August 16th, 2023. Dawn. Shuangqing City.
Li Daoxuan woke up to the sound of uproar inside the box — the kind of lively bustle that told him nobody was letting him sleep in today.
Shansier was pacing in anxious circles. The Third Madam was tightening her cloak like she was preparing for a royal procession. The two sculptors were trembling for reasons known only to them. Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu were checking their overly large backpacks. A handful of young villagers stood by the gate, ready for departure.
In the old days, going to the county seat was simple. Pack a bit of dry food, walk a few dozen li, and the trip was done before the sun finished stretching.
But now? Now the journey was a gamble with life.
Beyond the tall walls of Gao Village stretched the wasteland — a lawless expanse where the strong ate the weak, sometimes literally. After the collapse of order, even the magistrate's men no longer pretended to keep the peace.
Shansier, who always claimed to possess the "wisdom of survival," had been the first to bolt the moment he heard that tax collectors robbed Wang Village of their grain. Courage? Not his specialty. But the Third Madam had set her heart on visiting the county seat, and when the Third Madam made a decision, even thunder bowed out politely.
So Shansier was being dragged along like a reluctant duck.
"Relax," he muttered to himself, circling like a doomed scholar before an exam. "The Heavenly Master already defeated the Radiant King. The biggest bandit faction should be scattered. Probably."
Gao Chuwu puffed out his chest. "Don't worry! I'll protect you! Look, I even put on double lamellar armor. I look impressive, right? Just… hot."
Shansier nearly leapt three feet.
"Take it off! Idiot! Armor is fine when fighting bandits. But if you walk into the county wearing that, someone will separate your head from your shoulders before you can say 'protection.'"
"Eh? Why?"
Shansier launched into a lecture so terrifying that Gao Chuwu tore the armor off at record speed and returned it to the blacksmith shop like a thief returning stolen goods.
After a round of chaos, Gao Chuwu, Zheng Daniu, the sculptors, and ten other young men each armed themselves with a single knife, shouldered their bundles, and stepped beyond the village gate.
Fear clung to them like morning mist. Not long ago, they had survived a bandit assault. No one was eager to test their luck again.
But this mission was ordered by the Heavenly Master himself — to help the world, to save the suffering. That thought stiffened their spines.
"Faster, faster!" Shansier urged. Not that he needed to. The entire group practically ran.
Li Daoxuan watched them depart. With a tap on the box's "West" and "South" buttons, he made the view follow their journey — only for the sight to freeze a few hundred meters out.
They were gone, beyond the box's vision.
For the first time, Li Daoxuan understood the ancient lament:
When the child walks a thousand li, the mother worries ten thousand.
He turned his attention back to the village. With Shansier gone, discipline collapsed like a poorly built barn.
Blacksmiths hammered slower. Women weaving cotton abandoned their looms to gossip. Everyone behaved as if the village elder's spirit had drifted away with the morning breeze.
Gao Yiye sneaked out of her home, crept to the straw hut storing cotton, stole a huge armful, hid it under her clothes like a squirrel smuggling treasure, and sprinted home to secretly weave cloth with doors and windows firmly shut.
If she hadn't left a hole in her ceiling unfixed, even Li Daoxuan's magical camera wouldn't have been able to spy on her.
He chuckled.
Should he intervene?
…Nah.
They'd been working nonstop — building temples, fending off bandits, laboring under panic. A little laziness was practically a holiday. Let them breathe.
He shifted his attention to the real world. His surveillance camera had been recording continuously for days. Time to clean up the storage.
He plopped down before his computer, opened the camera software, selected all recordings, saved them to the hard drive…
Then clicked one at random to watch.
Clicked another.
And another.
Each one amused him.
Until—
"Wait. No. Absolutely not."
The night-vision footage showed Gao Yiye by the pond, loosening her clothes, clearly preparing to bathe.
His instinct and his moral integrity immediately brandished their weapons and engaged in a vicious internal duel. After a heroic battle lasting several imaginary seconds, morality staggered out victorious, dragging instinct's corpse offscreen.
Delete. Gone. Never happened.
Next recording: villagers enthusiastically building the Daoist temple.
That, at least, he could enjoy guilt-free.
Why not share the fun? He cut a 30-second clip, added a caption:
"Late Ming era. Hardworking common folk building a humble temple…"
His literary flair died halfway through, so he uploaded it to his Douyin account as-is.
Then he made instant noodles.
By the time he returned with a steaming bowl, his phone was exploding.
The video had gone viral.
Comments poured in:
"These actors are incredible. They really look like struggling peasants."
"The costumes! The props! Not like those cheap drama productions."
"This has a tiny-world vibe."
"That's tilt-shift photography, genius."
"Using tilt-shift isn't hard. What's hard is hiring all these extras and getting them to act in ragged clothes. That's expensive."
"No joke — the cost for a clip like this must be at least twenty thousand."
"For this level of effort, I'm giving a like, a save, and a share."
"You fools, don't you get it? The creator spent so much because he wants to sell you something later. Soon he'll do a live stream, shout about a huge discount, and sell you some useless junk for nine ninety-nine. He's baiting you."
Li Daoxuan paused.
Then grinned.
He hadn't planned on it…
But now that they mentioned it—
Why not take their money?
Dark ways, bright future.
The path of entrepreneurship had opened.