Longzang

Chapter 840 Karma Collection
In the late autumn of the eleventh year of the Tianqi era of the Great Tang Dynasty, Qingming once again held the Dao Foundation Ceremony. More than 50,000 cultivators, including local Qingming cultivators, disciples from various aristocratic families such as Bao, Xiao, Xu, the Li family of Nanqi and the Three Cui, Dao soldiers of Taichu Palace and scattered cultivators from all over the world, gathered in Qingming. The world was shaken and the Tang Dynasty was alarmed. The Tang Dynasty specially dispatched General Wei Boyang to attend the ceremony.

On the central altar of the Witch Clan's vanguard legion, a ghostly witch with a serpentine body tens of feet long coiled up. It had four arms on its upper body, and its entire body was covered with silvery-white scales with shimmering water-like ripples.

Dozens of confidential military documents floated around it, its four arms constantly waving, reviewing one batch only to draw in another. It possessed flowing silver hair and a pair of silver, pupil-less eyes. This was none other than Liu Lan, the commander of the vanguard legion and a trusted confidant of Tianwu Huiye.

Upon seeing a military dispatch, he suddenly flew into a rage and roared, "Qingming is going to hold a celebration in ten days?! My army is only a little over a thousand miles away from him, and he still has the mind to hold a celebration?!"

Around the altar, dozens of high priests prostrated themselves on the ground, none daring to utter a word.

Liu Lan pointed in front of her, and a map appeared, clearly marking the army's current location and the borders of Qingming. Ahead of the army, the canal had been extended to within 500 li of Qingming, and was wider and deeper than it had been during Hongye's time.

"Issue the order: have the common people dig the canal with all their might, at least thirty li per day! In nine days, the canal must be within two hundred li of Qingming. I will launch an attack the day before their celebration, and let's see how they celebrate then!"

The orders were relayed to the front lines like lightning. The shaman general immediately ordered his men to bring in large cauldrons, pour countless amounts of bloody liquid into them, boil them, and then distribute them to the working shamans. After drinking the blood wine, the shamans were instantly invigorated, as if injected with chicken blood, and felt no fatigue whatsoever, continuing to dig and dig to the sound of war drums and military music.

They had their full life potential unleashed by the secret medicine, and would die in three to five days when its effects wore off. However, the legion commander had already given a death order, so no one cared about the lives of these millions of commoners and slaves. In any case, slaves and commoners would be continuously transported from the rear; if one died, two more could be replaced.

At this time, Wei Yuan arrived at the Qingming front line to routinely inspect the positions and preparations for battle.

After more than half a year of preparation, Wei Yuan had built a defensive system with three lines of defense, stretching nearly a hundred miles in depth. Scattered within the defensive lines were more than ten small cities, each capable of accommodating tens of thousands of people. They were all roughly the same size, with no distinction between primary and secondary cities. This was Wei Yuan's desperate measure to prevent the Wu Clan from overwhelming him with their power, suppressing the Peerless Dao Domain, and then using a blood curse to wipe out the entire city.

The current battleground consists entirely of small towns, lacking a central major city, leaving the Witch Clan's Great Curse with nowhere to be cast. To expend enormous sacrificial power to eliminate only a little over ten thousand people is an exceptionally heavy loss. Even with a Heavenly Witch in charge, such a Great Curse can only be used two or three times at most.

The defenses and troops are fine, but scouts report that the witch tribe has significantly accelerated its progress. Millions of slaves and commoners have drunk blood wine, unleashing their life potential and working with all their might to dig the canal. If this continues, they should be within attack range in seven or eight days.

Seeing the movements of the Witch Clan, Wei Yuan frowned slightly. He had calculated the timing correctly; the Witch Clan's vanguard should arrive in Qingming around January. At that time, the Qingming Dao Foundation Ceremony would have just been completed, the newly promoted Dao Foundation cultivators would have initially stabilized their Dao Foundations, the morale of the entire realm would be extremely high, and elders from various friendly families would be stationed in Qingming to oversee things. If a military emergency were to occur, they would naturally lend a helping hand.

Wei Yuan had a very good plan, but the Wu tribe refused to cooperate and insisted on launching an early attack.

