be done with it.
With no people, there was naturally no need to waste grain.
If you couldn't solve the problem itself, you could solve the people who had said problem.
On top of that, the Qingchou Prefecture border was currently in the midst of a riot, with these disaster victims all having been labeled 'rioters'.
Whether or not they were truly rioters, it was better to kill the wrong than let the right go.
Some go even further, without distinguishing black from white, slaughtering everyone clean, which instead counts as a great merit.
One rioter is one merit.
Heads roll, battle merits shine.
Mo Hua's expression was ice-cold.
Gu Changhuai's face was likewise somewhat grim.
Though these matters were cruel, it was very possible that this was the reality.
Mo Hua pondered for a moment, then asked, "And the Dao Court just lets it be?"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Mo Hua instantly reacted, his pupils constricting slightly. "Could the Dao Court... be letting it happen on purpose?"
Gu Changhuai looked at Mo Hua, moved by the keenness of his mind, and sighed. "I am only an Inspector. I dare not comment on the arrangements of the Dao Court's high levels. But under the current circumstances, the Dao Court's seeming inaction is actually its best action."
"The Dao Court may also be waiting..."
Waiting for the riot to expand, for enough victims to die, for when there were fewer people to feed, before sending troops to suppress it.
By then it would be simple. All they had to do was kill indiscriminately.
Starve a batch to death, let a batch kill each other, then suppress and kill another batch, and finally only a small amount of relief supplies would be needed to keep the remaining people alive.
After all, no matter how many die, on the Dao Court's scrolls it is ultimately just a string of abstract numbers.
And numbers can be changed at will.
In the end, no matter who died and who lived, no one actually cared at all.
Mo Hua's gaze darkened. He glanced at the disaster victims around him, then could not help raising his head to look at the sky, a sudden feeling stirring in his heart.
At this very moment, perhaps there were Dao Court Heavenly Mechanism great cultivators, looking down from on high, calculating the karma of Kun Prefecture.
Looking down from the heavens, these city-wide disaster victims might truly all be like "ants," dense and swarming.
But if one stood on the ground, amid this land covered in bloody sores and the suffering victims, one could see that these dense "ants," men and women, young and old alike, each wore a different expression of bitter sorrow. They were one living person after another, each with a precarious, shattered life.
From above, one sees the grand scheme of the heavenly mechanisms.
From below, one sees lives adrift.
Heaven, Earth, Man...
Mo Hua's pupils deepened, and his thoughts rose and fell with the scene before him.
Gu Changhuai saw Mo Hua suddenly sink into thought, a faint, indescribable and mysterious aura emanating from him, and did not disturb him.
Only when Mo Hua restrained his aura, came back to himself, and withdrew some of his thoughts and divine sense back into his sea of consciousness did Gu Changhuai speak.
"Let's set off. We'll go to Qingchou City first."
"Mm." Mo Hua nodded.
No matter what, it was best to do something first. Trying times did not wait for anyone.
...
Afterward, Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai set off for Qingchou City.
Outside Qingchou City it was chaotic. With so many people, movement was inevitably inconvenient and could invite unknown trouble. So after a moment's thought, Mo Hua decided that he and Uncle Gu would first find a way into the city to see the situation.
Gu Changhuai instructed Gu An and Gu Quan, "Find a remote place, the two of you. Rest and heal in peace, conserve your strength. Without my order, do not act rashly."
Gu An and Gu Quan frowned, somewhat worried about Gu Changhuai, but then they thought again: their Lord Gu had the "vastly capable" Young Master Mo by his side, so theoretically he was safer than anyone.
If they encountered a problem even Young Master Mo could not solve, then following along would be useless.
Better to stay and heal properly, then help Lord Gu and Young Master Mo afterward.
Gu An nodded, cupped his hands, and said, "My lord, please be careful." Then to Mo Hua, "Young Master Mo, we leave it to you."
Mo Hua nodded.
After that, no one delayed further, and they began to move separately.
The Dao Court Department cultivators under Gu Changhuai camped in a remote place to heal.
Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai, concealing their forms, sped toward Qingchou City in the distance, battered by war yet standing amid the disaster.
Mo Hua himself was proficient in the Lesser Five Elements Concealment Art, so concealment was naturally no issue.
Gu Changhuai, having spent so long around Mo Hua, had been stained black by proximity to ink. Now he too kept several sets of precious concealment robes in his storage bag.
Hiding their forms, the two advanced toward Qingchou City.
All the way, they walked amid a tide of disaster victims, starving people, famine folk, refugees, and rioters. Everywhere they looked, there was still misery and desolation.
The ragged and emaciated were beyond counting.
