Chapter 769: Beheading Generals, Sacrificing the Banner, Subduing the Entire Army

The early‑autumn morning wind, like invisible sharp rasps, raised a biting chill over the cracked Huangtu, and blew the towering Xiazhou battle flag into a rattling sound.

On the great training ground of the Xiazhou Border Pass, thirty thousand Great Zhou elite troops, clad in armor and weapons, had already formed a tightly sealed Iron Armor Square Formation, their spears, flashing with a faint light, pointing straight to the heavens.

Although the entire training ground gathered tens of thousands, it strangely remained in a dead‑silent, oppressive hush; the suffocating, heavy aura of solemn killing was so dense that even the wind that should have moved in mid‑air seemed forcibly stalled.

Below the stone‑built high platform, two massive binding pillars stood alone in the wind.

The two Dushui who yesterday still bore an imposing demeanor were now tightly bound with coarse rope, their coats brutally stripped off, exposing their pampered, pristine flesh.

They knelt on the icy, biting mud, trembling from the autumn wind, while around them stood a dozen or so executioners wielding Great Swords with ghostly heads, their faces hidden behind black masks; the blades glimmered with a blood‑thirsty gleam in the morning light.

Accompanied by a few deep, penetrating war drum beats, Chen Yan, clad in the Dark Gold Python Pattern Great Cloak that symbolizes Great Zhou's supreme authority, appeared at the training ground's entrance under the tight encirclement of armored Personal Guard.

He stepped in his finely crafted heavy military boots, ascending the steps one by one; each footfall caused the horse spur to strike the stone steps, a crisp sound that rang like a deadly drumbeat striking the soldiers' very hearts.

Chen Yan stood, hands behind his back, at the edge of the viewing high platform that overlooked the entire army; the gale lifted the lower hem of his Great Cloak high, and his lone‑wolf gaze coldly stared down at the two prisoners still writhing in a death‑rending struggle.

When the two Dushui saw Chen Yan appear, their shattered mental defenses caused them to abandon any officer's dignity, kneeling on the ground and pounding their heads madly like crushing garlic, their foreheads striking the broken stones and instantly bleeding profusely.

"State Pillar, spare my life! I, the Subordinate General, guard the border pass; I have no merit but I have endured hardship. I beg the State Pillar, in view of my past blood‑soaked battles, grant me a way to live!"

One of them, hoarse and exhausted, rattled off those long‑yellowed past war merits, his voice laced with a nauseating sob, attempting to rouse the superior's compassion with such hackneyed pleas.

In the right‑hand line of generals, several gray‑haired veterans who had once lived and died together with these two among piles of corpses listened to the mournful pleas, and involuntarily a look of painful unwillingness appeared on their faces.

One veteran clenched his teeth, shifted his foot slightly, just as he was about to step out of the line, intending to ask Chen Yan to strip the two of their commissions, demoting them to front‑line horsemen to atone with merit.

Before the veteran could speak, Chen Yan's eagle‑sharp gaze had already locked onto him, a terrifying pressure that seemed ready to dismember descending onto the veteran's shoulders.

Chen Yan placed both hands on the wooden rail, leaning slightly forward; his fierce rebuke, mingling raging fury with absolute reason, thundered across the training ground like a storm from the nine heavens.

"Are you blind, still thinking of pleading for such a treasonous, glory‑seeking brute? The mercy in your minds is sheer stupidity!"

He stretched out his arm, pointing straight at the two trembling Dushui; each word landed like a hammer striking a nail into the ground, resonant and sharp.

"Their current silk‑clad luxury is built on selling the raw iron that sustains Great Zhou's survival to the Rouran, enabling those barbarians to forge weapons to hack your heads—a bloody trade. This wealth bought with the blood of our own brothers—do you think any battlefield merit can outweigh such a monstrous crime?!"

Chen Yan paced back and forth on the platform, his domineering aura, as if ruling the world, crushing every breath on the training ground.

"Listen up, raise your ears for this Duke: the sword of my Xiazhou can only point at external enemies. Whoever dares to aim its tip at our own people, violating this iron law of treason, will face nothing but the skinning of the nine clans, with no possibility of pardon!"

At those words, the few veterans who had intended to plead were struck as if by a sudden rebuke; shame and terror intertwined, cold sweat streamed down their spines, and they quickly withdrew their steps, bowing their heads deeply, daring not to entertain any plea.

To push this display of authority to its peak and imprint the iron law into every soldier's marrow, Chen Yan did not, as usual, order the nearby executioners to carry out the execution.

