"Yi Xiaochuan, how do you think we should deal with these bandits?"
Ling Yi asked as he watched Yi Xiaochuan crawl out from under the carriage.
"Huh? Arrest them and throw them in jail," Yi Xiaochuan answered without thinking.
Ling Yi looked at him as though he were an idiot.
"Well, we can't just kill them, can we? A life is still a life." Yi Xiaochuan scratched his head. Back in modern times, this sort of thing would have been easy to handle: call the police and wait.
But how could things be that convenient in ancient times?
Still, actually killing these people made him uncomfortable. These were human lives, after all.
"If we let them go, do you think they'll turn over a new leaf?"
"Uh, probably not."
"Then, since they won't turn over a new leaf, do you know how many travelers will die at their hands in the future? Just like what happened here." Ling Yi pointed at the household servants lying on the ground, their deaths gruesome.
"But no one can just take their lives so easily, right?" Yi Xiaochuan understood what Ling Yi meant and knew these people deserved to die, but he still couldn't get past that hurdle in his heart.
"We can't kill them, and we can't release them." Ling Yi looked at Yi Xiaochuan. "If you don't have a solution, I'll do it my way."
Yi Xiaochuan scratched his head and agonized over it for a long while before finally saying evasively, "Y-you decide."
"You need to learn to adapt. This is ancient times!"
With that, Ling Yi waved his hand, and a collar appeared around each bandit's neck.
"These are enslavement collars. In the future, they're made specifically for alien slaves. They can alter their thoughts and make them absolutely loyal to whoever controls them." Ling Yi invented an explanation for the things he had produced. In truth, he didn't need any external devices at all; a single thought could change these people's minds.
But Ling Yi didn't want to frighten them. Humans had a limit to how much of the unknown they could accept. Beyond that limit, worship would turn into fear.
Ling Yi could sense the emotions of Lord Lü and the others, so he naturally knew precisely where that limit should be.
"My God, have humans in the future become that powerful? They can even enslave aliens?"
"In the year 5820, humanity rules over a hundred galaxies and is a royal race that no one in the universe dares provoke," Ling Yi said proudly.
Lord Lü and his family were lost in a fog as they listened, but they grasped the general meaning: these collars could control the bandits.
Ling Yi snapped his fingers, altering their thoughts and memories. Once the bandits recovered, they immediately fell to their knees before him.
"Greetings, Master."
"The evil you committed warranted execution, but Heaven cherishes life. From this day forward, you will take this elderly gentleman as your master, serve him for the rest of your lives, and never betray him."
"Yes, Master."
Yi Xiaochuan still felt somewhat uncomfortable. After all, enslaving others crossed a moral line in modern times and was against the law. But he also knew this was the best possible outcome.
"Well..." Lord Lü hesitated-or rather, he wasn't entirely reassured. He had witnessed these men's brutality and bloodlust with his own eyes.
"Don't worry. As long as the collars remain, they won't betray you. And these collars are made from a special metal. They can't take them off."
"In that case, thank you, young master." What else could Lord Lü say?
"My name is Lü Wen, courtesy name Shuping, a native of Shan County in Shandong. These are my two daughters: my eldest, Lü Zhi, and my youngest, Lü Su. Thank you, sir, for saving our lives."
Lü Su and Lü Zhi also bowed gracefully. "Thank you, sir, for saving our lives."
"When you see injustice on the road, you draw your blade to help. If I lacked the ability, that would be another matter. But since I could save you, naturally, I couldn't stand by with folded arms."
"Lord Lü? Lü Zhi?" Yi Xiaochuan exclaimed. "Could this be..."
Ling Yi shot him a glare and frowned. "Remember, this is no longer the original timeline. Our arrival is bound to change the future. Don't go blurting out things like that again."
"Ah, uh, got it." Yi Xiaochuan knew his tongue had run ahead of him and sheepishly fell silent.
"My name is Ling Yi. You can just call me by my name."
"I'm Yi Xiaochuan. You can call me Xiaochuan."
"Young Master Ling, Young Master Yi, thank you once again."
Lord Lü then tentatively ordered the bandits to sort out the valuables and clear away the bodies. Only after discovering that they truly obeyed his every word did he finally breathe a full sigh of relief.
By the time everything was in order, it was nearly noon.
Ling Yi took out a Capsule containing a super motorhome, leaving everyone stunned all over again.
Yi Xiaochuan shouted in amazement. When he saw the luxurious interior in particular-three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom, covering well over a hundred square meters-he was so excited he nearly took flight.
As a modern man who had spent over two years living in ancient times, Yi Xiaochuan couldn't have felt more at home seeing these technological products again.
