Why Wouldn't I Dare?

Wei Yuan retracted his divine sense and watched as the mighty warriors loaded large wooden crates onto the flying boat one by one. The vessel then took off as usual, returning to Qingming. Just then, the sky suddenly twisted in violent ripples. One half was bathed in brilliant sunlight while the other was cloaked in dense thunderclouds, frantic lightning crashing down in sheets. Such an unnatural celestial anomaly made it obvious that the immortals beyond the heavens were clashing once more. With the immortals engaged in combat, there was naturally work to be done on the ground. Wei Yuan immediately assembled the chariots, took three thousand iron cavalry, and rode out of the garrison city, charging straight toward the northern Liao army camp. In Wei Yuan's convoy were also several transport wagons, tightly wrapped and concealed. Moving like the wind, the force pounced toward the Liao camp. The Liao Clan deployed outriders to engage them, but their heavy arrows failed to pierce the chariots. Instead, they were blasted by the chariot cannons, suffering catastrophic casualties. When the outriders failed to halt them, the Liao Clan finally sent out their elite heavy cavalry. But the wagons in Wei Yuan's ranks opened up, revealing rotary cannons concealed within. High-powered flying swords swept out like a tempestuous storm, ruthlessly harvesting the lives of the Liao horsemen. Four cascading torrents of flying swords swept through the Liao cavalry ranks, accompanied by the relentless bombardment of dozens of chariot cannons. Before their charge even reached midway, over a thousand of the Liao elite heavy cavalry had already fallen. Such horrific losses forced the Liao commanders to sound the retreat and pull back temporarily. Wei Yuan then advanced his army straight ahead, pushing all the way to within forty li of the Liao camp. Within the Liao encampment, shielded by military qi, tens of thousands of light cavalry and outriders were poised to strike, waiting for Wei Yuan to draw a bit closer so they could crush this small force in a single blow. Yet Wei Yuan abruptly halted. Then the compartment of the final wagon was thrown open, revealing a heavy cannon twice the size of a standard infantry gun! At Wei Yuan's command, several dozen cultivators swarmed the heavy cannon, their hands moving with blinding speed. The twin barrels of the heavy cannon rose simultaneously, and shells were loaded into the breeches. Wei Yuan gave a broad wave of his hand. Amid a thunderous roar, two shells whistled through the air, hurtling toward the Liao camp! The moment the salvo was fired, ten Dao Foundation cultivators hoisted the heavy cannon and bolted, abandoning the wagon entirely. Wei Yuan's battle formation then swung around and fled back toward the garrison city. The shells tore through the air at high speed, far faster than ordinary infantry gun rounds. Many Liao dharma idol masters attempting to intercept them were half a beat too slow, their spells hitting empty air, while tracking arrows could not even match the shells' velocity. In the blink of an eye, the shells sailed over the encampment. Two wind-and-sand spells struck them with dead accuracy—cultivators of the Scenery Command realm had intervened. Yet the moment the spells made contact, their light dimmed abruptly, losing ninety percent of their power, failing to detonate or deflect the projectiles! A furious roar erupted from the camp: "Nether crystal! Damned Shamans!" The two shells miraculously broke through the Scenery Command interception, detonating upon impact and leveling everything within a ten-zhang radius. The encampment was spread wide, so the two heavy shells inflicted merely several dozen casualties. But this was the first time since the start of the war that the Liao main camp had suffered a direct strike! In an instant, the Liao commanders' eyes turned bloodshot. Countless Liao cavalry poured out of the camp, charging after Wei Yuan in furious pursuit. Wei Yuan commanded the convoy to flee at full tilt. At their current pace, they could cover over two hundred li in a single shichen, and in less than half a shichen, they would reach the protective firing arc of the garrison city's defense cannons. The Liao cavalry were naturally much faster than the convoy, but their heavy cavalry were not swift enough, barely able to catch up before the convoy reached the safe zone. Consequently, the Liao light horsemen and outriders began harrying and charging the fleeing wagons and chariots. Here, the advantage of chariots became abundantly clear: even while speeding across the terrain, their firing accuracy remained unaffected. Unlike cavalry, whose archery accuracy deteriorated rapidly at high speeds and relied heavily on closing the distance and loosing volleys of arrows, the chariots kept up pinpoint fire. Whenever the Liao horsemen drew close, Wei Yuan's three thousand iron cavalry held shields in one hand and operated their flying-sword guns with the other, steadily cutting down any rider who approached. Upon retreating to the garrison city, the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World had already compiled the battle report. In this skirmish, the human forces suffered four hundred wounded and one hundred and fifty dead; one chariot was