Stalemate

When Wei Yuan returned to the front lines, dawn was already drawing near. The Shamans had completely overrun the first defensive line and were launching assaults toward the second. Over a million troops from both sides clashed across a front extending hundreds of li, their battle lines intricately interwoven and chaotic. In a slightly wider trench, a captain clad in heavy armor waved a double-barreled fire gun glowing with a dark azure sheen. Beneath its barrels was mounted a three-foot saber fashioned for both slashing and thrusting. He was giving a pre-battle rallying speech to hundreds of heavy-armored warriors. Though the captain's head and face were hidden beneath a visor, his accent gave him away as Xu Wenwu. He spoke with impassioned vigor, but the warriors under his command were Dao soldiers produced from the youths of the Xu family. Not a single one reacted, each staring silently at Xu Wenwu. Xu Wenwu knew they rarely uttered a word on ordinary days, yet for some reason, he felt as if they were looking at an idiot. Just then, a sharp, hurried blast of a war horn sounded. Xu Wenwu tilted his head to listen carefully to the pitch, count, and duration of the horn blasts, then shouted, "It's our turn! Charge with me, wipe out the Shamans!" He drew out an azure talisman and ignited it with Dao power. Countless flecks of azure karmic luck descended upon the Dao soldiers of his squad, blessing them. Howling at the top of his lungs, Xu Wenwu leaped upward and charged toward the Shamans three trenches away! Yet he had barely cleared three feet off the ground when two Dao soldiers seized him by the calves and hauled him right back down. The two soldiers held Xu Wenwu down firmly, leaving him unable to budge. The rest of the Dao soldiers vaulted past him and plunged into the Shaman army. Only after most of them had surged forward did the pair finally let go. Xu Wenwu flew into a rage, cursed foully, and then a bizarre chariot abruptly materialized on the battlefield. Light flared at the muzzles of its two cannon barrels, glowing motes continually converging toward them. Up in the air, Wei Yuan naturally saw this. Pointing a finger, he caused the chariot to vanish instantly; Xu Wenwu's Dao Foundation was sealed within his body, prevented from manifesting. Helpless, Xu Wenwu knew that no more than a two-digit number of people in Qingming were capable of such a feat, none of whom he could afford to offend. Suppressing his temper at last, he relied on what he had learned in school and led this five-hundred-man squad of Dao soldiers into the front lines, joining the clash against the Shamans. Though he had seen battle before, this was his first time fighting Shamans at close quarters. Xu Wenwu broke out in a cold sweat from tension, his hands and feet going numb. Suddenly, a heavy-armored Shaman warrior leaped out from nowhere, smashing downward straight at Xu Wenwu's head! The rigorous training Xu Wenwu had endured for so long finally paid off. His body instinctively raised the gun and pulled the trigger. A long tongue of flame erupted from the egg-sized muzzle, its deafening roar overwhelming everything nearby. The terrifying kinetic force blasted the Shaman warrior backward through the air, trailing a vast spray of flesh and blood behind him like a crimson banner. Only then did an unremarkable Dao soldier behind Xu Wenwu lower his own muzzle. Having drawn first blood, Xu Wenwu finally calmed down. The battlefield no longer seemed quite so terrifying, and everything he had studied during training returned to mind one lesson after another. He swept his divine sense across the surroundings in an instant and reeled it back just as swiftly, taking in the tactical situation. This was another strict requirement of their training, for many Shaman curses targeted divine sense, and certain poisons could damage it as well. Sweeping the battlefield with divine sense had to be done in a flash and retracted immediately. With a clear picture of the situation, Xu Wenwu began barking orders, leading his squad of Dao soldiers to strike at weak points in the enemy line. After hacking their way forward, they actually managed to circle behind a Shaman unit. Seeing the favorable opening, the young general commanding this sector promptly ordered surrounding forces to converge and encircle the several-thousand-strong Shaman detachment, preparing to wipe them out. Xu Wenwu's unit held the most critical position, simultaneously preventing an enemy breakout and fending off reinforcements under crushing pressure. Mid-battle, he suddenly sensed that the karmic luck on many Dao soldiers in his unit had dissipated. He ignited another azure talisman, scattering a thousand strands of azure qi in every direction to bless the human Dao soldiers. In the fierce fighting, Dao soldiers suffered continuous casualties, and their karmic luck depleted at an alarming rate. Only after Xu Wenwu had burned two more azure talismans were the encircled Shaman forces finally wiped out. The azure talismans were specially crafted by Wei Yuan, each storing a thousand strands of mortal karmic azure qi. Once ignited with a specific incantation, they could bestow karmic luck upon nearby friendly Dao soldiers. These talismans were practically tailor-made for Xu Wenwu, who alone could distinctly