My cultivation disguise has been exposed by Xiao Sizi.

In the wilderness, the gale suddenly subsided.

The last crimson hue of the setting sun was abruptly cut off in the sky.

Without warning, the sky above the ruins of Kyoto darkened.

It was an immense and terrifying pressure that was so great that it was suffocating, like ten thousand iron mountains crashing down on everyone's heads.

The warhorse snorted restlessly, its hooves pawing frantically in the scorched mud.

Li Chengqian gripped the lance tightly, his knuckles turning white, his legs rooted to the ground.

Li Jing, Yuchi Gong, Qin Qiong, and Cheng Yaojin all gripped the hilts of their swords at their waists, tilted their heads back, and stared intently at the sky.

Not a single one of the 2,500 elite Tang Dynasty soldiers in black armor retreated.

They had been soaking in blood for thirty days, and the fear in their bones had long been worn away into pure murderous aura. Five hundred Mo Dao swords pointed diagonally at the sky at the same time, their blades flashing in the dim light, revealing a chilling jungle.

"Zheng—"

A crisp sword cry tore through the oppressive air.

The thick, leaden clouds were split in two by an incomparably sharp force, and a white figure, standing on a steel longsword, with his clothes fluttering in the gale, fell from the sky like a shooting star.

Landing.

The sword's cry abruptly ceased.

The terrifying pressure that made it hard to breathe also vanished.

Li Chen stood with his hands behind his back, his white cloth shoes stepping on the charred rubble without getting a speck of dust on them.

He raised his eyelids, and his Golden Core stage divine sense spread out like mercury, sweeping over the two thousand five hundred soldiers in the five formations.

The black armor was shattered, and layers of dark red scabs formed. Every face hidden behind the visor exuded a cold indifference to life and death.

These are no longer ordinary elites. After a month of extreme killing and tempering by the earth's evil energy, their bodies and wills have been completely transformed.

This is the sharpest weapon of war in the Tang Dynasty.

Li Chen nodded slightly, quite satisfied with the transformation of this batch of embryos.

"The January deadline has arrived."

Li Chen's voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears. He walked to the bluestone, pulled over a broken wooden chair with one leg broken in half, and sat down comfortably.

"Report your results. Let me see your harvest this month."

Upon hearing this, the tension on the four dukes and the crown prince instantly dissipated.

Immediately afterwards, the five men exchanged glances, and their eyes flashed with the same fierce glint they used to vie for performance.

Li Chengqian was the first to take a big step forward.

He ripped the blood-soaked leather booklet from his waist and presented it to Li Chen with both hands. His voice was hoarse, yet it revealed an undisguised arrogance.

"Sixteenth Brother! I led the Eastern Palace Guards on a twelve-day, tireless march, breaking through three heavily fortified passes and heading straight for the enemy capital!"

Li Chengqian pointed to the ruins behind him, which were still emitting black smoke.

"I personally snapped the neck of that damned sorcerer, and with a single spear stroke, I beheaded that bastard who dared to call himself Emperor. The imperial palace, the nobles, and the city's armed forces were all slaughtered; not a single one survived!"

Li Chengqian raised his chin, his eyes bloodshot.

"My victory ranks first!"

Li Jing walked forward with steady steps and placed the account book flat on the bluestone.

"Lord Li Jing, lead your troops to advance steadily." Li Jing's voice was cold and sharp.

"Whenever resistance was encountered, the enemy was crushed by their military formations, six organized enemy units were massacred, and eleven large fortified villages were destroyed."

"Regardless of age, all became victims of the blade; the number of those killed was secondary."

Qin Qiong and Yuchi Gong were not to be outdone, and they stepped forward to report their numbers.

One of them used cavalry to cut down the hidden samurai in the deep mountains and forests, wiping them out completely.

The other was to smash every door and breach every city, burning everything along the way, including people and houses.

The two players have similar records.

Only Cheng Yaojin remained standing there.

His dark face turned bright red, and he held a crumpled notebook in his hand, stubbornly refusing to move an inch for a long time.

