"Reorganize them?"
Staring down at the more than ten thousand soldiers standing lost and helpless amid the wind and snow, Li Qingyan shook her head slightly. "These sect border troops can't be reorganized in short order."
Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow and asked softly, "Because their cultivation methods will clash?"
"Yes." Li Qingyan turned back and spoke quietly. "The troops commanded by the northern sects practice a body-tempering cultivation method called Cold Sky. While the military arrays are largely similar on the surface, on the battlefield, if they cannot be commanded as seamlessly as one's own limbs, things can easily go awry."
Xu Yuan was briefly at a loss for words, then softly added, "And even if we absorbed them, there's no guarantee whether these sect elites would harbor divided loyalties?"
In this era of isolated information, most people were uneducated and ignorant; for prominent clans, cultivating loyal death-sworn retainers was almost all too easy.
Xu Yuan didn't know specifically how the sects trained their soldiers, but he was intimately familiar with the Chancellor's Manor's Tian'an Martial Hall and the Black Scale Army.
The moment one entered the Tian'an Martial Hall, subtle indoctrination began.
Troops produced by these two military systems had undergone layer upon layer of brainwashing, possessing an intensely powerful cult of personality toward his father—or rather, toward the direct Xu lineage.
If these routed troops could not be thoroughly reorganized and integrated, then only one path remained for the soldiers beneath the walls.
To be forced into service as cannon fodder in the vanguard, breaking open the stalemate for the impending clash between the Black Scale Army, the Beifeng Army, and the Barbarians.
At that thought, Xu Yuan sighed and chuckled faintly with an inscrutable tone:
"How pitiable..."
Li Qingyan's eyes showed a glimmer of amusement. "Isn't the sects' current plight something you engineered with your own hands?"
"Your Highness, you have it wrong. The northern sects brought this entirely upon themselves; I merely offered a tiny bit of assistance."
Xu Yuan gazed into the distance, raising a hand to grasp at empty air in the direction of Beifeng City, his voice unhurried. "If they had been willing to fall back and relieve Beifeng City, if they had taken advantage of the clear skies created by the Cloud Qi Bombs to wage a decisive battle against the Barbarian army outside the city, their three hundred thousand elites would never have fallen to such a state."
Li Qingyan pondered for a moment and murmured, "It was also because that Barbarian Heterodox King knew how to seize an opportunity."
Xu Yuan slowly withdrew his hand and nodded slightly. "Indeed. That Barbarian Heterodox King's actions truly caught me off guard. I never expected him to stake every single chip he had on one roll of the dice.
"Of the only nine large tribes remaining, the Barbarian King committed seven to latch onto the sects' rear guard, leaving the last two tribes inside Beifeng City as bait. With such a strategy, had the northern sects reversed their battle arrays and chosen a decisive engagement outside Beifeng City, it most likely would have been the Barbarians who broke."
According to reports sent back from that outpost outside Beifeng City, the forces were roughly five hundred thousand against three hundred thousand. The Barbarians held a massive numerical advantage, but over the course of a thousand years, the gap in military strength between Great Yan and the Barbarians had widened dramatically.
Besides, war was never simply a matter of headcount.
The logic was quite simple:
If everyone in the front ranks died the moment they charged forward, would you dare rush in?
Men were clumped together; the moment one person turned to run, a second would follow, then a third, until it snowballed into a full-scale rout.
To counter this, the Barbarians took a crude, brute-force approach, brainwashing their people through the religion of their Ancestral God.
From childhood, every Barbarian was drilled with a single dogma: do not fear death, for to die upon the battlefield is to return to the embrace of the Ancestral God.
Great Yan's armies, on the other hand, relied far less on such illusory things and instead placed their faith in systematic military arrays.
As a component of a military array, through the resonance of their cultivation methods, soldiers could sense their commander and feel the comrades fighting beside them bathed in blood.
Moreover, with the evolution of cultivation methods to the present day, when Great Yan's military arrays deployed, the resonance between soldiers' techniques could even influence their minds to a certain degree, driving them into a selfless frenzy of courage.
And that was merely the effect on morale; the raw power of Great Yan's military arrays far outstripped the Barbarians' Barbarian God totems.
For that reason, in a decisive battle of nearly a million combatants, unless every single Barbarian went berserk believing in that so-called embrace of the Ancestral God, the final result would have seen the Barbarians break first.
In other words, the sects' current predicament was entirely of their own making.
They had wanted to foster bandits to enhance their own importance, preserve their strength, and thought, *Why should I bleed to wipe out the Barbarians while you in the imperial court wait on the sidelines to reap the rewards?*
And then...
And then there was no "then."
A catastrophic, thousand-li rout.
With his thoughts reaching this point, Xu Yuan looked down at the snow sweeping beneath the gate tower.
