The Rise of an Empire

Lishan Martial Arts School, in the study.

Lin Tuo stood quietly beside the sandbox, waved his hand to disperse the mist he had forcibly swept in from the Taihe Mountain Range, and then withdrew his avatar back into his body.

After finishing all this, he looked down at the still unsettled crowd on Yangcheng Central Business District Square and finally let out a light breath.

"Everything went smoothly."

Taking the time to use his avatar to enter the Taihe Mountain Range and carve the technique onto the surface of a giant rock had indeed cost him considerable effort. To be cautious, he had even deliberately used his left hand for the carving and carefully cleaned off fingerprints and other traces.

Ensuring no clues would be left behind.

"Yangcheng is neither too small nor too big. There were quite a few people on the square who witnessed this scene, and many filmed it. It won't be long before the specific content of this technique spreads online.

Especially within Yangcheng itself, it's bound to spark further heated discussion...

As for the national scale, it might also attract some attention, but probably not too much.

After all, the attention a mysterious warrior can draw is still limited... at least, until the technique is proven to actually work."

"Next, as long as the Yangcheng Municipal Government isn't too slow, they'll definitely investigate and report to their superiors. Perhaps the Provincial Investigation Team will arrive soon."

But Lin Tuo wasn't worried about being traced. With the Evolution Sandbox's ability, he could appear and disappear out of thin air, and his physical details were concealed. His movements were completely untraceable.

Seeing the crowd on the square gradually calm down, Lin Tuo stopped thinking about it and got up to head to the training ground for his daily practice.

Noon.

When Lin Tuo came down the mountain to eat in the town, he already heard diners discussing the morning's incident.

In the group chats and on social media feeds, there were related videos and photos of the "Azure Spirit Breath Technique" circulating.

Many people were skeptical, some firmly believed it was a scam, while others expressed support:

"It's real! I swear! I was right in the city center this morning and saw it with my own eyes. That guy threw a stone tablet that big from a building into the flowerbed, and it smashed a huge crater into the ground!

I even went and touched it. It was real stone, not a prop! It was that heavy, and he threw it so accurately—no normal person could do that!"

In the company group chat, a former colleague said with great seriousness.

A copywriting girl who had just started her internship asked curiously:

"Right in the city center? I'll go take a look after work."

"Don't bother, it's already cordoned off. The relevant city departments have taken over. I heard the stone was even moved away, though I don't know if that's true.

Too bad... but honestly, that stone tablet looked pretty nice sitting there..."

"Oh, I see."

Lin Tuo silently lurked, watching everyone's discussion without much surprise.

Suddenly, a colleague said:

"Hey, do you think that Azure Spirit Breath Technique... is real or fake? I mean, it looks like some kind of internal energy cultivation method, doesn't it?"

Another person joked: "I think it looks more like a cultivation formula, like in those novels."

After a pause, he added, "How about we give it a try? I looked it over carefully. This formula doesn't seem hard—it's just adjusting your breathing. Trying it can't hurt."

"I don't know... maybe we should wait for an official announcement?"

"Forget it, I'll try it after work anyway."

"Same here."

The group was mostly young people, full of curiosity. A few immediately started discussing how to practice it. The others stayed quiet, but Lin Tuo figured quite a few were tempted.

Feeling reassured, he finished lunch and returned to Lishan. Entering the study, he immediately summoned the "Virtual Panel" and switched the Evolution Sandbox to "Creation Mode."

In the room, the light and shadows suddenly collapsed, then reorganized, forming a continent in an instant.

After more than thirty hours of acceleration, the sandbox continent had indeed changed.

Looking down, the once chaotic farmland of the entire Chi Kingdom had become much more orderly, with clear ridges and rows. Some previously barren land unsuitable for farming had also been reclaimed as fields.

Looking closely, he could vaguely see humans pushing new agricultural tools, busy at work in the fields.

This was clearly the result of the "agricultural reform."

The land was now farmed collectively by "big landowners" or local state authorities, using new tools, new fertilizers, and more scientific planting methods, leading to increased grain yields.

As for the original farming labor force, they were recruited into state-owned factories, trained on the job, and used new technologies to produce fertilizers, pesticides, and new agricultural tools.

