"Do you know about desertification?"

Li Xiang shook his head, Sister Mingshu never mentioned it to him.

Yang Mingtai's face became very serious, and his voice was slightly low. "Ten years ago, someone suggested to the tree god Yu Wan to implement energy control and rationing, and Yu Wan accepted this suggestion, took back all the mimic plants in the inanimate area, carried out large-scale desertification, and turned the living area into an island, which can also be called an oasis. ”

"So I heard that there was other life near the lake? When I crossed here, it was already green grass, but I didn't see any local people. ”

"This area is inhabited by an underground race, but they don't like to interact with humans, so it's hard to see them. Yang Mingtai gave a brief explanation and continued: "Desertification is not terrible, because Yu Wan is still providing food and necessities to living beings, although life will become difficult and travel will become inconvenient, but no one will suffer from cold and hunger." When Yu Wan asked us for advice, all nine of us gentlemen agreed, after all, it was good for Yu Wan. Jiuqiu people have a long lifespan, and decades of endurance will pass. But then what happened caught the attention of me and Mr. Big. ”

Yang Mingtai took the water cup from the table and took a sip, Li Xiang didn't interject and waited quietly.

In the past ten years, there have been some cases of missing people, and at first everyone did not care, after all, Jiuqiu is too big, if someone travels, it is normal to not return for a few years, decades or even a hundred years. With the increase in the number of missing people, it has gradually aroused people's alarm. One day, a villager in Fanlu Village, Chiwangqiu, went home in the middle of the night, and when he was about to arrive at the entrance of the village, he saw a group of people walking out of the village, masked, with a long spear and wooden stick, he quickly hid, he saw that the second-hand feet of He Lao in the same village were tied to a wooden stick, hanging upside down and being carried away, the villager said that the leader was like an orangutan. The matter was reported to Mr. Seven, and each hill immediately counted the population of each village and town, only to find that in four years, Jiuqiu had lost nearly 4,000 people in total. There are men and women, humans and other races, and most of the missing people are ordinary people, which is often referred to as soul blindness, and there are also a few low-level soul masters. It was at that time that Yang Mingtai began to investigate the matter, but the progress was slow, and Master Qi Yun had no clue.

"In that eyewitness case, I never doubted the fifth child, the fifth child is a sincere person, and he can't do anything hurtful to nature. His ape servant is also a far cry from the two-meter-tall giant ape that the villagers say. I once asked Lao Wu if this ape was also from his home planet, and he remained silent. ”

Li Xiang asked, "Who is the fifth child?"

"Mr. Five of Wufuqiu. Seeing that Li Xiang did not continue to ask, Yang Mingtai continued: "Two years ago, my people saw a burly mandrill in Heibaiqiu, which was the same size as the one described by the villagers. This monkey behaves secretly, there is a way not to go, but to climb and climb, it seems that he is not willing to expose himself to the sight of others, my people quietly followed, found that he entered the sixth child's Xuanshuang Palace, and stayed for two hours before leaving. I concluded that even if the sightings were not instigated by the sixth child, they had nothing to do with the sixth child. The sixth man enjoyed it very much, he raised a group of ordinary women to sing and dance for him, and I suspected that the missing person was either taken captive by him to work as coolies, or he was incorporated into the song and dance team. So Master Qi Yun and I went to question the sixth child, but he shouted that he was wronged, saying that the mandrill was just a customer who came to ask for a soul, and he had no knowledge of the disappearance. He also called out all the servants and kabuki, and everyone could tell where they came from. I don't believe it, but I can't do anything about it. "The fifth is Mr. Five, presumably the sixth should be the sixth Mr. of Black and White Hill.

"Aren't there any police officers here?" Why do you want Mr. to investigate the missing person case himself?" asked Li Xiang.

