Chapter 18: Leaving the Sand Dunes

After fishing Song Changqing out of the pit, the Shu Kingdom armored cavalry and the Daoist boy Qingsong planned to leave.

But before moving, the Daoist boy Qingsong suddenly stopped, looked at Guan Huchen, and said: "I thought the General would slaughter all the males in the sand dunes before leaving."

Guan Huchen was dazed for a moment, then shouted loudly: "The Daoist has given the order, this subordinate will definitely complete the task."

Saying this, he prepared to turn the horse's head, not even looking at the foster daughter sitting behind him.

"No, this is not my order!" The Daoist boy Qingsong waved his hands repeatedly.

"What I mean is, according to General Guan's habits, he would definitely not easily let go of the remaining Sha Barbarians."

"Because of this inference, some things don't need me to give extra instructions."

"Now that General Guan has exceeded my expectations, those things need to be explained clearly."

"This subordinate is not a murderous person..." Guan Huchen defended himself halfway, then felt it was unnecessary.

It is said that when the Qin Emperor was still the "King of Qin," China had many vassal states, and many vassals paid attention to "benevolence" and "etiquette."

If one got a reputation for being "cruel and murderous," one's reputation and future in the superior land of China would be almost exhausted.

Even the "tyrant" himself did not want to be called a "harmful and solitary man."

But in the current prosperous Great Qin, the rules and atmosphere have changed; cruel slaughter does not count as a stain at all.

Even if he is considered "cruel and bloodthirsty," his planned "Great Qin great future" will not be affected.

Perhaps if the reputation spreads, he will win the appreciation of the "ruthless Qin generals who slaughter thirty thousand today and bury forty thousand tomorrow," and thus rise to prominence, finally entering the "circle of famous generals" who "slaughter thirty thousand today and bury forty thousand tomorrow."

Huchen didn't continue to cleanse the Sha Barbarians, one because of the backlash of Dragon Qi, which made him absent-minded, and the other because he felt it was unnecessary.

Yesterday's surprise attack on the sand dunes, he had already indulged the Iron Cavalry Camp to "slaughter the city," and the prime-aged men had long been slaughtered.

"Daoist, what matter do you have for this subordinate to handle?"

Qingsong said: "Smash all the earth kilns for iron smelting."

Huchen immediately arranged for two ten-man teams to complete the task.

"Besides the iron smelting kilns, there are divine shrines, salt wells, and irrigation ditches; should they all be destroyed?" he asked again.

Qingsong shook his head and said: "Your daughter is a born talent; she has never learned any Daoist arts, yet the iron smelting furnace she designed has a bit of the Dao of Xun-Li transformation of the Eight Trigrams Furnace in the Daoist Palace."

"Even if the previous blacksmiths all died outside the Tianmen Town, if the barbarians explore a little, they might restart the fire furnace."

"It's simple to scoop iron sand from the beach, but to burn iron sand into molten iron and refine it into fine iron... hehehe, in the land of China, even ordinary blacksmiths can't do it."

"So, if you don't completely kill and scatter the Sha Barbarian tribe, you must dismantle the iron smelting furnace."

"Doing this is enough."

"The divine shrines worship the Three Pure Ancestors, and I, the poor Daoist, absolutely dare not mess with them."

After a pause, he added: "The Dragon Vein is the Earth Vein. Just now when the Dragon Vein was broken, you all felt it; it was a shaking of the earth and mountains."

"The Earth Vein has undergone a drastic change, the brine wells have been directly buried by soil and stone, and the underground water veins will also gradually dry up."

"The irrigation ditches dug by the Sha Barbarians will no longer be able to store clear water, leaving only Weak Water, which cannot irrigate, and the fields will soon be desolate."

"Hehehe, this is the effect of breaking the Dragon Vein."

After speaking, he even turned his head and smiled at Xiang Xiaoyu.

Xiang Xiaoyu followed with a smile, her smile a bit stiff.

"Daoist, Envoy, help, save me~~~"

Silently, a puff of gray-black smoke emerged from the ground.

Inside, it was as if a thousand poisonous snakes were spitting letters, and the strange sound made one's scalp tingle.

Even more miserable wails came from the smoke.

"Old Daoist, I beg you, I beg you, save this little god... save this servant! This servant has made contributions to Great Qin, has guarded the Western Sha Barbarian land for hundreds of years for the Human Emperor, and this servant even offered you all the information about the Sha Barbarian Xiang Xiaoyu, pointing out her location to you; you cannot see death and not save—ah, ah, no, I am a ghost god conferred by the Great Qin Human Emperor, barbarian Dragon Qi, get out, get out—save me, so bitter, I am so bitter~~"

Xiang Xiaoyu was stunned; what kind of ghost is this?

And the things he said... the amount of information was too huge.

