Population Siphon: Taiheng's Bankruptcy Wave

Is the cultural industry important?

This is very important for countries in the Dharma-ending Age where people are unable to cultivate themselves!

Qu Heng is absolutely right. Cultural invasion can indeed attract talent away, and talent is the cornerstone of a country's development. If all the talent leaves, how can the country develop?

But this is a world of cultivation, what's so important about cultural industries?

You could publish a thousand or ten thousand novels, but that wouldn't compare to producing a single cultivator at the Spiritual Law Realm.

Of course, if a cultivator at the Spiritual Law Realm falls in love with a country because they like a novel, that's a different story.

Qu Heng understood this principle, and so did everyone in the Elder Council, yet they still did it this way, and even promoted it extensively, brainwashing the common people.

There's no future in cultivating immortality, so I might as well switch careers and draw comics.

Cartoonists and novelists earn high incomes and enjoy high status; isn't that better than being a miserable, low-level cultivator in the Cultivation World?

They even hold high-level meet-and-greets and book signings. A mere mortal author has countless fans who are like cultivators—isn't that enough to tempt you?

All I can say is that this is what a powerful, aristocratic Aristocratic Clan like.

For powerful Aristocratic Clan, the Great Harmony and continuation of the Lineage is more important than anything else. They would harm the country for the sake of their Lineage, and the fate of their sects would be just a basic operation.

Given the current power of the Taiheng Aristocratic Clan, doing nothing is the best course of action for them.

Let alone a bad policy, even a good policy can turn bad if implemented due to the selfishness of the Aristocratic Clan.

Moreover, there is now a country called Da Xia, which may seem insignificant, but has actually begun to compete with Tai Heng in all aspects.

Starting with the entertainment industry, Qu Heng issued this order on a whim, without considering that only Da Xia currently possesses the paper, pens, graphics tablets, computers, and even comic websites and animation studios needed for drawing comics and making animations. If you want to get started, you'll have to buy them from Da Xia.

Want to shoot movies or TV series? A mobile phone can shoot, but it can only shoot videos with the lowest resolution. If you want something better, you need a better camera, better equipment, and higher technology, and all of these only exist in Daxia.

Want to expand? Fine, then pay up and buy it.

Also, to watch a movie, you need a movie theater.

Our family's movie theater is attached to a plaza, which has restaurants, cafes, Mixue Ice Cream shops, clothing stores, jewelry stores, and everything else you could need.

We signed a contract with the Aristocratic Clan, indicating that as long as this land belongs to us, we will pay them a high monthly rent.

Why wouldn't Aristocratic Clan be willing to make money while lying down? Naturally, the Great Xia's chain cinemas also opened within the Taiheng Sect.

Some Aristocratic Clan also said, "Putting aside everything else, we have plenty of freelancers, and we can certainly do the movie theater job."

No problem. But how about we handle the troublesome things like movie scheduling and ticket sales? You can just sit back and make money. We've already negotiated the revenue sharing for you. You can earn 41% of the money for every movie you show!

The Aristocratic Clan were naturally delighted. I only needed to provide a piece of land or build a shopping mall, and I could make money without even having to film the movie. Why wouldn't I want that?

What they don't know is that movie theaters are actually a partnership between film companies and theater chains to divide up ordinary people's money.

In a country with a well-developed economic system, this operation is feasible because the government will redistribute the revenue of the cinema chain through taxation, allowing the economy to return to the overall economic system and circulate.

But Taiheng's distribution system is problematic. Apart from the Aristocratic Clan, this sect consists of commoners who are dependent on the Aristocratic Clan. Commoners have no money at all; their only value is providing faith and fortune.

There is no commercial activity or economic cycle in Taiheng, which means that the money spent by the local people and Aristocratic Clan families is truly gone!

This is just one example of the film industry; in reality, there are many similar industries.

For example, the best cars were made in Daxia.

For example, airplanes. Not everyone from the Aristocratic Clan can fly, and there is a demand for airplanes.

For example, restaurants, milk tea shops, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, express delivery companies, and almost every industry.

Many industries lack this feature, not because they don't need it, but because no one has thought of it yet.

In reality, there's no difference between immortals and mortals when it comes to enjoying life; they both crave delicious food and drinks.

Moreover, cultivators, like homebodies, enjoy the conveniences of life without leaving home. Therefore, transplanting fast food, takeout, and express delivery services can be seamlessly integrated into their lives.

In the cultivation industry, there are even more examples like this.

Pills for the Body Refinement Realm and the Qi Refining Stage are a necessity for every cultivator.

Spirit Artifact, Law Artifact, and precious artifacts.

Faced with the wave of industrialization, Taiheng's weapon-refining and alchemy industries would be utterly defeated by the Great Xia, leaving them with no chance to fight back.

Qu Heng merely opened up a cultural market, but what is not prohibited by law is permitted. Since he did not prohibit doing business with Da Xia, many things from Da Xia entered the country thanks to the cultural industry boom.

