Faced with Zhang Sheng's questioning, Wei Yuan could only patiently explain, "I pinned those charges on him deliberately, just to show contempt—and even more so to let everyone know that once you strip away that layer of skin, a so-called immortal is nothing more than that."
Zhang Sheng frowned slightly and said, "Your intention is good, but there is not a shred of subtlety. None of the refined arts—satirizing truth through falsehood, using the past to criticize the present—are present at all. How is this any different from a village bumpkin hurling insults in the street? How could such crude work come from our Tianqing Hall?"
Only then did Wei Yuan understand. He said, "That would indeed be elegant, but hardly anyone would understand it. How many cultivators are there in the world, and how many mortals? What I want is for every common mortal to understand it, so that everyone can throw a few curses his way. With enough people cursing him, Lu Changhe will be plagued by resentment, and casting off his cicada shell to escape won't be so easy anymore."
Zhang Sheng nodded at this. "That does make some sense. I recently gained insight into a sword art; I will demonstrate it for you in a moment. Even an immortal can be wounded by this sword. Though it can scratch only the surface at most, it provides an opportunity to attach karma."
Hearing this, Wei Yuan's eyes lit up immediately. If Zhang Sheng could wound an immortal with a single sword strike and attach karma, then by relying on his bond with Zhang Sheng, the hit rate of the Counter-Slay Wei Yuan unleashed with hundreds of millions of strands of mortal karmic luck would increase drastically.
Wei Yuan promptly said, "Just how extraordinary this strike is remains to be seen. I must witness it."
Zhang Sheng rolled his eyes at him in exasperation, and together they went to the residence to practice the sword art.
...
Practicing the sword art was arduous work.
...
When they flew out of the residence, the sky remained bright and fair. The sun hung high, its position virtually unchanged.
Though the sun's position hadn't changed, the date had.
Wei Yuan was thoroughly satisfied with this. Although it had cost him some regression in his Desolate Roar, wasn't the third note of Desolate Roar cultivated precisely so it could regress?
Zhang Sheng's dharma idol had also undergone tremendous changes. The ground around the Sword Tomb was constantly expanding, studded with all manner of bizarre discarded and broken swords. In the center, a continuous stretch of tomb chambers appeared, with a central great tomb rising magnificent and majestic, far surpassing the other sword tombs.
According to Zhang Sheng's speculations, an entirely new immortal sword seemed to be incubating within the central tomb chamber. However, even Zhang Sheng himself could not enter right now, so there was no way of knowing what was being conceived.
Yet what shocked Wei Yuan most was the three Lingxiao Treasure Halls floating in the sky above, inside of which sat three Daoists: an old man, a middle-aged man, and a young man. With Wei Yuan's current cultivation and discerning eye, he still could not perceive the status and nature of the three Daoists, leaving him thoroughly astounded. Just what kind of dharma idol had Zhang Sheng cultivated?
By this time, the vanguard of the Qingming Army had already crossed Hanyang Pass and would reach the border of Ganzhou in another ten days. Wei Yuan stationed himself in Qingming to take direct command.
Qingming's move shook the world, and the Western Jin court was abuzz with discussions about nothing else. Yet the ministers were overwhelmingly on Wei Yuan's side, completely disregarding the fact that Lu Changhe was actually the immortal ancestor of the Jin royal family.
However, public declarations were one thing; private attitudes were another. Many were not particularly optimistic about Qingming's prospects in this war. Their primary reasoning was that Qingming had never prohibited the sale of armor, and various factions had long confirmed that the armor Qingming sold differed little from what its own troops wore.
Furthermore, fire guns had been widely replicated, and the Lu clan's forces were also equipped with large quantities of fire guns and artillery. But fire guns and cannons had limited power; generally, only second- and third-rate troops were outfitted with them. First-line elite warriors, possessing higher cultivation, still favored traditional armaments.
An artillery position with several hundred artillerists required only a single Dao Foundation cultivator leading a dozen or so elites to charge in and slaughter everyone, smashing everything to pieces. The same went for fire guns: after firing, they required manual reloading and could generally fire only two or three volleys before elite troops charged right up to them. Once engaged at close quarters, fire gun units were mere fodder.
At this moment, five hundred thousand troops were already deployed along the Ganzhou border, with even more forces steadily pouring in, while in the rear, hundreds of thousands of new recruits were undergoing intensive training.
