A Scroll of Infinite Glory

Chapter 264 Moving to the Heavenly Gate to Gamble on Greed and Anger

"Liangshan actually dispatched all its troops to reinforce various regions?!"

Surrounded by verdant mountains on all sides, a fortified camp stood by the river, its imposing presence accompanied by the tinkling of bells. The commander, Yao Pingzhong, had just received news from various regions and was overjoyed. He rushed into the tent to pay his respects to the emperor and offer his advice.

"Your Majesty, the Eastern Circuit of Jingdong is currently undefended. If we advance straight in, first recapture Bianliang, and then wipe out the stronghold of the rebels in the Eastern Circuit of Jingdong, the remaining rebels will be like rootless duckweed, and they will definitely not be able to survive for long."

This Yao Pingzhong was also a general of the border army. His hair and beard were all dark purple, and he had a long face and big ears, which made him quite unusual. In particular, his bushy beard was several feet long, messy and shiny, which was very eye-catching.

The border army numbered 300,000 and was stationed along the Song-Liao border. In name, they were all under the command of Han Shizhong. However, because they had waited for many years without actually launching a war against the Liao, Han Shizhong usually only deployed troops to the Jiehe camp, which was closer to his commander's residence.

The tens of thousands of soldiers under Yao Pingzhong's command were originally stationed further away and had less contact with Han Shizhong and others. They were the most loyal ministers that the emperor had selected from the border troops.

However, the emperor, seated cross-legged in the center of the large tent on a snow-white bearskin and brocade cushion, showed no delight upon hearing his suggestion. He merely glanced at it indifferently and said, "Have you investigated thoroughly about who commands all these troops that Liangshan has dispatched, and where Guan Yu has gone to fight?"

Yao Pingzhong quickly bowed and said, "There are Daoist officials and spies in various places, keeping a close eye on things. News will be sent back soon."

"Then wait for the news to come back before offering your suggestions."

The emperor waved him away and closed his eyes to meditate quietly.

Yao Pingzhong responded, not daring to raise his head, and retreated to the tent entrance with his back bent.

Less than an hour later, he returned to the main tent, holding several secret letters in his hand, and recounted the latest battle situation.

Upon hearing that top experts from Jiangnan and Jinghu had used the natural defenses of mountains and rivers to cover the retreat, and that the local rebels had broken through the encirclement and retreated towards western Beijing, the emperor frowned slightly.

Upon hearing that Han Shizhong had led his troops south into the Liangzhe region, the emperor immediately asked, "Is there a border army led by Yang Zhi and his men in Liangzhe?"

Yao Pingzhong said, "Yes, His Majesty also specially ordered my sworn brother to serve as the military supervisor there, carrying the imperial edict."

The emperor said, "Let them withdraw their elite troops from Liangzhe and move westward to the capital to coordinate with the border troops in Jiangnan and Jinghu, divide the battlefield, and prepare to intercept the rebel forces retreating from various places."

Yao Pingzhong quickly said, "Does it mean withdrawing their entire border army from Liangzhe? The situation there was already in their grasp, but this might introduce new variables?"

The Emperor said, "Han Shizhong has only 40,000 men. He has taken Liangzhe and may even go to Guangnan. The rebels in these two places are already exhausted. The combined troops of the military governors in these two places total more than 140,000, with ample food and ample cannons. Tell them to keep a close eye on Han Shizhong's movements, not to launch a direct attack, but to harass, hold their ground, and delay. Can't they do that?"

"Your Majesty is wise and prudent; this is naturally not difficult."

Yao Pingzhong clasped his hands together, speaking slowly and sincerely, displaying the air of someone who had a good plan to offer to the emperor. "However, in recent days, there have been frequent reports of victories in Zhejiang and other places. Although there have been rebels breaking out in Jiangnan and other places, they have only managed to escape by taking advantage of the terrain. I think the morale of the troops in Zhejiang is good, perhaps..."

The emperor sighed and interrupted him: "You don't need to look. I only use you because of your loyalty, not because of your eyes, much less your brain. Do you understand?"

