Secular world: My destiny has no taboos

Chapter 492, Part 502: The Flames of War (Part 1)

Upon hearing the curses of the Heavenly Gang Venerable, Lin Beixuan clenched his outstretched hand, and the swirling mist flowed back into his palm like liquid.

Seeing this, Venerable Tiangang finally fell silent, looking at Lin Beixuan speechlessly and saying, "I really don't understand whether you homecoming people are bold or just reckless because you have something to rely on. Even when I was studying this thing, I had to be careful, but you, on the other hand, just plan to release it directly."

"Besides being a passage between two worlds, the border crossing shouldn't pose any harm to me, right?" Lin Beixuan frowned.

He hadn't expected the Heavenly Gang Venerable to react so strongly, as if the situation was something they found extremely repulsive.

The Celestial Venerable snorted coldly: "This thing certainly won't cause any harm to your body, but there's a certain probability that it's connected to the 'door'!"

"Besides, I don't want to go to your world."

Lin Beixuan asked curiously, "Could it be that even after being surrounded by the border lord, the mortal was unable to break free?"

After a long silence, Venerable Tiangang shook his head: "The rules within this realm do not belong to the mortal world, so even a mortal master would be unable to escape if trapped inside for too long."

Lin Beixuan glanced down at his palm and thought to himself, "No wonder this not only involves the pathway, but also a part of the authority of the Devouring Space. It must be that Venerable Tiangang used his own power of rules to seal the transit area."

"I am leaving."

Not long after, Lin Beixuan got up to leave.

The Heavenly Gang Venerable glanced at Lin Beixuan and said from behind, "Don't forget our agreement."

Lin Beixuan waved his hand without turning his head and disappeared into the vast night.

The Heavenly Gang Venerable stood there, watching Lin Beixuan's departing figure, lost in thought.

When Yin Yang Xuan Guan mentioned that Chen Long had used himself as a wager, he glanced at Lin Bei Xuan, a detail that Tian Gang Venerable could not possibly miss.

The reason he helped Lin Beixuan stemmed from the beating heart within Lin Beixuan.

But he couldn't figure out why Yin Yang Xuan Guan was helping Lin Bei Xuan.

The Tiger, the Yin-Yang Mysterious Official, has always been the most aloof among the twelve zodiac gods; the Ox, the Bearded Immortal, is the most upright and peaceful; and the Monkey, the Great Sage of Mount Sumeru, has the most unconventional thinking and often acts on impulse…

In his view, given Yin Hu's personality, there was absolutely no reason for him to take out those relics from the underworld and give them to Lin Beixuan.

Unless, the other party has seen something that he didn't see in Lin Beixuan.

"Brother Monkey, good Brother Monkey, I felt like you were hiding something from me when you were slaying the dragon. Even now, I'm still confused. Since you won't tell me, I'll find the answer myself."

Venerable Tiangang shook his head and returned to the temple.

The lights and candles illuminated the edges of the temple in the night, but the flames flickered and danced, so the light inside the temple didn't last long before being extinguished by a small, delicate white hand.

……

The Fox Spirit God has not yet returned, but most of the others who went to restore the land of Luozhou have been summoned back.

Lin Beixuan made some arrangements and decided not to wait any longer, so he set off directly for Huangque City.

Yellow Bird City.

A place with little scenery around it and a relatively uneventful way of life.

There are no elegant landscapes with platforms, pavilions, bridges, or flowing water; it is simply built of huge, bluish-gray stones, sitting on the land in a rustic manner.

From a distance, the slightly curved and extending city wall resembles a taciturn old man, quietly watching the changes of time.

Outside the city, there was an endless wasteland, where withered yellow grass trembled in the wind and made a rustling sound.

After crossing the wild grass, a patch of mottled woods begins to appear. Beyond the woods, the territory no longer belongs to Luozhou, but to Qingzhou.

Qingzhou is in a strange situation. Ever since Lin Beixuan left with his people, Zigu Goddess and Evil Spirit True Lord have reached some kind of agreement and have gradually withdrawn from Qingzhou, leaving only a small number of people behind.

Looking up at the towering Huangque City, Lin Beixuan did not enter the city immediately. Instead, he went to the location where Shen Tingmiao had mentioned the appearance of the Evil Spirit Army.

Under the moonlight, the withered trees bared their fangs and claws like lurking demons and monsters, waiting for people to approach before devouring them whole.

