Chapter 124: Title Pending

After returning to the Endless Wilderness, Li Hongshen prioritized granting the status of "Life-Sharer" to the Shaman of Mammoth and the Great Elder, both of whom were as vital as the territory itself.

As for Zhao Yun, Li Li, and the others, they were still relatively young—at least by the standards of Tier 3 warriors, they had only just exited their youth and were pushing toward their prime. Li Hongshen had explained the situation to them clearly: he wanted to minimize expenditures wherever possible. It wasn't out of stinginess or pettiness, but simply because they could afford to wait; there was no urgent need.

Zhao Yun, Li Li, and Li Zhong all agreed. Truly, this was not because they were unable to resist the will of their lord—not at all. Rather, they shared the lord's concerns and understood his reasoning. Besides, the situation had not yet reached a point of necessity; waste is shameful, and every bit saved counts.

Currently, the primary drain on the territory’s Source Points was the maintenance of the Energy Core. Li Hongshen had been using these points to accelerate the core’s growth, allowing it to integrate into the territory quickly and flawlessly. Second to this was the restoration of the territory's mineral resources. Due to economic reforms, the demand for iron had skyrocketed. Initially, they could only intensify the mining of local deposits, but once they had sufficient funds and allies, they shifted to external procurement. Consequently, the local iron mines were still being restored using Source Points.

Li Hongshen had diverted about one-sixth of his Source Points to grant the Life-Sharer status to the Shaman of Mammoth and the Great Elder. Afterward, he and the others witnessed what it meant for a withered tree to bloom again—to see what it meant for an old veteran to still have his edge. The Shaman of Mammoth, that shameless old man, married a new bride the very year he received his status and happily began fulfilling Li Hongshen’s population policy, leading by example to help build up the territory. As for the Great Elder, he had a formidable wife at home and was kept on a tight leash, though he seemed perfectly content and had no other complaints.

To Li Hongshen’s relief, the Great Elder did not ask for the Life-Sharer status for his wife, choosing instead to work even harder and spend his spare time with her. If the Great Elder had made such a request, he would no longer be the dedicated, duty-bound man Li Hongshen knew. This was not because Li Hongshen was selfish or cold-blooded; rather, given the current state of his territory, he simply lacked the capacity to provide the status on a large scale. If he made an exception for the Great Elder, he would have to consider the families of Zhao Yun, Li Li, and the others. Furthermore, it contradicted the philosophy he had long instilled in the territory: that the capable should rise and the mediocre should step down. Thus, Li Hongshen had to be cold-blooded.

If the Great Elder had indeed asked, Li Hongshen would have sternly explained the situation, begun training a successor for the administrative team, and stripped the Great Elder of his status. Li Hongshen knew this would likely affect some individuals, and that the death of a loved one might cause a Life-Sharer to fall into a period of despondency. However, he trusted those he had chosen; he believed they would eventually emerge from their grief, for their bloodline would continue, they were still alive, and their lord would still require their loyalty and assistance.

After returning to the Endless Wilderness from the Prime World, Li Hongshen not only distributed the Life-Sharer status but also increased the sales of his "Bomb Pellets." By collaborating with others in various realms and utilizing a regional agency model, he sold the pellets to remote outposts and even to other lord alliances, earning a massive amount of Source Points and resources.

However, Li Hongshen did not engage in the slave trade. Since entering the Inner Domain, he had not traded in human beings, not even slaves. His existing population base was already sufficient, and with his pro-natalist policies, he was confident that, over time, he could cultivate a powerful ethnic group. Furthermore, as the population had grown quite large, introducing outsiders would lead to issues of integration and cultural conflict—a troublesome prospect. In the Inner Domain, the population consisted of people from large Tier 3 tribes, some of which had not been destroyed but merely raided for slaves. Integrating such indigenous people would inevitably lead to bizarre problems that, if handled poorly, could invite the hostility of other lords or draw unnecessary attention from his fellow disciples.

While Li Hongshen did not fear such things, he preferred to avoid needless trouble. Most importantly, he realized he needed to preserve the purity of his tribe’s population. He discovered that the two "Lord Talents" he had acquired grew significantly stronger with each generation of inheritance. Newborns were roughly ten percent more talented than the first generation of Hong tribe citizens. Testing confirmed that when both parents possessed these talents, they merged and were passed on to their children, gaining strength in the process. Upon birth, the newborns were then endowed with the territory's talent again, further boosting their potential. Although the improvement per generation was small, after three or four generations, it had become quite significant. He envisioned that with long-term development, his citizens would possess even greater talents, ensuring they were ahead of the curve from the moment they were born.

This unexpected boon delighted Li Hongshen. He had not anticipated that the talents granted by his "cheat" could be strengthened through multi-generational inheritance. Thus, he abandoned the strategy of importing outsiders to ensure the purity of his population and the strength of his tribe's talents.

Of course, not everything was positive. About a decade after the Bomb Pellets entered the market, a senior disciple created something with similar effects. While it was produced in smaller quantities and was less powerful than Li Hongshen’s, it introduced competition, ending his monopoly. From that point on, more and more disciples began participating in the process, both from his own domain and others. However, there was a tacit agreement to keep prices at a certain level, ensuring everyone made a profit, albeit in varying amounts.

Li Hongshen had long anticipated this. The concept was straightforward, the finished product was there to be studied, and the results proved the path was viable. As long as a territory possessed the technology and was willing to invest the manpower and resources, they would eventually replicate it. After all, they were all elites; there would always be researchers among the many lords. The fact that it took ten years to replicate was a testament to Li Hongshen’s constant improvements, his addition of useless runic patterns, and his anti-tampering measures. At the very least, when he first started selling them, he sensed that some lords had detonated the pellets inside their own cities while trying to dismantle them. Li Hongshen said nothing about it—it wasn't his city that blew up, and he couldn't be blamed for their curiosity. ┐(-`)┌┐(｀)┌