During this period, the border army experienced many changes. Han Shizhong left, but Yao Pingzhong became a close minister of the emperor and was valued. He thought he could make great strides and repay the emperor. However, he did not expect the emperor to react in this way. He couldn't help but show his fear and quickly apologized.

In fact, the emperor of the previous life had seen Yao Pingzhong's extraordinary bravery and commendable loyalty, and was impressed by his heroic spirit. He appointed him to select elite soldiers to resist the Jin army. As a result, in one battle, he wiped out many of the Song army's elite soldiers.

The current emperor is naturally no longer going to listen to his brilliant strategies when making decisions.

The Emperor then asked, "In late September, news came from the Liao Kingdom that Yelü Yanxi intended to abdicate and pass the throne to a more worthy successor. The specific date for the abdication ceremony should have been yesterday. I sent someone to investigate whether there were any complications during the abdication ceremony. Has the scout returned?"

Yao Pingzhong took out the bottom letter from the stack of secret letters in his hand and said, "This is also a recent message. It seems that there were no major incidents on the day of the ceremony, except that Yelü Yanxi's illness worsened and he had to be carried there that day."

"The new emperor is an unfamiliar face, not the Liao nobles we knew before. However, there are some absurd rumors circulating in the Liao capital. Some say that their new emperor is possessed by the spirit of Emperor Taizu of Liao, while others simply say that Emperor Taizu of Liao himself is involved. Some important officials of Liao are fueling these rumors and seem to be happy to see them happen."

The emperor took the secret letter and examined it closely. As he read, he muttered to himself, "In just two months, he actually succeeded... Yelü Yanxi, how come he's not even as good as those rebels..."

The emperor, clutching the secret letter, fell into deep thought.

There was no trace of Guan Luoyang among the various armies sent out by Liangshan to provide support. It was obvious that he was waiting somewhere on the route of the imperial army heading towards Bianliang and Jingdong East Road.

In order to provide timely support to the rebel armies in various regions and to maintain the military discipline and reputation of the rebel armies, he chose to lead a small number of troops to guard the rear and fight against the elite troops of the imperial court, which were under the command of the emperor.

—This is exactly the kind of "unwise move" that the emperor had wanted to see the other party make.

Compared to the selective approach of only supporting a few key rebel armies and dividing the territory among themselves, the method chosen by Guan Luoyang is undoubtedly more extreme. For the sake of reputation, or rather, for some insistence that the emperor despises, he puts himself in a very disadvantageous position.

The emperor almost laughed, and he actually did. He said with a smile, "Draft an edict to send someone to the capital of Liao to borrow a general from Liao!"

"What?!"

Yao Pingzhong was so shocked that he was speechless.

………………

The Song army's messengers delivered Emperor Tianming's letter to the Liao capital within two days at top speed.

In the newly renovated Liao court, when the Liao civil and military officials heard this state letter, they showed the same expression as Yao Pingzhong: their mouths were half open and their eyes were somewhat dazed.

But unlike Yao Pingzhong, they didn't need to cover it up so quickly; instead, they soon came to their senses and burst into a ridiculous laugh.

"Hahaha, has the emperor of Song lost his mind?"

Yelü De pounded his chest and stomach, laughing, "Ten thousand taels of gold and a thousand pairs of cattle and sheep, and you think you can borrow the brave generals of my Great Liao to quell their rebellion? Why don't you just go back and tell your emperor that my Great Liao is willing to lend him 100,000 elite troops to help him govern the country, and see if he agrees?!"

The other ministers in the court laughed even louder when they heard this.

However, the new Liao emperor, who sat high on his throne with a face ashen as iron, did not laugh with them. Instead, he carefully examined the letter.

Some people, observing the expressions on others' faces, gradually stopped laughing.

Wuyan Guang stepped forward and said first, "Your Majesty, we have received news from our spies that the rebels in the Song Kingdom have actually been forced to flee in all directions by the Emperor's troops, and their rear is already vulnerable. Their Emperor's victory is just around the corner, yet they sent such a letter. There may be another conspiracy."

The new emperor asked, "Do you remember the person who rescued Han Shizhong that day?"

