"Li Zhi really does know how to fight," Wei Yuan remarked, offering high praise after reading through the battle report. A pity Xiaoyu was not here, or he surely would have chimed in: "Only just a hair behind our Qingming."
The sand table at the center of the council hall had already been replaced with the terrain of Southern Jin, where the cultivators had just finished reviewing the recent campaign.
This battle had lasted several months. Li Zhi had committed the entire force of one hundred thousand Dao Foundation cultivators—exchanged for Zhenshan Fief—to Xiaoyaoyu, cutting the several million Qi troops in two and severing the supply lines of the two million vanguard troops ahead.
Moreover, Li Zhi had kept the operation under absolute secrecy. In the opening clashes, he held back his strength; only after suffering a bitter loss would the Qi army revise upward its estimate of the Dao Foundation cultivators stationed at Xiaoyaoyu. In the final battle, the King of Qi oversaw the assault in person, deploying three Scenery Command masters and unleashing wave after wave of attacks with an army of five hundred thousand.
Yet Li Zhi came to Xiaoyaoyu himself, single-handedly holding back the three Scenery Command masters. Then the hundred thousand Dao Foundation cultivators below surged out en masse. Of the five hundred thousand Qi elites, fewer than a hundred thousand managed to flee back. Only after that battle did the King of Qi realize that within tiny Xiaoyaoyu lay an entire force of one hundred thousand Dao Foundation cultivators!
For over a month afterward, Li Zhi remained at Xiaoyaoyu, eating and sleeping alongside his officers and men, holding fast against pincer attacks from north and south. In the south, Sun Chao'en led the generals in a counteroffensive, battering the ill-clad, ammunition-starved Qi troops into utter rout.
The Zhenshan Army's artillery fire was ferocious, the shells pouring out as if they cost nothing. So long as the mobile base was fed sufficient raw materials, it could churn out a hundred thousand shells every single day.
As the fighting wore on, the Qi army had no choice but to scale the mountains on both flanks, detouring thousands of li just to escape back north.
Only at that point did Li Zhi lead his troops in retreat, vanishing clean away overnight. An army made entirely of Dao Foundation cultivators could cover a thousand li a day on foot; the King of Qi stood no chance of catching them.
In this campaign at Xiaoyaoyu, the Qi army lost a million men, and more than twenty dharma idols fell. The concentrated fire of flying swords from the template Dao Foundation cultivators was simply terrifying—when thousands of flying swords converged at once, no dharma idol could withstand it.
Back when the grand campaign began, Duke Weiyuan of Southern Qi, confident in the toughness of his dharma body, had barged straight into the grand array the moment he arrived. Never could he have imagined that with the enhancement of mathematics, Qingming's formations were peerless in the contemporary world.
The grand array calculated automatically, coordinated its commands on its own, calculated the flaws in his protective arrays to breach them, locked onto his position, and retarded his movement with array power. Then, this middle Scenery Command master—who had already cultivated a true spirit—saw over thirty-eight thousand immortal swords shimmering with the radiance of karmic luck descending directly upon him!
Duke Weiyuan's dharma body was blown apart on the spot, his true spirit eradicated. Only a single severed head, clinging to his soul, barely managed to flee back. Though he scraped by with his life, his cultivation tumbled back down to early Scenery Command.
From then on, even after Qi brought in a replacement Scenery Command master, the three of them could merely trade blows back and forth with Li Zhi, and they fought with great hesitation. Ultimately, all three prized their own lives, whereas Li Zhi was truly reckless with his.
The battle report Li Zhi sent to Qingming stated that the Qi army had suffered a total loss of over 1.9 million troops. The Qi forces south of Xiaoyaoyu had abandoned all of their heavy armaments and supplies.
The Zhenshan Army suffered four hundred thousand casualties, and of the hundred thousand Axe Gang brawlers, a total of thirteen thousand were lost.
Not only did this campaign destroy a vast portion of Qi's main forces, but in its wake, Huai Pu began to stir restlessly once again. Song Cui had originally ceased hostilities, halting their assaults on Southern Qi, but now they began recruiting soldiers anew.
In Northern Qi, monks emerged from small temples deep in the mountains. Arriving at military camps everywhere, they donned armor, grew out their hair, and transformed into generals commanding troops.
These men were well-versed in military treatises, thoroughly familiar with military affairs to the highest degree. The atmosphere of Northern Qi's armies underwent a total transformation; they could actually press the attack and hold their ground. Though still far from the world's elite, they were no longer the feeble forces that could be bullied at will, and they were growing visibly stronger by the day.
