Riding side by side with Wei Yuan, Li Zhi looked ahead at the billowing yellow qi and remarked with feeling, "The Liao barbarian territory is more than ten times larger than Great Tang. In their realm, the Liao barbarians are uniquely blessed, bolstered everywhere by the mighty power of heaven and earth, whereas we are bound by layers of restrictions. Fortunately, those camps lie on the fringes of the Liao domain. Otherwise, I would hardly dare to venture deep inside."
From his studies of the *General History of the Human Race*, *General Knowledge of the Immortal Path*, and the *History of Tang*, Wei Yuan had learned a great deal about the Vast Sea Liao Clan. Hearing this, he added, "The Liao domain possesses a unique atmospheric qi of heaven and earth. Both the Liao barbarians and their Liao horses can inhale and exhale this qi, allowing them to gallop thousands of li without fatigue. When the barbarians attacked the night before last, I saw firsthand how the night seemed to travel with them wherever they went, veiling their movements."
"Once we enter the Liao domain, we must protect our bodies with Dao power to resist the force of heaven and earth. Thus, we cannot linger; we must make it quick, sweeping through the enemy like a thunderbolt and retreating at once," Li Zhi said.
Wei Yuan nodded. That was common military sense—stating it was practically stating the obvious.
Li Zhi suddenly grew wistful. "Back when I was studying at the academy, I sometimes thought about how vast the Liao domain is, and how much easier it is for the Liao barbarians to wield the power of heaven and earth compared to our human race. Sometimes one has to admit that the Liao barbarians seem far more like the favored sons of this world than we do."
Wei Yuan replied, "It isn't just the Liao barbarians. The domains of the Wuyu, Mountain Folk, Cheli, and Guirong are all far larger than ours, and within their respective realms, they are favored sons as well. Looking strictly at the map, we are merely a small country."
Li Zhi let out a hearty laugh. "Small has its advantages too! Expanding our borders and opening new frontiers—that will be up to us in the future!"
Their iron-shod mounts galloped forward and soon reached the boundary of the Liao domain. It was an invisible borderline: on the human side, the sky was clear and bright; on the Liao side, yellow qi rolled like waves. Arriving at the demarcation line, the warhorses hesitated, reluctant to move forward. Wei Yuan nudged with his legs and urged his mount on, and only then did the horse cross the boundary.
The moment he entered the Liao domain, Wei Yuan felt as though he had been dusted with a layer of grime, or as if he had gone a fortnight without a bath, every pore clogged with oily sludge so that he could barely breathe. His vision blurred, his field of view plummeting from eighty li down to fifty, and even Li Zhi's voice beside him seemed muted.
"Brother Wei, don't forget to cast the Clear Qi Technique," Li Zhi reminded him.
The Clear Qi Technique was a low-rank Dao technique in widespread use. Wei Yuan did not even need to chant an incantation; a mere stir of his divine sense completed it. Once cast, he felt as if a basin of cool water had been poured over his head, washing away the greasy, sluggish feeling entirely. Yet the Clear Qi Technique lasted only a short while; so long as they remained in the Liao domain, it had to be cast repeatedly.
Compared to the territories of other races, the Liao domain was considered relatively mild. Even ordinary mortals could survive here for a brief time, and many ancient humans had lived in the region. However, mortals who dwelled here long-term would be plagued by illness and suffer shortened lifespans, rarely living past forty.
All the riders cast the Clear Qi Technique. Observing them with his Qi-Gazing Technique, Wei Yuan saw a hazy, clear radiance enveloping each horseman's body. As the surrounding yellow qi fell upon them, the clear light washed it clean in an instant.
Having crossed into the Liao domain, the troop picked up their pace and quickly reached the first campsite. The clearing was empty, devoid of anything, showing no signs of recent habitation. Without pausing, Wei Yuan and Li Zhi rode on directly toward the next camp.
More than ten li from the second camp, Wei Yuan spotted a wisp of cooking smoke curling lazily into the sky.
Several Liao barbarian horsemen sat gathered around a bonfire, roasting the massive hind leg of a beast over the flames. Beside them stood a few tents framed with iron poles and inscribed with formations to ward off the cold and insects. Setting up or striking these tents took considerable effort, making them semi-permanent military pavilions in Northern Liao. Loud snores drifted from inside, where an unknown number of barbarians were still asleep.
Just as Wei Yuan spotted the smoke, the barbarians by the fire snapped their heads around in unison, spotting him as well.
The human race and the Vast Sea Liao Clan had coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years and fought for tens of thousands, making them intimately familiar with Liao customs. Disciples of the Palace of Grand Beginning were issued a manual before stepping onto the battlefield, detailing Northern Liao official ranks, attire, cultivation realms, and common battlefield encounters along with their countermeasures.
With surprise on their side, Wei Yuan immediately cast a Divine Travel Technique and a Great Strength Technique onto his warhorse, causing its speed to surge by half!
Li Zhi and the other riders followed suit, buffing their mounts with Dao techniques before launching into a full-speed charge. They covered more than ten li in the blink of an eye. Though they could not prevent the Northern Liao cavalry from mounting, their haste denied the enemy time to form ranks, leaving them to take the opening blow on the defensive.
Yelling loudly, the barbarians by the fire scrambled to their feet and dashed toward their mounts. Several more tumbled out of the tents, jolted from deep sleep and still bewildered by the situation. Before they could get their bearings, a dozen sharp arrows whistled through the air, turning them instantly into pincushions.
The men Li Zhi had brought were elites with superb mounted archery skills. Their opening volley consisted entirely of artifact arrows, striking with deadly accuracy from three hundred zhang away and cutting down the half-asleep barbarian riders.
