Guanxi Plain, Jiangbei Fan Domain Has Come

"Go!" The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land did not pause for an instant. He snatched the teapot off the table and headed outside. The pocket teapot was something he carried on his person, an ordinary exotic treasure, but it felt good in the hand. The Guanxi Plain covered an enormous stretch of land. But the truly rich places were only a few, lying in the northern section of the Guanxi Plain, closer to Jiangnan than the Guandong Plain was. The handful of top powers on the Guanxi Plain were, for the most part, seated in this region. And so their Immortal Slaughter Holy Land was not very far from the Hentian Sect. At a hard gallop, they would arrive soon. Meanwhile, the Hentian Sect had already received Fan Domain's denunciation. A disciple charged with gathering intelligence took it in, and as the reports kept being sent upward, the denunciation finally reached the Hentian Sect Master's hands. Seated in the great hall, the Hentian Sect Master stared at the denunciation with an ugly look on his face. Only after a long moment did he crush the paper into a ball and force the words out one by one through clenched teeth. "This is too much of an insult!" He was a rather thin, small man, not even a meter and a half tall. A layer of dark, gloomy black qi drifted faintly over his whole body, and when he grew angry he looked all the more sinister. To his mind, this denunciation was nothing less than grinding the Hentian Sect's face into the dirt and stepping on it. These past days they had heard of Fan Domain too. A power that had suddenly risen in Jiangbei. They had not paid it much mind. The distance between them was too great, and the two sides would never have had anything to do with each other. He had not expected the other party to dare pick a fight on its own. All he had done was kill a batch of insignificant merchant caravans, people who had nothing whatsoever to do with that Fan Domain. A moment later, the man's rage turned inside out into laughter. "If Fan Domain insists on forcing this to a head, then I'll see them lose every scrap of face. I'd like to see what it can do one shichen from now!" The Hentian Sect was no short distance from Jiangbei. Traveling by skeleton horse would take days on end. Just then— A black-robed disciple strode in from outside the hall and presented a letter. "Sect Master, this letter is from the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land, and it comes with ten thousand ghost stones." "Oh?" The Hentian Sect Master's expression grew a shade more serious. He could afford not to care about Fan Domain, but he could not afford not to care about the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land. It was a power that stood at the same height as the Hentian Sect among the top forces of the Guanxi Plain. As for which of them was stronger, that he did not know. They had never fought. The Immortal Slaughter Holy Land had not joined the chaotic wars for many years. He looked down at the letter in his hand. Only a few scant lines. Not many. "To the Hentian Sect Master: I am sorry. I have only just learned that, some time ago, disciples of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land and the Hentian Sect came into conflict. I am sorry. Though our Dao lineages differ, we are all living beings. How could we turn blades upon one another? I am sorry. Today I specially present ten thousand ghost stones, as a small token of my regret. May we set all former grievances aside and guard the Eternal Night together. I am sorry. Ziwei, Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land. Eternal Night Calendar year 380, the eighth day of the third month." The Hentian Sect Master stared at the letter, unable to make sense of it. Had this thing even happened? A matter this small would never have been reported up to him. Did that fellow Ziwei have this much time on his hands? Personally stepping in over something so tiny, and writing a letter besides. Even so, he was rather pleased. The other man had sent ghost stones as an apology and written to him in person. That was recognition. The Hentian Sect did not lack these ten thousand ghost stones, but if he himself were asked to give away ten thousand, he would be a little unwilling to part with them. Not lacking them did not mean he could hand them out on a whim. But right after that, a subordinate strode into the hall again. "Reporting to the Sect Master: the Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land has come in person, with elders, disciples, and the rest. They are waiting on the slope eight hundred meters outside the Hentian Sect. Seventy-eight people in all." "Temperament!" The Hentian Sect Master froze, then caught on at once. He sprang down onto the floor and strode for the hall doors. "Change my robes! Elders, come with me out