Longzang

Chapter 1065 The Two of Them Attacked Together
Despite their extreme reluctance, they ended up fighting on two fronts.

Furthermore, on the main battlefield, Cangwu was still occasionally sending Dao soldiers to key areas. At this time, Wei Yuan's Red Lotus Karmic Fire had been exhausted, and he could only use the cumbersome method of eliminating the gray-clad Dao soldiers little by little, which effectively turned into a multi-front war.

If it were any of the other nine kingdoms, or even the nine armies of the Great Tang, facing frequent attacks from the gray-clad Taoist soldiers in their rear and key areas, the battle would have collapsed long ago.

But the Qingming troops were not only well-trained and well-equipped, but also included a large number of soldiers selected from the Ji Kingdom. These soldiers were well aware that they were now defending their hard-won peaceful life, so everyone was willing to fight to the death.

Needless to say, the troops that Qingming transferred have always known that they are protecting their own country.

Even the refugees recruited from the Western Jin and Zhao states now have their own land and houses in the territory of Ji, and are living a peaceful life. Therefore, they are fighting to the death.

Wei Yuan then established six major war zones, effectively incorporating the command capabilities of the war zone commanders into the prosperity of all realms. Not only could adjacent war zones cooperate with each other, but even the two most distant war zones, Bao Yun and Xiao Yu, could coordinate their actions.

With numerous outstanding generals in command, hundreds of small Qingming units flexibly and unpredictably gathered and dispersed across the hundreds of miles of frontal battlefield. Meanwhile, the various bunkers and trenches served as strong fortifications, restricting the enemy's movement and forcing them to pay a heavy price for every inch they expanded their operational space.

Thus, the two sides continued their brutal attrition warfare on the main battlefield. The casualties of Qingming and Ji's army remained at one to three, but for every Qingming warrior who fell, three additional gray-clad Dao soldiers were lost.

Wei Yuan was in Guantun New City at the moment. The Azure Warriors and the Gray-Clad Taoists were engaged in a fierce battle just a block away. Wei Yuan was facing the ever-changing sand table map and was constantly weighing his options.

Both sides were testing their endurance. At this time, Wei Yuan still had 500,000 elite heavy troops urgently transferred from Qingming that had not yet been deployed, and only 50,000 Dao soldiers were stationed in the north to block the mountain people.

If Wei Yuan were to deploy these elite troops directly into the main battlefield now, he would be confident of inflicting a crushing defeat on Ji's army. The question is, could this be exactly what the enemy is waiting for?
Immortals may be capricious, but they are not fools. Wei Yuan can use various methods to mislead his opponents and gain the upper hand, but he cannot assume that his opponents will act foolishly.

Qingming had been invincible in battle, and both the Zhao and Western Jin states began to copy its military system and purchase large quantities of armor and firearms. Qingming's bloody battle against the Wu tribe's Rain Kingdom was a spectacle that captivated the world. Therefore, Wei Yuan did not believe that the enemy would misjudge Qingming's true strength. The only possibility was that Wei Yuan's concealment of the heavenly secrets had worked, causing the enemy to misjudge the military force Qingming had currently deployed in the Ji Kingdom.

Such misjudgment can only be used once. For example, when Wei Yuan destroyed a million Dao soldiers with the Red Lotus Karmic Fire, Cang Wu immediately launched new Dao soldiers after Wei Yuan's karma was exhausted, which shows that he saw through the fact that Wei Yuan's karma was limited.

Therefore, Wei Yuan had been waiting for an opportunity, a chance to secure victory in one fell swoop.

But at this time, another major problem arose: the mountain people.

Wang Fo had already made it very clear that the mountain people's secrets were worth two sticks of incense, and he wasn't afraid that Wei Yuan wouldn't take the bait.

The mountain people are still arriving in droves, far exceeding Wei Yuan's expectations.