"Old Cheng, are you mute?" Yuchi Gong grinned and mocked mercilessly.

"Weren't you the loudest shouters when everyone was scrambling for spots? Let's see what happened, how many heads were chopped off?"

Cheng Yaojin slammed the notebook to the ground, his beard bristling with anger.

"Bullshit! How can you blame me for this?!"

Cheng Yaojin pointed to the southern defense zone he was in charge of and began to curse.

"I chose a bad location; it's all barren mountains and bad waters, not even a decent city!"

"Those bastards are faster than rabbits! I spent a month crawling through the mountains, my legs were practically broken, and I only managed to chop off that few heads!"

Getting angrier as he talked, Cheng Yaojin turned around and kicked Cheng Chumo hard in the butt.

"It's all your fault, you little bastard! You eat too much and run too slowly. I watched helplessly as someone's head disappeared into a hole and I couldn't pull it out. You've squandered all my longevity pills!"

Cheng Chumo staggered from the kick, clutching his buttocks, too aggrieved to utter a sound.

Everyone looked at the comical father and son and couldn't help but burst into laughter. The laughter echoed through the desolate ruins, carrying a sense of unbridled joy.

Li Chen smiled too.

He tapped on the bluestone slab, interrupting the laughter of the crowd.

"Alright, a loss is a loss. Let's follow the rules."

Li Chen stood up and pointed to the carts behind the army, laden with heads. Those were heads preserved with quicklime, used to calculate battle merits.

"According to the military law of the Tang Dynasty, in the event of a war that destroys a country, a mound of skulls should be built to intimidate all sides."

"Right here in front of these ruins, build them up."

The order has been issued.

Two thousand five hundred soldiers quickly sprang into action.

With expressionless faces, they dumped the heads from the cart onto the plain and tamped them down with mud and wooden stakes.

One by one, heads with grotesque faces, filled with fear before their deaths, were neatly stacked.

Five hours later.

Five enormous pyramid-shaped mounds of statues rise from the plain outside the ruins of Kyoto.

The tallest one is three or four zhang tall, and it is made entirely of the heads of the Emperor, the Imperial Family, and high-ranking samurai.

Dark red blood seeped into the ground through the cracks in the skull, and a strong malevolent aura shot straight into the sky, dyeing the clouds with an eerie dark red color.

"Boarding."

Li Chen didn't look at the mounds of corpses anymore; he simply raised his hand and waved it away.

A hundred-zhang-long Sumeru spirit boat appeared out of thin air and hovered above everyone's heads. A blue guiding beam descended, sucking all five armies, along with the captured gold, silver, and supplies, into the ship's cabin.

Li Chengqian and the others stood on the deck, looking down at the gradually shrinking ruins below, and let out a long breath.

"Finally, I can return to Chang'an. I will go back and ask my father for credit." Li Chengqian wiped his face.

However, the spirit boat did not turn westward towards the Tang Dynasty in mid-air. Instead, it turned its bow and sped straight towards the southwest of the island.

"Sixteenth Brother, where are we going? Aren't we going back to the country?" Li Chengqian asked in confusion.

Li Chen stood at the bow of the ship, facing the sea breeze, a cold smile playing on his lips.

"Before you leave, take some local specialties back with you."

Half an hour later.

The spirit boat hovered steadily above a range of rolling mountains.

This is the very Shijianyin Mountain that Qin Qiong and Cheng Yaojin discovered earlier.

At this time, due to the massive earthquake that caused the earth's veins to rupture, landslides occurred in Yinshan, and large sections of rock layers peeled away, completely exposing the pure silver vein inside, which was tens of feet wide and stretched for several miles, to the light of day.

Its silvery-white metallic sheen, when refracted by sunlight, is almost blinding.

Qin Qiong and Cheng Yaojin walked to the side of the ship and looked down at the enormous wealth below.

"Your Highness, this silver mountain is too large. Even if our 2,500 men dig for a month, we won't be able to remove even one percent of it. Why don't we wait until we return to Chang'an and then have His Majesty send craftsmen to dig it up slowly?" Qin Qiong suggested in a deep voice.