The fellow first ran to the bathroom to take a dump, then rushed out in excitement. With tears in his eyes, he told Ling Yi, "Two and a half years! I finally got to poop sitting down again! I finally got to use toilet paper!"
"In those two years, did it never occur to you to make your own toilet and paper?"
"Make them myself? Holy crap, why didn't I think of that?"
Ling Yi once again looked at him as though he were brain-dead. Yi Xiaochuan blushed, feeling he must be a fake transmigrator.
"Papermaking, printing, gunpowder, toilets, modern tables and chairs... What the hell have I been doing these past two years? Did hanging around that guy Xiang Yu drag down my IQ?"
Yi Xiaochuan muttered to himself, filled with self-doubt. He felt his transmigration had been an utter failure and that he had disgraced transmigrators everywhere.
In truth, it wasn't that Yi Xiaochuan had never thought of these things. He had deliberately avoided them before.
He had always believed he had returned to the past and hadn't wanted to change history, thereby causing enormous changes to the future.
He knew about the butterfly effect, so after arriving in the Qin dynasty, he had been extremely cautious.
But after Ling Yi told him this was merely a branching parallel timeline, his original thinking changed considerably.
Some shackles and misgivings fell away, and only now did Yi Xiaochuan truly begin evolving toward becoming a competent transmigrator.
"This isn't immortal magic, just technology. You can think of it as mechanical craftsmanship." Ling Yi was currently giving Lü Zhi a lesson.
Compared with Lü Su, Lü Zhi was much bolder and came straight at him with a hundred thousand whys.
Beside Lü Zhi, Lü Su blinked her large eyes, listening attentively and looking around curiously.
"The method I used to subdue the bandits wasn't immortal magic either. It was microcurrent. You can think of it as a kind of energy that exists inside every one of us."
Ling Yi didn't grow impatient. Instead, he did his best to explain his power of laws in scientific terms.
This explanation wasn't just for the Lü sisters. It was also for Lord Lü and Yi Xiaochuan.
They could accept technology and mechanical craftsmanship, but ordinary people of this era would feel greater reverence and fear toward immortal magic. That wasn't what Ling Yi wanted.
In fact, Lord Lü had even more questions, but he wouldn't ask them. As an old hand, he understood one thing very well: sometimes, knowing too much wasn't necessarily a good thing.
Moreover, from the conversation between Ling Yi and Yi Xiaochuan, Lord Lü had also formed a guess about their origins: people from the future.
And what would people from the future come to the past to do? Change history...
Yi Xiaochuan had let something slip earlier, and Lord Lü had committed it to memory. He also suspected that he and his eldest daughter, Lü Zhi, must have been recorded in history. Otherwise, Yi Xiaochuan wouldn't have reacted so strongly upon hearing their names.
But whatever positions he and Lü Zhi had held in history, Lord Lü understood perfectly well that these two people from the future represented an immense blessing and opportunity for him.
Ancient people were by no means stupid. Their knowledge was limited, but their intelligence was not.
The great talents of ancient times, in particular, each possessed monstrous intellects. The heights of their intelligence were by no means something modern people could imagine.
Ling Yi cooked personally, treating everyone to an exceptionally sumptuous lunch. Even the bandits ate stuffed buns, twisted steamed rolls, and pickled vegetables that ancient times did not have.
"Bro, how about I follow you from now on?" While Lord Lü rested and Lü Su and Lü Zhi went to the kitchen to wash the dishes, Yi Xiaochuan approached Ling Yi with a chuckle.
"What use are you?" Ling Yi asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Damn, listen to you! I'm a modern man, at least. Fine, I'm an ancient person to you, but I'm still a little smarter than the people of this era, right?"
"Are you sure you're smarter than the people of this era?"
"..." Yi Xiaochuan had already witnessed how formidable Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu were. He really didn't dare claim that now.
"Would you believe me if I said Lord Lü has already guessed that we're from the future and is even planning how to invest in us and profit from us?"
"Seriously?"
"So, what use are you?"
"At least my knowledge and way of thinking are better than theirs, right?"
"That's true enough."
"Bro, what are you planning to do next, then? Overthrow the First Emperor of Qin and become emperor yourself?"
"No. Being emperor isn't that easy. Without grand talent and bold strategy, the bearing of a celestial being, a far-reaching vision, and a great goal, one doesn't deserve to sit in that position."
"The First Emperor of Qin was an emperor for the ages. I will help Great Qin achieve grand ambitions and dominion that the original timeline could never reach. I will have the First Emperor unite the planet and even stride into the sea of stars."
Yi Xiaochuan: "..."