Chapter 1244: Ghost-Dao Split Lines

The main force under General Cangu's command is not easy to fight.

Although they had once been defeated at the hands of the Wujiu Tribe, the remaining forces were still very large.

Sixty thousand barbarian cultivators, thirty thousand barbarian soldiers, and in addition, the Abyssal Bone Heavy-Armored Soldiers left behind by their ancestor Shugu numbered over two hundred and fifty — more than the heavy-armored soldiers in the main force led by Lord Lugu.

From this, one can see that this great general Cangu must hold no low a position within the Shugu Tribe.

Apart from this, the biggest problem is the barbarian slaves.

Because of the famine, Lord Lugu lost his own territory, and most of his barbarian slaves scattered, so he only wandered about with the barbarian soldiers under his command.

But Cangu is different — his tribe's composition is relatively complete, and he also possesses the large number of barbarian slaves that a normal main force would have.

A full two hundred thousand-plus barbarian slaves.

These barbarian slaves may not be strong in combat, but there are many of them; in war they generally serve as "cannon fodder," placed at the front to die, used to a certain extent as "human shields" to blunt the enemy's assault.

When they are alive, to the tribe they are labor.

In war, they are cannon fodder.

If they die in war, it even saves on food.

In a certain sense, they are "used to the utmost" as objects.

Therefore, the vast numbers of barbarian slaves, whom no one pays attention to, are in fact the cornerstone of the entire Great Wasteland.

This battle is not unwinnable, and it is not impossible to win, but once it begins, it means a large-scale "slaughter" of the barbarian slaves.

The barbarian slaves will die in great numbers, and the other barbarian cultivators and barbarian soldiers of the Shugu Tribe will not be spared either — they too will suffer considerable casualties.

On Mo Hua's own side, there will also be heavy troop losses.

This is not what Mo Hua wants to see.

Although on the battlefield, blades and swords have no eyes — you die, I live.

But here in the Great Wasteland, this is not war in the simple sense; it is war, and even more so a chessboard.

Mo Hua must find a way to "convert" as many people as possible into his own chess pieces.

Therefore, too many casualties also mean losing a large number of chess pieces.

Even if he wins, he still loses.

The only way is to capture the king first — to deal with Cangu first.

Either kill him, or make him collapse in defeat, and the rest of the Shugu Tribe will naturally be easy to handle.

However, this kind of thing is easy to say, but extremely difficult to carry out on the frontal battlefield.

So Mo Hua shut himself in a small dark room, alone and fully concentrated, deducing.

During this period, with constant skirmishes large and small along the march, Mo Hua's ability to deduce strategy using the "Heaven, Earth, and Man" Three Talents formation has grown increasingly proficient.

And after his divine sense strengthened, his foundation was reinforced, and his computing power also improved.

But even so, Mo Hua calculated for a very long time, exhausting his divine sense, and still could not work out any lead.

This is a battle involving barbarian soldiers on the order of a hundred thousand — the scale is completely incomparable to previous battles, and far exceeds the upper limit of Mo Hua's deductive ability.

His Ghost-Dao split-line processing simply cannot solve such complex troop-line problems either.

Mo Hua rested his chin on his hand, pondering for a long time, still without a thread of thought.

But the current battle situation is extremely critical — it concerns the lives and deaths of large numbers of barbarian slaves, the survival of elite troops, and his own subsequent schemes against the Shugu Tribe.

Mo Hua's brows knit tightly.

At this moment, he could not help but suddenly think:

"If I were Shibo, what would I do?"

Shibo's computing power must certainly be stronger than his own; he can orchestrate things in the Great Wasteland, and even beyond — in Xiancheng, in the Qianxue State boundary, in various places across the Nine Provinces, he might be orchestrating simultaneously.

So many "split lines" require an extremely terrifying amount of computing power.

Mo Hua does not know whether Shibo walks the path of "Dao Verification through Divine Sense," but Shibo's divine sense being very strong is beyond doubt. Yet Mo Hua's own divine sense is also quite remarkable.

On the path of divine sense, he will not be unduly modest about himself.

Even if, within the same realm, Shibo's divine sense is stronger than his, it cannot be stronger to the point of a "cliff-like" lead.

This kind of Ghost-Dao multi-line control, especially when it involves the battlefield — tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of barbarian soldiers in combat — even if he himself were to advance to Liu Yuhua in the future, he would probably find it hair-raising and utterly impossible to control.

And Shibo, who is also only at Liu Yuhua — how does he accomplish such a vast and complex Ghost-Dao calculation that spans great states, runs through territories, infiltrates various factions, and involves so many cultivators?

Mo Hua recalled Shibo's past deeds, and in a flash, suddenly realized a problem:

He himself might have been overthinking the problem.

Or rather, his Ghost-Dao split-line method was too "stupid."

He had truly believed before that the algorithm of Ghost-Dao split lines required calculating person by person, but this idea was fundamentally wrong.

For battles of dozens or a hundred, it was still fine — one could still split them a little.

But what about wars of ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or even millions and tens of millions?

The number of people in the cultivation world is beyond counting in the billions.

