Longzang

Chapter 972 Alternative
The rebels were fleeing in all directions. A hundred young cultivators from the Xu family, all at the Dao Foundation stage, divided into several small teams and advanced steadily, gunfire ringing out continuously. With each shot, a rebel fell. The flying sword spears used by the Qingming Dao Foundation cultivators had undergone generations of improvement and were now essentially stable in terms of rapid-fire single shots, high power, and long range.

However, the rebels were just as adept at escaping as the old man Yu Jing, and in the blink of an eye, they had fled into the desolate wilderness. Tens of thousands of corpses were left on the original battlefield, the vast majority of whom were dead but not injured.

Although Wei Yuan was standing in the air, his mind was constantly pondering his future choices.

Seeing the rebel army routed, a small cavalry unit from the Ji State army came out and ran to Wei Yuan's location. A captain bowed and said, "What is the background of this righteous man? My general would like to invite him over for a meeting and a chat."

Wei Yuan frowned slightly. The customs of Ji State were indeed rather strange. The government troops feared bandits like snakes and scorpions, but as soon as they saw him without official rank, they put on their general's airs again. He had defeated Xu Kuang with three thunderbolts and Zhang Sheng with one move against Yu Jing, yet this man hadn't seen any of it?

Wei Yuan's face darkened. Suddenly, a Dharma Aspect cultivator appeared on the ground, dressed in armor in the style of the Great Tang Dynasty. This Dharma Aspect cultivator raised his whip and lashed it across the captain's face, knocking him off his horse!

Then the Dharma Aspect cultivator continued whipping the whip, striking more than a dozen times while cursing, "What kind of general are you! My master is the Jiedushi of Qingyang of the Great Tang Dynasty. In front of my master, you are all just common soldiers! If you dare to disrespect my master, I'll beat you half to death first!"

The captain screamed in agony as he was whipped. The soldiers, who had initially been quite arrogant, immediately fled in terror upon seeing how ruthless the Dharma Master was, abandoning their captain behind them.

The captain was at the mid-stage of the Dao Foundation realm, but in front of the high-level cultivator of the Dharma Aspect realm, he was like a child, beaten without any ability to struggle.

Soon the government general received the news and immediately flew over on his own, accompanied only by a few close attendants.

The general, a mid-stage Dharma Aspect cultivator, only clearly saw Wei Yuan and Zhang Sheng's appearances upon arriving before him. He vaguely sensed their auras, and his heart skipped a beat. Then, seeing the Dharma Aspect warrior of similar cultivation showing extreme respect to Wei Yuan, he immediately lowered his body, becoming half a head shorter than Wei Yuan, and cupped his hands, saying, "This humble general, Zhao Zhen, greets Your Excellency, the Military Governor!"

Wei Yuan gave a forced smile and said, "Da Tang and Ji State are nominally ruler and subject, but we each serve our own masters and are not subordinate to each other. General Zhao, there is no need for such formalities. However, as an official of Da Tang, I am still pursuing the rebel army and cannot have much time to talk with you, General Zhao. Please make yourself at home."

Zhao Zhen glanced at the corpses of the rebels scattered on the ground, hesitated for a moment, but still didn't dare to say what he wanted to say, and slunk away.

A moment later, the large contingent of officers set off. However, many officers in the ranks kept glancing in their direction.

Wei Yuan frowned slightly and said to Zhang Sheng, "Can you bring that general over? I have a few questions to ask him."

Zhang Sheng said calmly, "It's nothing."

An elderly Taoist appeared above her head, sitting cross-legged, with black and white energy constantly swirling in his hands. Suddenly, the general surnamed Zhao appeared in mid-air, still in the posture of riding a horse in deep thought.

Zhao Zhen was pondering who this so-called Qingyang Jiedushi was when suddenly the world around him changed. The army appeared to be more than ten miles away, and he inexplicably appeared in mid-air, then fell headfirst to the ground!
Before he could even use his magic to protect himself, Wei Yuan helped him up, saying, "General Zhao, don't panic. I just want to ask you something. I've noticed that your army seems very interested in these rebel corpses. Why is that?"

Zhao Zhen finally came to his senses and was immediately terrified. He was a Dharma Aspect, after all, and yet he had been captured silently without any warning. He had no idea how he got there, let alone how he resisted.

