In the study of the commandery governor's estate, Yuan Qingyan stared at an official dispatch, his hands trembling more and more until he slammed his palm heavily onto the desk, smashing the yellow rosewood furniture into splinters across the floor.
"Wei Yuan, that little thief, has gone too far!" Yuan Qingyan ground his teeth hard enough to throw sparks. He stormed out of the study and headed straight for the administrative yamen in the front courtyard, shouting, "Assemble all officers! I want to see them within the burn of an incense stick!"
A short while later, the commandery's officers were fully assembled in the reception hall, with General Xu still at their head.
Yuan Qingyan passed the dispatch around among the officers and declared, "Wei Yuan has colluded with scoundrels to actually kidnap my family in the imperial capital! This feud cannot rest under the same sky! Muster your troops at once and march as the vanguard to attack the domain. I will depart immediately for the prefectural seat to demand that Governor Chen and Commander Yue mobilize their forces. The main army will follow shortly! General Xu shall command this campaign. Gentlemen, avenge this insult for me!"
Having read the dispatch, General Xu said, "With our commandery's current military strength, taking the domain will likely prove difficult. We must reconcentrate the forces dispersed among the various military redoubts. Reinforcements will also be crucial; without Commander Yue's Northern Border Army, relying on us alone will probably not suffice."
"The main army will arrive in the blink of an eye!" With that, Yuan Qingyan rose, stepped out of the hall, and vanished in an instant. He truly left without delaying a single moment.
General Xu sat in silence for a moment before rising. "Muster the men," he said.
A colonel whispered, "With nothing more than a mask, can we really be sure it was the Heaven-Battling Gang? Besides, why would the Heaven-Battling Gang run all the way to the capital?"
General Xu snorted. "Out of all the families of provincial officials in the capital, they left everyone else untouched and kidnapped only Lord Yuan's family—even leaving behind a mask. Wasn't that done precisely out of fear that we wouldn't know it was the work of the Heaven-Battling Gang?"
The colonel drew a sharp breath. "Able to abduct people in the capital itself... they have such vast power? This band of outlaws has grown too formidable. They cannot be allowed to remain!"
General Xu glanced at him with a faint, wry smile. "Do you think he wouldn't know we're coming to attack? By now, he must have prepared long ago and is waiting for us."
"Then what should we do? Do we attack or not?"
General Xu said flatly, "Of course we attack! If we don't test their mettle ourselves, how will we know how to deal with them in the future? Commander Yue likely thinks the same."
***
In the prefectural seat of Anzhao Commandery.
Chen Dao sat in the high seat, flanked by officials high and low from across the prefecture. Sun Chao'en and Li Weisheng had also rushed over from their garrison posts. Every official possessed cultivation, so traveling a thousand li was a matter of barely half a day.
Yuan Qingyan sat among the civil officials, placed after Li Weisheng but before another commandery governor. Chen Dao concurrently served as the governor of Anzhao Commandery.
Chen Dao said slowly, "Outlaws run rampant, and Grand Academician Li of the Hanlin Academy is incensed. He specifically sent a letter urging us to restore local order and exterminate the bandit scourge. If any of you have thoughts on the matter, speak your mind."
Yuan Qingyan shot to his feet, his voice shrill and fierce. "Wives and concubines can be remarried if lost, and children can be sired again! If those scoundrels think they can threaten me with my family, they are deluding themselves! As everyone knows, the Heaven-Battling Gang's lair lies in the Qingming Domain. We should gather the grand army this very instant, strike at their heart with thunderous momentum, slaughter every last brigand, and bring me justice!"
Sun Chao'en stood up and asked, "Lord Chen, may I ask if this matter has been submitted for royal ears and memorialized before the King?"
Chen Dao replied, "Not yet. Grand Academician Li wrote to me as a private entreaty."
