Ever since its founding, the Northern Mountain Gate had sat on the front line of the battlefield. Over time, more than one Immortal Monarch and numerous True Monarchs had passed away in meditation here before it expanded to its present scale.
This place had always been a thorn in the side of the Liao Clan. Over thousands of years, the two sides had waged countless battles of life and death, and innumerable cultivators and Liao tribesmen had laid their bones here.
The Northern Mountain Gate featured many unique institutions, such as Dao soldiers and War Daoists.
To become a War Daoist, one had to be skilled not only in magical combat, but also in troop maneuvers, battle formations, battlefield offense and defense, and even weaponry, ordnance, army maintenance, and grain stockpiling. On top of that, one needed at least a working knowledge of smithing, artifact forging, and alchemy. All such diverse crafts were oriented around battlefield slaughter, differing markedly in content from general scholarship.
Take battlefield medicine, for instance. For an identical blade wound, the Hall of Xuanming would meticulously cleanse the laceration, purge residual dharmic power, mend flesh and meridians, and finally regenerate skin and bone. Battlefield medicine, by contrast, meant shoving a fistful of medicinal powder violently into the wound to pack it shut and halt the bleeding first. If the blood still didn't stop, one simply crammed another bandage inside.
Dao soldiers could be regarded as the Palace of Grand Beginning's private army. They prized quality over quantity, and virtually every one possessed several specialized Dao arts. At present, twenty thousand Dao soldiers were garrisoned at the Northern Mountain Gate, with even the lowliest foot soldier having achieved great completion in Body Casting.
Beyond them, the Northern Mountain Gate also maintained three hundred thousand elite troops and nearly a million militiamen. Only with a million-strong host stationed here, supplemented by countless high-level cultivators, could they survive against the tidal onslaughts of the Liao Clan time and again.
Xuan Tongzi had gritted his teeth and drawn fifty men from the reserve Dao soldiers to hand over to Wei Yuan, laying down clear merit point criteria. Added to the fifty Dao soldiers already stationed in the military redoubt, that made a total of one hundred Dao soldiers. Merit points were to be earned on a one-for-one basis—meaning that only by slaying Liao forces equivalent to one hundred Dao soldiers would he break even on the investment.
Late at night, a large detachment of Liao cavalry arrived under the cover of darkness, heavy arrows howling as they plunged into the military redoubt.
The architecture of the Northern Mountain Gate's redoubts differed from that of Western Jin. The walls were not tall but thick, and most interior structures were built semi-subterranean, their roofs paved with iron-clad timbers that had no fear of heavy arrows falling from the sky.
The forces under the Palace of Grand Beginning were small in number but formidable in combat, unfazed by engaging the Liao cavalry on foot. If the Liao cavalry dismounted, vaulted over the walls, and entered for street fighting, they would walk right into their hands.
Facing the Liao cavalry, Wei Yuan dispatched three Dao Foundation warriors to trade shots with them, picking off rider after rider. Leaving behind several dozen corpses, the probing detachment of Liao cavalry retreated, and no further stir came for the rest of the night.
This would not do. Wei Yuan grew somewhat anxious.
He had only seven days in total. Now a day had slipped by in the blink of an eye, and he had killed merely several dozen common soldiers—how could such a record suffice? Thus, throughout the entire daylight hours, Wei Yuan set the several hundred soldiers in the redoubt to digging fortifications, extending trench after trench like a spreading spiderweb.
Then Wei Yuan ordered the garrisons of the redoubts on his left and right flanks to pull back, leaving his own redoubt isolated at the very front line. He then hoisted a grand banner bearing words in the Liao script that paid colorful regards to the female ancestors of Myriarch Canglei's family.
At first, the Liao Clan made no move. But on the fourth day, two thousand-man contingents suddenly appeared, seizing the sites of the two vacated redoubts and cutting off Wei Yuan's retreat. Soon, over ten thousand Liao troops completely surrounded Wei Yuan's redoubt. At this point, the garrison inside numbered barely a thousand men, with only thirty at the Dao Foundation level.
As usual, the first assault was a sky-blotting barrage of heavy arrows that pinned the defenders down so hard they could scarcely raise their heads. Immediately after, several hundred elite Liao cavalry charged almost on the heels of the arrow rain, coordinating seamlessly—truly a race naturally adept at mounted archery.
These elite riders were master horsemen; their Liao horses bounded nimbly, leaping across trench after trench. Directly before them, however, several square boxes suddenly rose. Amid rumbling roars, countless flying swords sprayed out in a fan-shaped volley, riddling the foremost row of cavalry like sieves. Dao soldiers then emerged from the flanking trenches, reaping the lives of the Liao riders from the sides with heavy crossbows.
