All around him, yellow mist surged and billowed. Liao cavalry seemed capable of bursting forth from any direction at any moment. Heavy arrows constantly whistled past Wei Yuan's ears, occasionally interspersed with strange, piercing shrieks. It was a new type of arrow, lobbed specifically from high altitude; as it plummeted, it could subtly alter its trajectory, homing in on human warriors. Defending against them was nigh impossible, and many had been shot down right before Wei Yuan's eyes by these falling projectiles.
The range of these arrows was extraordinarily long—at least, Wei Yuan had not yet spotted where the archers were stationed.
Spurring his mount through a patch of yellow vapor, Wei Yuan inhaled instinctively. At once, it felt as though he had swallowed a mouthful of grit. His nose and mouth burned fiercely with an indescribable agony. It was not that the yellow mist actually contained sand, but rather that it naturally irritated and harmed human flesh. These vapors originated from the Liao domain, brought along with the Northern Liao riders. With so many Liao cavalry currently filling the battlefield, the yellow haze drifted everywhere, making the air almost indistinguishable from that of the Liao domain itself.
Ahead and to Wei Yuan's flank, a skirmish broke out. A dozen or so Liao horsemen circled several human cultivators, hacking and slashing at them. Corpses littered the ground, and the few survivors were plainly at the end of their strength.
"No! I don't want to die!" one of them suddenly screamed, leaping into the air to fly away into the distance.
"Fool!" Wei Yuan had no time to stop him and could only curse under his breath.
The man had flown barely several hundred feet when howling winds erupted through the air. At least twenty arrows tore through the sky, riddling him into a sieve.
The combat manual issued by the Palace of Grand Beginning before the war contained a strict rule: *Unless one has reached the late stage of Dao Foundation, taking to the air on a Northern Liao battlefield is forbidden.*
Suddenly, the yellow mist stirred around Wei Yuan as a Northern Liao centurion took to the sky to survey the battlefield.
Wei Yuan instinctively raised his hand, greeting him head-on with a Flying Sand Technique. A whirlwind abruptly coalesced around the centurion, pelting him with fist-sized rocks and gravel like driving rain. The barrage instantly destabilized his aura, nearly causing him to lose his levitation. The abundance of the Liao domain's yellow mist was not entirely without advantages; at the very least, it boosted the power of the Flying Sand Technique by a full fifty percent out of thin air, making it Wei Yuan's most frequently used spell.
Before the centurion could recover from the pummeling, a golden sword projection flashed through the sky and pierced straight through him! Immediately afterward, a sudden thunderbolt struck from nowhere, slamming into his body and finally knocking him out of the air. Before he even hit the ground, Wei Yuan's javelin tore through the air and ran him through.
In the span of a single breath, the centurion had become a corpse. The rule against taking to the air applied equally to the Liao riders.
Without realizing it, Wei Yuan had been fighting for the better part of an hour. He was already on his sixth quiver of javelins, and his own arrows had long been exhausted; he was now using arrows scavenged from the bodies of fallen Liao riders.
Despite battling for so long, he had advanced less than ten li. Most of the time, Wei Yuan was charging back and forth in melees, focusing primarily on bleeding the enemy forces. Not long before, Bao Yun had fired a third signal arrow, transmitting the message: *Fortifications secure; reinforcements have arrived.*
Once that message spread, the various relief forces shifted their tactics. No longer did they blindly push straight toward the besieged stronghold; instead, they engaged the intercepting Liao cavalry in force. Inflicting heavy casualties on the Liao riders served just as well to relieve pressure on the fortress.
Wei Yuan followed suit. After fighting his way forward a few more li, his eyes suddenly brightened. Far in the distance, a massive pillar of clear light rose straight toward the heavens! Bathed in that radiance, the yellow mist around Wei Yuan rapidly thinned and dissolved away.
Where that clear light arose was Bao Yun's stronghold.
As the Liao domain's yellow vapor was driven off, Wei Yuan's field of vision expanded dramatically, quickly extending to a radius of nearly a hundred li. Applying a slight force, he leapt up to stand atop his horse's back and gazed far into the distance.
Beneath the clear qi stood Bao Yun's fortress. Bao Yun could have been stationed in a county town, but she had chosen an advanced post, and like Wei Yuan, her assigned zone was an outpost fortress. Yet the fortress Wei Yuan saw now was more than ten times larger than Shayang Village—it was practically half a county seat.
Outside the fortress, thousands of Northern Liao iron cavalry formed a massive vortex, swirling rapidly around the central bastion. Countless arrows rained down upon the fortress, and at every moment, swarms of Liao cavalry attempted to charge the walls. To the north, another thousand Liao horsemen galloped back and forth, using their momentum to lob volleys of arrows at the fortress from thousands of feet away.