Over the ensuing months, Li Zhi led the Zhenshan Army in a massive counteroffensive. Yet an invisible boundary seemed to lie before him: he refused to step foot into the dozen-odd commanderies surrounding the royal capital, keeping his focus solely on hunting down the Qi army.
This time, the King of Qi finally tasted what Huai Pu had felt back then, understanding what it was like to face an army that would not break no matter how hard it was hit. Moreover, this army possessed abundant spirit and steel alike; its sole shortcoming was its limited numbers. Yet as the war went on, its ranks were steadily swelling.
For the Zhenshan Army, this was hardly a question that needed answering. Their own king stood right on the front lines; if he had not retreated, who would have the gall to fall back? Thus, as long as Li Zhi's banner remained flying, every last man fought to the death without giving an inch.
Gradually, the Qi troops realized that Li Zhi would not pursue them once they fled near the Southern Jin royal capital. Consequently, more and more defeated Qi soldiers gathered around Jin's capital. These vanquished troops had originally been arrogant, battle-hardened soldiers whose discipline was far from stellar to begin with; after their recent defeat, they became even more dissolute and unrestrained, causing untold misery across Southern Jin.
On this day, a detachment of Qi soldiers emerged from a ransacked town, dragging along dozens of young women with insatiable cruelty, only to run headlong into a Southern Jin army unit.
The Qi commander was taken aback. Offhandedly, he lashed his riding whip across the face of the Southern Jin general and cursed, "Out of the way, you dead pig!"
With a sharp crack, the whip struck the Southern Jin general's face, leaving behind a deep, bloody welt.
The Qi commander froze for a moment, caught off guard that the Southern Jin general had neither dodged nor flinched. An unexplainable twinge of panic seized him, yet Qi troops had long grown accustomed to running rampant in Southern Jin, treating it like their private garden, and his pride would not let him back down.
Just as he opened his mouth to shout another curse, a flash of blade-light erupted, and his head flew into the sky. Then the main body of the Jin army swarmed forward, not only slaughtering every single Qi soldier, but hacking their corpses to pieces.
On that very day, Huai Pu issued a formal edict to the King of Qi, declaring that the War for the Imperial Selection had yet to be settled, and giving the Qi army three days to withdraw from Jin lands before they resumed battle.
In truth, the edict had barely reached the King of Qi's hands when the Jin army launched a full-scale counteroffensive, attacking Qi forces across dozens of fronts. Chaos erupted through the Qi ranks, and only through the desperate protection of his Imperial Guards was the King of Qi able to flee Southern Jin.
When he reached the border, an elite Jin force was lying in ambush, on the verge of capturing the King of Qi alive. At last, the Venerable Master intervened, driving back Duke Yansheng with a single strike and wounding Elder Mr. Gu, allowing the King of Qi to escape Southern Jin.
The realm fell into chaos once more.
Yet though the Qi army had suffered heavy losses, its civil ministers and military commanders remained intact. After retreating ten thousand li in disarray, they laid an ambush, annihilating over a hundred thousand pursuing Southern Jin soldiers in one stroke and finally stabilizing their footing.
Subsequently, the King of Qi mobilized his entire nation, marshaling all of its armed might. Furthermore, he executed Duke Huien's entire clan, hung their corpses from the city gates for public display, and then boiled the duke's head into soup before sending it to Li Zhi.
Li Zhi buried the pot of soup, then carried on fighting as though nothing had happened. How he had fought before was how he fought now, as if Duke Huien had never died.
Yet the hundred thousand Dao Foundation cultivators who had shocked the world at Xiaoyaoyu never appeared again after that battle. With Li Zhi holding this trump card in reserve, the entire realm grew uneasy, everyone speculating where this piece would fall on the board.
Thus the turbulent times continued, yet the landscape had completely shifted. Having endured decades of warfare, the common folk suffered beyond measure, their hearts yearning for peace. New Tang and New Song were already exhausted, while Li Zhi remained entrenched in his corner, gnawing off territory mouthful by mouthful, carefully cultivating each piece he seized. His contention for the world resembled an old farmer clearing wasteland.
Amid such turmoil, a single day felt like a year to the common folk. In the eyes of high cultivators, however, a single day in heaven was three years on earth.
On this day, Wei Yuan awoke from his meditation and looked toward the southwest. Today, Xiaoyu's True Fire of the Great Sun World had reached perfection, and he was about to merge it with the Zhenshan boundary stone, taking that crucial step forward.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, three more years had passed.
Chapter 1488