Based on Li Zhi's experience in Zhenshan Territory, Wei Yuan originally estimated that the scale of the mountain people's attack would be at most a million or so, with one or two hundred giants and one or two Imperial Guards to hold the line. Therefore, he only deployed 50,000 Dao soldiers.

With 50,000 Taoist soldiers holding their positions in the strategic locations, armed with sharp artillery fire, ample ammunition, and the added defensive and regenerative capabilities of the Taoist Palace, plus Wang Hu in charge of resisting Yu Jing, they could steadily hold off the million-strong army of the mountain people.

However, the actual number of mountain people who have arrived so far is over three million, including nearly a thousand giants, and there is also a sage in charge!
Immortal Lord Yan Shi's gaze had already fallen upon them, confronting the Mountain Folk Immortal across the void. However, this clearly made their strength insufficient to deal with Cang Wu and the Venerable Lord.

Zhao Lixianzu himself still had to stay in the Zhao Kingdom. Secretly providing Wei Yuan with some manpower and helping him resist some underhanded attacks was already the limit. He couldn't openly intervene.

If Wei Yuan hadn't used the power of 100 million people to kill Liu Miao, the situation would be even worse now.

The problem is that the mountain people are constantly reinforcing their troops, which happens to be the time when Wei Yuan is facing enemies on two fronts and his forces are most strained! Wei Yuan doesn't even need to think to know that the mountain people must have been brought here by those immortals from the Ji Kingdom.

Currently, the territory under the jurisdiction of Weiyuan Ji Kingdom has over 20 million people, including nearly 2 million children under the age of two. It's easy to scatter these people, but difficult to gather them back.

Even if Wei Yuan were to kill all of Ji Jun's troops, if he couldn't stop the surging tide of the mountain people, then all twenty million people would be slaughtered and turned into food or fertilizer. The mountain people's diet is very broad and varied; anything that contains meat will end up in their mouths.

The Mountain People and the Ghost Chariots are the only two races among the Great Clan that consume sentient beings, but the Mountain People consume more than the Ghost Chariots.

Wei Yuan was no longer surprised or angry about the fact that Ji State colluded with the mountain people and attracted a large army of them.

At the level of immortals, morality and righteousness are all illusions, right and wrong are meaningless, and only the result matters. The suffering of living beings and the devastation of the land are things that mortals value. In the eyes of many immortals, there is a difference between immortals and mortals. Mortals are nothing more than ants on the roadside. Even if thousands, tens of thousands, or even tens of millions die, they will feel nothing.

Moreover, immortals enjoy extremely long lifespans. Their parents, friends, children, and grandchildren, with whom they had kinship ties, have long since passed away. By the time they ascend to immortality, their new descendants are only connected by blood, and in reality, they are no different from strangers.

Immortals often possess supernatural abilities such as telepathy. Even if these are not innate, similar methods are quite simple, and listening to the thoughts of those below the Dharma form is not particularly difficult. Therefore, when the ancestral immortals receive the worship of their descendants, what they hear and what they see are often vastly different. Over time, immortals gradually drift away from the mortal world.

But Wei Yuan was different. He rose from humble beginnings and was precocious, so he witnessed human suffering and heard the voices of mortals by the age of six, and remembered them well. After that, he cultivated rapidly and became well-versed in history books. The voices of mortals, the reality he saw, and the historical materials and classics in books gradually merged together, and his thoughts and ideas were very different from those of ordinary immortals.

Wei Yuan initially felt resentful that mortals lived such miserable lives and wanted to save some people trapped in the Broken Realm. However, he unexpectedly embarked on the path of cultivating by borrowing the luck of others.

Wei Yuan has now gone further and further down this path, and has inadvertently made a great vow, regarding the millions of mortals as the foundation of his path. In any case, Wei Yuan cannot stand idly by and watch twenty million mortals be slaughtered by the mountain people.

However, Wang Fo's attitude in this situation is quite subtle.

Wei Yuan wasn't quite sure whether Wang Fo wanted to save all living beings or to suppress the mountain people and resist foreign tribes. Although to a large extent these two things were essentially the same, there were subtle differences, and these subtle differences were probably quite crucial.

