"Houting County?"
Unexpectedly, Li Qingyan showed no delight at this revelation. Instead, her dark brows slowly knitted together. "You want the sects to march south in reinforcement?"
Xu Yuan stroked the standard-issue saber hilt at his waist and nodded.
"Didn't you want to hold Beifeng City? This young master is helping you."
With that, he continued in an unhurried, lowered voice:
"Jiang He told me that a Cloud Qi Bomb can disperse cloud qi across a two-hundred-li radius. Judging by the weather in the Northern Border, the blizzard's cloud qi will reconverge within a day, but that is more than enough time for them to reach a point a hundred li north of Beifeng City. When they get there, we detonate another one. Wouldn't the siege of Beifeng be broken then?"
Li Qingyan glared intently at Xu Yuan, her grip on her saber hilt tightening slightly.
"Xu Changtian, the present situation is perilous, but it is also an opportunity. I want to hold Beifeng City, but even more than that, I want to trap these barbarians here completely and wipe them out."
Xu Yuan spread his hands. "Once those three hundred thousand elites from the Northern Border sects arrive, won't the barbarians be trapped here anyway?"
Li Qingyan's raspy voice dropped low.
"You don't understand the sects at all."
Xu Yuan let a well-timed look of surprise cross his face.
"Your Highness, are you saying that even if those sect elites arrive, they will simply stand by and let these barbarians slip right past under their noses into the depths of the Northern Border?"
Li Qingyan exhaled a plume of white mist.
"Otherwise... why do you think I never asked you people for Cloud Qi Bombs?"
Beneath this blizzard catastrophe, the Barbarians and Great Yan were waging an asymmetrical war.
One could say the barbarian side had essentially mapped the entire area, moving freely to and fro, while Great Yan's side was completely in the dark, not daring to make a reckless move.
The Cloud Qi Bombs were the ultimate trump card prepared by the Chancellor's Manor and the imperial family against the barbarians.
Eight in total.
From the very beginning, all they needed to do was detonate two or three near Beifeng City to blow away the blizzard, allowing the three hundred thousand sect elites around Houting County to march south.
Pausing briefly, Li Qingyan seemed genuinely angry, her words hissed between clenched teeth:
"Now that you've detonated a Cloud Qi Bomb, the Barbarian Heterodox King will receive word within half a day.
"If their own survival were threatened, the sects would indeed act to exterminate the barbarians. But as long as there is no immediate threat to their existence, they will never lift a finger against them! To wipe out the barbarians, our only hope is waiting for Uncle Mu and Mr. Zong to march south, but right now the high-rank cultivators I dispatched might not have even reached their fortified camp near Mount Dali!"
That the sects would let the barbarians slip past was unexpected, yet entirely within reason.
Because that was the choice that best served their interests.
With that in mind, Xu Yuan parted his lips in an appropriately hesitant manner. "Then does today's operation still proceed?"
Li Qingyan took a deep breath and spat out a single word:
"Proceed."
First the Black Scale Army had disobeyed orders and sallied out of the city, and now came this stunt with the Cloud Qi Bomb. The dandy before her had already thoroughly disrupted her schemes in the Northern Border.
After a beat, her phoenix eyes narrowed as she stared intently at Xu Yuan.
"But you are coming with me."
"..."
Xu Yuan's mouth opened slightly, his eyes instinctively darting toward Zhou Chen at his side.
The corner of Zhou Chen's mouth twitched. He glanced at the princess radiating murderous intent and tentatively cupped his hands in salute.
"Your Highness, my family's Third Young Master possesses meager cultivation..."
Before he could finish,
*Boom!*
Zhou Chen was slammed flat against the ground by an invisible force, leaving a sprawled, human-shaped indentation in the thick snow.
Even so,
Zhou Chen gritted his teeth and struggled to lift his head.
"...This Zhou is willing to go in his stead."
Having said that,
he promptly played dead and passed out.
