Chapter 705: Omitted Details

The ferocity of the great battle exceeded all expectations. Both sides fought from dawn until nightfall, with the Liao forces launching wave after wave of assaults, scaling the walls again and again, only to be driven back each time. The fighting raged back and forth along the walls, every inch gained paid for in blood and flesh.

Wei Yuan remembered only three distinct distortions in the Dao of Heaven and Earth—signifying three exchanges between Immortals. All other minor details were too fleeting to record; he could only passively absorb them amid the chaos of mortal strife, to analyze later.

Though Dingyue Stele and the Northern Shanmen's territorial dispute should have been at a decisive disadvantage, it was now merely slightly outmatched. The Dao soldiers' advantage of fighting within their own Shanmen had been largely neutralized, and casualties were far greater than usual.

This situation should not have occurred. Even without Tinghai Xianjun Yan Shi present at the Northern Shanmen, the lingering blessings left by past Immortals who had cultivated here and passed away should have utterly crushed Dingyue Stele.

Wei Yuan guessed that the Liao forces must have exerted immense pressure on the Northern Shanmen elsewhere, diverting most of its power—hence its inability to suppress Dingyue Stele.

Since the Shanmen's power was insufficient, Wei Yuan continuously reinforced nearby warriors with the Heaven's Outlaw's Blessing, formed arrays with the Five Elements Dao Soldiers, and strengthened the defenders with array techniques. In the most critical moments, the Five Elements Dao Soldiers would directly join the front lines.

Yet even if Wei Yuan could match hundreds or thousands of elite soldiers, on a battlefield of hundreds of thousands, his impact was negligible. The Liao army also harbored hidden talents who occasionally launched ambushes—his ruthlessness and cunning rivaled Wei Yuan's own.

Wei Yuan himself was unafraid, but he had to divert attention to protect his comrades—he had saved He Fang twice, and pulled Sun Yu back from the brink of death.

The Liao's arrow-into-serpent manifestation was formidable and never revealed itself; only when an arrow nearing its target suddenly transformed into a serpent did one realize it had struck again.

This man had no moral boundaries. He did not merely target manifestations—he repeatedly ambushed Dao Foundations. With his cultivation, an ambush on a Dao Foundation was nearly always a one-hit kill, and Wei Yuan could not reach them in time.

After several such incidents, Wei Yuan, enraged, took out Shacha and loaded a Storm Bomb as backup, scouring the entire battlefield for him—only then did the man cease his attacks.

The battle raged until the moon reached its zenith; both sides were utterly exhausted.

Many Dao Soldiers had depleted their magic power and hid beneath shields, desperately replenishing their strength. As soon as they recovered slightly, they rose again, fired a shot toward the enemy outside the wall, then either cheered with raised fists or suddenly had a light arrow embedded in their foreheads—fates varied wildly.

Outside the wall, Liao cavalrymen riding forward would sometimes suddenly collapse. After falling, they struggled for a moment but could never rise again.

Finally, a mournful horn sounded. One by one, the Liao cavalry halted their charges, and the Dao Soldiers on the wall ceased firing.

All Liao cavalry turned their horses around. Gazing at the corpses littering the ground, someone suddenly began singing a northern herdsman's song; soon, more and more Liao riders joined in, humming in unison.

Amid the night, beneath the desolate, lonely song, surviving Liao riders slowly rode northward, vanishing beyond the horizon. Behind them lay perhaps fathers, uncles, brothers, or close companions. And these Liao men would never return north again.

Only when the Liao cavalry vanished completely into the night did Wei Yuan finally exhale—and then pain erupted across multiple parts of his body.

He realized his Dao power was nearly depleted, and he bore over a dozen wounds, some of which he could not even recall receiving.

Corpses littered the walls. After nightfall, squads of Liao cavalry occasionally leapt onto the ramparts, slashing and killing briefly.

This was a standard Liao tactic: if they sensed weakness in the defenders, they would storm the city en masse; but if they met fierce resistance on the walls, they would fight briefly and retreat, avoiding street fighting with the Tai Chu Palace Dao Soldiers inside the city.

Wei Yuan walked along the wall, kicking Liao cavalry corpses over the edge, then uprighting the bodies of Dao Soldiers.

Among the piles of corpses, a Liao Dao Foundation-complete squad leader, drenched in blood, suddenly woke. He stared at Wei Yuan, scrambling backward while waving a sharp arrow, gasping hoarsely.

Wei Yuan drew the demon blade July, stabbed it casually into his chest, then tossed the corpse into the city.

Amid the corpses, Wei Yuan suddenly spotted a familiar body. He rushed over and lifted it up—it was Sun Yu.

Sun Yu was drenched in blood; his left leg below the knee was gone, grievously wounded.

Wei Yuan checked his manifestation—it was not severely damaged—and he relaxed. He pulled out a vial of healing pills, used Dao power to turn them into mist, and brought it to Sun Yu's nose for him to inhale.

Sun Yu groaned, slowly regaining consciousness, then looked around and understood: "I passed out?"

"Yes."

Sun Yu looked dejected. "Today's just my luck. Just now I was about to take medicine, but the dose expired a moment too soon. There are still arrowheads in my back—pull them out… your technique's wrong! You cut a tendon!"

Wei Yuan held an arrowhead, his face awkward. The arrowhead was exquisitely crafted: upon entering flesh, three small wings would spring out from three sides, hooking into muscle and tendon—yanking it out would tear off a large chunk of flesh.

While extracting the arrowhead, Wei Yuan had focused only on severing the wings with Dao power and forcing it out—but when he pulled, the arrowhead suddenly sprouted two more wings, snapping a back tendon.