Although Lu Changhe held Qingming in contempt, he did not dare be careless in war preparations. He had begun total mobilization, marshaling every soldier and horse he could muster, while continuously shifting hundreds of thousands of elite northern troops southward.
The Qingming Army advanced toward Ganzhou along established routes and schedules in several columns. In the blink of an eye, the lead elements were less than a day's journey from the Ganzhou border.
On the Ganzhou front at this time, several generals gathered around a sand table in the Lu Clan Army's main camp. Gazing at the surging military advance across the map, some looked troubled, while others appeared dismissive.
A general with a curly beard declared, "Whatever weapons Qingming has, we have as well. Our grand army awaits at ease while they exhaust themselves traveling, and our walls are high and thick. We will surely leave Qingming bruised and battered!"
Beside him, an old general with graying hair shook his head and said, "We must not be careless! I hear the Qingming Army's artillery fire is fierce, and many fortified cities could not withstand a single blow. It is said he carved out a massive swath of territory over in the State of Ji."
The bearded general sneered, "We managed to get our hands on a few of the cannons Qingming uses, and they were nothing special. In recent years, we have manufactured cannons vigorously, producing several hundred of them. Moreover, the front-line fortresses have all been specially reinforced. Qingming's cannons cannot shake our walls at all, whereas our cannons can fire from within the city as they please! How can Qingming possibly win?"
The generals all found this reasonable, and the veteran general fell silent. Just then, a colonel rushed into the command tent and reported, "The Qingming vanguard has arrived and is currently pitching camp outside the city!"
"Let us go and see," the commanding general, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke.
The generals changed into the uniforms of ordinary officers and quietly ascended the city walls, only to be taken aback. Was this the Qingming Army before them? Why was it so drastically different from what they had imagined?
Ten li outside the city, dust billowed as square blocks of steel crawled forward slowly, carving deep trenches behind them. Right beneath the eyes of the Lu clan generals, the ground was gradually plowed into a web-like pattern. And behind that intricate network of trenches, large numbers of Qingming soldiers began constructing bizarre structures one after another.
Though the Lu clan's front-line generals were battle-hardened veterans—some, like the curly-bearded general, even fierce fighters transferred back from the northern frontier—they were utterly baffled at this moment. They had no idea what tricks the Qingming troops were playing; they could not recognize a single piece of the strange equipment.
The cannons inside the city were at the ready, yet not a single shot had been fired. The artillery deployed by the Lu clan on the front lines was of fairly good quality, ordinarily capable of firing seven or eight li.
When the Qingming vanguard first arrived, the garrison general on duty had immediately ordered the cannons to fire. Caught off guard, several Qingming soldiers were blown to death on the spot. But this also exposed the maximum range of the city's artillery. The Qingming vanguard consequently pulled back ten li to pitch camp, leaving the city's hundred-odd cannons completely helpless, forced to look on.
Behind the Qingming battle lines, concrete was being poured for one position after another; after a single day, these would become solid fortifications.
In just a single day, a massive and complex fortified encampment sprang up outside the pass city. Then, several giant floating airships appeared, unloading heavy cannons one after another to be assembled right on the spot.
The Lu clan generals atop the city walls possessed impressive cultivation and could naturally see clearly. When they laid eyes on those giant cannons, gleaming with a dark greenish-black sheen and boasting dimensions far beyond their imagination, every one of their faces turned ghastly pale.
One heavy cannon after another was deployed onto the freshly hardened firing positions, where specialized craftsmen began assembling them.
Next, shells were unloaded one by one from the floating airships. A logistics officer holding a ledger was checking the dimensions and models of the shells.
He carefully inspected the labels and specifications on the shell crates moved before him, then nodded. "Caliber: exactly one chi and five cun. Inspection passed. Send these shells to gun emplacements one through fifty. Send the one-chi-caliber shells to gun emplacements fifty-one through three hundred."
Four soldiers at the peak of Body Casting joined forces to lift an ammunition crate weighing nearly ten thousand jin, hauling it to the designated gun emplacement.
In this manner, massive cannon shells were steadily moved, delivered to their respective positions.
Early the next morning, a deep, sullen rumble of thunder suddenly erupted. A bloom of fire appeared from the Qingming artillery positions, and a terrifying artillery shell roared into the sky, crossing fifty li to slam into the pass fortress!
The generals atop the walls turned ashen. Among the many Dharma Idol generals present, not a single one dared intercept it!
Two hours later, the pass city was engulfed in a sea of flames, and the gateway to Ganzhou was blown wide open.
Chapter 1127