Enraged, the Liao commander immediately dispatched a thousand-man contingent to reinforce them. In response, several Dao soldier captains on both flanks leveled flying-sword guns and let loose a sweeping volley. This was a batch of flying-sword guns Wei Yuan had rushed to manufacture specifically for this defense. The flying swords were only seven inches long, packing just enough power to wound a Dao Foundation cultivator, but for Body Casting cultivators, they were thoroughly lethal.
These guns required virtually no training; the dozen or so Dao soldier captains could wield them effectively with only the briefest pointers. Guiding the flying swords with their divine sense, they struck with complete accuracy within a hundred fathoms. The flying swords themselves had also undergone adjustments for this batch: upon firing, half the propulsion relied on pre-stored Dao power, while the other half drew upon the wielder's own Dao power.
Having fought the Liao Clan for many years, these Dao soldier captains knew their enemy's vulnerabilities intimately. Every flying sword targeted not the riders, but the horses, instantly bogging down the second wave of reinforcements in a morass of chaos.
The Liao commander had never expected his foe to be so ferocious; before even catching a clear glimpse of the enemy, he had already lost several hundred cavalrymen. He immediately committed two more thousand-man contingents to attack the left and right flanks. Wei Yuan pulled the Dao soldiers back from the flanks, relying instead on the fortifications of the redoubt to wage a grueling battle of attrition.
This was Wei Yuan's first time fighting the Liao Clan as a commander. He deployed his forces with patient deliberation. Whenever a critical juncture arose, he unleashed the three Dao Foundation warriors, alternating between flying-sword guns, the Water Blade Art, or charging directly into hand-to-hand combat. In this manner, he repelled assault after assault, never once resorting to dharma-idol-level combat strength from start to finish.
The slaughter raged through the night. Having left nearly two thousand corpses before the lines, the commander could finally endure it no longer and dispatched three chiliarchs for the first time. However, the three chiliarchs were intercepted respectively by Xuan Tongzi, Wei Yuan, and another Perfected Person from the Palace of Grand Beginning. The two sides clashed in midair, their fight raising heavenly thunder to stir earthly fire.
The Palace of Grand Beginning held the advantage of terrain, while the Liao chiliarchs were bolstered by military qi, leaving the two sides evenly matched. Seeing the battle deadlocked, the Liao commander sent out two more chiliarchs.
Seeing reinforcements arrive, the Liao chiliarchs locked in battle were greatly heartened and began attacking with reckless abandon. The chiliarch battling Wei Yuan, noticing that Wei Yuan was merely at the great perfection of Dao Foundation, pressed his attack with even greater ferocity, striking downward with a bolt of lightning. Yet Wei Yuan neither dodged nor parried, taking the lightning strike head-on!
When the lightning faded, Wei Yuan was merely slightly scorched. But to either side behind the chiliarch, a scholar and a tall warrior materialized, each clutching a rotary sword-cannon.
Lifting the Crimson Night Immortal-Slaying Sword, Wei Yuan drew upon the immortal sword's might, using a strike of Beginning of a Thousand Autumns to freeze the chiliarch in place. Immediately after, a torrent of flying swords submerged the chiliarch. The two dragon guards bombarded him with sword-cannons in one hand while swinging greatswords with the other in a wild frenzy, slaying the chiliarch in moments.
The two reinforcing chiliarchs were pinned down tightly by Xuan Tongzi and the other True Person of the Dharma Idol realm, unable to render aid. With the fall of this chiliarch, the Liao forces finally retreated, and the curtain fell on the great battle.
In this engagement, the Liao Clan left behind three thousand corpses and one chiliarch, while Wei Yuan's casualties were under two hundred. Inspecting the bodies after the battle revealed that most of the Liao had been slain by flying swords from Dao Foundation cultivators, with fewer than twenty percent having fallen to bows and crossbows.
Over the next two days, the Liao Clan's activity diminished drastically. Left with virtually nothing to do, Wei Yuan even passed the time by observing the layout of the Liao military encampment.
This time, no matter how Wei Yuan provoked them, the Liao Clan held their ground strictly and refused to offer battle. Outside the sector Wei Yuan defended, however, fierce attacks occurred repeatedly.
