The envoy slunk off in disgrace. Li Zhi led several generals into the council hall.
Surveying the battered cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning, Li Zhi gave a wry smile and said, "I burned through two substitute puppets in a row before realizing something terrible had happened here, so I led my troops over to see for myself. It seems the Karma Great Curse was just as harsh on all of you. Worthy Brother Wei... he... he..."
Li Zhi trailed off.
Standing atop the main peak, he gradually sensed that Qingming Domain had fallen lifeless and grim; less than a tenth of its domain power remained.
This meant the Domain Lord's connection to the boundary stone had been severed entirely. The boundary stone had entered a dormant state, and before long, the domain would slowly recede until it returned to its most primitive state. For Qingming, the domain would contract to roughly a hundred li.
Li Zhi's voice choked with emotion. Now a Domain Lord in his own right, he naturally knew what this sign meant: Wei Yuan had fallen.
Making no effort to hide his grief, Li Zhi wiped the tears from his face, gritted his teeth, and said, "My worthy brother departed so suddenly that he probably left no final words. But knowing him, he would rather feed Qingming to the dogs than ever let it fall into the hands of the Xu family! There is little I can do to help him now, but at the very least, I will fight this battle against the Xu family first!"
The cultivators chimed in, "As it should be!"
"Good!" Li Zhi turned to a dharma idol cultivator behind him and ordered, "Return to our domain right now and mobilize another five thousand light cavalry! Move quickly!"
"That will leave only two thousand guards in our domain."
"Never mind that for now. Once this battle is won, I will return." The dharma idol cultivator nodded, turned, and sped away in the blink of an eye.
Li Zhi said, "I brought twenty thousand elites with me this time. With the five thousand light cavalry to follow, that makes twenty-five thousand in all. Forgive my presumption, but I have some modest experience in commanding troops. How about I direct this battle?"
The cultivators of the Palace of Grand Beginning conferred briefly and raised no objections.
In the previous great battle against the Xu family, everyone had witnessed Li Zhi's military prowess firsthand. While he had not commanded the spotlight quite like Wei Yuan, he was still capable of defeating superior numbers with fewer troops. With just five thousand light cavalry, he had successively routed enemy forces several times his size, breached a major camp, and captured tens of thousands of laborers.
When it came to leading armies and fighting wars, the cultivators knew they could not match Li Zhi. Warfare was not a duel of spells; high cultivation alone did not make one a commander. Seeing that no one objected, Li Zhi turned to Cui Yu. "How many soldiers remain in the domain, and what units do we have?"
Over the past several days, heedless of his weakened condition, Cui Yu had traversed the entire domain to take stock of their losses and available forces. Had Li Zhi not arrived, he had planned to lead the troops into a fight to the death against the Xu family on his own.
Cui Yu immediately answered, "Under the Karma Great Curse, over fifty thousand people perished across the domain. Although Body Casting cultivators had stronger resistance, their karmic bonds with the Domain Lord ran deeper, resulting in heavy casualties—eight thousand died. Of the newly drilled elite divisions totaling ten thousand, only seven thousand remain. Of the twenty thousand trained standing troops, sixteen thousand remain. The remaining deaths were one thousand peasant soldiers."
Li Zhi froze in astonishment. "So many died?! Their bonds were truly that deep?!"
Li Zhi considered himself an upright commander who balanced leniency with discipline, following the righteous path of kingly rule. Even though his elite troops had followed him far longer than these men had followed Wei Yuan, he asked himself honestly: if the Karma Great Curse had struck his own head, how many would have died by association?
Li Zhi figured it would not even be a hundred.
How had that barbarian Wei Yuan won over so many hearts?
Collecting his thoughts, Li Zhi spread a map across the table and began laying out deployments. "The Xu family's army is vast, but they suffered heavy losses among their elites last time, and their ranks are now diluted with imperial regular troops, making them bloated and unrefined. I predict their movements will be sluggish and inflexible. Therefore, we will use Xuanwei Three as our fulcrum, stationing heavy defenses there to withstand their initial waves. My Southern Qi elites will be deployed on the flank. When the time comes, our light cavalry will cut their supply lines first, and our elite shock troops will strike their rear flank. We will have a real chance at victory."
The cultivators could think of no better alternative, so Li Zhi began positioning the domain's remaining forces across the battle lines according to their numbers and disposition.
As Cui Yu and the other commanders committed the formation diagrams to memory and prepared to deploy, a cultivator came rushing in frantically. "Disaster! The Xu family envoys have all been slain!"