destroyed and two suffered mechanical failures, both detonated before abandonment. The Liao Clan suffered two thousand dead and two thousand wounded. This casualty ratio far exceeded that of previous defensive battles, demonstrating that chariots held an overwhelming advantage over Liao cavalry. The Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World analyzed that chariots were vastly superior in both offense and defense, an advantage that became even more pronounced at high speeds. Its conclusion: build more chariots. Yet another impractical report that was mere armchair theorizing... Wei Yuan tossed it into the wastepaper pile. Wei Yuan naturally wanted more chariots, but the bottleneck constraining chariot production was not steel; it was motive power—namely, the cultivators who drove them. The nearly one hundred chariots at the Northern Mountain Gate already occupied eight to nine hundred Dao Foundation cultivators, and that was with a portion being six-driver light chariots. This battle was merely an embellishment to the conflict between the immortals in the heavens, serving to preliminarily validate a few of Wei Yuan's tactical ideas. However, slamming artillery shells directly into the Liao encampment was tantamount to delivering a stinging slap across their face. Without a doubt, the Liao Clan would seek retaliation, ushering in another grueling war of attrition. Wei Yuan patiently awaited the Liao offensive. For now, his top priority was to keep digging trenches. Excavating from both sides toward the middle, he planned to link the three garrison cities with trenches to create a four-hundred-li defensive line that would pin down the Liao cavalry's movements and drag the Liao Clan completely into a quagmire of war. *** In Qingming, Wei Yuan's dharma idol warrior opened a specially made pill furnace. Countless Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pills gushed from the cauldron, which he gathered into medicine chests with his dharmic power. Having infused this batch with karmic luck, the yield was fifty percent higher than usual, and the quality was noticeably superior. Yet this was the limit of what this avatar could achieve. Had Wei Yuan's true body been here in person, the yield would have doubled, to say nothing of a vastly superior quality. As expected, once these Lesser Origin-Nourishing Pills were distributed, those who consumed them would contribute karmic luck as their cultivation advanced. Balancing what went in against what came out, it was equivalent to exchanging one wisp of human karmic azure qi for two. The surplus karmic luck served as the reward for the dharma idol warrior's laborious pill refining. Stepping out of the pill room, the dharma idol warrior checked the time and let out a call. The spiritual horse trotted over briskly. Swinging into the saddle, the dharma idol warrior galloped toward the flying boat landing field. By the time he arrived, a small flying boat appeared in his sight and slowly descended. A smile touched the dharma idol warrior's face. Patting the spiritual horse, he said, "One of these crates is special. If you can pick it out, you get an extra meal tonight!" "A fifty-year-old Five Elements spirit ginseng. Water-attributed," the spiritual horse immediately stated its terms. In high spirits, Wei Yuan said, "Done!" The flying boat touched down, and the mighty warriors carried out identical wooden crates one after another. The crates emitted a strange, pungent fragrance that smelled none too pleasant. By now, the contents of these crates were no longer a secret. Most people knew what lay inside and had guessed the function of the Reincarnation Furnace with near-perfect accuracy. Laid bare, it was nothing extraordinary—merely transporting alien corpses back to nourish their own realm, no different from burying them in the soil to slowly turn into fertilizer, differing only in speed. The mighty warriors hauled the crates onto specially made wagons to transport them to the Reincarnation Furnace. Just then, the spiritual horse suddenly gestured toward one of the crates and said, "That one right there!" Wei Yuan waved his hand, and the mighty warriors carried that crate to the side. Only after erecting curtains to shield it from view did they pry the crate open, and countless naked corpses immediately spilled out. Among these ordinary corpses lay a unique one: the dharmic body of the Wise King of the Left's youngest son. At this moment, he looked no different from the other Liao corpses, distinguishable only by his facial features. To prevent the Wise King of the Left from sensing anything, Wei Yuan had waited until now, when construction on the Turtle-Snake Immortal Refining Diagram was about to commence, before transporting this dharmic body. Moreover, the body had been mingled among ordinary Liao corpses without Wei Yuan's involvement throughout the process, so even he did not know which crate it had been packed into. This was a method Wei Yuan had learned from True Monarch Huangyun's designs to prevent anyone from divining heavenly secrets. Under such an arrangement, unless one possessed profound mastery over the Dao of Karma, deducing the truth was exceedingly difficult. And attempting to divine Wei Yuan through karma risked dragging oneself down with him, for