Sun Chao'en's question was loaded with subtext. The officials were all seasoned veterans of the bureaucracy; hearing this, they understood immediately that the affair had not yet reached the level of royal review. Yet mobilizing a major army was a grave matter—moving troops privately without royal decree bordered on treason.
The officials' enthusiasm instantly cooled by seventy or eighty percent. None of them had harbored much goodwill toward Yuan Qingyan to begin with; earlier, they had merely felt a touch of sorrow for a fallen peer.
Sun Chao'en continued, "Although the Heaven-Battling Gang is exceedingly brazen, to date there is no direct evidence proving they originate from the Qingming Domain."
Yuan Qingyan flew into a rage. "This is an obvious fact! Anyone who isn't blind can see it clear as day!"
Sun Chao'en kept his head bowed, speaking unhurriedly: "What this subordinate wishes to say is that aside from a few masks that could be obtained anywhere, we possess no physical evidence whatsoever. Moreover, up to this point, not a single brigand from the Heaven-Battling Gang has been captured."
A chill ran through the officials' hearts. Not a single outlaw had been captured because the Heaven-Battling Gang was invincible—they only captured others, never the other way around!
Yuan Qingyan's brows bristled, and he barked, "Sun Chao'en! You bolster the enemy's spirits and crush the court's prestige—what are your true motives? Could it be that you, too, are an accomplice of the Heaven-Battling Gang?"
Sun Chao'en waved his hands in haste. "This subordinate holds humble office and little influence; I merely spoke a few extra words in the moment. I cannot bear so monstrous an accusation as being an accomplice to outlaws. Since Lord Yuan disapproves, this subordinate will simply hold his tongue."
Li Weisheng let out a cold snort and drawled, "What formidable authority Lord Yuan displays! To brand someone an outlaw's accomplice so casually, as if by fiat. For Lord Yuan not to head the Ministry of Justice is truly a waste of talent."
Yuan Qingyan had not expected Li Weisheng to speak up on Sun Chao'en's behalf, nor so bluntly. Li Weisheng was nothing like Sun Chao'en; shielded by a colossal patron like the Left Prime Minister, his backing ran deep.
His face turning ashen, Yuan Qingyan sat down and spoke no more.
Though Yuan had seated himself, Li Weisheng had no intention of letting the matter drop. He added, "Mounted bandits run rampant across the territory under my jurisdiction, throwing the locale into utter turmoil. Of those bands, the hardest to deal with is the Heaven-Battling Gang. Over this affair, none of you gentlemen refrained from memorializing impeachments against me. I had always wondered where such a formidable band of mounted bandits came from; they could hardly have fallen from the heavens, could they? Only upon hearing Lord Yuan's words today did I learn that they originated from the domain. It appears Lord Yuan knew about this all along."
The officials wore varied expressions, lost in thought. Of those seated, only one person had the idle leisure to submit memorials impeaching Li Weisheng.
Li Weisheng's words carried deep undertones as well. Why would mounted bandits bypass the grass right beside their den and ride a thousand li away to stir up trouble across Bianning Commandery? And why was Yuan Qingyan's domain calm and peaceful while bandits ran rampant under Li Weisheng?
Some officials couldn't help but wonder: could this kidnapping have happened because the spoils weren't shared equally?
Chen Dao coughed lightly and said in a heavy voice, "Regardless of the connection between the Heaven-Battling Gang and the domain, the domain currently exists outside the law—that much is a fact. I have already consulted Commander Yue. At the very least, we must make him understand that under the whole heaven, every spot is the sovereign's ground."
With the resolution settled, the officials dispersed.
Chen Dao walked slowly back to his study, accompanied by a young scholar. The man was Chen Dao's student and aide, having made the special journey from within Western Jin's passes to serve his teacher and gain practical experience.
With no one around on their way back, the young scholar said indignantly, "That Sun Chao'en is truly blind to the room. You already stated that Grand Academician Li wrote to you, yet he still jumped out to spout all that nonsense."
