Morning, August 16, 2023. Shuangqing City.
When Li Daoxuan woke up, the little world inside his box was already buzzing with activity.
Shan Shi'er, Mrs. Shan, the two sculptors, Gao Chuwu, Zheng Daniu, and several young villagers were getting ready to leave for the county town.
In the old days, a trip to the county town was no big deal. Pack some dried food, walk thirty-some li, and you'd arrive in one or two shichen. Nothing complicated.
These days, however, the journey had turned into a dangerous expedition.
Beyond Gaojia Village's tall walls stretched a lawless wasteland where the strong preyed on the weak. According to the news Master Bai had brought back during his last visit, the imperial court had practically washed its hands of the bandits. Their official policy seemed to be: let them rob people until next spring. They'll probably settle down on their own.
Quite a brilliant strategy. Why bother maintaining order when you could simply wait for the criminals to get bored?
Shan Shi'er was actually a rather timid fellow. When he'd first heard that the bailiffs had stolen Wangjia Village's seed grain, he'd been the first to run for the hills. He certainly wasn't the sort of man who enjoyed staring danger in the face.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Shan was determined to return to the county town this time. There was no talking her out of it, so Shan Shi'er had no choice but to grit his teeth and accompany her.
"Tianzun has already eliminated Wushang Mingwang and scattered the largest bandit force." He paced back and forth, trying to reassure himself as much as the others. "There shouldn't be any large bandit groups left."
Gao Chuwu flashed him a broad grin.
"Don't worry. I'll protect you! Look, I'm wearing Liang Dang Jia. Pretty impressive, right? Ah... though it's a little hot."
Shan Shi'er nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Take that thing off! Right now, you idiot! Wearing armor when fighting bandits is one thing. Walking into the county town dressed like that is another. The moment the authorities see you, they'll chop your head off!"
Gao Chuwu blinked in confusion.
"Huh? Why?"
Shan Shi'er hurriedly gave him a crash course in the law. By the time he finished explaining the consequences, Gao Chuwu was so frightened that he stripped off the Liang Dang Jia at lightning speed and rushed to return it to Gao Yiyi's smithy.
After that little episode, the group finally got moving.
Gao Chuwu, Zheng Daniu, the two sculptors, and ten other young men each carried a blade and slung a bundle over their backs before heading out through the village gate.
Naturally, everyone was nervous. Only a few days earlier, they'd barely survived an attack by a bandit army. Asking them to wander around outside the village now was hardly a relaxing proposition.
But then they remembered that this journey was being undertaken at Tianzun's command. They were going to save the world!
That thought gave them the courage they needed.
Tianzun had done so much for them. Compared with everything he'd given, the little they could do in return was hardly worth mentioning.
"Hurry up! The sooner we reach the county town, the safer we'll be!"
Shan Shi'er kept urging everyone forward. Not that he needed to. The others were already practically marching at double speed.
Li Daoxuan watched as the group left Gaojia Village and headed toward the county town. He reached out and tapped the "West" and "South" buttons on the outside of the box, adjusting the viewing angle to follow them.
Unfortunately, the view only shifted a few hundred meters before hitting its limit.
The group kept walking, gradually leaving the visible area until they disappeared beyond the edge of the box.
A child traveling a thousand li leaves his mother worrying every step of the way.
For the first time, Li Daoxuan understood what it felt like to watch a child leave home. Even though these were technically a bunch of tiny people living inside a box, he'd still developed a strange attachment to them.
He turned his attention back to the village.
With Shan Shi'er gone, the atmosphere changed almost immediately. Everyone seemed to breathe a little easier.
The blacksmiths in the forge visibly slowed their pace. The women who had recently started weaving cotton cloth put their work aside and gathered in little groups, happily gossiping about one household or another.
And then there was Gao Yiye.
The moment she slipped out of her house, she made a beeline for the broken thatched hut where the cotton was being stored. After looking left and right to make sure nobody was watching, she grabbed a large bundle of cotton and stuffed it beneath her clothes.
Then she hurried home, shut the doors and windows, and immediately started up her loom.
Fortunately, she'd never bothered to repair the hole in her ceiling. Otherwise, even Li Daoxuan might have had trouble catching her secretly weaving cotton cloth inside.
He couldn't help laughing.
With Shan Shi'er away, should he take over and manage the villagers himself?
He considered the idea for half a second before dismissing it.