"These sect elites do live up to the name of 'elites' in one respect—even routed and pursued by the Barbarians, they still managed to flee all the way to Houting County in organized formations."
Li Qingyan's eyes deepened as she murmured, "Prince Consort, it is not that the sect elites are formidable; it is that the Barbarians are too weak. A host of three hundred thousand is not something the Barbarians could swallow in a single gulp."
Hearing this, Xu Yuan could not help chuckling. "Fair point. Even if it were three hundred thousand pigs running in every direction, you couldn't butcher them all in just a few days."
"..."
Li Qingyan shot Xu Yuan a slightly odd look, seemingly failing to catch the reference in his words.
Xu Yuan collected himself and waved a hand to signal that she needn't mind it, then praised, "Given such a disparity in military strength, even with my help, for that Barbarian Heterodox King to achieve this much truly is impressive."
Sensing the meaning behind Xu Yuan's words, Li Qingyan curved her eyes and asked, "The Prince Consort assumed the Barbarian King would choose the safest route?"
Xu Yuan nodded in agreement. "After all, the Cloud Qi Bombs could only disperse this blizzard disaster for two or three days at most. Once the blizzard resumed, Beifeng City without its northern wall would become a massive prison—one that the Barbarians could freely enter and leave at will. All they needed to do was bide their time and harass them relentlessly. In ten days at least, a month at most, the sects would inevitably break."
Having listened carefully, Li Qingyan smiled and nodded. "What you say is indeed true, Prince Consort. But the Barbarian King had no way of knowing whether we might march south during that time."
"..." Xu Yuan laughed helplessly.
Li Qingyan let out a long breath, her tone remote. "In the face of absolute disadvantage, only by casting life and death aside could he seize a sliver of hope. The Barbarian King took the chance you gave him, and so he won that sliver of hope.
"It is just a pity that the northern gate was blown too early, causing the sects to collapse too quickly. Though the Barbarians suffered losses, they were not crippled to their roots."
Xu Yuan spread his hands helplessly. "Nine times out of ten, life does not go as planned. Even my father cannot guarantee flawless calculations, let alone me. That said, I suspect the sect disciples noticed something amiss when taking up defensive positions on the northern wall. Had it not been detonated then, it might have been discovered, forcing the operative to trigger the explosives ahead of schedule."
At those words, Li Qingyan pondered briefly and said, "With the northern wall blown up, the northern sects will likely suspect us."
"As long as those sect leaders have any wits about them, they'll surely figure it out. After all, the Barbarians didn't possess the architectural blueprints of Beifeng City's walls, let alone the means to plant that volume of Source Crystal bombs at key structural nodes."
Speaking, Xu Yuan looked down imperiously at the sect soldiers below, his voice ice-cold.
"But even if they know, what can they do? Rebel openly? With their current strength, are they even in a position to rebel? As for settling scores later? Heh... Qingyan, Lou Ji was already summoned back north by my father last night. You should be receiving the news soon as well."
Li Qingyan immediately turned her head, her willowy brows furrowing slightly. "Prince Consort, you mean Imperial Father and the others are preparing to make their move?"
Xu Yuan nodded. "Most likely. The northern sects' three hundred thousand elites, the very force that kept Di'an City wary, have now been routed. Naturally, there are no more reservations."
"..."
Li Qingyan did not reply at once, instead rapidly deducing the consequences of such an action in her mind.
After a long silence, she suddenly asked in a low voice, "Can Imperial Father and the court... still muster enough troops to wipe out these sects?"
Though the troops of the Great Yan imperial court were spread throughout the world—the Imperial Guard stationed at Di'an City, the Zhenxi Army guarding the Great Desert, the Xuanjia Army holding the Wanxing Mountain Range, and even the Qianji Army guarding against the Wokou along the southeastern coast—none of these could be redeployed lightly.
To eradicate the Barbarians, nearly all the elites the Chancellor's Manor and the imperial clan could mobilize were concentrated here on the northern snowfields.
Even though the three hundred thousand elites of the northern sects were routed, the inner sect disciples and the high-ranking cultivators, such as elders within their mountain gates, remained a formidable fighting force.
Without sufficient troops, once it was confirmed that the court had struck, those core sect cultivators would never sit idly by. If they rebelled en masse...
"I don't know."
Xu Yuan answered the question directly. But after a brief pause, he smiled meaningfully. "Though, they probably won't need that many troops."
"..."
The air atop the gate tower fell abruptly silent.
Li Qingyan thought for a moment and ventured, "The Sun-Blotter?"
"..."
Xu Yuan grinned and nodded with a smile.
As expected of a princess who led armies, she knew Great Yan's military equipment like the back of her hand, understanding with only a hint.
Though Fourth Sister's tinkering had originally been intended to benefit the people, the results seemed even better when adapted for military use.