Chen Dao sighed. "You are still too young. Sun Chao'en is a formidable character, nowhere near as simple as you think. Today's matter could go left or right. Left goes without saying; there was ample groundwork laid for it. But for turning right, there was none. If I wished to lean left, I needed only to ignore Sun Chao'en. But if I wished to lean right, then out of so many officials, he alone provided me a way out."
The young scholar reflected carefully before realization dawned upon him.
"It is just a pity he has no background whatsoever," Chen Dao muttered, shaking his head as he entered his study.
***
Inside the domain, Wei Yuan watched a line of youths don freshly forged plate armor. Their movements were still a bit awkward, but fortunately, numerous cultivators were on hand to guide them, and the plate armor was easy to put on. Before long, they were all fully suited up. The thousands of boys and girls before Wei Yuan instantly transformed into an elite army clad in heavy armor.
Next, the cultivators distributed steel-tube guns to them, though the guns were not loaded with gunpowder or projectiles.
Moments later, the youths were divided into dozens of companies, a hundred to a squad, while cultivators explained the operation and principles of the steel-tube guns.
A faint rumble echoed in the distance—gunfire coming from the newly established firing range. One group of youths cleared wasteland and farmed, another trained in armor, a third practiced martial arts and shooting, while the fourth cultivated Body Casting, the four groups rotating in shifts.
With the seeds Xu Su had delivered, Wei Yuan cleared another twenty thousand mu of fields. After some thought, however, he devoted all the new land to growing grain. Although the domain did not lack food at present, the past trauma of nearly having to eat Shaman corpses made Wei Yuan believe that the more grain, the better. Until grain was so plentiful that it had to be brewed into liquor, Wei Yuan would never feel they had enough.
Wei Yuan had pushed the training of this batch of youths with particular urgency, placing equipment and marksmanship on the schedule far earlier than he had previously planned.
Just then, Cui Yu hurried over and said, "The equipment for my clan's men has all been distributed. Their training has been fairly obedient lately; the few who mouthed off, I strung up and whipped. But those bows you issued them are meant for Dao Foundation cultivators—they'll exhaust their strength after drawing them three times at most."
Wei Yuan said, "They are meant for them. When the time comes, with the empowerment of Ephemeral Multitude and Outlaw of Heaven and Earth, they won't have any trouble using them. Didn't the Old Matron tell us to look after them a bit so not too many die? Making them archers is just right; they can trade shots with the enemy from afar."
Cui Yu said, "What archer wears red armor? That's far too conspicuous!"
Wei Yuan chuckled. "The whole point is to let the enemy know they're archers. Otherwise, what if they refuse to trade shots with us?"
Cui Yu had considered this question long ago, but after calculating the casualty rate of trading volleys, he found it completely acceptable and said no more on the subject.
Looking at the youths training in full swing, however, he frowned and asked, "Isn't it a bit early to train them like this? They've barely cultivated at all—are they already going onto the battlefield?"
Wei Yuan replied, "Not early at all. A major battle is coming soon. If not for their need to sleep and rest, I would have them train twelve shichen a day."
At the mention of war, Cui Yu's spirits lifted. "Another major battle? Who are we fighting?"
Wei Yuan said, "This time, we will likely face Yue Jinshan's Northern Border Army and clash with his world-renowned Northern Border Iron Cavalry. When that time comes, these youths will be the prime candidates to counter the cavalry."
"Fight Western Jin? Isn't that coming a bit fast?"
Wei Yuan shook his head. "To Western Jin, we are currently a thorn in their back, a bone stuck in their throat. As long as the Shamans make no moves, they will want to move against us. This isn't a question of whether we want to fight. Only after fighting a battle can everyone sit down and talk, and only then will they know how to negotiate."
Cui Yu drew a deep breath. "Clashing with Yue Jinshan, huh? Looks like I'll have to go back and drill those little bastards from my clan properly!"
Wei Yuan smiled faintly. "Go on. Once this battle is over, we will be able to speak with them properly from a position of strength."
Chapter 300