Countermeasures

Rows of saber-and-shield troops from the State of Ji led the advance, closing in on the Qingming fortifications. The moment they entered range, gunfire suddenly erupted along the Qingming front lines, mowing down the approaching Ji soldiers in swathes as cleanly as a scythe through grass! Xiao Jingyuan's pupils narrowed sharply, his expression turning grim. He had previously tested and confirmed that the Qingming carbines possessed immense power but very short range; beyond ten zhang, both accuracy and lethality plummeted. Consequently, his prior tactics had been to advance to within twenty zhang before launching a full-speed charge. Yet he never anticipated that Qingming had fielded a new firearm. What it fired now were guardless flying swords whose accuracy and power were astounding, picking off the shieldbearers one by one from a hundred zhang away. In the blink of an eye, the shieldbearers suffered catastrophic casualties. The Dao Foundation squad captains had no choice but to rush forward to parry the flying swords and cover their men's retreat. The first wave of assault was beaten back before even penetrating within a hundred zhang, leaving thousands of corpses strewn across the battlefield. Xiao Jingyuan frowned in deep thought, racking his brains for a solution, when the hatch of a bunker on the Qingming position suddenly swung open. A light infantry cannon was unveiled and began firing at maximum rate. Shells plunged into the Ji army's formations, blowing dense ranks of soldiers skyward in clusters. The Ji army clearly lacked experience in dealing with artillery. The dharma idol generals merely stood aloft with their hands behind their backs, looking down from on high; not one stepped forward to intercept the barrage. As a result, a massive army of a million men stretching over a dozen li was thrown into disarray by a mere dozen or so infantry cannons. Seeing that things were going awry, Xiao Jingyuan personally drew his bow and nocked arrows, loosing seven at once toward different infantry cannons. The long arrows flew like lightning, landing on the cannon emplacements almost the instant they left the bowstring. Rings of frost detonated outward, instantly freezing more than a dozen artillerymen into ice sculptures and destroying the cannons. With Xiao Jingyuan setting the example, the rest of the generals understood how to respond. They displayed their respective divine skills, subjecting all manner of bunkers and strongpoints to a furious bombardment. Yet even with over a hundred dharma idols unleashing hundreds of Dao arts or firing enchanted bows and heavy crossbows, they only managed to destroy several dozen bunkers and kill a thousand men. Only then did they realize how extraordinarily resilient the Qingming bunkers were. It took a full-strength strike from a dharma idol to smash open a hatch, and the weaker among them required two or three blows. The Qingming forces were dispersed along an extensive, deep defensive line, meaning their martial aura was not concentrated, and thus its suppression of Dao arts was very limited. But Wei Yuan had long developed an alternative defensive approach: to put it simply, where martial aura was lacking, concrete made up the difference. Even for dharma idol spells, battering through three-finger-thick steel plating took considerable effort, while Dao Foundation ranged attacks were like scratching an itch against steel-reinforced concrete fortifications. Wei Yuan was simply using construction materials to exhaust the enemy's Dao power. Seeing how sturdy the Qingming fortifications were—and with at least several thousand more bunkers visible across the landscape—Xiao Jingyuan's expression darkened, an ill premonition taking root. However, the Chief Director of the Embroidered Uniform Bureau stood right behind him, staring intently. He had no choice but to wave his command banner and deploy the heavy-armored infantry bearing greatshields. These heavy shieldbearers were all at the third tier of Body Casting, and their greatshields could withstand carbine fire. They were Xiao Jingyuan's specially prepared trump card against Qingming. Xiao Jingyuan specifically ordered the heavy shieldbearers to begin their charge from a hundred zhang out, with light cavalry ready to follow behind them, followed in turn by saber-and-axemen. Sure enough, Qingming's flying sword guns failed to pierce the greatshields, allowing the shieldbearers to close within fifty zhang. But right then, high-pitched shrieks filled the sky. A deluge of mortar shells arced out from the trenches and crashed onto the forward perimeter. The heavy shieldbearers were instantly blown off their feet. Meanwhile, several li to the rear, camouflage was stripped away from multiple artillery positions as the true heavy artillery took the stage! These large-caliber shells screamed through the air, laying down a barrier of death before the position that blasted the trailing light cavalry and infantry into chaotic ruins. Concussion after concussion hammered the hearts of the Ji army; those caught closest bled from their ears, deafened if not blasted to pieces. Xiao Jingyuan's eyelid twitched at the sight. With a sweep of his broad hand, dozens of incoming shells detonated in midair. Only then did the other Ji generals awaken from their daze and leap into action to intercept the fire. Seeing this, Wei Yuan promptly ordered the heavy artillery batteries to expend another three