The brutality of the battle exceeded all expectations. Both sides fought fiercely from dawn until nightfall. The Liao Clan attacked in wave after wave, repeatedly storming the walls only to be driven back time and again. The two sides engaged in a relentless tug-of-war along the ramparts, every gain bought with blood and flesh.
Wei Yuan could only recall three distinct distortions in the Great Dao of heaven and earth, signifying that immortals had clashed three times. There was no time to track other minor details; they could only be passively recorded in the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World to be sifted through and analyzed after the fighting was done.
The domain clash between the Mountain-Stabilizing Stele and the Northern Mountain Gate should have put the stele at an absolute disadvantage, yet at present, it was only slightly suppressed. The Dao soldiers' advantage of fighting within their own mountain gate was mostly neutralized, resulting in far heavier casualties than usual.
Logically, such a situation should never have occurred. Leaving aside the fact that Immortal Monarch Yanshi was currently at the Northern Mountain Gate, the lingering legacy left by the several Immortal Monarchs who had passed away in meditation here in the past should have been more than enough to completely suppress the Mountain-Stabilizing Stele.
Wei Yuan surmised that the Liao Clan must have applied immense pressure on the Northern Mountain Gate elsewhere, siphoning away most of the gate's power, which left it unable to suppress the stele.
Since the mountain gate's power fell short, Wei Yuan continually bolstered the surrounding fighters with Outlaw of Heaven and Earth, while deploying his Five Elements Dao Soldiers to form formations and cast arts, reinforcing the defending troops with tactical formations and Daoist spells. In the most critical moments, the Five Elements Dao Soldiers were even thrown directly into the fray.
Yet even if Wei Yuan alone was worth hundreds or thousands of elite soldiers, he could hardly make a massive splash across a battlefield of hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, crouched tigers and hidden dragons lurked within the Liao army; powerful combatants launched ambushes from time to time, striking with an insidious ferocity scarcely inferior to Wei Yuan's own.
Wei Yuan had nothing to fear for himself, of course, but he had to divide his attention to protect his comrades. For instance, he had saved He Fang at least twice and pulled Sun Yu back from the brink of death.
The Liao Dharma Manifestation expert whose arrows turned into serpents was formidable in combat and never showed his face. One only knew he had struck again when an incoming arrow abruptly transformed into a snake right before impact.
This individual had no bottom line whatsoever. Rather than targeting only fellow Dharma Manifestation experts, he repeatedly ambushed those at the Dao Foundation realm. With his cultivation, an ambush against a Dao Foundation cultivator was virtually a one-hit kill, leaving Wei Yuan with no time to intervene.
After this happened several times, an enraged Wei Yuan retrieved Instant, chambered a storm shell for backup, and searched across the entire battlefield for him. Only then did the assailant rein himself in and cease his strikes.
The battle dragged on until the moon hung high in the middle of the sky, leaving both sides utterly exhausted.
Many Dao soldiers, their Dharmic powers drained, took cover beneath their shields, desperately catching their breath. As soon as they recovered even slightly, they would roll to their feet and hastily fire a shot outside the wall. Some pumped their fists in excitement, while others were suddenly struck through the forehead by a light arrow, each meeting a different fate.
Out beyond the walls, Liao cavalrymen would suddenly collapse mid-gallop. After falling in battle, they struggled a few times, but could not get back up no matter what.
At long last, a desolate horn call sounded. One by one, the Liao cavalrymen halted their charges, and the Dao soldiers on the walls ceased firing.
Every Liao rider turned their horse around. Looking at the corpses blanketing the ground behind them, someone suddenly began singing a northern pastoral ballad. Soon, more and more Liao cavalry joined in the chorus.
Under the cover of night, accompanied by that desolate, lonely song, the surviving Liao riders slowly rode toward the north, disappearing beyond the horizon. Left behind on the ground were their fathers, uncles, brothers, and close childhood friends. And these fallen Liao warriors would never return to the north again.
Only when the silhouettes of the Liao cavalry completely melted into the night did Wei Yuan let out a breath of relief, whereupon sharp pain flared from multiple spots across his body.
Only then did he realize that his Dao power was running dangerously low and that his body bore more than a dozen wounds, some of which he did not even remember sustaining.
