"Using a Guizu relic to lure Guizu?" Namuzha had originally been wondering whether this Jin hostage had planned this all along and was deliberately trying to provoke a conflict.
Hearing those words, his attention was instantly diverted. "Just how wealthy are you to dare even think of that?"
A Guizu relic could certainly attract Guizu; it was said that the raw ingredients for Guizu-luring agents even contained similar components.
However, their prices... really couldn't be compared. One was in the heavens, while the other was in the dirt.
Guizu-luring agent was rare, but its price wasn't entirely absurd.
On the black market, the price was driven quite high, but very few people dared to engage in such trades.
Wu Youren chuckled softly and kept silent. He had already said what needed to be said—if they still couldn't devise a battle plan with this much, there was nothing more he could do.
Leading them this far had truly been no easy task.
Why did it feel like the people of Liang really weren't the sharpest tools in the shed?
Seeing that he had gone quiet, Rossi immediately spoke up. "Then there's no problem. Are we doing this or not?"
"We're doing it!" Namuzha agreed without hesitation. "Young Wu, you don't have an issue either, right?"
"I..." Wu Youren paused for a moment, then sighed softly. "Do I even have the standing to object?"
"Cut the act!" Rossi gave a soft scoff. "You'd like nothing more than to see Liang plunged into chaos. Don't think I don't know you."
"That's twice now." Wu Youren didn't hold back this time—he really couldn't let it slide, especially with Namuzha right beside them.
"Lord Rossi, you're an upperclassman, but you really shouldn't make jokes like that. It could get me killed horribly."
"If you keep saying things like that, I'll turn around and leave right now. I mean it!"
"Can't take a joke, can you?" Rossi had merely been shooting his mouth off, and hearing this made him somewhat displeased. "I was just speaking off the cuff."
Subconsciously, if he didn't disparage the kid like that, he would feel an indescribable discomfort inside.
Acknowledging someone else's excellence was truly... not easy, especially when the person was not only young, but also a hostage from an enemy state.
"To you, it's just playing around," Wu Youren said with a bitter smile. "But all I want is to stay alive in peace!"
"All right, no one meant anything by it," Namuzha said, smoothing things over. "We're the ones who need your expertise. You're just being dragged along."
That night, the three passed the hours on edge, but fortunately nothing happened.
For knights, going without sleep for a night was no great hardship.
Moreover, the goal of an "eye for an eye" kept their spirits stimulated.
The next day, as they tracked the group from a distance, the Guizu aura clinging to Rossi finally vanished completely.
However, the three ironwood biguijue had all suffered some wear.
Not just Rossi, but even Namuzha gritted his teeth slightly. "This rate of depletion... Fortunately, Young Wu still has a few spares."
By dusk, the group ahead began digging a cave and pitching camp again.
A kilometer away, the three watched this scene with considerable confusion. "Why haven't they headed back to their main camp yet?"
They assumed their movements were stealthy, never imagining that the other side had already vaguely sensed something was amiss.
Arrogant though the people of Tianjing Martial Academy might be, their actual capabilities were by no means lacking.
Once they harbored suspicions—even if merely speculation—they would take corresponding precautions.
According to this squad's original schedule, they should have reached their main base camp today.
Instead, they chose not to return to the main camp for now; a significant amount of supplies was stockpiled there, and suffering losses there would be a massive blow.
There were seven people in the squad in total, so digging shelters, keeping watch, and similar chores could be rotated with plenty of hands to spare.
Rossi was thoroughly baffled. "It can't be that they don't have a main camp, can it?"
Namuzha pointed out that if they had a main camp, a scouting excursion shouldn't exceed two days of travel.
This wasn't a hard-and-fast rule, but when Red Pine's party had set out, they had calculated the corresponding risks.
Two days out and two days back meant spending three nights in the wilderness, while also leaving a margin of error for potential battles.
That was essentially the limit for a knight.
Back when they chose the location for their own camp, they had spent considerable time ensuring it could cover all the points they wanted to scout.
Namuzha also expressed his bewilderment. "Even if they don't have a main camp, they should at least have a secondary one, right?"
"Could they be roaming continuously?" Rossi speculated. "Spending a few days in the Guizu domain and then returning to the military encampment to rest and resupply?"
This possibility objectively existed, especially given that the other squad wasn't carrying many supplies.
"Let's observe for one more night," Namuzha decided.
"Agreed," Rossi immediately concurred. "Not even having a temporary shelter at night is sheer torture."
"We can make one tonight," Wu Youren suggested. "A foxhole will do, since we don't plan on making a move anyway."
His suggestion counted as supporting Namuzha's decision—even if he had wanted to object, would it have been possible?
As it happened, after a quiet night, the chief instructor of Tianjing Martial Academy made a similar decision.
"Tonight, we'll tough it out in the wild for one more night. If nothing happens, we head back to camp."
They had enough people to rotate, but even a temporary wilderness camp was grueling on the nerves.
During the following day, the squad from Tianjing Martial Academy slew over a dozen Guizu while marching, reaping two Guizu relics.
To avoid detection, the three trailing them kept a vast distance and couldn't make out the details clearly.
Undeniably, however, the other party was already trying to earn some side profit, while their own side could only watch from afar.
