Beichen Sword Sect's Headmaster's Secret Records

Chapter 286: Dark and Bright Cutting Iron
"Dark and bright."

"Zhantie."

"Greetings, sir."*2
Son...

Looking at the two nuns in front of him wearing Taoist robes and with their hair tied up in rosy clouds, Tiedan was speechless for a moment.

The third wife of Cangjian Villa is Xiaorong, and the eighth wife is Wuyi, the mother of the young marquis and Jianjia.

Now she has become the Beichen Sword Sect's sword-serving maid, and is able to cut through iron with great clarity.

These two people are actually biological sisters. Now that they have removed their makeup and are wearing the same blue clothes, they look the same. Tiedan has never met them up close, so how could he recognize them?

Even Tiedan was a little confused for a moment.

"Do you...know who I am?"

Huiming, "Young Master is the descendant of the Sword Master."

Zhan Tie, "Guangxia Mountain Sword Immortal Tiedan."

Tiedan hesitated for a moment.

"Then do you know who you are?"

Huiming, "Servant in Beichen Palace, with the twin blades of Huiming in his belly."

"The guardian of the Jiuyao Pavilion, the divine weapon of Zhan Tie."

Tiedan asked again,

"What about the two from the Shen family? Are they coming with you?"

They both nodded.
"Yes, but they haven't reached Nascent Soul stage yet, and their souls are suppressed by the sword light."

"As long as the sword leaves the body, they will naturally wake up."

"But once the Beichen Divine Weapon is unsheathed, blood will be shed."

"Each time you take the sword, you will lose a lot of energy and shorten your life by ten years."

"You just need to pinch the sword's fingers and call my sword's name, and then you can take it out and use it."

"Sir, would you like to wake them up and have a word with them?"

Tiedan shook his head quickly.

"That's not necessary. We are not very familiar with each other."

"Yes."

So Huiming Zhantie just stood quietly beside Tiedan, neither asking nor answering.

Tiedan was silent for a while, then turned to look at them.
"You guys are just standing here?"

Huiming Zhantie immediately knelt down again,
"I usually stand like this. I forgot for a moment. Please forgive me, sir."

"Sir, would you like some tea? Plain or boiled? Please advise."

Tiedan was speechless.

"What use are you guys for? Uh, I mean, besides serving the sword and hiding the sword, why don't you practice on your own?"

Dark and bright cut the railway,
"The second wife of the Shen family is not talented enough and has a weak foundation, so she cannot obtain the true method of Xuanmen."

"Last time, they tried to survive by using their secret swords, which caused them to lose a lot of energy and blood. They only have a hundred years left to live."

"If we practice Qi cultivation, I'm afraid that the sword Qi will be too sharp and will shorten their lifespans."

"Sir, please find us a new sheath and reforge the sword within a hundred years."

"...Okay, I understand."

In other words, these two lackeys are really useless, serving tea and water, and they can use swords when the fight really comes. But when they are really pushed to the limit, one or two swords are of no use.

Huiming Zhantie was not stupid. He saw that Tiedan disliked the burden, looked at each other and added,

"We have been in Jiange for a long time, and have learned a lot of the five arts. We have also heard a lot of the secrets of the Xuanmen and the rumors in the world. I can tell you about them, young master."

“Although it is not suitable to practice Qi to control the sword, the soul can also transform into a sword. If the young master’s soul leaves the body, the two of us can hold the sword and protect your body.”

"If your spiritual awareness is insufficient, you can give us any extra magic weapons and instruments you have."

"Collecting herbs and refining elixirs, guarding formations and enforcing laws, serving tea and water, making beds and folding quilts, anything that humans can do, we can do too."

I see. Hmm... that's still useless...

Tiedan thought about it,
"I am used to being alone, let alone bringing you along. If my sword gets damaged, that would be bad. It would be better for you to practice in this temple..."

Huiming Zhantie immediately rushed over to ask for the truth.
"We are the sword masters of the Kaiyang lineage. Now that our inheritance has been cut off in the mountains, if even the young master doesn't want us, we will be thrown back to the sword tomb again!"

"It's been a while since I last drank blood and killed anything. I'm extremely hungry and thirsty, and I feel extremely itchy, as if thousands of bugs are scratching my heart. Please, sir, take us with you!"

Tiedan frowned, Huiming Zhantie was startled, and quickly retreated, prostrating himself on the ground.

Tiedan thought about it. After all, it was the sword that his master had given him... It would not be good to just send him away. So he took out the list that Tianyin had given him from his sleeve.

"Okay, you know the way? Let's kill those closest to us first."

Huiming was overjoyed when he cut through the iron.

"Respect the law."

So Tiedan didn't delay, and took the two of them out with Jian Guang to do the sect management task. Along the way, he also listened to Huiming Zhantie's explanations, and really learned a lot of skills that he had never come into contact with before.

That is how to run a sect.

Yes, let’s not talk about how despicable, shameless and damnable the people in Benshan are. The fact that they can sit in that position means they have at least mastered one skill, which is knowing how to run a sect.

They know where the resources are, how to get them, who to send, and how to divide them. You think they are really stupid. It's just that they only fight for their own families and won't share with outsiders like you.