The cultivators were shocked. Cui Yu asked, "What happened? Who killed them?"
"I did." The door opened, and Bao Yun stepped inside.
Cui Yu could scarcely believe his eyes. "Why are you here? Would your family even permit you to leave?"
Bao Yun replied, "There was a price."
Cui Yu understood and pressed no further.
Looking at his former rival from the grand examination, Li Zhi wore a complicated expression. He sighed, "When two armies clash, envoys are spared. He was merely an insignificant Dao Foundation cultivator. Even if you slaughtered the entire delegation, what purpose does it serve?"
Bao Yun replied, "I slaughtered every single person in the delegation!"
Li Zhi was left speechless, unsure of what to say.
Bao Yun walked over to the map, examined the defensive plan, and asked Li Zhi, "This is your strategy?"
"It is."
"This plan won't do. The odds are even at best."
Bao Yun did not mince words. Li Zhi felt a flash of irritation, but looking at her slightly weary face, he suddenly glimpsed a surging torrent of immense sorrow beneath her calm facade.
Bao Yun said quietly, "You don't mind if I take command, do you?"
Li Zhi hesitated, but ultimately spread his hands, indicating she could do as she pleased.
After asking Cui Yu for the exact headcount of the domain's remaining forces, Bao Yun stood before the map, cleared away the existing markers, and said, "I slaughtered the entire delegation, hung their corpses along the border of the domain, and had their severed heads paraded through every city in the domain for one reason: to let everyone know this is a blood feud of life and death. Either they die, or we perish. There is no room for reconciliation."
Li Zhi opened his mouth, but in the end said nothing.
Bao Yun pointed directly in front of the advancing Xu family army. "Establish a defensive line here. Senior Brother Cui will hold it with five thousand men, forming mutually supporting horns with Xuanwei Three. These five thousand troops need not be excessively strong nor too weak—middling will suffice. When only two thousand remain, you may retreat. But by the time you fall back to this point, no more than five hundred must be left alive."
Cui Yu froze. "You are sending us to our deaths?"
"Not to throw your lives away—to die in battle," Bao Yun said evenly.
"With Senior Brother Cui's desperate stand, and with these men staging a genuine rout to lure the enemy, the Xu family will be convinced that the domain has reached the end of its rope and all its elites have been wiped out. They will surely drive deep into our territory. Once they pursue for several tens of li, their army will inevitably fall into utter disarray. All you need to do is draw fifty thousand of them into here."
The spot Bao Yun indicated was a flat valley surrounded by hills several tens of zhang high, barely suitable for an ambush. She divided the Xu family youths into left and right flanks to lie in wait here, ready to launch a pincer attack once the Xu army entered the trap.
Finally, Bao Yun said to Li Zhi, "When the time comes, Brother Li, lead your Southern Qi shock troops and strike where the Xu family's private retainers meet the imperial regulars. Pay no heed to anything else—cut straight through toward their line of retreat, then establish a defensive line at the border of the domain to prevent their army from escaping. The five thousand light cavalry will sweep around the flank into their rear to cut their supply lines, but make sure they see the cavalry's movements."
Li Zhi nodded.
"Then everyone to your posts. The decisive battle begins the day after tomorrow!"
Upon learning that the delegation had been slaughtered down to the last man and their headless corpses hung up for public display, the commander-in-chief of the Xu family was beside himself with fury. He marched his army straight forward, clashing outside Xuanwei Three with Cui Yu, who had fortified the ground for a stand.
Though the disparity in numbers was vast, the two sides slaughtered each other for nearly an entire day. Every cultivator from the Palace of Grand Beginning joined the fray; although Old Daoist Chuhe was their sole dharma idol cultivator, he severely wounded three dharma idol elders of the Xu family. Near dusk, Cui Yu suffered grievous wounds and had no choice but to lead his battered remnants in retreat. By then, the enemy had already left thirty thousand corpses before the fortifications!
After the battle, the Xu family commander counted four thousand corpses of domain warriors across the battlefield. Eighty percent of the defenders led by Cui Yu had fallen here.
Even the Xu army's commander-in-chief felt a chill down his spine. He ordered a lavish burial for all the Qingming warriors, then personally led his main force in pursuit of Cui Yu, driving straight toward the heart of the domain. By nightfall, the vanguard entered the ambush zone, while the center army was still ten li behind, and the rear army trailed fifty li in the distance.