With the influx of cultural industries, ordinary people in Taiheng were the first to face mass unemployment.

This unemployment is normal. How can a small-scale agricultural country, relying solely on handicrafts, possibly compete with an industrialized country?

Leaving aside industry, even in agriculture, which relies on Immortal Method Law Technique, Taiheng cannot compete with Daxia.

Since you still need to manually cast spells to cultivate the land, I've directly installed the runes on the mechanical equipment.

You consume Law Power, I consume Solar True Force. You can use Law Power a few times a day, but Solar True Force is inexhaustible!

The influx of large quantities of low-priced grain into Daxia led to widespread unemployment among Daxia farmers, as they were unable to sell their grain.

If we can't sell our food, we won't have money; if we don't have money, we can't buy food.

The people of Taiheng had never experienced anything like this before. They used to complain that grain was too expensive, so they grew rice but could only sell it and eat millet instead.

Self-sufficient? Does food really all a person needs to live?

Do you want to eat vegetables? Do you want to wear clothes? Do you want to watch some TV? Do your children want to go to school? Do you want to renovate your house? Do you want to get treatment if you get sick? All of these things cost money!

Are you worried?

If you're worried, that's fine. Come to Daxia! Work in Daxia and you'll earn more in a month than you used to earn farming for a whole year!

You can also bring your wife and children along, and the children can directly enroll in the local school.

If you can earn enough money, you can buy a house locally, settle down, and become a Daxia resident!

From then on, a large number of Taiheng farmers, just like the Dutch farmers of that time, began to work in Daxia. This number was not in the millions or tens of millions, but in the hundreds of millions!

Has anything been discovered at Taiheng?

Of course they discovered it, but the cultivators who usually manage the common people don't have a high status, and there's not much to squeeze out of the common people. These people can be bribed with just a small amount of Spirit Stone.

As for those in higher positions, they don't really care about farmers in their daily lives, especially since farmers have always been a largely absent group online.

How can someone who never existed disappear?

Of course, wouldn't the disappearance of hundreds of millions of people cause a sharp drop in fortune, thereby affecting the cultivation of cultivators?

No, there really isn't.

Here, the Great Xia Dynasty employed a strategy of deception.

The principle is that a person with high cultivation can provide far more fortune than countless ordinary people.

Therefore, if I have one million Qi Refining Stage cultivators entering Taiheng, I can offset the impact of one hundred million civilians leaving.

Yang Ning wouldn't lose out either. In Taiheng, 100 million people are just ordinary citizens or even slaves, but in Daxia, with the popularization of education and the improvement of their cultivation, they would become an elite population.

Moreover, industrialization is a way to increase fortune. Regardless of future impacts, Taiheng's fortune is at least on the rise in the short term.

It's like a person whose life suddenly improves, and their food also improves.

Regardless of the possibility of him developing high blood pressure, high blood sugar, or high cholesterol in the future, at least in the short term, he is going from being skinny to healthy.

This was Taiheng's plan: it wasn't enough to just stop the population growth of aristocratic families; the common people at the bottom of the Aristocratic Clan also had to stop.

However, since the common people at the bottom of society have not received any education, it would be too early to directly upgrade them to Tier 0. Therefore, the only solution was to take drastic measures and directly use the industrialization of the Great Xia Dynasty to siphon the population from Taiheng.

In the 39th year of the Great Xia Dynasty, Qu Heng went to Great Xia and signed the "Great Xia Taiheng Cultural Industry Exchange and Mutual Assistance Agreement". It included many aspects such as opening borders, providing technical assistance, talent support, and talent introduction, and its scope far exceeded the scope of a cultural industry.

Qu Heng's idea was that he was the one recruiting talent from the Taiheng Sect Aristocratic Clan go to the Great Xia?

Unexpectedly, the Great Xia Dynasty didn't choose a scion of the Aristocratic Clan, but rather an ordinary farmer.

By the 41st year of the Great Xia Calendar, in just two years, 80 million people, nearly 400 million people, had entered the Great Xia through various channels such as personal connections, introductions by intermediaries, trafficking by established Aristocratic Clan, labor dispatch, and smuggling. The Great Xia did not reject anyone who came; they were given work and accommodation. Adults went to work directly after a short training, while minors were sent to schools for education. The arrangements for people were made very clear.

Although ordinary people don't have a big voice online, they still have the ability to write letters or make phone calls home, and their lives in Daxia will naturally reach their hometowns.

In Taiheng, they were all slaves of the Aristocratic Clan, without their own land, jobs, or the qualifications to cultivate themselves; their ancestors had been farmers for generations.

But when they arrived in the Great Xia Dynasty, they became glorious workers, and even young children had the opportunity to embark on the path of cultivation, transforming directly from slaves into human beings!

Such a situation naturally attracts the envy of countless people, leading to even more people coming to Daxia.