Now that his life was in someone else's hands, he immediately adopted the attitude of kneeling before his superior, saying, "My lord, you may not know this, but His Majesty attaches great importance to suppressing the rebellion and has promised generous rewards. For each rebel head handed over, one can receive a certain amount of silver, and for every hundred heads handed over, an officer will be promoted one rank. And these more than ten thousand elite heads are enough for this humble general to be granted a title."

"Heads?" Wei Yuan frowned slightly. There were many ways to verify whether battle records were fabricated. The simplest was for military officers to carry recording devices, or at the very least, to search officers' memories, or even have them swear a blood oath. Why insist on submitting heads? From a convenience standpoint, cutting off a thumb or ear would be far better.

Perhaps there is only one reason: Prince Ji needs heads, especially those of the rebels.

Wei Yuan inquired about nearby supply depots and then released Zhao Zhen. Zhao Zhen glanced at the several high-ranking Dharma Aspect cultivators standing around Wei Yuan, shuddered, and hurriedly chased after his army. Once he was far away and the four Dharma Aspects had disappeared, Zhang Sheng couldn't help but smile. These four Dharma Aspects were all Wei Yuan's warriors, essentially his clones. Then Wei Yuan released these clones, pretending they weren't himself, to do what was inconvenient and to embellish what he was embarrassed to do—the effect was quite good.

If it weren't for the significant difference in appearance between the mirage demons and humans, the three Imperial Realm experts would undoubtedly have been on duty. Zhang Sheng, however, was unaware that Wei Yuan was currently sending out a wisp of his divine sense to inquire of the three entangled mirage demons about a way to conserve their Dao power when summoning them.

Zhang Sheng then left to cultivate, while Wei Yuan summoned pages from an ancient military manual, causing flying horses to appear on his military aura, greatly increasing his speed. In a short while, he arrived at a county town a hundred miles away.

The county town had clearly suffered from war; the city gate towers showed signs of burning, and the city walls were dilapidated, but there was still some life and human activity in the town.

With a sweep of his divine sense, Wei Yuan knew that there were still more than 10,000 surviving civilians in the city. So he ordered his troops to enter the city and sent Liu Yanzhi ahead to find the local government.

A moment later, Wei Yuan sat in the county government office, with the county magistrate sitting beside him, trembling with fear, treating Wei Yuan as nothing more than a regional governor who had come to Ji State to fish in troubled waters.

These military officers are the most troublesome, even more difficult to deal with than bandits. If they were local soldiers of Ji State, it would be a little easier, as officials could at least give them some leeway. But this one is a regional military governor from another region. If he's displeased, he might even execute the county magistrate, then pack his bags and leave, blaming everything on the rebels.

Wei Yuan was renowned throughout the Western Regions, but this was the State of Ji, a remote place where officials, aside from matters of state, only knew about local affairs within a hundred miles. They had never even heard of the Qingyang Military Governor.

So the magistrate showed utmost enthusiasm and respect, as if treating an ancestor, saying, "...Our county is remote and barren, and the rebels don't like to come here. It's the government troops who have come three times. The government troops who come here are all starving. They even caught and ate the chickens I raised in the backyard of the county government. Now there is really nothing left in the city, and we live on tree bark and grass leaves."

When Wei Yuan arrived, he saw that the fields were completely barren, without a trace of green; everything edible had probably been eaten. It was quite remarkable that the magistrate hadn't fled at this time.

Wei Yuan then asked, "Lord Liu, why aren't you leaving yet?"

The county magistrate, named Liu Muzhi, smiled bitterly upon hearing this and said, "I am, after all, an official. I was once a protégé of the Minister of Personnel, so my colleagues in the officialdom give me some face. With me here, the government troops that come won't go too far. If they really have no food, they'll leave. There won't be any incident of them seizing a sheep."

"If the rebels come, won't you be in danger?"

Liu Muzhi remained silent for a moment, then said, "I sent people to spread the word that we've run out of food here and that government troops have been here. If that doesn't work, then we can only leave it to fate. There are still over ten thousand people in the city. I've been an official here for three years, and I really can't bear to abandon them. If there were only three or four thousand, I might have run away too."

Wei Yuan was filled with respect; this guy was an oddball in the officialdom of Ji State.

Wei Yuan asked one last question: "What was the population of the city before the three arrivals of the government troops?"

"Forty-one thousand three hundred."

After a moment of silence, Wei Yuan asked, "How did they all die?"

"The first time the government troops came to collect grain, there were many conflicts, and more than a thousand people died. The next two times the government troops came, the people had learned to accept their fate, so not many were killed; they all... starved to death."

(End of this chapter)