Inside the toy store, rows of miniature playthings filled the shelves. Li Daoxuan scanned them one by one, but he quickly realized that almost nothing here was usable for his tiny villagers.
A child's toy gun was out of the question. Once placed inside the box, it would stretch to hundreds of meters in length. He did spot a rubber-band pistol, but even that was ten centimeters long. At their scale, it would become a twenty-meter monstrosity, far beyond what his little people could ever hope to wield.
If I really can't find any modern hardware, he thought, I'll just have to whittle down some toothpicks into one-centimeter splinters and let them use those as pikes.
But the villagers had no combat training and no understanding of formations. Even with long pikes in hand, they'd still be combat trash. If they were going to defend themselves against the bandits horde, they needed projectile weapons. Something that could strike from a distance.
Projectile weapons. Projectile weapons...
Suddenly, Li Daoxuan's eyes lit up.
Tucked away in the most inconspicuous corner of the shop, on an obscure bottom shelf, sat a box of micro plastic catapults.
Each unit was barely three centimeters across. The craftsmanship was laughably crude, all plastic, and the mechanism was dead simple. It relied entirely on the material's elasticity. A child would press the throwing arm down with a finger, and once released, the plastic's spring-back would snap the arm upward.
Li Daoxuan grinned. Fun, very fun! How come I never saw neat little toys like this when I was a kid?
He picked up the entire display box and walked to the counter. "Boss, how much for these catapults?"
The owner didn't even look up from his phone. "One yuan each."
Li Daoxuan couldn't help but scoff. "For this little bit of plastic and a mold this sloppy, you're charging a whole yuan?"
The owner shrugged. "Then take the whole box. Fifty of them for twenty-five yuan."
Li Daoxuan pulled out his phone, scanned the code, and paid.
---
When he returned home and sat before the diorama box, he found Gaojia Village in a state of feverish activity. Every single resident was working with frantic energy.
The women had split into two groups. One group was busy cooking, preparing a full meal for the men before they went off to battle. The other group was heating oil. Inside tiny pots barely two millimeters across, rapeseed oil was boiling and rolling.
The men handled the heavy labor. They dragged leftover stone and timber from the construction of the Dao Xuan Tianzun Cave toward the walls, preparing rolling logs and crushing stones.
Up on the wall, a group of young men listened intently to Master Bai.
Li Daoxuan leaned closer, straining his ears.
"Hold the spear like this... keep your palm steady... when a bandit climbs up... you thrust downward like this..."
Fun!
Off to the side, another group caught his attention. Elderly villagers and children were gathered inside the newly completed Dao Xuan Tianzun Cave, kneeling before his statue in heartfelt prayer. They begged Tianzun to protect everyone, to keep them safe from harm.
This bustling, breathing life inside the box was exactly what Li Daoxuan loved to watch.
He felt secretly relieved that he hadn't simply flattened all those bandits earlier. If he had, he would have missed out on such an entertaining scene.
Alright! Time to give them a little help.
Li Daoxuan spoke up. " Yiye, tell everyone to prepare. I am dropping down weapons."
Gao Yiye shuddered in delight, her face lighting up with joy. She immediately shouted, "Everyone, pay attention! Tianzun is bestowing weapons upon us!"
The moment those words echoed out, the hundred-plus original residents of Gaojia Village snapped to attention. The young men who had been listening to Master Bai's defense lecture abandoned their lesson entirely, raising their heads with expressions of pure devotion.
Master Bai felt an intense surge of annoyance.
I am teaching you how to fight a war! You should be treating me with respect! Mid-sentence, you suddenly turn your heads to gawk at the sky? What utter nonsense!
That cult priestess claimed Tianzun was granting weapons? Pure fraud! She'd probably perform some hocus-pocus ritual, dance around like a shaman, then haul out a pile of rusted junk from the storehouse and hand it out while claiming it was a divine gift.
Master Bai had heard tricks like that until his ears grew calluses.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, Gao Chuwu shouted at the top of his lungs, "It's coming! Look up!"
"It's descending!"
"We bow to Tianzun!"
The original villagers of Gaojia Village dropped to their knees one after another with loud thuds. Master Bai's group, on the other hand, stood there foolishly, completely clueless about what was happening.
Master Bai looked up into the sky and finally saw it.
At some point, a low-hanging cloud had appeared out of nowhere, hovering roughly seventy zhang above the ground. Within the mist, a colossal object was slowly descending.
It was green!
Perfectly square!
And fitted with a massive spoon!
For a moment, Master Bai couldn't even process what he was looking at.
Actually, what the object was didn't even matter anymore. The real question was: how was it descending so smoothly out of the clouds? How was that even possible?
Could it... truly be a gift from an immortal in heaven?
He stood there, utterly stunned.
Once the colossal object touched down and settled firmly on the ground, Master Bai finally caught a clear view. The main body measured two zhang long and two zhang wide, perfectly square, while the spoon above was attached to a long throwing arm secured by a mechanical catch.
"A... a catapult!" Master Bai gasped. "That is a strangely shaped catapult!"
He could recognize a siege engine at a glance, but the others could not. The villagers of Gaojia Village and the tenant farmers from Bai Family Fort stood there staring blankly, completely lost.
Gao Yiye raised her voice. "Listen carefully, everyone! This sacred engine granted by Tianzun is called a catapult. Place a stone into the spoon on the throwing arm, then trip that mechanism beside it, and it will fling the stone out!"
Everyone blinked in confusion: "???"
Gao Yiye commanded, "Li Da, Tianzun orders you to bring your iron hammer and stand beside that mechanism. When I give the word, swing your hammer with all your strength and strike the catch!"
Li Da answered at once, gripping his massive sledgehammer and striding over to stand beside the catapult.
Li Daoxuan gently picked up a small pebble and dropped it into the catapult's spoon.
To him, the pebble was cutely microscopic, no bigger than a small pill. But to the villagers below, a massive boulder floated out of thin air and settled neatly inside the spoon.
The crowd gasped: "Whoa!"
Master Bai: "!!!"
Having just spent the last few minutes scoffing at cult trickery, he now felt his brain short-circuiting.
Gao Yiye called out, "Strike!"
Li Da summoned every ounce of strength in his body, swung his sledgehammer, and smashed it against the catch with a heavy thud.
The mechanism released. The colossal throwing arm whipped upward with a violent whoosh, flinging the giant boulder across the sky. The stone arced from one end of the village to the other before slamming into the ground outside.
BOOM!
Dust and gravel exploded into the air, sending sand and stones flying everywhere.
After a brief pause, the villagers burst into a unified cheer: "Incredible! An immortal artifact! A divine treasure of heaven!"
Master Bai didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "A bunch of ignorant bumpkins! Catapults on a real battlefield produce that exact same power!"
Even as his mouth muttered the words, he couldn't help but glance up at the sky, a sense of awe rising in his heart.
There really was an immortal in those clouds.
And this weirdly shaped catapult... might actually be a divine artifact from heaven after all.