Qingyun Town
In Southern Forest, within the territory of the Sangyu Kingdom, in Qingyun Town, a young man dressed in a blue robe jumped down from a carriage. After giving a few instructions to the people in the carriage, he led the carriage to the town gate.
"Halt!" At the city gate, a soldier stopped the young man. "You need to register to enter the city!"
The young man pointed to the flow of people coming and going freely beside him, looking bewildered. "But why don't they need to register?"
"I know them all, of course I don't need to register!" the sergeant said. "Judging from your appearance, are you from out of town?"
"Yes!" The young man nodded and followed the soldier to the barbican next to him. There was a table there, and a young man who looked like a scholar sat behind the long table, wiping his sweat from time to time.
"Old Liu, we've got some work to do!" the soldier said, standing to the side without leaving, as if he wanted to watch the show.
Old Liu was that scholar, and his appearance and attire were somewhat similar to Jiang Gan from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Both were thin and weak, with a small tuft of pointed mustache below their noses.
"Name?" Old Liu asked.
"Yang Guo!" the young man exclaimed.
"Hmm, how many people are in the carriage? What's your relationship with them?" Old Liu continued to ask.
"It's a member of my family, named Little Dragon Girl, and her maid Mochou!"
"Hmm!" Old Liu nodded, then asked, "Where are you from, and what brings you to Qingyun Town?"
"We came from Yudu recently, and we were worried about being affected, so we came to Qingyun Town to take refuge for a while!"
Old Liu glanced at the carriage outside. Just then, Little Dragon Girl opened the window, revealing a perfect profile. Although it was fleeting, Old Liu's eyes lit up.
Qingyun Town has a grand name, but it's actually just a rural, unsophisticated town. There are pretty girls, but they're all kept by landlords. Where had he ever seen anyone so beautiful?
However, judging from Yang Guo and the style of the carriage, this group of people must be rich and powerful, and they may have some connections and influence behind them, which is not something a mere clerk like him can afford to offend.
"There are so many towns along the way, why choose Qingyun Town?" Old Liu asked again.
"My wife is exhausted from the long journey and is too weak to walk any further. Besides, Yudu, so let's stop here!" Yang Guo said with a smile.
"Hmm!" Old Liu nodded, noted down the reason, and gave Yang Guo a wooden plaque. "This is your identification. If anyone checks it in the city, show it to them. Also, there are three of you, so the fee is three hundred coins!"
"Here you go!" The young man took out three hundred coins from his pocket and handed them over.
Old Liu took the money and, while counting it, asked, "Um, since you're from Yudu, what exactly happened Yudu? I heard that the king was killed by immortals?"
"That's exactly right!" Yang Guo nodded. "Those immortals said that the king had broken a great precept, and then they started killing people. They killed from morning till night, not even sparing a chicken!"
"Then our Sangyu Kingdom is now without a king?" Old Liu was somewhat panicked. He had never imagined in his entire life that a king could cease to exist!
"Not only is the king no longer alive, but the Sangyu Kingdom is also a mere shell of its former self!" Yang Guo whispered, "On my way here, I heard someone shouting the slogan 'Heaven creates all things to nourish man, but man has nothing to repay Heaven,' and they were killing people like madmen!"
"Ah!" Old Liu exclaimed in alarm, "Does this mean the world is about to descend into chaos?"
"Things are about to get chaotic, let's prepare!" Yang Guo patted Old Liu on the shoulder, seeing that Old Liu had even forgotten how to count, he was too lazy to remind him, and simply picked up the identity token and left.
Old Liu and the soldiers were stunned by the sudden news and did not stop Yang Guo. They just watched as Yang Guo led his horse into the town.
Qingyun Town is an ordinary ancient town with simple houses, a small population, and no government office. There is only a 10-person team stationed at the city gate, which was formed by the townspeople themselves.
The town has a total population of 4,600, of which the Four Great Families Bu, Xiu, He, and Wei make up the majority. These four families are intermarried and collude with each other, controlling 90% of the farmland in Qingyun Town and the vast majority of its commercial income, such as salt, iron, grain, cloth, restaurants, and medicinal herb trading.
The remaining ordinary people either depended on the Four Great Families as tenant farmers or made a living by hunting and fishing, and basically no longer had their own means of production.
"Are we going to settle down here from now on?" On the carriage, the frail and sickly girl, pale from the long journey, gazed at the distant verdant mountains. This place was so different from where she usually lived that she felt somewhat uncomfortable.
"We'll be settling here for a while, but how long depends on how fast we develop!" Yang Guo said.
"Yes!" The girl nodded, understanding dawning on her.
She's currently stuck at the Fifth Level of Divine Abilities, and it's time for her to settle down. So she doesn't really care whether she lives on a celestial mountain or in a mortal town.
That's right, the couple is Yang Ning and Yuanxi, Mochou is Xiao Huan in disguise.
As for why the three of them came here, it was naturally to fulfill their promise to Hengming Tower.
Hengming founded the Great Ming Kingdom, his intention being to bring all the countries together to form a super-large nation.
But in Yang Ning's view, a country formed in this way actually lacks any organizational capacity or cohesion.
The dynasty had developed for hundreds of years, and countless powerful Aristocratic Clan had already formed in the local areas. The royal family was just the largest of these Aristocratic Clan.
From the perspective of dynastic change, now that the emperor has died, a new one comes to power, which naturally means a change of dynasty.
But at the fundamental institutional level, this dynasty was actually no different from the one before it.
What Yang Ning wanted was not a country under this feudal system, but a modern country!
The current Southern Forest is equivalent to the late Ming Dynasty during the Chongzhen era. It has accumulated too many problems, and top-down reforms alone are no longer effective. You need to learn from Li Zicheng and the Huangchao, and thoroughly sort things out from the bottom up in order to completely eliminate the old interest groups.
This transformative process is also a process of reshaping people's thinking and building national cohesion.
This process can actually be omitted, because Yang Ning can use cultivation techniques to interfere with people's thinking.
But Yang Ning had a kind of fastidiousness; he preferred that ordinary people have children slowly and let the population grow.
Of course, there's another reason for doing this.
Yang Ning had already deduced countless times that if someone suddenly appeared and wanted to rule the Great Ming Kingdom, Taiheng Sect would immediately realize the problem and then regard that person as an accomplice of Yang Ning.
Even with Hengming's protection, there's a way to kill this person if Taiheng is solely focused on targeting him.
However, if it were a battle royale mode, where one fights their way out from among countless others, the Taiheng Sect would be much less vigilant.
If this process of fighting is prolonged, they could even carry out a new era of national transformation in their respective territories, and when they are unified, it will be the complete form that Yang Ning envisions.
Meanwhile, Taiheng remained unconcerned. Even as Yang Ning constructed warship satellites during the simulations, Taiheng Sect continued to watch with amusement.
In their eyes, watching Hengming Tower make a wrong decision was far more important than the development and growth of the Great Ming Kingdom. As long as the Ming Dynasty did not show any strength that threatened them during the chaotic war, they would continue to enjoy the spectacle.
Yang Ning intends to exploit this mentality to grow stronger right under the enemy's nose!