Bai Yujun traveled alone, stopping from time to time to observe carefully.
Interestingly, the mortals under the False Human Emperor lived peacefully. They had not been conscripted en masse for corvée labor, nor were they scantily clad and gaunt as skeletons. The crops in the fertile fields grew well, the cattle and sheep were plump and strong, and the villages and towns were all normal. There were no impoverished, miserable people living amid broken walls and ruins.
But...
Everything had stagnated.
Through Gaze into the Past, she saw it more clearly. The farming implements remained unchanged, livestock were raised exactly as they had been thousands of years ago, and production and daily life seemed frozen in place. Clothing styles had not progressed at all, homes were primitive and crude, food was monotonous, and medical care was too horrible to look at. Under normal circumstances, there should have been constant innovation and change.
The small town beneath Bamboo Spring Temple often produced novel little things: adjustments to farming tools, the spread of ironware, even innovations to waterwheels.
The towns she had seen along the way had almost all remained in the past, as though they had been deliberately suppressed.
Repeating the past day after day, year after year, made Bai Yujun feel deeply uncomfortable.
It could still be called a life of ample food and clothing, without the warfare and upheaval of the lower classes tearing one another apart. Yet it always felt as though something was missing.
Her figure landed atop an old tree by the roadside.
From high above, she watched ox carts and carriages traveling along the dirt road, as well as farmers laboring in the fields. Everything was orderly. After observing several towns in succession, she found them all the same. Everything she saw and heard met