The earlier waves of grand curses could be seen as an immortal playing chess through intermediaries, but that final karmic redirection was clearly the direct hand of an immortal. It remained unknown which immortal from the human race had stepped in to help. Otherwise, had such an immense mountain of karmic debt landed squarely upon Wei Yuan's head, even if he did not perish, his dharma idol would have suffered terrible contamination.
Wei Yuan had no time to dwell on shock or fury. He immediately ordered the units positioned at the far ends of the left and right flanks to advance and strike both flanks of the Shamans, while he charged straight for their central camp!
"What insolence!" Liu Lan had never imagined that Wei Yuan would dare launch an attack at such a moment.
He instinctively looked down on anyone in the Dharma Idol stage, yet having just suffered karmic backlash, and with Huiye temporarily unable to disrupt the extraterrestrial horrors' sight, Liu Lan could not fight with full strength right now.
Coiling around his massive serpentine form was a distinct black-and-red aura that clung like maggots on rotting bone, relentlessly attempting to bore into his flesh. Fortunately, a hazy moonlight radiated from the scales of his serpent body, barely withstanding the karmic corrosion. But the moonlight was burning away rapidly, clearly unable to hold out for much longer.
Seeing Wei Yuan charge across the battlefield, four Great Shamans flanking Liu Lan took to the sky simultaneously to intercept him.
Yet Wei Yuan's body sank abruptly, and thrusting his spear in righteous fury, a sphere of crimson-black light erupted from the spearpoint. Like red lightning, it instantly split into hundreds, then thousands of streaks, fanning out more than a hundred zhang across!
The power of that single spear strike seemed capable of shattering heaven and earth, shaking even the Great Dao itself. This was the very strike that had made Wei Yuan famous all those years ago: Counter-Slay—immensely ferocious and absolute, proving one's dao through pure, unadulterated force.
After all these years, Wei Yuan's cultivation was far beyond what it had once been, and the power of this spear strike had ascended to an entirely new realm.
A great plume of bloody mist erupted from all four Great Shamans simultaneously. One after another, they plummeted from the sky, unable to slow Wei Yuan in the slightest. Having instantly seen through all the mysteries of Counter-Slay, Liu Lan hesitated no longer, turning and fleeing at once—abandoning the entire vanguard legion without a second thought!
The moment Liu Lan fled, dozens of Great Shamans skimmed low to the ground and broke out of the camp in an instant, fleeing into the distance.
Wei Yuan had arrived brimming with murderous intent, but caught completely off guard by this sight, he froze in his tracks. He could not tell whether Liu Lan was merely a paper tiger or had truly discerned the profound depths of Counter-Slay.
Wei Yuan had continuously refined Counter-Slay over the years, primarily because the true intent embodied in the strike was exceptionally rare; even Wei Yuan himself could not guarantee he could replicate that true intent of defying heaven through any other means.
After stepping into the Mindscape Realm, drawing inspiration from the breathing and evolution of the two grotto-heavens, Wei Yuan had gained an entirely new comprehension of the Great Dao of heaven and earth, allowing him to finally perfect the strike. The current Counter-Slay grew stronger against stronger foes, unleashing its true, full might only when facing an immortal.
Furthermore, Wei Yuan could infuse the spear with supplementary karmic luck or celestial spiritual qi, drastically elevating the strike's fundamental stature. Having arrived in fury just now, he had infused the spear with the karmic fire newly gathered by the Red Lotus Bodhi.
This karmic debt had a direct causal link to Liu Lan, making its power exceptionally devastating. With just that small test of its edge, it had heavily wounded four Great Shamans. Yet Wei Yuan never anticipated that Liu Lan would flee so decisively, without the slightest hesitation.
Pursuing him now was futile. Wei Yuan immediately ordered an all-out chase after the routed Shaman forces, pursuing them for a hundred li in a single breath and slaying another hundred thousand Shaman troops before returning to camp.
Wei Yuan then mobilized over a hundred thousand troops to dig through the front-line battle zones and rescue any soldiers who still clung to life. Fortunately, it was already morning; the dark clouds had receded and bright daylight flooded the area, facilitating the rescue efforts. Perfected Chuhe brought in large numbers of spiritual guinea pigs to assist with the search.
However, because the earth was soaked with the Shamans' Corrosion Curse, the guinea pigs were unwilling to draw near.
