I run a casino in the immortal realm.

The airship's chassis made heavy contact with the dark gray bricks of Pengcheng's city wall, producing a dull thud and kicking up a cloud of choking dust.

Zheng Yifei stood at the edge of the deck, the strong wind carrying a strong smell of blood and dried dust.

He did not disembark immediately, but instead looked down at the city defenses of this important town in the western frontier.

The city wall was wide enough to accommodate eight horses galloping side by side, but at this moment it looked somewhat messy.

Dark red array patterns were faintly visible between the bricks and stones. In some places, the light was dim, indicating that the city had been neglected for many years. There were even a few collapsed battlements, which were barely covered by rough wooden fences.

The city walls were filled with armored soldiers, but their posture was slouching, and their eyes revealed undisguised fear and numbness.

A series of heavy, hurried footsteps came from below.

Wearing a set of dark heavy armor that he had somehow acquired, Ouyang Zhan strode up the stone steps and onto the flying boat.

His body was covered in dried bloodstains, and even his stubble was covered in dust, but his eyes shone with an astonishing brightness.

Reaching Zheng Yifei, Ouyang Zhan abruptly stopped, slamming his right fist heavily against the breastplate on his left chest with a deafening thud. He knelt on one knee, his voice booming, "Your subordinate, Ouyang Zhan, greets General!"

Zheng Yifei is now the fourth-rank Pengcheng General. Although they are brothers who would risk their lives for each other in private, in this public setting, especially with countless local Pengcheng garrison soldiers watching, the rules and authority of the army must be upheld.

Get up.

Zheng Yifei raised his hand, his gaze sweeping over the guards who were secretly observing them, and asked in a low voice, "How's the situation? Nothing's gone wrong, right?"

Ouyang Zhan stood up, grinned, and sneered: "Sir, it's fortunate that you let us come ten days in advance. We just arrived in Pengcheng the day before yesterday and hadn't even had time to submit the Ministry of War's transfer order to the General's Mansion when we stumbled upon a good show."

"What happened?"

"The former prefect of Pengcheng and the acting cavalry general were terrified when they heard that the two counties of Linshui and Cangshan were slaughtered by orcs in one day."

Those two bastards not only failed to organize city defenses, but also secretly mobilized their cronies, loading over thirty large carts with gold, silver, and valuables, preparing to open the west gate and flee the city under cover of night.

Ouyang Zhan spat, his eyes filled with contempt.

Zheng Yifei's eyes turned cold: "Where are they?"

"They've been detained. Night Owl and his men blocked the city gates. The acting commander tried to resist, but Night Owl severed his arm with a single blow. Now, along with the prefect, they're all locked up in the death row."

Ouyang Zhan reported, "Now the entire Pengcheng is under our control. I have taken over the city's defenses, suppressed all the officers who wanted to run away, and even killed a few who were dissatisfied."

Night Owl led his elite troops out of the city to cast nets and act as scouts thirty miles to the west;

Wang Changsheng was leading his men to repair the defensive formations at various points along the city wall;

Xu Qian and Zheng Hai were at the prefectural government office, maintaining public morale and ensuring logistical support.

Upon hearing this, Zheng Yifei broke out in a cold sweat.

He was prepared for the corruption in the officialdom of Western Xinjiang, but he never expected it to be this bad.

Faced with a formidable enemy, the highest military and political leader actually led the way in absconding with the funds.

If he had followed the established procedures and arrived in Pengcheng today with the main force, he would have been facing an empty city with no commander, no prefect, demoralized troops, and even one that had been completely looted.

When the Western Rong army arrives, Pengcheng will be flattened in an instant.

Meanwhile, the Third Prince, far away in the capital, would definitely seize the opportunity to frame him for "deserting in the face of battle and causing the loss of the army and disgrace to the country," and even Prince Pingxi, Long Yuan, would be implicated.

"here you go."

Zheng Yifei patted Ouyang Zhan on the shoulder, his tone filled with relief, "Take me to the prefectural government office."

As they descended the city wall and entered the inner city of Pengcheng, the scene before them caused Zheng Yifei and Su Wanqing, who was following behind, to frown.

This should have been the most prosperous prefecture in Qizhou County, but the streets were deserted at the moment. Almost all the shops on both sides were closed, and many doors still showed signs of being smashed and looted.

Occasionally, a few pedestrians could be seen, all of them hurrying along and looking pale and sickly. Under the eaves of the houses along the roadside, many ragged refugees huddled together, shrinking into the shadows in terror at the sound of horses' hooves.

Ouyang Zhan led the way and said in a deep voice, "The news spread too fast. The orcs' massacre of the city scared away all the wealthy households and merchants. Everyone who could leave has left."