of the sect to receive them!" In ordinary days he had, in truth, looked down on the Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land a little. The man was the famous "apology maniac" of the Guanxi Plain. Every day the holy land sent out more letters of apology than it dispatched trade guilds. Everyone on the Guanxi Plain said the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land had truly produced a saint. Not a saint as a compliment. A saint of the spineless sort. But this time the man truly made him see the man anew. He was not worried about that Fan Domain. It was only a power that had just risen, and it was far off in Jiangbei. What could it do to him? Even so, such wholehearted support still moved him, and shifted his impression of the fellow by a thread. "Good, good. This spot will do." The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land swept a glance around. There was not a soul. They had come the earliest—or else the others had never meant to come at all. After all, no one truly believed Fan Domain could do anything to the Hentian Sect after a single shichen. Eight hundred meters ahead lay the city of the Hentian Sect. Walls of a uniform Level 4 made the city sit on the Guanxi Plain as firmly as a stone pinning down a mountain. Through rainy season after rainy season, the city had never once been broken. It had cost a great price to build. Defense Line No. 7 on the Guandong Plain had only Level 6 walls, though of course the two walls were not on the same scale. Defense Line No. 7 was a full ninety-seven kilometers long. He stood on the slope and looked toward Hentian City. The angle was just right. The whole of Hentian City could be taken in at a glance, and if anything was going to happen, this was the best place to see it. "Holy Lord." The Great Elder of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land looked up and around. Not a cloud for ten thousand li; a clear sky from end to end. He could not help lowering his voice. "There isn't a stir. It's still noon, but before Eternal Night falls we have to leave ourselves enough time to get back." By rights, as a Great Elder, he should not constantly question the Holy Lord's actions. But the Holy Lord's way of doing things was simply too senseless, and he truly could not hold it in. Sometimes he was glad the Holy Lord was the one in charge. Otherwise, with a mouth as loose as his, if they made him Sect Master of the whole Hentian Sect, he doubted he would live very long. When he was small, he often saw that the elders of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land were all very steady. He had thought that when he grew old, he would be that steady too. He had not expected that, even with death from old age close at hand, he still had not managed to be steady, and his mouth was still that loose. It seemed this was not a skill one automatically gained as one's age went up. So he had simply given up. "What's the rush?" The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land curled his lip and looked toward the horizon not far off with a touch of anticipation. "Fan Domain might be building a high-speed rail and rushing this way right now. Wait a bit." As Fan Domain's name spread across the Guanxi Plain, its high-speed rail drew the most attention of all. The importance of the Fan Domain high-speed rail to a power went without saying. Many powers wanted one of their own. The principle was not hard: forge max-level hanging baskets, then lay copper pipe, and it could be done. The building blueprint for the hanging basket was rare, but a few powers still had it. Only that copper pipe... They could only stare blankly at one another. They had never heard of such a building, nor seen one. Could that even be a building? And laying copper pipe for hundreds of kilometers at a stretch—how many ghost stones would that consume? A rare building like that could hardly be cheap to forge. Most important of all, Fan Domain had only one architect, and that was Chen Fan of Fan Domain. Every stretch of track had been forged by Chen Fan himself. Forging that much copper pipe was no small labor either. Just then— the gates of Hentian City suddenly opened, and a great crowd came pouring out. The Hentian Sect Master walked at the very front. With the elders and disciples of the Hentian Sect behind him, he strode up to the Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land, swept a glance over the crowd at his back, and laughed heartily. "Ziwei. It's been a long time." "Everyone on the Guanxi Plain speaks of the Holy Lord's heart for all under heaven. Today I have seen it. The moment Jiangbei's Fan Domain, ignorant of heaven's height and earth's thickness, sent a denunciation against the Hentian Sect, you brought your disciples to our aid at the first instant. I accept this kindness." "Only—" "it was unnecessary." "That