Wei Yuan stood in midair, gazing down at the frontline where slaughter raged unabated, and at the Shaman legions constantly shifting toward both flanks.
In this battle, the Shamans had made no deliberate attempt to envelop Qingming's flanks. For one thing, Qingming was far larger than it had been in the past; an encirclement would require stretching the battle line across several thousand li. However, as Shaman reinforcements arrived in continuous waves, the front inevitably began extending toward both wings. Otherwise, they could neither deploy such vast numbers nor bring their numerical superiority to bear.
For this assault, the Shamans had altered their tactics: they maintained an unceasing, relentless frontal offensive. The strategy appeared clumsy, yet after a full day and night of uninterrupted attacks, Wei Yuan's sharp instincts told him something was wrong.
The defenders along Qingming's fortifications had already rotated twice, while the attacking Shaman legions had been swapped out six times. Whenever a legion was crippled, a fresh one took its place. As a result, Qingming's defenders were granted no respite whatsoever. Wei Yuan was forced to commit his reserves to the line, pulling back the exhausted troops who had fought far too long.
In just a single day, the rotated troops pulled back from the frontline exceeded three hundred thousand. Qingming's forces were beginning to feel the strain.
Yet the Shamans were not finished. While maintaining their frontal assault, two legions numbering in the millions began shifting toward the flanks. This was no mere extension of the line; they intended to seek out weak points on the wings, establish independent positions, and launch fresh offensives from there.
Wei Yuan had no choice but to mobilize his reserve legions again, sending one hundred thousand troops to mirror each enemy legion's movements. At the same time, he deployed engineering units equipped with mobile fortresses to accompany them, while chariot units stood on standby in the rear.
The two Shaman legions pushed ever deeper, drawing the two hundred thousand men Wei Yuan had assigned to counter them farther and farther from the main defensive line. Just as Wei Yuan's concern was mounting, he noticed that the Shaman legion to the east had stopped advancing. Instead, it was setting up camp on the spot, preparing to attack.
That Shaman legion had marched only a little over a thousand li along the exterior line. Wei Yuan held the interior line, remaining just six hundred li from his main positions. The halt of this flank legion was good news, but why had they suddenly stopped pushing forward? The western legion was still sweeping in a wide arc; if it advanced much farther, it would enter Li Zhi's defensive zone.
Right then, an intelligence report filtered through the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World and arrived before Wei Yuan. Two days ago, a Shaman legion of three hundred thousand had pushed eastward, attempting to drive a wedge between Hanyang Pass and Qingming to sever the connection between Qingming and Western Jin.
However, that legion had been ambushed by forces advancing from the direction of Hanyang Pass. It was reported that Xu Lanshan had intervened personally, slaying both the commander and deputy commander with a single sword strike before withdrawing unscathed. Stripped of leadership, the Shaman legion fell into chaos. The Xu family's private army pursued them for a hundred li, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties and shattering them into a complete rout.
*The Xu family?!* Wei Yuan could not fathom Xu Wangu's reasoning.
Offering charcoal in the snow? There was no need for it.
Qingming was currently powerful, its forces strong and well provisioned. Even after the Heavenly Shaman had slaughtered over two hundred thousand soldiers with a barrage of great hexes, Qingming still maintained an army of over a million men.
Moreover, with every passing month, hundreds of thousands more trained reserves joined the ranks. Across Qingming, nearly three million cultivators had reached the Body Casting stage. Even if more than half remained in the rear to produce supplies, the remaining recruitment pool was immense. Xu Wangu was far too shrewd to overlook such an obvious fact.
Was it a gesture of goodwill? Wei Yuan hardly felt himself worthy of it.
Beyond these two explanations, Wei Yuan could think of nothing else—unless Xu Lanshan had acted out of sentiment for their past ties. Yet striking in the Shattered Lands required an immortal's assistance to veil her presence from the entities beyond the realm; otherwise, she would suffer the same fate as the Nether Shaman had back then, sustaining severe trauma to her foundation and risking the collapse of her internal scenery world, which would drop her back down to the Dharma Idol realm.
In other words, Xu Lanshan's intervention had undoubtedly been sanctioned by Xu Wangu.
