"Dig the trenches like this. If a blood curse descends, take cover in another section. As long as we draw the Wuyu Clan into the trench network, we can neutralize their advantages. What we need right now is to stall for time. As long as we aren't crushed by their first wave, we'll have a chance!"
Both Yun Feifei and Xu Wan'er felt there were some flaws with this plan. What if the Wuyu Clan refused to enter the trenches? Couldn't they just stand up top and fight? But before either of them could voice their doubts, Wei Yuan said, "It's decided! Get to work!"
Since Wei Yuan had already made up his mind, Yun Feifei and Xu Wan'er carried out the order despite their confusion—perhaps an esteemed cultivator from the Palace of Grand Beginning had his own profound reasoning.
Following Wei Yuan's instructions, they assembled all the guards who had surrendered and assigned tasks to each of them. The dozens of cultivators were equally baffled by the order, but thinking that an esteemed cultivator from the Palace of Grand Beginning surely had his reasons, they obediently set to work digging ditches.
Wei Yuan took a look at Xu Wenwu's build and abandoned the thought of sending him to dig. "Stay here and think it over some more. See if you can come up with anything useful."
Flattered by the unexpected regard, Xu Wenwu hurriedly sat down to rack his brains.
Wei Yuan rose into the air. Nearly a hundred cultivators were scattered across the area, digging with all their might, not even the Dao Foundation cultivators exempt. Neither Yun Feifei nor Xu Wan'er spared their Dao power; with every Dao art cast, roughly a square zhang of earth and stone was blasted clear.
Ordinary warriors of the Wuyu Clan moved like the wind, agile and nimble, and in swamps they could even skim right over the water. Their greatest strengths lay in curses and poison arts, not physical brawn. Drawing them into trenches would curtail their speed and force them into close-quarters melee within confined spaces. That was the reasoning Wei Yuan had used to convince the two women.
In truth, there was another reason: Wei Yuan had realized he could no longer leave the guards idle. He had to keep them occupied. These men had initially followed him out of a surge of hot blood and sheer intimidation, but some were already wavering, reminded of the Xu family's vast influence and terrifying methods. Groups of three to five had begun whispering amongst themselves, discussing how to flee.
Wei Yuan needed to give them something to do immediately so they wouldn't have time for stray thoughts. At the very least, he had to lash them to his war chariot first. Fortunately, under the effects of Jia Wood Life-Mystic, their recovery speed was heightened, allowing them to endure digging far longer than usual.
Wei Yuan called Yun Feifei over again, instructing her to make a circuit of the surrounding towns to warn them of the approaching Wuyu Clan army. She was to bring back anyone with cultivation to bolster their defenses, while those without cultivation should scatter into the mountains and forests to hide until the Wuyu army retreated.
Without lingering for a moment, Yun Feifei flew off. Two hours later, she returned with over a hundred cultivators, astonishingly including a dozen or so at the Dao Foundation realm. Though all were merely at the Earth Tier of Mortal Foundation—none even at the middle stage—it was still a force of respectable size.
According to Yun Feifei, several hundred more Body Casting cultivators who had attained preliminary success were on their way. Unable to fly and not as swift as those who had reached the great success stage of Body Casting, they would be trickling in gradually.
She reported that upon hearing a cultivator from the Palace of Grand Beginning had stepped forward, boldly planted a boundary stone, and reopened the domain, the common folk of the nearby towns had wept tears of joy and spread the word from house to house. Countless people had clamored to help defend the position. However, the Wuyu Clan's blood curses were far too lethal to ordinary mortals, so Yun Feifei had refused them and selected only those with accomplishments in Body Casting.
With these reinforcements, Wei Yuan felt somewhat more confident.
Over the next few hours, cultivators continued to arrive in waves. Yun Feifei and Xu Wan'er organized them into squads and put them to work digging trenches as well. After hours of unceasing excavation, ten lines of trenches had formed across the ground like a colossal spiderweb. Yun Feifei appointed a captain and vice-captain for each squad, then assigned them their initial battle sectors.
Taking advantage of this lull, Wei Yuan communed closely with Qingming.
A boundary stone's transformation of heaven and earth was not accomplished in an instant; it spread gradually outward in all directions from the stone until reaching its limit. An ordinary boundary stone could expand by half a li a day, whereas Qingming expanded by ten li.