Yet whenever Wei Yuan rushed over to reinforce those areas, the Liao forces ceased their activity again. After being dragged back and forth like this several times, Wei Yuan grew vigilant. He realized the Liao Clan was not genuinely afraid of him, but rather trying to lure him out of position to find an opening and hunt him down in one fell swoop.
The enemy Liao commander was truly astute and calculating. Having suffered a minor loss, he adapted his tactics immediately, denying Wei Yuan any further opportunities to exploit. Wei Yuan, meanwhile, did not dare step beyond the perimeter of the mountain gate. He reckoned that the moment he ventured out, that woman cloaked in lightning would descend from the sky at once.
Amid this stalemate, word arrived on the seventh day that True Monarch Xuanyue had emerged from seclusion and summoned Wei Yuan.
When they met again, True Monarch Xuanyue remained ethereal and peerlessly elegant, mist curling softly at the tips of his long eyebrows. At the sight of Wei Yuan, True Monarch Xuanyue could not help rising and walking over, scrutinizing him from head to toe before saying, "Good, good, good! It is enough that you returned!"
Noticing a pale fire burning unceasingly deep within True Monarch Xuanyue's pupils, Wei Yuan asked hurriedly, "Patriarch, that flame is..."
True Monarch Xuanyue chuckled. "What else could it be but that little trouble you stirred up? Back then, this old man took the initiative to provoke him, and that Heavenly Shaman didn't hold back either, hitting me with quite a vicious blow. Still, if he thinks a flame like this can burn this old man to death, he's got another think coming!"
Wei Yuan understood then that True Monarch Xuanyue had absorbed a substantial portion of the Karma Great Curse's might; otherwise, Wei Yuan might not have withstood it back then.
Wei Yuan then said, "This disciple earned some more heavenly merits this time, which can be exchanged for merit points or immortal silver. I was wondering whether I should repay a portion of the immortal silver I owe. I need you, Elder Patriarch, to decide on this matter."
True Monarch Xuanyue laughed. "You're a filial child! Having heavenly merits is a good thing. How many new heavenly merits did you get this time? Let this old man take a look... Hmm... Hmm?!!"
Both of True Monarch Xuanyue's long eyebrows flew upward as he cried in astonishment, "Did you slay some old monster?"
Converting heavenly merits to merit points and then to immortal silver would yield around a thousand liang. Even with the intense fighting currently inflating all kinds of merit points and significantly reducing the immortal silver conversion rate, it still amounted to a thousand liang.
Slaying an ordinary True Monarch yielded a mere five thousand heavenly merits. Wei Yuan had gained ten thousand new heavenly merits—had he killed two early-stage True Monarchs, or brought down some mid-stage old monster?
Wei Yuan said, "I killed a few dharma idols, one of whom seemed rather formidable." He then gave a concise account of what had transpired.
True Monarch Xuanyue inquired about a few details before declaring, "Good, very good! You may not know this, but killing a genius dharma idol like Longying is actually more useful than slaying two early-stage True Monarchs! The palace's heavenly merit system still has some flaws in that regard. You performed a great service for the palace this time, and that old geezer Danming wasn't foolish after all—he knew enough to grant an additional reward.
"Keep the heavenly merits you earned yourself and use them for your own needs. The heavenly merits awarded by that old geezer Danming can be handed over to our hall for repairs. Otherwise, having the main hall perpetually collapsed doesn't look good."
"Sky Azure Hall collapsed?" Wei Yuan was taken aback.
"Back then, to block that Karma Great Curse, I drew a bit too heavily on the hall's karmic luck, so it collapsed. No matter; if it's down, we'll just rebuild it." True Monarch Xuanyue genuinely did not seem to care in the slightest.
True Monarch Xuanyue took another careful look at Wei Yuan and was suddenly startled again. "You've already achieved great completion in Spirit Nourishing?"
Wei Yuan replied, "I devoured some blood qi and dharma idols, and my cultivation made a breakthrough."
True Monarch Xuanyue's expression tightened, turning uncharacteristically solemn. "How did you devour them? Tell me in detail."
Seeing True Monarch Xuanyue's gravity, Wei Yuan did not dare withhold anything. He gave a thorough account of everything related to the True Dragon scion, leaving out only what had passed between himself and Zhang Sheng.
True Monarch Xuanyue examined Wei Yuan's body with painstaking care, then looked into his sea of consciousness. However, when True Monarch Xuanyue sent his divine sense inside, he was exceedingly cautious and scrupulous. He looked neither at the full moon nor at Maiden Yin-Yang, registering only a flash of surprise upon seeing the tens of thousands of mortals before withdrawing.
Chapter 376