Chapter 280 National Policy on Universal Childbearing and Cultivation Welfare Subsidies
Kyoto Union, Central News Tower.
At 6:00 AM, the main channel covering the entire territory was forcibly cut off.
The previously scrolling battle reports, ruin coordinates, and conscription notices were simultaneously turned off, replaced by a minimalist, almost cold black screen with gold lettering.
[The Alliance's Seventh Wartime Decree: Project Fireseed is officially launched.]
The city fell silent for a moment when those words appeared.
Immediately afterwards, the second line of text appeared.
Effective immediately, the national policy of universal childbirth and the "cultivation welfare allowance" will be fully implemented.
The news was like a boulder thrown into the water.
Not only the Kyoto Alliance, but also major fortified cities, border towns, black market camps, transportation hubs, civilian channels, and even projection screens in schools, hospitals, and factory canteens are all simultaneously broadcasting this decree.
People didn't even realize it at first.
With the war at this point, everyone thought that what followed would only be more stringent conscription, more frantic city building, and more intense excavation of historical sites.
No one expected that the first thing the league would do was to pass a birth control law.
The content on the screen scrolled down one by one.
All legally registered newborns will be included in the Alliance's cultivation welfare system from the date of birth.
[Prenatal checkups, childbirth, early childhood physical screening, basic spirituality testing, and introductory breathing exercises are all free.]
Families with newborns can receive monthly supplies of spiritual rice, body-tempering fluid, basic pollution-preventing medicine packs, and a spiritual cultivation allowance.
[The orphans of those killed in action, families of frontline personnel, and families of those who constructed fortifications will receive an additional level of protection.]
The previous distinction between yellow and green zones in terms of household registration has been completely eliminated in newborn welfare and basic living allowances.
When the last message was typed out, many people's eyelids twitched.
At that moment, what truly made people's hearts tighten was not "childbirth," but "cancellation."
Even just canceling newborn benefits first is enough to say a lot.
This is not an ordinary policy.
This was the first time the old order had been openly breached under wartime pressure.
......
Yellow District, Xueshi Town.
The same decree was also being displayed on a large screen in the black market square.
The entire square was even quieter than it had been a few days earlier when the wartime allocation order was issued.
Someone swore, but their voice was weak: "What time is it? Still having babies?"
Someone nearby immediately chimed in, "If we don't have children, and it really falls apart in ten years, who will keep it going?"
Beside the crowd, Old Ding squatted under the steel shed, holding a cold psionic lunchbox in his hand, his eyes fixed on the screen.
The young hunter next to him scratched his head, his face full of bewilderment.
"Brother Ding, are these people at the top going crazy? The whole world is preparing for war, why are they suddenly encouraging people to have babies?"
Old Ding took a bite of rice, chewed it a couple of times, and then slowly opened his mouth.
"Because they finally understood one thing."
"If that wave really comes down ten years from now, it might not be a question of whether we can hold on or not."
"It's also possible that half will survive, while the other half will die."
"These guys who can still wield knives are the wall. But there can't be no one behind the wall. If we're really going to die to the last generation, there have to be some left who can carry on the torch."
The young hunter paused for a moment.
Old Ding looked up at the line on the screen that read, "The differences between the original yellow and green zones in household registration will be completely eliminated in newborn welfare and basic spiritual care guarantees," and his lips twitched slightly.
"Besides, with the resurgence of spiritual energy over the years, the children are all different now."
"In the past, people were born with mortal bodies, and their future depended on their fate. Now it's different; more and more people are born with spiritual beings in their wombs. In ten years, this batch of people born today may very well come in handy."
This isn't just Lao Ding's wild guess.
Beneath Kyoto, the Supreme Academy of Sciences has produced a complete set of data.
In the decade following the war, the global population did not recover as steadily as in the old era. Instead, due to long-term war damage, overwork of low-level cultivators, the side effects of pseudo-spiritual roots, and high-pressure environments, a significant gap emerged.
However, at the same time, the continuous rise in spiritual energy concentration has also led to significant changes in the physical data and spiritual fluctuations of the new generation.
The average bone density of infants and young children increases.
They have a stronger innate physique.
The threshold for spiritual response decreases.
Most importantly, the "natural spiritual response" that used to appear frequently only among the descendants of powerful families and high-ranking cultivators is now beginning to appear frequently in newborns of ordinary families.
This means one thing.
The next generation will no longer just be children who need to be protected.
It may also be the true spark that ignites the flame in the great calamity ten years later.
Therefore, this national policy is not based on sentimentality.
It's arithmetic.
It was also war.
……
Kyoto Alliance, the first fortress city.
People lined up outside the Home Affairs Department from early morning.
Some were soldiers and hunters who had taken a break from the front lines, some were array workers and psionic line workers who had worked continuously for half a month in the fortification area, and some were ordinary young couples who dared not have children or raise children in their early years.
In the past, having a child was a gamble with one's life.
They gambled on whether they could raise the children, whether they could wait until they grew up, and whether a beast tide, pollution, or a cleansing event would one day wipe out the whole family.
But now, although the stakes are still there, for the first time the state is stepping in to bail them out.