Fan Domain is only talking tough. If I'm in a good mood, I'll treat the matter as if it never happened. If I'm in a bad one, taking people to Jiangbei for a little amusement is not out of the question." The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land had been standing there, thoughts wandering, when a hearty laugh suddenly reached his ear. His brow tightened. He looked up, and sure enough, that fellow had come. This deliberately hearty laugh was one of a kind on the Guanxi Plain. He had been born a dwarf. Before becoming sect master he had suffered plenty, and he was somewhat insecure, so after he became sect master he had deliberately trained up a hearty laugh. Only, the effort showed, like an opera troupe, and set against his height it made for a thick sense of incongruity. "What kind of talk is that?" The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land put on a show of anger. "You and I are brothers. How could I sit by and ignore you? Brother, hurry back. It's cold outside. Don't go catching a chill." "Uh—" The Hentian Sect Master, just about to say something, looked up on instinct at the sun overhead. "Early in the third month. Spring's here. It's not that cold..." "It is cold. Hurry back, hurry back. It won't do to catch a chill." "Well, what I mean is..." "Go back first!" The Holy Lord's face was stern. "Your brother will stand right here. You don't need to mind anything else. Don't make it hard for your brother. If you caught a chill because of this, I, your brother, would deserve ten thousand deaths." "Uh—" "Go back, quickly!" "All right, then." The Hentian Sect Master was utterly baffled by now. Half pushed and half yielding, he led the people behind him back toward Hentian City. Ziwei had talked him into a muddle. He had organized a whole pile of things to say, and after a few lines he had been made to forget what he meant to say at all. What had he meant to say? Actually, he had wanted to say that even if he caught a chill it would not matter. He had medicine. Word that the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land had taken up a position not far from the Hentian Sect spread quickly. Anyone with eyes could more or less work out what was going on. If they had not come to watch the excitement, they had come to lend their strength. Either way, it meant that one shichen from now, Fan Domain would truly act. In a short time, the powers at a nearer distance all set out for the Hentian Sect. If Fan Domain really sent people, and the Hentian Sect then displayed its divine might, they would pile onto the loser and sell the Hentian Sect a favor. If the Hentian Sect lost the fight, they would come to watch the show. If nothing happened at all, then they would watch Fan Domain's show. Fail to do what you had said, and there would be disgrace to spare. In any case, so long as they went, whether Fan Domain came or not, there would be firsthand excitement to see. Little by little, more and more powers gathered around Hentian City. The slope with the best view, however, was firmly occupied by the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land. "There." The Holy Lord looked at the ever-growing number of powers arriving on every side and said, a little pleased with himself, "See? I told you. Come early, and you get a good spot." "Only the first person to eat the crab gets the meat." The Great Elder beside him muttered, "What the first person to eat a crab gets is absolutely not meat. What he actually eats depends on whether the crab is male or female." The Hentian Sect Master, all the while, received them one by one with a chuckling laugh. He had not expected the Hentian Sect's reputation on the Guanxi Plain to be this good. One side in trouble, and aid from every side. "Mm." Aboard a flying boat, Chen Fan stood on the deck and looked at the ghost-skin map in his hand, estimating the distance. A little more than half a shichen, and they would more or less be there. He looked to either side. The members of Fan Domain's War Pavilion had all sortied. Together they controlled one hundred fully equipped flying boats, and high above the nine heavens they crossed mountains and ridges at tremendous speed, making straight for the Hentian Sect. After they passed Jiangnan, the denunciation had more or less spread as well. The whole way, the flying boats held peak speed in a wild-goose formation, blanketing the high sky. One look was overwhelmingly intimidating. "D-Domain Lord." The head of the Gongyang clan came up beside Chen Fan, his face full of guilt, gratitude and fear tangled in his voice. "Will this trip cost Fan Domain a great deal?" Chen Fan tipped his head and glanced at the old man, casual. "You estimate it yourself. You tell me whether it's costly." The Gongyang clan head froze where he stood. What was there to estimate? The look of this alone was enough to