However, apart from some traces of human activity, Lin Beixuan did not find anything else.

"Has the necessary information already been taken away by the Northern Underworld Army?"

Lin Beixuan stood there for a while, and suddenly two flames, one gold and one black, flickered in his pupils.

Then, his vision slowly began to change strangely.

The desolate scene was gone, leaving only wisps of colorful gas rising from the ground.

These energies each formed different shapes: the blue energies formed trees, the gray energies formed stones...

Lin Beixuan's gaze fell on a tree, where a trace of lingering energy remained.

The mark of this energy is in the shape of a human, but this energy is very strange. In addition to the two normal hands, it also has a third hand at the waist.

It lay prone on the ground, like a scorpion crawling on the ground, when suddenly a gust of air shot towards it, hitting it right between the eyebrows.

Lin Beixuan slowly walked forward to the spot where the other person had died.

This is the mark of that residual energy. Judging from the strange shape on that person's body, he is indeed very likely one of the Evil Spirit True Lord's people.

As for the arrow shot at it...

Lin Beixuan looked in one direction, not at the location of Huangque City, but rather from behind the enemy.

What exactly is the reason?

Lin Beixuan was somewhat confused about the current situation.

He continued walking forward and finally saw the marks left by the archer next to a boulder a few hundred meters away.

Judging from the traces, the other party was neither a member of the Evil Spirit True Lord nor an evil spirit from the side of the Purple Maiden Goddess, but a genuine human being.

Moreover, judging from the traces of aura, the opponent is not weak, at least possessing the strength of the Divine Invocation Realm.

Lin Beixuan closed his eyes slightly, and the world composed of all things disappeared, returning to its original state.

He looked at his position, then turned around. From this vantage point, he could clearly see Huangque City standing tall in the wasteland.

They were originally monitoring Huangque City, but they encountered someone under the command of the Evil Spirit True Lord and ultimately eliminated him. Lin Beixuan quickly deduced a possibility in his mind.

He didn't linger there but went to Huangque City to see what the Beiming Army had discovered, so he could deduce that it belonged to the Evil Spirit Army.

Lin Beixuan went directly to the military headquarters at the top of Huangque City.

Because he left in a hurry, he did not appoint a city lord for each city. As a result, on the front line with Huangque City as the vanguard, although there was a supreme commander, none of them were city lords.

Luo Bingzhong and Wu Huo were in charge of the Huangquecheng defense line.

Although Luo Bingzhong was defeated by the Xuanhuang Hungry Ghosts in the early stages of the Luozhou Hungry Ghost outbreak, he was a qualified general from beginning to end.

This is also why Lin Beixuan entrusted Luo Bingzhong with the most important location in Huangque City.

At this time, Luo Bingzhong had not rested yet and was working late into the night on military affairs at his desk.

With Lin Beixuan implementing the merit-based reward system in the army, the combat power of the Beiming Army has been increasing almost daily.

However, it also has significant drawbacks, namely, it's too much of a waste of time!
Because many Beiming soldiers would use their earned merits to exchange for rewards at the merit warehouse every day, the daily expenses and gains required a large number of people to calculate and arrange.

Moreover, these people cannot be ordinary people; they must all be experts in divination and calculation.

Luo Zhou already had a shortage of talent, and in previous years, the art of divination was not popular. After all, half of the rules in the secular world are resolved by force, and the other half by one's background.

If you have strong fists and a powerful background, you've already won half the battle.

Although divination is not considered a lowly profession, it is practiced by many schools of thought, and there are even many people in the private sector who have created their own schools of divination.

For example, the Confucian school wrote "True Chapters of Cursive Calculation", the Legalist school wrote "Calculation Canon", and the Mohist school wrote "Mechanical Arithmetic", etc.

Although the art of divination is widespread, very few people in the general public are truly proficient in it; most of it is cultivated by wealthy and powerful families.

Luozhou was already short of talent, and even after gathering all the necessary personnel, there were only four or five people who were proficient in divination.

However, this number of people is far from enough for the merit exchange system established by Lin Beixuan. Therefore, Luo Bingzhong has to put aside his status from time to time and use the skills he had before joining the army.

He was a Legalist and had studied mathematics extensively for many years, so he was able to handle some calculation-related matters.

After finishing his tasks for the day, Luo Bingzhong rubbed his temples and leaned back in his chair, looking extremely exhausted.