No one can split that many divine-sense lines.

And in fact, there really is no need to split so many divine-sense lines, nor to care about every single person's thoughts and every single person's movements.

What one should care about is each batch, each hierarchical level of people.

Group the same kind of people onto the same line — only by deducing in this way can one use the fewest number of Ghost-Dao split lines to control the trends of war to the greatest extent.

This is what Shibo did.

In Xiancheng, he did not control too many people either — there was only one figure, spreading and beguiling others everywhere, propagating the unorthodox Dao, thereby cultivating the soil for demonic karma.

In Lizhou City, Shibo appeared to have "infected" and slaughtered so many people, but in the final analysis, the verified origin was only one.

He himself had also followed this Shibo's "origin" all the way.

The Qianxue State boundary should be the same.

Although Mo Hua didn't see his martial uncle directly, he could roughly guess that his martial uncle's shadow was hidden somewhere in the dark, or on some person.

It's just that he hadn't yet figured out where this "shadow" was hiding.

And in all these events, his martial uncle acted covertly and concisely, without making a big show of it or manipulating so many Guile Thoughts.

Instead, he used a "point" to connect a "line" and drive an entire "surface."

Using a single avatar to form a thread of guile-calculation, thereby driving the development of the entire situation.

What he himself had to do now was still to learn from his martial uncle.

When it comes to a scale of a hundred thousand people, one actually doesn't need to truly calculate a hundred thousand individuals.

Rather, one must learn to divide these forces into "lines," and then for each line, simply perform the derivation separately.

Because on the battlefield, the movements of one type of troop line are unified.

Within this troop line, the actions of all the barbarian soldiers are, under normal circumstances, also the same.

Learning to divide causal lines allows one to use the least divine sense to perform the greatest degree of multi-line guile-calculation, thereby controlling a larger-scale battlefield.

At this thought, Mo Hua's mind suddenly became clear, and he gained a deeper comprehension.

Indeed, one must learn to discover problems on one's own and try to overcome them oneself.

When one doesn't know how to overcome them, one should think about how someone stronger than oneself does it, and then learn from it.

Mo Hua didn't hesitate, and immediately began his own attempt at using divided-line guile-calculation to derive the changes of a hundred-thousand-strong battlefield, which he had just figured out.

But the moment he moved his divine thought, Mo Hua paused again, and his brow gradually furrowed.

He became aware of another problem:

If he used Dao-Heart Demon-Sowing, his martial uncle might discover it.

What about Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation?

Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation was also a heritage that his martial uncle had unconsciously "taught" him, and it was the most supreme divine-thought method; in this world, besides his martial uncle, very few people knew it, and besides his martial uncle, perhaps only he himself knew it.

If he used guile-calculation, would his martial uncle also sense it?

But could he not use it?

Mo Hua thought for a moment and found that he couldn't.

Dao-Heart Demon-Sowing could be set aside; he could think of other ways to "guide" the desires in others' hearts.

But Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation could not.

Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation had no substitute, and Mo Hua simply couldn't create anything else that could rival it.

Without Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation, there were many things he simply couldn't calculate.

And most importantly, Mo Hua had long used Heavenly Mechanism Derivation and Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation together in practice, so that a large part of these two divine-thought methods had already become intertwined, even merged together, hard to separate.

This was an "instinct" formed through long-term derivation.

Sometimes, Mo Hua himself couldn't tell whether he was using Heavenly Mechanism Derivation or Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation.

Once Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation was sealed, Heavenly Mechanism Derivation would have to be sealed along with it.

That would be like cutting off both his arms—how could he still play chess with his martial uncle?

Mo Hua frowned and pondered for a long time, then decided it still wouldn't work.

The Heavenly Mechanism calculation method simply couldn't be discarded; one couldn't, out of fear of being discovered by one's martial uncle, throw away the essential Heavenly Mechanism methods for fear of small risks.

He sighed, and could only hope his martial uncle wouldn't discover him.

At the very least, his Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation was used together with Heavenly Mechanism Derivation, so it should be able to confuse the Heavenly Mechanism to some extent.

"I hope the Heavenly Mechanism Derivation Master passed down to me can cover the traces of guile-calculation, and keep my martial uncle from noticing my little tricks—"

Mo Hua said silently in his heart.

Whatever had to be done, Mo Hua no longer hesitated, and began using guile-calculation divided lines to derive a war of a hundred thousand cultivator-level combatants.

He divided the troop types of the Remnant Bone Tribe into "lines" one by one.

Cannon-fodder barbarian slaves, ordinary barbarian soldiers, elite barbarian armored soldiers, Abyss Bone heavy-armored soldiers, and so on—each planned into one or several "troop lines."

Each troop line, treated as an independent causal line, used Heavenly Mechanism Derivation to derive its various actions and changes.

Then all the troop lines were linked together, and Heavenly Mechanism Guile-Calculation was used to perform multi-line composite derivation.

In this way, an integrated whole was formed, controlling the changes of the entire situation and the turning points of victory and defeat.

In the vast sand table, there was no visible change on the surface, but the invisible cause and effect presented themselves one by one in Mo Hua's eyes, shifting and flowing.

