Longzang

Chapter 621 Humbly Seeking Advice
“Show us your experience in the small world,” Zhang Sheng said.

Wei Yuan then visualized the entire battle. The battle itself wasn't long; the chase was the main part that took up time. Zhang Sheng watched it all without saying a word, and then the video started playing again from the beginning.

As Wei Yuan chased after the monsters until they fell into an ambush, Zhang Sheng said, "It is said that people in the martial world are treacherous. In fact, we humans are not the most powerful race among sentient beings. Many monsters in our eyes are actually smarter than us. We cannot let our guard down just because they are in the form of wild beasts. In particular, some spirit beasts will deliberately disguise themselves as ordinary wild beasts without intelligence."

"Look, they were already gathering when you just stepped out of the portal. But your attention was completely drawn to the birds, and you didn't notice the activity in the distance."

Wei Yuan replayed the video again, and his divine sense automatically recorded everything he perceived, even details he hadn't noticed at the time.

Zhang Sheng was referring to the sight of several black birds flying away, while at the same time, some dark shadows were floating in the distance, gathering towards a certain spot. In Wei Yuan's perception, those shadows were just a few black sesame seeds in a black ocean, and because they were far away, Wei Yuan overlooked the extremely subtle changes, but Zhang Sheng noticed them at a glance.

If Zhang Sheng were in actual combat, his reaction would be even faster. Wei Yuan hadn't expected her to be more perceptive than his own, despite his powerful spiritual sense, and humbly asked for her secret.

Zhang Sheng would not keep anything from Wei Yuan. After mastering more than five hundred immortal swords, she had been diligently practicing the ultimate killing move of unleashing all the swords together. Her cultivation in the Netherworld had greatly improved her spiritual sense, and she could now barely make each immortal sword move autonomously. However, she was still a long way from achieving perfect coordination among the swords, with the ability to lure and attack enemies, and to automatically adapt to the opponent's situation.

Wei Yuan immediately recognized the terrifying nature of Zhang Sheng's path. Once she mastered it, her opponents would no longer face a rain of immortal swords, but rather an attack from over five hundred highly skilled Dao Foundation cultivators.

As for forming a sword formation, that's already a low-level skill. At that time, Zhang Sheng would be able to switch back and forth between different sword formations instantly, and even nest several sword formations to attack the enemy at the same time.

Constantly distracted by manipulating over five hundred immortal swords, Zhang Sheng became extremely perceptive of his surroundings. The gathering and ambush of monsters in the distance were almost invisible to Wei Yuan, but these subtle movements were very noticeable to Zhang Sheng.

Zhang Sheng then said, "It seems you also need to train your spirituality. You can't always rely on overwhelming power. I think the first goal is to control 1,024 missions simultaneously."

"Why do I need so much?" Wei Yuan cried out in anguish.

"Because you are the Dharma form."

Wei Yuan felt that something was wrong. He was practicing his skills in the mortal world while simultaneously handling multiple tasks? What would he do after mastering them? It would simply mean manipulating more magical artifacts at the same time, or going a step further and manipulating more puppets.

What happens when you take puppet manipulation to its extreme? Naturally, it's about manipulating even more puppets while simultaneously finding a way to give them their own sentience, enabling them to fight autonomously.

The problem is, aren't the Dragon Guards just like that? Aren't those enlightened warriors also like that? Leaving aside those who haven't gained enlightenment, aren't the Yin-Yang Maidens and the Immortal Plants also puppets with their own sentience?
Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of mortals can be considered as sentient puppets. In this respect, Wei Yuan's spirituality, if not unparalleled in the world, is at least unmatched among Dharma beings.

However, these guys are too intelligent and act on their own, so Wei Yuan can't really command them.

However, after discussing with Zhang Sheng, Wei Yuan also discovered his own problem: his divine sense was still lacking in subtlety. If divine sense had a weight, then Zhang Sheng was doing seven or eight times the work of Wei Yuan with only one unit of divine sense, and this gap would continue to widen as her cultivation level increased.

They had a direction, but they had no idea how to make it work. Wei Yuan and Zhang Sheng kept discussing, and before they knew it, night fell and day broke, and a whole day had passed.

In the observation room, the female disciples had long since dispersed. Sun Yu, still unwilling to give up, was yawning repeatedly. He couldn't bear to miss a single detail, yet dared not use his divine sense to investigate. He could only stare intently at the humanoid image, waiting patiently. At this moment, the clock struck three times, reminding Sun Yu to feed Wei Yuan the last dose of medicine, after which Wei Yuan could leave.