the karmic ties he bore were anything but trivial. Even here, the dharma idol warrior had intended to rely on sudden intuition to locate the right crate, or resort to the clumsy method of opening and inspecting every single one. Wei Yuan asked the spiritual horse how it had managed to pinpoint the different crate with such precision, when even Wei Yuan himself had found it difficult and had prepared a contingency to inspect them all. To his surprise, the spiritual horse said, "Just a wild guess. If I'm wrong, no harm done; if I'm right, I get a treat. Only a fool wouldn't guess." Wei Yuan carried the dharmic body of the Wise King of the Left's youngest son in person to the construction site outside Ding'an City. With the spiritual horse, traveling back and forth across Qingming was far more convenient. In the small valley outside Ding'an City, an excavation thirty zhang across and several zhang deep had already been dug out to serve as the foundation for the Immortal Refining Grand Formation. Bao Yun worked day and night revising and optimizing the construction blueprints, breaking the work down into over a hundred small tasks each day and assigning them to different individuals. Most of the cultivators only knew they were making a small component, completely unaware of what that component was for. Wei Yuan brought the dharmic body and stored it in Ding'an City, then reviewed the construction timeline with Bao Yun. Constructing the Immortal Refining Diagram was far more complex than anticipated, requiring roughly ten months to complete. Wei Yuan had centuries remaining in this stage of his cultivation, so ten months was hardly a rush. As an upgraded version of the Reincarnation Furnace, the Immortal Refining Diagram would offer boundless benefits once finished. Before the dharmic body could be refined, Wei Yuan estimated that the war with the Liao Clan would remain in a deadlock, with both sides competing on every front. By now, Wei Yuan had already noticed certain clues: the Wise King of the Left's relentless fixation on the Northern Mountain Gate was likely because he wanted to reclaim both the dharmic body and the primordial spirit. The problem was that the primordial spirit dharma idol had already been devoured by Feng Chutang, elevating him into the topmost tier of geniuses. Furthermore, True Monarch Feng Yuan was exceptionally formidable, standing on the threshold of immortal ascension—perhaps only slightly behind Xuanyue. Consequently, no matter what price Northern Liao offered, there was absolutely no chance the Palace of Grand Beginning would ever hand Feng Chutang over. Wei Yuan sensed that if his speculations held true, the day the dharmic body was refined would be the day the conflict escalated once again. Having realized this, Wei Yuan shifted his strategy. He exercised as much restraint as possible, ceasing all offensive sorties to remain securely behind fortifications and bastions, waiting for the Liao Clan to attack. And so autumn arrived in the blink of an eye, the chill in the wind growing sharper. Several dull, grinding skirmishes were fought in the interim. Wei Yuan did nothing but reinforce the defenses and stockpile firepower, bleeding the Liao Clan slowly like carving meat with a dull blade. With vast amounts of cement and steel poured into the fortifications each day, the exchange ratio climbed steadily, stabilizing at over five to one and creeping toward six. One day, just as Wei Yuan was wondering when the first snowfall would arrive, Immortal Monarch Yanshi's voice suddenly resonated in his ear: "Return to the mountain gate to see me." Wei Yuan hurried back to the mountain gate. Immortal Monarch Yanshi still lived in that small courtyard, still drinking from the chipped teacup. Seeing Wei Yuan, Yanshi looked him up and down and said, "The Wise King of the Left and the Little State Preceptor have truly turned ruthless this time. I have been fighting them for nearly two months. In the end, my foundation is still shallow, so this battle has been rather taxing. Zhu Yan and Danming each have opponents of their own and cannot pull away. "Old Chunqiu... your ancestral master cannot come for the time being. If he comes, he will face a fatal tribulation. I didn't tell him that; I only said all was well in the north and told him to properly renovate Sky Azure Hall back at the main mountain. Why did he need to build it so high anyway?" Wei Yuan's heart tightened. He knew that with Xuanyue's temperament, the more lethal a tribulation was, the more determined he would be to charge straight into it. Yanshi paused, then said, "Beyond the mindscape world that underpins their ascension, immortals may possess thousands of minor worlds. When immortals battle, their clashes primarily consist of assaults between mindscape worlds. If one can conquer and destroy a minor world, the opponent's immortal power weakens by a fraction." Wei Yuan listened quietly, knowing Immortal Monarch Yanshi had more to say. Sure enough, Yanshi continued, "The enemy possesses quite a disorderly collection of mindscape worlds. I will pick out one or two lower-grade ones for you; you need only hold off their attacks. What say you? This is a contest among immortals—do you dare give it a try?" Wei Yuan said in a deep voice, "Why wouldn't I dare?"