There were occasional scenes of abuse and slaughter, all in chaos.
Many victims had numb eyes and dark glows between their brows. It was clear that their fate was exhausted, their hearts despairing, simply enduring one day at a time.
And such wretched people, when one looked around, were like dark clouds; stretching into the distance in a mass beyond counting.
Even Mo Hua, who had seen much, felt somewhat numb and could only sigh helplessly.
Gu Changhuai's feelings were perhaps even deeper than Mo Hua's.
After all, he was a young lord from a great Qianxue clan, pampered and well-fed since childhood.
After becoming a Dao Court Inspector and pursuing criminal cultivators, he had encountered many unfortunate people.
However, personally passing through such a massive tide of disaster victims, to see this gathering of worldly suffering up close, to look upon these people barely recognizable as human, the complex emotions in his heart still surged back and forth like tides.
Before this, he had only seen records of "famine disasters" in Dao Court history books.
At the time, he had read only words and felt little.
Now, seeing it with his own eyes, he understood what weight those two words carried, the worldly suffering they contained truly beyond words.
Every living person around him was a concrete manifestation of suffering.
Amid this dense crowd and the thick, unresolvable "tide of suffering," Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai walked on silently.
Because the atmosphere was too heavy and oppressive, neither spoke much.
The victims and rioters along the way had low cultivation. Golden Core cultivators were rare, and no one could possibly discover them.
Thus the two passed through the vast tide of rioters, walking all the way to the base of Qingchou City, and looked up.
They saw Qingchou's walls towering high, the surface broken and stained with dried flesh and blood.
It was clear that since the riot began, countless cruel slaughters had occurred near the city walls.
At this moment, Qingchou's walls were tightly sealed with the city gate formation locked down. The outer perimeter had also been fortified and cleared, allowing no outside cultivators to enter.
What the scene inside the walls was like, nobody knew.
Mo Hua glanced at the tall walls, then turned to Gu Changhuai and asked, "Inside Qingchou City, are there really Dao Court Department cultivators who could survive this long?"
Judging by the look of it, the gates were shut tight, a scene of bloodshed.
The Dao Court Department cultivators in Qingchou City were probably long since slaughtered clean.
Gu Changhuai sighed. "We can only hope that there are a few survivors..."
Even if local Dao Court cultivators were not high in cultivation and could provide no combat strength, at least they could provide some information.
From the current situation, there must be other hidden aspects to this Qingchou riot.
Gu Changhuai had previously found these things hard to investigate, lacking Mo Hua's devious thoughts and broad knowledge.
Some matters beyond ordinary understanding left Gu Changhuai truly helpless.
Now he only hoped that by following Mo Hua into the city, they could find survivors and uncover some information.
Gu Changhuai looked at the city wall and asked Mo Hua, "This wall, can we get in?"
Mo Hua examined the tall, sturdy Qingchou wall that cut off the outside victims. His divine sense turned, and he nodded, "It's fine, it doesn't seem to be that hard."
It was roughly a gate defense system composed of composite five-element formations at the early third rank and below.
If they tried to force their way in, with so many eyes watching, it would indeed be difficult.
But if it was merely a stealthy infiltration, then in this world, within the third rank, there were truly few walls and formations that could stop Mo Hua.
At least such formations would not exist in a relatively remote third-rank Qingchou Prefecture border.
But before that...
Mo Hua's brow furrowed slightly. He circled the wall and finally, at the corner, found a small clump of wild grass.
Mo Hua pulled a few blades, held them before his eyes, and his brow furrowed. Then he could not help asking Gu Changhuai softly, "Uncle Gu, have you seen any... wild grass in Qingchou Prefecture?"
"Wild grass?" Gu Changhuai was slightly taken aback. "What grass?"
"Just... very ordinary and humble... yet somewhat special. Rather precious..." Mo Hua did not know how to describe it either.
Gu Changhuai frowned, not knowing what kind of confused nonsense Mo Hua was saying.
What did he mean, ordinary and humble, yet special and precious?
If it was ordinary, how could it be special? If humble, how could it be precious?
Gu Changhuai recalled for a moment, then could only shake his head. "I have no impression..."
It was not his fault for having no impression. Who would care about roadside wild grass for no reason? It was a worthless thing to begin with.
Mo Hua's frown gradually deepened.
He had originally thought that in these chaotic times, coming to Qingchou Prefecture, he would be able to find common grass to use as a medium for the Great Wilderness Straw Dog Fate Technique of the Heavenly Mysteries.
But in reality, he just discovered that he had thought too simply.
All along the way, he still hadn't seen a single blade of wild grass that could be woven into a straw dog of fate.