However, since Tiedan had to do all the dirty, tiring and hard work now, Tianyin would not let him kill anyone he caught, so he still wrote a few more words, roughly divided the list and indicated the order of priority.

Even though Tiedan had never done this kind of work before, with Huiming Zhantie's guidance, he quickly understood the general idea.

In short, Genzhou was originally prosperous and rich in resources, and Yedu was the capital of the northern vassal state. After Qianzhou was taken away, it has become the richest metropolitan area in the north after thousands of years. There are countless local wealthy families, ministers, generals, and aristocratic families.

Therefore, although there have been many wars in recent years, and the northern soldiers and barbarians have seriously disrupted production and life, the victims are all ordinary people at the bottom of society. The power of the Hebei clans is still there, and in the struggle with the stone dragons, they have also preserved the survival wisdom of jumping between the two sides. For example, when the righteous army rose up, they welcomed the king's army, but now that they saw the king's army was defeated, they immediately jumped back and sent their children to Longteng Palace to worship the king.

So even though the common people suffered devastating losses, with hundreds of thousands of them starving to death, freezing to death, being killed or looted, the local powerful families took the opportunity to grow and become stronger in the process, and under the banner of the King of Heaven, the Immortal Palace, or the Xuanmen, they wantonly plundered people, resources, and land.

And please note, it is plundering, not destruction. No one will go crazy and only care about destruction. The ultimate goal of victorious deeds is always wealth and glory. In the final analysis, wealth and resources are just transferred in the hands of different people.

Therefore, although the Heavenly King rebels took the lion's share, the resources they looted were mostly gold, silver, jewelry, money, food and women, and these resources were actually of little use to the Xuanmen.

So what does Xuanmen want?

To cultivate immortality one naturally needs Dharma friends, wealth, land, natural materials and treasures. Not to mention the competition for immortality opportunities in the sacred mountains and rivers, let’s just talk about the materials that need to be obtained from the human world.

The largest amount of resources that Xuanmen requires from the mortal world are ore and firewood. Ore is relatively easy to understand. To put it simply, it is the "spiritual stone" commonly seen in various novels.

Minerals that have been contaminated with spiritual energy and can be refined, various natural treasures, meteorites and star iron, metal and non-metal mineral aggregates generated under the special environment of the Tai Chi world, or pitch-black lumps of soil that are impossible to tell what they are, as long as they are dug out from the ground, can all be collectively called spiritual stone deposits.

Even those that are not contaminated by spiritual energy, ordinary gold, silver, copper, iron, precious stones, jade, cinnabar, sulfur, various auxiliary materials dug out from mines in caves in the mountains, and the arts of Taoism, alchemy, medicine making, and various secret recipes are naturally indispensable.

All these materials and minerals are classified into different categories and the more the better. If we ask the disciples outside the mountains to collect them all, they will really rebel.

Damn, I swallowed a golden pill, and now I am here to mine for you???
But these things are used by immortals. If you don't dig them and I don't dig them, someone has to dig them, right? And the key point is that mortals generally don't need to deliberately collect mineral resources.

After all, the poor people only need minerals and precious stones for food, clothing, shelter and transportation. They don't have time to farm, weave and perform corvée labor, so who would go out of their way to collect them? Moreover, how could the mines be in the hands of the common people?

Since the spiritual stones basically come from the mineral resources in the hands of the royal family, government, clans, landlords, and tyrants, only these people can use carrots and sticks to drive the people to mine and collect, and provide the three major sects of Qi refining practitioners with essential material resources. Therefore, in order to obtain the spiritual stone veins, it is necessary to first win over the local forces and obtain the mineral resources and human resources they have controlled for generations.

Well, the cost of winning over a group of people is really too high. However, if you only win over one family, pick their sons and grandsons to be recruited into the family, then they will be able to send truckloads of spirit stone ore to you in the mountains for worship. Isn't it a very cost-effective deal? This is called investing resources.

The second is firewood.

Firewood is firewood. It doesn't need to be spiritual firewood. It is just pure firewood for burning, as fuel.

After all, there is no nuclear fusion and natural qi these days. In ancient times, people just chopped wood and burned it. Of course, there is also coal, which is used for iron smelting, burning lime, and refining cinnabar and sulfur, but in the final analysis, it still has to be dug from the ground, so it is classified as an ore.

Yes, immortals can also practice the Red Evil Technique by hand, and produce those high-end Samadhi True Fires. It is not difficult to create colorful flame reactions, plasma sparks, and light firecrackers.

But I still say that, I have been breathing mist for hundreds of years, and finally became an immortal, and cultivated a human-shaped fusion reactor, and you want me to come and light the fire next to the furnace???

Besides, firewood is cheap. How is burning a red evil talisman different from burning firewood? How many truckloads of firewood can you exchange for it?

Anyway, these days the immortal palaces are all made of golden machines, the immortals have gone to heaven and earth, but mortals are still worrying about a mere piece of firewood. This setting is really weird.

However, there are so many inexplicable settings in the world of immortals, and the people in the palace are busy fighting for power, and the people in the mountains are busy understanding the will of heaven, and few people bother about such trivial matters. As a result, tens of thousands of years have passed in a blink of an eye, and the people in the world are still picking up firewood.

