There was no telling how long Hule Gao'en would take to open his tribe's secret vault and return. Wei Yuan certainly had no intention of waiting around for him, and with the fortress construction schedule fully booked well into the following year, there was nothing left for him to oversee. Finding himself with time on his hands, Wei Yuan gathered the hundred young Xu family Dao Foundation cultivators he had brought along and set out eastward to scout a path to the State of Ji.
Traveling with the company were a few unusual individuals: a scholar and roughly a dozen men dressed as attendants. The scholar had thick eyebrows, large eyes, and an expression brimming with resolute righteousness; his name was Liu Yanzhi. Back when the governor of Jieyang Commandery sent a denunciation against bandits, Liu Yanzhi had delivered it in person, escorted by nothing more than a dozen-odd guards.
His outcome had been predictable. Wei Yuan had immediately ordered them all seized on the spot.
Among the attendants were several hardened, reckless old soldiers who held Wei Yuan in complete disregard, craning their necks and begging for death, gambling that Wei Yuan would not dare kill them. Readily obliging, Wei Yuan had casually executed a few of them on the spot, after which the rest completely ceased their antics.
Wei Yuan had then starved them for seven straight days. They grew so ravenous that their eyes glowed green in the night. To make matters worse, large basins of delicious food were placed right outside their cell doors; the tempting aroma doubled their hunger. After seven days, even the most stubborn among them had their arrogance thoroughly extinguished.
Wei Yuan had then returned to Qingming, leaving the prisoners in the hands of a few jailers.
Naturally, none of the men who accompanied Wei Yuan in the first wave to the Mountain Folk territory were pushovers. Well-versed in such matters through long exposure, the jailers had their own methods. Every day, they tossed in only a few steamed buns—enough for an average of two bites per person. Famished to the point of madness, the prisoners immediately came to blows over the food. No one cared about saving face for the scholar; each time, they shoved him into a corner, leaving him without so much as a single mouthful. Though Liu Yanzhi possessed a Dao Foundation, his pride prevented him from brawling with servants over scraps, and so he simply stayed hungry.
After three days of this, deep grudges had formed among the prisoners. They eyed one another with suspicion, refusing even to lie down together to sleep. With just a few steamed buns, the jailers had shattered their unity.
By the time everything was in place at the fortress and Wei Yuan was preparing to depart for the State of Ji, he finally remembered this group. Fortunately, they had not starved to death. Wei Yuan went to speak with the scholar, who was now on his last breath from hunger. Liu Yanzhi remained stubbornly unyielding, refusing to act as a guide under any circumstances and asking only for a swift death.
Wei Yuan was helpless, though he did not care overly much. After all, the nine surviving attendants together had already supplied eleven routes into the State of Ji.
When Zhang Sheng caught wind of the matter, however, he spoke a few words with the scholar. Liu Yanzhi promptly fell to his knees in homage, swearing fealty unto death.
Wei Yuan was thoroughly baffled and privately asked the scholar what Zhang Sheng had said to him, but the scholar looked down on Wei Yuan from the bottom of his heart and refused to say a single word. Unable to press Zhang Sheng about it, Wei Yuan had no choice but to bring the man along on the road.
On this journey, Wei Yuan took only a hundred light troops. After every stretch of road, a dozen or so men would take flight in all directions to survey the terrain and record the geography, typically scouting forward about a hundred li before rejoining the main column.
Wei Yuan had already determined his position using the maps from the Palace of Grand Beginning. However, the palace's records for this region were exceedingly vague, as the immortals had focused their offensives primarily on the northern Liao Clan and the southern Shaman race. Since he had ample time on this journey, Wei Yuan prepared ahead, intending to refine the surrounding maps first—a crucial factor for winning future military campaigns.
According to the route Wei Yuan had chosen, their entry into the State of Ji would take them south of Jieyang into Xiangshui Commandery, located along the upper reaches of the river. He had chosen this location because Liu Yanzhi had revealed that Xiangshui Commandery was an area where the rebels operated; beyond it lay Fengyuan Commandery.
Wei Yuan planned to make initial contact with the rebels to assess their caliber before formulating a military strategy. Ideally, he wanted to clash with a small detachment of them.
As for the closer Jieyang Commandery, Wei Yuan decided to set it aside for now. That governor of Jieyang acted in an eerie, unpredictable manner, inexplicably aware of Wei Yuan and his people's existence from ten thousand li away. According to the scholar Liu Yanzhi, the governor had ordered him to travel ten thousand li to this place simply to deliver a denunciation against bandits, offering not a single word of explanation as to why.
Liu Yanzhi's elderly father had been a minor official who had been imprisoned for a crime, awaiting execution after autumn. The governor had promised that if Liu Yanzhi delivered the document, his father's offense would be pardoned. Thus, the scholar had come with a resolution to die, never expecting to return alive. Furthermore, so far as he knew, several similar groups had been dispatched to different locations.
Upon hearing this, Wei Yuan had sensed that something was amiss. He decided to wait on events rather than act rashly, ignoring the governor of Jieyang for the time being. Once the governor lost his patience, he would naturally reveal his hand.
The journey passed without incident.
Ten days later, Wei Yuan stood before an ancient, weathered stone stele, looking at the four large characters carved upon it: "Border of the State of Ji." Below was an inscription: "Penned by Marquis Xuanwei."
Crossing past this stele meant entering the territory of the State of Ji. However, the stone was not merely dilapidated; there were also numerous traces of animal droppings scattered around it. The border defenses were clearly in decay, abandoned to the point that not even important boundary steles were patrolled.
Wei Yuan studied it for a moment before saying, "Let us go." He then took the lead, stepping across the border into the State of Ji.