Sun Yu kept correcting Wei Yuan's technique; together they removed thirteen arrowheads from his back, buttocks, and thighs. All were heavy armor-piercing arrows, fired by Dao Foundation-complete cavalrymen—Sun Yu's physical body could not withstand them.

The battlefield was too chaotic; no one could maintain spiritual sense coverage in all directions. Sun Yu had simply been struck by countless stray arrows.

Most of these arrowheads carried special effects—poison, paralysis, soul confusion—all intertwined. Sun Yu could not endure it and suddenly fainted.

There were other reasons for being hit so many times. Wei Yuan now suspected Mu Hawan might not be a fate-chosen one, but he certainly had some anomaly—otherwise, how could Sun Yu, who had absorbed one of his manifestations, be wounded so severely? If Wei Yuan had discovered him even slightly later, Sun Yu might have died.

Once the arrowheads were removed, Sun Yu, himself a skilled healer, pulled out a vial of pills, swallowed three, then handed the rest to Wei Yuan: "There's Immortal energy everywhere on the battlefield—wounds heal slowly. Take some too."

Wei Yuan, wounded, took the vial and swallowed three pills. But Sun Yu immediately poured the remaining half-bottle into his hand: "Your physical body's different from mine. Take them all."

Wei Yuan obeyed, swallowing them whole, his expression subtly changing. The pills reminded him of the taste from childhood.

Sun Yu, rarely smiling, grinned: "I'm fine. Let's split up and save others! Immortal energy is everywhere—strange things can happen. Many look only lightly wounded but may die suddenly. Don't be careless."

Wei Yuan nodded—he had noticed this himself during the battle.

Several times, he had clearly slain enemies with Dao techniques, yet in a fleeting instant, he saw entirely different outcomes: sometimes the enemy escaped, sometimes a strange woman with silver braids suddenly appeared and slit his own throat with a short knife.

It felt like sudden auditory or visual hallucinations—he could barely distinguish illusion from reality. But Wei Yuan was a Manifestation cultivator, his Primordial Spirit extremely strong, his fate abundant—illusions barely affected him. Only Immortal energy could cause such persistent illusions.

What followed confirmed Sun Yu's words: two Dao Foundation cultivators suddenly died in Wei Yuan's hands, with no warning—both died from Primordial Spirit collapse.

Wei Yuan did not dare delay. He worked until dawn, finally tending to all critical wounded. The battle results had been tallied and delivered to him.

In this battle, 11,000 Dao Soldiers died; the Qingming Army lost 1,500. The Liao army suffered 50,000 dead; wounded numbers were uncountable. Among high-cultivation cultivators, one Manifestation Dao Soldier commander died, another was critically wounded and needed evacuation.

On the Liao side, Wei Yuan personally slew two Manifestation cultivators; Ji Ji Liuli, Feng Feng Tingyu, and Feng Feng Chutang each killed one.

As dawn broke, reinforcements from Tai Chu Palace arrived: 5,000 Dao Soldiers and one Manifestation cultivator, plus vast quantities of healing pills and other supplies—efficiency was exceptional.

Near noon, two flying vessels arrived, landing directly in the city center. These were Qingming's vessels. The Tai Chu Palace's Duty True Person confirmed their purpose, did not inspect them, and allowed them to fly straight to the frontline Zhencheng, escorting them all the way and blocking every Liao attack.

Upon the vessels' arrival, Wei Yuan's spirits lifted. The cargo doors opened, revealing row upon row of disassembled cannons—the long, deep-blue cannons filled Wei Yuan's vision with unmatched beauty.

The two vessels delivered fifty infantry cannons and tens of thousands of cannonballs, plus tens of thousands of breastplates, giant shields, and flying sword-spears—the standard equipment of Qingming's perfected-body elite warriors.

Yet most Dao Soldiers with perfected bodies still used bows, crossbows, swords, and blades. Wei Yuan ordered the equipment distributed, then selected a thousand Qingming warriors as temporary instructors to teach Dao Soldiers how to use the flying sword-spears.

The True Person escorting the vessels, seeing the Dao Soldiers fully armed, could not help smiling and nodding inwardly.

Once unloaded, the vessels were loaded with Liao corpses. In the haste, many corpses had not even been boxed—they were simply piled aboard. As soon as all corpses were loaded, the vessels took off immediately, returning to Qingming.

The True Person ignored the transport of Liao corpses.

Watching the tens of thousands of re-equipped Dao Soldiers, Wei Yuan exhaled in relief—war had finally returned to familiar ground. He glanced around, feeling as if he had forgotten something.

Wei Yuan frowned slightly. Under the influence of Immortal energy, his own perception had become erratic. If he could forget things, others would be even less able to resist.

But Wei Yuan had his own method—he directly used Human Fire to search all battle records, seeking what he had missed or neglected.

Human Fire, rooted in Qingming and possessing the mysterious Three-Eyed Bird-Head, was nearly impossible for Immortals to manipulate. Indeed, after several breaths, Human Fire extracted from the ocean of data the place where Immortal energy had caused Wei Yuan to overlook something: he had not seen Feng Feng Tingyu.

Wei Yuan immediately scoured the entire battlefield. Once he remembered Feng Feng Tingyu, he shattered the Immortal energy's blockade—what little remained could no longer interfere.

Moments later, Wei Yuan found Feng Feng Tingyu, hiding in a half-collapsed house, tending to a wound on her leg. As he approached, he realized she was treating herself purely by instinct—she had long since lost consciousness.

The moment he saw Feng Feng Tingyu, Wei Yuan was momentarily disoriented—he seemed to see again the silver-haired Liao woman.

(End of Chapter)