The rebels were fleeing in all directions. A hundred Xu family Dao Foundation youths split into several squads, advancing steadily as gunshots rang out without pause. With every gunshot, a rebel fell. After generations of improvements, the flying-sword guns used by Qingming's Dao Foundation cultivators had essentially settled on rapid single shots, heavy stopping power, and long range.
Yet the rebels' fleeing ability was hardly inferior to that elderly Scenery Command cultivator's; in the blink of an eye, they had vanished into the surrounding wilderness. The battlefield was left strewn with over ten thousand corpses, the vast majority of them killed outright rather than wounded.
Though Wei Yuan stood suspended in midair, his mind was occupied with thoughts of his future choices.
At that moment, seeing the rebels rout, a small squad of cavalry rode out from the State of Ji's government forces. Galloping beneath Wei Yuan, a colonel cupped his hands and called up, "From what background does this righteous warrior hail? My general would like to invite you over for a meeting and a word."
Wei Yuan frowned slightly. The atmosphere in the State of Ji was truly bizarre: the government troops feared bandits like snakes and scorpions, yet the moment they assumed he held no official post, the general put on airs again. Had that fellow failed to see him destroy Xu Kuang with three thunderbolts and Zhang Sheng defeat a Scenery Command expert in a single move?
Wei Yuan's expression darkened. Suddenly, a dharma idol cultivator clad in Great Tang-style armor appeared on the ground. Raising a riding crop, this dharma idol cultivator lashed it straight across the colonel's face, whipping him clean off his horse!
The dharma idol cultivator then whipped him relentlessly, landing more than a dozen strikes in quick succession while cursing, "Bullshit general! My lord is the Military Commissioner of Qingyang for the Great Tang! Before my lord, you're all just common grunts! Disrespect my lord, and I'll beat you half to death first!"
The colonel screamed repeatedly under the lash. The government soldiers, who had still carried a bit of arrogance, took one look at how vicious this dharma idol lord was and immediately scurried off like rats with their heads in their hands, abandoning their own colonel.
The colonel was in the mid Dao Foundation realm, yet before a high dharma idol cultivator, he was like a child, beaten without the slightest ability to resist.
Before long, the government army's general received word and flew over in person, bringing only a few retainers.
This general was at the mid dharma idol realm. Approaching Wei Yuan, he finally saw Wei Yuan and Zhang Sheng's appearances clearly and faintly sensed their auras, causing his heart to skip a beat. Then, seeing that the dharma idol warrior—whose cultivation matched his own—treated Wei Yuan with utmost reverence, he immediately dropped his altitude half a body-length lower than Wei Yuan's and cupped his hands. "This humble general, Zhao Zhen, pays respects to the Lord Military Commissioner!"
Wei Yuan offered a faint, humorless smile. "The Great Tang and the State of Ji are nominal sovereign and subject, but you and I serve different masters and share no chain of command. There is no need for such ceremony, General Zhao. However, as a commissioned official of the Great Tang, I must pursue the rebels and cannot converse at length with you. Please do as you please, General Zhao."
Zhao Zhen glanced at the rebel corpses carpeting the ground. Hesitating for a moment, he dared not voice what he wanted to say, slinking away dejectedly.
A moment later, the main body of the Ji army marched off. Yet many officers in the ranks looked back toward this direction time and again.
Wei Yuan frowned slightly and said to Zhang Sheng, "Can you bring that general over? I have a few questions for him."
Zhang Sheng said calmly, "A minor matter."
Above her head manifested an elderly Daoist sitting cross-legged, black and white qi continuously swirling in his hands. Suddenly, General Zhao appeared in midair, still holding the posture of riding a horse in contemplation.
Zhao Zhen was pondering just what manner of sacred figure this so-called Military Commissioner of Qingyang was when the world suddenly shifted before his eyes. His army was more than ten li away, and he had inexplicably appeared in midair, tumbling headfirst!
Before he could circulate his dharmic powers to protect himself, Wei Yuan caught and steadied him, saying, "General Zhao, do not panic. I only wish to ask you something. I noticed that your army seems very interested in these rebel corpses. Might I ask why?"
Only now did Zhao Zhen come to his senses, gripped by sheer terror. He was a dharma idol cultivator, after all, yet he had been snatched over without a sound; far from resisting, he did not even know how he had arrived.
With his life now held in another's hands, he immediately adopted the subservience of greeting a superior official on his knees. "My lord may not know, but currently the King places great importance on suppressing the rebellion and has promised handsome rewards. Submitting a single rebel head yields a bounty of silver, while a hundred heads grant a promotion of one rank. These ten thousand and more elite heads would be enough for this humble officer to be enfeoffed with a noble title."
