From the Carp that Brings Children to the Celestial Officials

Chapter 206 Prosperous Life
You Ming entered seclusion again. In any case, his divine position belonged to the Heavenly Court, and no one checked on him on weekdays, so he had a lot of free time.

He wanted to keep a low profile, but because he was recently building a grotto-heaven, the spiritual energy of the entire Yuanling Mountain was constantly changing, and the momentum was quite significant.

The colors shift and change from time to time, as if the four seasons are changing.

Sometimes the spiritual energy surges, and the wind and rain rage.

On the occasion of the full moon, layers of star trails intertwine in the void, arranged like an array, as if a miniature nascent starry sky is being born.

Under these circumstances, time passed quickly, and two years went by in the blink of an eye.

After Changning County was upgraded to a prefectural city, You Ming was not assigned to spread his faith in an entire county, but the local deities no longer interfered much in the twenty-three villages he originally governed.

This might also be due to his promotion to the rank of [Dharma Aspect].

The power of Dharma-type cultivators is still quite significant in terms of their influence in local areas.

With this high degree of autonomy, You Ming was finally able to gradually loosen his grip on things.

He had previously ordered all the gods under his command to build roads connecting the four directions of Yuanling Mountain. After several years of repairs, wide gravel roads have taken shape. The once somewhat desolate country lanes are now bustling with people and horses, and the smoke of cooking fires fills the air.

The original villages have now been largely connected.

After all, in the past two years, not only has the number of births increased significantly, but there have also been many migrants who have come here because of its reputation.

Initially, these new houses were built around the village, but as the population grew, they gradually became crowded and disorganized.

Seeing that things couldn't continue like this, You Ming decided to act decisively and planned a new city in the center of the twenty-three villages.

In the past, it would have been extremely difficult to successfully implement this.

However, as a Dharma Aspect Grand Master, You Ming's influence in the Divine Path is enormous even without relying on his background.

The city god merely sent someone to make a brief appearance before leaving, only offering a subtle reminder that building a new city was permissible, but constructing city walls was prohibited.

Because if city walls are built, then it becomes a city.

Without building city walls, it would at most be considered a market or marketplace, which at least in name did not violate the rules of the gods.

However, this was exactly what You Ming wanted to do.

With him in charge of Yuanling Mountain, he naturally wouldn't allow any war to break out there. The city walls wouldn't be of much use and would even hinder his future expansion.

So he brought in Wu Mo and a few others to do a comprehensive new city planning. They not only had to clearly define residential, market, and activity areas, but also ensure that the drainage system was properly separated from sewage, otherwise the whole city would inevitably become a mess.

Although You Ming did not study urban construction in his previous life, he was familiar with some basic concepts.

For example, he stipulated that the main roads of the new city should be five zhang wide and the auxiliary roads two zhang wide, with stone slabs laid in the middle of the roads so that vehicles would not be bumpy and would not be slippery when it rained, and shade trees should be planted on both sides of the streets.

The underground system was modeled after modern sewers. The local servants worked together to excavate winding underground channels to collect mountain spring water and rainwater, which then flowed into the Feng River.

Streetlights were installed at major intersections and along main roads, with stone bases, copper frames, and copper wire walls. Every evening, someone would add oil and keep the lights burning to provide illumination for passersby.

Streetlights are obviously too extravagant.

But this is You Ming's next step in his plan.

Most cities have curfews at night, but he plans to turn this new city into a city that never sleeps. After all, many wealthy people have moved here, and to revitalize the economy, he needs to get them to spend their money.

You Ming felt that this was the same as the holiday planning he did for various games; it was all about racking his brains to get players to take out their money.

After two years of development, the new city is beginning to take shape.

At present, the new city is not very large, and it is inhabited by newly relocated nobles, merchants, and some cultivators, as well as their servants, merchants, and craftsmen.

Although the high-ranking officials and nobles in the city lived in a remote corner, they maintained their status and paid attention to extravagance in all aspects of their lives, including clothing, food, housing, and transportation.

Houses are designed with great attention to lighting and energy flow, and feng shui principles to protect the home. Even daily meals are made with the utmost care and refinement.

Their needs, naturally, create ripples on the surface of water, like stones thrown into still water.

As a result, some merchants came to visit, and the general merchandise market expanded rapidly. It was no longer just about grains, coarse food, firewood, salt, and cloth, but also introduced more exotic items, such as brocade from Yunzhou, fruits from the southern wilderness, and shellfish from the East Sea.

The markets that originally sold rice, flour, and vegetables were gradually replaced by restaurants, private chefs, and dessert shops. Wealthy families paid attention to rotating the types of food in their three daily meals, and the dishes were divided into hot and cold types, and the soups were paired with medicinal ingredients.

After all, rich people have precious teeth, so their meals have to be varied.

Various tailor shops suddenly appeared, and the small workshops on the street corners that used to sew and mend clothes for people gradually changed from just cloth clothes to ready-made clothes such as silk shirts and embroidered robes.

In this situation, many young people preferred to go to the city to work as servants, craftsmen, or merchants, where they could easily earn far more money than by farming.

Of course, most of the villagers are still outside the city.

On the one hand, for the vast majority of people, land is their lifeline, and they cannot and do not have the right to leave the land and live directly in the city.

On the other hand, if they entered the city, the city's food supply would become a huge problem.

We can't keep transporting food from other cities; that would be like handing over our lifeline to someone else.

However, even though most villagers cannot leave the land, their way of life is still changing rapidly.

For example, city dwellers prefer fresh and tender meat with a constant supply, so some villagers built pigsties in their homes and raised free-range chickens and ducks on the hillside behind their houses.

When the villagers heard that noblewomen in the city were vying to wear fine silks and satins, they encouraged the villagers to clear a large area of ​​hillside land to plant mulberry trees.

In spring, the mulberry groves are like clouds. After the summer solstice, smoke rises from the silkworm rearing rooms. Although it is hard work, the money earned from collecting silk is more than a season's worth of grain in the past.

Some clever young men even carried their loads into the city to sell pickled vegetables, dried bamboo shoots, tofu, and tea cakes from their own villages.

If a wealthy family is satisfied with their meal, they will place an order, even for freshly picked scallions from the garden the night before, which must be delivered to the food stalls at the city gate before the rooster crows this morning.

But this round trip earned him more money than he used to earn in a whole month of hard work.

Thus, a supply and demand cycle gradually formed both inside and outside the city.

The once quiet village is now filled with the sounds of oxcarts and looms, and some families who have "become rich" have started to renovate their courtyards and buy furniture, making their lives increasingly prosperous.

Of course, You Ming didn't care much about these details; he focused most of his energy on building the cave.

And today, the grotto is finally about to be successfully built.

(End of this chapter)