Over five thousand horsemen were besieging the fortress alone, not to mention the countless roaming skirmish parties across the wider region intercepting arriving relief forces.
Bao Yun's fortress had been completely transformed. The surrounding grounds were pitted with deep trenches one foot wide and three feet deep. Unlike the dirt pits Fang Hetong had dug, the inner walls of these trenches were reinforced with iron plates; tough though the Liao horses were, stepping into one would inevitably shatter a leg. Between the trenches lay countless iron caltrops about a foot long, guaranteed to mutilate hooves on contact. Layers upon layers of obstacles prevented the Liao cavalry from galloping freely within a thousand feet; even if the riders were fearless, their horses would instinctively shy away.
The fortress walls stood thirty feet high, far taller than ordinary fortifications and exceeding even those of a county seat. The stone face shimmered with a pale green light, treated with some unknown art, so that heavy arrows shot into the walls could only sink in less than halfway. The battlements were entirely clad in iron plating, which armor-piercing heavy arrows could only barely punch through, posing no threat to the defenders taking cover behind them. This fortress had evidently been overhauled from top to bottom, much like Bao Yun's courtyard back in the Palace of Grand Beginning.
The defenders atop the walls were outfitted uniformly in cyan armor trimmed with gold filigree. Every one of them held a powerful crossbow, aiming and firing down at the Liao cavalry. As soon as one rank finished shooting, the next stepped up, leaning out to loose their bolts before rotating back, orderly and unflustered.
Volley after volley of crossbow bolts poured like a torrential downpour onto the besieging Liao forces, unending and relentless. Any Liao rider who drew even slightly too close was brought down, and those who dared charge the fortress walls were turned into pincushions without exception.
The colossal pillar of clear qi measured several fathoms across, with the faint silhouette of a treasure tree floating within it. Each time the tree swayed, the pillar radiated a ring of pure light, bestowing blessings upon the defenders while driving back the yellow mist of the Liao domain. Stripped of their familiar haze, the Liao riders were inherently weakened by a noticeable margin, while the defenders, bolstered by the clear qi, were full of vigor and seemed to know no fatigue.
From just a distant glance, Wei Yuan felt as if he were looking at an enormous iron hedgehog. Thousands of elite defenders, an endless storm of powerful bows and crossbows, and the empowerment of a large-scale formation—who could possibly breach such a place?
Wei Yuan suddenly sensed danger. Lowering his stance, he pressed himself flat against his horse's back. Several arrows whizzed over his head, two of them dipping slightly along with his movement; they actually possessed tracking capabilities. Fortunately, the two arrows were of modest grade, barely qualifying as magical artifacts and lacking nimble steering, or Wei Yuan would have taken at least one hit. While taking a single arrow was no grave matter for him, it would still hinder his movements.
Wei Yuan had not even taken flight, merely standing a head taller on horseback, yet he had already drawn a concentrated volley.
Raising a hand, Wei Yuan cast a Flying Sand Technique toward a galloping Liao rider nearby. But the spell proved surprisingly weak, failing to unseat him or cause his mount to stumble. Only then did Wei Yuan remember that the Liao domain's yellow mist had already been dispelled. The battlefield was now permeated by the clear qi of the human domain, shifting the five elemental affinities from Fire-Metal-Earth to Wood-Metal-Water.
Wei Yuan waved his hand again, this time unleashing a Water Blade Art suffused with dao power. Sure enough, its power was vastly greater; in an instant, it shredded both horse and rider, throwing them to the ground in a spray of blood. Wei Yuan then followed up with a javelin, ending the man's life.
Having fought this far, Wei Yuan had refined a reliable combat pattern: injure or hinder the Liao riders with techniques, then finish them off with a javelin. This method was extraordinarily efficient, yet it relied heavily on a formidable physique and vast reserves of dao power. Any ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator would have drained their magic and collapsed from exhaustion after throwing a single quiver's worth.
By now, a vast battlefield had taken shape centered around Bao Yun's fortress. Over ten thousand Liao horsemen were gathered here, while human reinforcement detachments steadily advanced into the fray, clashing with the outer skirmishers. The entire battlefield was now enveloped by the human domain, and the yellow mist of the Liao domain had practically vanished. The area had turned into a massive trap, pinning ten thousand Liao cavalry within the pure domain of the mortal realm. The once-ferocious Liao riders gradually grew weaker, and the tides of battle began to turn, bit by bit.
Chapter 83