"This is the Great Spiritual Field Realm, and it is a disaster year..."
Gu Changhuai said thoughtfully, "Any grass with even a bit of spirituality or nutrients, along with tree bark, has all been eaten."
"Even if it were not a disaster year, the spiritual farmers of the Great Spiritual Field Realm live by farming. Farming itself requires weeding."
Gu Changhuai paused here, somewhat puzzled, and asked Mo Hua, "What do you need wild grass for?"
Mo Hua sighed. "I use it for fortune-telling."
Gu Changhuai's expression turned subtle. He did not know whether Mo Hua's words were true or false.
Mo Hua's nature was kind yet devious. The truth in his mouth might be a lie, and the lie in his mouth might be the truth.
Gu Changhuai did not ask further.
Mo Hua, however, remained somewhat heavy-hearted.
He hadn't expected to not have found suitable grass even after all this time. This was somewhat troublesome.
Without a straw dog, there was no medium to "block the baleful."
He also lacked the means to proactively offset karmic killing calamities.
The countless vicious ghostly formations laid by his Senior Uncle still lurked within his fate.
His Divine Thought Sword could not yet be "unsealed," and he could not commit any killings, ;est the ghostly formations rebound and draw his Senior Uncle's attention. That would be terrible beyond all else.
By reason, with the Ghostly Path descending, his Senior Uncle should now have greater proper matters to attend to, and might not even pay attention to his little martial nephew.
But the problem was that his Senior Uncle might not be a person who cared about "reason."
The Ghostly Path itself was not very reasonable either.
Mo Hua did not know what other unreasonable and terrifying aspects the "Ghostly Path" might have, derived from a supreme technique like the Heavenly Devious Calculation and his Senior Uncle's profound Dao Heart Demon-Seeds.
Mo Hua sighed inwardly.
"I must quickly weave a few more straw dogs..."
From the looks of it, this karmic art involving the law of karmic transference, substituting a straw dog for death, was not as "casual" as he had thought.
It might truly be one of the Great Wilderness's most supreme karmic inheritances.
Now that he had left the Great Wilderness, finding karmic materials had become so difficult.
"Straw dogs" had been used too casually back then. Now, times had changed and they have become precious and beyond reach.
Mo Hua sighed in his heart and pondered alone for a long time.
Gu Changhuai did not know what Mo Hua was thinking, standing there in a daze. But he was used to it and did not disturb him.
After a while, when Mo Hua finished pondering, Gu Changhuai asked, "Can we enter the city now?"
"Mm." Mo Hua nodded.
He restrained his thoughts, no longer thinking about straw dogs, and instead raised his head. Through his pupils, divine sense flowed, discerning the flaws in Qingchou's walls.
The Qingchou gate formation was an extremely brilliant third-rank formation that had protected Qingchou City for nearly a thousand years and ensured its continued existence through storms.
But to Mo Hua, such brilliance did not exist.
In others' eyes, there was the "impenetrable" Qingchou wall. In the eyes of a monstrous talent like Mo Hua, there were instead quite a few flaws.
Moreover, Qingchou City had just experienced a riot, and the gate formation itself had sustained some damage.
Before long, Mo Hua discerned the gaps in the array hub circulation on the wall and found a flaw.
He led Gu Changhuai, and the two stepped close to the Qingchou wall, bodies parallel to the ground, walking step by step up the magnificent wall.
Where to step, along what direction, which wall bricks to tread, which formations to avoid, Mo Hua knew clearly in his heart.
Gu Changhuai did not understand formation layouts, but he knew that following Mo Hua was always right.
Thus, on the tall, towering Qingchou wall, Mo Hua and Gu Changhuai, like two ants, and also like two masters strolling up a mountain, avoided all warning and defense formations, walked for a quarter of an hour, and finally reached the top of the wall.
Standing atop the wall, Gu Changhuai was briefly dazed, "We actually entered Qingchou so easily..."
Then he glanced at Mo Hua and understood that the ease was because of this formation freak Mo Hua.
Formations were like that: a quarter hour of use, a hundred years of cultivation.
For anyone other Mo Hua, even with great talent and an entire lifetime of studying formations, entering a third rank formation as if strolling in a courtyard would be a very difficult feat.
Gu Changhuai sighed inwardly.
Comparisons are odious, and even more so when the target of comparison was "Mo Hua"
Mo Hua glanced at Gu Changhuai, and Gu Changhuai nodded.
After that, the two no longer hesitated. Unseen by anyone, they openly crossed the parapet, crenellations, and beacon towers, and leaped down.
Like two invisible falcons, they plunged into Qingchou City.
And amid the great disaster, inside Qingchou City, there was an entirely different scene.