standard loads of ammunition. He wanted to see who ran out first: Qingming's shells, or the high-level cultivators of Ji's Dao power. To the Ji generals, the bombardment seemed endless. The heavy artillery batteries were simply too far away for dharma idol spells to reach, while the Scenery Command cultivators, wary of that sinister sun, dared not act rashly. The battle fell into a stalemate. Yet plenty of shells slipped through the net, tearing through the charging Ji troops and inflicting catastrophic casualties until, without waiting for the retreat gongs, they broke and fled. A small detachment of heavy shieldbearers managed to breach the Qingming positions. They had assumed their greatshields, sabers, and battleaxes made them the kings of close-quarters combat, but the Qingming heavy infantry that surged out immediately taught them through cold hard results that shotguns were the true kings of melee. Unfortunately, the corpses of the Ji soldiers were no longer capable of pondering the lesson. In this round of assault, the Ji army left behind another thirty thousand-plus corpses. Even across such a vast front, tens of thousands of bodies sprawled across the landscape were a horrifying sight. Over ten thousand severely wounded men lay groaning on the ground, but the Ji army dared not rescue them. Qingming was still shelling relentlessly; rounds could fall anywhere on the battlefield at any second. With two failed assaults, the Ji army's morale plummeted to rock bottom. Only after exchanging a glance with the Chief Director of the Embroidered Uniform Bureau did Xiao Jingyuan order a retreat back to camp. As night fell, Xiao Jingyuan convened the army's generals to rack their brains for a way to break the enemy. Meanwhile, the Ji soldiers were startled awake time and time again; no sooner did they drift off than a tremendous explosion would jolt them upright. All through the night, Wei Yuan kept launching missiles at the Ji encampment, just as he had once used missiles to exhaust the Dao power of the Shaman Clan's Great Shamans. Yet today was unlike the past. Now that Qingming had annexed the Red Sand Oasis, its gunpowder supply was abundant, and there was no longer any need to use empty warheads. This forced the Ji dharma idols to find ways to intercept every single missile. Even so, large numbers of missiles penetrated the screen and slammed into the camp. Every detonation claimed over a hundred Ji lives. After a single night, the Ji army pulled their camp back twenty li under cover of darkness, putting seventy li between them and the Guantun front. But against missiles with a range of a thousand li, twenty extra li made no difference at all. They were bombarded just the same for another whole night, leaving the entire Ji army exhausted to the bone. In his command headquarters, Wei Yuan performed another yin-yang divination and discovered that the Ji army's two reserve forces remained stationary, showing no sign of movement. It seemed those two legions were not meant for him after all. As for the more than one million Ji troops across from him, so long as the immortals had no hidden cards up their sleeves, Wei Yuan already considered them in the bag. On the flat plains of the State of Ji, even light cavalry could not outrun a heavily armored mobile force in pursuit. Two consecutive nights of relentless missile bombardment left the Ji army, from top to bottom, utterly worn out. Xiao Jingyuan had already submitted an urgent memorial demanding that a cohort of dharma idols be dispatched to the front posthaste. On the morning of the third day, an imperial edict arrived at the camp alongside over a hundred conscripted dharma idols. Xiao Jingyuan unrolled the edict, only to find a sparse few words: "Launch the general offensive tomorrow." Xiao Jingyuan read it over and over before finally saying under the Chief Director of the Embroidered Uniform Bureau's complicated gaze, "This minister receives the decree." The following night was spent manufacturing arms and organizing assault echelons. Xiao Jingyuan chose to strike simultaneously from both north and south. At the break of dawn, soldiers who had eaten their fill and downed march wine charged toward the Qingming lines with bloodshot eyes! With the Ji army launching a general offensive, Wei Yuan held nothing back. In one stroke, he unveiled seven heavy artillery positions, firing a thousand heavy guns in unison. They forged an absolute zone of death before their lines; under the blinding hail of artillery fire, not a single Ji soldier could cross! Xiao Jingyuan watched, his face ashen, yet the Chief Director of the Embroidered Uniform Bureau remained completely unperturbed. Right then, a fiery-red gourd materialized in the sky, pouring out over a dozen soldier beans. Several crashed onto the heavy artillery positions, several plummeted into the Qingming positions along the main axis of attack, and two landed inside the newly built county seat of Guantun. Dao mist rolled out as countless gray-robed Dao soldiers surged forth, attacking in all directions. In an instant, a million Dao soldiers erupted across the Qingming positions, plunging them into chaos and silencing the heavy artillery piece by piece. Seizing the opening, the Ji grand army swept in, punching ever deeper through the lines. Right then, a gentle, deep, melodious voice resonated between heaven and earth: "The world speaks of all dharmas; thus should they be observed..."