Only then did the savage side of Perfected Chuhe's beast-taming arts reveal itself: he directly compelled the guinea pigs to dig downward. As soon as one died, another took its place, swiftly carving out multiple underground passages and pulling out many who lay buried deep beneath the earth, hovering on the verge of death.
In the final hours, a few thousand more were saved. In this battle, Qingming suffered two hundred and fifty thousand fallen, over half of whom were elite soldiers. Less than a hundred thousand survived on the front line—a truly catastrophic loss.
Meanwhile, the Shamans had paid the price of a million soldiers from start to finish, with considerable casualties suffered by Shaman commoners and slaves during the rout. The Qingming troops had gone completely blood-mad, no longer distinguishing between warriors and civilians, slaughtering every moving Shaman they saw.
A blessing amidst tragedy was that Xu Wenwu had actually survived. Out of the five hundred Dao soldiers under his direct command, more than four hundred and sixty had survived, with only around thirty fallen in battle.
The surviving Dao soldiers showed a noticeable surge in their auras; it seemed that absorbing several strands of karmic luck had not been in vain.
Wei Yuan stood suspended in the sky above the Shaman camp. Below, a hundred thousand Qingming soldiers had completely taken over the grounds and were conducting a thorough sweep. Several high-ranking officers came up beside Wei Yuan, awaiting their next orders.
Wei Yuan gazed northwest, pondering repeatedly in his heart: following this wave of grand curses, what would the Shamans do next?
After a long silence, his thoughts cleared, and he began issuing orders: "Plant explosives throughout the camp and detonate them in two hours. Destroy every facility here. Haul away all provisions and supplies, useful or not; whatever cannot be transported is to be burned on the spot. Conscript laborers and craftsmen to erect a new defensive line immediately!
"Also, recall all pursuit forces on the front, and pull the scout cavalry back within a hundred li."
The officers accepted the orders and dispersed to carry them out.
Sure enough, scout cavalry returning at dusk reported seeing the military qi of a massive army in the northwest, estimating its numbers to be at least a million. The Shamans could not possibly dispatch two vanguard legions in a row; this time, their main force had likely arrived.
Wei Yuan keenly sensed that the Shamans had no intention of engaging him in positional or attritional warfare. That was why they had disregarded casualties and karmic debt to directly obliterate the defensive line he had painstakingly fortified for over a year with grand curses, followed by a swift, deep drive with their massive army. Without any terrain to defend, Qingming would face near-certain defeat.
Wei Yuan understood in his heart that it was once again a race against time. Everything hinged on how many fortifications he could construct before the Shamans launched their next offensive.
Night was now deep. Massive detachments of Shaman troops poured into the vanguard legion's ruined camp. Liu Lan reappeared, though his aura had weakened considerably, and even the luster in his eyes had grown dim.
Beside him stood two Shamans who looked almost identical. Both were barely a zhang tall, hardly matching the thickness of Liu Lan's serpentine body. Yet Liu Lan had cast aside all his arrogance, displaying an attitude bordering on obsequiousness.
Both Shamans had humanoid bodies, hairless heads, and somewhat silvery irises. The only feature that appeared non-human was a pair of compound eyes of differing colors at the outer corners of each eye, which lent them a slight touch of aesthetic grace.
Yet in the eyes of other Shamans, those two faces were far too smooth, far too symmetrical—identical on both sides, without a single decorative fleshy bud or tentacle to be seen. In the Shaman realm, it was hideous beyond measure.
The Shaman on the left said, "Our warriors marched nine thousand li today, and you prepared a field of ruins to welcome us?"
Liu Lan offered an ingratiating smile. "I never imagined he would dare mount a counterattack. Struck by karmic debt at that moment, I lost my fighting capacity and had no choice but to temporarily withdraw."
The Shaman on the right said, "Recall all commoners and slaves to reconstruct the camp at once. Let the army rest for a day, and attack the day after tomorrow. In little more than a day, the humans shouldn't be able to erect many fortifications, right?"
Liu Lan replied, "For fortifications of the previous caliber, the humans mobilized tens of millions of people to build for nearly two years! Now, let alone less than two days, even if we gave them two months, they couldn't build a complete defensive line. And that's overestimating them. If we used commoners and slaves, it would take around fifty million laborers two to three years of hard labor to do it."
A gleam flashed across the compound eyes of the Shaman on the left. "The commoners and slaves are far too lazy, unable to even outmatch frail humans! That is your failing!"
Liu Lan hurriedly said, "This time, I will be sure to lash them thoroughly!"
Chapter 849