Chapter 362: Temporary Balance

The sky was slightly bright, and everywhere on the earth were small groups of fleeing defeated soldiers, while teams of cavalry and infantry swept back and forth, mopping up the remnants.

The twenty thousand Southern Qi elite soldiers killed their way through the enemy formation and set up a firm formation on the only path for the enemy's return, causing the enemy's morale to completely collapse, scattering them to flee for their lives; even the Dharma Form Elders could not maintain military discipline, and in the end, they could only flee for their lives.

Seeing the sun rise, Bao Yun left silently; no one knew when she had left.

The second war between the Ningzhou Xu family and Qingming ended in failure again, and this time it was not just a complete defeat, but a crushing one.

The commander of the Xu family in this battle was actually a veteran of many years, but Bao Yun used the lives of five thousand warriors as bait, making him have no doubts, allowing him to drive deep boldly, resulting in the army being disconnected and falling into an ambush.

Actually, the forty thousand youths in the Body Forging Realm did not have high cultivation, and their true combat power was mediocre; if the Xu family's vanguard had dared to charge to the death, they could have slaughtered them once they rushed into the formation. But the youths advanced slowly and fired, killing nearly ten thousand people in just a few rounds.

A casualty rate of nearly twenty percent caused the Xu family's vanguard's morale to collapse, directly turning into a rout. The main force was rushed by the collapsed soldiers, then pierced through by Li Zhi's army, and seeing their rear cut off, they also collapsed. With this, the battle was decided.

When cleaning the battlefield, Li Zhi reviewed the battle in his main tent, and the more he reviewed, the more cold sweat broke out.

Actually, after stripping away the halo of all living beings in the moment, the vast majority of the troops in the domain were not even as good as ordinary official troops, basically at the level of civilian volunteers. The forty thousand youths were only at the level of ordinary regular troops. Even with Li Zhi's twenty-five thousand elites, the paper strength was much weaker than the opponent's.

This was also the reason why Li Zhi chose to fight steadily and compare willpower consumption with his opponent.

Bao Yun's ruthlessness lay in sacrificing five thousand people in exchange for a complete victory. And these five thousand people knew they would die, yet still fought to the death without retreating.

It was not that they were truly brave to this extent, but also because Cui Yu, as the Regional Commander, was always fighting in the front line, never retreating an inch. If the main general does not retreat, naturally everyone will fight to the death.

At this point, Li Zhi was also impressed; he could not make such a ruthless move, did not have generals willing to fight to the death, nor so many dead soldiers who knew they would die but still had to fight.

In terms of using troops, he was still a notch behind Bao Yun.

However, Li Zhi was not discouraged; Bao Yun used troops too strangely and dangerously. According to the teachings of the academy teachers, using troops should be based on the orthodox, with the strange as a supplement; this is the royal way. When commanding hundreds of thousands or even millions of troops in battle, the royal way of using troops will become crucial. That will be the time when Li Zhi surpasses Bao Yun.

After this battle, Li Zhi left all the spoils to Qingming, while he led his troops back to the domain.

For the next few days, it was calm.

After such a big event as the Great Karma Curse, the imperial court acted as if it knew nothing, did not appoint a new Military Governor, and did not even send an envoy to check.

And after two successive defeats, the Xu family also suffered heavy losses. This time, out of the two hundred thousand-strong army, less than twenty thousand fled back, over one hundred thousand were captured, and forty thousand died in battle.

At this point, more than half of the Xu family's visible troops had been lost. Those official troops looked like they belonged to the Western Jin imperial court, but in reality, they were all controlled by the Xu family, equivalent to the Xu family's private army wearing the court's skin and eating the court's food. The Xu family did not even need the Jin Prince's decree to mobilize them.

After this failure, the Xu family unexpectedly calmed down.

Bao Manshan personally came forward to contain them, and finally, under intentional misleading, Zhu Yuanjin severely injured Taotie, plus Li Zhi led troops to fight; in the eyes of the big figures, it was actually the Bao family and the Southern Qi Li family coming forward to curb the Xu family's ambition to move west.

At this point, Qingming was eerily calm, but everyone knew the tranquility was only temporary. The benefits of a complete Immortal Stone without a Domain Lord were too great, at least equivalent to the territory of a prefecture, enough to support a small family from nothing to eventually standing outside the gates of the Seven Clans and Thirteen Houses.

With such great benefits, all major families, and even Immortal Sect forces, would intervene to some extent, perhaps after countless complex under-the-table transactions, before the ownership of Qingming could finally be determined.

Previously, with Wei Yuan there, to snatch Qingming, one had to either smash it and take it away, or kill Wei Yuan. And the Primeval Palace would never sit by and watch Wei Yuan be killed, even triggering an Immortal War for this.

But now Wei Yuan had suddenly been hit by the Great Karma Curse, and his life or death was unknown. If he were really dead, the authority of the Qingming Domain Lord could potentially be transferred.

Although the Xu family had quieted down, the situation of the Primeval Palace was no better than before. Under the Great Karma Curse, the Palace Master of the Primeval Palace had not taken action, and coupled with the fact that he had been in seclusion for many years, it was inevitable that people would have doubts about his current situation. Tinghai Xianjun Tinghai was already severely injured, and this Great Karma Curse had likely affected him, and it was very likely that his injuries were compounded, and he would not live much longer.

However, as the head of the Four Great Immortal Sects, the Primeval Palace relied not only on Immortal Lords but also on its massive scale. Even if Tinghai Xianjun Tinghai fell, and even if the Primeval Palace had a temporary gap in Immortals, new Immortals would take over in a few decades. Moreover, the Primeval Palace had numerous True Lords and Dharma Forms, and at this level, it could firmly suppress any aristocratic family.