perceive whether Dao soldiers within a certain range still retained their karmic blessings and replenish them in time. Now, the Shaman military qi wavered. Xu Wenwu caught this shift sharply, his spirits surging with a sudden feeling that the entire battlefield was within his grasp. With a crisp click, he rammed two fist-sized cartridges into the barrels, sprang to his feet, and prepared to lead a charge. Suddenly, the retreat horn blared across the battlefield. Xu Wenwu froze. Seeing Xu Wenwu lag behind in reaction, Wei Yuan willed from above, and several Dao soldiers seized Xu Wenwu by the arms, fleeing like the wind toward the third line of defense and conceding the positions they had just fought so hard to reclaim back to the Shamans. Instead of rejoicing, the Shamans took fright. Shaman Scholars and nobles paled; the stronger ones wheeled around and fled, while the weaker scrambled for cover on the spot. By now, they were well-practiced at ducking into trenches and had learned to press flat against the walls to evade airburst shells. In the blink of an eye, an eerie howl resonated in the sky. The shrill screech sent shivers down the spines of human and Shaman alike. Yet that shrill screech was merely the prelude; the truly terrifying heavy artillery shells made no sound at all. Within moments, the surface of the battlefield became a sea of fire. Under the horrific saturation fire of the heavy artillery, anyone on the open ground below the Dao Foundation realm had no hope of survival. Only those who managed to dive into trenches in time had any chance to live. This great war had now raged into its fifth day. Aside from a few brief hours of rest, the rest had been nonstop bloodshed. The Shamans left behind over a hundred thousand corpses every day, while Qingming suffered over ten thousand casualties daily. The lion's share of casualties on both sides came from heavy artillery and great curses; direct melee combat accounted for less than a third of the toll. On the surface, the Shamans seemed at an overwhelming disadvantage, but Wei Yuan knew full well that they were wearing down Qingming's nurturing power and heavy artillery shells. Artillery shells were manageable, and Wei Yuan was not overly concerned about them. Nurturing power, however, was a grave problem. More than half of the Shamans' sacrificial power was being directed toward striking Qingming itself, repeatedly deploying several great curses capable of compressing domain boundaries. Wei Yuan had no clever counter, forced to burn through the nurturing power accumulated by Qingming to endure it by force. Wei Yuan, for his part, continually lured large Shaman formations deep into the positions, pulverized them with a sudden volley of heavy artillery carpet bombardment, and then dispatched troops to seize the ground back. This repeated see-sawing was a meat grinder harvesting Shaman lives. The Shamans had seen through this tactic on day one, but they had no answer for it, left with no choice but to take shelter in human trenches right where they were. The Shamans had attempted to demolish the human fortifications completely, only to discover that the reinforced concrete defenses were extraordinarily sturdy and incomprehensibly vast in scale. Shaman arts hurled against them had negligible effect, leaving only Dao Foundation nobles and mighty warriors capable of dismantling them with brute strength. But they were all lordly figures—how could they stoop to such menial labor? Besides, trying to tear down fortifications on the battlefield made one an easy target for sudden death. The humans possessed two kinds of indirect-fire artillery shells: those with sound and those without. During general offensives, they used the audible shells; for targeted ambushes and surgical eliminations, they used the silent ones. Meanwhile, deep behind the front lines, Wei Yuan had already begun constructing the fourth, fifth, and sixth defensive lines, advancing at an astonishing pace each day. The Shamans saw all of this and were forced to expend great curses from time to time to strike the construction sites and impede further fortification. Yet few workers were stationed on the sites, so the casualties from great curses there paled in comparison to the front line. Years after their previous clash, the Shamans and Qingming were locked in war once again. Both sides had learned from the previous conflict and adapted, though Qingming's transformations were far more pronounced and swift. Even so, neither side had a truly effective counter to the other's trump cards. Liu Lan's hopes for a swift victory had collapsed by the third day. The war had settled into the pattern Wei Yuan envisioned: a grinding war of attrition waged over heavily fortified terrain. Wei Yuan steadily traded steel and gunpowder for Shaman flesh and blood—and... souls. The war was fought on Qingming soil. Wei Yuan held firm against the Shaman great curses, choosing to burn through nurturing power rather than contract Qingming's domain boundaries, largely because the souls of the fallen on both sides were drawn into the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. The Yellow Springs Grotto-Heaven was expanding at a staggering rate, packed so tightly with wandering souls and wild ghosts that there was hardly room to turn around.