Seeking Good Fortune and Avoiding Misfortune: Starting from the Blind Prince

After figuring out a solution, Zhou HaoChen's brow slowly unfurrowed.

"Aunt Lan, find an excuse to delay the person delivering the message from Sixth Brother," Zhou HaoChen instructed.

Qin QiuLan, upon hearing Zhou HaoChen's instructions, looked blank, her eyes filled with confusion.

What did His Highness mean? Was he going to the banquet or not?

"Your Highness, the Sixth Prince's invitation..."

"I still need to focus on cultivation, so I won't be attending the banquet."

"But don't immediately give Sixth Brother this reply."

"In short, it's just one word."

"Delay!"

Qin QiuLan nodded, seemingly understanding.

Although she didn't quite understand, she would do as His Highness instructed.

After having Qin QiuLan delay the messenger, Zhou HaoChen immediately sent a servant to the Town Demon Division to deliver a message.

The Town Demon Division was a good blade to use against the Blood Fiend Sect's bandits.

Since the Blood Fiend Sect dared to interfere in the struggle between him and the Divine Firmament Sect, they had to be prepared to pay the price.

Daring to ambush him on the road and set up formations, they were truly courting death.

Did they think that Jade Capital City was a place they could come and go as they pleased?

Zhou HaoChen guessed that the Blood Fiend Sect was so bold because the Divine Firmament Sect was secretly helping them cover things up.

The servant took his letter of accusation and headed to the Town Demon Division.

The Blood Fiend Sect problem was now handed over to the Town Demon Division.

However, the mastermind behind the scenes, the Divine Firmament Sect, was not so easy to deal with.

The Divine Firmament Sect was a Daoist holy land, a reputable and well-known orthodox sect.

It was impossible to deal with them like the Blood Fiend Sect, by simply informing the Town Demon Division, who would then rush up and tear them apart like mad dogs.

The Divine Firmament Sect was not a rebel force; in dealing with him, a prince, they were cautious and needed to borrow the blade of the Blood Fiend Sect.

Similarly, Zhou HaoChen was also constrained in dealing with the Divine Firmament Sect; at least, he couldn't mobilize official forces openly.

However… after thinking it over, Zhou HaoChen came up with a handle.

Xuanyuan Blood!

Letting the Divine Firmament Sect and Xuanyuan Blood fight each other was Zhou HaoChen's plan.

"Brother Glutton, I'll have to trouble you this time."

…

"Hasn't that dog prince arrived yet?"

"Master, news from the Divine Firmament Sect says that the dog prince hasn't left the royal residence yet."

"Bah! What's going on?"

"It's been almost a quarter of an hour since the invitation was sent in. What is that dog prince doing? Dragging his feet!"

"Maybe he's playing with women. I heard that the dog prince's maids are rare beauties. If I could spend a night with them…"

"Humph—once we kill that dog prince tonight, let alone a night, I'll let you play with them until you're bored."

Blood Sea Old Ancestor snorted lightly, his tone cheerful, with a hint of joy.

Although he didn't know what deep hatred existed between the Thirteenth Prince and the Divine Firmament Sect that could make the Divine Firmament Sect, who claimed to be the leader of the Daoist sect, collude with their Blood Fiend Sect.

But this operation was a godsend opportunity for the Blood Fiend Sect, with no harm and only benefits.

Regardless of whether the ambush tonight succeeded or not, the Divine Firmament Sect's attempt to assassinate the Thirteenth Prince was now in their hands.

Blood Sea Old Ancestor was already planning how to use this handle to manipulate the Divine Firmament Sect.

Instantly, Blood Sea Old Ancestor's expression changed drastically. He scanned with his divine sense and cursed inwardly.

Town Demon Division!

Were the Town Demon Division all dog noses?

They had just entered Jade Capital City, and they were already being chased after?

Even now, Blood Sea Old Ancestor didn't understand how the Town Demon Division had discovered their tracks last time at West Ox Mountain in Wanping County.

And now, they were here again?

Damn it!

"Retreat!"

Blood Sea Old Ancestor disregarded the Divine Firmament Sect's plan and directly led the Blood Fiend Sect's followers to retreat quickly.

"Chase them!"

"Don't let any of the Blood Fiend Sect's remnants escape!"

A great battle erupted unexpectedly.

Blood Sea Old Ancestor fought and retreated, unwilling to engage, and quickly withdrew from Jade Capital City.

Yu Shenxing, however, pursued relentlessly, with the intent to kill Blood Sea Old Ancestor here.

Not long after the Town Demon Division and the Blood Fiend Sect broke out in a great battle, the Divine Firmament Sect learned of the news.