In addition, many high-level cultivators in the Primeval Palace had intricate relationships with various families, and there were also many people from the Primeval Palace in various aristocratic families.

The only disadvantage of the Primeval Palace was that it had not been established for long, and there were few people from the Primeval Palace among the Immortal Ancestors and True Lords of various aristocratic families. It was only in the generation of Wei Yuan and Bao Yun that the Primeval Palace began to occupy a clear advantage.

However, since Zhu Yuanjin publicly stated that she would abandon the Northern Shanmen, various aristocratic families were actually quite worried that the Primeval Palace would really do so. If there were no Northern Shanmen, the Western Jin, Eastern Jin, and Northern Qi would face the impact of the Liao tribe directly, and the pressure on border defense would greatly increase.

Therefore, the situation at this moment was subtle, and one move would affect the whole body, so no one dared to move lightly.

... Wei Yuan, who had gained a lot, walked out of the temple, and with the help of the Dao Foundation warrior's eyes, he saw thick smoke rising from the direction of the village!

Wei Yuan let the Dao Foundation warrior ascend into the air and fly toward the village at full speed, while he himself hopped and landed behind.

In the village, the old woman and more than a dozen villagers were standing in an open space, surrounded by dozens of Liao tribe scouts. Several houses in the village were burning.

Most of the villagers had gray hair and were old and decrepit; there was not even a single able-bodied person.

A Liao tribe knight walked out of the village and said, "Looking at the traces, there should be seven or eight people left in the village; they probably all fled into the woods."

A centurion looked down at the villagers and said, "I didn't expect there to be people hiding here. The Great Shaman's prophecy was correct; there is indeed a secret in this area. Ask them first if they have seen any outsiders."

A Liao soldier who understood the human language questioned the villagers, but the villagers all had blank faces and said nothing.

The Liao soldier became impatient, suddenly drew his sword, and slashed at the neck of an old man beside him!

The sharp curved sword successfully cut into the flesh and finally got stuck on the neck bone; it actually couldn't cut through!

The Liao soldier was stunned, and then he saw the old man suddenly smile at him, revealing the few charred yellow and gray-black teeth left in his mouth, and an indescribable bad breath rushed toward his face!

The old man suddenly grabbed the Liao soldier and bit him on the face!

After Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation warrior flew close to the village, he began to decelerate, using the terrain to hide himself, and sneaked into the village. Then he saw the villagers were all putting out the fire; there were no outsiders in the village, and this fire had burned very strangely.

However, it was midwinter, and there was snow everywhere, and the people hunting in the mountains also returned in time, so they quickly extinguished the fire. Then everyone began to count items and repair the houses.

At this time, a horse neigh appeared in the distance; a tall, fine horse ran out from somewhere and rushed into the woods.

!.

Seeing that there was nothing unusual, Wei Yuan recalled the warrior and returned to the stone house, where the woman was processing snow leopard skin by the fire. Seeing Wei Yuan return, she threw the skin aside and lay back on the bed, facing inward, without saying a word.

Seeing that the woman was fine, Wei Yuan breathed a sigh of relief; the worry had finally not turned into reality.

Wei Yuan filled a bowl of meat soup and carried it to the bedside, but the woman still did not move.

Wei Yuan said while undressing to get on the bed, "Since you're not in a hurry to eat, let's continue..."

The woman was startled, hurriedly got up, snatched the wooden bowl from Wei Yuan's hand, and drank the meat soup in one breath. As the hot soup entered her belly, her body warmed up, and her vitality clearly began to become active.

But the woman did not expect that after eating, they still had to continue...

An hour later, the woman could not bear the burden and fell into a deep sleep.

Wei Yuan got up and got off the bed, processing the unfinished fur while using his rare clear mind to think about life.

His hand movements suddenly stopped; he suddenly remembered the horse the Dao Foundation warrior had seen from afar! Wild horses generally would not appear in such steep snowy mountains, and the horse had obvious saddle pressure marks on its body. That was not a wild horse, but a warhorse—a Liao tribe warhorse!

Recalling carefully, Wei Yuan also discovered that there was a faint black shadow hanging on the warhorse, which seemed to be biting. The way the warhorse ran was more like it had been bitten by a predator and was desperately trying to escape and shake it off.

Wei Yuan stood up, but then slowly sat down. He sensed the woman and saw that she was sleeping soundly, so he did not wake her.

Combining the various signs he had seen, Wei Yuan roughly reconstructed what had happened. A team of Liao cavalry had come here for some reason and discovered this small human village. They burned a few houses, and then they all mysteriously disappeared; the only one to escape was a warhorse.

Wei Yuan's mind stirred, and the Dao Foundation warrior appeared quietly outside the house, then sneaked to a nearby high place and looked toward the small village.

Sure enough, in a short while, all the houses had been repaired as before. If Wei Yuan had returned a little later, he would not have known that the Liao tribe had already come.

Wei Yuan casually set up a Feng Shui formation and calculated his current fortune; the conclusion was that everything was normal—especially normal, very normal, without a single abnormal place.

This was very abnormal.

However, Wei Yuan did not intend to take action now, just acting as if nothing had happened. Now that there was this excellent place for Yin energy replenishment—the temple—Wei Yuan was not in a hurry to take action. Today's deep exploration of the temple had a rich harvest; although he did not encounter a second Dharma Form monster, the accumulated spirituality was already close to the point of unlocking the second warrior.

The top priority now was to recover from his injuries and improve his strength. As long as his strength went up, it would not be him who was in danger, but the enemy.

At night, the Dao Foundation warrior was tirelessly making flying swords; he moved fast, consuming all the naturally recovered Dao power, leaving Wei Yuan with nothing to do.

And so, the woman suffered again.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 363 =====