Why bother?
The villagers had been working like slaves these past few days. First came the construction of the Dao Xuan Tianzun Cave, then the battle against the bandits, followed by one exhausting task after another. Shan Shi'er had been pushing everyone around so relentlessly that they barely had time to catch their breath.
Why not let them enjoy a few days of freedom while he was away?
Consider it a holiday.
Li Daoxuan withdrew his attention from the miniature world and turned to something else.
After thinking for a moment, he remembered that the surveillance camera pointed at the box had been recording continuously on a loop for quite some time. It was probably time to clean up the footage.
He sat down at his computer, opened the camera management software, and brought up the recording list. Then he selected everything and saved the files to his local hard drive.
While the files were being transferred, he casually opened one recording and watched a little, chuckling to himself. Then he opened another, watched for a while, and chuckled again.
But when he opened the next one...
"Holy shit. What the hell is this?"
The night-vision footage showed Gao Yiye standing by the pond, taking off her clothes. Judging by the circumstances, she seemed to be preparing to bathe.
In that instant, Instinct and Integrity both drew their weapons.
The two forces clashed in Li Daoxuan's mind. One delivered a slash, the other countered with a thrust. A fierce battle raged for several dozen seconds, with neither side willing to back down.
In the end, Integrity emerged victorious by the narrowest of margins. Instinct lay defeated, its corpse chopped into pieces on the battlefield.
Li Daoxuan immediately clicked the delete button and sent that recording straight to the afterlife.
He then opened another file.
This time, the footage showed the villagers shouting and bustling about as they worked on the Dao Xuan Tianzun Cave. There was something oddly entertaining about watching the whole village moving around like a colony of extremely industrious ants.
Joy shared is joy doubled.
Why keep this amusing sight to himself? He could upload it to Douyin and let the internet have a look. The netizens wouldn't know he was filming actual people from the Ming Dynasty. At most, they'd assume he'd hired a bunch of actors for a historical reenactment.
The idea sounded fun, so Li Daoxuan immediately got to work.
He cut out the most interesting section, edited it into a thirty-second short video, and added a caption:
Late Ming Dynasty: A group of hardworking laborers constructing a Daoist temple...
And then he got stuck.
He stared at the caption box for a while, trying to think of something more poetic or inspiring, but his literary talent simply refused to cooperate.
Forget it. Good enough.
He uploaded the video to his Douyin account and promptly forgot about it.
After putting down his phone, he went to boil some water for instant noodles. A few minutes later, he returned with his steaming bowl, picked up his phone, and casually opened Douyin again.
The moment he saw the screen, he nearly choked on his noodles.
The video he'd uploaded just minutes earlier had already exploded!
The comment section was filling up at an alarming speed.
"This video has incredible realism! Every actor is so convincing. They genuinely look like poor laborers, not professionally trained actors!"
"Agreed! Look at the costumes and props. Someone clearly put a lot of effort into this. Nothing like those cheap, low-budget historical dramas that look as though they were filmed with pocket change."
"Is it just me, or does the whole scene look strange? It almost feels like we're looking at a miniature kingdom."
"You're clueless. That's called tilt-shift photography. It makes ordinary objects appear as though they're part of a miniature model."
"Exactly! I'm pretty sure this was shot using tilt-shift photography. The technique itself isn't anything special. Any decent photographer can do it. But look at the scale of this production! The blogger must have spent a fortune hiring all those extras and dressing them up in rags just to film a little video of a Daoist temple being built. The production costs must be insane."
"Look at the number of extras and all those props. Thirty seconds of footage, and I'd say the budget was at least twenty thousand yuan."
"Just seeing how much effort went into this deserves a like, favorite, and share!"
Then came another comment.
"You idiots are missing the obvious. Why do you think this blogger is willing to spend so much money making a thirty-second video? It's obviously an investment! Give it a few days and this account will have a shopping cart attached. Then the blogger will start livestreaming, claiming he's personally negotiated a special discount on some piece of garbage. Not 999, not 99, but only 9.9 yuan, with free shipping straight to your door! That's how he'll fleece every last penny out of you!"
Li Daoxuan stared at that comment.
His eyes suddenly lit up.
Oh?
He hadn't actually planned to do anything like that.
But now that someone had mentioned it...
Well, what do you know? That's not a bad idea.
Li Daoxuan grinned at his phone.
"Fine, then. Let's fleece your money!"