The scene was so bizarre that for a moment Cangwu doubted his own eyes, while the King of Ji simply assumed he was hallucinating.
Just as Cangwu moved to take another look, several invisible and intangible strands of gossamer drifted down from the void, settling squarely upon him and the king.
Cangwu's face drained of color. The spider silk did not physically exist; they felt it only because barging into the array had entangled them in karma. In truth, these gossamer threads were fishing lines cast from above.
Never had Cangwu witnessed fishing lines so lofty, unfathomable, and profound. The very next instant, an earth-shattering blow was sure to travel down along them!
Cangwu did not need to see it with his own eyes; basic common sense told him he had no hope of withstanding such a strike. He had to secure advantageous terrain. And in the State of Ji, no location offered greater advantage than the royal palace. Cangwu seized the King of Ji and vanished on the spot! Flickering through the void several times, he bolted into the palace by the skin of his teeth.
At that very moment, Wei Yuan, who had been sitting quietly in meditation, suddenly opened his eyes. He clearly sensed the arrival of Cangwu and the King of Ji. This sensation was extraordinarily distinct—so clear it felt as though a pair of eyes was looking down from on high, taking in everything at a glance.
Moreover, it was not merely "seeing," but an explicit "lock-on." Wei Yuan felt that whatever attack he unleashed right now would strike the pair without fail.
Without hesitation, Wei Yuan immediately raised the small sword manifested from the Fourth Grotto-Heaven. Yet because the blade was formed from an entire grotto-heaven, it was unimaginably heavy and carried several floating isles of its own. Wielding it was like an ordinary man swinging a weapon weighing over a hundred jin—infinitely powerful, yet ponderously slow to unleash.
Before Wei Yuan could even bring the sword fully into play, Cangwu and the King of Ji bolted like cats whose tails had been stepped on, vanishing in an instant. Wei Yuan was left petrified on the spot, utterly baffled.
Shielded by the grand array, Wei Yuan felt it unlikely he had exposed himself. Even if he had, this sword strike fell far short of the strike fueled by a hundred million mortal karmic luck that had slain an immortal back then; at most, it would have inflicted minor wounds.
Yet the immortal had fled headlong in panic, leaving Wei Yuan completely at a loss. Was his sword really that terrifying? Could it be that he had once again habitually underestimated his own ferocity?
Though the immortal had retreated far away, Wei Yuan did not dare let his guard down. The immortal was now roaming the mortal realm and could mount a sneak attack at any moment. Wei Yuan prepared to pull back the troops scattered outside and initiate the second phase of the grand plan: lure the enemy before the Guantun defense line.
***
Back in the royal palace of Ji, Cangwu's face was grim. "There truly is a mighty figure secretly obstructing us! But I distinctly recall telling you to issue an imperial decree relinquishing Guantun County so it would no longer be part of the State of Ji's domain. Why did I see today that Guantun County is still entangled with Ji's karma, still an integral part of Ji's territory?"
The King of Ji was equally perplexed. "This king issued the decree half a month ago. It should have been carried out by now."
Cangwu gritted his teeth. "Investigate! Investigate through the night! Get to the very bottom of this!"
Moments later, swarms of Embroidered Uniform Bureau agents poured out of their yamen and fanned across the royal capital. They hauled over a hundred officials of various ranks out of their warm beds and marched them back to the bureau. Interrogations ran through the night, scrutinizing every link in the chain. Before dawn broke, they had their answer.
It turned out the drafting, stamping, and dispatching of the imperial decree had gone smoothly enough. However, the palace had been bogged down with endless trivialities, and with the rebel army having just dealt a crushing defeat to Xiao Jingyuan, court and realm alike were thrown into utter chaos. As a result, the decree arrived at the Ministry of Rites a day late. At the time, the rebels were advancing like a hot knife through butter, throwing the Ministry of Rites into panic. On top of that, they were burdened with preparing the grand New Year sacrificial rites—a task both tedious and demanding—and with the state treasury depleted, they were quarreling daily with the Ministry of Revenue, which led to another day's delay.
Up to this point, things were relatively normal; delays were understandable under the circumstances. But when it came to the final step—entering the change into the official registers and formally expunging Guantun County from the realm's territory—the Ministry of Rites director responsible for the registry had received grim news of his father's death just the day before and had left the capital for his hometown to observe mourning.
In the midst of such wartime turmoil, the Minister of Rites merely sent a letter to the Ministry of Personnel requesting a replacement to fill the vacancy, then set the matter aside.
And the Ministry of Personnel was never swift in appointing personnel; a delay of several months was entirely possible. Thus, to this very day, from Cangwu and the King of Ji at the top down to the Minister of Rites, all assumed Guantun County was no longer part of Ji's domain. None of them could have anticipated that the entire affair would stall on the very last and most trivial link, failing to expunge Guantun County in time.
When the interrogation results were presented, Cangwu went livid with fury. The King of Ji immediately ordered all officials from the Minister of Rites on down thrown into prison, and even dispatched express couriers riding thousands of li to arrest the official mourning his parent at home, intending to drag him back to be beheaded alongside the rest.