guess how costly it was. "I... Domain Lord, from now on the Gongyang clan will formally merge into Fan Domain, and hereafter serve Fan Domain as oxen and—" "Don't!" Chen Fan looked at the old man with an odd expression. "You've got a pretty dream there. Merge into Fan Domain, even? Fan Domain is very strict about who it takes in. How are you trying to take the meal and the pot too?" "Relax." "Mainly, I just learned that Da Yu is on good terms with your Grand Elder, Gongyang Yiyue. That's why I'm stepping out for your Gongyang clan. Don't be nervous. What's more, your Gongyang clan really is quite close to our Fan Domain. Killing your people is killing my people." "I'm standing up for myself as well." Whoever he felt like standing up for, he would stand up for. He was tired of finding reasons. He had simply wanted to find a chicken to kill. The chicken was found. It was this Hentian Sect. At the start he had been ready to take the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land as the chicken. After all, there really was old bad blood between the two sides. It was a perfect chicken. Then that fellow sent apology letters every other day, and for a while Chen Fan had not known quite how to strike. If the other side had spoken even one harsh line, he would have raised the butcher's knife. But their posture stayed low the whole way through, and the knife in his hand was simply a little too awkward to bring down. The head of the Gongyang clan gave a small start. Together with the elders, clansmen, and the rest behind him, they all looked toward Gongyang Yiyue and Da Yu on the deck of the flying boat, staring at each other with red-rimmed eyes, and then quickly lowered their heads. The same picture flashed through every mind. Beasts! That Da Yu looked to be not even eighteen. Gongyang Yiyue was seventy or eighty, damn it, an old man at his last gasp, and the two of them were making eyes at each other in a way that truly made one's scalp prickle. Everyone knew the two of them were both Nightwatchers. Their ages were actually about the same. But the picture itself was genuinely bizarre. Right after that, hearts began to thump wildly. The matter of Qi Yue and Gongyang Yue was essentially settled. The two of them had never formally been together, but Fan Domain's denunciation to the outside today had made the thing entirely clear. If Gongyang Yiyue and Da Yu could get together as well... The Gongyang clan head, the elders, and the clansmen all drew breath a little faster. Kin upon kin. And on top of that, this matter of standing up for their Gongyang clan. It was no exaggeration to say that from now on their Gongyang clan could swagger through the four regions of Jiangbei. They would not even need to raise a death flag. So long as they stated who they were, no one would dare touch them. One was Gongyang Yue. One was Gongyang Yiyue... They had imagined many chances for the Gongyang clan to rise. They had not expected it to come through marriage alliances. Heaven's calculations truly could not match what people did. Chen Fan glanced, seemingly without intention, at Da Yu behind him, then went on standing at the edge of the deck, gazing toward the horizon, and said nothing. He had already transferred Da Yu from the War Pavilion to vice pavilion master of the Hundred Grains Pavilion, to work under Stationmaster Qi. Ordinarily she could just tend the fields. Her rank was unchanged. But the work was much easier, and the pressure was not so great. So long as Da Yu made no mistake, he could not let her become an ordinary member. Especially... in the rainy season, Da Yu had more than once volunteered to activate herself, and that had given him some pity for this girl of tragic origins as well. For Da Yu, the happiest thing was to be an ordinary person. As for now... He smiled faintly, lowered his head, and tucked the jade slip of intelligence on the Hentian Sect back into his robes. No Anti-Air Cannons, hm? What, in the ordinary rainy seasons, they had never run into a ghost creature that could fly? Well, some had come today. Unprofessional. There were many things one might never need to use, but could not be without. The Anti-Air Cannons on his Jiangbei defense line had never once truly been used. The only time they had been started was when that batch of ghost creatures had teleported straight above Fan Domain, and the Godslayer Cannons could reach them too. Even so, he had spent heavily to forge a batch. Buildings of this special kind—if one waited until they were needed and only then tried to obtain them, it would already be too late. Outside Hentian City, more and more powers arrived. Not only powers. Even small families from the nearby cities rode skeleton horses over, testing the ground as they came. In ordinary days these powers had no end of disputes and fought until the noise shook the sky. How would