Heads? Wei Yuan frowned slightly. There were plenty of ways to verify whether battle achievements were falsified. The simplest was for army generals to carry shadow-recording orbs; failing that, searching an officer's memories or demanding a blood oath could both verify claims. Why must severed heads be submitted? For convenience, cutting off thumbs or ears was far better.
Perhaps there was only one explanation: the King of Ji needed heads, specifically the heads of the rebels.
Wei Yuan asked a bit more about nearby towns available for resupply, then let Zhao Zhen go. Zhao Zhen glanced at the several high dharma idol cultivators standing around Wei Yuan, shuddered, and hurried off to catch up with his army.
Once he was far away, the four dharma idols vanished. Zhang Sheng could not help but smile. These four dharma idols were Wei Yuan's warriors, essentially Wei Yuan's avatars. Wei Yuan had released his avatars, pretended they were not him, done what was inconvenient for him to do personally, and boasted what he would have felt too bashful to say himself—with remarkably good effect.
Were it not for the considerable physical differences between mirage demons and humans, those three Scenery Command demons would certainly have been dragged out on duty as well. What Zhang Sheng did not know was that at this moment, Wei Yuan had detached a strand of divine sense to ask the three entangled mirage demons if there was any way to summon them while conserving Dao power.
Zhang Sheng then left to cultivate on her own, while Wei Yuan brought forth the ancient art of war page. A winged horse appeared over the military aura, drastically increasing their travel speed. Within a quarter of an hour, they arrived at a county town a hundred li away.
This county town had clearly suffered the calamity of war. The gate tower showed signs of burning, and the walls were battered and decayed, yet faint sounds of human life and vitality still lingered within.
With a sweep of his divine sense, Wei Yuan knew there were still over ten thousand surviving commoners inside. He ordered his troops to enter the town, while sending Liu Yanzhi ahead to find the local magistrates.
Moments later, Wei Yuan sat in the county yamen, while the county magistrate sat tremblingly below him in attendance, taking Wei Yuan for a regional warlord come to fish in troubled waters in the State of Ji.
These military lords were the hardest to deal with, far more troublesome than bandits. Local troops from the State of Ji were slightly better, as they would at least maintain a shred of bureaucratic courtesy. But the one before him was an out-of-state military commissioner; if displeased, he might well execute the magistrate, dust off his sleeves, leave, and pin the whole affair on the rebels.
Wei Yuan was renowned throughout the Western Regions, but this was the State of Ji. Aside from major court events, officials in remote lands knew only what transpired within a hundred li of their jurisdiction. A "Military Commissioner of Qingyang" was something he had never even heard of.
Thus, the magistrate displayed twelve parts warmth, treating him as reverently as an ancestor: "...This humble county is remote and impoverished. Even the rebels disdained coming here, yet the government troops have visited thrice. Any government troops who come this far are starving mad; they even seized and ate the chickens I raised in the yamen's back courtyard. There is truly nothing left in the town now; we survive purely on tree bark and grass leaves."
On his way here, Wei Yuan had indeed seen that the surrounding lands were barren, stripped of even a speck of green; everything edible had likely been gnawed clean. For this magistrate to remain at his post instead of fleeing at a time like this was no small feat.
Wei Yuan asked, "Lord Liu, why haven't you fled yet?"
The magistrate, surnamed Liu with the given name Muzhi, smiled bitterly upon hearing this. "I hold an official title, after all, and once studied under the Minister of Personnel, so colleagues in officialdom accord me some slight face. With me here, arriving government troops will not go too far; finding nothing to eat, they simply move on, and there are no captures of 'two-legged sheep.'"
"And if the rebels come, wouldn't you be in danger?"
Liu Muzhi fell silent for a moment, then said, "I sent people to spread word that our grain is utterly exhausted and the government army has already passed through. If that fails, I can only resign myself to fate. There are still over ten thousand people in the town, and having served as magistrate here for three years, I truly cannot bear to abandon them. If there were only three or four thousand left, perhaps I would have run, too."
Wei Yuan felt a genuine sense of respect. This man was truly an outlier in the officialdom of the State of Ji.
Wei Yuan finally asked one last question: "Before the government army's three visits, what was the town's population?"
"Forty-one thousand three hundred."
After a silence, Wei Yuan asked, "How did they perish?"
"The first time the government army came to requisition grain, heavy clashes broke out, and over a thousand died. When the troops came the following two times, the people had learned to submit meekly, so not many were slaughtered. They all... starved to death."
Chapter 967