Daybreak arrived quietly.
Li Daoxuan sat in front of his computer, his eyes bloodshot as he stared blankly at the pale morning light creeping through the window.
Without realizing it, he had spent the entire night buried in historical records.
Page after page, account after account, he had reviewed that humiliating and chaotic period of the late Ming Dynasty. By now, he had gained a general grasp of the timeline, though many finer details remained unclear.
Historical records were rarely straightforward. Like the Spring and Autumn Annals, they often concealed more than they revealed. The wording was careful, selective, sometimes even contradictory. It was difficult to know which parts reflected truth and which parts had been softened or distorted.
He moved the mouse and opened a document on his desktop.
Inside were the questions he had compiled over the course of the night.
Three questions.
These were the problems he needed to solve.
Question One.
Objects placed inside the box increased in size by two hundred times.
Their volume expanded proportionally, but their mass appeared to increase even more dramatically.
As a humanities student, Li Daoxuan had no intention of calculating the exact physical ratios. But the practical result was clear enough. A fifty-gram egg would become something weighing tens of thousands of pounds.
This meant feeding a single villager cost him almost nothing.
Even feeding all forty-two villagers of Gao Family Village would barely affect his finances. He could easily provide them with abundant food and a comfortable life.
But if the number grew to tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands...
He would go bankrupt.
His financial reality imposed a hard limit.
So the true question was this.
What was his goal?
Was he simply trying to save these forty-two villagers?
Or did he want to save more people?
Could he save countless suffering commoners of the late Ming?
Could he save the entire nation?
If it was the latter, his current approach was unsustainable.
He would need a different strategy.
Question Two.
The late Ming Dynasty was a time of endless chaos.
War. Famine. Bandits. Rebels. Invaders.
The villagers' lives were constantly at risk.
Meanwhile, Li Daoxuan himself still had his own life to live. He needed to eat, sleep, shower, and go outside. He could not remain in front of the box twenty-four hours a day.
At any moment, disaster could strike.
He might step out briefly, only to return and find the entire village destroyed. Imperial troops, Manchu forces, rebel armies under Li Zicheng or Zhang Xianzhong. Any of them could wipe out Gao Family Village without warning.
The possibility was frighteningly real.
He needed to strengthen the villagers' ability to survive on their own.
Question Three.
The box itself was only 2.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide.
This translated to a visible area of roughly five hundred meters by three hundred meters inside the miniature world.
That was barely enough to cover Gao Family Village and its surrounding farmland.
Anything beyond that lay outside his reach.
Was there a way to expand his field of influence?
He did not know.
This question bordered on the metaphysical.
For now, there was nothing he could do about it.
He leaned back in his chair.
Of the three questions, the first two were within his power to address.
The third would have to wait.
His gaze returned to the first question.
He was not a heartless person.
If possible, he wanted to save more than just these forty-two villagers.
But simply dropping food into the box was not a real solution.
It was not sustainable.
And more importantly, it would create dependence.
People who relied entirely on divine charity would never learn to stand on their own.
If he truly wanted to help them survive, they needed water.
Water was the foundation of life.
Without water, nothing could grow.
But how could he provide it?
He could not simply turn on a faucet and pour water directly into the box. A stream magnified two hundred times would become a devastating flood.
His eyes fell upon a Lock&Lock container nearby.
An idea formed.
He picked it up and moved it over the box, positioning it above an empty area beside the village. He measured the space carefully with his eyes.
It would fit perfectly.
Then, without hesitation, he reached inside and pressed his fingers into the earth.
The ground gave way instantly.
A massive pit began to form.
Morning had arrived inside the miniature world.
The villagers woke early, as they always did.
Even in times of hardship, diligence remained their habit.
But the land was suffering from severe drought. The fields were barren. No crops could grow.
Normally, they would venture into the wilderness to gather wild vegetables.
But now, with divine rice and enormous cabbage leaves still remaining in their homes, there was no immediate urgency.
Instead, they turned to other tasks.
Weaving baskets.
Sharpening tools.
Mending clothes.
Gao Yiye brought her needle and thread outside. She carried a small stool and sat beneath the morning sun, preparing to repair her worn garments.
Then she heard something.
A faint rustling sound nearby.
She turned her head.
It was San Shier.
"Oh? You're still here?"
The previous night, following Tianzun's instructions, she had fed him and told him to return to the county town.
But San Shier had not left.
The sight of rice grains as large as millstones had shaken him deeply. His mind was filled with questions he could not answer.
So he had stayed.
He had spent the night sleeping beneath the eaves.
He slowly sat up, still groggy.
"Is it morning already?"
Gao Yiye frowned slightly.
"Didn't I tell you to return to the county town?"
San Shier blinked, confused.
"Why didn't I leave? How strange..."
Before he could finish speaking, Gao Yiye's expression suddenly changed.
She saw it.
A colossal hand descending from the sky.
It reached toward the empty land beside the village and pressed down.
The earth trembled violently.
In an instant, a massive pit appeared.
San Shier could not see the hand itself.
But he saw the result.
The ground split open. Soil, sand, and stones rose into the air as if lifted by an invisible force.
His mind froze.
"Did I wake up too quickly?" he muttered weakly.
Even his usual four-character expressions failed him.
The villagers noticed the disturbance and began rushing toward the scene.
"Stop!"
Gao Yiye leapt to her feet.
"Do not approach. Do not interfere with Tianzun's divine work."
The villagers halted immediately.
No one dared disobey.
They watched from a distance as the invisible force continued shaping the land. The pit grew larger and larger, until it became a vast square cavity.
Then, something even more astonishing appeared.
A massive transparent object descended slowly from the sky.
A crystal box.
It lowered gently into the pit, fitting perfectly.
The villagers stared in stunned silence.
They could not comprehend what they were witnessing.
Above them, Li Daoxuan smiled faintly.
"The reservoir is complete."
He picked up a cup of water and carefully poured it into the container.
Inside the miniature world, the effect was overwhelming.
Water suddenly appeared in the sky.
A vast torrent cascaded downward like a celestial waterfall, roaring as it fell into the crystal reservoir below.
Before long, it was filled.
No one spoke.
No one moved.
They simply stared.
At last, San Shier whispered hoarsely,
"It is as though the Milky Way itself has fallen from the Ninth Heaven."
Gao Yiye glanced at him.
"That was more than four characters."
San Shier clutched his head.
"No four characters could possibly describe such majesty."