those small families dare go out and wander at random? But too many powers had come today. Even powers that usually rubbed against each other chose, for now, to say nothing. So the small families came to join the excitement as well. And to see whether they might tie a thread to some great figure. On an ordinary day there was no chance to see this many important people. Toss them one small order, and their families would rise. "H-Holy Lord." A middle-aged man who looked rather down-at-heel fumbled a voice transmission talisman out of his robes and offered it to the Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land, his tone flustered and hurried. "I am of the Little Grass Wang family of the Guanxi Plain. The family has three architects. The highest is a Level 6 architect. Whenever the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land is short of hands for a job, you might consider us." "The Little Grass Wang family?" The Holy Lord looked at the family emblem on the voice transmission talisman and asked, suddenly curious, "Why a name like that? I know quite a few Wang families. They're all called things like the Silent Wind Wang family, the Great River Wang family." "The good names were all taken... This one isn't a duplicate." "True enough." The Holy Lord was suddenly moved. Wang was a great surname, and there were quite a few Wang families on the Guanxi Plain. Nearly all of them were named for the terrain nearby. The Silent Wind Wang family, for instance, sat around Silent Wind Gorge. There truly were not many names left for those who came after. The greatest Wang family on the Guanxi Plain was one called the Guanxi Wang family. Those who dared name themselves that way were, as a rule, the strongest line in that region. Jiangbei Fan Domain, for instance. Just then— "What is that?" A cry of alarm burst from the crowd. The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land looked along the direction of the noise, and when he saw clearly, even he, who had seen enough great scenes, could not help freezing where he stood. At first it was only an iron-gray ripple rising deep in the clouds at the sky's edge. But as that ripple drew nearer, people finally saw it clearly. It was nearly a hundred flying boats! Each flying boat was like an iron fish enlarged several times over, closing in silence. No howl of wind and thunder. No great commotion at all. Only a flag, its allegiance impossible to make out, planted on the foremost flying boat and streaming in the wind. The weight of it nearly pressed on the chest, as if the whole sky were slowly caving in. The shock of nearly a hundred flying boats was terrifying in the extreme, especially on the Guanxi Plain, where war never ceased but the mainstream mount was the skeleton horse. No one had ever seen a scene like this. Flying boats that could fly. Most of the people here were seeing a flying boat in the sky for the first time. The flock of boats was not disordered. The three at the very front thrust ahead in a triangular wedge, leaving traces in the air where they tore the airflow apart. Behind them came seventy or eighty flying boats, split into nine groups, spread like crane wings. The last few dozen were tightly guarded at the center. The whole formation was extremely neat. Almost in the space of a blink, the formation of flying boats was already above the Hentian Sect, and slowly slowing. A hundred enormous flying boats hovered a thousand zhang above Hentian City. The next moment— a mechanical clatter, made of countless clicks, came down from the sky. Panels on the surface of every flying boat slid sharply aside, revealing pitch-black cannon muzzles. One flying boat carried seventeen cannon towers. There were a hundred boats here. That was... 1,700! Only then did the powers gathered around Hentian City go ashen and freeze where they stood in horror. They had finally seen that flag clearly. It was... the flag of Jiangbei Fan Domain. Fan Domain had truly come. And it had come in a form they could not understand at all. In the instant the hundred flying boats finished hovering a thousand zhang in the air, the killing began. When white light flowed at once through the patterns on every flying boat's surface, the hundred boats were activated. Max-level Godslayer Cannons mounted on the flying boats, from a position safe enough, began an indiscriminate bombardment of Hentian City below. "Boom!" A sound loud enough to split the ears rose all at once. One scarlet shell plunged from a flying boat suspended in the high air straight into the very center of Hentian City. That single strike collapsed the surrounding buildings almost instantly. The bursting scarlet light swept up every living thing it could find nearby, like something come to claim lives. Overflow damage sought targets on its own. And then— "Boom! Boom! Boom!!!" One thousand seven hundred