Could it be that she had been watched by such a ghost all along?

"General Guan, the matter of the sand dunes is settled; I will go first. We will meet again at Hengsha Pass."

The Daoist boy Qingsong only glanced at the black smoke, then turned his head with an expressionless face, greeted Guan Huchen, and without waiting for Huchen to return the salute, his body shrank into the ground, and with a flash of yellow light, he disappeared without a trace.

"Daoist, this—"

Huchen reached out to stop him, wanting to say: The dead ghost of Eastern Shu has already found this place; if you don't send him away, do you want me to deal with him?

This thought disappeared in the next instant.

Because seeing the Daoist boy Qingsong use the Earth Escape technique to leave, the gray-black smoke that was wailing for help didn't stop at all, and immediately chased after the yellow light in the ground and disappeared.

Ordinary people cannot see the Earth Escape technique, but Zou Qing, after all, was the Earth God in charge of one side, and in the "Heart Demon" Western Sand Barbarian land under his jurisdiction, his speed was faster than the Daoist boy Qingsong.

Xiang Xiaoyu hadn't had time to ask, when a few hundred meters away in the sand, that miserable wail came again, "Old Daoist, you cannot abandon this servant; this servant's divine soul is being eroded by Earth Qi, and I am about to dissipate—help, help, help, ah, ah, ah, ah~~"

"Get lost, you brought this upon yourself, it has nothing to do with me."

The Daoist boy Qingsong's voice had obvious anger and impatience.

"No, it was you who harmed me like this; you must be responsible for the old man, don't run, come back, you can't run away."

"Boom!" A purple-red lightning flashed across the sky.

"Ah~~" The wail became even more miserable and full of resentment, "Qingsong, the old man curses you; when the heavenly condemnation descends, you will surely die and your soul will dissipate; for the suffering of the old man today, you will bear ten thousand times more! The old man also wants to curse Great Qin; you are sinister and ruthless, cutting off the Dragon Veins of foreign races in all directions, suppressing all foreign-surname vassals in the world; one day, retribution will fall on every Great Qin person, Human Emperor Zheng, the old man wishes to perish with you—"

"Boom!"

A blue-white lightning bolt as thick as a water bucket almost tore the sky into two, and the venomous curse stopped abruptly.

"Hurry, leave this place immediately!"

Guan Huchen's expression changed slightly, and he ordered the knights in a low voice, taking the lead to run fast.

The Red Smoke Steed's speed was extremely fast, like a fireball rolling on the sand.

It didn't carry Guan Huchen toward where the lightning struck.

Clearly they should have returned south, but it ran west, getting further and further away from where the lightning struck.

The other knights didn't shout "General, you are going the wrong way," and they also remained silent, desperately squeezing the horses' strength, galloping behind.

After running for about half an hour, Xiang Xiaoyu, who was sitting behind Huchen, turned her head and couldn't see even a shadow of the black-armored iron cavalry.

"Father, the Iron Cavalry Camp is lost," she reminded in a low voice.

"They won't be lost," Huchen said with a confident tone.

However, he also pulled the reins slightly, letting the Red Smoke Steed slow down.

"What was that just now?" Xiang Xiaoyu asked curiously.

"Don't ask too much, forget everything you heard and saw just now," Guan Huchen said sternly.

"Father, Xiang doesn't know Wu Gong, and is a bit hard of hearing, so I didn't hear anything, only saw a puff of gray smoke; what was that thing?" Xiang Xiaoyu said.

Huchen turned his head to look back, but didn't see Xiang Xiaoyu.

Xiang Xiaoyu was riding with him, but hid her body inside his fire-washed cloth cloak.

"Heart Demon Earth God, Zou Qing."

"Earth God..." Xiang Xiaoyu's expression changed slightly, "Could it be the Earth God of the sand dunes? In such a wild place as the sand dunes, are there gods willing to come?"

Even the sand dunes have an Earth God; what kind of prosperous and strictly regulated divine path is this world?!

She began to regret that she had been too wild.

Building steel smelting furnaces, finding salt wells, all kinds of "Brain-Clamping Wind" talk, had actually been recorded by the Earth God all along.

A cold sweat broke out on her back.

After the regret, Xiang Xiaoyu felt extremely lucky: although she was a bit wild, she had always been on guard against the gaze of gods and Buddhas.

Thanks to the reminder of the "Liushahe," a famous internet spot in Journey to the West, she knew that this was a Primordial World with Tathagata, Three Pure Sages, and the Heavenly Palace.

Although she was "Brain-Clamping Wind," she was only jumping in thinking and precocious, and had never said sensitive words like "television" or "Journey to the West."

Even for steel smelting and salt boiling, they were slowly explored, not achieved overnight, and the experience was mature like a traveler with an encyclopedia hidden in her brain.