While reviewing combat experience with Zhang Sheng, Wei Yuan was not idle elsewhere. Several Dao Foundation Warriors had already gathered three thousand elite cavalry from the military camp and equipped them with powerful support troops.

Wei Yuan was not like Cui Yu. He strengthened the firepower as much as possible. Only three thousand cavalrymen carried all the remaining seventy-odd infantry cannons, and arranged thirty wagons to carry cannon shells. They also brought three war chariots modeled after Xu Wenwu's Tianqi Toad.

By the time Wei Yuan was discharged from the hospital, the support force had already completed its reorganization, and Wei Yuan prepared to lead it out in three days. He also invited Xu Wenwu to accompany the army, wanting to use his knowledge of the outer world to evaluate his newly acquired three-vehicle unit.

To stabilize the situation in the Red Sand Oasis, Wei Yuan also arranged a logistics unit specifically for transporting grain. This unit was ostensibly commanded by Xu Henshui, but in reality, Feng Tingyu was also hidden within it. Feng Tingyu's new Dharma form was practically a nemesis of magic cultivators; with her around, a surprise attack by a high-level cultivator squad from the Witch Clan would be a joke.

The pre-battle preparations were extremely complicated, especially with the addition of infantry guns and three armored vehicles. The amount of logistical supplies needed to be prepared was more than double. After Wei Yuan brought all the supplies he could think of, he found that the supply corps had become a behemoth of five thousand people, requiring the requisition of three hundred large trucks, which was more than the main force that Wei Yuan himself had brought.

The local community was also very busy, managing to squeeze out 10% of the resources to help Wei Yuan optimize the entire supply train plan.

After several rounds of optimization, we were finally able to cram in 10% more supplies while maintaining the same number of trucks.

Just as Wei Yuan was preparing for battle for a few more days, a battle report suddenly came from the front: Cui Yu's main force was ambushed when it was about to join forces with Xu Yi. After a fierce battle, Cui Yu successfully withdrew his troops from the encirclement, but suffered more than a thousand casualties. Moreover, Xu Yi's vanguard was completely surrounded.

Battle reports indicate that the Wu tribe had ambushed more than 50,000 troops, and that Cui Yu had already sent scouts to explore the ambush site, yet they were still ambushed.

Wei Yuan's first reaction was that the Desolate Ancestor Tribe had defected, but the battle report stated that almost all of the hundreds of warriors sent by the Desolate Ancestor Tribe to guide them had been wiped out in this battle. The Witch Army of Lei Ze hated the Desolate Ancestor Witches more than the humans. They immediately focused their attacks on the warriors of the Desolate Ancestor Tribe and successfully separated them from Cui Yu's main force.

The powerful shamans were fearless and fought to the death. If these few hundred powerful shamans hadn't held back tens of thousands of Thunder Swamp shaman soldiers, Cui Yu's losses would have been even greater.

Having ruled out the involvement of the Desolate Ancestor Tribe, Wei Yuan immediately ordered a ritual to be performed to summon Tianyu, hoping he would join him on the march. At the same time, Wei Yuan did not wait any longer and led his army to reinforce Cui Yu at full speed.

For this attack, Wei Yuan only brought three thousand cavalry and two thousand mounted infantry, while the remaining five thousand were ordinary troops responsible for transporting supplies. However, the firepower of the entire force was quite fierce, and it had never been seen before.

The troops moved at an extremely fast pace. Wei Yuan had loaded all the infantry artillery onto wagons, with each wagon carrying two cannons, one on each side. Therefore, the entire army was either on horseback or in wagons; apart from the cultivators, no one walked.

Xu Yi had already cleared the road ahead and built bridges over several treacherous rivers. Although the bridges were simple, heavy objects were not carried across them; instead, the Foundation Establishment cultivators carried them directly across. Wei Yuan himself could carry two heavy-duty trucks at a time.

After entering the Witch Domain, Wei Yuan became extremely cautious, never leaving the army for extended periods to act alone. Without the protection of military aura, Wei Yuan would be the target of the entire Witch Domain, and would easily be killed if he encountered a powerful opponent.

Wei Yuan then imbued all the most elite Dragonwing Iron Cavalry with aura of fortune. Combined with the Dragonwing's own karmic fortune, if any Netherworld Witch dared to kill all these thousands of iron cavalrymen imbued with fortune, Wei Yuan could likely deliver them to the afterlife by unleashing his Red Lotus Salvation Mantra.

(End of this chapter)