The massive army broke camp in successive waves and headed south, leaving deep ruts and beast hoofprints across the hardened permafrost.
Before setting out, Li Qingyan had gathered her generals for a council of war targeting the Barbarians.
Though much was said, it could essentially be distilled into three words: find, intercept, destroy.
And of these, the most critical was the first: find.
Just like that Champion Marquis in his past life's history, the difficult part was never winning the battle—the difficult part was locating the Barbarians' main force.
Under the leadership of that Heterodox King, the Barbarian host had won battle after battle, yet their military strength was already much diminished compared to when they had first bypassed Beifeng City to march south.
A batch had died when Li Qingyan raided their camp outside the city, another batch when storming Beifeng City, and another massive batch when routing the three hundred thousand strong sect army.
In Xu Yuan's words, though the Barbarians possessed soaring momentum, their manpower stamina bar was actually more than half depleted.
A shortage of manpower meant the Barbarians could only keep winning, winning grand victories, if they hoped to achieve the historic feat of ants devouring an elephant. The Great Yan Dynasty, with its deep pockets, could afford to lose; but if they won even once, the Barbarians would face utter ruin.
This was likely the tragedy of that Barbarian Heterodox King—or perhaps of the entire Barbarian race.
The days spent breaking camp and marching south were bustling, yet for Xu Yuan, it was quite boring.
The reason remained unchanged: as an amateur outsider who was completely off the books, he wasn't qualified to participate in military affairs.
Li Qingyan, however, was swamped—so busy she didn't even have time to share a bed with him.
On a brand-new day, when Xu Yuan awoke from slumber, he immediately saw Li Qingyan seated across from him at a simple desk, reviewing military dispatches.
Judging by the looks of it, the woman hadn't slept all night again.
Once the war machine began operating under heavy load, countless matters required Li Qingyan's review and decision as commander-in-chief.
An exceptional general didn't merely lead troops into battle. The marching pace and routes of tens or hundreds of thousands of men, communications with allied forces, equipment wear and tear, and the distribution of supplies to front-line units all required her personal attention.
Sitting up from the daybed and rubbing the bridge of his nose, Xu Yuan drew back the carriage window curtain and peered outside.
The carriage was retrofitted from a military transport beast wagon; the interior was spacious, even larger than two RVs combined from his past life.
Beyond the beast wagon, as far as the eye could see, marched the Beifeng Army in white armor.
Over a hundred Beifeng royal guards riding tall demon steeds escorted the commander's wagon, their armor gleaming with metallic luster. The clinking and scraping of plates as the heavy infantry marched sounded oddly stirring, while in the distance, colossal beast wagons laden with supplies occasionally let out low rumbles, leaving heavy ruts in the earth.
The journey southward proceeded in an orderly fashion.
Yet unlike the brilliant sunshine at their departure, clouds were gathering again in the sky above, looking as though they might dump their payload onto the mortal realm at any moment.
Retracting his gaze, Xu Yuan looked at the woman in red armor inside the carriage. "Where are we now?"
Li Qingyan didn't look up, replying softly, "About a hundred li or so from Beifeng City."
"And the Barbarians?" Xu Yuan asked the question he cared about most.
Li Qingyan's Beifeng Army served as the vanguard of the allied forces; if an encounter battle occurred, their vanguard would inevitably be the first to clash with the Barbarians.
Li Qingyan shook her head lightly. "No sign of them. I've already dispatched aerial scouts alongside the sect's heavy cavalry to scout around Beifeng City, but it seems the Barbarian King simply abandoned Beifeng City."
Hearing this, Xu Yuan chuckled softly. "How could anyone hold Beifeng City when its northern wall has collapsed?"
Li Qingyan finally raised her eyes, a hint of a smile gracing her lips. "You already had that in mind when you decided to blow up the wall, didn't you?"
Xu Yuan stood up, walked over to the opposite side of the simple desk, took out a prayer mat, and sat down. "No, I purely wanted to use the Barbarians' blades to slaughter those three hundred thousand elites of the northern sects. Besides, even if the northern wall were still intact, the Barbarians wouldn't hole up and defend Beifeng to the death."
Li Qingyan gently laid down the dossier in her hand and smiled faintly. "Indeed. Without the Cloud Qi Bombs, the Barbarians might have defended Beifeng to the death with the advantage of the blizzard weather—after all, under cover of the storm, they could strike at relief forces outside the city at any time. But with Cloud Qi Bombs, defending Beifeng to the death would simply be waiting to die."
Midway through her words, Li Qingyan changed her tone and sighed softly. "However, that Barbarian King guessed we don't have many Cloud Qi Bombs left. He retreated into our Great Yan's territory, hoping to wait until we exhaust them completely."
It was a simple deduction: if Great Yan had plenty of Cloud Qi Bombs, they would never proceed with such caution; they would have simply blasted a path forward with Cloud Qi Bombs and charged southward.
Thinking up to this point, Xu Yuan said nothing. He casually picked up the report Li Qingyan had put down and glanced over it.
