There were times when strength ran dry; all one could do was exhaust human effort and heed Heaven's will. That was Ye Zhen's current predicament.
After the first batch of two hundred million shi of disaster-relief grain arrived, the food shortage in the Yizhi Sand Sea was considered resolved. However, the number of tribes suffering from water shortages because the Yidongqing Divine Trees had all died out only continued to grow.
Even if Ye Zhen worked around the clock without sleep or rest, he could only induce Yidongqing Divine Trees in fifty or sixty tribes a day.
Leaving everything else aside, merely saving the 7,100 tribes under Wu You's jurisdiction would take at least three and a half months at the fastest.
Starting from the second month, the daily death toll reported by the various tribes from heat sickness or lack of water exceeded five thousand. Moreover, that number was multiplying by the day.
Ye Zhen was frantic with anxiety, yet utterly helpless.
He had already thought of every possible solution.
For instance, several neighboring small tribes could gather together first. If Ye Zhen saved one tribe, it would be equivalent to saving two or three.
At the same time, the Yizhi Temple had fully mobilized those martial artists capable of burrowing into underground rivers, having them draw water directly from those rivers.
Yet the situation continued to deteriorate. Not only was the number of martial artists capable of entering underground rivers limited, but the hidden rivers beneath the ground near those water-starved tribes had already seeped into the sand sea. The amount of water that could be drawn was extremely limited.
To obtain more water, they could only travel farther and fetch it from the main channels of the underground rivers, but even then, the quantity was limited.
By