The war in Ganzhou seemed slow on the surface, but was urgent in truth. Three vanguard legions of Qingming swept back and forth across the land, constantly searching for the Lu clan's main forces to force a decisive battle. Both sides seemed to share an unspoken understanding: within the ground battle arrays, neither fielded anyone above dharma idol cultivators as they clashed and campaigned against each other.
On the front lines, Wei Yuan made appearances now and then, whereas not a single Lu clan Scenery Command cultivator was anywhere to be seen. Anyone capable of reaching Scenery Command had once been the premier genius of their era; naturally, none among them was a fool.
Never mind Wei Yuan, whom no one could touch without meeting certain death; even the elusive Zhu Yuanjin was loathed and dreaded by gods and ghosts alike. No one wished to cross paths with such a female fiend.
Wei Yuan was in no rush to advance either. After occupying the three southern commanderies, he halted his armies for two full months, focusing entirely on consolidating the newly acquired territories and uprooting the Lu clan's influence within them.
Moreover, Wei Yuan showed no mercy. He had grand formations that detected bloodlines erected directly in the major cities across the three commanderies, herding all mortals through in batch after batch for screening. Anyone carrying Lu clan blood—especially descendants of Lu Changhe's branch—was rounded up without exception, stripped of all property, and expelled from the three commanderies, sent north to make their own way back to the Lu clan's ancestral lands.
Naturally, the screening process inevitably turned up many unexpected revelations—such as children carrying Lu blood even though neither parent had a trace of it.
Such scandals emerged in endless succession, throwing countless households into chaos and ruin in the aftermath of the screenings.
The Lu clan's territories had long been far removed from war and enjoyed peaceful living, each of the three commanderies boasting tens of millions of inhabitants. With such vast populations, screening was naturally complicated and arduous, capable of progressing only at a deliberate pace. Over the course of more than a month, twenty million people were tested, turning up a shocking one hundred thousand individuals of Lu bloodline—over ninety thousand of whom had been concealed.
Even with Qingming's unprecedented organizational efficiency, more than half the population remained untested. Furthermore, many of the three commanderies' residents were scattered across remote rural villages; completing the screening in its entirety would likely take several years.
However, Wei Yuan was unhurried. He first promulgated decrees declaring evasion of screening a grave crime. Anyone who had not undergone bloodline testing was barred from enlisting, holding office, or leasing land. If landlords were discovered concealing or failing to report such persons, they would be treated as accomplices, the lightest punishment being the confiscation of their entire family fortune.
When this policy came out, the world was stunned. After all, no one had ever treated the bloodline descendants of a living True Immortal with such raw brutality.
Yet for all their shock, the literary world remained deathly silent, with virtually no one daring to speak out.
By now, the Qingming Development Bureau had gathered unstoppable momentum. The scholars and literati it funded were legion, and under Qingming's backing, many saw their status rise continuously.
If anyone dared to stand against Qingming, the pack of hounds under the Development Bureau would swarm them immediately, slapping on all manner of trumped-up charges, heaping vitriol upon them, and giving them no peace until their reputations were utterly ruined.
Under Wei Yuan's instructions, various anecdotes concerning Lu Changhe were compiled into popular storybooks and circulated widely throughout Qingming.
When common folk first heard about a living immortal, they had been as quiet as cicadas in winter, not daring to speak a word. But Wei Yuan immediately directed large numbers of Dao Foundation cultivators to take to the streets, openly discussing Lu Changhe at the top of their lungs in alleys and thoroughfares, addressing him directly by name.
When ordinary people saw others shouting an immortal's name with blatant irreverence, they were petrified at first. But when nothing happened—let alone heavenly lightning, not even a single cloud gathered—human nature took over. Mortals loved a spectacle, so seeing others take the lead, they naturally joined the gossip. And when they talked without any lightning tribulation falling upon their heads, everyone's courage swelled instantly.
Before long, from top to bottom across Qingming, Lu Changhe's name was on everyone's lips. Whenever storybooks concerning the living immortal were released, they were instantly snapped up. Literacy in Qingming was now widespread, reaching nearly forty percent of the populace, and storybook sales surged by over a hundredfold compared to the past.
Numerous down-on-their-luck literati smelled commercial opportunity. Taking up their brushes, they penned one storybook after another, giving free rein to their wildest imaginations in pursuit of sales.