It recorded some non-combat casualties from the previous night—in short, brawls that had broken out between the routed sect troops and their own men.
Pondering a moment, Xu Yuan frowned and asked, "The sects aren't behaving?"
Li Qingyan replied nonchalantly, "It happened last night during the handover of rations and fodder. They felt the rations were too meager, and those border troops know full well they've become convict cannon fodder. Under such sentiments, a few conflicts are completely normal. But none of that matters. As long as we hold the supplies in our hands, the commanders on the sects' side will figure out how to settle it themselves."
Xu Yuan laughed dryly. "True. They don't know their sect mountain gates are about to be wiped out. On the surface, we're all still one family. If they chose to mutiny, it would give the court an excuse to move against them."
Pausing, Xu Yuan shifted the topic and asked, "Still, now that we can't pin down the Barbarians' main force, what do you plan to do?"
Li Qingyan pursed her lips into a smile, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "Do you want to hear the truth or a lie?"
The corner of Xu Yuan's mouth twitched into a smirk. "The lie."
Li Qingyan gave a light chuckle, her slender, delicate fingers tapping against the desk. "Block the bottleneck of Beifeng City, dispatch high-level cultivators and aerial scouts to patrol the mountain ranges to prevent them from taking a detour back to the snowfields, and simultaneously send the sects' heavy cavalry inland to seek them out, starving the Barbarians to death within Great Yan."
Hearing this, Xu Yuan pondered briefly. "Right now, the Northern Border is frozen under blizzards. Aside from the northern cities and the fortified manors built by local squires and gentry, common folk in the outlying towns and villages have either frozen to death or fled as refugees. It's a natural scorched-earth situation. And if the Barbarians dare attack a city for food, they'll expose their position."
Li Qingyan looked at him, saying with a bright smile, "You're quite right, Prince Consort, but unfortunately, that was the lie."
"..." Xu Yuan.
"Prince Consort, do you want to know what the truth is?"
"No." Feeling an ill premonition, Xu Yuan turned his head away.
Li Qingyan raised her hand, using Source Qi to turn his head back. "This Princess thinks you do."
Sighing, Xu Yuan met her bright eyes and asked, "Why?"
"The scouts dispatched near Beifeng City sent back word: the corpses of the sect border army, the Barbarians' corpses, and even the three Ice Beast Colossi have only half their shells remaining." Saying this, Li Qingyan narrowed her eyes slightly, lowering her voice: "Prince Consort, how long do you think the Barbarians can hold out on these 'provisions'?"
The corner of Xu Yuan's eye twitched. After a long silence, he said, "It seems that during the lull of these past few days, that Barbarian King has been transporting 'grain' all along..."
Li Qingyan drew a deep breath, then exhaled, her tight chest motionless. "That Barbarian Heterodox King is truly cunning. The moment the battle ended, he was already prepared to rely on these looted 'provisions' to play a war of attrition with us here. With such an army hiding within Great Yan, we dare not transport grain northward on a massive scale; we can only rely on Sumeru rings for supplies. We cannot afford to drag this out."
Speaking up to this point, Li Qingyan tightened her fist slightly. "Furthermore, Imperial Father and the court need the Beifeng Army and the Black Scale Army to participate in exterminating the northern sects. The longer this drags on, the greater the risk of exposure."
High-level cultivators within sect mountain gates were unlike ordinary people; no matter how tight the cordon, some might escape. And once the secret sect slaughter began, if even a single person slipped through, all sects across the Northern Border would receive word in short order. Only by committing both the Beifeng Army and the Black Scale Army could they guarantee complete success.
After a brief silence, Xu Yuan suddenly asked, "With an army as massive as the Barbarians', it's impossible for them to vanish without a trace. Can't we track them?"
Li Qingyan replied with a touch of helplessness, "The wind and snow completely covered all their tracks. Trying to trace them across a nearly ten-day gap is easier said than done."
Xu Yuan remained quiet for a long while before speaking in a low voice: "So you want to drive deep alone? Using yourself as bait to lure the Barbarian host into surrounding and annihilating you?"
"Yes."
"What if the Barbarians take the mountain paths they came by and return to the northern snowfields?"
"Mr. Zong has already issued strict orders. The accompanying high-level experts are each assigned a sector between the Wanren Mountain Range and the Tianxue Mountain Range to conduct intensive patrols, giving the Barbarians no opportunity to detour north."
"..." Xu Yuan.
The lives of high-level cultivators were precious. Under normal circumstances, they would never undertake such high-risk patrol duties, because if the Barbarians' main force discovered them, a single totem strike could send them straight to the netherworld.
Yet by the same token, the moment something happened to them within their patrol sector, it would confirm Barbarian forces were in that area.
Evidently, Zong Qingsheng and Li Qingyan were dead set on forcing a swift conclusion.