That evening, seeing the group pitching camp yet again, Rossi finally couldn't take it anymore.
"Let's do it tonight. We dug a foxhole last night, but it was honestly unbearable."
Their numbers were small to begin with, and they hadn't dared to make any loud noise while digging. Their resting conditions were vastly inferior, and they had to stay on full alert...
The disparity between the two squads was comprehensive; currently, their mental states were far worse than those of their quarry.
"Tonight it is, then," Namuzha agreed, finding it hard to hold out as well.
He had another reason. "The depletion of the biguijue is also getting a bit high."
"Then let's take a bit more time first and dig a better shelter," Wu Youren said, thoroughly displaying his cautious dread of dying.
The other two knights valued their lives just as much, and Rossi said, "Keep our distance. Make it three kilometers."
Late that night, the short, stocky external affairs officer took the watch again. Having rested the previous night, he took responsibility for guarding this final night.
In the early hours before dawn, he suddenly felt a creeping chill run down his spine. Once again, he nudged the chief instructor awake.
The grand knight snapped his eyes open. Without the man needing to say a word, he already guessed what it was.
He gave a wry smile. "Again?"
Before the sentry could answer, the chief instructor once more released a faint thread of perception...
Regrettably, tonight was an exact replay of two nights prior: still nothing detected, yet a latent threat lingered.
"About this..." The grand knight looked at the stocky knight, hesitating on the verge of speaking: *Aren't you being a bit too cautious?*
Right then, however, his expression abruptly shifted. With a flick of his fingers, he tapped gusts of wind against the other five knights.
He spoke in a low voice, "Get up, quickly! Trouble is coming!"
The five knights had been sleeping lightly, but two consecutive nights of disruption had left them utterly exhausted!
They woke in a daze, not yet understanding what was happening, when an explosion sounded from not far away. *Boom!*
Immediately after, two more explosions rang out from two other directions.
"It's those bastards!" The tall knight reacted instantly. Tianjing's men weren't so ignorant that they couldn't even recognize a ghost-destroying mine!
"Damn it, our direction is the only one without one!" a knight cursed angrily while hurriedly scrambling to pack his gear.
Everyone grasped the tactic in an instant; in siege warfare, this was the classic maneuver of "surrounding three sides and leaving one open"!
Ghost-destroying mines inflicted severe damage on the Guizu. With mines detonating on three sides, which way would the other Guizu instinctively flee?
"Vicious bastards!"
"It's the dead of night, for fuck's sake! In the dead of night!"
"Stop shouting, everyone! Listen to the boss!"
*Listen to me...* The chief instructor smiled bitterly inside. Who on earth could have anticipated encountering something like this in the middle of the night?
He was sixty years old and had fought Guizu nearly a hundred times, but this was the first time he had ever run into such a thing!
He had engaged in night battles against the Guizu as well—both in the narrow and broad senses of the Guizu—some twenty or thirty times in total.
Yet those were all encounter battles; running into them at night left no choice but to fight.
Detonating ghost-destroying mines in the Guizu domain in the dead of night like this... He had never even heard of something so preposterous!
In an environment like this, even someone of a grand knight's cultivation would never leave camp unless there was no other choice.
Who had so much time on their hands that they would go around blowing up ghost-destroying mines?
Fortunately, this temporary camp had some defenses set up, though he had no idea whether they could withstand the violent Guizu aura of the night.
"Calm down!" he barked softly. "Packs on your shoulders! Abandon the odds and ends, and await my next command... What the fuck?!"
The grand knight had originally thought the temporary camp's defenses could hold out to some degree, but when he extended his perception outward, he was instantly stunned.
"Don't resist!" He unleashed his battle qi, wrapping up the other six men.
Fortunately, whatever could be said of their practical combat reactions, men from Tianjing Martial Academy had their readiness for battle maxed out.
Useful items were packed in an instant, and whatever remained behind was unimportant.
The next moment, the grand knight flashed into motion, vanishing into the night.
Behind him and on both sides, surge after surge of turbulent ripples came crashing in like a tide.
There were blasts of displaced air, roaring undercurrents, and shuddering, bone-chilling cold...
Some undulated in waves, some swirled in vortexes, and others twisted into all manner of irregular shapes...
Different waves intersected and collided, throwing sand and stones into the air and sending severed branches and leaves flying.
Punctured by the omnipresent, unearthly wails, it was the spitting image of hell on earth.
As the grand knight sprinted at top speed, he kept his perception extended, dialing it up and down in an all-out effort to avoid being struck or ensnared by the Guizu aura.
Twisting and turning, stumbling along the way, he ran seven or eight kilometers before abruptly pulling in his aura and landing beside a massive boulder.
"Motherfucker," he exhaled a long breath. "Who would have thought a nocturnal frenzy of Guizu aura could be this terrifying!"
Its violence was nearly an order of magnitude higher than during the day!
He had originally thought their temporary camp could hold out for a while.
Yet the moment he sensed the power of that surge, he had instantly judged: it wouldn't hold at all!
Their only option had been to run!
Throughout the escape, every step had been fraught with peril. He had sprinted with absolute concentration, his heart in his throat the entire way.
Only now did he finally have the breath to let out a gasp of dismay.
Chapter 131