Wuyan Guang said, "I heard that Han Shizhong has also become a member of the rebels. The one who rescued him must have been Guan Luoyang's subordinate."

"good."

The new emperor said, "He only sent one subordinate, and he was able to rescue Han Shizhong right in front of us. Even if he raised an army too quickly, had a shallow foundation, an empty rear, cherished his reputation, and made some foolish strategic moves, as long as he himself is still alive, who can feel at ease?"

Wuyan Guang suddenly realized, "That's why the Song emperor didn't hesitate to borrow generals from our Great Liao, just to increase the chances of that person having nowhere to escape and being completely defeated and killed."

Yelü Dezhong said, "In that case, the longer they fight, the more advantageous it will be for our Great Liao. A mere ten thousand taels of gold is insignificant in such a major matter. We should stand by and watch."

The new emperor smiled: "To stand idly by is too conservative, the act of a mediocre person. My warriors must dare to create greater opportunities. He has the absurd ambition to make this request; surely there are no heroes in the court willing to respond?"

The Liao generals all knew that this was their founding emperor. Having spent time with him, they were deeply impressed by his charisma. Hearing just these few words, they were filled with patriotic fervor.

The generals immediately volunteered, but Wuyan Guang's voice was deep and loud, overpowering the others.

The new emperor smiled and said, "It is precisely because you, my dear minister, went in person that you are able to shoulder this important responsibility."

He then personally selected fourteen fierce generals, including Wuyan Guang, Aliqi, Song Mingyu, and Tianshan Yong, and after some preparations, they set off overnight.

Wuyan Guang was even given the Tang-splitting whip by him.

This iron whip is five feet eight inches long, with twelve sections. The guard is carved with a wolf's head, and there are two natural green crystals in the wolf's eyes. The handle is shaped like a wolf's body. It was originally the personal weapon of Emperor Taizu of Liao, Yelü Abaoji. It has been passed down for two hundred years and has been refined by successive royal family members, experts, and Liao emperors. It is a first-class treasure of the Liao Kingdom.

Although Yelü Yanxi was incompetent and foolish, he relied on the power of this treasure to protect himself, which prevented Yelü Dezhong and others from making any rash moves, until their "Great Ancestor Emperor" arrived.

Wuyan Guang was overjoyed to receive this treasure. After listening to the new emperor's instructions and receiving a reply from him, he set off with his men that very night.

For these people, traveling thousands of miles a day was nothing more than a trivial matter. With Song envoys leading the way, they traveled without hindrance, arriving even faster than messengers. After they met the absurd Song emperor, they were given official positions in the Song army by imperial decree and made to serve under him.

The following day, this large army marched towards Bianliang.

Since being transferred back to the border army, the emperor had been hiding his identity, and he had not even ordered the re-making and display of the imperial regalia and banners. But this time, he would no longer hide it.

Wherever the army passed, day or night, five-colored clouds would faintly appear in the sky. Especially before sunrise and after sunset, the five-colored clouds would glow brilliantly, and the morale would be extremely high.

They arrived at the wasteland that morning.

According to the map once drawn by the imperial court, this area should be a plain, where tens of thousands of cavalry could roam freely.

But now, there is a neat row of mountain peaks there, all less than a hundred feet high, but with extremely steep slopes, standing there in a row.

The closer the soldiers and officers got, the more majestic and imposing the shadows of those mountains appeared, and the more jarring and incongruous they seemed.

The formation of mountains is not simply a matter of nature moving some soil from elsewhere and piling it up, but rather the result of the earth's long evolution, originating from deep underground deformations that fracture, uplift, and elevate the surface, forming various kinds of mountains.

Mountains have roots.

It has a foundation that people can take for granted and see naturally, but these mountains do not!

At the edges of these peaks, there is a distinct ring of soil that arches up, the marks left by heavy objects falling down, and the marks are still quite recent.

The surrounding earthen slopes were generally only a few meters high, the soil was still moist, and there were fresh, vibrant green grass roots mixed in.

These towering mountains, the closer you get to them, even when you're only ten miles away, the more you feel that they might collapse at any moment, or even roll over while still maintaining their intact shape.