Everything was clear now. Heaven knew what Wei Yuan had been thinking, but within the borders of Ji, he had occupied only Guantun County, using all the boundary stones he had scoured up on the Mountain Folk territory to stake out an enormous tract of land. Moreover, he had not only relocated more than two million people from neighboring commanderies to the Mountain Folk territory, but had also somehow transported a vast population from who-knew-where to multiply and thrive there.
Previously, Cangwu had regarded Wei Yuan merely as an opponent with potential. He had never paid any mind to Guantun County, let alone the modest domain Wei Yuan was running in the Mountain Folk territory. Furthermore, once his divine sense left the State of Ji and entered Mountain Folk lands, both its range and detail were severely compromised. As such, Cangwu had never bothered to check on what was happening there.
In this world, the usual convention was that pioneering unfamiliar land meant ten years of hardscrabble survival; only after a decade, when the land was cultivated and the boundary stone nurtured and upgraded, could a population truly begin to grow and prosper. Going from erecting a boundary stone to creating a bustling land filled with hearth fires routinely took over a century.
Wei Yuan had managed it for less than two years, yet who could have guessed Guantun County would already transform into such a surreal spectacle!
If Guantun County was like this, one could easily imagine the Mountain Folk territory behind it. Tens of millions of people was by no means an exaggeration.
The problem was that the vast majority of the population resided in Mountain Folk territory. The center of Wei Yuan's domain was not in the State of Ji at all; he merely held a single county in Ji. Yet that very county had ruined everything!
When the Heavens-Severing World-Refining Grand Array deployed, because Guantun County remained administratively attached to Ji, the array had automatically factored in all of Wei Yuan's lands in the Mountain Folk territory, seeking to envelop them as well. As a consequence, it provoked a backlash from twenty million living mortals, causing the array to fail.
The person who had shielded the heavenly secrets of Guantun County was unquestionably an almighty figure. And the sudden mourning leave of the Ministry of Rites director responsible for the final registry—leaving the capital the day before the imperial decree reached his desk—was almost certainly this figure's handiwork as well.
Just judging by this effortless maneuvering, leveraging momentous trends through the subtlest details, this figure's attainments in heavenly secrets and geomancy were far beyond anything Cangwu could ever hope to rival.
Cangwu forced himself to calm down. That was the flaw of his current Dao path: the Dao heart was exceptionally prone to disruption. Its advantage, however, was that its arts were elusive, unfathomable, and immensely powerful.
Pondering carefully, Cangwu realized the situation was not entirely hopeless. The array had failed only once, costing some immortal-grade formation materials. If he spent another five years preparing, he could lay the array anew. Of course, before doing that, he had to eliminate the scourge that was Wei Yuan.
Cangwu swept his divine sense over the King of Ji, yet could not discern what the man was thinking. Cangwu frowned slightly, sensing that this was another troublesome individual. He thought to himself: *Could he know the truth behind the Soul-Expelling Pill?*
To thoroughly eradicate the reincarnations of his ancestors, the King of Ji had actually poisoned his favorite son to death. Although he utterly loathed those reincarnated ancestors, Cangwu had a sneaking suspicion that the king might have caught on to something after all.
After the Soul-Expelling Pill eradicated a reincarnated soul, a new soul would slowly form within the vessel. Yet this soul was not born of the body itself; rather, it was another wandering soul drawn in from the cycle of reincarnation. The true soul originally belonging to that body had already been snuffed out when the ancestor seized it.
Hence, the King of Ji's son was already dead long ago. Giving him the Soul-Expelling Pill was nothing more than summoning yet another reincarnated soul into the vessel.
Yet matters had already reached the point of no return. Whether the King of Ji had guessed the truth or not, Cangwu had no choice but to carry on their cooperation. If another slip-up occurred, the Venerable Lord would not let him off lightly.
Cangwu swept his divine sense across the lands of Ji. Several giant eagles had taken wing in all directions, and troops across Ji had been mobilized. At the same time, he retrieved a red jade gourd, tipped out three dusty gray beans, and flung them into the distance.
The three beans landed in different locations, each erupting into a cloud of smoke. Dusty gray Dao soldiers marched out from the haze. In the blink of an eye, each bean transformed into one hundred thousand Dao soldiers. Moving as swift as the wind, they instantly encircled two roving detachments of Qingming cavalry.
Meanwhile, near the main encampment, the main forces of the rebels and the imperial army finally converged, surrounding the main camp of the Spear Saint of the Great Desolation on all sides, preparing to launch their assault at first light.
And several hundred li away, a detachment of Great Desolation cavalry numbering under a thousand men was first encircled by Dao soldiers, followed by the arrival of ever more imperial troops. At the center of this cavalry unit was a somewhat chubby general. He raised his visor, scrutinizing the enemy forces appearing from all directions. It was none other than Xu Wenwu.
Chapter 1048