The fact that Ding Yun bought hundreds of young men and women from various places and they disappeared without a trace was not noticed by anyone. In this era, with numerous deaths from natural disasters and many unregistered households, it was hardly a cause for concern.
The yamen could not even accurately count the registered households of ordinary residents, let alone those of slave status. A few more or a few less made no difference. No one cared. Therefore, Ding Yun's purchase of hundreds of people caused not even a ripple.
After acquiring the children, Ding Yun continued to purchase adults. The children were to be her students, but she also needed to develop her own influence while teaching them. Thus, buying adult men and women to work for her was undeniably necessary.
Once the people were purchased, she bought various essential supplies. With the supplies also procured, Ding Yun, along with her new acquisitions, used the Arbitrary Door to travel to a hidden valley she had already scouted. There, she began construction and established her base.
Simultaneously, Ding Yun treated the purchased children and adults differently. The children were to be nurtured, their health improved, and they would begin preliminary basic education. The adults, however, were illiterate, lacked knowledge, and possessed no skills. They could only build rudimentary straw huts. Ding Yun had no time to teach them slowly, so she installed a basic skill chip in each of them. This enabled them to acquire various skills recorded in the chips, such as construction, handicrafts, sugar making, or salt production, excluding high-tech skills.
Although this meant they lacked innovative ability and struggled with flexible adaptation, they were obedient and capable of carrying out tasks. Ding Yun needed people to work for her. If she hadn't been worried about robots affecting the level of targeting she faced from the world, she wouldn't have gone through such trouble. She had plenty of robots in her soul space, even instruments that produced robots. But now, she had no choice. It was best to be cautious.
After being implanted with the chips, the people Ding Yun had bought, in their bewildered state, inexplicably knew how to build houses and perform tasks she assigned. However, they were not proficient. Overall, they still required gradual practice and adjustment. But this, combined with Ding Yun's earlier demonstration of the Arbitrary Door, was enough to make them believe she was no ordinary mortal, treating her like an immortal, never daring to harbor any dissent, and diligently obeying her commands.
The intelligent have their advantages, and the simple have their benefits. Ding Yun did not need intelligent people for now. If she wanted intelligent individuals, she could educate them herself; she did not need those already educated. This was why she had specifically bought people who had absolutely no formal education and brought them back to cultivate them over time, starting with their thoughts and knowledge.
As the valley was completely transformed, Ding Yun swiftly commenced her next grand plan: simultaneously teaching disciples and developing her influence. Teaching disciples was straightforward. However, developing her influence proved challenging, presenting Ding Yun with numerous setbacks and lessons before she finally found her path.
Initially, Ding Yun intended to dispatch some of her subordinates, who had been implanted with relevant knowledge chips, to pursue official careers, while others would build prosperous businesses. She aimed to grasp both wealth and power. But the reality proved otherwise. Knowledge and secret recipes alone were not enough.
No matter how much knowledge Ding Yun copied into her subordinates' chips, comparable to that of great scholars, if they lacked a good background, no one paid attention. They had no avenues for recommending themselves through filial piety and integrity or submitting essays. Their submissions were discarded and used as kindling. People simply did not engage with those from humble backgrounds.
Ultimately, it required finding connections and bribing eunuchs. After spending several thousand taels of gold, one of them finally became an official. Even then, it was useless. Upon arriving at their posts, local clerks quickly sidelined them. The reason was their complete lack of family background. Officials from aristocratic families would find local clerks only daring to make minor, underhanded moves, or even actively catering to them. Humble scholars who managed to join forces with aristocratic officials were not taken seriously by local clerks. They wouldn't openly resist, but achieving anything would be extremely difficult. Disrupting their interests was almost impossible, unless one brought their own troops.
Those who became officials by bribing eunuchs were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, susceptible to being trampled upon by anyone. The eunuchs, after receiving their payment, would arrange for an official position and then wash their hands of it, offering no after-sales support. If the appointee was capable and competent, they could hold their position. If they were incompetent and unstable, the eunuchs could receive another payment and arrange for a new person to take their place. It was a foolproof business.
Ding Yun found it impossible to teach her subordinates about human relations and how to deal with local clerks solely through knowledge infusion. Consequently, the path of having her subordinates enter officialdom was extremely difficult, with perhaps two out of ten managing to stabilize their positions and coexist peacefully with local clerks. Any expectation of them achieving anything significant was basically out of the question.
Those who attempted business with exclusive secret recipes fared even worse. Either their recipes were stolen and they were pursued, or they were forced to sign indentured servitude contracts and become household slaves. Yes, those aristocratic families were that arrogant.
In the end, Ding Yun had to intervene due to desperation and rescue them. She temporarily abandoned the idea of engaging in business and instead assigned them to mine in nearby, undiscovered, and unpopulated gold and silver mines. After all, the primary purpose of business was wealth, and mining also yielded wealth with less risk.
Regarding the specific countermeasures for the failed attempts at entering officialdom, since the path of becoming a direct official was too arduous, Ding Yun could only arrange for her subordinates to join the army or become clerks and jailers. She didn't expect them to achieve great success, but having personnel in various capacities would be convenient for collecting information or, if necessary, raising an army in the future, preventing them from being completely in the dark. Who could say that a foot soldier was useless?
This was the progress in developing her influence. In terms of education, after teaching her disciples for some time, Ding Yun found that the learning progress of some disciples was unsatisfactory. She felt that teaching only a few hundred people would likely be insufficient for the future. The number of people with leadership and governing talents was too scarce. She had to expand the number of disciples to find exceptional ones. Therefore, she quickly arranged for people to continue adopting orphans discreetly, without affecting the overall situation or attracting attention.
These children would be gathered and settled in other hidden areas by Ding Yun. Subordinates equipped with teacher chips would instruct them. After completing their basic education, they would be appropriately streamed. Those skilled in something, passionate about something, would be guided in that direction. The disciples personally taught by Ding Yun were also handled this way. Only by having all types of talent in place beforehand could the world be reshaped and destiny rewritten.
If only a small number of leaders learned new ideas, even if they succeeded in an uprising and overthrew the court, comprehensive reforms would be extremely difficult afterward, and they might even be forced to compromise. The warrior who slays the dragon can become the new dragon. Therefore, Ding Yun had to teach according to aptitude, educating as many disciples as possible. She did not seek to cultivate all-around disciples, but rather to have disciples who, when brought together, would be all-around. And that would be enough!