Before anyone gave the order, the army's advance slowed down more and more, the horses' hooves pounding and clattering until they almost came to a stop.

Everyone stared blankly at the man-made natural barrier.

If these were naturally formed mountains, they would probably be moving forward with ease by now.

One or two mountain peaks can be blasted down with artillery fire, while three or four peaks can be disintegrated by Taoist priests casting spells and spending some time.

Even if it doesn't work, you can still climb over or go through it. After all, mountains are just inanimate objects. Landslides and mudslides have their limits and can only be part of the mountain.

but now……

These mountains have proven that they can all move!

A mountain without roots is frightening, but what's even more frightening is human imagination. The mountain has already defied the natural order of the world, so what's inside the mountain, and what's behind it?

Whether they were soldiers or officers, whether they were Yao Pingzhong or Wuyan Guang, they all had many ideas about this war.

Those expectations either make them anticipate or make them nervous, stemming from their confidence or their caution.

But regardless of the type, in the imaginations of Wuyan Guang and the others, it should be something that would make them feel their blood slowly heating up.

But they never imagined that the moment when the two sides seemed to have met and were about to begin the war would turn out like this.

silence.

In this silence, Wuyan Guang suddenly began to examine a question.

In the past, under the imperial dynasty's fortune system, when targeting individual masters, the court would often start with their thoughts, using the vast and boundless turbidity of the mortal world to gather the thoughts of the army and impact their spirit.

This method is actually difficult to kill individual masters, but it will pollute the purity of the immortal path, induce hidden dangers in the demonic path, and suppress the magic power of the unorthodox path. Therefore, it often ends quickly with the individual masters taking the initiative to retreat and avoid it.

After the revival of the demonic path, everyone reached a consensus.

With a general commanding them at the level of a Precious Bone Demon God, no expert could single-handedly defeat more than 30,000 elite demonic soldiers. Even if that general had only barely reached that level.

Therefore, any master who wants to accomplish something that can influence the overall situation of a country needs to rely on the army. They can be an indispensable part of the army, and can be the most important vanguard, but they cannot be completely equated with the army.

The presence of the strong is always in a position that is both important and not important enough. They grow up in such an environment and subconsciously accept this position.

To this day, no one has ever seen how far a top expert who is serious, calm, and unhurried in preparing for "one against ten thousand" can go in his preparations.

People who have other options are often unwilling to risk their lives in such a trial.

Those who have no other options often have no opportunity to prepare, and because they lack the experience of predecessors, they may not even know where to begin preparations—to prepare elixirs? To prepare divine weapons?

Today, finally, someone who is neither a celestial being nor a demon nor a heretic has shown them this answer.

—Without seeing their true form, the entire army halted!

In the silence, the curtain of the imperial carriage on which the emperor sat stirred, and a command was given in a low voice.

The command was relayed out, one person to another, one to ten, ten to a hundred, the volume rising from calm to loud, and the emotions escalating from silence to fervor.

"Open the mountain, advance!"

"Open the mountain! Advance!"

"Open the mountain!!!"

The army advanced once more, and the wasteland trembled beneath their hooves.

The imperial dynasty's fortune and the demonic energy converged into a massive black cloud that blotted out the sun, within which flowed five-colored light.

Yao Pingzhong suddenly cried out in alarm and was involuntarily sent flying into the sky. He felt his luck and power merging with the dark clouds and colorful light outside. A force many times greater than his own passed through his body, bringing him excruciating pain that distorted his features and made him scream in silence.

He was like a pipe, trying to temporarily mold something intangible into a fixed form, but his pipe was too fragile and far from sufficient.

As a result, Yao Pingzhong's capable generals had all taken to the air, and then Tian Shanyong and others from the Liao Kingdom also took to the skies.

The Kundali Vidyaraja Dharma Image that Shan Yong had been cultivating had just emerged behind him when it was twisted by the surging black clouds and turbid energy, losing its original form. Unfamiliar demonic energy continuously poured into his body and then surged out again.

