Careless Management

"Changchuan, be careful around that man."

After Shen Shiying and his party had gone far away, his grandfather Han Qinhu hesitated for a moment,

but in the end he stepped forward and quietly warned him in a low voice.

"People who show kindness for no reason are either up to no good or after something!"

"Shen Shiying didn't show himself at first. Instead, he sent his son to deal with us. However you look at it, he didn't take us seriously. And the way Shen Shaochong acted just now, he was clearly itching to pick a fight and give us a show of force."

"But later, for some reason, he changed his mind."

"Earlier, he said he wanted to take some local specialties home, so he took things from the village's public storehouse. That excuse is rather flimsy. In my opinion, his original goal was to strip the entire village bare!"

"I just don't know why his attitude changed so suddenly."

Han Qinhu analyzed in a low voice beside Shen Changchuan's ear.

Although he wasn't a cultivator,

he had traveled far and wide and lived most of his life. He'd seen plenty of the world.

The incongruity between what had happened before and after was far too easy to spot.

That man had almost certainly had bad intentions from the start!

"Grandfather, don't worry. I understand."

"The situation was probably just as you said, and these five Spirit Stones and the Spirit Eye Technique were most likely his way of apologizing and making amends."

"I'm not going to think he's a good person just because he tried to curry favor with me."

"But there's no need to worry, either."

"After all, the Shen Clan is so vast. Who knows whether we'll ever meet again?"

Shen Changchuan weighed the little pouch holding five Spirit Stones in his hand. His eyes flickered slightly as he spoke.

After spending two and a half years living in fear in the treacherous Shen Family Estate,

and witnessing the brutal infighting within a great Aristocratic Clan, Shen Changchuan was no longer the clueless, wide-eyed newbie office worker he'd been in his previous life.

Naturally, he wasn't about to lower his guard around a stranger.

One thing was certain:

if he encountered Shen Shiying again in the future, Shen Changchuan would remain wary of him.

Of course,

he also wouldn't deliberately make an enemy of the man because of it.

Shen Shiying might have had bad intentions at first, and perhaps even been hiding some scheme.

But the thing he'd been targeting hadn't actually happened,

and the man had even paid him a hefty sum in compensation, hadn't he?

Something that hadn't happened—

Shen Changchuan wasn't going to make himself miserable by looking for an enemy.

"Shen Shiying changed his mind so quickly. I'm afraid it had something to do with that big fellow, didn't it?"

Shen Changchuan recalled the look on the man's face when he saw the giant wild boar carcass on the carriage. He understood, and had a rough idea what had happened.

Perhaps Shen Shiying had seen the giant wild boar, at least at the fourth level of the Qi Induction Realm, that Shen Changchuan had killed with a single blow. The sight had made him wary, so he'd abandoned his original plan.

It wasn't hard to understand.

As the saying went, once you became famous, everyone around you was a good person.

The same held true if you replaced fame with strength.

Once you grew powerful, all sorts of good people would start appearing around you.

"Forget it. Who cares?"

"Even if we meet again, that'll be a matter for the future. Let's head back first. Right now, the most important thing is to get everything in Dawan Village under control. We can't afford any slipups."

Shen Changchuan spoke.

Han Qinhu nodded beside him.

"That's true."

The group turned and left.

After some effort, Shen Changchuan and his party settled into the Half-Mountain Courtyard and smoothly took over all of Dawan Village, completing the transfer of power.

Nothing went wrong during the process.

There were some difficulties and confusion, but fortunately no one resisted, and everything went smoothly.

This was hardly surprising.

Although Dawan Village had been established to serve the immortals by farming Spirit Fields, and most of its residents were martial artists—some of them even criminals seized and forced to work as laborers—

the gap between cultivators and ordinary martial artists was simply too vast.

It was almost impossible to bridge.

Even if there had been any defiant fools who didn't know their place, they had probably already been killed by Shen Shiying and the others over the past few years.

Those who remained had long since been tamed.

They might not be loyal and obedient from the bottom of their hearts,

but at the very least they wouldn't resist. They would follow the orders given by the immortal master.

With the help of his grandfather Han Qinhu and his eldest uncle Han Dayong,

Shen Changchuan soon took over the village's authority and gained control of Dawan Village from top to bottom.

But after he had people submit all the information and spent some time sorting through it, he learned about the state of the village and couldn't help feeling a headache coming on.

The village gave him one impression: disorder.

Utter chaos!

Dawan Village had several hundred households and a population of around two thousand.

Among them were old martial artists who had followed the Shen Clan when it first came to take charge of Dawan Village twenty years ago.

There were also ordinary martial artists recruited—or rather, seized—from Mortal Realm powers every few years.

Some left once their term of service was up. Others were killed for stealing Spirit Grain or resisting in defiance.

Still others settled there, married, and had children, hoping to gain a chance at immortality by serving the immortals and establish a household in Dawan Village.

All these changes had left the village's household records in complete disarray.

And the previous town guard, Shen Shiying, had managed the village in a very hands-off manner.

Most of the village's administrative authority had been delegated to his household steward, who normally left the servants to run things.

When the season for planting Spirit Grain came around, he had the steward crack his whip and drive the villagers into the Spirit Fields to turn the soil and sow the seeds. After that, the steward would select some villagers to form patrols, keeping watch around the Spirit Fields day and night and occasionally clearing weeds, pests, and the like.

When harvest time came, he had all the villagers rush out at once to reap the Spirit Grain in the fields.

At most, he'd personally show up then to prevent the villagers from secretly pocketing the ripe grain.

Overall, though, the management had been extremely slapdash.

It was just like a feudal lord managing the labor of his own serfs. Apart from putting some thought into cultivating the Spirit Fields, everything else had been handled in a thoroughly careless manner.

So Shen Shiying probably didn't even know how many people lived in Dawan Village!

As for this,

Shen Changchuan, who had been in this world for two and a half years and had gained some understanding of it, could appreciate the reason.

In this world, cultivators stood high above everyone else.

Even the most down-and-out cultivator, with only the barest grasp of cultivation, could still establish an enormous estate in the mortal world.

For people like that to manage farmland

was like asking the young master of a powerful ancient family to oversee agricultural production in the countryside!

Just being able to do that much was already quite impressive!

But understanding it was one thing.

As someone who had crossed over from another world, Shen Changchuan was clearly dissatisfied with the chaotic state of Dawan Village.

"Reform! We have to reform!"

"This crude, serf-estate style of management is a tremendous waste of manpower and resources!"

"Now that Dawan Village has become my territory to oversee and manage, the more it produces, the more I'll benefit. Production here will affect my future Dao Path, so things have to change!"

After roughly sorting out the specific situation throughout Dawan Village, Shen Changchuan made up his mind.