"The Blood Fiend Sect is fighting with the Town Demon Division?"

"Waste!"

"More than capable of spoiling things, but deficient in accomplishing them!"

"Have the Blood Fiend Sect's brains been damaged by cultivation? They were told to ambush the Thirteenth Prince, not to fight the Town Demon Division."

Elder Lin's face twisted with gloom upon hearing this news, and his mouth was filled with incessant curses.

"Enough!"

Elder Wang, annoyed by Elder Lin's incessant nagging, shouted sharply.

"Since the Blood Fiend Sect has been discovered by the Town Demon Division, the plan to ambush the Thirteenth Prince is temporarily canceled."

"Is Qingyang's revenge not going to be avenged? Is the Yingyuan Prefecture Jade Tablet not going to be retrieved?"

"Of course not!" Elder Wang shook his head. "It's just that without the Blood Fiend Sect, how can we deal with the Thirteenth Prince without involving our Divine Firmament Sect? This matter needs to be considered carefully."

Elder Lin's lips moved a few times. He walked to the window, looked at the dark night, clenched his fists unwillingly, and finally sighed faintly.

…

The next day.

All was calm.

Apart from the collapsed walls along the street, it was impossible to tell that the Town Demon Division and the Blood Fiend Sect had fought a great battle last night.

After temporarily resolving the crisis, Zhou HaoChen went to the Ministry of Works to find Mo Sihai.

The Thunder Roc corpse obtained in the Jade Balance Pagoda.

How to utilize it? Zhou HaoChen thought about it all night.

The Corpse Control Technique was also a good choice, but it was ultimately a demonic method and not exactly upright.

But the best way was to refine it into a mechanical puppet beast.

In refining mechanical puppet beasts, who was more skilled than the Mo family?

If there was anyone, it would be the Old Mo faction.

However, the imperial court was not very fond of the Old Mo faction, and Zhou HaoChen didn't have any acquaintances, so he could only go to Mo Sihai and Mu YuanYe.

"Your Highness is a rare guest."

"What wind has blown Your Highness here?"

Mo Sihai said with a smile, looking enthusiastic.

Zhou HaoChen didn't beat around the bush and said straight to the point, "This visit is to ask Mo Juzi to help refine a mechanical puppet beast."

As soon as he finished speaking, Mo Sihai's eyes lit up.

A big order had arrived!

Their Mo family's mechanical puppet beasts were powerful, high in quality, and durable, completely outperforming the Farmer family's.

But because the price was too high, far less than the Farmer family's spiritual seeds, they watched as the Farmer family ate meat, while the Mo family couldn't even drink soup.

But the price was high?

Wasn't this insulting the prince?

"Your Highness, our Mo family has one hundred and twenty-seven types of mechanical puppet beasts, from small to large, flying in the sky, walking on the ground, swimming in the water, everything."

"I don't know what type of mechanical puppet beast Your Highness wants."

Zhou HaoChen took a sip of fragrant tea and said lightly.

"Mo Juzi, I want to customize it."

"And the raw materials are already prepared."

"Oh? I wonder what Your Highness has prepared?" Mo Sihai's eyes lit up.

He wondered what good stuff the Thirteenth Prince could come up with?

Zhou HaoChen flicked his finger and handed the storage ring to Mo Sihai.

Mo Sihai scanned with his divine sense, and when he saw the things in the storage ring, his face instantly showed a horrified expression.

"This is…"

"Thunder Roc corpse!"

"So complete… hiss—"

"Your Highness, what good fortune you have!"

Mo Sihai looked at the Thunder Roc corpse, his eyes burning, as if he had seen his dream lover.

For them in the Mo family, collecting all kinds of strange materials and corpses was their greatest hobby.

The Thunder Roc, an ancient divine beast that had been extinct for tens of thousands of years.

It actually appeared before him.

And it was a complete one.

Mo Sihai's hands were itching, eager to move, wishing he could immediately take the Thunder Roc corpse and refine it into a mechanical puppet beast.

"Mo Juzi, do you think the Thunder Roc corpse is acceptable?"

"Acceptable? Of course, it's acceptable!" Mo Sihai's eyes rolled, as if he had come up with some bad idea. "It's just that the Thunder Roc corpse is difficult to refine."

"The cost of refining it, I'm afraid Your Highness can't afford it."

"How much? I'll have Aunt Lan give you the silver notes, Mo Juzi."

"One million taels!"

"Cough cough—"

One million taels?

Zhou HaoChen coughed twice, almost spitting out the tea in his mouth!

Was this robbery?

Refining a mechanical puppet beast required one million taels.

