Out on the plains, Ji Liuli checked the glow of the feng shui formation in her hand and said to the several hundred men behind her, "There is an encampment ahead. What you need to do is charge in, kill anyone you see, set fire to whatever provisions you find, and run the moment they react. I will be waiting right here. As long as I see smoke and you make it back alive, you will officially be members of the domain guard! Go!"
Though their cultivation was not particularly high, every one of these hundreds of men bore a ferocious look. Receiving the order, they scattered immediately, employing their various methods to sneak toward the distant camp. A moment later, war cries erupted and flames leapt into the sky. Several hundred men stormed the encampment, cutting down anyone in sight and hurling oil jars from their waists, setting blazes wherever they landed.
The defending troops in the camp were a step late to react before pouring out of their tents to counterattack. Well-trained and well-equipped, they quickly cut down swaths of the intruders. Seeing the battle turn against them, the raiders whistled sharply and turned on their heels to flee.
Wang Ziyan emerged from the central command tent, shocked and furious, taking flight straight into the sky. Looking down, he saw the raiders already fleeing in disarray after suffering a head-on blow.
Swooping down from midair, Wang Ziyan swept a great hand, knocking unconscious a dozen or so who were slow on their feet. By then, more than half of the several hundred men who had stormed the camp were dead, with only a hundred or so escaping.
Wang Ziyan ordered the survivors rounded up for immediate interrogation. He could not fathom how the perimeter outposts had failed to react, allowing such a rabble to raid the camp.
Fierce though the raiders were, there were few tough bones among them; under interrogation, they confessed everything at once.
They had originally been mounted bandits and thieves, recruited by the Qingming Domain only a few days prior, abruptly transformed into regular domain troops and even bestowed the unit designation of the Loyal and Brave Battalion.
Today, domain superiors had dispatched them to raid the camp, promising rewards upon a successful return. These bandits made a living with their heads on the line anyway, so without caring who was in the camp, they had simply charged in to slaughter and burn.
Wang Ziyan cursed the Palace of Grand Beginning for being sly and treacherous—challenging them openly to a duel, while secretly sending men to raid their camp behind their backs.
Fortunately, Xu Xinhui had made proper arrangements by leaving Wang Ziyan to guard the camp, preventing substantial losses. Still, this Qingming Domain truly was nothing to take seriously, using freshly recast bandits as regular troops. But on second thought, it made sense: what strength could a newly established domain have when its supply lines had been cut off?
***
Atop the isolated peak.
Xu Xinhui was drenched in blood, fire spitting from his eyes as he glared fixedly at Wei Yuan. Above his head, the immortal sword Shaohao circled and wailed incessantly, the flames along its blade almost completely snuffed out, leaving only a faint flicker of gold and red.
Wei Yuan was likewise battered and bruised all over, many of his wounds charred black, his grip on the eight-foot long saber trembling slightly.
The two had battled for half a day, and by now, both were nearly running on empty.
Wei Yuan had to admit that Xu Xinhui was truly difficult to fight. Though both were at late Dao Foundation, tying several of that Liao Clan young master together would not have been enough to face Xu Xinhui. Though only a single rank separated an immortal foundation from a Heaven Foundation, that gap could be as vast as heaven and earth.
Xu Xinhui possessed profound cultivation, consummate Dao arts, unyielding resolve, and transcendent swordsmanship, with no weaknesses whatsoever. Even with his immortal sword's power drastically reduced, he remained a formidable and respectable adversary. Wei Yuan had found no opportunity for tricks or shortcuts; he could only trade blow for blow, grinding away in head-on clashes, pitting wound against wound and Dao power against Dao power, fighting bit by bit until this moment.
With only a final ember left, the immortal sword Shaohao plummeted from the sky. Catching the sword, Xu Xinhui uttered several bitter shouts of "Good!", hissing with resentment, "Consider this my loss this time. Guard your nest well! You won't have such good luck next time."
Xu Xinhui soared into the sky and vanished into the distance.
Wei Yuan did not give chase, watching him depart instead. Only after Xu Xinhui's figure vanished beyond the horizon did Wei Yuan flex his body. The blood across his frame flowed back into his veins, and his wounds knit together rapidly; in the blink of an eye, he was mostly healed.
***
Before Xu Xinhui even reached the camp, he spotted several plumes of smoke from afar. Alarmed, he sped back to find Wang Ziyan coming out to greet him.
Seeing Xu Xinhui, Wang Ziyan fumed with rage and cursed, "Those bastards from the Palace of Grand Beginning calculated that you weren't here, Big Brother, and actually sneaked over to raid our camp! Fortunately, they were just a rabble of former bandits. We lost twenty-odd men, killed over a hundred of theirs, and captured more than a hundred. I already interrogated them: the domain currently has an army of over three thousand, but more than half are ordinary mortals who've never cultivated, people with no past training at all. Why don't we just march over and wipe them out?"
Xu Xinhui remained silent. Only then did Wang Ziyan notice his elder brother's odd expression and asked, "What is it? Did they break their word and gang up on you?"
