From this day on, the notoriety of Zhou Ming spread thoroughly throughout Yuyang Commandery.

Rumors flew in the streets, claiming he fabricated charges out of thin air, coerced confessions, and framed the innocent. They further condemned him for being money-grubbing and profit-driven. All sorts of defamatory accusations came one after another, endless in variety.

Zhou Ming extended his Divine Sense, heard these accusations, and simply laughed them off.

He sneered inwardly. These were merely trivial street rumors; what did they amount to?

If the world knew that it was he who spread the 'Dushi Sutra', stirring up the world, igniting wars, inciting conflict between nations, and causing countless commoners to be displaced and suffer, they would likely wish to grind his bones to dust and eat his flesh raw.

The wealth obtained from wiping out the Sun Family and coercing the subsequent families could only be described as massive.

These noble families had entrenched themselves in Yuyang Commandery for generations, their enclosed fertile lands stretching in unbroken swathes.

The grain piled in the warehouses was so abundant that they hadn't even finished eating the old stock before new grain was added.

Strings of copper coins piled in the storerooms grew green rust, silver filled large wooden crates that stuffed several cellars, and calligraphy, paintings, antiques, land deeds, and property deeds were innumerable.

Zhou Ming dispatched an entire team of clerks who spent five days and five nights just to finish taking inventory of the gains.

The grain alone was enough to feed an army of two hundred thousand for a whole year, not counting the textiles, livestock, vehicles, horses, and ironware.

He transported the majority of these assets back to the Marquis Mansion, leaving a small portion behind to be used for Yuyang Commandery's military expenses and civilian livelihood expenditures.

After taking control of Yuyang Commandery, Zhou Ming placed an old general who commanded five thousand elite troops in charge of city defense, while he himself moved into the Prefectural Governors Mansion, becoming the Yuyang Commandery Governor in name and deed.

From his very first day in office, he had no intention of managing those trivial administrative matters.

Daily tasks like measuring farmland, collecting taxes, and repairing waterworks—let alone doing them, he felt sleepy just looking at the numbers on the official documents.

Fortunately, it didn't matter that he couldn't do them; there were plenty of people who could.

What was the one thing the Marquis Mansion never lacked? Talent.

The Su Family had operated for generations, accumulating not only military power and land but also a group of talents nurtured by the noble clans who had never been given important roles.

Zhou Ming sent a message via flying eagle to the Northern Territory, and five days later, the reply from Empress Su Mingyue arrived.

Inside the envelope was a long list, written on three full sheets of mulberry paper.

From the Commandery Chancellor to the magistrates of each county, from the Registrar in charge of taxes to the Works Officer responsible for water conservancy.

Under each position, she had written the name, previous post, areas of expertise, personality, and what to be mindful of when employing them.

At the end of the list was an attached note in small characters: "Go into the third alley east of Yuyang Commandery city, there is a three-courtyard residence. Inside lives a retired Ministry of Revenue Director from the previous dynasty with the surname Chen. This person has a bad temper but exceptional administrative ability. You must invite him personally; others will not be able to persuade him."

Zhou Ming sent men to invite him twice, and as expected, the old Director Chen kept his doors closed and refused to see them.

Later, Zhou Ming brought two jars of fine wine and a rare book from the previous dynasty copied from the Library, visited in person, and drank tea for an entire afternoon.

In the end, Director Chen agreed to try working for three months first.

With the former Ministry of Revenue Director and a team of capable personnel carefully selected by Empress Su Mingyue, the machine of the Prefectural Governors Mansion began to operate in an orderly manner.

Zhou Ming then had more energy to focus on the matter he cared about most: expanding the army.

The order from Empress Su Mingyue was very clear: have him expand the defensive forces of Yuyang Commandery.

He had money, grain, and men on hand, and Yuyang Commandery was one of the most populous commandery cities in the heart of You Province; the conditions were all ready.

In less than ten days, Zhou Ming had raised an army of one hundred thousand in Yuyang Commandery.

Once the recruitment notices were posted at the gates of the commandery city and various county towns, the young men who came to enlist lined up in long queues.

The notice was written very straightforwardly: "All those selected will receive a monthly salary ten percent higher than the original commandery garrison, with food, lodging, and new uniforms provided."

Zhou Ming had those five thousand Northern Territory veterans serve as instructors, took the one hundred thousand new recruits to an abandoned military garrison outside the city to set up camp, and drilled them day and night.

At the same time, he taught them all the 'Dushi Sutra'. With one hundred thousand new recruits in camp, the sound of scripture recitation could be heard daily.

Among the one hundred thousand, the fastest to condense a sense of Qi took less than three days, and the slowest did not exceed ten days.

After Cultivating the 'Dushi Sutra', the new recruits trained at an intensity several times that of ordinary soldiers, yet they remained full of vigor.

Over the course of a month, while Zhou Ming was stationed in Yuyang recruiting troops and rectifying internal affairs, Empress Su Mingyue was not idle in the Northern Territory.

She had already combed through all ten-plus commandery cities throughout You Province one by one.

Either sending people to take over or reaching tacit understandings with local noble families.

She integrated the local garrison forces of You Province with the Marquis Mansion's direct forces, unifying their organization, deployment, and the teaching of the 'Dushi Sutra'.

At the same time, she expanded military forces, reinforced city defenses, stockpiled grain and fodder, and repaired beacon towers, pulling the entire military and political system of You Province together from top to bottom.

During this month, Zhou Ming's cultivation did not increase much.

The purple Golden Core within his Dantian remained as steady as a rock.

Every day, hundreds and thousands of faint heat currents surged in from the Causal Chain, silently absorbed by the Golden Core, yet they couldn't even stir up a single ripple.

Zhou Ming knew that these heat currents meant that hundreds and thousands of people were still dying intermittently every day.

On the battlefield, on the borders, or at the blade's edge where the Zongsheng Sect clashed with garrison forces in other provinces and commanderies.

But to Zhou Ming, these things had already become commonplace.

In chaotic times, human life is like blades of grass; that is not just a simple saying.

Even with hundreds and thousands of heat currents generated daily, it was long insufficient to produce any substantial advancement for his Golden Core Stage cultivation.

To rely on this trickle to move further upward, unless there was another war on the scale of the decisive battle in An Province, with hundreds of thousands dying simultaneously.

Meanwhile, the Causality Web between his brows had seen unprecedented explosive growth over this month.

The newly added phantom images climbed from an initial hundred thousand or so per day to hundreds of thousands, then over a million per day.

In the last few days, it had even reached the shocking figure of over two million new additions in a single day.

It usually only took two to three days for these phantom images to appear and then solidify.

Every time a Causal Chain solidified, it meant that yet another person he had never met had finished reading the scripture one hundred times and had Cultivated their first wisp of Qi in their Dantian.

Zhou Ming made a rough estimate; the Causal Chains that had already completely solidified numbered no less than ten million.

Ten million, ten million cultivators, spread across You Province, Cang Prefecture, Qing Province, An Province, and even further places, reciting the same scripture and Cultivating the same Cultivation Technique.

They might be refugees dragged into the Zongsheng Sect, ordinary soldiers in the You Province great camp, or private soldiers secretly nurtured by some noble family in a hidden chamber.

They recited continuously, and with every extra recitation, the Causal Chain grew thicker by a fraction.

The number ten million, in Zhou Ming's eyes, did not make him excited, nor did it make him uneasy.

He simply glanced at the Causality Web every morning and evening to confirm it was growing, and then returned his attention to the official documents on his desk.