Li Qingyan stood up with resolute vigor. Glancing back at the silent Xu Yuan, she said, "Right now, defeating our forces piecemeal with superior numbers in an encirclement is that Barbarian Heterodox King's only chance to turn defeat into victory. As long as I can pin down their main force and detonate a Cloud Qi Bomb so Mr. Zong can rush to reinforce us, we can settle the Northern Border campaign in the shortest possible time."
Half a day later, the Beifeng Army, acting as the vanguard, arrived beneath Beifeng City and began regrouping.
A day later, the Black Scale Army led by Zong Qingsheng arrived at Beifeng City.
After the two armies completed the handover of essential supplies and armaments, Li Qingyan led two garrisons of the Beifeng Army and the twenty thousand border troops under Luo Qingfeng and his peers, braving the wind and snow to bypass Beifeng City and push further south in pursuit of the Barbarian host.
To tell the truth, Xu Yuan wasn't keen on such a reckless gamble, especially when the gamble might cost him his own life.
Unfortunately, his words carried no weight and meant nothing.
Even surrounded by guards of hulking, muscle-bound armored soldiers, and even with a madwoman like Li Qingyan beside him, marching through a blizzard still gave Xu Yuan a profound sense of insecurity.
Fortunately, Zong Qingsheng was generous enough to allocate most of the Black Scale Army's scouts directly under Li Qingyan's command.
Hundreds of well-trained scouts ranged ahead of the army, relaying an unbroken stream of information to provide early warnings for the main force.
And Xu Yuan, serving as Li Qingyan's personal guard and Prince Consort, could browse through these military intelligence reports out of sheer boredom.
The reports delivered to Li Qingyan were essentially filtered by the deputy generals below for importance. Well, relative importance.
Day one: No military developments, though two scouts suffered non-combat injuries due to the blizzard disaster.
Day two: Two villages destroyed by the blizzard were discovered to the army's southwest and southeast; the frozen corpses of the villagers inside remained untouched.
Day three: A handful of aerial scouts encountered Barbarian bone-wing birds, losing seven men, while ground scouts were ambushed by Barbarian wolf riders in a gorge, leaving nine dead and thirteen missing. The army turned toward the suspicious gorge in pursuit.
Day four: Clashes between scouts of both armies grew frequent, with miscellaneous casualty reports topping a hundred in a single day.
Day five: Scouts reported only a small number of wounded Barbarians in the gorge; they were wiped out by the accompanying Grandmaster.
Day six: The army entered Ningyuan Commandery, compelling local gentry to donate grain for resupply.
Day thirteen: Small-scale Barbarian harassment. The sect border army suffered a hundred and thirty-seven casualties, with fourteen non-combat losses.
Day fourteen: Small-scale Barbarian harassment. The sect border army lost thirty-six men, and the Beifeng Army lost seventeen.
Day sixteen:
*Smack!*
Xu Yuan casually tossed the dossier onto the table inside the beast wagon, sank back onto the daybed, and let out a long sigh. "Seriously, when is this guerrilla warfare going to end?"
That Barbarian King was truly as slippery as a loach. The Beifeng Army had been circling around the far northern Tianshui Province for nearly a month, yet hadn't managed to catch so much as a stray hair of them. Instead, the entire army was worn to exhaustion from the Barbarians' constant harassment. The man had truly mastered guerrilla warfare.
Li Qingyan rose, walked over, and sat down beside Xu Yuan. The daybed dipped slightly beneath her weight as she said softly, "Prince Consort, in life, things rarely go as one wishes nine times out of ten—wasn't that what you said? Expecting that Barbarian King to stake everything on a reckless offensive is simply impossible. War is not child's play, after all. If he gambles and loses just once, the entire Barbarian race will face ruin."
"..."
Lying on the daybed with his hands pillowed behind his head and one leg crossed over the other, Xu Yuan stared at the carriage ceiling and suddenly said, "Hey, how about we put some pressure on that Barbarian King?"
"Pressure?" Li Qingyan raised an eyebrow.
Looking at her coldly gorgeous profile, Xu Yuan said in a low voice, "Tell him directly that your Uncle Mu has gone to the Land of Utter Darkness to raid their homeland."
"..." Li Qingyan paused slightly.
Xu Yuan glanced back at her with a strange look. "What, can that information not be shared with the Barbarian King?"
"No, of course it can." Li Qingyan's phoenix eyes flickered for an instant before she broke into a radiant smile. "Such a wicked trick—why didn't you mention it sooner, Prince Consort?"
Xu Yuan slowly sat up and said softly, "It takes time to reach the Land of Utter Darkness from Mount Dali. If the Barbarians had long-distance communication methods, we might have spooked the snake in the grass. By now, Marquis Wucheng has likely been there for a good while."
Li Qingyan's eyes gleamed for a moment. "That Barbarian Heterodox King's lifelong dream was to secure a living space for his people. If he now discovers that the women and children of his tribe have been slaughtered to the last..." Saying this, Li Qingyan's eyes curved into two shimmering crescents, brimming with excitement. "I imagine it will be quite entertaining."
Chapter 267