After work, under local arrangements, they attended "night schools" for basic education, creating a positive cycle.

When Lin Tuo shifted his gaze to the factories that were beginning to take shape, his mood improved even more.

This feeling of witnessing a country's rapid development firsthand... was very strange.

"Open the operation log."

Lin Tuo spoke softly, and the interface automatically opened.

[Year 740,823 of World Evolution: Chi Kingdom agricultural reforms, implementation of a series of new policies. In the same year, the first State-Owned Factory was established within Tao County to produce agricultural necessities, along with a related laboratory as a pilot project.]

[...One year later, the pilot scope gradually expanded. The reigning monarch proposed the first Five-Year Plan...]

[...Year 829: On the banks of the Taohua River in the Capital suburbs, the first large-scale textile mill was built. New-style looms impacted the original textile industry. In the same year, the Chi Kingdom treasury invested ten thousand taels of silver to develop the Steam Engine, which was first deployed at Xishan Mining. Plans were also made to issue a trusted currency... further liberalizing private commerce...]

[...Year 838: The first Stock Exchange in Chi Kingdom was officially established in the Capital, raising over... from private capital...]

[...Year 841...]

[...Year 853...]

Lin Tuo browsed through the Operation Log with keen interest.

Through his recent exploration, he had come to understand the log's rules better—it tended to record landmark events in societal development.

Simply put, these were events worth putting in history textbooks and appearing on exam papers.

Thus, during periods of rapid social development, the records were especially frequent. Lin Tuo only needed to skim them to roughly grasp the developmental trajectory.

Further along, if the same type of thing had no major changes, it would no longer be recorded.

Folding it away, Lin Tuo turned his gaze expectantly to "Current Environment Aether Concentration."

It still read "Low," which was no surprise.

After that, there was a green upward arrow, indicating that the Aether within the Sandbox was rising.

"This time, it can't still be that little, right?"

Lin Tuo muttered to himself, looking down at the Sandbox. He lowered his body slightly, then once again activated the Qi-Eating Method.

Immediately, above the rapidly shifting Sandbox continent, wisps of green-white breath were drawn over and swallowed into his abdomen.

This time, as the Aether entered, Lin Tuo's skin suddenly flushed red and heated up, as if he had a high fever, with even fine beads of sweat seeping out.

After several dozen seconds, Lin Tuo opened his eyes and asked again:

"How much Aether do I have now?"

Information surfaced in his mind:

[Host currently has Aether Value: 536 points]

536!

Seeing this number, Lin Tuo's spirits lifted.

Originally, after purchasing the Tongyu Technique, he had only 24 Aether points left. He had absorbed a few more points to temper his body, deducting those.

This single breath had netted him over five hundred points!

Compared to last time, this was a leap.

After all, even Yangcheng City had only provided him with about a hundred Aether points.

This one breath was equivalent to five Yangcheng Cities!

Of course, it couldn't be calculated that simply.

For one, after these years of development, Chi Kingdom's total population had increased. For another, Lin Tuo wasn't absorbing Aether from a single point in time; under the Time Acceleration effect, he was drawing from a time period.

Thus, it was five times higher than Yangcheng.

Moreover, because the conversion consumption differed between the two modes, Lin Tuo suspected the actual Aether absorbed far exceeded this number, with a portion being consumed by the Sandbox.

"This is the right path. If I'd stubbornly stuck to Observation Mode, how long would it have taken to save up five hundred points?"

Sighing inwardly, Lin Tuo felt a bit of a swell.

With money, naturally, he wanted to spend.

He opened the "Store" button with his mind. Only one item remained inside:

[Observation Range: 1000 points / 10,000 square kilometers]

Seeing the number one thousand, Lin Tuo was silent for two seconds. That little bit of "swell" in his heart vanished instantly.

He thought he'd come into a windfall, but he couldn't even afford half an item.

Lin Tuo let out a deep sigh, his smile bitter:

"I'm so poor."

Thanks to readers: Little Cold Palace o Miao, OAA Alliance Founder, La Guzi, Water Demon Ice Blue, CLAY, Clown, Reader 2019...0746 for your reward support.