max-level Godslayer Cannons fired as one. The ground began to shake violently. The whole sky suddenly darkened. Eternal Night had not fallen. The light of the Godslayer Cannons had drowned the light of the sun. Every power watching saw, in that moment, the sight that shook them most. Countless scarlet shells fell, one after another without a break, straight down on the Hentian Sect. They were so dense that even people dozens of li away could see it clearly. It was raining in the direction of the Hentian Sect. A rain of blood. And every drop of that rain was a shell fired by a max-level Godslayer Cannon. One such shell, landing on a ghost king, would be more than the ghost king could take. Now they fell from the high air as if they cost nothing, pouring down on the Hentian Sect without end. The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land stared at the scene, his body locked in place, his lips beginning to tremble. He had always apologized, but he had never feared any power. If it truly came to a fight, the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land feared no power. But now... he was afraid. The torrent of scarlet shells poured out by one thousand seven hundred Godslayer Cannons wove, in the air, a three-dimensional web of death that covered every inch of space. Not a thread of blood was to be seen. Not a shred of a scream. And yet a thick breath of death could be felt. The voice transmission talisman in his robes grew faintly hot. From inside it came the Hentian Sect Master's roar, desperate and terrified. His hand shook, and on instinct he tore the talisman to pieces. Dimly, he seemed to see quite a few others doing as he had done, tearing the voice transmission talismans in their hands. After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the scarlet torrent pouring from the high air finally faded, and the ground stopped shaking. Light slowly returned before their eyes. They had readjusted to the light of the sun. Hentian City... was gone. Ahead there was no city. There was only a pit without a visible bottom. If they had not seen it with their own eyes, they would never have believed that, a cup of tea earlier, a city had stood where this pit now was. A city that counted as one of the toughest cities on the Guanxi Plain. A city whose walls were Level 4 throughout. The air was a muddle of every smell blended together. The high-air bombardment of one thousand seven hundred Godslayer Cannons was Fan Domain, by means of a violence pure to the extreme, issuing its declaration to every power on the Guanxi Plain. "Guanxi Plain, Jiangbei Fan Domain has come." Before terror of this order, the so-called top power of the Guanxi Plain, the Hentian Sect, seemed to have been reduced to a joke. The city-protection great array that had only just risen had not held for a single breath before it shattered completely. And that had already been the Hentian Sect's only act of resistance. The whole way through, there had not even been time to beg. Perhaps they had begged. Only the sound had been buried outright beneath the thunder filling the sky, dwindled until it could not be heard. Just then, among the hundred flying boats hovering in the high air, the one at the very center, ringed by the others, slowly descended and came down before the crowd. A wooden stair unfolded from the deck and reached to the ground. A young man, leaning on an emerald cane, came down from the flying boat with a crowd accompanying him. His gaze passed over each of their faces in turn, and a mild smile showed on his. "Everyone." "Allow me to introduce myself. Chen Fan of Jiangbei Fan Domain. A pleasure to meet you." The powers that had come to watch the excitement had not yet come back to themselves from the scene that had just shaken them. They wanted to open their mouths and say something, so Chen Fan's words would not fall unanswered to the ground. But the words broke as soon as they left their mouths. Lips that would not stop trembling made even one complete sentence difficult. The Guanxi Plain was full of war in ordinary days, but all of it was fought on skeleton horses. When had they ever seen a thing like this? This was not the same level at all. Jiangbei Fan Domain... These past days they had often heard the name of this power rising in Jiangbei, but the main things they remembered were that it had risen very fast, that its luzhu was quite good, that it had the Fan Domain high-speed rail, that its strength was not weak, and that its walls were of a high level. They had never known Jiangbei Fan Domain had means like this! "D-Domain Lord Chen." The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land forced his mind steady and went forward to meet him, squeezing out a smile uglier than crying. "You might have sent word you were coming. I could have gone to receive you." "As for Fan Domain coming south—" "my