The barbarians by the bonfire had already swung into their saddles. Undaunted, they charged out to meet the attackers, one of them brandishing a saber and heading straight for Wei Yuan.
With an impassive face, Wei Yuan leveled his spear and charged, his horse moving so swiftly it seemed to fly. The two riders closed in on each other, narrowing the distance to within a hundred zhang in an instant. Then, almost simultaneously, they made their moves: the Liao rider drew his bow and nocked an arrow, while Wei Yuan drew a short spear. A heavy arrow and a short spear were launched at nearly the exact same moment—neither had intended to engage in true melee combat.
As the short spear left Wei Yuan's hand, the tremendous recoil momentarily checked the horse's momentum! That fleeting pause allowed the barbarian's heavy arrow to graze past his body, while Wei Yuan's short spear sank deep into the chest of the Liao mount.
Wei Yuan was, after all, a powerhouse capable of making the master of the Hall of the Bright King ignore his purse and personally step in to claim him. The force behind the thrown spear was immense, piercing clean through the Liao horse before continuing another hundred-odd zhang before it struck the ground. No matter how skilled the rider, he was thrown uncontrollably from the saddle. A strange howl tore through his ears, and a second short spear passed straight through his body.
Li Zhi drew his bow. Both bow and arrow shimmered with golden light, and almost the instant it left the string, the long arrow pinned itself to a barbarian's face, striking dead center through the slit of his visor.
The longbow in Li Zhi's hands was a top-grade magical artifact, and his arrows were all high-grade artifacts, giving him total superiority in an archery duel against the barbarians. He drew his bow unhurriedly, and the moment the bow was drawn taut, a heavy golden arrow materialized automatically on the string. In the instant the bow was fully drawn and the arrow appeared, Li Zhi's divine sense expanded instantly under the bow's enhancement. This was the ability of this top-grade artifact bow: aided by it, Li Zhi's divine sense could sweep across a three-hundred-zhang radius and unleash a shot the moment an enemy was perceived. So long as his divine sense locked onto a target, no matter where the arrow pointed when released, it would strike home without fail.
Yet when Li Zhi swept out with his divine sense, the surroundings were utterly empty; there was not a single target left.
Taken aback, he looked around, only to find that every barbarian was already on the ground. Aside from one rider brought down by the combined fire of his personal guards, the other five had all been skewered by Wei Yuan's short spears.
Shock stirred in Li Zhi's heart, and he praised, "Brother Wei is truly valiant!"
Wei Yuan had no time to reply. Grabbing another short spear, he hurled it with a flick of his arm, its whistling flight piercing an unseated Liao horse. Li Zhi's heart gave a start as he recalled that Liao horses could not be left alive either!
Seasoned veterans all, the guards loosed a flurry of arrows, cutting down every riderless Liao horse.
Liao mounts recognized their masters; once their riders died, they would gallop back to their previous camp on their own. If allowed to flee, the Liao people would quickly know this post had fallen.
With the skirmish over, steam rose from Wei Yuan's entire body. He exhaled a breath of scorching heat and slung the twelve-foot spear back onto the flank of his saddle. From start to finish, he had relied entirely on throwing short spears, sweeping through everything within a hundred zhang and turning the area into a dead zone. The twelve-foot spear had seen no use at all, remaining purely decorative.
As for the Outlaw of Heaven and Earth, it relied on karmic destiny to operate. Using it inside the Liao domain carried a high risk of burning through his karmic destiny, so Wei Yuan had no intention of deploying it unless absolutely necessary. Even though several thousand strands of black qi still remained in his sea of consciousness, it paid to be thrifty and husband his resources.
Li Zhi rode up, looking Wei Yuan up and down, and remarked, "Brother Wei's valor is as formidable as ever!"
Wei Yuan sighed. "My cultivation progresses slowly; I just have a bit of strength. To this day, I haven't even formed my Dao Foundation. Brother Li, don't tease me."
Li Zhi's eyelid twitched. *Just a bit of strength?*
That short spear weighed thirty jin, yet the speed at which Wei Yuan hurled it was nearly fast enough to rival an artifact arrow shot from his own hands—and he called that 'a bit of strength'?
With his sharp eye, Li Zhi could see that while Wei Yuan's throwing spears resembled artifacts, they had merely been tempered for a bit of extra durability, lacking even an edge-sharpening refinement. If anything counted as an artifact, it was the spear case that held them, which contained an expanded interior capable of holding thirty spears. In terms of grade, that case was the absolute bottom tier for an artifact, cheap enough to look shabby even on one of Li Zhi's guards. For the short spears to possess such terrifying power came entirely down to Wei Yuan's physical might.
The spears Wei Yuan hurled had no wondrous tricks, lacking even basic functions like divine-sense lock-on; they were simply heavy enough and fast enough to crush anything in their path. Even though Li Zhi had forged an immortal foundation and was equipped with top-grade artifacts, he had no desire to face Wei Yuan's short spears within a hundred zhang.
In a daze, Li Zhi remembered the terrifying figure seated calmly atop the looming mountain boar during the martial test years ago. Back then, Wei Yuan had shattered Li Zhi's supreme karmic destiny secret art with a single spear strike. The memory still sent a shiver through him even now.
*He truly is a barbarian...* Li Zhi thought, though of course he kept the words to himself.
After this clash, the look in the guards' eyes when they looked at Wei Yuan changed completely. In just the blink of an eye, the majority of the Liao cavalry had been slaughtered by Wei Yuan, leaving not a soul alive within a hundred zhang. Li Zhi and his guard unit had managed to claim only a single kill apiece.
Chapter 76