The divine shrines of the Three Pure Ones, the Buddha, and the Jade Emperor were also established after she heard the "outside stories" told by the barbarians.

If she really wanted to be wild, creating papermaking or "inventing" Sha Barbarian characters would be even simpler. But she couldn't even write, didn't know characters... this disguise was relatively simple, because there were no books or characters in the sand dunes.

If there were no reminder from the Liushahe, Xiang Xiaoyu would definitely have thought she had received the script of "traveling to the primitive society to be a chieftain," and she would have been even wilder, recklessly wild, until she lived and died wildly.

From the attitude of the Daoist boy Qingsong and Guan Huchen toward her, she might have "strange signs," but she hadn't exposed her identity as a traveler.

In fact, she couldn't be blamed for being "Brain-Clamping Wind."

If she had been born in Great Qin, she would definitely have been a standard Qin female talent, and wouldn't have "messed around" at all.

Everything she created in the sand dunes was for survival.

If she didn't find salt wells and boil salt, she would have become a White-Haired Girl.

Before she ran through a hundred miles and finally chiseled a salt well from the cracks in a stone cave, more than half of the Sha Barbarians were "White-Haired Girls," lacking salt, severely lacking salt.

She smelted iron because the sand dunes were too wild, and the jackals, tigers, and leopards were just small fries.

Those "half-step monsters" that absorbed the essence of the sun and moon were difficult to break through even with fine iron.

If she didn't smelt iron to forge weapons, how could she protect herself?

She couldn't shrink in the sand dunes for a lifetime, and didn't dare to travel alone.

Creating weapons to improve the tribe's martial power, boiling salt and farming to increase the population (mainly incorporating nearby Sha Barbarians), and letting the "Sand Dune Kingdom" expand its power and influence rapidly until it contacted the "Chinese Civilization Circle," was the safest choice.

Xiang Xiaoyu basically succeeded.

When the sand dunes developed from a "village" with a population of over three hundred to a "large tribe" with tens of thousands of people and five thousand armored soldiers, with the hard power to incorporate nearby Sha Barbarians and form a "Barbarian Kingdom," the Lu Kingdom's envoy took the initiative to find her.

If this world's superior land of China were normal, not too martial, and not too domineering, just like the Great Tang in "Journey to the West," keeping its own one-third of an acre (ps), she would have already gone to the Lu Kingdom to seek immortals as the "Sha Barbarian Princess."

(ps: In fact, the China in "Journey to the West" is not "peaceful" at all, but also abnormally martial.

The original text has a clear description; in the "Wuji Kingdom," the Crown Prince said: "Think of Li Shimin, who claimed the throne and unified the country, but was not satisfied, and went to sea to conquer. If he knew my King harmed his Imperial Brother, the Holy Monk, he would definitely raise troops and horses to fight my King. Alas, the troops are few and the generals are weak, it will be too late to regret then.")

What does it mean that the Wuji Kingdom Crown Prince could say these words?

There must have been similar events, a precedent—a certain Western country offended the superior land of China, and as a result, although far away, it was punished, suffering a miserable conquest by a large army.

Otherwise, this is clearly a lie, without any meaning, and the Wuji Kingdom doesn't need to be afraid at all.

In fact, after the Wuji Kingdom Crown Prince said these words in the court, including the fake King and the full court of ministers, no one laughed at the Crown Prince for being stupid.

The fake King disguised as a demon immortal was immediately bluffed.

Where is the Wuji Kingdom?

The route of Tang Seng's journey to the west is like this:... Liushahe, Wanshou Mountain Wuzhuang Temple, White Tiger Ridge, Wanzishan Boyue Cave (three hundred miles west, Baoxiang Kingdom), Pingshan Lotus Cave (ten miles away, Yalong Mountain Yalong Cave), Wuji Kingdom (Baolin Temple)...

The Great Tang's army might not have entered the various Western countries yet (judging by the spineless appearance of Emperor Taizong of Tang in the book "Journey to the West," he likely wouldn't have gone there in his entire life; alas, one cannot compare this to real history, it can only be considered an alternate reality. If it were the personality and courage of the real Emperor Taizong of Tang placed in the "Journey to the West" world, he certainly would not have been easily manipulated by Buddhism), but before Emperor Taizong of Tang, the Central Kingdom of China must have struck terror into both banks of the Liushahe.

Not only political influence, but also military conquest and punishment.

In this book, the one who does this kind of thing is Great Qin, and the future Great Han.

In the real world, with the production level of more than two thousand years ago, Great Qin could develop military industrial production and military construction to the limit.

In the Journey to the West Primordial World, Great Qin could also develop military power to the limit allowed by the current world's productivity—the first productivity of the Primordial World is of course not technology, but Daoist arts!) ===== CHAPTER 19 =====