Chapter 320: Governance and Seeking Aid

The army shouted battle cries all day; the beastfolk soldiers of Autumn Frost City were basically routed by the Human Dao Great Army, and most of the beastfolk soldiers were detained by Mu Yi.

Without the divine technique boost of the beastfolk Legend, these beastfolk soldiers' combat ability is decent, but still far from being a match for the great army.

"Thanks to the general's profound strategies, otherwise this battle would not have gone so smoothly!" the Iron Lion Duke exclaimed, praising Mu Yi greatly.

Although he could tell Mu Yi was probably not from this world, what did that have to do with him? All he knew was that Mu Yi was his lifesaver, and Mu Yi had also taken revenge for him.

"In your opinion, if the beastfolk soldiers had divine technique support, could they fight my troops?" Mu Yi drew his bow, casually shot down a beastfolk flying in the sky, then turned and asked offhandedly.

"The elite of the general's troops are rare in the world; even my Iron Lion, which I founded, falls short of the general by a notch, but if the beastfolk of Autumn Frost City were bolstered by divine technique, they could possibly match the general!"

When the Iron Lion Duke spoke of divine technique, his face darkened somewhat; on this continent, no matter how hard humans struggle, the beastfolk still occupy the good lands, while humans, elves, and other races can only dwell in the borderlands.

Mu Yi frowned upon hearing that; although the army has not yet begun smelting, its combat strength is a tier below that of the great army in Wei Qing's camp, but overall the military formation and the boost from Cloud Energy are still quite objective.

Under the leadership of various officers, the great army had an overwhelming advantage against the beastfolk; however, this overwhelming advantage, in the Iron Lion Duke's view, could only match beastfolk bolstered by divine technique, and might even be slightly inferior.

"Divine technique support actually has such remarkable effects?"

This surprised Mu Yi greatly; hearing the Iron Lion Duke's description, the effect of this divine technique is probably far stronger than the boost from his legion's innate talent.

"The divine might is unfathomable; all creatures in the world are merely livestock tended by the gods! How could mundane creatures possibly oppose the gods? Even a Legend is nothing but an ant in the gods' eyes!"

The Iron Lion Duke's expression was extremely dim, yet he harbored no resentment, as if stating a natural heavenly truth, filled with reverence for the gods.

"Hehehe, gods are merely somewhat stronger beings!"

Mu Yi glanced at the Iron Lion Duke and flatly rebutted, saying he had no awareness of any supreme divine beings.

"If the gods are not benevolent, one should naturally raise the sword to slay gods!"

In Jiuzhou, the so-called immortals and gods cannot be considered supreme; the authority they hold and the responsibilities they bear are essentially relative.

Speaking of which, Mu Yi himself could be considered a proper immortal and god; toward other divine beings, he naturally feels only respect, not fear.

"Since the general has already taken this city, will he next slaughter the captives and raze the city, or enslave all these beastfolk?"

The Iron Lion Duke never expected Mu Yi to say that; he fell silent at once, then changed the subject with a strange expression.

"Slaughter captives and raze the city? After you take the beastfolk's city, would you choose that method?" Mu Yi was somewhat surprised.

"Besides capturing a few beastfolk slaves, leaving the rest alive is also a disaster!" The Iron Lion Duke's attitude toward beastfolk is clearly quite hostile.

"As for enslavement, most of the time it is done through magical enslavement, turning them into slaves, which is still fairly popular in the kingdom!"

"Some adventuring parties, when exploring the wilderness, choose to bring along some beastfolk slaves to reclaim land; compared to humans, these beastfolk, once enslaved, can perform even better."

"For example, foxfolk and dogfolk are also favored by the nobility!"

"Enslavement? Using magical enslavement?" Mu Yi's eyes lit up.

He still largely adheres to Han Xin's principle that more troops are better, but maintaining troops truly consumes too many resources; his force of ten thousand already shows a tendency to exceed income.

Moreover, this is based on the contract he established with the officials of the main world, which resolved part of the logistics problem, allowing him to barely sustain it.

After all, the Transcendent Great Army needs not only grain and fodder, these basic living supplies, but also cultivation materials and so on; Mu Yi now basically relies on exchanging Zongwang Disaster Coins.

It is hard to train a soldier; it is even harder to maintain one.

"Does the general also have interest in this?"