At the very least, it made his father's plan to eradicate the northern sects vastly simpler.
With that thought, Xu Yuan offered a silent second of mourning for Fourth Sister in his heart, before saying softly:
"The Sun-Blotter Bomb's property of shrouding the intent-soul and disrupting Source Qi can completely jam all communication crystals within the sects' mountain gates."
Li Qingyan's phoenix eyes narrowed slightly. Her delicate, pink tongue lightly moistened her red lips.
"In that case, it truly does seem that not many troops will be needed. So long as the operation is executed meticulously, leaving not a single soul alive when slaughtering the sects, even just fifty thousand elites would suffice to exterminate every sect in the Northern Border without anyone being the wiser."
Xu Yuan raised his head toward the boundless falling snow in the sky and murmured, "This blizzard, unseen in a century, gave the Barbarians a chance to turn the tables, but it has likewise blocked most of the northern roads, concealing the court's troop movements and shipments of supplies and armaments."
Li Qingyan took a deep breath and smiled. "That means we need to quicken our pace."
"Hmm?" Xu Yuan murmured, quizzical.
Li Qingyan turned back. "If we drag things out too long with these barbarians, this palace won't be able to personally slaughter those sect bastards."
Looking at the killing intent flashing in her eyes, Xu Yuan pondered for a beat, then asked tentatively, "Your Highness... do you hate the sects that much?"
"..."
A silence fell upon his words.
After a while, Li Qingyan's crimson eyes held a smile as she countered, "Prince Consort, what kind of person do you think this palace is?"
Without hesitation, Xu Yuan grinned. "Her Highness the Princess is not only resourceful and astute, but holds the realm at—"
"Heh, glib-tongued."
Li Qingyan rolled her eyes at Xu Yuan, cutting him off, and looked toward Beifeng as she said softly, "This palace... does indeed hate the sects, but not because of some grand righteousness for kingdom and home, or any noble cause of serving the realm and its people."
Xu Yuan's eyes flickered, playing along: "If not for those, then because..."
Li Qingyan cut him off once more. "Prince Consort, let me ask you something."
"...Go ahead."
"Lou Ji treats you well?"
"Uh... yes."
"Then if Director Lou were to die tomorrow on her way back to the Northern Border due to the sects' machinations, what would you do?"
"..." Xu Yuan was speechless.
"It seems you wouldn't be able to accept such a thing happening, Prince Consort. Neither could I, yet it did."
Li Qingyan looked at Xu Yuan's expression and shook her head, her fists clenching slightly, though her voice remained calm. "Because of that scum from the sects, it has happened more than once..."
"..." Xu Yuan suddenly understood what she meant.
And then, Li Qingyan fixed her gaze on Xu Yuan, speaking gently:
"Prince Consort, I have known since childhood from Uncle Mu what Imperial Father and Duke Xu wished to accomplish. But by nature, I was detached; initially, I truly didn't care about such things. The so-called reforms and transformations are claimed to benefit the realm and its people, but in the end, it is merely infighting between my imperial clan and the sects over power and profit. Even if the sects are successfully curtailed, another 'sect or aristocratic family' will soon emerge in a different guise. Not to mention, if the internal strife becomes too severe and drains the nation's strength excessively, the surrounding alien races circling us like wolves could very well invade Great Yan's fourteen provinces en masse."
"..." Xu Yuan kept quiet.
Li Qingyan breathed out a long plume of white mist that dissipated into the wind and snow, pressing her lips into a smile. "But now my thoughts have changed. It has become very simple: whoever can slaughter every last sect in the world, this palace will support their ascent to the throne."
Having said this, she gave Xu Yuan an ambiguous wink.
Xu Yuan took a deep breath and echoed softly, "My father's thoughts are likely not far from yours, Qingyan. The only question is who to support."
"Heh..."
Li Qingyan chuckled softly and said no more.
Xu Yuan also stood quietly by her side, calculating in his mind.
Time slipped by second by second amid the wind and snow.
A few minutes later, Xu Yuan suddenly pointed down at the remnant sect soldiers below the walls.
"Qingyan, a quarter of an hour has passed. How should we handle them? Should we just follow Yuan Hao's playbook?"
That psychopath Yuan Hao was fond of taking a feather for an arrow of command.
The moment routed troops arrived at his post requesting entry to resupply, he had secretly dispatched an army to surround the fleeing soldiers seeking shelter with him, slaughtered quite a few, disarmed the rest, and detained them within the city, planning to use them as a penal army when facing off against the Barbarians later.
Hearing this suggestion, Li Qingyan pondered for a moment and answered quietly, "Given the current situation, that may well be the best choice..."
As the two were speaking, a clear, cool female voice echoed softly from below the wall:
"Your Highness Wuyuan, we are willing to hand over all our arms and supplies. We only beg that you grant us entry into the city."
Chapter 262