Xu Xinhui sighed and gave a bitter smile. "No, it was indeed a one-on-one duel. It's just that the world there had been altered by the Shamans, sealing away the immortal sword."
Wang Ziyan was struck dumb.
***
Half a day later, Wei Yuan returned to the domain's main peak and convened everyone from the Palace of Grand Beginning for a council.
The moment Ji Liuli saw him, she asked, "Are your wounds severe? Do you need me to treat you again?"
Wei Yuan hastily replied, "No need to trouble Eldest Senior Sister, they're already healed!"
Even before returning to the domain, Wei Yuan's injuries had nearly recovered. Once inside the domain, with the blessing of Jia Wood Life-Mystic, a mere half-hour would see him fully restored.
Ji Liuli smiled. "That must have been hard on you, fighting him for so long."
Wei Yuan felt helpless at the thought. In combat, his style was always bold, forceful, and overwhelming, crushing enemies head-on and rarely taking long. But Xu Xinhui was stubborn as a mule, devoid of flaws, and refused to yield, dragging out a war of attrition with Wei Yuan for half a day.
To avoid alerting the enemy, Wei Yuan could not use his thousand-odd Dao Foundations, could not use firearms, could not use the immortal laurel branch, could not use karmic luck, could not call upon Ji Liuli or Bao Yun, and could not rely on Master. In the end, he had to borrow Feng Tingyu's method—taking two sword strikes to land one saber slash—hacking back and forth with Xu Xinhui for several hours before finally chasing the man off.
Xu Xinhui held a delicate identity: both a son of the Xu family and an elite disciple of the Sword Palace. Killing him was out of the question; doing so would require a proper pretext, one Wei Yuan had yet to conceive.
In this expedition west, Xu Xinhui had brought not only a thousand elite clan soldiers, but also four thousand auxiliary troops. Bao Yun had uncovered all of this yesterday, even pinpointing the location where the auxiliaries had pitched their main camp.
Therefore, after conferring yesterday, everyone had unanimously agreed that Xu Xinhui was likely a vanguard dispatched by the Xu family to probe them, and a larger force was bound to follow.
Wei Yuan had also urgently requested information from Xu Jingfeng. Though not exhaustive, it contained vital details such as his age, background, cultivation level, and post, along with an overview of his character.
Piecing all the intelligence together, Wei Yuan combed through historical records and found quite a few templates resembling Xu Xinnian. Elite disciples of immortal sects like Xu Xinhui—born into privilege and making a name for themselves early on—who spent years leading clan troops yet were only entrusted with five thousand men to probe the enemy, clearly possessed mediocre military command abilities. Otherwise, never having lacked opportunities in their early years, they would have achieved fame long ago and been commanding grand armies.
Bao Yun, for instance, had commanded a massive battle of tens of thousands in the northern frontier, wiping out more than ten thousand of the Liao barbarians' main force in a single stroke.
Furthermore, being a sword cultivator, his temperament was naturally stubborn and obsessive, prone to fixating on minutiae and taking pride in it.
Thus, after much deliberation, Wei Yuan decided to feign weakness, intentionally exposing a portion of his cards to the other side—such as sealing the immortal sword.
With his immortal sword sealed, Xu Xinhui could not personally lead troops to assault the domain. If he could not act, Wang Ziyan leading troops alone would be suicidal. And as long as they did not breach the domain, they would never uncover its true strength.
Yet Wei Yuan still wanted Xu Xinhui to glean some intelligence about the domain—only what Wei Yuan wished him to know, of course. The method was to convey it through subtle details.
Hence, Wei Yuan sent a batch of freshly co-opted bandits to launch a sneak attack on Xu Xinhui's camp, resulting in the expected crushing defeat, with only a hundred or so escaping back.
The three-thousand-strong city defense force into which these bandits had been inducted truly existed, and most of this defense force were indeed ordinary mortals, not even considered robust among their peers. From top to bottom, everyone in this defense force, including the residents of Yong'an City, believed that aside from a few Exalted Immortals, they were the domain's sole army.
The only memories those bandits sent on the raid possessed were of lax discipline, lack of training, comrades who were almost entirely mortals, inadequate gear without even enough wooden spears to go around, and commanders who were Exalted Immortals barely ever seen.
This was hardly surprising; any domain established for merely a month was bound to be like this unless supported by troops from a great family. Other fledgling domains could not even afford to sustain an army of three thousand.
This was precisely the information Wei Yuan wanted Xu Xinhui to draw out through interrogation piece by piece, assembling on his own the exact picture Wei Yuan intended for him to see. Intelligence pieced together from fine details in such a manner was always particularly captivating and irresistible.
The true main force of Qingming at this time was in fact eight thousand Body Casting cultivators, who had already been relocated separately to another military camp, cordoned off from Yong'an City. To the east, west, and north, Yong'an was now a restricted zone where mortals were forbidden to enter or leave, preventing leaks.
Under the empowerment of Ephemeral Multitude, five thousand of these eight thousand cultivators could instantly reach the caliber of the Nine Armies of Great Tang, while another thousand could bridge the Dao Foundation chasm, standing only slightly weaker than the young masters and mistresses had been when they first arrived in the Western Regions.
Chapter 175