Rather than calculating, he preferred fighting and killing; otherwise, he wouldn't have left Legalism to join the army.

Unexpectedly, after going around in circles, he found himself back in the busy state of staying up all night solving problems.

Back then, he studied Legalist mathematical theories, but now he was dealing with the complex data and affairs of the military. Those densely packed numbers seemed to have become annoying problems, hovering before his eyes.

"Fu Jun?"

In a daze, Luo Bingzhong saw Lin Beixuan appear at his desk. At first, he thought he was seeing things, but after he rubbed his eyes, he found that Lin Beixuan was really beside him.

Luo Bingzhong was immediately alerted and stood up from his seat.

Lin Beixuan looked down at the contents of his desk and said in a low voice, "The amount of merit points that can be exchanged in the army every day is indeed huge. Aren't there enough people with the skills to calculate it?"

Luo Bingzhong sighed and shook his head, saying, "We might be able to make a little more money if we had at least ten times more people. The ones I'm dealing with today are the ones that piled up from the past few days."

Lin Beixuan nodded upon hearing this: "After some time, I will specifically look for some talented people to fill these vacancies in Luozhou."

He did not expect that the shortage of talent in Luozhou had not only affected Wangfeng City, but also greatly impacted Huangque City on the front line.

Taking this to heart, Lin Beixuan turned to Luo Bingzhong and said, "Tell me in detail about the message you sent back."

Upon hearing this, Luo Bingzhong immediately realized what was happening, and his expression turned serious.

"We found the corpses of the evil spirit soldiers outside Huangque City."

"Logically speaking, the Evil Spirit Army is the direct army of the Evil Spirit True Lord and is the strongest. No matter what caused the Evil Spirit Army soldiers to die in our Luo Prefecture, the fact that it appeared here is an extremely serious problem."

When Luo Bingzhong talked about this, his originally tired body tensed up.

"Moreover, I asked the Shadow God to examine it. This soldier of the Evil Spirit Army was quite strong, but he was killed by an arrow. This means that the person was not from the side of the Evil Spirit True Lord. This involves a third party. We are currently suspecting whether this third party is from the Goddess Zigu."

“No!” Lin Beixuan shook his head and said, “The archer is a male, and a genuine human. Given the attitude of the Goddess Zigu towards humans, it’s impossible for her to have human subordinates.”

"Before entering the city, I went to that forest outside the city. What puzzled me was whether the other side had good intentions or bad intentions towards us, and what the Evil Spirit Lord was thinking?"

Under the candlelight, Lin Beixuan's tall figure was cast on the window. He frowned slightly, pondering the purpose of the archer and the evil spirit lord.

"If I were an archer and harbored ill will towards the Northern Underworld Army, I would dispose of the bodies after killing the Evil Spirit Army soldiers, rather than leaving them at the scene."

But since the other party chose to leave the body there, it means that they came with good intentions and wanted to remind us.

The Evil Spirit Lord has recently made deployments and arrangements targeting Luozhou.

Lin Beixuan went through all the possibilities in his mind.

The reason he rushed over from Wangfeng City was because he was worried that the Evil Spirit True Lord would attack Huangque City.

If the other side were to attack Huangque City, Huangque City probably wouldn't last even a day.

After pondering for a while, Luo Bingzhong frowned and analyzed, "Then which side is this archer from? Could he be a master who survived from the original Qingzhou territory?"

"It's uncertain, but from this incident, discovering the corpses of the evil spirit soldiers is not a bad thing for us."

Lin Beixuan said calmly, "Regardless of the circumstances, Luozhou will need to strengthen its defenses starting today. I have already ordered the people of Wangfeng City to stop going out on missions and instead stay within the city."

"How's the training going at Huangque City?"

Back when Lin Beixuan left, he had made a copy of the Taibai Yin Jing and given it to Luo Bingzhong, asking Luo Bingzhong to train the army according to the military strategies in it.

Now that more than a month has passed, there should be some results to show.

Upon hearing this, Luo Bingzhong's lips curled up, his eyes gleamed, and he wore a confident expression before uttering a remark that even made Lin Beixuan take notice.

"In terms of military formations, my Northern Darkness Army is absolutely no less than any other powerful army in the world. Even the elite barbarian troops in the north will be swallowed whole by the Northern Darkness Army like a giant fish!"

(End of this chapter)