Ahem, I've gone off topic. In short, unless it is the refining of some precious elixir, which requires the alchemist to carefully tend to the fire, the furnaces that are usually used to refine medicinal residues and auxiliary materials are simply filled with firewood.

In the past, it was fine to buy some firewood, and no one cared. But now the Xuanmen is getting bigger and bigger. The nine Xuanmen, the giants of the immortal family, consume thousands or tens of thousands of kilograms of firewood at any time. Hundreds of alchemy furnaces and sword furnaces are running all day long, and the fire in the sword furnaces may not be extinguished for hundreds of years.

Looking at the Cloud Terrace filled with smoke and clouds all day long, one can tell that the expenses of Xuanmen are no less than those of the Immortal Palace.

Similar to minerals, this also depends on local powerful landlords to organize manpower and contribute by logging from the mountains.

But the problem is that ordinary people also need firewood.

Don't you burn firewood to cook and keep warm? Firewood can be counted as wages these days.

Of course you can buy up all the firewood on the market, and if you dare to buy it, the rich will give it to you. But in the end, the price of firewood goes up to the sky, and there are piles of frozen corpses on the roadside. Whose are they?
Why do you blame the rich for using firewood to make the elixir? Would you share one with them after you have made the elixir? Besides, if the common people are freezing to death or starving to death, who will help you to mine and chop firewood?

And don't forget the Immortal Palace! They've all gone to mine and chop wood for Xuanmen! Who's going to pay taxes to the Immortal Palace?
This means that the amount of firewood that Xuanmen can get from the market is limited. The amount of ore is also limited. The manpower is also naturally limited.

After all, every year and every place, firewood, manpower and mineral resources are all limited.

The elixirs and swords that are refined using ore, firewood, and manpower are naturally of limited value.

How to divide this number among the Danfang Sword Furnace will also require a fight.

The three major sects, the Jiuxuan Sect, and the Inner and Outer Mountains, all want to fight for it.

To fight for it, that's what Tiedan has to do.

Therefore, more than half of the people on this list either have mines or forests at home, or they are the internal historians and chancellors who were in charge of the money and grain of the Gen State, such as Taicang, Junshu, Pingzheng, Dunei, Jitian, Wuguan, and Tieguan, and were familiar with local affairs.

No matter whether it is by deception or coercion, we must win them over and tie them to the Sword Sect's chariot.

Because ore and firewood are the two major items of the sect's expenses, and they are not transactions that can be completed after one or two times. Whether the sect can occupy the mineral veins and forests for a long time, whether the local powerful people can be subdued and won over, whether the sect can achieve stable production and obtain long-term resource supply will directly determine the fate of the entire sect.

Of course, just by controlling the distribution of ore and firewood, the Tianyin family would gain countless benefits.

Well, Tiedan is the one who fights, and they are the ones who divide. If there are benefits, they will naturally eat their fill, but if they fail to win, they won’t be able to handle it well.

There is a lack of mines and firewood, which has delayed production, damaged the sect's things, and ruined the mountain's fortune. Who will bear the final responsibility?

Haha, I understand.

"Sir, this first person is not easy to deal with."

"Is Master Tianyin trying to embarrass you?"

Tiedan was speechless, you guys understood so quickly...

"Why, who? Can you handle it? A Divine Transformation Level?"

"Rather than being difficult to deal with, it's better to say that it's impossible to deal with..."

"I'm afraid he's dead now..."

Tiedan frowned and took the note to take a look.

"Changshan Shou..."

Counting on my fingers, it seems that he led troops to resist the rebels, but was eventually besieged and destroyed.

"Sir, let's go to the northern moat of Ye City first!"

"Yes, maybe it's not too late!"

So Tiedan followed Huiming Zhantie's instructions and fled at high speed. In a blink of an eye, he landed at the moat. From afar, he saw more than a hundred people, all of whom were dismembered, with their limbs cut off. They were roasted and eaten by the captive soldiers, and their torsos were hung on the bridge pillars of the moat for public display. The Zhang River had all turned red.

One of them kept cursing and his tongue was hooked off. Blood spurted out of his mouth and nose. He kept screaming and screaming with blood spraying in his face, which made the enemy soldiers so angry that they cut his flesh with knives.

The onlookers were so angry that they dared not say anything and could only shed tears in secret.

That must be him, I guess.

"Go drink blood!"

"Respect the law!"

Huiming Zhantie leaped out, sword flashing wildly, killing all the northern barbarians into pieces.

Tiedan leaped up, climbed onto the bridge, pulled the rope, and lifted the bloody man in front of him.

"But Yan Zhongjie?"

The man had his throat, tongue, mouth and nose cut off. He just coughed up blood and nodded.

Tiedan said, "Do you have any unfulfilled wishes?"

The man looked toward the distant Longteng Palace and roared angrily in grief and anger, like the roar of a dragon.

Tiedan nodded.
"Okay! I agree! Let's dissolve the weapon!"

Then the sword flashed, picked up his head, and flew away.

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(End of this chapter)