Wei Yuan pondered it for a long while without making sense of it. Ultimately, he put it out of his mind and focused on countering the Shaman offensive.
Over the past few days, the Shamans had advanced methodically, nibbling forward step by step, taking on the air of an army building solid encampments to wage a slow war of attrition.
After several days of bloody, seesaw battles, Wei Yuan's newly erected defensive line had fallen behind enemy positions. However, he had already finished another defensive line further back, and a third line was more than half complete. At this pace, Qingming's fortifications would only multiply.
Suspended in the air, Wei Yuan used his divine sense to process military affairs through the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World while silently asking himself: *Is this really all the Shamans have to offer?*
Though their current tactic was brilliant—braving horrific casualties to maintain a casualty ratio around ten to one—the two sides were on vastly different scales. For Qingming, this was an arm bleeding; for the Shamans, it was like a giant bleeding from the tip of his pinky finger. If the stalemate persisted, Qingming would inevitably perish.
Yet this clever, uncomplicated approach did not feel right. Even Hongye had played every trick in the book during his offensive. Now that the Heavenly Shaman was personally overseeing the campaign, how could his methods be so limited?
*Right—a mole!*
Fei Yutong's betrayal had proved long ago that the Shamans could infiltrate anything. Wei Yuan had no doubt that if the Shamans put their minds to it, they could penetrate Qingming. Qingming was massive now, populated mostly by newcomers. While many had contributed karmic luck, those who had yet to produce any still formed the vast majority. Any of them could turn traitor.
Besides, if even a core disciple whom the Water Moon Hall had groomed with full devotion could be dragged down, Wei Yuan doubted more than a handful of people—apart from the inner circle of cultivators from the Palace of Grand Beginning—could truly withstand Shaman corruption.
Having studied history for a long time, Wei Yuan did not put human nature to the test, nor did he put his trust in it. Or rather, he believed people simply acted according to human nature.
Yet finding a traitor was another matter.
Every day, Wei Yuan combed through the records of the Great Array of the Heavenly Constellations and the Peerless Dao Domain, but found nothing. All he turned up were petty thefts and trivial neighborhood squabbles; many grievances that would normally provoke fights were being suppressed instead.
The phrase heard most often was: *If you've got the guts, settle it on the battlefield.*
There was no internal sabotage and no trace of external Shaman infiltration. Visiting merchant caravans were well-behaved, showing no irregular personnel turnover. Every change in personnel had a clear paper trail, mostly boiling down to mundane affairs of romance.
Everything looked normal. Yet the more normal it appeared, the more abnormal it truly was. Indeed, the abnormality was so glaring that it almost felt as though the Heavenly Shaman across the line was deliberately dropping hints.
Even though he found no actionable clues, Wei Yuan had no intention of launching a sweeping purge. During a critical campaign, internal unrest was the greatest peril.
Instead, he selected a thousand sharp, capable Dao Foundation Dao soldiers, formed them into an independent mobile force, and began specialized training aimed specifically at extinguishing localized rebellions.
With these preparations complete, Wei Yuan felt slightly more at ease. He had grown accustomed to seizing the initiative after the enemy acted and holding people accountable after the fact.
While this approach inevitably incurred some losses when trouble broke out, severe punishments were enough to strike fear into petty scoundrels. In truth, those losses were far smaller than the disruption caused by massive purges and interrogations.
Just then, word arrived from the border: the caravan of the Desolate Ancestor Tribe had arrived once more.
Wei Yuan was taken aback. What was going on now? Had the Heavenly Shaman's control over his people degraded to such an extent that it was worse than Hongye's?
Back then, trade had been modest in scale, yet it had still been conducted in secret.
A Heavenly Shaman's ability to monitor heaven and earth was no empty boast. For them to trade with Qingming under these circumstances—had some formidable figure emerged among the Desolate Shamans capable of standing as an equal against Heavenly Shaman Huiye?
The matter demanded caution. Keeping his true body where it was, Wei Yuan dispatched an avatar to meet them. Rather than allowing the Desolate Ancestor Tribe's caravan into Qingming, he arranged to conduct the exchange right at the border.
Chapter 853