Immortal Slaughter Holy Land is the first to raise a hand in welcome." Chen Fan looked at the Holy Lord with a light smile. This one was an odd man. These past days he had received quite a few apology letters from the fellow. He had started apologizing before Chen Fan had even shown Fan Domain's strength. That was not yielding out of fear. He truly did not want to go to war. Even if he could win, he did not want to fight. So Chen Fan accepted the apology. If the man had apologized after Chen Fan showed his strength, Chen Fan would not have paid that apology any mind at all. No... if the sequence had gone that way, the fellow would not have had a chance to apologize. By the normal course of things, this chicken on the Guanxi Plain ought to have been the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land. He said nothing more. He only swept a casual glance over the crowd around him, then returned to the flying boat. The boat rose slowly, gathered with the remaining boats still hovering in the air, and sped off into the distance once more. Not long after, they vanished at the end of everyone's sight. As if nothing had happened. If not for that pit. The powers that had rushed over to watch the excitement looked at one another with complicated faces. Even powers that had held old grudges did not want to speak of them now. They only wanted to get back to their own ground quickly. This was the same as a pile of ants fighting until they could not be pulled apart over a pile of breadcrumbs. Then a person suddenly arrived and stamped a heap of ants dead under one foot. Of course the remaining ants stopped fighting. What was there still to fight over? Set the breadcrumbs aside for now, and first see how one might avoid being stamped dead. Soon the powers round about dispersed again. They had come chasing excitement. They had seen the excitement. They had been frightened. The Great Elder of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land looked at the enormous pit before him with a complicated expression. A cup of tea ago, there seemed to have been a city here. Only now did the voice transmission talisman in his robes grow faintly hot. "Great Elder, a batch of boats just flew past through the sky." "Oh. Noted." "Holy Lord." He drew a deep breath. For the first time he agreed so completely with the Holy Lord's decision. He was just about to say something to him when he saw the Holy Lord with his head lowered, busy at something, and asked on instinct. Then he saw the Holy Lord stuff a stack of letters into his hands. "These three apology letters—rush them to Fan Domain overnight, riding hard." "This time the trouble is serious." The Holy Lord of the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land said, flustered, his voice shaking, "There isn't enough paper. I'll go back and write three more." All this time he had apologized to Fan Domain mainly because he did not want to go to war. If it truly came to a fight, and he brought out everything he had, he had thought that even if he could not match the other side, he could still preserve the legacy. But looking at it now... if it truly came to a fight, his Immortal Slaughter Holy Land lasting more than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea would be a miracle. "Go. Back, quickly!" "Then..." The Great Elder looked hesitantly at the pit. "There ought to still be secret chambers and the like in the pit that weren't completely blasted apart. Shouldn't we dig and have a look?" Jiangbei Fan Domain had left with extreme style. Not a single ghost stone picked up. Not even a glance at the pit. "Dig, my ass!" The Holy Lord said, frantic with anger, "Under a bombardment like that, what the hell could still be intact? Besides, these are Fan Domain's spoils. Even if Fan Domain doesn't want them, who would dare take them?" "Get back with me, now!" This time, he truly had to write an apology letter. He suddenly felt a little lucky. Fan Domain had clearly come to establish its might. If he had not kept writing apology letters to Fan Domain, the chicken that died might have been his Immortal Slaughter Holy Land. Before this, in all the Guanxi Plain, only his holy land had a conflict with Fan Domain. No one else's hand could reach that far. The Great Elder took one last look at the pit, and only then did he suddenly understand. A chill ran up his spine. He must have been out of his mind. Just now he had actually thought of picking up spoils. This time he encouraged the Holy Lord to send the apology letters. The more sincere, the better. Inside the Immortal Slaughter Holy Land, the elders gathered and weighed every word, writing an apology letter of the utmost sincerity and attaching a gift of compensation of the utmost sincerity. Every elder was urgently recalled. Even those in seclusion were dragged out. This was truly a moment of life and