Mo Hua recorded all these changes, using them as the basis for deploying troops and arranging formations.

After deriving like this for two days, Mo Hua had a general idea of the plan in his heart.

That evening, Mo Hua gathered everyone and, on the great sand table, explained the entire process of deploying troops and assigning generals, including when, which general would lead how many troops, to which place, to engage how many enemy troops, how victory and defeat would change, and so on—down to the smallest detail.

In everyone's eyes, this didn't look like a pre-battle "deployment," but more like a post-battle "review."

The battle hadn't even been fought, yet he was already reviewing it—truly outrageous.

Lord Lugu was likewise stunned for a long time.

On the previous journey, there had been no truly large-scale battles, and when Mo Hua deduced the situation and omens, he only briefly pointed out a couple of sentences.

But now, encountering a truly great battle, he finally understood what "foreknowledge" meant, and what a terrifying "divine oracle" was.

Mo Hua said: "In this battle with the Remnant Bone Tribe, the main focus is defense and delay; the most crucial goal is not to annihilate the barbarian soldiers of the Remnant Bone Tribe, but to defeat Remnant Bone himself."

"The Remnant Bone Tribe is led by its great general."

"Once the great general Remnant Bone dies, or is defeated, his remaining forces will naturally collapse."

Hearing this, everyone nodded.

"It's just that—" Mo Hua frowned, "Remnant Bone's strength is also very great; this battle may not go smoothly. If it drags on too long and we cannot achieve a quick decision, the casualties on other battlefields will inevitably gradually worsen."

Seeing Dan Zhu and the others all had solemn expressions.

Lord Lugu frowned and couldn't help but say: "Had I known it would be like this, I should have struck first during the negotiations that day and killed that bastard Remnant Bone; now I wouldn't have to go through all this trouble."

Mo Hua looked at Lugu and said, "If I'd known it would be like this, you could have just read out what I told you. Then maybe we wouldn't have had to fight at all."

Lugu was yin-yanged by Mo Hua, unable to utter a single word.

Mo Hua suddenly thought of something and asked him, "How did the talks fall apart? Did you mention your elder brother?"

Lugu said, "I mentioned him."

Mo Hua asked, "What did you say?"

Lugu shook his head. "I didn't say much, just brought him up briefly. Cangu's attitude suddenly seemed off, and after a few more words, we started fighting—"

Mo Hua's expression turned strange.

Just a brief mention, and his attitude changed — normally, it shouldn't have come to that.

Could it be that Cangu, this great general, was also involved in the scheme to ambush and kill General Shi Gu? Or at the very least, knew about it?

Mo Hua looked up at Lugu again.

If that were the case, then this negotiation might have been doomed to "fall apart" from the very start. Cangu certainly wouldn't have given way.

But... why would Cangu take part in plotting against Gu?

Mo Hua considered it for a moment and felt this didn't even pose a real question.

General Shi Gu was simply too powerful in his lifetime — so powerful that even the Great Chieftain feared him. For Cangu, this was an even more insurmountable "formidable foe."

Then in that case·

Mo Hua's gaze flickered slightly, and a plan gradually formed in his heart.

Three days later, the battle began.

Nearly a hundred thousand barbarian troops clashed, covering every hill and plain with slaughtering barbarian soldiers. The scene was vast and heroic, like rivers surging, wind sweeping the scattered clouds.

Yet Dan Zhu and the others could discern from the chaos that the overall situation, though appearing grand and disordered, followed the troop-line trajectory Mo Hua had sketched out exactly.

In everyone's heart, none failed to marvel at Mr. Wu's profound "divine favor," that he could receive such a detailed "revelation" from the God Lord.

Afterwards, as the battle progressed, the barbarian slaves of Cangu's faction were led away by Dan Que's barbarian soldiers and blocked at a narrow valley mouth.

The Jin Dan under Lugu's command led a group of barbarian soldiers to fight Cangu's faction's barbarian soldiers across the open mountains and fields.

But after all, they shared the same roots and origin, the terrain was open, there was plenty of room, and for the moment neither side struck to kill.

Meanwhile, the heavy troops of Yuan Gu on both sides were also locked in a contest of strength.

Mo Hua handed over all of his heavy-armored soldiers to the heavy-armored soldier from Shugu's faction who had previously surrendered, "Ada Gu," to command — altogether over three hundred Yuan Gu heavy-armored soldiers, to contend with Cangu's faction's two hundred heavy-armored soldiers.

Mo Hua's side's heavy troops clearly held the upper hand.

But Ada Gu, following Mo Hua's orders, also did not strike to kill; the two sides were simply locked in a stalemate.

Outside this relatively stable battlefield, in the valley on the other side, the slaughter between Gu and Cangu could truly be called brutal.

Both were great generals; they had known each other, had their debts of gratitude and grievance, and each found the other disagreeable.

Moreover, the outcome of this battle would, to a large extent, be decided by the life and death of these two great generals. So once they began to fight, it was like heavenly thunder meeting earthly fire — impossible to separate. The entire valley was crushed by the power of Jin Dan, with broken stones everywhere.