Forty thousand youths charged forth from both flanks, advancing steadily with guns in hand. The tongues of fire erupting from their muzzles lit the entire battlefield bright as day. In the very instant of contact, the Xu family vanguard suffered catastrophic casualties, and the army crumbled into immediate rout.
Pressed by the forty thousand youths advancing steadily, the routed vanguard surged back into the center army. Right at that moment, Li Zhi led his Southern Qi shock troops into the fray, ripping the enemy forces into two.
This invincible elite contingent had no appetite for lingering combat, driving straight toward the rear. Now every soldier in the Xu army knew their retreat was about to be cut off. Colliding with their own routed soldiers, they descended into instant pandemonium, and countless men took advantage of the darkness to flee for their lives.
Just then, the seven thousand elites trained by Wei Yuan and Li Zhi's five thousand light cavalry swept in from both flanks, flanking and cutting down the enemy until corpses blanketed the wilderness.
High in the firmament, a plump, fair-skinned Daoist grew incandescent with rage upon seeing the army below collapse. He raised a magic treasure. Just then, a calm, steady voice sounded beside him: "The affairs of the juniors are best left untouched by the likes of us."
The Daoist whipped his head around, only to see a refined cultivator clad in silver robes watching him with a faint, enigmatic smile. The Daoist's expression instantly turned grave. "Bao Manshan! Our clans have always stood as one—surely you haven't sided with the Palace of Grand Beginning?!"
Bao Manshan chuckled. "You exaggerate. It is merely that a junior in our clan harbors an obsession in her heart, and as elders, we naturally cannot sit by and watch her Dao path be obstructed."
"My Xu family's scions below are suffering catastrophic slaughter. I must intervene!"
Bao Manshan said with a mocking half-smile, "I believe it would be best if you didn't. If you were to disrupt Yun'er's Dao heart, things might get rather messy. Besides, the youth of your Xu family aren't worth much anyway. If they die, can't you just breed more?"
The plump Daoist grew agitated. "I will only rescue members of my Xu family! It will not affect your junior's Dao path!"
Bao Manshan's face suddenly darkened, his voice turning chillingly cold. "Brother Daoist Tie, if fewer of your people die down there, it will affect Yun'er's Dao path! Have I made myself clear enough? Or is it that Bao has not drawn his blade much in recent years, and now even you dare withhold face from me?"
The plump Daoist's expression flickered erratically. But seeing the killing intent burning ever fiercer in Bao Manshan's eyes, he ultimately gritted his teeth. "Our Immortal Ancestor will surely demand an explanation for this!"
Bao Manshan let out a hearty laugh. "Then you had better ask your venerable ancestor to come soon! In ten more years, when my Bao family's second Immortal Monarch arises, we will not be nearly as accommodating as we are today!"
The plump Daoist snorted and turned away to depart.
Bao Manshan shook his head and sighed. "Faint of heart after all. How fast he runs! Fellow Daoist Zhu, you may come out."
A woman in red emerged from the void and said, "He is suspicious by nature and would certainly suspect that the two of us had joined hands. It is only natural that he fled."
Bao Manshan looked the red-robed woman up and down, then remarked, "When the Karma Great Curse struck, there was no way you could have escaped it. I am very curious now: just how badly are you wounded?"
Zhu Yuanjin replied, "Why not strike and find out?"
Bao Manshan looked tempted, but in the end he did not make a move. Right at that moment, an explosive shout rang out from behind Zhu Yuanjin: "Then let me try!"
Tie had doubled back in secret, concealing himself nearby. The moment he struck, he unleashed his full might, going straight for a fatal blow!
Light flared across the heavens, and blood showered the sky!
Leaving a long trail of blood in his wake, True Monarch Tie fled in the blink of an eye, his agonized roars rumbling like thunder along the way. Zhu Yuanjin slid a gleaming dagger into her sleeve.
Bao Manshan chuckled and shook his head. "That fellow truly isn't the sharpest. Wouldn't it occur to him that after sitting in the Shattered Lands for so long, how could you lack the means to deceive heavenly secrets? For you to fool the Karma Great Curse was hardly impossible."
"My thanks to you as well for playing along, Fellow Daoist."
Bao Manshan gazed down below and said, "I only did it for the sake of the girl Yun. After this, whatever karmic affinity she had with you will be severed."
"As it should be."
Bao Manshan suddenly smiled and said, "If that kid Wei Yuan is still alive, tell him that if he wants to renew these past ties, he can make a trip to the Bao family. At the very least, I won't make things difficult for him."
Chapter 361