Chapter 274: Famine and War

In the illusory world, the unbearable winter finally passed.

Due to the recovery of spiritual qi in the world, many things changed. The climate everywhere in the continent of the Nine Provinces was abnormal.

This wave of winter lasted exceptionally long. After eight months, the temperature rose.

Even though they had already made the best preparations, Zi Yao’s village had a certain number of casualties.

This was unavoidable. Under extreme conditions, the original fate of this backward village was to be completely wiped out.

During the winter, she did not idle and brought people to build a brick kiln furnace.

The entire village usually did not stop working at all.

Using these burning bricks, more than ten simple water storage towers were built.

As soon as spring began, she ordered people to shovel snow into the storage to store water for the subsequent drought.

The ignorant villagers did not know her good intentions. They even tried to resist, but were forcefully suppressed by Zi Yao.

Although she looked like a weak girl, cultivators were cultivators. No matter what, they could not be bullied by mortals.

The fields near the village had also been modified by her. She dug out trenches and buried them in wooden slots before mixing them with the snow and soil that had yet to melt.

When the snow melted, the soil in the wooden trough would remain moist for a longer period of time, and more food could be planted here.

On the other hand, Jiang Li was living as comfortably as possible under the effect of the illusion techniques.

Not only did the remaining villagers not die, they even ate until they were full.

All the women of suitable age in the village were pregnant.

This was because Jiang Li requested that they had to expand the population as much as possible, even if they did nothing else at all.

If he wanted a place to develop, population was the first factor. He believed that in the assessment criteria, population also played a huge role.

In order to better deal with the army and beast tide later, he also needed a lot of people as soldiers.

In addition, Jiang Li, who wanted to cheat even more, also discovered that other than Qin Shuman who was directly attached to him,

If he wanted to pull other ghosts in, they had to have a physical identity in the illusion realm to enter.

“Young Master, there are 20 refugees outside the village.”

Just as Jiang Li was idling and trying to cultivate the Bodhisattva Heart Sutra in the illusion, Qin Shuman reported this to him.

“There are actually refugees in this game, cough, this illusion realm?”

Jiang Li went out to take a look. There were only 20 refugees in ragged clothes.

When asked where they came from, they only said that there was a great drought in the north and that they had come all the way south to seek a way out.

On Zi Yao’s side, she had already erected a road sign to indicate that they were recruiting refugees and using them to actively cultivate the fields.

He had to take advantage of the precious time before the drought to plant as many crops as possible.

Jiang Li saw that this was a good method to increase the population.

He directly recruited these 20 refugees.

Then, they got the village to cook a few large vats of rice and a large amount of chicken, duck, and fish. The group of people moved to the main road at the entrance of the village and gathered there to eat.

At this moment, Zi Yao, who was next door, was stunned.

All the refugees who passed by this path were attracted by the fragrance of Jiang Li’s food. No one came towards her.

Not only that, but the few refugees that they had just recruited also disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Even the villagers were complaining. They were very envious and wanted to join the other side.

All this time, Jiang Li did not seem to have done anything, were they really in the same situation?

In the illusion, time flowed very quickly. In his senses, a year would not make Jiang Li feel that it was long.

Not long after, the snow melted, but not a drop of rain fell from the sky.

Under the scorching sun, the ground cracked from the heat.

In a thousand miles of land, the vegetation was withered and yellow, and all things were on the verge of death.

On Zi Yao’s side, she gathered a batch of sweet potatoes and beans before the crops withered.

Instead, she abandoned a large area of ordinary farmland and used the snow water that she had left behind earlier to water the plants bit by bit in the wooden trough.

There were more and more refugees on the main road. They formed groups and seemed to be endless.

Because there were too many people, Zi Yao also recruited many refugees. However, after the number reached 1,000, she stopped recruiting because she could not afford to feed more people.

However, the cheater did not have such worries.

Jiang Li’s village did not reject anyone.

On the main road, he would act like a deity everyday, turning thin air into food or houses.

Under his simple operation of using the cheat code, the village quickly became a town, and the town quickly became a county city.

It was a thriving paradise in this chaotic world.

The first batch of ghost soldiers under Jiang Li finally reincarnated in the illusion realm.

Those babies that were born could grow to three feet in a day.

In just a few days, more than a hundred infants had already grown into burly adults.

Most importantly, all of them could unleash the strength of Qi Refinement realm cultivators.