A thought struck Wei Yuan, and he willed Qingming to retract its domain. Sure enough, the surrounding toxic miasma and humidity surged back, returning the area to how it had been before Qingming was planted. Wei Yuan then expanded the domain once more, and this time the transformation of heaven and earth was far swifter; in under a quarter of an hour, the area had turned back into a clear domain of the mortal world.
Meanwhile, Wei Yuan was not idle in his sea of consciousness. He shaped piece after piece of stone into flying swords, lining them up around the jade mountain. After a few hours, he had molded over a hundred flying swords. Wei Yuan felt a twinge of regret: his letter to Xiaoyu had been too conservative. He should have written: "With my Dao Foundation newly formed, I possess a hundred immortal swords. Dare you come behold them?"
While preparations were still underway, a plume of beacon smoke suddenly rose in the distance. It was the warning system Yun Feifei had set up. Small contingents of Wuyu forces might slip through, but a large army could never infiltrate undetected and was bound to trigger the alarm.
The smoke had risen two hundred li away. Wei Yuan communed with Qingming to retract the domain, and moments later, this stretch of heaven and earth was once more swallowed by damp, toxic mist. By now, several hundred cultivators stood ready in their respective positions, their faces bearing both nervous tension and the passionate resolve of men ready to embrace death.
Many among them had no expectation of victory. They simply knew they had no way out, and since someone had planted a boundary stone, they might as well fight to take the enemy down with them!
Wei Yuan stood atop high ground, flanked by a dozen chosen cultivators. All of them possessed powerful physiques, capable of donning heavy armor to charge enemy formations. Beside Wei Yuan stood a horse: crimson across its entire body, save for mixed patches of white and teal at its four hooves. Standing nearly a zhang tall, it was exceptionally magnificent and muscular.
This horse had originally belonged to Xu Wenwu, but on two consecutive occasions, small traces of the fortune Wei Yuan funneled into him had not been retrieved, noticeably bolstering the steed. By now, it had become an extraordinary specimen among mortal horses, looking thoroughly imposing. Needing a mount to charge enemy lines, Wei Yuan had claimed it.
Across the distant horizon, a vast expanse of dark clouds rolled forward, an underlying bloody glow gleaming through them—the telltale sign of the Wuyu Clan army's arrival. Beside him, a middle-aged man gazed toward the blood clouds, his expression grave. "Judging by those clouds, at least ten thousand Wuyu have come, and there's a Great Shaman!"
Another man sneered, "What, scared?"
The middle-aged man flew into a rage. "Who standing here right now isn't ready to die? Your words are utter nonsense!"
The other man's expression turned solemn. "Then I misjudged you, Dao Brother. My apologies."
The middle-aged man snorted. "No need for that. Why don't we see who kills more shortly!"
In the blink of an eye, the dark clouds drew near. Beneath them stretched the shadowy, menacing host of the Wuyu Clan. At the center of the army stood a massive platform, its upper tier bearing a grand throne where a Great Shaman shrouded entirely in black robes sat. Flanking him were dozens of shamans and generals, each wreathed in swirls of bloody aura. At the four corners of the platform rose four towering fire pillars, the braziers atop them burning with ghostly green flames that continuously hurled intangible things into the sky.
The Great Shaman looked toward the nearby ruins of Lanshen Palace and saw a stream of clear qi spiraling upward. Faint as it was, it was locked in a grueling struggle against the surrounding dark green vapors.
Furious, the Great Shaman said, "They truly did plant a boundary stone—what insolence! But it was only just planted and has not yet formed a boundary domain. Plenty of robust sacrifices are hidden there. Go, drag them all back to me! Once this battle ends, I will immediately offer sacrifices to the heavens!"
The Great Shaman's voice was low and raspy, accompanied by bursts of hissing like countless insects rubbing their wings together. At his command, the four-thousand-strong vanguard of the Wuyu army surged forward, crashing recklessly into Lanshen Palace's former grounds like a swarm of insects crawling across the earth.
Bizarrely shaped Wuyu warriors sprinted at full speed, faster than galloping steeds. As the front rank drew near the trenches, they leaped into the air in succession, charging straight into the human positions.
Chapter 119