Registering childbirth grants asylum status.
When a child is born, they are given spiritual rice, body-quenching fluid, physical examination, and teaching materials.
Orphans of those who died in battle are directly admitted to the Alliance's public academy preparatory system.
Families of border construction teams and defense personnel will be given priority in being allocated places in the underground refuge area.
Many people don't believe that the authorities would suddenly be kind.
But they knew even better that any food or cultivation resources they could squeeze out of the Alliance at this time were better than enduring the wasteland on their own.
The situation at the hospital was even more outrageous.
Several large maternity and children's hospitals were directly taken over by the wartime command and expanded with three new wards. The obstetrics directors, who originally focused on high-end customization and exclusive services for the elite, were now all put into a new process: unified examinations, unified screenings, and unified recording of spiritual indicators.
An elderly doctor held the newly printed data sheet, staring at the numbers for a long time until his lips became dry.
"Is this child from the yellow zone?"
The nurse nodded: "My father worked on a construction team, and my mother used to sell medicine on the black market."
The old doctor glanced at the instrument's curve again, a hint of unease creeping into his eyes.
"His bone age is significantly higher than normal, and his spiritual response is also quite rapid..."
"In the past, you could only see such talent in the homes of powerful families."
This isn't the first time a similar situation has occurred in the past few months.
However, for the first time, it has been incorporated into national policy.
He is not a genius kept secret by any particular family.
Instead, they are a generation that the entire league is scrambling to support and desperately trying to nurture.
......
At 3 p.m., during the closed-door parliamentary meeting, the powerful families indeed erupted in anger.
"I have no objection to giving newborns a spiritual allowance."
"But why are even low-income families from the former Yellow District being included in the unified system?"
"They can't even support themselves, is it worth wasting so many resources?"
The head of the powerful family who spoke had a very deep voice.
Without wasting any words, Wang Mingyuan threw a population projection chart onto the table.
"See for yourselves."
"Ten years from now, if we continue with the old system, how many sustainable troops will the alliance have left, given the current frontline casualties, population shortage, and natural attrition of cultivators?"
No one responded.
Wang Mingyuan continued speaking, his voice as cold as ice.
"This is not a discussion about who should eat more or less."
"The discussion is about whether there will be a second group of people standing up on this planet ten years from now."
"No matter how precious the direct descendants of powerful clans are, how many children can they have?"
"What truly supports this base number is not the people in your ancestral home, but the entire human world."
The meeting room fell silent for a long time.
In the end, no one pushed any further down.
They are not fools.
In the face of great calamity, the lower classes are never a burden.
It is the last, most unseemly, yet most practical, chassis.
……
Once the policy was implemented, changes began almost immediately.
On the black market, the prices of Spirit Rice and Basic Tempering Fluid doubled overnight, before being forcibly capped by the Coordinating Department.
Several maternal and child health hospitals that were previously barely surviving suddenly became key protection units.
The first items purchased by people in border towns are no longer just riot shields and hemostatic agents, but also infant pollution control kits, low-level nutrient solutions, and family protection kits.
Even some grassroots monk teams that used to only recognize battle merits and not household registration have begun to actively apply for marriage and childbirth allocations and family settlements.
It wasn't because I suddenly figured something out.
It's because everyone now understands that if a civilizational divide is truly to be reached in ten years, then the children born today, like the cities built, the arrays unearthed, and the scrolls retrieved, are all seeds of revolution.
It's just that one type is the fire we see now.
One is the fire of the future.
……
Evening, Bloodstone Town.
A long queue formed outside the civil affairs service point. The acid rain had just stopped, and the ground was still glistening with a layer of dark, shiny water.
When Lao Ding passed by, he subconsciously took another look.
He saw a female hunter with calloused hands, holding a child while checking documents; he saw a lone wolf who used to specialize in tracing remains, standing stiffly at the registration window, handling the adoption and transfer of the orphans of his fallen comrades; he saw several old hunters who usually loved to curse the Alliance for exploiting them, but this time they were unusually silent, just squatting by the steps, smoking cigarettes.
The wind blew from the street corner, making the newly posted flyers on the wall rustle.
The above is just a very short sentence:
As long as the flame of civilization burns, there will be a tomorrow.
Old Ding looked at it for two seconds, said nothing, and turned to leave.
But after walking a dozen steps, he still looked up at the sky.
The sky was overcast and gloomy, as if something was pressing down on it.
Nobody knows how many people will die in ten years.
At least now, someone is finally starting to leave seeds for the future.
This is enough.
......
After that night, the entire planet's war preparation logic was pushed to another level.
It's no longer just about building cities, repairing formations, and excavating relics.
They also started raising the next generation.
Just three days after this new policy was implemented, the Supreme Academy of Sciences received another batch of new geological data.
Earth vein activity is rising simultaneously in many parts of the world.
The spiritual pressure fluctuations beneath some large cities showed an extremely slow yet extremely stable increase.
Most strangely, the density and thickness curves of some deep rock layers have begun to deviate from all previous geological models.
Is the Earth slowly growing under a continuous infusion of spiritual energy?