Seeing this display, Xu Yuan looked at Li Qingyan and fell silent.
*Your fists are bigger, so you call the shots.*
Li Qingyan exhaled to compose herself, casting a glance at Zhou Chen on the ground.
"This guard of yours is loyal enough."
"Mr. Zhou has been following me since Jingjiang Prefecture," Xu Yuan offered with an embarrassed smile.
"Since he is willing to go in your stead, arrange for him to head to the south of the city to assist the Black Scale Army in defending the walls."
"What about me?"
"You?"
Li Qingyan sighed and looked at Xu Yuan, a trace of helplessness in her phoenix eyes. "Blades and arrows have no eyes. If anything were to happen to my prince consort, I would have to live as a widow for the rest of my days. You need only watch over me from the eastern gate tower."
Xu Yuan let out a breath of relief upon hearing this.
"That's good, then. Princess, please have someone carry Mr. Zhou to the south of the city."
"..." Zhou Chen.
On the way to the east of the city, Xu Yuan did not take a carriage, as doing so would affect troop morale to a certain degree.
The military revered martial prowess, and a commander riding feebly in a carriage would win no favor.
Fortunately, in his previous life Xu Yuan had occasionally visited equestrian pastures with his fair-weather friends to enjoy horse riding, so he didn't make a fool of himself, riding alongside Li Qingyan's... vice general on horseback.
As commander-in-chief, Li Qingyan could hardly share a horse with a man before her troops.
As they drew near the eastern city wall, Xu Yuan discovered that the buildings adjacent to the wall had all been demolished.
Every marketplace and residence within two li of the wall had been razed clean.
Seeing this barren expanse while mounted on his fine demonic beast steed, Xu Yuan casually asked Li Qingyan beside him,
"This is..."
Li Qingyan did not answer, but Vice General Cang, who was also riding alongside on horseback, replied with a smile:
"The young master may not be aware, but clearing those markets and dwellings opens up the field of view. First, it prevents spies from launching surprise attacks on the wall from within the city, and second, buildings would hinder the deployment of our military arrays. Furthermore, if the city were to fall and the barbarians attempted to storm inside, they would not only face our military arrays, but also bear the brunt of the city-protecting array overhead."
Xu Yuan understood and pressed no further.
The horses' hooves crunched through the frozen slush on the roadway; virtually all horses in the Northern Border were fitted with anti-slip shoes.
After advancing for half a quarter of an hour, Xu Yuan saw row upon row of Feather Forest Guards, neatly outfitted and strictly disciplined.
They wore suits of red armor bordered in gold—embellished, well-fitted, but not particularly aesthetically pleasing, appearing somewhat bulky once donned.
The standard-issue armor of elite forces across all factions in Great Yan was predominantly heavy armor.
Looking good required a form-fitting cut, and a form-fitting cut meant sacrificing a degree of protection. On the battlefield, looks were the most useless thing imaginable.
However, his family's Black Scale Guards' standard armor was somewhat different.
As the final boss across numerous worldlines in Cangyuan, the Chancellor's Manor had featured official character art of the Black Scale Guard uniform in the game.
Perhaps because of that, the Black Scale Guards' standard armor had inherited the look of the game's illustration.
Interlocking black scales linked together like serpent skin, paired with a ring saber, appearing form-fitting, domineering, and imposing at a single glance.
In Wu Zigeng's words, having military armor that was dashing and handsome enough was crucial in persuading the martial apprentices trained by Tian'an Martial Hall to stay with the Black Scale Army.
Zong Qingsheng had agreed wholeheartedly, so he convinced his old man to allocate funds to Hua Hong, tasking the Gewu Academy with solving the design of the Black Scale Guards' armor.
As it turned out, it was genuinely effective.
Many of the young men in the Black Scale Guards today had remained solely for the sake of donning that suit of black scale armor.
Less than half a quarter of an hour after Xu Yuan was guided up to the city gate tower,
the war began.
Chapter 245