Use Mine

Wei Yuan still could not hold back, and activated Ephemeral Multitude for the northwestern city a third time. The subterranean tunnels crisscrossed in every direction, and enemies continually attacked from all angles. For reasons unknown, those originally feeble folk had suddenly grown exceptionally formidable, their strength more than doubled and their speed twice as fast. In their hands were many short rods sputtering with sparks. Caught entirely off guard, many Shaman warriors died in an instant, without ever knowing how they had perished. Ten breaths of Ephemeral Multitude reduced the more than three thousand Shaman warriors who had charged underground to just five hundred. Silently, Wei Yuan drew out a mask and donned it. Bao Yun appeared beside him and asked, "What's the matter?" Wei Yuan took a deep breath. "I made the wrong call. I couldn't use the lives of over ten thousand people just to add a sliver of an edge to my own victory. Even if that chance was negligible, as a commander I shouldn't have let it slip." Bao Yun gave a sudden smile. "Since the chance was negligible, letting it go is no great loss. A true commander never splits hairs like that." She drew a mask from her robes, handed it to Wei Yuan, and said, "That mask of yours is too ugly. Use mine." Wei Yuan instinctively took the mask, only then realizing it had not come from the cartload bought last time, but was her personal one. The mask looked serene, mysterious, and carrying a hint of charm, with faint specks of starlight drifting across its skin-like surface. Compared to his own silver ghost mask, this one was indeed exquisitely beautiful, though Wei Yuan felt that wearing it made him look a little too feminine. Without hesitation, he switched to Bao Yun's mask, acting with a decisiveness that caught even her slightly by surprise. By this point, the Shaman army had reached the center of the domain. Even as they advanced, they were shifting into an offensive formation. The entire transition was smooth and practiced, with formidable cavalry patrolling both flanks, denying their adversary the slightest opening. The main hall where Qingming was housed offered no natural barriers to defend, so Wei Yuan had deployed his ten thousand main troops here, while the remaining two thousand lay in ambush on the flank. Wei Yuan himself led two hundred riders positioned against the mountain peak, waiting to see just how much importance the enemy commander placed on him. The Shaman general stood atop a high platform, beating the war drum with heavy force. Each thunderous beat seemed to strike directly at everyone's chest, leaving their heartbeats to instinctively fall into rhythm with the drums. Once the Shaman formation was fully drawn up, the Shaman general let out a roar that resounded through heaven and earth. Following his cry, rolling billows of green qi surged from every Shaman warrior, knitting together into an expansive sheet that resisted the eroding pressure of the clear domain. At this moment, the green qi above the Shaman phalanxes hung as dense as physical matter, shielding every warrior within. At Qingming's rate of erosion, it would likely take hours to burn it all away. Such was the strength of the Shaman elite—even inside a top-tier clear domain like Qingming, they could rampage for hours on end without suffering any weakening. On the high platform, the battle shaman struck the military drum once more, this time in an unhurried cadence. Tens of thousands of Shaman soldiers stepped forward in time with the beat. Every stride made the earth tremble, and the clattering crunch of their march struck the soul like an avalanche or a tidal wave! Though Wei Yuan's ten thousand main troops had trained the longest, in truth they had not even logged enough time to match the basic recruit training mandated by Great Tang military regulations. Facing several times their number rolling toward them like a collapsing mountain, many of the men had already turned ash-pale. A few veterans began howling like beasts to mask the terror deep in their hearts. Had the ranks not been packed so tightly together, some might have already turned and fled. Tens of thousands of Shaman troops advanced in uniform lockstep, the green qi above their heads having coalesced into a hundred-foot wall of vapor that bore down gradually alongside their march. Behind Wei Yuan, Wang Yu's eyes suddenly flared with countless bloodshot veins. Rolling tears faintly tinged with red streamed down his cheeks as he cried, "They have too many Dao Foundations! We can't win—there's no way we can win!" *It seems I really am not a qualified commander...* Wei Yuan leveled his spear forward. "There are only a thousand cavalry ahead of us. I'll charge first. You just watch!" Spurring his steed alone, man and horse moving as one, Wei Yuan charged toward the thousand-rider detachment before him! These Shaman riders did not mount poisonous monitors, but rather camel-sheep native to the Northern Territories. Coldly gleaming iron spikes were studded across the beasts' massive, curved horns. Standing tall and broad, the camel-sheep were not in the least inferior to warhorses, and the riders atop them were all powerfully built and clad in heavy armor, clearly far beyond what venomous lizard riders could compare to. Wei Yuan moved at blinding speed, closing the distance to the cavalry in the blink of an eye. Leaping from his saddle, a platinum radiance flared along his spear. Wei Yuan swung the spear downward from midair, the platinum light surging exponentially into a waterfall of radiance several dozen yards across that slammed savagely into the center of the squadron. Caught in its direct path, more than a dozen riders collapsed and died without uttering a sound. Against the entire squadron, a dozen casualties was negligible. Yet the green qi that had bound the cavalry as one was split in two, and its connection to the main army was severed. The green qi remaining over the thousand riders had been cut by more than half. On the high platform, the Shaman general missed a beat on the drum, shocked beyond measure. That was a cavalry force that roamed the northern frontier and could go toe-to-toe with the elite Liao horsemen—not some ragtag rabble! Did this not mean that the unified momentum of a thousand-man cavalry unit could be shattered by this man in just two strikes?! He could not even recall which Great Shaman was capable of such a feat. Wei Yuan plunged straight through the breach in the cavalry. His spear blazed with flames, trailing a long platinum tail of fire as he hurled himself toward the main Shaman battle array. The unified momentum of the tens of thousands in the Shaman main formation stood like a towering green mountain, while Wei Yuan was like a platinum meteor crashing headlong into it. A corner of the mountain collapsed! After driving dozens of yards into the array, Wei Yuan could push no further, so he wheeled his horse around. The surrounding Shaman warriors immediately swarmed in, refusing to grant him room to build up speed. Wei Yuan hoisted his spear high and smashed it violently into the earth. Instantly, countless rays of platinum light erupted from the ground across dozens of feet, melting the green qi away like snow before fire. Every Shaman soldier touched by it burned as though engulfed in an inferno, faint platinum flames catching across their bodies. Catching this fire seemed to bring excruciating agony; even Shaman warriors fortified by curses and indifferent to pain collapsed, thrashing on the ground in torment. That corner of the formation instantly dissolved into chaos, and Wei Yuan seized the opening to fight his way out. Cutting once more through the cavalry, who had not yet managed to reform their lines, he returned to the foot of the main peak. The moment Wei Yuan returned, Wang Yu blurted out, "Seventeen wounds." Wei Yuan paused, only now beginning to feel the pain. Sweeping his divine sense across himself, he saw a dozen arrows protruding from his back and legs like the quills of a hedgehog. He had no idea when or how the Shamans had even shot them. Adding the few lacerations on his thighs, it came to seventeen wounds in total. That fellow's Yin Eye was formidable indeed. Xu Yi suddenly remarked, "What a wonderful fragrance!" Only then did a faint scent of sweet osmanthus drift into Wei Yuan's nose. Glancing at the faint platinum flame still flickering at the tip of his spear, he understood that his Dao power had picked up a trace of the immortal laurel branch's aura. An immortal relic was truly an immortal relic; having caught merely a wisp of its presence, the might of his Dao arts had undergone a qualitative leap. Seizing upon the momentary disarray within the Shaman battle array, Wei Yuan immediately barked the order to engage, and his ten thousand main troops began marching forward.