For example, one celebrated tale described the immortal taking a young, beautiful junior to the finest garment shop in the land. The immortal was naturally dripping with wealth, so with a grand wave of his hand, he commanded the maidservants to take down every single garment hanging on an entire wall and bought them all.
Another tale recounted how the immortal often traveled in disguise: whenever he spotted a beautiful woman on the street, he would stalk her all the way to a secluded spot, knock her out with a bludgeon, and commit all manner of unspeakable atrocities. Readers were beside themselves with fury, cursing as they read and reading as they cursed.
Through such tales, the common people read with relish, finding endless gossip over tea and meals. With storybooks selling like wildfire, destitute writers unexpectedly reaped vast fortunes in immortal silver. To their delight, they too could finally afford to have an entire wall of clothes taken down to give to the women they fancied.
All told, this was the very first time since the founding of Great Tang that tens of millions of mortals gossiped about a living True Immortal. The rumors grew ever more outrageous, with storybooks flying everywhere in no fewer than several hundred versions. Every wicked deed that had ever occurred in the mortal realm—and even those that hadn't had time to happen yet—had been perpetrated several times over by Lu Changhe in these tales.
Yet Wei Yuan strictly contained the spread within Qingming. Beyond its borders, anyone was strictly forbidden from discussing Lu Changhe, and no storybooks were permitted to leave. Even when discussing military affairs in the Qingming army, despite the protection of martial aura, Lu Changhe had to be referred to by codename.
This way, Wei Yuan figured that by virtue of his immortal divine abilities, Lu Changhe would hear the relentless muttering of countless people echoing in his ears day in and day out, like millions of flies buzzing all at once.
Yet with Wei Yuan holding down the fort in Qingming, supported by immortal stones and the mortal karmic luck of hundreds of millions, if Lu Changhe dared summon thunder from a clear sky like Xu Wangu once did, Wei Yuan could immediately seize the trace and retaliate across space with thunderous fury.
Moreover, while Qingming's people might not all be like dragons, they had been well-fed and well-clothed for decades; every person was sturdy and spirited, Body Casting cultivators were as numerous as cattle hairs, and forty percent were literate. Therefore, if a bolt of immortal lightning from Lu Changhe struck down a mortal here, the karmic backlash would be tens of times greater than killing ordinary mortals in the outside world.
Wei Yuan anticipated that Lu Changhe was smart enough to understand this and would have no choice but to endure it. Besides, an immortal's divine ability to listen across the three realms was innate; if shut off, he would lose his perception of danger.
Now, at least ten million people were chanting Lu Changhe's name daily. The cacophony was so deafening that it drowned out virtually all other sounds—making it functionally the same whether he closed the divine ability or not.
However, once outside Qingming, Wei Yuan's ability to retaliate would be considerably weaker, and Lu Changhe might lash out in fury.
Thus, Wei Yuan strictly forbade his people from speaking of the immortal outside Qingming, precisely out of concern that Lu Changhe might manifest lightning from the void to strike dead anyone gossiping about him in public. Wei Yuan had no intention of handing him an opportunity to assert dominance before the world.
Wei Yuan's actions naturally stirred great uproar among the immortals. After all, an immortal's prestige could brook no defilement, and many immortals—especially those of the Seven Surnames and Thirteen Great Clans—felt that an insult to one was an insult to all. Seeing Wei Yuan openly indulge mortals in slandering a True Immortal, many immortals were naturally displeased.
But Wei Yuan couldn't care less whether they were pleased or not.
In the twelfth month of the winter of the fifteenth year of Hongjing, the Qingming army concluded its two months of rest and reorganization and thrust north once more. During those two months of respite, the Lu clan had reorganized its military forces as well, dispatching seven hundred thousand elite troops to garrison four central pass cities and working day and night to overhaul defensive fortifications. Each pass city was assigned a Scenery Command cultivator to oversee its defense.
The Lu clan's defenses were undeniably formidable. Back when Xu Wangu had regained his youth and defeated Pei Tinghai, at the very peak of the Xu family's might, they had never entertained the idea of moving on Ganzhou. That was because Ganzhou's terrain was intricate and bristling with pass cities at every turn; fighting through them would be utterly impossible without several times the troops and mountains of provisions.
Yet in Wei Yuan's eyes at this moment, the Lu clan's defensive network was an absolute joke.