In this illusion world, Qi Refinement realm cultivators were already the top of the world.

If word got out that there were more than a hundred Qi Refinement cultivators, any enemy would faint from fear.

After a period of famine, the people in this region were no longer living comfortably, and there were skeletons lying on the road.

Due to the large number of refugees that had surged into the two human cities not far away, the security became extremely poor, and civil complaints arose everywhere.

If this continued, there would definitely be a civil rebellion.

The officials could feed them for a month or two, but no more.

When the food supply was cut off, there would definitely be chaos in the city.

Then, the two cities simultaneously chose the same measures.

Conscription and war!

Using food to recruit refugees to join the army, firstly, they could increase their strength to suppress those refugees who were unwilling to join.

Secondly, they could send out troops to sweep the area and ease the food crisis.

Thirdly, if there was a war between the two sides, they could also make these extra people die. Without them, wouldn’t there be more food and water for the rest?

The rapidly expanding Jiang City undoubtedly attracted the attention of the two cities.

Their location was in the middle of the two cities.

Under normal circumstances, this was a good place for transportation and development.

But now, it was the first choice for them.

How could they feel at ease without robbing such a prosperous city?

Two troops formed from refugees rushed towards Jiang Li’s group from the left and right. Wherever they passed, there was practically no survivors.

They killed everyone in their way and snatched all that they could find.

When the scouts discovered that nearly 100,000 soldiers were rushing over from both sides, Zi Yao was so shocked that her face turned pale.

Although she had built a fence and made some mechanisms and defense tools that mortals could use, she could only deal with a small troop of a few hundred soldiers. How could she withstand the pincer attack of tens of thousands of soldiers?

Logically speaking, they should pass the test as long as they survived this chaotic environment.

However, because Jiang Li’s village was developing too well, this situation was triggered after the target became larger.

However, no matter how well the villages developed, no matter how many refugees they recruited, during this era, they were unable to smelt metal on a large scale and forge weapons. Compared to a true army, it was no different from courting death.

She did not know, or rather, she did not imagine, that there were already more than a hundred Qi Refinement cultivators in Jiang Li’s city.

Under the pressure of the army calamity, Zi Yao thought about it and made a decision.

She decisively led her villagers to abandon the stronghold and escape. As long as they hid deep in the mountains, no one would be able to find them.

Although doing this meant that all her previous preparations had been wasted, she could avoid this calamity and find an opportunity later!

She softly said goodbye to Jiang Li’s village and left with the villagers.

However, this decision caused her to lose 30% of her villagers who went to join Jiang Li.

Abandoning her home, food, and water, she fled into the mountains. It was already extremely incredible that 70% of the population chose to follow her.

Jiang Li had some ghost soldiers as scouts, so he was naturally much more well-informed than her.

In fact, although Qi Refinement cultivators were much stronger than mortals, ordinary Qi Refinement realm cultivators were almost at their limit when fighting hundreds of people alone.

In a battle of a hundred over Qi Refinement cultivators against tens of thousands of mortal soldiers, if both sides fought bravely and fearlessly, the chance of winning was really not very high.

However, cultivators were fast and had many methods. They could completely use other methods to obtain victory.

For example, the shovel was a good tool to use.

The 108 villagers reincarnated from ghost soldiers were divided into two teams. Each of them held a shovel and rushed towards the army on both sides of the road.

What they needed to do was not to kill those soldiers with shovels.

Instead, they destroyed the roads and obstructed traffic.

An army of nearly a hundred thousand people moved slowly to begin with.

Their transport carriages were even heavier.

At first, it was fine, but soon, the road in front of them became bumpy. There was not a single flat area ahead of them.

That was the destruction caused by Jiang Li’s orders. To those ghost soldiers, using a shovel to make a huge hole was not difficult at all. The speed at which they dug the holes was much faster than the movement speed of the army.

Ordinary foot soldiers were fine, but the carriages carrying supplies and rations practically sank with every step, making it extremely difficult to move.

Under such circumstances, the army took longer and longer. Soon, the heavy carriages fell behind.

Jiang Li then ordered two groups of ghost soldiers to go around the back, easily breaking through the defenses. They directly burned the food carriages.

There were nearly 200,000 soldiers on both sides. They were all stunned at this point.

There were no villages or cities in sight. Without food supplies to support them, they would not be able to rush back and would starve to death on the way.

There was already a famine occurring, and now that they were faced with such fatal hunger, the army’s morale immediately collapsed.