Gazing at the sea of insects surging across the sky, Li Junwu felt her heart rate involuntarily begin to spike, her pupils trembling slightly.
*They're here.*
Even though she had prepared herself, the racing of her heart remained unavoidable.
Gently pressing her palm against her chest, she could feel a pulse even faster beneath her touch than during the first time she had ever stepped onto a battlefield.
Li Junwu took a deep breath, an unconscious smile curving her slightly pale lips.
As if sensing her reaction, the man beside her suddenly chuckled and asked, "What, scared?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "This young lady calls it excitement."
Xu Yuan offered a casual reminder. "Say whatever you like, but whether it's fear or excitement, what you need right now as the commander within the city is absolute composure. Too much excitement makes it easy to forget far too many things."
Li Junwu fell silent for a moment, then retorted with a scoff, "Your heart is beating so fast it's practically about to burst out of your chest, and you have the nerve to lecture me?"
Not a ripple disturbed Xu Yuan's calm expression as he replied flatly, "That's different. My racing heart right now is a physiological response, not psychological."
"What do you mean?" Confusion showed on Li Junwu's clean, lovely face.
Xu Yuan's gaze seemed to pierce straight through the swarm blotted across the canopy, looking past it to the shadow of that youth concealed in the darkness beyond. With a chuckle, he answered, "I've already shared this intelligence with you before. There's a little brat out there from the same source as me who wants to devour me. My heart rate right now was triggered by him."
A scorching summer breeze swept through the courtyard. Li Junwu froze for an instant.
"...You never said he wanted to *eat* you."
"Well, I've said it now."
Xu Yuan gave a faint smile. A gentle breeze swirled around him, and his body rose straight into the air.
"There's a first time for everything. No need to be too nervous. We've done everything humanly possible, and whatever could be done, we have already done. Just keep the admonitions I gave you yesterday firmly in mind."
With that, Xu Yuan glanced back over his shoulder at the armor-clad woman standing before the hall door, waving a hand.
"Prepare well. I'm heading out first, Junwu."
"......"
Watching his figure speed away toward the city walls, Li Junwu gently pursed her thin lips.
*The admonitions he gave yesterday...*
***
Slanted evening light had filtered through the window lattice into the room. A kettle hissed atop the stove, and the air was thick with the distinctive swelter of summer.
He had been resting in the rocking chair by the window, while she sat on the edge of the bed. The little Divine Maiden sister, who had been tied up for most of the day, lay sprawled facedown on the mattress, thoroughly shutting herself off from the world.
Amid that tranquil ease, his mild voice had suddenly spoken:
"Junwu, I was just thinking. To avoid any nasty surprises, I'd better ask you in advance: you do know that facing Saints is entirely different from conventional warfare, right?"
"Of course I know." Drawing back the hand that had been comforting the little Divine Maiden, Li Junwu chuckled softly. "Military treatises all discuss how to defend against high-level cultivators."
Hearing this, Xu Yuan had clearly looked speechlessly exasperated.
"Military treatises are military treatises; reality is reality."
"Huh?"
"Come on, you don't actually believe the people in power would allow methods for killing them to be written into military manuals and circulated, do you?"
"......" Li Junwu fell silent.
Xu Yuan let out a light sigh. "Well, fair enough. Zhenxi Manor has only been established for some forty years, so it's only natural that you lack a foundation of intelligence on such matters. Though if I recall correctly, Dachao's former king who died at your father's hands was supposedly a Saint. Only he faked his death—your father never managed to kill him."
"......" Li Junwu remained speechless.
Glancing at Jiayi, who had perked up her ears to eavesdrop, Xu Yuan made no attempt to conceal anything. In a leisurely tone, he said, "I've read through a great deal of records and case histories, observed battles between Saints in Di'an, and even personally slew the Barbarian King who had ascended to Sainthood back in the Northern Border..."
"Wasn't the Barbarian King killed by Wuyuan?"
"......"
Xu Yuan rolled his eyes and snorted. "Tsk. Never mind whether Li Qingyan took the lead when I killed that Saint. Just take what I'm about to say to heart."
