Deep within the Zhao palace, the King of Zhao sat in his study. Overhead, a single lamp illuminated only a circle around his desk, leaving the rest of the room submerged in shadow.
The King of Zhao favored reviewing memorials in such an environment. Whenever weariness overtook him, he would look at his surroundings; the shadows swallowing the room gave him an ethereal sense of floating in the void. When he was very young, the Immortal Ancestor had taken him on a journey through the void to behold the magnificence of the myriad realms, planting the seed of immortal cultivation in his tender heart.
Yet later, his elder brother—who had inherited the throne—perished unexpectedly without leaving behind an heir. Still young at the time, he did not understand what was happening before being thrust onto the throne as the King of Zhao. Only after growing up did he gradually realize that his elder brother must have fallen victim to the machinations of an adversarial immortal, meeting an untimely and unexplained end.
Once he grasped this truth, the King of Zhao could not help but wonder from time to time: why had that hidden immortal wanted him on the throne?
The older he grew and the more he learned, the more he felt the terrifying power of that unseen entity. Even his own family's Immortal Ancestor could not uncover the mastermind's origins and had no choice but to suppress the matter.
Why him? Did that immortal believe the thousand-year heritage of Zhao would crumble in his hands? Tormented by that thought, the King of Zhao became intensely diligent in state affairs, sleeping merely three shichen a day, terrified that any misstep would dishonor his ancestors.
Yet after staying tautly wound for several thousand years, he suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion.
The King of Zhao rubbed his face and resumed reading the memorials. The edge of the current one was brushed with red, denoting critical military intelligence.
The memorial had come from the Bishui Domain. It reported that the Qingming army had crossed the border, where Li Chengfeng led his troops in a bitter struggle. After a day of bloody combat, his forces were overwhelmed and defeated: fifty thousand had been captured, with total casualties nearing a hundred and fifty thousand. Refusing to retreat, Li Chengfeng had fought to the bitter end before his defeat and capture.
Uncharacteristically, the King of Zhao did not erupt in fury. Instead, he stared at the memorial for a full quarter of an hour before softly tapping a small bell and commanding, "Summon Cui Shutong."
A moment later, Cui Shutong, newly promoted to Minister of War, walked into the study. Dawn was approaching, and Cui Shutong had only lain down in his clothes, allowing him to arrive the instant the summons came.
The King of Zhao said, "Bishui has fallen. Next is Yuyang Commandery. Return to your domain first and hold fast with your own forces. I will dispatch an additional hundred and fifty thousand infantry and a hundred thousand iron cavalry to aid your defense, all under your command. In this battle, we shall clash properly with Wei Yuan and see if he is truly as formidable as the legends say."
Cui Shutong accepted the decree and took his leave.
Before he had even left the palace grounds, he saw the Sixth Princess walking briskly toward him, seemingly headed outside. Cui Shutong immediately stepped to the side of the road to yield way to her. However, a woman in red standing beside the princess suddenly halted and said, "Commissioner Cui?"
"It is indeed this official," Cui Shutong replied with a bow, observing the full etiquette required when addressing a superior.
In truth, he had been granted a peerage long ago, and as Minister of War, he held the rank of second grade—far outranking the woman in red. Yet she hailed from an extraordinary lineage, was an intimate confidante of the Sixth Princess, and was known for her overbearing temperament, so Cui Shutong dared not show the slightest disrespect.
"Did Commissioner Cui just receive an imperial decree?"
Cui Shutong gave a vague summary of the king's orders. Even if he kept silent, the extensive eyes and ears the Crown Prince and the Sixth Princess maintained within the military would discover the troop movements in the blink of an eye. It was better to grant a favor now.
Upon hearing the decree, the woman in red's eyes lit up, and she turned to the Sixth Princess. "We could command the cavalry!"
The Sixth Princess gave a slow nod. Cui Shutong's heart sank.
***
Wei Yuan had not sent forth merely a single column of soldiers. Aside from his main force, three detachments pressed against the border between Qingming and Zhao, pinning down the Zhao border garrisons so they could not budge. At the same time, Wei Yuan exercised his authority over Southern Military Affairs, ordering the garrisons of the Southwestern Five Commanderies of Western Jin to advance toward Zhao territory, tying down even more Zhao troops.
The Qingming forces marched at astonishing speed. Cui Shutong had barely hurried back to Yuyang Commandery when Wei Yuan's vanguard had already arrived, seizing two outlying county towns without shedding a drop of blood.
Cui Shutong was a seasoned tactician. He anchored his defense on the commandery seat and an adjacent county town, deploying an extensive network of fortifications and fortified camps between the two.
The terrain here was narrow, preventing vast armies from spreading out. Yet the staging grounds ahead were a wide, flat plain; if Wei Yuan failed to break Cui Shutong's defensive line, his forces would be vulnerable to a sudden strike by Zhao's world-renowned iron cavalry.
Wei Yuan rested his troops for only a single day before launching his assault the next morning. Cui Shutong groaned inwardly, uncertain whether the iron cavalry led by the Sixth Princess and the female general in red would arrive in time.
By full daylight, standing atop the commandery wall, one could already see the roiling military aura of Qingming sweeping forward. The aura was dense and cohesive to the extreme, striking dread into all who beheld it.