Seeing Mu Yi's interest, the Iron Lion Duke directly grabbed a blue-faced, fanged beastfolk from the captives and began demonstrating the enslavement magic.

"Before the world as witness, you shall become a slave willingly!"

The Iron Lion Duke's blade rested on the beastfolk's neck; the trembling beastfolk, after its neck was nicked by the blade, accepted the enslavement magic.

Mu Yi frowned, not because this scene was inhumane, but because during the enslavement magic ritual he sensed the flavor of the Abyss.

It appears that the humans of this world, in order to oppose the beastfolk, are not truly hidebound, but have devised many methods.

No wonder Wei Qing chose to act against the human kingdoms; if the people of those kingdoms can accept the Abyss Demon, then taking in these foreign humans would likely entail little psychological burden.

When the ritual ended, the Iron Lion Duke's hand held a parchment-like contract, which he presented before Mu Yi.

【Slave Contract】

Type: Curio

Effect: The carrier recording the slave contract; before it is destroyed, the enslaved creature cannot resist the holder of the slave contract.

Mu Yi could feel that the contract and the slave had formed a very tight connection.

"This is the most basic slave contract; as long as it is torn up, the contract is void!" the Iron Lion Duke said while displaying the contract in his hand.

Mu Yi pondered for a moment, then reached out and severed the connection between the contract and the slave.

"Stand up!"

The Iron Lion Duke noticed Mu Yi's move, roughly understood what he was doing, and thus directly issued a command to the slave.

The contract, whose connection had been severed, began transmitting signals again under the command's effect; after a brief delay, the beastfolk slave stood up uncontrollably.

"What truly amazing magic!"

Mu Yi roughly understood the principle of this enslavement magic; it is indeed well-designed: as long as the contract is not destroyed, even if the connection is cut, it will quickly resume.

Mu Yi learned the enslavement magic from the Iron Lion Duke, enslaving essentially all the beastfolk in the city; for those stubborn hardliners who would rather die than submit, Mu Yi also gave them respect, directly killing them.

During this process, Mu Yi also discovered a problem: the so-called enslavement magic actually involves making a deal with the contract and the Abyss Demon.

After these enslaved beastfolk die, their souls gather via the contract to an unknown place and then vanish.

Mu Yi could sense that the place where these souls converge is precisely the direction of the human kingdom; according to the Iron Lion Duke, it is likely where the human royal family signed a contract with the Abyss Demon.

All slave contracts are completed based on a divine artifact; Mu Yi conjectured that those souls should flow through the artifact into the Abyss, becoming fodder for the demon.

However, according to Mu Yi's understanding, the Abyss Demon is usually utterly chaotic; this orderly contract-making behavior resembles more the tactics of Purgatory devils.

But Mu Yi is also uncertain; after all, in the far reaches of the cosmos there exist succubus paladins, six-armed Gana sword saints, and other oddities, so perhaps an Abyss Demon lord who honors contracts is not something to be overly surprised about.

All in all, Mu Yi ended up with three thousand beastfolk infantry and ten thousand beastfolk auxiliaries; as for the other elderly, weak, sick, and disabled, he handed them over to the humans liberated from Autumn Frost City.

Just as humans enslave beastfolk, beastfolk also enslave humans; the raiding party Mu Yi previously encountered had captured a batch of humans intending to sell them as slaves, and Autumn Frost City also held many human prisoners.

Mu Yi liberated these humans, then occupied Autumn Frost City, began governing its internal and external affairs, and, led by Chu Yi, swept up any stragglers and eliminated them.

After the Iron Lion Duke had settled in Autumn Frost City, he chose to take his leave of Mu Yi, wishing to return to the Iron Wall Kingdom.

Mu Yi did not make things difficult for this helpful assistant; if it weren't for him, he estimated that for Autumn Frost City he could only adopt a slaughtering method, rather than occupying Autumn Frost City as he does now.

He returned a portion of the soldiers who had been captured together with the Iron Lion Duke to the Iron Lion Duke, and also prepared ample food and water for them, which can be considered gratitude toward the Iron Lion Duke.

And after the Iron Lion Duke left, the entire Autumn Frost City completely became Mu Yi's property.

Although most beastmen were made slaves, Mu Yi also did not treat them in the way of a concentration camp; instead, he allocated an area to provide for the liberated human slaves, trying to keep the two sides as isolated as possible.

These beastmen are still useful; they cannot be killed just because of hatred.

