For this battle, Wei Yuan mustered an army of fifty thousand—claiming two hundred thousand—and marched with sweeping momentum toward Zhao's new domain.
The vanguard consisted of a thousand light cavalry, led by a man whose face bristled with needle-sharp stubble. Appointed in the hour of need, he had only transferred his brothers from the Heaven-Extinguishing Gang into the Qingming Army three days prior. Once this battle was over, he would probably return to his old trade.
The man was at perfected Dao Foundation. Leading the cavalry at an easy trot, he called out as they marched, "Our job this trip is simple: pick a fight! We know this business inside and out. Watch me and follow my lead in a bit. Stay sharp—hear me?"
"Understood!" A band of men fierce as wolves and tigers roared in unison from atop their galloping mounts.
The cavalry soon reached the edge of the Zhao domain. The stubble-faced man pulled out an embroidered pouch, opened it, and retrieved a slip of paper. After reading it thoroughly, he channeled Dao power to burn it to ashes and said, "The Domain Lord has already taught us how to stir up trouble; I don't even have to rack my own brains. Brothers, follow me!"
Iron hooves thundered as they rode into the gentle landscape of the Bishui domain.
With their sizable numbers, the cavalry had already formed military qi. The moment they charged into the domain, their presence was detected. Augmented by warning beacon smoke, over a thousand light cavalry rushed out in the blink of an eye to bar their path.
A captain of the Zhao light cavalry spurred his horse forward and shouted, "Halt! Who are you, and why have you trespassed into our domain? This is the Bishui domain of Great Zhao, not a place you can wander in and out of as you please!"
The stubble-faced man pointed at the black-and-silver uniform he wore and bellowed, "Blind as a dog! You can't even recognize the uniform I'm wearing? Have you ever seen a uniform this sharp? Yours truly is a guerrilla general of Qingming!"
The Zhao cavalry captain already bore no goodwill toward Qingming, so he sneered, "And here I wondered who it was! Turns out it's just the barbarians from Qingming! If you have no business here, go back the way you came. Otherwise, once our generals place the blame, I fear you won't be able to bear the consequences."
"We have business! Who said we didn't? Who'd come to your godforsaken dump without business? Listen up: two pigs raised by our lord have gone missing, and we suspect they escaped into your Bishui domain!"
"What?" The Zhao soldiers all thought their ears were playing tricks on them.
"I said, our lord's pigs are missing, and we suspect they ran into your city! Step aside right now. We're going into the city to search. If we search the whole place and don't find them, we'll turn right around and leave."
The Zhao captain laughed out of sheer fury. "And who knows what your lord's pigs look like?"
The stubble-faced man nearly blurted out, *They look just like you!* Fortunately, he reined himself in at the brink. Urging his horse forward into the domain, he said, "I'll know them when I see them—"
How could the Zhao captain let him pass? Reaching out to block him, he barked, "Insolence! You dare trespass into Great Zhao territory?"
As their horses brushed past each other, the stubble-faced man grazed the Zhao captain's fingertips and instantly tumbled off his horse, howling at the top of his lungs, "The Zhao army is beating people! They're killing us! Brothers, fight them!"
The Qingming light cavalry immediately drew their fire guns, leveled them, and fired. Dense clouds of steel balls swept across, knocking over a hundred Zhao horsemen from their saddles in an instant!
The violence erupted so abruptly that the Zhao light cavalry was thrown into shock. At this moment, their main body of troops was still forming up in the distance. Though caught off guard, the Zhao horsemen were ferocious fighters; despite being outnumbered, they charged back fearlessly, and the two cavalry forces clashed in an instant.
Once blows were traded, the Zhao light cavalry—who had always considered themselves elites—discovered that their opponents surpassed them in cultivation, combat arts, and weaponry alike. Within just a few rounds, the Zhao troops suffered heavy casualties.
Lying on the ground, the stubble-faced man groaned while continuously firing his fire gun, aiming specifically for horse bellies and dropping seven or eight riders in the blink of an eye.
In moments, the five hundred Zhao light cavalry were reduced to barely over two hundred, forcing them to retreat. Meanwhile, the Qingming cavalry suffered only several dozen wounded and ten dead.