Wuyan Guang, the only one still on the ground, sensed something was wrong. He pulled out the Lie Tang Whip from the brocade bag on his back, dispelling the Song army's luck that had been attached to him not long ago.

But he was too close to the emperor's carriage.

The moment the whip was raised, the tip was grabbed by a hand that emerged from the gauze curtain.

"General, you are a general I specially borrowed; how can you retreat in the face of battle?"

"you……"

Wuyan Guang felt an incomparable force coming from the iron whip, which flung him into the air.

Colorful light and dark, murky clouds surged in.

The numerous generals connected in the air to form a near-human-shaped frame. With Wuyan Guang as the head, the demonic turbidity and the imperial fortune could finally mix and attach to this frame.

The emperor's portrait was expanded to a height of fifty zhang (approximately 150 meters), with the emperor's actual carriage directly below it.

An extremely wide black dragon robe draped down from the emperor's portrait, its hem connecting to billowing black mist that swirled among the entire army.

As the army charged forward and approached the mountains ahead, this enormous Dharma image, which commanded the turbid energy of the entire army, suddenly leaned forward.

The Dharma Image lowered its two large hands and retrieved several cartloads of artillery shells from the army, smashing them onto the two mountain peaks ahead of the vanguard.

Several truckloads of cannonballs specifically designed for the Dragon King's Cannon were detonated directly by these two giant hands. The explosive force, combined with the crushing power of the giant hands, transformed into a massive shockwave that topped off the two mountains, which were tens of meters high, shattering them into giant waves of mud and sand that rolled forward.

If you only use artillery to bombard, you can never achieve such a fine detail.

There is another mountain peak between these two mountain peaks.

The Emperor's Dharma Image clasped his hands together and pushed forward, using only the power of the Dharma Image to blast the mountain off the ground, shattering it in mid-air and scattering it forward.

After removing these three mountain peaks, a gap was created that was barely wide enough for cavalry to pass through.

The scattered rubble and debris ahead could be easily climbed or avoided by the elite demon soldiers' horsemanship.

The emperor's Dharma image had already seen Guan Luoyang at the end of the thick dust, holding a wine jar in one hand and drinking heartily.

It's just a mountain peak; no matter how much preparation you make, it's nothing more than mud and rotten rocks trampled underfoot.

Others might be misled by the spiritual power that permeates the mountains, imagining the presence of living mountains and scaring themselves.

But I won't...

"Green hills are as thin as paper, insufficient to serve as your armor. Guan Luoyang, I've come to kill you."

The emperor's right palm shot forward, his body surging with turbid energy, his arm stretched to its limit, and his swollen palm looked even more ferocious as he chopped down with it.

The cavalry below, their turbid breaths coalescing into one, resembled a massive iron wall sweeping across the land, about to reach Guan Luoyang.

Guan Luoyang stretched out his hand, the one that wasn't holding the wine jar.

Suddenly, a dark blue bead flew out from underground, piercing through the topsoil and the gravel and sand that had been scattered on the ground, and flew toward his palm.

There are four dark blue round beads in a row, from left to right.

Besides the three peaks that were just shattered by the Emperor's image, a round bead also flew out from beneath a mountain peak on the west side.

As soon as the four beads flew out, four large sections of the ground simultaneously caved in.

Who would have thought that there would be a pit trap right below the mountain peak?!

These four small mountains were able to stand on the ground entirely thanks to Guan Luoyang's four Azure Demon Pearls, which controlled gravity and kept them from collapsing.

After seventy-two days and nights of tireless work in Bianliang City, he only managed to refine eight demonic beads: four Wuwei and four Biluo.

The Azure Demon Pearl achieved its goal in one fell swoop, causing all the demonic cavalrymen who were galloping on the ground to fall down.

The four magic beads spun in Guan Luoyang's palm, forming a deep blue hollow wheel, and met the giant palm of the Dharma image in the air.

With a deafening roar, the massive Dharma body staggered backward.

"The green hills are like paper; they are merely a challenge to invite you in."

Guan Luoyang smashed the wine jar and burst into laughter.

"You bunch of blind fools! Come on, today I'll take you all on by myself!!"

(End of this chapter)