However, to appease the rescued humans, Mu Yi organized a group to gather intelligence, pulled out the beastmen with the worst crimes, and held a revenge assembly.

What surprised Mu Yi was that, after he finished this revenge judgment assembly, he felt as if he had completed a great ritual, and his legion talent directly gained some growth.

This made Mu Yi realize that his legion talent truly had the possibility of becoming a divine office, and even assisting in revenge could actually be considered part of purging demons and cleansing impurity.

To verify his hypothesis, Mu Yi also did the same with a portion of the beastmen, holding a judgment assembly; it genuinely had an effect, but the effect was very weak.

Mu Yi was not sure why, after all there are too many factors to consider—for example, his bond with the beastmen is insufficient, and a relationship maintained by slave contracts could not possibly compare to the relationship he had with the human slaves he liberated from the city.

It might also be the influence of the beastmen's deity; after all, the Beast God concurrently holds the divine office of vengeance for the beastmen of this world, and Mu Yi obviously has no advantage in competing with him.

Mu Yi was not entirely sure, but he had also groped onto a path beneficial to his own growth, which can be considered a great gain.

Because Autumn Frost City was taken by Mu Yi's surprise attack, the supplies in the city remained basically intact, which differs from the ordinary supplies of the main world; as the defensive supplies of the Supernormal World, they possess a large amount of cultivation resources.

No one knows how long Autumn Frost City has been accumulating, but anyway it all came cheap to Mu Yi; this is also a major characteristic of war—that the winner takes all.

No matter how much you have accumulated or how abundant your supplies are, once you are defeated, these things will be given away for free to the opponent; conversely, no matter how poor you are, as long as you keep winning, you will become quite wealthy.

Mu Yi unceremoniously used seventy percent of it entirely to enhance the strength of his subordinate soldiers, while the remaining thirty percent was used by him on these beastmen slaves.

He wanted to try out some information he had previously obtained from Wei Qing's mouth, which included the part about using slave puppets as soldiers.

After all, this is the most money-saving method Mu Yi could think of.

However, Wei Qing's expression at the time was very strange; he neither objected nor stopped him, but instead let Mu Yi try it himself, telling him that this is also something a military family descendant must experience.

Mu Yi tried to let these beastmen slaves master an elite talent, but he discovered it was completely impossible to succeed.

Clearly, under the effect of the contract, these slaves had already obeyed orders and prohibitions, yet they still could not give birth to an elite talent.

Clearly, the captured beastmen soldiers earlier had physiques far superior to ordinary people, but when Mu Yi easily bestowed elite talent on others, he could not for a long time succeed in giving it to these beastmen slaves.

"Can the will not be mixed with impurities?" After a series of failed attempts, Mu Yi finally understood Wei Qing's meaning.

After all, the beastmen slaves' physiques are fully qualified; the sole reason for the failure is the existence of the slave contract.

However, Mu Yi did not give up; instead, he had another idea.

Since beastmen slaves themselves cannot give rise to talent, could one rely on external force to achieve this effect?

Mu Yi bestowed Asura Armor upon the beastmen slaves; unlike when he bestowed it on human daoist soldiers, this time he chose to let the Asura Armor and the beastmen slaves completely merge into one.

Let them suffer the negative effects of Iron-blooded Slaughter.

This can be considered fighting poison with poison; anyway, the beastmen's will under the slave contract is already mixed with problems, so why not go all the way and simply drive these beastmen mad?

The experimental results were quite successful; these beastmen completely merged with the Shura Armor, thereby possessing the talent of Iron-blooded Slaughter.

Mu Yi also tried to let these beastmen merge with other forces, but the effect was not good; the beastmen who had lost their reason were obviously unable to accomplish the difficult actions of controlling mounts and mastering skills.

And just as Mu Yi was conducting various experiments, a figure flew straight toward Autumn Frost City.

Because warning points had been set up in advance in various places inside the city, the patrolling soldiers immediately noticed the newcomer.

They informed Mu Yi; when Mu Yi flew to the city wall, the other party showed no concealment, openly standing outside the city, as if waiting for his arrival.

"Lin Yi?" Upon seeing the newcomer, Mu Yi was somewhat surprised.

"Brother Mu, please lend us a hand!"

When Lin Yi saw Mu Yi, his face clearly showed a dim expression, but he quickly forced himself to cheer up and appealed to Mu Yi for help.