Two Qingming riders helped the stubble-faced man up from the ground as instructed and hoisted him back into the saddle.
The moment he was in the saddle, the stubble-faced man became full of vigor again. Seeing thousands of Zhao armored cavalry thundering toward them, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "You stole our lord's pigs! We won't let this rest! Our main army is arriving shortly—guard your little ruined city well!"
With a whistle, he rallied his men, and the Qingming cavalry scooped up their wounded brothers and the bodies of their fallen, galloping off like the wind.
On the way back, a rider asked the stubble-faced man whether he had laid the act on a bit too thick just now. Since they were going to fight anyway, wouldn't it have been simpler to just give the order and have the brothers go at it?
The stubble-faced man scolded, "You lot just don't have brains! This was the method the Domain Lord personally laid out. Do you think the Domain Lord isn't as smart as you? By putting on a complete act, no matter which immortal or almighty figure asks later, I can swear to the heavens that they struck first!
"If I did what you said and swore a reckless oath, heavenly lightning would probably strike me dead before I even finished speaking. A bunch of fools! Use your brains more in the future! Spend less time reading storybooks and read more history! The master said that going forward, you can't fight wars without reading books."
The riders all bowed their heads in admiration.
In the cultivation realm of this world, it was common knowledge that lying before an immortal would summon a lightning tribulation right on the spot. Certain formidable Scenery Command cultivators possessed such methods as well, such as True Monarch Yanshi.
From the very beginning, this stubble-faced man had prepared his excuse for when he stood before immortals.
***
In the Bishui domain, Li Chengfeng had just finished breakfast when word reached him. It incensed him so much that he couldn't keep his food down, and he immediately went to inspect the border.
Scouts soon returned with reports that they had located Wei Yuan's army: nearly a hundred thousand troops had already arrived a hundred li away and were advancing in their direction.
It so happened that the edge of the Bishui domain was an expanse of open, flat terrain, ideal for a pitched battle between two armies. Li Chengfeng therefore ordered his entire army mobilized to seize the battlefield positions and await the arrival of Wei Yuan's forces.
For this battle, he had prepared for a full year.
Near noon, Wei Yuan's army slowly entered the battlefield. Several li away across from them, the Zhao army had already completed its battle array. Fifty thousand Zhao troops were arrayed in several horizontal ranks, their formation neat and orderly, their military qi soaring skyward.
The twenty thousand Zhao soldiers in the front ranks each held a flying sword gun, standing at the ready. The twenty thousand behind them were saber-and-shield infantry, flanked on the left and right by three thousand light cavalry on each wing. Li Chengfeng stood arrayed with his generals on the high ground to the rear.
Looking from afar, Wei Yuan saw that the Zhao army's military qi was magnificent and imposing, like a sheer cliff wall—the very picture of a first-rate elite army.
By contrast, the military qi on Wei Yuan's side was somewhat uneven, and under the pressure of the Zhao army's military qi, small pockets of it even showed signs of dispersing.
Wei Yuan gazed toward the Zhao forces and remarked, "No wonder he had the confidence to fight me. A full twenty thousand Body Casting warriors of the Spirit Refinement realm—even in the Nine Armies of Great Tang, they would be an absolute core force."
Cui Yu nodded. "Truly remarkable. What a pity, though, that times have changed."
Wei Yuan chuckled. "Times have changed because of us, and that is a good thing. Otherwise, we would be the ones falling behind and taking the beating."
Wei Yuan waved his broad hand, and the horns blared. Several thousand men in front formed a horizontal line and dug in their heels. While they also bore flying sword guns, Wei Yuan had only three thousand equipped with them; the remaining seven or eight thousand held fire guns.
Li Chengfeng pointed toward Wei Yuan from the distance and smiled to his attendants. "Well? Was I right? The fire gun may have first appeared in Qingming, but what matters is whose hands hold it. We are now equipped entirely with flying sword guns, while most of the men across from us are still using old-fashioned fire guns. Wei Yuan probably never dreamed that I would turn his own tricks against him!"
"Your Highness is brilliant!"
"Your Highness is the true enlightened lord!"