"Jiuqiu does not have an established official office, and naturally there is no official difference. Jiuqiu is vast and sparsely populated, and it is indeed inconvenient to manage. Therefore, most of them are self-managed by towns or villages...... Before I went home, I was used to this pattern, but my mind has changed a little now...... We nine gentlemen are nominally divided into one place, but in reality we do not have much real power, and can only be regarded as a spiritual leader. What he did was nothing more than to do some educational duties, mediate disputes between villages, and help ordinary people to plant souls. In return, Yu Wan will provide us with some additional high-level seeds every year. The seeds do not need to be collected on harvest day, they will fly to our dwellings. In the past, the seeds were sufficient, and the energy was unlimited, and the gentlemen did not charge any remuneration for cultivating souls, and the remuneration charged by most soul cultivators was also very reasonable. Although Jiuqiu has always been in a state of anarchy, even ordinary people who do not have a soul cultivator in their homes can live a very prosperous life. At that time, the road was not left behind, the night was not closed, and the neighborhood was harmonious, which could be described as a great harmony. However, in the past decade, everything has quietly changed. Let's put aside the case of missing persons for the time being, and let me talk to you about desertification first. ”

"Who made the suggestion of desertification, and why did she accept such a suggestion?"

"Eleven years ago, a man who called himself Abu Anakuri suddenly appeared in Taotang, with a face that looked like a fruit bat, a red ochre complexion, and was wrapped in a wide red robe, so he was also called a red bat, and I had never heard of this person before. He has been active in Tao Tang for half a year, helping ordinary people to plant souls but never asking for reward, although he never cultivates souls in front of others, but the items he takes out are excellent. Master Qi Yun heard about his righteous deed, met with him, and found that he was still an ultra-low-frequency consciousness wave perceptor, so the master introduced him to Yu Wan. It was at that time that the red bat made a suggestion to Yu Wan. ”

He said that seeing that the catastrophe was coming, the Lord Tree God was still distracted from taking care of the creatures of Jiuqiu, and could not fully integrate the power of the mother tree, and if another catastrophe happened 20,000 years ago, it would be a misfortune for Jiuqiu. The so-called pleasure is small, life is big. He put forward three suggestions, one is to implement desertification in uninhabited areas, the second is to abandon the high-energy-consuming shuttle channel, and the third is to reduce the supply of seeds and energy and implement an energy rationing system. All three of the recommendations are aimed at reducing the Dryant's daily energy consumption so that she can focus on accelerating the fusion. Yu Wan happily took the suggestion, and after the nine of us worked together to design and make the energy bracelet, the energy control and rationing system was officially implemented. According to the talent level, ordinary people have a quota of 1,000 points per year, and the soul masters from low to high are 3,000, 5,000 and 8,000 points, and the master is 10,000 points, and the bracelet is used to record energy points. ”

"But it doesn't seem like a bad piece of advice. Li Xiang said.

So no one objected at the time, but now that I think about it, Yu Wan doesn't need to do this, with her strength, even if she can't fully control the gate of time and space after decades, she is still sure to imprison the ferocious and vicious people who broke into the Sifang Mountain, she is still a little girl, and she is a little anxious for quick success. I didn't see the harm of this suggestion at the time, after all, I was not a real official, and I was not good at officialdom. Strangely, not long after the suggestion was made, the red bat disappeared, as if there had never been such a person in this world. The purpose of his existence seems to be just to make a suggestion to Yu Wan. Yang Mingtai took a sip of water from the water cup and continued: "After the energy is rationed, the soul cultivator no longer dares to help others cultivate souls at will, after all, soul cultivation also consumes energy points. ”

Li Xiang was puzzled: "Why does the soul seed consume energy points, my understanding is that the soul seed is to write the drawings into the seed, and what is consumed should only be the spiritual power of the soul master." ”

"But the construction of items requires the consumption of Yu Wan's energy, so when planting souls, this part of the energy points will be advanced in advance. Ordinary people don't have many energy points allocated in the first place, and in order to obtain living materials, almost all of their energy points will be exchanged for soul cultivators. As a result, they don't have extra energy points to use video conferencing and underground passages. ”

"Underground passages?"