However, Wei Yuan had already invested heavily in this Dao Foundation Ceremony, and naturally he would not allow the Wu Clan to disrupt it. Therefore, Wei Yuan immediately ordered people to go to the rear to deploy missile units to the positions and equip them with the newly developed high-explosive warheads.

Half a day later, at dusk, dozens of missiles soared into the sky and flew toward the Wuzu Canal construction site.

At the end of the canal, a dam was built, and in front of the dam, a twenty-mile-long waterway was excavated. Laborers were densely packed together, working tirelessly day and night. Every now and then, a member of the shamanic tribe would suddenly collapse while working, and the guards would drag the body away, its whereabouts unknown. Suddenly, sparks appeared in the sky, like dozens of shooting stars appearing in the heavens. In the blink of an eye, they flew above the construction site, and the shooting stars began to fall rapidly.

The archers guarding the site immediately let out a long cry to warn the shamans, and at the same time, they drew their bows at high speed, shooting arrows one after another at the meteor in the sky.

Having learned of the previous battle with the Land of Rain, the archer shamans now knew that Qingming possessed a weapon called a missile or rocket, which was quite difficult to defend against. Therefore, dozens of archer shamans were specially stationed at the front-line construction site to intercept the rockets.

The archers' arrows flew like the wind, each archer firing dozens of arrows in the blink of an eye. However, this time the fiery meteors in the sky suddenly accelerated, their speed doubling, instantly leaving all the arrows intercepting the witch clan behind.

Then dozens of rockets dispersed and rained down on the shamans working on the river. Dozens of huge fireballs rose into the sky, and countless fragments rained down on the earth. Each rocket could cover an area of ​​hundreds of feet in radius, and the number of fragments scattered was at least several thousand.

A dense cloud of fine dust rose from the ground, and large numbers of shamans inexplicably collapsed. Some high-ranking shamans felt excruciating pain, having been hit by a barrage of shrapnel.

The high priests were thick-skinned and tough, so shrapnel was just a superficial wound to them, but for slaves and commoners, even a single shrapnel could be fatal. A single volley of rockets fell tens of thousands of the priestly commoners, and hundreds of priests and nobles were wounded, including two high priests who were seriously injured.

The witch clan's construction site was thrown into chaos. Many commoners abandoned their tools and ran around hiding in all directions. The witches had no interest in maintaining order and were busy trying to save their own lives. After all, several witches had just died in front of the witches.

Before the first wave of chaos among the Wu tribes had even subsided, the second wave of missiles arrived. This time, the missiles had a wider range and higher accuracy, specifically targeting densely populated areas of the Wu tribes, instantly causing heavy casualties.

The two rounds of attacks resulted in 70,000 to 80,000 casualties among the Malays, bringing the construction site to a standstill.

One of Wei Yuan's Dao soldiers floated in the air, constantly transmitting images of the battlefield below back to the rear. Wei Yuan himself, however, remained hidden a hundred miles away, continuously using his divine sense to guide missiles to bombard the Wu Clan.

At this moment, wisps of black and red karmic energy continuously flew towards Wei Yuan, entering the mortal realm. Wei Yuan remained unmoved, focusing on observing the movements of the Wu Clan and assessing whether a third round of long-range attacks was necessary. However, it seemed unnecessary at the moment.

There were no more witches working on the canal construction site; instead, witches were scattered and hiding everywhere. Karma kept rising from the corpses of the dead witches, all pointing towards Wei Yuan.

Just then, the Red Lotus Bodhi, having absorbed enough karmic energy, bent its branches low. A faint red flame flickered at the tip of each branch, burning silently upwards, growing ever stronger, condensing into a massive ball of red light. Suddenly, this red flame seemed to break free from some deep, dark embrace, shuddering and bursting forth, its brilliant red light shooting straight into the sky. Instantly, vast Buddhist power, like a surging tide, continuously flowed from its body, and it had advanced to a higher level at that moment.

Amidst the hustle and bustle of human life, patches of golden tribulation clouds appeared in the sky. Within these clouds stood a magnificent mountain peak that seemed to reach into the clouds, upon which appeared to be thousands of Buddhas and Arhats, all opening their eyes and staring down at the Red Lotus Bodhi!

(End of this chapter)