Wei Yuan considered the current situation from the perspective of the mountain people once again. A key question was: what exactly did this region, so close to the human realm, possess that warranted the involvement of the mountain people and immortals?
The border areas of the major clan territories are considered barren zones by all clans because the heavens and earth are influenced by another side. The same applies to the mountain people. There were originally not many mountain people in the areas surrounding the Ji Kingdom. Wei Yuan has enclosed tens of thousands of miles of land, which contains only a little over ten million mountain people who live a rather primitive life.

Clearly, in the eyes of the mountain people, this place was a remote and impoverished backwater, a place even birds wouldn't bother with. Why would such a place warrant the intervention of immortals?

Numerous questions remained, and the more he thought about it, the more shrouded in mystery it became. At this moment, Wang Fo had already laid out a shortcut for Wei Yuan; all he needed to do was take one more step forward.

Moreover, Wei Yuan guessed that Wang Fo's explicit statement probably had another layer of meaning: the crisis was imminent, and time was of the essence. The sooner they unlocked the mountain people's secrets, the more initiative they could gain.

At this time, fierce fighting continued on multiple fronts. In the northwest, the mountain tribesmen's army had bypassed the fortress and begun to advance deeper into the territory. Two mountain tribesmen, Yu Jing, confronted Wang Hu at the pass, while two other Yu Jing, along with the two mountain tribesmen's armies, bypassed the fortress and outflanked the rear.

In addition, two ordinary mountain dwellers named Yu Jing and a giant from Yu Jing Mountain Range were watching from behind, having already exchanged blows with Xuan Yue and Zhi Dan Sanren who had rushed over, and were not at a disadvantage.

Just then, Feng Tingyu found Wei Yuan and brought bad news: the Lord of the Mingwang Palace should have arrived a day earlier, but he has not shown up yet.

Wei Yuan naturally knew what this meant: it was yet another deadly trap. He just didn't know who this trap was aimed at.

Now that things had come to this, Wei Yuan calmed down. Everything now pointed to the mountain people's secrets; the mountain people were the biggest threat. As long as the mountain people's army in the northwest was dealt with, Qingming's hundreds of thousands of elite troops would turn around and crush Ji's main force in no time.

After much deliberation, Wei Yuan finally decided not to rely on Wang Fo.

He would postpone his ascension to the lotus throne as long as possible. As for the enemies on all sides, Wei Yuan did not believe that they could possess the same steel torrent and steely will as the Azure Nether Warriors.

Ji Jun was terrified of death, as were the mountain people. Although the Taoist soldiers were not afraid of death, the immortals would obviously be heartbroken.

With the plan finalized, Wei Yuan mobilized another 100,000 of the reserved Ji Kingdom troops to set up another defensive line behind the pass. This line was also fortified with chariots and heavy artillery, blocking one of the mountain tribes' flanking forces while allowing another to advance deeper.

Then Wei Yuan's figure flashed, he left the battle formation, and came to Xiao Jingyuan and the Embroidered Robe Supervisor.

Upon seeing Wei Yuan appear, the two Imperial Guards vanished instantly and reappeared simultaneously, but their faces remained calm, as if nothing had happened.

Wei Yuan stood with his hands behind his back and said, "I am very happy to meet you two seniors today. Although I am only a Dharma Aspect, I admire your demeanor. Why don't you two come at me together?"

Xiao Jingyuan narrowed his eyes, unable to figure out what Wei Yuan was up to. But whether he could guess or not, Wei Yuan had recently slain an immortal with a single sword strike, and even if he had a few more lives, he wouldn't dare to fight Wei Yuan one-on-one.

Although there was still an Embroidered Uniform Guard supervisor present, whose power surpassed that of Xiao Jingyuan, Xiao Jingyuan was a cunning and shrewd man. He knew that with this supervisor present, he might die even faster.

(End of this chapter)