Corpses littered the walls. After night had fallen, squads of Liao cavalry had repeatedly leapt onto the ramparts to hack and slash.
This was standard Liao doctrine: once they detected weakness in the defense, they would pour into the city in force. But if they met stubborn resistance on the walls, they would withdraw after a brief slaughter, doing everything possible to avoid street fighting inside the city against the Dao soldiers of the Palace of Grand Beginning.
Wei Yuan walked along the ramparts, kicking the corpses of Liao cavalrymen off the wall one by one and straightening the bodies of fallen Dao soldiers.
Amid a pile of corpses, a blood-soaked Liao squad captain at the peak of the Dao Foundation realm woke up. Glaring at Wei Yuan, he dragged himself backward, waving a sharp arrow in his hand while letting out hoarse, guttural growls.
Wei Yuan drew the Demon Blade Qiyue, casually thrust it into his heart, and flipped the corpse down into the city.
In another heap of bodies, Wei Yuan suddenly spotted a familiar form. He hurried over to prop the man up—it was Sun Yu.
Sun Yu was drenched in blood, his left leg gone from below the calf, gravely injured.
Wei Yuan sensed his dharma idol and was relieved to find it had not sustained severe damage. He produced a bottle of healing pills, used his Dao power to vaporize them into a medicinal mist, and brought it to Sun Yu's nose so he could inhale it.
With a muffled grunt, Sun Yu slowly came to. Taking in his surroundings, he realized what had happened. "Did I pass out?"
"You did."
Sun Yu looked thoroughly dejected. "I don't know what's wrong today, but I've been plagued with terrible luck. Just a moment ago, I was about to take some medicine, only to find it had expired just a quarter of an hour earlier! I still have some arrowheads in my back. Help me pull them out... Hey, that's the wrong technique! You cut a tendon!"
Wei Yuan held an arrowhead in his hand, looking awkward. The arrowhead was exquisitely crafted; once it penetrated flesh, three small barbs sprang from its sides to hook into the muscle. Ripping it out forcefully would tear away a huge chunk of meat.
When Wei Yuan extracted it, he had focused only on using Dao power to sever the barbs before forcing it out. He hadn't expected that as he pulled, two more barbs would snap out from the tip, severing a tendon in Sun Yu's back.
With Sun Yu constantly barking instructions, Wei Yuan extracted thirteen arrowheads in total from his back, buttocks, and thighs. Every single one was an armor-piercing heavy arrowhead shot by a peak Dao Foundation cavalryman; even Sun Yu's dharma body couldn't withstand them.
The battlefield was simply too chaotic. No one could keep their divine sense covering all directions, so Sun Yu had inexplicably caught a barrage of stray arrows.
Most of these arrowheads also carried special effects—deadly poison, paralysis, mental disorientation, and more—intertwined together. Sun Yu hadn't been able to hold out, abruptly passing out.
There was naturally another reason for taking so many arrows. Wei Yuan now suspected that even if Muhawen wasn't a child of karmic destiny, there was definitely something anomalous about him. Otherwise, after devouring his dharma idol, Sun Yu shouldn't have been injured to such a degree. If Wei Yuan had found him a moment later, he might have lost his life.
With the arrowheads removed, Sun Yu was an adept physician in his own right. He produced a bottle of pills, tipped three into his mouth, and swallowed them before handing the rest to Wei Yuan. "Immortal power permeates this entire battlefield, so wounds heal slowly. Take some as well."
Wei Yuan had external injuries of his own, so he took the bottle and poured out three pills. To his surprise, Sun Yu dumped the remaining half bottle straight into his palm. "Your dharma body is different from mine. Eat them all."
Wei Yuan obliged and swallowed them down, his expression shifting slightly. The taste of these pills reminded him of his childhood.
Sun Yu offered a rare smile. "I'm fine now. Let's split up to rescue the wounded! Immortal power is everywhere on this battlefield, and all manner of bizarre things can happen. Many people might not look badly injured, but they could drop dead without warning. We can't afford to be careless."
Wei Yuan nodded; he had noticed this during the battle as well.
Several times, he had clearly killed an enemy with a Daoist art, yet for a fleeting instant, he saw a completely different turn of events. Sometimes the enemy fled; at other times, a bizarre woman with silver braids abruptly materialized, slitting his throat with a short blade.