"Compared to Your Highness, that Wei Yuan isn't even worth mentioning!"
Li Chengfeng laughed long and hearty, his spirits soaring as his voice rang out across the entire field. "Full army, advance! Today we do not return without victory!"
The Zhao army chanted "Victory!" three times in unison, shaking the plains as their military qi vaulted upward. By the look of their military qi, the Zhao army was more than a cut above.
The main body of the Zhao army began marching forward in step, preparing to bring the Qingming forces within range.
Li Chengfeng smiled faintly. "There is surely one more thing Wei Yuan doesn't know: the first three flying sword rounds in our soldiers' hands were specially crafted by master artisans, giving them twenty zhang greater range than Qingming's flying swords! When the time comes, it will give him quite a grand surprise!"
Many generals and strategists had not known this until now; their confidence surged instantly, and another deluge of flattery poured forth without end.
When the Zhao troops closed to three hundred zhang, Wei Yuan waved his hand once more. The vanguard retreated like the receding tide, and the center army pulled off the tarpaulins covering the infantry guns—cloth capable of blocking divine sense—revealing row upon row of infantry guns gleaming with a dark bronze-green luster.
To guard against any mishap this time, Wei Yuan had prepared a full five hundred infantry guns.
There were simply too many infantry guns to fit in a single row, so they were deployed in two staggered ranks. The rear rank was fitted with bases to temporarily elevate them, completing the deployment so neither row interfered with the other.
By then, the Zhao army was already well within range. Wei Yuan gave the direct order to fire.
Cannons roared, instantly drowning out every sound between heaven and earth!
When the hundreds of infantry guns were unveiled, Li Chengfeng felt a sudden premonition of impending doom. Before he could react, the battlefield was swallowed by the thunderous roar!
Cannonball after cannonball detonated in the Zhao battle array; their tight, orderly formation now became a death warrant. Every whistling round claimed the lives of a dozen, or even scores of Zhao soldiers!
A single volley of artillery fire left Li Chengfeng's mind blank, dazed and unsure of what had just happened. Most of the Zhao soldiers were blown senseless, yet a small portion still followed their training, leveling their guns and pressing forward—only to be greeted by another round of bombardment.
Salvo followed salvo, as though it would never cease.
Of the grand army Wei Yuan had brought out, more than half were actually laborers responsible for hauling cannonballs and supplies. For this battle, to be safe, Wei Yuan had brought twenty thousand cannonballs—enough for forty rounds from every single gun.
In Wei Yuan's philosophy, even when beating up little kids, one had to do it seriously; getting hit back by a kid would be far too humiliating.
In the artillery corps, every ten guns were directed by a Dao Foundation warrior, allowing them to concentrate fire on up to fifty targets at once. Seeing the heavy casualties among the central Zhao troops, Wei Yuan diverted two hundred guns to blast the cavalry on both wings, and turned another fifty guns at maximum range to bombard Li Chengfeng's central command.
The centers of both armies were eight li apart, and eight li happened to be the exact range of the infantry guns Wei Yuan had brought.
Wei Yuan had calculated the distances precisely when positioning his artillery battery. When the guns were brought up and deployed, the obscuring cover of military qi prevented Li Chengfeng and the dharma idol cultivators under him from probing with their divine sense; even the two Scenery Command cultivators lurking in secret to oversee the battle had no inkling of what Wei Yuan was doing.
Dozens of cannonballs came shrieking down toward Li Chengfeng's central force. A Dao Foundation general reacted with swift reflexes, reaching out to catch a cannonball and shouting, "What devilish thing is th—"
*Boom!* The round exploded, blowing the general's arm clean off and sending him plummeting straight from midair. A cultivator at perfected Dao Foundation was severely crippled on the spot.
Shocked and enraged, Li Chengfeng was forced to unleash his full might alongside several dharma idols just to barely fend off wave after wave of cannonballs. Right at that moment, he suddenly saw a cavalry force burst out from the flank of Wei Yuan's battle line, a heavenly steed galloping within the military qi above their heads.
This cavalry unit moved with astonishing speed, tracing a wide arc from afar to cut straight behind Li Chengfeng and sever his line of retreat!
Chapter 670