Before the main army even reached the gates, Wei Yuan flashed across ten thousand li in a single day, launching surprise strikes on all four pass cities. With thunderous might, he severely wounded three of the Scenery Command cultivators; only one, sensing disaster the moment he saw Wei Yuan arrive, fled immediately and managed to escape unscathed.
Then, Qingming assembled nearly two hundred Golden Pellet dharma idols into dharma idol assault regiments. Led separately by Xiaoyu, Wang Hu, Feng Tingyu, and others, they first drove off the defending dharma idols, then bombarded the pass cities with Dao arts, shattering the defensive wards with sheer brute force. In truth, the moment more than two hundred dharma idols showed themselves, most of the Lu clan dharma idols vanished; those remaining hesitated for only a few breaths before disappearing as well.
Only then did Qingming's heavy artillery carpet the ground, demolishing the pass cities, after which all the army had to do was occupy the settlements and round up prisoners.
Having absorbed the doctrines of maneuver warfare from the world beyond the heavens, Wei Yuan had turned himself into the ultimate core mobile strike force, specifically targeting enemy Scenery Command cultivators. The dharma idol assault regiments were another product of this doctrine, concentrating an unimaginable number of Golden Pellet cultivators to achieve crushing local superiority.
The Lu clan had dispersed its high-ranking cultivators in accordance with traditional siege defense doctrine, only to hand Wei Yuan the opportunity to defeat them in detail.
Even though the Lu clan had stationed nearly ten dharma idols in each pass fortress, facing a surprise assault centered on one of the Twelve Heavenly Idols and backed by two hundred Golden Pellet dharma idols, they remained utterly brittle. Whether early, middle, or late stage, any Lu clan dharma idol who ran a step too slow was turned into heavenly merit and a bestowal of heaven and earth.
With the high-level cultivators crushed, the Qingming army surged forward, consistently punching through each pass fortress in a single day before driving deep into the enemy rear, latching onto the Lu clan's main forces and wiping them out battalion by battalion.
Only now did onlookers finally understand: Wei Yuan's two-month halt had not only been to consolidate the three southern commanderies of Ganzhou, but also to bait Lu Changhe into committing massive forces to the frontline so they could be wiped out in one fell swoop.
In the end, the central defensive line that Lu Changhe considered impregnable fell to Wei Yuan in three days. Most of the seven hundred thousand troops were captured, with fewer than a hundred thousand escaping back north.
Wei Yuan maintained his previous strategy. After taking the four central commanderies, he used heavy forces to block the northern passages, bottling up the Lu clan's remnants inside the four northern commanderies of Ganzhou. Then, unhurriedly, he began resetting boundary stones, purging the Lu clan, redistributing farmland, and so forth, settling in for long-term governance.
By this point, the foundations of the Lu clan had been largely uprooted. The remaining four northern commanderies had a bitter, frigid climate, with resources insufficient to sustain the Lu clan at its present scale.
Moreover, the Lu clan's casualties had already surpassed one million soldiers, leaving its ground forces crippled. While the Lu clan still had three hundred thousand elite troops in the Northern Border, not a single soldier could be spared, for any further redeployment would leave them unable to defend against the Liao Clan.
Defending against foreign races was a matter of righteous principle. So long as Lu Changhe continued to shoulder the duty of warding off the Liao Clan, there was still room for maneuver.
Just as when Wei Yuan led Qingming to resist the Shaman Clan, many underhanded schemes across the Nine Kingdoms ground to a halt, and considerable assistance was offered both openly and covertly. Even the Xu family, with whom blood feuds had been forged, had not dared kick him while he was down too aggressively.
While Wei Yuan was focused on governing the four central commanderies of Ganzhou, an intuition suddenly stirred in his heart. A peerless beauty silently materialized not far before him. Yet for all her peerless grace, her eyes were filled with arrogance. Looking down on Wei Yuan from on high, she parted her lips and asked, "Are you Wei Yuan?"
Her voice was cool and melodious, enchanting beyond words, yet her tone was extremely rude.
Wei Yuan looked up, smiling broadly as he replied, "Senior, speaking to me like this, aren't you afraid of how awkward it will be when we meet again after I attain immortality?"
The woman froze for a moment before grasping what his words implied, and flew into a rage!
Chapter 1130