Zhou HaoChen suspected that Mo Sihai was treating him like a sucker.

Seeing Zhou HaoChen's displeased expression, Mo Sihai patiently explained.

“Your Highness, if it were other mechanical puppet beasts with mature craftsmanship, the price naturally wouldn't be this high.”

“It's just that Thunderbirds are scarce. In the history of the Mo family, there has never been a precedent for refining Thunderbirds into mechanical puppet beasts, so the price is naturally high.”

Zhou Haochen's expression changed a few times, and he snorted lightly.

Although he felt it was nonsense, he was, after all, a soul nurtured by industrialization, so he naturally knew the difference between industrial products and works of art.

Mature mechanical puppet beasts have mature craftsmanship, and the research and development costs are spread out over the quantity, so the price naturally comes down.

But the Thunderbird corpse in his hand seemed good, but it couldn't be mass-produced, and the research and development costs could only be borne by him alone.

It's just... although he understood... Zhou Haochen always had a feeling of being a sucker.

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“Cough cough!” Mo Sihai cleared his throat and said lightly, “Refining a Thunderbird into a mechanical puppet beast is extremely difficult. This one million taels is still a conservative estimate.”

“However, Your Highness, you have shown great kindness to our Mo family by helping to solve the Divine Martial Cannon upgrade project. I, Mo Sihai, am not an ungrateful person.”

“The refining fee is waived!”

Waived?

Zhou Haochen's expression became strange.

Was Mo Sihai really that generous?

Were there no other conditions?

Immediately afterwards, he heard Mo Sihai say: “My little apprentice, Yuan Ye, has recently encountered some trouble in her cultivation. I want to refine a mechanical puppet beast for Your Highness, so please help and give her some guidance.”

Hearing this, Zhou Haochen suddenly understood.

So that's how it is!

Good you, Mo Sihai!

You have thick eyebrows and big eyes, but your scheming is so deep.

Using a beauty trap on me?

Am I that kind of person?

I don't fall for beauty traps.

“Mo Master, I won't disturb you in designing the mechanical puppet beast. I'll go take a walk with Yuan Ye.”

Watching Zhou Haochen's departing figure, Mo Sihai revealed a maternal smile on his face.

“Yuan Ye, your master can only help you this far.”

“You must seize the opportunity!”

…

“Greetings, Your Highness!”

The girl wearing a green lotus leaf dress, upon seeing Zhou Haochen, had her eyebrows and eyes curved, looking pure and lovely, giving people an impulse to bully her.

“Yuan Ye, I heard that you've encountered a bottleneck in your cultivation.” Zhou Haochen asked with a smile.

“No!”

“The Mo family's cultivation method is very simple. I can understand it with just one glance.”

Hearing Mu Yuan Ye's words, Zhou Haochen almost couldn't hold back his laughter and wanted to laugh out loud.

Mo Sihai schemed and plotted, but he didn't expect that Mu Yuan Ye would sell him out with a single sentence.

“However…”

“I have some questions about thunder techniques that I want to ask Your Highness.”

“What questions?”

Zhou Haochen sat down, listening to Mu Yuan Ye's words.

“Last time at the Prince's mansion, I heard Your Highness talk about the reversal of yin and yang, and the universal transformation into a sound of thunder.”

“Within the changes of yin and yang, thunder is conceived.”

“Yuan Ye has been studying the changes of yin and yang during this time, wanting to integrate the changes of yin and yang, the birth and death of thunder, and the calculations of heavenly secrets into one.”

Hearing Mu Yuan Ye's thoughts, Zhou Haochen seemed to have thought of something, and his expression became strange.

“Yuan Ye, how did you think of connecting these three together?”

Mu Yuan Ye didn't seem to notice the change in Zhou Haochen's expression, and she was completely immersed in her own research.

Her pretty face was serious, looking very much like a scientific researcher.

“Your Highness, do you know the biggest problem with our Mo family's mechanical puppet beasts?”

“Expensive!”

Zhou Haochen blurted out.

“Being expensive is indeed a problem.”

“But besides being expensive, the biggest problem is actually the operation.”

“Mechanical puppet beasts are controlled by puppet silk threads. The more powerful the mechanical puppet beast, the more troublesome it is to operate.”

“The Mo family has actually been researching a device that can make the mechanical puppet beast move on its own, so that it can fight even without operation.”

“This device is called Mo Heart within our Mo family.”

“According to the idea of the first Master, after installing the Mo Heart on the mechanical puppet beast, it is equivalent to giving the mechanical puppet beast a soul.”

“The operator only needs a simple command, and the mechanical puppet beast can automatically complete the task of the command.”

