The field of view expanded

Dust swirled through the air.

The Supreme Wisdom King's corpse and the enormous handprint slowly grew clearer amid the dust. Seen from atop the city wall, the sight was especially overwhelming.

The original forty-two residents of Gao Family Village had witnessed this scene before, but seeing it again still shook them to their cores. With a chorus of thuds, they dropped to their knees, covering the ground in an instant.

Then the new villagers, the White Family's tenant farmers, and the White Family's servants fell to their knees one after another, knocking their foreheads against the ground.

Mister Bai was stunned by the sight as well. Proud as he had always been, the shock he felt at this moment far exceeded even that of the ordinary villagers.

He turned to look and found that San Shier and his wife had obediently knelt down just like everyone else.

Everyone murmured the same words: "Mighty is the Heavenly Venerable!"

Just then, the curtain of the White Family's large carriage carrying their family members lifted. A middle-aged woman and a young man jumped out-Mister Bai's wife and son. The moment they landed, both decisively dropped to their knees and prostrated themselves, utterly unconcerned that their clothes were covered in dirt and dust.

Mister Bai looked around. He was the only person in all of Gao Family Village still standing, painfully out of place.

Mister Bai did his best to convince himself: He isn't an evil god or a false god. He's a genuine immortal, and he just performed a miracle. Besides, his name sounds Daoist. There's nothing wrong with kneeling before a Daoist immortal, is there? That doesn't count as joining an evil cult.

In fact, scholars of the Ming Dynasty often considered Daoist robes fashionable. Everyone regarded Daoism as a legitimate religion, so its immortals were naturally worthy of their bows.

Once he had convinced himself of that, his knees were no longer quite so stiff.

Mister Bai knelt down too. "Mighty is the Heavenly Venerable!"

From the "sky," Li Daoxuan watched the little people prostrating themselves throughout the village below. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, and he was just about to tell them to rise.

Suddenly, he sensed that something was off.

A faint point of light rose from each little person, glowing like a firefly and hovering in the sky. Then these firefly-like lights converged on the "Dao Xuan Heavenly Venerable Cave" at the center of the village.

There were over a hundred and fifty people in the village, plus the hundred-odd people Mister Bai had brought, bringing the total to nearly three hundred. One point of light per person meant nearly three hundred lights. One after another, they flew into the "Dao Xuan Heavenly Venerable Cave" and gathered inside the Daoist temple.

Then the Daoist temple blazed with golden light!

It was as though an enormous golden lamp had been lit inside the Scenery Box.

The little people seemed unable to see the golden radiance. They did not even blink, but the light made Li Daoxuan blink once.

When he opened his eyes again, he was astonished to discover five new buttons at the corner of the box, labeled "East," "South," "West," "North," and "Center."

A strange feeling rose in Li Daoxuan's heart, like suddenly grasping a crucial control while playing a game.

Could these five buttons do what I think they do?

Let's give it a try!

He pressed the "East" button.

The entire village inside the box seemed to shift a little to the left in a flash. The visible area to the village's left clearly shrank, while the visible area to its right clearly expanded.

He pressed "East" again. The houses and little people seemed to shift a little farther left in a flash, revealing another stretch of land on the right.

He rapidly tapped the "North" button several times.

The whole village seemed to shift a little southward, while the view to its north expanded, revealing a small hillside covered in a grove of dead trees, every one stripped bare of bark.

This was the hillside where Zheng Daniu had chopped down trees last time. He had been unable to see it then, but now he could. (Readers who have forgotten can check the last few paragraphs of Chapter 39.)

"The field of view can move east, south, west, and north now."

Li Daoxuan was delighted. "Haha! My field of view has finally expanded!"

So that's how it works! I get it, I get it! Starting by building a temple was the right strategy. The temple serves as the center, and the number of worshippers determines the radius of the area I can see.

The hundred-odd worshippers I originally had weren't enough to meet the minimum requirement for expanding the view. But now there are over a hundred more, and the requirement has been met. That's why the box has gained five buttons-East, South, West, North, and Center-so I can click them to see the newly accessible area.

Excited, Li Daoxuan hammered away at "North," but soon discovered that it would not move anymore...

More precisely, pressing the button no longer did anything. The view stopped moving northward.

"Has the view reached its northern limit?"

One tap of "Center" instantly centered the view again, returning it to the space above the "Dao Xuan Heavenly Venerable Cave."

He then tried all four directions, took out a ruler to measure the distances, and converted them using the 1:200 scale. He soon calculated that roughly five hundred meters of additional visibility had opened up in each direction around the village.

The increase was not very large!

That was, of course, because the increase in worshippers was not very large.

But that did not matter. Simply learning how to expand his field of view was already a major gain. As long as he found ways to increase the number of worshippers in the future, his view could keep expanding.

"Wait. What if I exploit a bug-a loophole in the rules-and pick up the Dao Xuan Heavenly Venerable Cave myself, then put it down at the edge of my field of view? Would I be able to see even farther?"

No sooner had the idea occurred to him than he tried it, reaching for his Daoist temple.

But it did not work. The tiny temple actually had a strange protective barrier that prevented his hand from picking it up.

Li Daoxuan opened a Notepad file on his computer and recorded today's discoveries.

1. The center of the box's field of view was the "Dao Xuan Heavenly Venerable Cave," while its radius was determined by the number of worshippers.

2. The field of view could be moved using the five buttons-"East," "South," "West," "North," and "Center"-but the scale between the real world and the objects and little people inside remained 200:1.

3. The box had a mechanism to prevent loophole exploitation and would not allow him to move the Daoist temple himself.

After recording all that, he stretched luxuriously, feeling quite pleased.

When he lowered his head to look at Gao Family Village inside the box again, he saw the villagers bustling about. Just as they had after the bandits' last incursion, they were beginning to clean up the aftermath.

A group of villagers was dealing with the bandits' corpses. Naturally, they stripped off the clothes-not a scrap of fabric could go to waste. All the weapons were confiscated and divided up. Some bandits also had a few copper coins on them; whoever found those got to keep them. It all came down to luck.

The stripped-naked corpses were carried outside the walls, thrown into a large pit dug on the hillside, and buried.

Thanks to Li Daoxuan's partial assistance, no one in the village had suffered much harm. The most seriously injured person turned out to be a White Family servant. While carrying a jug of oil and pouring it down outside the walls, he had accidentally spilled a little boiling oil onto his own leg.

A patch of skin on his leg had now blistered, and he kept groaning in pain.

Several villagers were rinsing it with cold water to try to cool it down, but they had no medicine for treating scalds. Apart from washing it with cold water, there was little else they could do.

Li Daoxuan opened his drawer and found a tube of "Stronglie Brand Burn and Scald Ointment." He squeezed out a tiny dab, smaller than a sesame seed, and lowered it into the box...