The sensation felt like sudden auditory or visual hallucinations, to the point where reality and illusion blurred together. But Wei Yuan was a Dharma Manifestation cultivator with an exceptionally powerful primordial soul and abundant karmic luck; ordinary illusions had virtually no effect on him. For him to experience hallucinations repeatedly, it could only be the influence of immortal power.
What followed confirmed Sun Yu's words. Two Dao Foundation cultivators died right in Wei Yuan's hands without any warning, both perishing from the collapse of their primordial souls.
Wei Yuan dared not dally, working tirelessly until dawn before all the critically wounded were finally settled. By then, the battle tallies had been finalized, and a casualty report was delivered to his hands.
In this battle, the defending Dao soldiers had suffered eleven thousand dead, while the Qingming Army lost fifteen hundred. The Liao army had lost fifty thousand dead, with wounded beyond counting. Among the high-tier cultivators, one Dharma Manifestation leader of the Dao soldiers had fallen, and another was severely injured and required transport to the rear for treatment.
On the Liao side, Wei Yuan had personally slain two Dharma Manifestation experts, while Ji Liuli, Feng Tingyu, and Feng Chutang had each slain one.
At first light, reinforcements dispatched by the Palace of Grand Beginning arrived. They brought five thousand replacement Dao soldiers and one Dharma Manifestation cultivator, along with large shipments of healing pills and other supplies, moving with extraordinary efficiency.
Near midday, two flying vessels arrived, descending directly into the center of the town. These two vessels had come from Qingming. After confirming their purpose, the presiding True Monarch from the Palace of Grand Beginning let them fly straight to the front-line fortified town without interfering, escorting them all the way and intercepting every Liao attack directed at them.
Wei Yuan's spirits lifted when the vessels touched down. As their cargo doors opened, what greeted his eyes was row upon row of disassembled infantry guns. To Wei Yuan's eyes, those long, dark azure barrels were undeniably the most gorgeous sight in the world.
Together, the two flying vessels delivered fifty infantry guns, tens of thousands of artillery rounds, as well as tens of thousands of breastplates, heavy shields, and flying-sword guns—the standard gear for elite Body Casting mastery soldiers from Qingming.
At this point, most Body Casting mastery fighters among the Dao soldiers were still using bows, crossbows, sabers, and swords. Wei Yuan ordered the equipment distributed and detached a thousand Qingming warriors to serve as temporary instructors, teaching the Dao soldiers how to use the flying-sword guns.
Seeing the masses of Dao soldiers armed to the teeth, the True Monarch who had escorted the vessels could not help but smile and nod approvingly.
Once unloaded, the vessels were packed with the corpses of Liao warriors. Because time was so short, many bodies were hauled aboard directly before they could even be crated. As soon as all the corpses were loaded, the vessels took off immediately without lingering for a single moment, heading back to Qingming.
The True Monarch turned a blind eye to the hauling of Liao corpses.
Looking at the tens of thousands of newly rearmed Dao soldiers, Wei Yuan breathed a sigh of relief, feeling at last that the war had returned to a familiar track. He surveyed his surroundings, yet a nagging feeling told him that he seemed to have forgotten something.
Wei Yuan frowned slightly. Under the influence of immortal power, even his own mental state had become erratic. If even he could forget things, it would be even harder for others to resist.
However, Wei Yuan had his own means of countering this. He directly used the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World to comb through all the combat data, searching for anything he had missed or neglected to handle.
The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was rooted in Qingming and harbored the enigmatic three-eyed bird head; even an immortal would find it difficult to manipulate or influence. Sure enough, after a few breaths, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World singled out the oversight caused by the immortal power from the vast sea of information: he had not seen Feng Tingyu.
Wei Yuan immediately searched the entire battlefield. Once he remembered Feng Tingyu, he broke through the immortal power's seal, and the lingering immortal power could no longer tamper with his perception of her.
A moment later, Wei Yuan found Feng Tingyu hiding inside a half-collapsed house, tending to a wound on her leg. When Wei Yuan approached, he realized that she was treating her injuries purely through the physical instinct of her hands; she had already been unconscious for who knew how long.
The instant he saw Feng Tingyu, Wei Yuan's vision swam, and he seemed once again to catch a glimpse of that silver-braided Liao woman.
Chapter 702