Several dozen li into the country stood a county seat. Yet its city gates hung wide open, the walls had collapsed in numerous places, and the gate tower had been reduced to ashes by fire. Countless crows circled in the sky above the city, and not a single trace of living movement could be seen.
Wei Yuan flew into the city first, only to discover that the entire place had been burned to ruins. Charred corpses lay everywhere, most bearing the marks of blades and swords. Piled before the main gate of the county yamen were dozens of corpses, impaled with a large banner displaying a tiger's head and the character "Xu" as large as a bushel. The arms and legs of every single corpse were gone, vanished without a trace.
Wei Yuan circled the city, his face dark as stagnant water. Over thirty thousand corpses lay inside, with not a single survivor. Even those hiding in cellars and woodpiles had been dragged out and slaughtered. This could only mean a powerful cultivator had used divine sense to sweep the entire city, allowing them to carry out such a thorough massacre.
Wei Yuan reached out, and the tiger-head banner planted atop the corpses snapped in two, flying into his grasp. Tearing off the blood-soaked cloth, he handed it to a subordinate to stow away and commanded, "Release the useless ones. The whole army departs!"
All the attendants were promptly set free. Holding the scholar in hand, Wei Yuan rose directly into the air, pursuing the march tracks left on the ground. The hundred soldiers took flight as well, following closely behind him.
The scholar was utterly astonished. Only now did he realize that the soldiers Wei Yuan had brought were remarkably young—some even looking slightly childish—yet every single one of them was a Dao Foundation cultivator!
Judging by the degree of decomposition of the corpses in the city, Wei Yuan estimated that the rebels had departed no more than three days prior. Since his entire force was composed of Dao Foundation cultivators, it would take less than half a day to catch up.
Wei Yuan truly wanted to ask these rebels—who claimed to be purging evil from around the sovereign—how they had ended up purging ordinary commoners instead, slaughtering them without leaving a single soul alive.
After flying over a hundred li, Wei Yuan spotted another county seat. It too was burned to the ground, with not a single survivor left. A total of more than twenty-seven thousand corpses filled the city, including infants still wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Without a word, Wei Yuan took off in pursuit again. This time, the young Xu family Dao Foundation cultivators had to strain with all their might just to barely keep up.
Before long, an encampment came into view. The camp was haphazardly arranged, with a large banner bearing the character "Luo" standing by the entrance. The soldiers inside wore an assortment of garments, dressed in all manner of attire, though most had a strip of yellow cloth tied around their heads.
Wei Yuan swept the camp with his divine sense and discovered over a thousand bandit soldiers inside, led by one at the perfection of the Dao Foundation realm.
Wasting no time, Wei Yuan brought the aura of the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World crashing down from midair. In an instant, every bandit below the Dao Foundation realm fell unconscious. Only then did he descend into the camp and stride into the largest military tent.
Inside, the bandit leaders had been drinking and making merry, watching several unclothed peasant women dance. Suddenly feeling a heavy weight in their heads, they had passed out one after another, leaving only two Dao Foundation leaders conscious. Catching sight of Wei Yuan, both were terrified and bewildered, recognizing that a superior expert whom they could never afford to offend had arrived.
Before Wei Yuan could even ask, the two exchanged glances, dropped to their knees with a thud, and frantically cried out, "Exalted Immortal, spare our lives!"
Wei Yuan threw the tiger-head banner down in front of them and demanded, "Whose colors are these?"
One of the leaders hurriedly replied, "Those are the colors of General Xu, General Xu Kuang! General Xu holds the post of General of the Front and goes by the moniker 'Man-Eating Tiger.' He has always fought with utter disregard for his life. Not long ago, General Xu shattered the State of Ji's hundred-thousand-strong army, so Leader Liu Heihu gave him permission to come to the border region to relax."
"Relax?" A flash of murderous intent flared in Wei Yuan's eyes.
Failing to notice the shift in Wei Yuan's expression, the two bandit leaders explained, "After a bloody battle, the army is exhausted in both body and mind. When that happens, the leader dispatches them to counties and townships they have never visited before, collecting military funds and grain on the one hand while having some fun on the other. That is what relaxing means."
"Where is there grain right now?" Wei Yuan asked.
It was late in the second lunar month, not yet the third. Spring had only just begun in the State of Ji, the lean season before the new harvest. Along the way, all the fields Wei Yuan had seen were still empty, as the time for sowing had not yet arrived. Wei Yuan still remembered how, around this time of year when he was a child, Wei Youcai would be deeply troubled, carefully measuring out grain jin by jin to shepherd the most destitute tenant farmers across the threshold of death.
Hearing Wei Yuan's question, one of the leaders eagerly tried to show loyalty: "Though there is no grain this season, there are plenty of sheep!"
"Where are the sheep?" A sinister premonition crept into Wei Yuan's mind.
The leader pointed at an unconscious woman on the ground and said, "Aren't these two-legged sheep right here?"
Unable to endure any longer, Wei Yuan made a grasping motion through the air. Two translucent souls were forcibly torn from the leaders' bodies and swept into his sleeve. Both bandit chieftains collapsed instantly, motionless.
This was the first time in Wei Yuan's life that he had forcibly extracted living souls. Scoundrels so steeped in heinous sin could never answer for those brutally slaughtered mortals through bodily torment alone.
Wei Yuan walked out of the tent. Looking at the thick resentment and karmic debt pervading the camp, he said coldly, "Kill them all. Leave none alive."
The colonel commanding the troops saluted and led his men into the camp. Moments later, every bandit in the encampment was slain.
Wei Yuan held out his hand, two shivering souls appearing within his palm. He asked, "Which direction did Xu Kuang go?"
Chapter 962