Mutated Tao

Chapter 770: Bai

Dong dong dong~ Dun dun dun~ The drum beat rhythmically.

“Mount the Heavenly Disc, and the sky will rotate. Mount the Earthly Disc, and the earth will rotate. A black fish carries the earth while the qi above supports the skies. The black fish supports the moving earth. The qi supports the revolving sky. This was how the stars were arranged.”

Amidst Bai Lingmiao’s drumming, the incense from the house's four corners slowly enveloped the dying baby.

White smoke entered the baby’s orifices. Bai Lingmiao took out a pair of scissors and cut open a small hole in the baby’s left palm.

Bai Lingmiao pressed hard on the baby’s left palm. The white smoke and a dark yellow gelatinous goo were forced out from the small wound.

As she continued to squeeze out the goo, the baby’s face became redder, and he soon started crying.

An old man also began crying when he heard the baby crying. “My son is alive! My family finally has an heir!”

The old man brought his entire family and kneeled on the ground before Bai Lingmiao, “Saintess! Thank you for saving our entire family! For the sake of the White Lotus Sect’s prosperity, we will donate our belongings! From now on, we will devote our everything to the White Lotus Sect!”

Bai Lingmiao walked out of the courtyard. Meanwhile, devotees of the White Lotus Sect marked chests filled with gold and silver with tapes of the sect as they hauled them out from the estate.

The Second Deity scoffed. “We’re already this late into the game and you still have the time to think whether this is fine? Think about what he had done in the past! If I was the one who made the decision, I would’ve blackmailed him using his son and taken all of his belongings instead!”

Bai Lingmiao remained quiet as she stared at the beggars downing bowls of porridge near a stand.

The world was in chaos, so it wasn’t a time to be considerate to others. This amount of money could be used to save so many more people. The old tycoon would’ve just kept the money in his vault to rot. Money was meant to be spent to maximize its value!

Now that they were at war, there were very few people working in the fields. The cost of food was rising rapidly.

Bai Lingmiao walked out of the city and looked at the devotees working hard in the fields. All of them ran towards her and kneeled the moment they saw her.

“I am Qian Chaoqing. I greet the Saintess.”

“How’s the field?”

Qian Chaoqing’s face was covered in dirt when she frowned.

“Saintess, it’s as you’ve said. It’s very bad right now. We’ve lost so many divisions in a day that the calendar is worthless now. I don’t even know the season now. More importantly, the weather for the past few years has been bad.”

Bai Lingmiao looked up. The clouds were flowing in a weird pattern, condensing and dispersing occasionally, as if something was fighting inside them.

“It’s either a drought or flood. Saintess, I’ve been working in the fields for over forty years, but this is the first time I’ve faced so much difficulty. We have a lot of laborers from the White Lotus Sect, but no matter how hard we worked, we only managed to get half the amount of food compared to the previous years. There are even places where they yielded less than me.”

“Do not worry about this. We will work as hard as we can while we leave the rest to the Heavenly Mater.”

The white lotus on Bai Lingmiao’s forehead glowed faintly. Qian Chaoqing felt as if he had found the greatest treasure of his life, and he smiled before returning to his fields to work.

This was Bai Lingmiao’s idea—delegate the task of planting food to those with weak comprehension skills. Since they couldn’t learn any techniques from the White Lotus Sect, they were used as laborers.

For the sake of defeating the Dharma Sect, the devotees of the White Lotus Sect were willing to do anything.

The White Lotus Sect was rapidly expanding and providing background support for each country. She was maximizing every single resource in each one.

Producing food in every country was extremely helpful. Transporting the food from the Liang Kingdom to Si Qi would’ve wasted too much time and resources. Bai Lingmiao was certain that most of the food would’ve been eaten during the journey.

“I thought the Heavenly Mater was strong? How come she can’t just produce food?” The Second Deity taunted.

Bai Lingmiao shook her head lightly. “Even the Immortal Families can’t do so. I sent people to scour the lands, but none of them reported anything about a deity that could give us bountiful crops.”

“Hmph! Many of them can’t even help us. All they know is how to take from us.”

“We have to think of a plan. We don’t know how much longer we’ll have to fight.”

“Rather than thinking about how to produce more food, we should get rid of the Dharma Sect as soon as possible. We can then take over their granaries. That way, we won’t have to worry about food anymore.”[1]

Bai Lingmiao did not protest that idea. She continued to walk and reached the barracks. They were special because the banner was a white donkey following a white lotus.

She saw numerous shirtless young men around fifteen to sixteen years old. They were all standing there and observing the master on the stage turning impervious to all bladed weapons. They yearned to learn that technique.

The youths were specially selected for their excellent comprehension abilities and physical bodies.

They had a wide selection of candidates since they could recruit a lot of people, but they were expanding so fast that they didn't have enough masters to teach the disciples.

Rather than a barrack, the place was more like a mobile temple for the Heavenly Mater. There were altars and drawings of the Heavenly Mater everywhere.

The White Lotus Sect accepted both men and women. All they required was good comprehension. Bai Lingmiao soon saw a familiar face on another stage, Chun Xiaoman.

She was very strict in her teachings. The black hair covering her body scared everyone.

“You are all women! If you want to live you will follow my training! You will not stop until I tell you to stop! If you lose on the battlefield, you will face an ending worse than death! I chose all of you because your family was killed by the Dharma Sect! If you think you can’t endure it anymore, think about how your family was killed by the Dharma Sect! Think about how you swore to kill them for revenge!”

As she shouted, the women started stomping and chanting their sutras. All of them had a red dot on their forehead.

As they chanted, they began walking barefooted onto a large path of burning coal.

Many of them were unharmed when they walked out, but some were less proficient and got burned.

Thankfully, there were people on standby with buckets of sand. The moment any of them burned up, they threw the bucket of sand at them. Whoever had been burned would then be eliminated.

Bai Lingmiao couldn’t stomach it, but she didn’t call for them to stop. If the Dharma Sect won, there would be even more deaths.

Only after taking command did Bai Lingmiao realize there were no perfect plans, only the best ones possible given the circumstances. She could only choose plans that required the least sacrifice.

Bai Lingmiao had thought that her personality wouldn’t allow her to do so, but every time she remembered how the Emperor of Si Qi talked about sacrificing 1,800,000 people for the sake of the world, she steeled herself to prepare for the worst.

She was doing this not only for herself—it was also for the sake of the other members of the White Lotus Sect.

She remembered what she had sworn to do, to prevent the others from losing their family. She didn’t want them to suffer what she had gone through herself.

Bai Lingmiao had been working hard for that.

She was patrolling the area when she saw a paper crane flying down from the air.

She opened the paper crane and thought she had misread it. Xuan Pin was calling for her to discuss something.

1. The Dharma Sect drinks stone water to begin with. I doubt that they would leave the granary unpoisoned. ☜