By the end of the 42nd year of the Great Xia Calendar, the number of immigrants from Taiheng had reached 680 million!

With the addition of the self-growth of the Great Xia and the population born to immigrants, the population of the Great Xia finally exceeded 3.5 billion in January of the 43rd year of the Great Xia Calendar!

In August of the 44th year of the Great Xia Calendar, the population of Great Xia had swelled to 4 billion!

It has initially recovered to the level it was at when Southern Forest was founded.

Back then, Southern Forest was merely an agricultural country, while the current Great Xia is an industrial nation. Coupled with a fair distribution system, it can support a far greater population than Southern Forest did back then.

According to Deep Blue's calculations, if the current natural ecosystem is maintained, Great Xia could easily support a population of 12 billion.

If we destroy some ecosystems, reclaim some land, and research some high-yield crops, feeding 20 billion people wouldn't be a problem.

Following the wave of unemployment among farmers came a wave of unemployment among those working in the alchemy, weapon crafting, talisman drawing, and array formation industries.

They might spend ten days or even a month refining just one batch of pills, only a dozen or so.

However, even a relatively small biotechnology company like Daxia can produce hundreds of thousands of units per day.

The pills produced in the Great Xia region are not only abundant, but also inexpensive.

Even if a member of the Aristocratic Clan is rich and powerful, they still need to be careful with their money when they have many people to support.

For the same price, I can only buy five portions here, but I can buy fifty portions here in Daxia. So, whose portion do you think I should buy?

The same applies to Qi Refining, talisman drawing, and formation.

The only consequence of failing to compete is bankruptcy.

These people still wielded some influence within the Taiheng Sect. They filed complaints all the way to Qu Heng, hoping he would ban the Great Xia's elixirs and equipment from entering Taiheng.

But besides being the head of the Taiheng Sect, Qu Heng is also the head of the Qu Family. His own family also purchases elixirs from the Great Xia Dynasty, so how could it be prohibited?

Moreover, Taiheng has a long-standing tradition of prioritizing personal relationships over technical skills. Jiang Boming's skills rotted in the library, ignored by everyone. The great inventor Yang Ning was killed simply because he opposed Aristocratic Clan. Even the war genius Tian Dao Yi, whose abilities were too strong, was killed.

Moreover, in a market economy, fair competition is the norm. If you can't compete with Taiheng, who can you blame? Look for the problems within yourselves. Have you been doing any research and development? Are you being too stingy with your knowledge?

All these years, why didn't you ever think of improving the pills for mass production? How come it was the people of Great Xia who discovered it?

What can be done with Taiheng's technical talents? Since Taiheng no longer provides them with a place to thrive, they have no choice but to leave!

Going to the Myriad Saints Alliance is definitely out of the question for the Tianyi Sect; such an act would be considered treason.

But going to Daxia is no problem, since the two countries have signed a talent introduction agreement, and we can go there through the talent introduction route.

They've practiced alchemy and weapon crafting their whole lives, so they have some professional knowledge. As long as they can still learn and are willing to delve into it, finding a job in Daxia won't be difficult.

With the collapse of Taiheng Technology Industry, a third wave of unemployment followed.

This wave of unemployment affected various treasure shops, Pill Workshop, and other service industry workers, including shopkeepers, waiters, auctioneers, and waiters.

These people depended on Taiheng's technology industry for their existence. Now that Taiheng's technology industry no longer exists, they have naturally lost their jobs.

Most of these people were commoner cultivators, whose fathers might be imperial princes, but their own aptitude was too poor.

Going any further is unlikely.

Going home would be shameful, and besides, they were reluctant to leave the Cultivation World.

Faced with this dilemma, they could only find a job to do for the time being.

They couldn't do professional work like weapon crafting or alchemy, so they could only work as waiters to make a living.

But now, that life has shattered.

In the past, he could simply go home and inherit the throne.

But now, the countries outside have also been wiped out by the rebel army, and they can't even go back to their homes!

What else can the unemployed do? Arson, murder, looting, and other risk-free businesses.

When you can't even afford to eat, all those concepts of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness become meaningless.

Fortunately, at this moment, the Great Xia Dynasty once again extended a helping hand.

If you can't find a job in Taiheng, go to Daxia. Whether you choose to cultivate or continue working as a waiter, Daxia offers a place for you to shine.

Another point worth mentioning is that with the departure of skilled workers, technicians, and tertiary industry personnel, Taiheng's flower shop service industry has also begun to decline.

After all the workers are gone, who's going to wash feet?

The Great Xia Dynasty explicitly prohibits this industry, but there are always Divine Ability people who manage to open a dimly lit foot massage parlor in some corner of the city, or disguise it as a hotel, KTV, bar, etc.

Yang Ning was well aware that this industry could not be completely eliminated, and the security guards of Daxia also understood this principle, so they strongly opposed it in their attitude but only detained people for 15 days in their actions.