When the Qingming host entered his line of sight, Cui Shutong's pupils contracted. This Qingming army differed yet again from what he had seen before. The vanguard consisted of massive iron-and-steel fortresses rolling slowly forward. Following close behind the mobile fortresses were dense ranks of heavy infantry. Interspersed among the infantry companies were peculiar carriages bearing thick steel tubes. They resembled cannons, yet differed from any cannons Cui Shutong had ever seen—far thicker, far more intricate, and far more complex.
The Qingming army halted a thousand zhang away. Then, one carriage after another lowered its ground spades, securing the chassis before aiming their muzzles directly at the commandery seat.
Cui Shutong's hair suddenly stood on end!
He hurled himself backward instantly. Just as he moved, several cannon shells came shrieking through the air, slamming into the gatehouse and blasting the wooden structure into splinters! Judging by the sheer explosive force, had he not reacted so swiftly, those few blasts would have wounded him.
Shock and fury surged through Cui Shutong. How had Qingming's cannons grown so terrifying all of a sudden? In the past, artillery barrages had been effective mainly against Dao Foundation cultivators, but now their destructive power had multiplied several times over. Even Dharma Idol experts would hardly dare intercept them, let alone withstand them head-on.
Immediately after, thousands of cannons roared in unison as hundreds of heavy-caliber pieces unleashed an unrelenting bombardment. In less than a quarter of an hour, four Dharma Idol cultivators attempting to intercept the incoming shells were blown back wounded. With the aerial interception neutralized, Wei Yuan concentrated his fire on the city gate. Half a shichen later, the towering gate collapsed in a thunderous crash alongside a stretch of the curtain wall, leaving a massive breach in the city's defenses.
The Yuyang garrison had prepared in advance and immediately mobilized troops to haul earth, stone, and timbers to plug the gap. Yet the Qingming artillery shifted its focus to the breach, unleashing lethal fire. Within moments, several thousand men lay dead around the opening.
Standing suspended in the sky, Wei Yuan silently calculated the consumption of shells. The munitions being expended today were old stock, on the verge of expiration. Once this battle concluded, Yu Zhizhuo would likely have far less to complain about, and the merchant caravans supplying raw ingredients for gunpowder to Qingming would be all smiles. In a few months' time, the flow of caravans would surely swell.
A shichen later, the Qingming war chariots and artillery carriages began to advance, scouring the defenders from the ramparts with relentless cannon fire. Whenever a silhouette appeared, a blast followed, completely disregarding whether the shells or the enemy soldiers were more expensive. Seeing muzzles swivel in their direction, many defenders simply leapt down the city walls and vanished.
Seeing that defeat was inevitable, Cui Shutong gritted his teeth and personally led ten thousand elites out through the breach, hoping to launch a desperate raid on the Qingming artillery carriages.
Yet every carriage was mounted with a rotary cannon. Qingming now possessed a considerable number of Dharma Idol cultivators and had even developed lightweight, rapid-firing rotary cannons that could be operated by late-stage Dao Foundation cultivators. The firepower was savage. Dozens of rotary cannons swept their fire across the breach, filling the air with a tempest of flying sword projectiles, harvesting lives as fast as men emerged. Even heavy shields were shattered by the devastating impact of the rounds. Cui Shutong threw himself to the very front, barely holding out for half a quarter of an hour. Struck by over a dozen rounds, he had no choice but to fall back.
The moment he retreated, the defenders' morale shattered, and they were swept back into the city.
Recognizing that the battle was lost, Cui Shutong could only lead his remnants out of the commandery seat and abandon the field. In less than two shichen from start to finish, Cui Shutong had been utterly routed. Before the clash, he never could have imagined that holding a fortified city with a hundred thousand elite troops would end in such swift catastrophe.
Yet had he not retreated, the veteran elites who had followed him for so many years would have been buried in that city. Cui Shutong knew all too well that his position as the Pacification Commissioner of Yuyang did not rely on his friendship with the King of Zhao, but on these veteran soldiers who answered to his commands alone.
A city could be lost, and even sons could be fathered anew if they died, but losing even a single one of these veteran soldiers cut Cui Shutong to the quick.
With the fall of the commandery seat, the defensive line and the outlying camps collapsed as well. Half a shichen from now was the appointed time for the Sixth Princess to lead the cavalry into the battle and strike from the flank. Yet no one had anticipated that Cui Shutong would fail to hold out for even three shichen.
Now, Cui Shutong could only pray in the depths of his heart for the Sixth Princess, wishing her good fortune.
Wei Yuan found the battle thoroughly unsatisfying as well. The engagement had been dreadfully dull—it had opened with an artillery barrage, and it had ended with an artillery barrage. The opposing commanding general had not even had the chance to step forward and issue a formal challenge, and the enemy Dharma Idol experts had all been blasted into injury before they could utter a single intimidating word.
From beginning to end, Wei Yuan had merely stood in the sky and watched, denied even the opportunity to exchange verbal barbs.
Fortunately, at that moment, the earth trembled. Military aura rose from the edge of the horizon, and countless cavalrymen crested the mountain ridges. Up in the sky, the atmospheric qi fluctuated wildly, revealing a distinct patch of space that clearly harbored a Scenery Command expert.
Only then did Wei Yuan's spirits lift. And once he clearly made out the banners of the approaching cavalry, his spirits lifted higher still!
Chapter 979