Seeing the heavy casualties, the Liao chieftain hastily pulled his warriors back. A single charge had cost him over five hundred men!
Regrouping his forces into a dispersed formation, the chieftain prepared to attack once more. He had no other choice; with every moment wasted, the likelihood of the Jin main army appearing grew greater.
During this wave of assault, the crossbowmen pressed forward without pause. Even after closing within twenty zhang, they kept advancing, laying down suppressive fire on the march.
Yet thunderous roars erupted incessantly before the breastworks, and gunsmoke billowed anew. Over a hundred crossbowmen were knocked off their feet, thrown backward as if struck by an invisible giant palm.
The Dao Foundation knights ducked as arrows skimmed overhead, stood up to fire, ducked again when shafts flew in, and resumed shooting whenever the barrage abated. Being Dao Foundation cultivators, their reflexes far exceeded those of ordinary mortals. Separated by more than a dozen zhang, they would rarely be hit unless extraordinarily unlucky.
As the Liao warriors charged again, the knights holding the line fired at maximum rate. The ten rounds of ammunition allotted to each man dwindled rapidly.
A Liao sub-chieftain surged with all his might. Relying on his mid-stage Dao Foundation cultivation, he crossed ten zhang in an instant, dropping directly over the trench.
With a ferocious snarl, he brought his saber slashing down upon the heavy-armored warrior before him! Seeing the soldier raise a steel rod to parry, he let out a savage roar and channeled thirty percent more dao power into the strike!
It was a blow of terrifying weight and force. The Liao sub-chieftain was confident he could shear the warrior and his weapon straight in two!
Saber met rod with a deafening crash. The heavy-armored warrior staggered backward, halting only when his back slammed into the far wall of the trench. Yet the Liao sub-chieftain's blade was also knocked high into the air. He had never imagined the opponent before him was also a Dao Foundation cultivator!
Though this Dao Foundation was weak, it was still Dao Foundation, far beyond what peak Body Casting could match. Casting aside his contempt, the sub-chieftain unleashed a torrential storm of slashes. His foe had to be an officer—killing an officer was worth ten foot soldiers.
Suddenly, two heavy-armored warriors from the left and right thrust their spears forward, swift and lethal. They, too, were Dao Foundation cultivators!
Besieged by three Dao Foundation foes, the sub-chieftain was overwhelmed. In the blink of an eye, a dozen bloody holes opened across his body, and he collapsed in a pool of blood. The other sub-chieftains who breached the line met the same fate, surrounded by multiple Dao Foundation opponents and slain in moments. Even so, the main body of Liao warriors surged through the barrage and poured into the trenches. The heavy-armored knights were forced into hand-to-hand combat.
When lightly armored Liao Body Casting warriors clashed in melee against heavy-armored Dao Foundation cultivators, the outcome was inevitable.
At that moment, hooves thundered like rolling stormclouds. The hundred cavalrymen Wei Yuan had held in reserve had long since mounted their steeds. Sweeping in a wide arc from the perimeter, they now crashed into the enemy's flank and rear.
Knowing all was lost, the Liao chieftain drew his precious saber. His hawkish eyes swept across the chaotic battlefield, locking instantly onto Wei Yuan. For reasons unknown, he simply found this youth intolerable to behold.
Since he was doomed to fall, killing anyone was killing—better to kill the one his heart most despised. Locking his qi onto Wei Yuan, the Liao chieftain charged straight at him.
Wei Yuan felt helpless. With so many people to choose from, why pick him out of all of them? Truly, the tallest tree in the forest attracted the wind.
Wei Yuan leveled his spear to meet the charge. Seeing him accept the fight, the Liao chieftain bellowed and swung his saber, unleashing several zhang of blood-colored blade beam that hurtled forward with the force to cleave mountains and shatter stone!
This strike was equivalent to the blow of a dharma idol, extraordinarily fierce and terrifying. The saber qi alone suppressed the surrounding knights, leaving them temporarily immobilized.
Yet a towering warrior materialized out of thin air, stepping before Wei Yuan and using his very body to intercept the blade!
As the bloody saber beam cut through, a massive diagonal wound opened across the tall warrior's body, slicing the colossal form nearly in half. Inside the wound lay a chaotic, indistinct substance—unidentifiable, but certainly neither flesh nor viscera.
A Fire-Treading Knight dharma idol flickered above the towering warrior's head, though under the array's suppression, it appeared faint and insubstantial, its remaining power negligible. Having weathered the blow, the warrior swung his two-handed horse-slaying saber and brought it cleaving down toward the Liao chieftain's skull!
Daring not treat it lightly, the Liao chieftain raised his saber in defense, actually parrying a strike that brushed against the realm of a dharma idol! By this feat alone, it was clear he was no ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator; nine times out of ten, he possessed an immortal foundation.
Wei Yuan stepped out from behind the towering warrior holding Flawless Transmigration and leveled the barrel at the Liao chieftain.
An alarm bell instantly rang in the Liao chieftain's mind; he caught a faint wisp of immortal spirit aura! Knowing the coming strike would be earth-shattering, he could spare no thought for anything else and concentrated his entire spirit on Wei Yuan.
Suddenly, an unbroken succession of roars thundered all around them. Gunsmoke instantly billowed, concealing both Wei Yuan and the Liao chieftain.