death. And at the same time, the news began to spread across the whole Guanxi Plain like willow catkins after rain. Tonight the message relay stations were unusually busy. Voice transmission talismans flickered without cease inside the stations. Message after message was relayed through those talismans. Powers that sold information also gathered every detail at speed and sold them to other powers. And, on the market, the price of building blueprints of the anti-air kind suddenly soared. Several powers named extremely high prices and began trying to buy them. Before this, the Guanxi Plain had no concept of air defense. Air defense? What could there be in the sky? In all these years, not one ghost creature had been able to fly. But now they knew what was in the sky. In the sky there was Fan Domain, those hundred flying boats, and those 1,700 Godslayer Cannons. Powers that had fought all their lives on skeleton horses understood overnight what air supremacy meant, and what it meant that whoever controlled the sky controlled power. And where had those flying boats come from? The sky gradually darkened. Eternal Night descended once more and covered the whole Guanxi Plain. Tonight, countless people on the Guanxi Plain would toss and turn, unable to sleep. Especially those who had seen that scene with their own eyes. All their endless strife had been to seize more resources and develop their families. But after seeing what they had seen today, they suddenly let it go. Fight for what? However much more they fought, they could not beat Fan Domain. Fighting back and forth—what were they after? Better to live their own honest lives. Powers holding this thought were not few. And in the deep of the night, a hundred flying boats lit their ghost fires and flew into the Guanxi Plain again. This time no one knew. Eternal Night had covered every trace of the boats' passage. No one saw them at all. The flying boats drove deep into the Guanxi Plain until they landed beside a pit. This pit had originally been Hentian City. Ghost fire spilled from the hundred flying boats and covered the pit. A great number of War Pavilion members came down from the boats carrying iron shovels and other tools and set busily to digging. "However little the meat, it's still meat." Chen Fan stood on the deck, looked at the Fan Domain members busy in the pit, and laughed. Even the smallest piece of meat, tossed here and left unclaimed, would pain him. Only, his main purpose in coming this time had been to kill a chicken, establish his might, and spread Fan Domain's name. Wiping out Hentian City with clean, shocking means— the purpose was already achieved. If, at that moment, a batch of people had walked down off the flying boats and started digging things out of the pit, it would have been somewhat face-losing. It would have made him look as if he had come for this little bit of stuff in Hentian City. So at the time he had left without a backward look. He had not returned to Fan Domain. He had found a place to hide. He would come back and dig at night. The round trip from Fan Domain to Hentian City was quite far. Even at the speed of a flying boat it was not enough. One shichen was not enough for a single leg. He had issued the denunciation only when he was already halfway, and he had counted the speed at which the denunciation would spread as well. Passing on information takes time. Looking at it now, those powers had been quite tactful. Not one of them had coveted what remained in Hentian City. He had been thinking that if any power took it, he would pay that house a visit tonight and eat a meal there. Flying boats could be fitted with ghost fire. So long as one made sure there were no flying ghost creatures, they could fly entirely in the dark of night. This was an even more terrifying method. Eternal Night. The darkness was like thick paste. Hold out a hand, and one could not see one's fingers. If the bombardment had started then, Hentian City would have had not a shred of means to resist. Of course, they would not have been able to see below either. But so long as the firepower was great enough, even striking at random would hit. "Not bad." Chen Fan stood on the deck, both hands resting on the edge, and smiled faintly as he looked at the Fan Domain members busy in the pit. From here on, the powers of the Guanxi Plain ought to behave themselves for a while. He could start laying high-speed rail lines and signal towers across the Guanxi Plain. Once those things were laid down, it would mean this whole region was his territory. Whether these people acknowledged it did not matter. He acknowledged it anyway. Fan Domain's territory had gained another piece. He leaned on the deck and heard, faintly in the darkness beside him, a rustling. It was the sound of ghost creatures moving in the dark. They had not, however, entered the ghost fire's range.