"The underground passage is a huge hollow pipe stem that grows underground in order to facilitate people's travel, and there is water in the pipe stem, just like an underground dark river, where people want to go, they only need to row through the underground passage. There are signs in the passageway, so you don't have to worry about going the wrong way. Because bio-lighting is provided in the tunnel, the user must pay a certain amount of energy points. Nowadays, ordinary people rarely choose underpasses, preferring to trek through the vast desert on foot, and the journey becomes extremely difficult. I am very worried that more people are no longer going out, no longer video, the mobility of the population is becoming more and more sluggish, the people-to-people information exchange is poor, and Jiuqiu is becoming more and more like a pool of stagnant water. ”

"Because of the poor communication of information, many people have disappeared without alarm?"

Yang Mingtai nodded and continued: "There is also a limit to the energy rationing of the soul cultivator, and after the energy points exceed the limit, you can only go to the energy rationing station and exchange them with seeds. In order to get more energy, the soul planters have increased the reward of the soul planting, for example, in the past, the soul planting only needed one silver seed with one pattern as a reward, but now it has been increased to two two-pattern silver seeds. In a year with a bad harvest, the price of the soul planter is higher, so in these years, the seeds and energy points of ordinary people rarely have a surplus in a year. Fortunately, there is no desertification around the village, the common people can always pick some fruits nearby, food and clothing are still not worried, and the contradiction between the soul planter and the ordinary people has not been intensified. It's just that there is a class division in Datong society, which is always bad, which is also contrary to Yu Wan's idea of wanting various groups to live in harmony. If it is not contained, it will eventually be exploited by others and cause great disasters. Therefore, I suggested to Yu Wan to increase the energy and seed ration, but Yu Wan only promised to give more seeds, no matter what, the people's harvest this year is not bad, and life can be a little easier. ”

"The people may have some complaints, but the first one to jump out and complain is the sixth child, his domestic servants and singers have as many as 100 people, and after the energy rationing, he has to feed so many people, it is a little stretched. Therefore, he was the first of the gentlemen to start receiving a high reward for the soul seed. In the second year's meeting, all eight of us gentlemen objected to his approach, and in the third year, he used the excuse that he was in a bitter cold place, the distance was long, and he could not afford to pay for the high energy points required for the underpass, and only attended the meeting by video call, and his attitude made us very angry, and he simply said that he could not even afford the energy points required by the video, and cut off the video and quit the meeting. For this reason, we asked Yu Wan to reduce the quota given to him every year, and he intensified his exploitation of the people of Heibaiqiu, which is located in the icy extreme north, half of the land is covered with snow all year round, and the people's lives are already more miserable than those of other hills, and the oppression of the sixth child makes them miserable. At the beginning, the sixth child complained that their Katiti tribe was assigned to this hill land, and Yu Wan took good care of him in the allocation of resources, and we pretended not to know about his pleasures. But this connived at him, you must know that it is easy to go from thrift to luxury, and it is difficult to go from luxury to thrift. Energy rationing, how could he be willing to give up the luxury he had long been accustomed to. Yu Wan felt sorry for the people of Heibaiqiu, and made a compromise, not only restoring his previous rations, but even improving them, so that he could restrain a little. ”

"You mean that there is a lack of checks and balances between gentlemen?"

"Mr. is a title, there is no real power, where are the checks and balances? Yu Wan's compromise was undoubtedly a failure, and the mentality of other gentlemen also changed, and they all gave up their obligations as a gentleman and began to receive remuneration. The fourth and seventh children even began to raise kabuki, but they didn't go too far. Even the most honest old five began to receive symbolic payments. Now, only Master Qi Yun and I can abide by our duties. ”

"You and Mr. Big deserve to be public servants. Li Xiang praised.

Yang Mingtai was stunned for a moment when he heard the word "public servant", and shook his head with a wry smile.