Upon arriving at the prefectural government office, the plaque was half-crooked, the gate was wide open, and the courtyard was piled with various messy account books and boxes of supplies.

Xu Qian was sitting behind a large desk, holding a brush in his hand, quickly sketching on an account book.

His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, clearly indicating that he hadn't slept for the past two days.

Xu Zhenghai, along with several of his men, was in the courtyard counting the grain they had just confiscated from the prefect's house.

Upon seeing Zheng Yifei enter, Xu Qian immediately put down his pen, rubbed his aching temples, and went to greet him.

"My lord, you've finally arrived."

Xu Qian gave a wry smile and pointed to the mountain of official documents on the table: "This mess is ten times more troublesome than we imagined."

"Let's get straight to the data."

Zheng Yifei walked to the table and looked at the rough map of Pengcheng's defenses.

"Pengcheng, as a prefecture city, originally had a permanent population of around 500,000, but in the past half month, some people have fled and others have moved away, and now the population left in the city is less than 100,000 at most."

Xu Qian opened a roster and said in a heavy tone, "Moreover, more than half of these 100,000 people are elderly, weak, sick, disabled, women and children who cannot walk. The young and strong either ran away or were forcibly conscripted."

Zheng Yifei frowned: "Where is the army? Hu Qi told me in Bingzhou that there are 30,000 troops garrisoning Pengcheng."

"There are indeed 30,000, but the amount is shockingly inflated."

Xu Qian sneered, pulled a military register from the table and handed it to Zheng Yifei: "I checked the military roster these past two days, and I also had Ouyang Zhan personally go to each camp to take roll call. Of these 30,000 men, 12,000 are logistics workers responsible for starting fires and cooking, transporting supplies, raising horses, and even emptying the officers' chamber pots."

"So, in other words, only 18,000 men were actually capable of taking up arms and fighting on the city walls?"

Zheng Yifei's fingers, which were gripping the military register, turned slightly white.

"Moreover, among these 18,000 people, many are farmers and street thugs who were temporarily captured. They have never even touched a knife in a few days, let alone formed an army."

Xu Qian sighed, "The only ones who can fight are the three thousand elite troops originally under the command of the General's Office. But half of those three thousand men were taken away by the escaped acting General to serve as guards in the past two days. Although we have captured them, their morale has collapsed."

A deathly silence fell over the room.

Zheng Yifei felt a throbbing sensation in his temples.

The Western Rong army is said to number 300,000. Even if the intelligence is wrong, it is definitely more than 100,000. Moreover, the Western Rong people are all half-orcs, naturally strong and powerful, with extremely strong individual combat capabilities.

Eighteen thousand demoralized and poorly trained soldiers were sent to block one hundred thousand fearless elite orcs.

This isn't war, this is suicide.

Zheng Yifei walked to a chair and sat down, closed his eyes, and quickly calculated the chips in his hand in his mind.

He's rich. Zhao Wenyuan is procuring supplies in Bingzhou, and the wealth of the Southern Wilderness Gambling House can be continuously converted into spirit stones and elixirs.

He had experts; the three anti-smuggling teams he brought were all elite units composed of Nascent Soul stage cultivators.

The three captains, Night Owl, Ouyang Zhan, and Wang Changsheng, are all at the Refinement of Void Realm. The various squad leaders below them are at the Perfection of Nascent Soul Realm, and even the most ordinary team members are at the mid-Nascent Soul Realm.

If you randomly picked any of these people and put them in the garrison of Pengcheng, they could easily become a sixth or seventh-rank military officer.

If it were just a feud between a few hundred or a thousand people, or a battle between cultivators, he could break through the vanguard of the Western Rong army with just this group of people.

But this is a national war involving hundreds of thousands of people.

Large-scale military operations are not one-on-one duels between cultivators. Once the enemy forces form battle formations, their murderous aura soars to the sky, and spiritual energy is extremely compressed and interfered with.

With hundreds of thousands of troops pressing in, even a powerful cultivator at the Integration Realm would be hacked to pieces if they were trapped in the formation and their spiritual energy was exhausted.

Fighting this kind of war requires extremely strict military management, exquisite tactical application, on-site command and dispatch, and perfect logistical support.

This is a massive and sophisticated systems engineering project.

And this is precisely Zheng Yifei's biggest weakness.

In his previous life, he was a gambler. He had read "The Art of War" and knew what "know yourself and know your enemy" and "strike unexpectedly" meant. However, he applied those theories to business warfare and political maneuvering.

If he were to stand on the city wall, looking down at the massive army of 100,000 men, he would have no idea which battalion to use to block the breach, which to use to flank the enemy, when to fire arrows, or when to activate the formation.

Theoretical knowledge is useless in the brutal battlefield of the immortal realm; the price is the lives of tens of thousands.