“It's like the magical treasures of the Daoist family that give birth to artifact spirits. They don't need the cultivator to command them and can fight on their own.”

“Generations of Mo family members have been researching Mo Heart, but unfortunately, until now, they have not realized the vision of the first Mozi, and have even entered a dead end.”

Mu Yuan Ye spoke of the Mo family's past, with a somewhat lost expression.

Obviously, for the Mo family, this was not a glorious experience.

Zhou Haochen didn't interrupt Mu Yuan Ye's words, but just quietly drank tea, acting as a quiet listener.

“This is also why, after the Supreme Ancestor proposed the concept of mechanical ascension, the Master at the time quickly agreed with the Supreme Ancestor's idea.”

“Because the idea proposed by the Supreme Ancestor is much simpler than the concept of Mo Heart.”

“The construction of the body is much simpler than the construction of the soul.”

“The path of mechanical ascension can just circumvent the research of Mo Heart.”

Hearing this, Zhou Haochen asked.

“Why not directly extract the souls of demon beasts and integrate them into the mechanical puppet beasts?”

“This path has long been walked by Mo family cultivators.”

“The souls of demon beasts can indeed solve some problems.”

“However, the souls are not original and cannot exert the full strength of the mechanical puppet beast.”

“For example, if I install a Thunder God Cannon on the mechanical puppet beast, but the demon beast's body does not have the function of the Thunder God Cannon, then naturally there is no instinct to control the Thunder God Cannon in the soul.”

“In this way, the Thunder God Cannon cannot be used.”

“Using the souls of demon beasts will instead limit the design of the mechanical puppet beast.”

A trace of helplessness appeared on Mu Yuan Ye's pink and tender face.

Immediately afterwards, she changed the subject.

“However, Your Highness, your lecture last time touched Yuan Ye deeply.”

“Yuan Ye is thinking that the Confucian school uses the Book of Changes to deduce heavenly secrets. The eight trigrams in the Book of Changes are divided into yang and yin lines, which are quite similar to the yin and yang thunder techniques.”

“Therefore, Yuan Ye wants to use thunder techniques to deduce heavenly secrets and command mechanical puppet beasts.”

After listening to Mu Yuan Ye's train of thought, Zhou Haochen almost couldn't help but want to give Mu Yuan Ye a thumbs up.

Because Mu Yuan Ye's train of thought was very awesome.

She almost came up with the concept of a "computer".

The eight trigrams are composed of yang and yin lines, which are basically a binary system, and the principle is the same as the binary system used in computer programming.

Using thunder techniques to drive it is almost the prototype of a fantasy version of a computer.

What Mu Yuan Ye lacked was probably the Von Neumann architecture and the concept of programming.

Zhou Haochen cleared his throat and said meaningfully.

“Yuan Ye, your idea coincides with mine!”

“Really?”

A bright light flashed in Mu Yuan Ye's eyes, as if she had met a confidant.

“Regarding Mo Heart, I also have some ideas that I want to discuss with Yuan Ye.”

Zhou Haochen spoke eloquently, telling Mu Yuan Ye about the concept of computers on Blue Star.

Mu Yuan Ye listened with rapt attention, looking at Zhou Haochen with little stars in her eyes, full of admiration.

The vague and incomplete concepts in her mind, after Zhou Haochen's guidance, suddenly became clear, as if an invisible hand had cleared away the mist.

Zhou Haochen lectured Mu Yuan Ye on the principles of computers for a whole afternoon, and only ended today's lecture when there was movement in the Thousand Mile Communication Device.

“Cough cough! Yuan Ye, that's all for today, I have something to do, so I'll leave first.”

“Thank you, Your Highness, for your lecture today. Yuan Ye has benefited a lot.”

Facing the setting sun, Zhou Haochen left the Ministry of Industry.

Seeing that Zhou Haochen didn't stay overnight, Mo Sihai showed a heartbroken expression.

“Yuan Ye, I gave you the opportunity, but you are useless!”

…

【Glutton: Found the whereabouts of the Spiritual Profound Ginseng, gather at Xiniu Mountain immediately.】

【Jia Chen: Received.】

【Yi Si: Guarantee to complete the task.】

Zhou Haochen told He Lianhai about this matter, asking He Lianhai to lie in ambush near Xiniu Mountain, ready to take action at any time.

With He Lianhai, an Eleventh Realm powerhouse, as a backup, Zhou Haochen also had a bit more confidence.

After hearing Zhou Haochen's plan, He Lianhai seemed to have guessed something, and his eyes suddenly lit up.

“Your Highness, are you going to attack the Divine Firmament Sect!”

“Hahahaha—Old He, great minds think alike!”