Chapter 159: A Presumptuous Request
Over the next day, Wei Yuan worked non-stop and visited seventeen human settlements of varying sizes—some with thousands of inhabitants, and others with only a hundred or two. Every time he ran into a village with more than a hundred people, he made sure to visit it and requested the residents spread the word. Most people were living separately across the vast western regions, but they had to visit human settlements eventually and periodically to exchange for necessities. That was when they would learn of Wei Yuan’s recruitment of mortals.
It wasn’t until late at night that Wei Yuan finally returned to the realm. This day, Wei Yuan had covered every human village and town of any size within a three-hundred-li radius and gotten the word out to roughly forty thousand people.
When Wei Yuan had first arrived in this area, approximately eighty thousand people had been living in the vicinity. Unfortunately, the repeated incursions by the Shamans had driven many of them to flee their original settlements and seek refuge in the dense forests of the mountains.
Everyone was willing to relocate into the realm, even if it meant abandoning the village they had lived in for generations. After all, a home without the protection of a realm stone was no home at all.
Mortals relocated much more slowly than cultivators. It was quite normal for a family—especially if they were carrying baggage—to spend weeks on the road just to cover a distance of three hundred li. To solve this issue, Wei Yuan had purposely gathered five hundred cultivators and divided them into dozens of squads. Their main task was to help the mortals relocate.
To be honest, many people were skeptical of his decision. Even Yun Feifei had tactfully voiced her concerns about the matter. In her view, having too many mortals at this sensitive time was a pure detriment. To say nothing of other issues, the matter of food alone was a serious problem.
All Shaman food were more or less toxic to humans. Assuming there was absolutely no other option, a human could eat a small amount out of necessity. But too much, and they would simply die. Readily available food aside, the Shaman realm was teeming with living creatures, and the waters were overflowing with countless ferocious fishes on the surface. In truth, none of them were suitable for human consumption. Not even the water was drinkable.
Consequently, humans still starved to death year after year even though the region appeared as if it was overflowing with resources.
Whatever the cultivators might think, Wei Yuan still insisted on bringing every single mortal back to the realm, taking in even the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the disabled. Not a single person was left behind.