When the smoke cleared, the Liao chieftain stood frozen in place, riddled with over a dozen bloody holes.
While his full attention had been fixed on Wei Yuan, several nearby Dao Foundation knights had freed themselves, reloaded, and aimed straight at him before firing a concentrated volley.
These fire guns were calibrated to inflict harm on Dao Foundation cultivators within ten zhang. Though the Liao chieftain stood at peak late Dao Foundation, he lacked dharma artifact armor. The first seven or eight shots had blasted through his protective dao power, and the subsequent dozen had turned him into a sieve.
With their chieftain dead, the Liao force's military qi plummeted, completely suppressed by Wei Yuan. Yet the remaining Liao warriors knew death awaited them regardless, and they continued fighting with reckless abandon. At last, Wei Yuan's unit sustained casualties of its own.
One knight was accidentally dragged out of the trench, only to be buried beneath dozens of Liao warriors. Shrieks of agony rose incessantly from beneath the pile of bodies; his comrades lunged again and again with their spears, but to no avail.
A few other knights fell to close-range ambushes from heavy crossbows.
The fierce battle lasted for less than half a shichen, ending with the total annihilation of the six thousand Liao warriors.
Corpses of the Liao Clan littered the ground before and inside the entrenchments. Over two thousand had been brought down by fire guns, and over two thousand had been slain in melee combat. Another thousand or more lay behind the lines, trampled and cut down under repeated charges by the heavy cavalry.
Wei Yuan's losses amounted to over a dozen wounded and seven dead.
As the Liao Clan's military qi dispersed, a strange aura rose from many of the corpses. The moment this aura left their bodies, the dead withered and aged with alarming speed.
These peculiar auras were exceptionally faint, dissolving into nothingness almost as soon as they surfaced. But Wei Yuan had manipulated karmic luck for years; signatures bearing such distinct traces of karmic luck could not escape his eyes.
These Liao warriors had been transformed by some manner of karmic destiny secret art, which explained their sudden surge in strength. Moreover, the chieftains—from their individual prowess to their troop deployment—were by no means ordinary figures, hardly the sort to be reduced to mere quarry in a hunting ground. The reasons behind their presence here gave considerable food for thought.
Wei Yuan remembered Prince Ying's warning and had intended from the very beginning to turn a blind eye to any strange occurrences. He had not even wanted to fight this battle, but his sincere offer had been rejected.
Inside the grand hall of the field palace, Prince Cheng finally broke the silence. "Wei Yuan hides his depth well, to have brought five hundred Dao Foundation cultivators into the grounds. The Liao Clan laid deep plans this time, but their luck was poor—they ran straight into Wei Yuan. Before five hundred Dao Foundation warriors, their defeat is hardly unjust."
Xu Tongshou said, "With such military might, should Wei Yuan harbor sinister intentions..."
Prince Ying cut him off. "How long has he been in the Western Regions? These Dao Foundation cultivators were surely trained in secret by the Palace of Grand Beginning and bestowed upon him as a core retinue."
Xu Tongshou conceded, "That would explain it. We still have to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Palace of Grand Beginning in the north, so there is little need to fuss over such a trifle. It is only the rankings of this Autumn Hunt..."
The King of Jin remarked indifferently, "The pieces have entered the board; each must accept their fate. We need only watch."
The projected image remained fixed on Wei Yuan, shifting nowhere else.
At present, the forces of the Border Army and Prince Ying remained nearly intact within the grounds. Scouts dispatched by Prince Ying's unit had noticed unusual activity at the barracks in the northwest corner, prompting their main force to march over, eliminate the dozen or so Liao warriors covering the rear, and then remain idle.
The Border Army, meanwhile, continued scavenging scraps in the southwest corner.
As Wei Yuan ordered his men to clear the battlefield, he pondered the current situation. Though he had not plundered any treasure vaults, wiping out six thousand Liao warriors in one stroke meant his score could not possibly be low—a thoroughly vexing prospect.
Wei Yuan had half a mind to find a few other contingents to skirmish with, hoping to drag down his hunt assessment. Yet judging by the uniforms worn by the attacking Liao, only the units belonging to Prince Ying and the Northern Border Army remained on the field.
Wei Yuan had no real desire to fight them, nor did he have any idea where they were. In a mountainous region spanning five hundred li, where was he supposed to look?
Left with no choice, Wei Yuan could only accept reality, praying that Prince Ying and the Border Army would show some backbone and squeeze him out of the top two.
The top two finishers would both receive a share of the state fortune, though second place received far less. Yet even the smallest share was something Wei Yuan wished to avoid. To possess state fortune was to paint a target upon one's back. Once granted state fortune, should he accumulate more military achievements in the future and expand territories, that fortune would swell further—perhaps even approaching enough to claim a throne. What was that supposed to lead to?
Between Prince Ying's warning and the heads-up Zhao Tong had provided in advance, Wei Yuan naturally had no wish to wade into these murky waters, which was why he had set his heart on finishing dead last. Western Jin's state fortune stirred too much envy; it was the exclusive domain of the King of Jin's sons. Forget the three Military Commissioners—even Prince Cheng and Prince Ying would face suspicion of harboring treacherous ambitions if they claimed it.
For Wei Yuan to receive it would be utterly preposterous. Was he supposed to acknowledge the King of Jin as his adoptive father?
Chapter 322