Under the soldiers' widened, shocked and bewildered gazes, he resolutely flung open his Great Cloak, strode down the platform like a comet, and approached the two traitors.

Chen Yan did not listen to their final desperate wails; instead, with swift precision, he grasped the hilt of the treasured sword at his waist—its blade capable of cutting iron like mud—and power surged from his wrist.

The sword's light, like a silver bottle suddenly shattered, traced a dazzling fan‑shaped white flash in the morning sun.

Chen Yan, with the most iron‑blooded, cold, unblemished ferocity, raised his hand and brought down the sword; the razor‑sharp blade sliced through the two men's flesh, skin, and cervical vertebrae without hesitation.

Accompanied by two sounds like tearing silk, the two wide‑eyed, unblinking heads instantly separated from their necks, rolling far forward across the mud‑slick ground.

The deep red blood gushed like a valve‑less fountain from the headless cavities, spraying up to five steps away, blooming on the dry grass like a series of bewitching blood‑colored plum blossoms.

Chen Yan stood amid the blood‑soaked ground, letting drops of blood from his sword tip fall into the dust; he turned to face the tens of thousands of soldiers utterly swayed by this ruthless method and, on the spot, announced the subsequent punishments.

"Seize all the nine‑clan assets of these two, confiscate every field and shop under their names, and use the resulting gold and silver as the winter provisions for my Xiazhou army this winter!"

This ultimate blend of grace and terror, thunderous as a mountain‑crushing force, completely shattered the last sliver of hopeful complacency in these proud, fierce generals.

After a brief, extreme silence, the thirty thousand soldiers erupted like a tsunami, all kneeling on one knee—Dankui Guidi— their deafening shouts of reverent awe soaring to the heavens, tearing apart the dark clouds on the horizon.

At that moment, Xiazhou's military discipline was, by Chen Yan's iron‑blooded, cold forging, completely reshaped into a piece of raw iron that no money could corrode, no enemy could shake.

The wheel of time, after this slaughter, mercilessly turned forward, its gaze brutally shifted hundreds of li away to the decadent political center of Qi State, Yecheng.

Within the Qin King Gao Yang Residence, surrounded by high walls and deep courtyards, deep inside the study used daily for strategizing, the atmosphere likewise dropped to an absolute freezing point that could petrify a person.

Gao Yang wore a Prince's formal attire embroidered with premium gold thread; his face, usually a Dark Hawk's composed and restrained mask, now twisted grotesquely with anger.

He clenched with both hands the blood‑stained report that an informant had just risked sending from Xiazhou, his eyes flashing crimson like a trapped beast, his chest heaving like a broken bellows.

The report clearly stated that the smuggling route at Fengshen Kou had been uprooted by Chen Yan, the Wealthy Merchant of Qi beheaded and his flag raised, and the two Dushui spies he had placed within the Great Zhou army were also publicly executed.

"That dog‑thief Chen Yan, how dare he stretch his hand so far, brutally cutting off the smuggling lifeline that this King has painstakingly cultivated for fifteen years to amass power for a usurpation!"

Gao Yang, his anger surging, could no longer suppress the raging, violent fury churning in his chest; he snatched the priceless Western Regions glass vase from the desk and smashed it heavily onto the hard Qingshi floor.

A crisp cracking sound exploded in the study; the multicolored glass shards flew across the floor, tearing the precious wool carpet and also tearing Gao Yang's seemingly unshakable Prince façade.

Trusted strategist Yang Yin, hand hanging, stood in the shadowed corner, watching the wreckage; even with his countless schemes, faced with Xiazhou's now‑welded absolute iron plate that no fly could penetrate, he was helpless.

"Prince, calm your anger; the Official Mutual Trade Chen Yan implemented in Xiazhou is as solid as a copper wall and iron barrier. Our spies we placed in the Northern Border, if they dare touch Salt and Iron, will face the fate of family extermination and clan eradication."

Yang Yin's steady voice also carried a hint of helpless despair; he bent down, picked up a shard of glass, and toyed with it between his fingertips.

"Today's Xiazhou has been turned by him into an airtight Independent Kingdom; our smuggling routes in the Northern Border are now hopelessly beyond repair."

Gao Yang kicked the desk in front of him onto the ground; his cold eyes gazed toward the distant Northwest Desert, a howl of extreme resentment issuing from his throat, yet he had no way at all to counter Chen Yan, who was far beyond the heavens.