Chapter 726 — The Sovereign and the Minister Share One Heart
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Shen Mu, thus abruptly abandoned by the little girl, watched as she leaped onto the Dragon Qilin's tail. The Dragon Qilin lifted its tail, and the child slid all the way from the tip of the tail down to the top of its head, giggling without pause.
"The Xizhou that the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and the emperor are refining—every single component looks as though it were forged from the same mold. Each shipyard makes only a dozen or so components, and then they are assembled together."
Shen Mu was astonished. He went up to examine the components. The runes upon them interlocked ring within ring, extraordinarily precise, and with the Western Lands' art of the Ten Thousand Things Have Spirit, they could be assembled with great speed.
"This is a superb method for manufacturing Xizhou and Pozhou on a massive scale!" Shen Mu praised again and again.
The Xizhou and Pozhou had been designed by the Woodcutter Sage, but in the Kaihuang era the forging of these two great instruments had not been so precise. Thus Xizhou and Pozhou came in all sizes, and the speed of their manufacture had been slow.
But the shipyards here in Jiangling could manufacture Xizhou and Pozhou with utter swiftness!
When they found the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and Emperor Yanfeng, the two had already fallen asleep inside the shipyard, while the people of the Earth-Walking Clan hurried to forge components of every kind, and one god after another, none of them five chi in height, flitted around the components.
"You are looking for that mud-turtle emperor?"
Lady Earth stroked her beard, her voice like thunder. "He is over there, lying stiff as a corpse!"
Shen Mu, the Woodcutter, and the rest followed the direction of her finger and saw two grown men sprawled every which way in a corner of the shipyard. The forging din inside the workshop was deafening, and yet the two slept soundly.
The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping and Emperor Yanfeng were both handsome men. Though they had reached middle age, they still paid great attention to their bearing.
Yet at this moment their beards were unkempt and their clothes were worn, old, and filthy. The Imperial Preceptor of Jingping had his foot planted on Emperor Yanfeng's face, while Emperor Yanfeng clutched the Imperial Preceptor's leg and slept on in bliss.
Beside them lay many court ministers and scholars of the Imperial Academy, sprawled in the corners of the workshop, sleeping sweetly and deeply.
Di Yiyue was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed. "Now I know why the Great Heavenly Master held such expectations of them. An emperor like this, an Imperial Preceptor of Jingping like this—these are truly the leaders of reform."
The Woodcutter Sage said, "Do we need to wake them?"
"No need. They are gods, and yet they are exhausted to such a degree—it shows how hard these days have truly been."
Di Yiyue said, "I never imagined an emperor could personally preside over such trivial affairs, nor that the Imperial Preceptor of Jingping who oversees the reforms could attend to every detail himself. This Imperial Preceptor of Jingping has done even better than you did in your day."
The Woodcutter Sage laughed. "In those years I only tinkered a few things into existence and then had others do the work. The truth is I feared trouble and rarely lifted a hand myself."
Di Yiyue said, "You are a sage, too far removed from the common people."