As he spoke, Xu Yuan turned his rocking chair around to face the bed, crossed his legs, and continued at an unhurried pace:
"To put it plainly, Saints are merely humans who have grown a bit stronger. Their physical physiology is largely identical to high-level cultivators, except they possess an extra substance known as saint origin."
"What saint origin?" Jiayi blurted out instinctively.
Hearing her, Xu Yuan glanced over with a knowing smile.
The moment their eyes met, shame and annoyance flared in Jiayi's chest. Without a word, she buried her head straight back into the pillow.
Xu Yuan had no intention of teasing the little Divine Maiden any further, continuing with a faint laugh, "Saint origin is the bedrock of a Saint's might. You can think of it as an upgraded form of Source Qi. Infusing saint origin into techniques grants them far greater power, while also conferring a certain spell-breaking effect. Furthermore, unfolding a Dao domain using saint origin can utterly overwhelm ordinary Dao domains, or even collapse them in an instant..."
"Are you saying we shouldn't clash head-on with a Saint's techniques?" Li Junwu asked.
"That's part of it, but what I mainly want to explain is the immortality that saint origin grants a Saint."
"Immortality?"
"Once a cultivator breaks through to the Origin Realm, the physical body's self-healing capacity can already be called inhuman. Saints are slightly stronger than ordinary cultivators—think of it as: so long as their saint origin isn't exhausted, a Saint cannot die. That makes slaying them nearly impossible."
"......" Li Junwu.
"......" Jiayi.
The atmosphere in the room instantly plummeted to freezing.
Seeing the two women go from dazed shock to despondence, Xu Yuan's reaction remained as placid as ever. He said with a smile, "No need for the two of you to be so tense. Saint origin isn't like Source Qi, where you can simply meditate and circulate your breath for a few cycles to return to peak condition at will. Under normal circumstances, Saints won't squander their saint origin lightly. After all, that stuff seems to serve the purpose of extending their lifespans as well."
As he spoke, Xu Yuan's eyes narrowed slightly, and his smiling tone turned serious.
"And judging by your expressions, it seems both of you have misunderstood something from the start—our goal has never been to kill the Saints outside the city. It is to force them to retreat."
With a soft inhalation of breath, Li Junwu replied in a steady voice, "Framed that way, it does sound considerably simpler."
Xu Yuan's expression returned to normal. He casually tossed Li Junwu a secret manual, chuckling. "Though to pull this off, it still requires your coordination, Junwu."
Li Junwu looked at the untitled tome in her hands. "What is this?"
"A few methods for slaying Saints. With your current cultivation, you won't be able to use most of them, but you just need to follow the methods inside to expend their life origin using the military array and the city defense formation."
"......"
Hearing this, Li Junwu instinctively moved to open the manual and browse through it, but Xu Yuan stopped her in the next breath.
"Hold on a moment."
Sensing both women's gazes turn to him, Xu Yuan looked at Jiayi, who had averted her eyes, and waved a hand with a chuckle. "You can read it too, Jiayi. After all, we'll need Linlang's cooperation later. I stopped her because I haven't finished speaking yet.
"War against Saints bears no comparison to conventional warfare. Siege weapons and the raw courage of soldiers are secondary; knowing yourself and knowing your enemy is what's crucial. If we know the nature of their techniques, it will save an immense amount of unnecessary attrition once the fighting starts. As it happens, I have some understanding of the techniques used by a few among those six Saints. Once I finish sharing this intelligence, it won't be too late for the two of you to look through this secret manual together."
With that, Xu Yuan rose from the rocking chair and warned, "Remember one thing above all: even with this intelligence, you must never, under any circumstances, get ideas about slaying them. No matter how glaring a flaw the opponent reveals, do not try to go for the kill. A Saint's survival methods are guaranteed to exceed anything you can imagine.
"Even if we seize military command and control of the formations tomorrow, the gap in power between us and them remains too vast to bridge. Never, ever think about trading pieces using the meager resources in our hands. Simply exhaust their saint origin until they retreat."
Chapter 656