Chapter 570: Drink Up!

Li Guanyi defeated Jiang Su, ending the battle in his sector.

Without time to rest, he galloped toward the battlefield a hundred li away; even before reaching it, gusts of wind carrying the stench of blood and death slapped against his face.

Li Guanyi pressed forward in anxious haste.

When he arrived at the flank battlefield, what met his eyes was an utterly horrific scene; Li Zhaowen and others noticed the shattered armor on Li Guanyi's body, the crack and blood on his shoulder pauldron.

Li Zhaowen said: "Guanyi..."

Fan Qing, clinging to his last breath, said: "Your Majesty..."

Li Guanyi raised his hand to silence them, using Wu Gong from the Huangji Jing Shi Book to heal them, all the while observing the gruesome battlefield, his voice calm: "Jiang Su is dead; the Yan army's fate is sealed."

Fan Qing whispered: "Our comrades have suffered heavy casualties—Old Master Gongsun Huai Zhi, and General Xue Shen..."

"Are both gone."

Li Guanyi's gaze dimmed, but under these circumstances, he could not show weakness; he suppressed all emotional turmoil, maintaining the composure befitting a monarch to steady the troops, and simply said:

"Rest first."

Khan Qibili survived thanks to his personal pills, but his primordial energy was severely damaged.

Had he not broken through into the Seventh Heaven Realm, he would have died on this battlefield; even with a Grandmaster's foundation and robust vital energy, he would need seven or eight months to fully recover.

It was uncertain whether this would affect his future martial path.

Fan Qing lost an arm.

His expression remained resolute; he murmured: "It's only one arm. Compared to brothers who fell in battle, I've been far luckier."

Li Guanyi took a deep breath, tilting his head upward.

After a long while, he said: "I'll send General Kou Yulie, the Wrath-Scale Long Wang, to retrieve our brothers by waterway; Shi Dalin and others have already prepared behind the lines to bring back our men and prisoners."

"We must get our brothers home."

Li Guanyi looked at the Tiger Roar Heaven Halberd lying on the ground.

As the wind blew, Yuwen Lie lay with closed eyes, lifeless; yet the halberd's razor-sharp blade, capable of slicing through armor, emitted a faint, low growl like a tiger's rumble.

General Xue Shen's divine essence had been utterly depleted.

Li Guanyi stepped forward slowly, scanning the shattered machinery fragments, until he finally found it—his eyes brightened slightly, he hurried two steps, bent down, and picked up the core of the array from this bloody, brutal battlefield.

The tension in his chest finally eased.

His Wu Gong began with this array core; it was because of this object that Li Guanyi learned the world's top-tier martial arts as a child.

It was also from General Xue Shen that he truly began studying military strategy and laid its foundation.

In the past, this crystal always held faint streams of light shifting within.

He could sense the presence of its divine essence—but now, the light on this array core crystal was extremely faint; as Li Guanyi held it in his hand, he froze, then his pupils contracted sharply.

Crack—

He opened his palm; fine cracks had appeared on the crystal's surface. He poured his legendary martial qi into it, nurturing the crystal with his own primordial energy, yet it seemed utterly incapable of halting its fracture.

The cracks spread rapidly, swiftly, covering the entire crystal.

The array core, infused with General Xue Shen's divine essence, was riddled with fissures.

It seemed ready to shatter into dust at any moment.

The battle with Yuwen Lie had drained him far too much.

Even the real Zhang Ziyong standing here would have been cut down alive by Bai Hu Da Zong in that state, let alone just one arm of Zhang Ziyong—still only one-third of its divine essence remaining.

Li Guanyi's expression hardened, a dazed, numb feeling washing over him.

The brutality of battle, the slaughter, grew sharper in his mind.

Since he picked up his weapon and stepped onto this chaotic world, this era and its chaos had continually shown him loss and the cruelty of war.

Every step forward demanded a great price; each brought loss.

Li Guanyi's military strategy and battlefield foundation were taught by General Xue Shen; now, in this moment of numb grief, he suddenly noticed the cracks on the crystal forming a peculiar pattern.

The pattern resolved into an array; suddenly, a trace of divine essence glimmered on the crystal—suddenly, a loud, free-spirited laugh echoed in Li Guanyi's ears: it was General Xue Shen's voice, utterly triumphant—

"Hahahaha! I got you!"

Li Guanyi froze.

He stared, watching the cracks on the crystal slowly mend, just like the carefree laugh in his ear—as if General Xue Shen was watching him, then turned, hefted the halberd, and, facing away from the now-grown Qin Huang, waved his hand.

"I'm off!"

The divine essence finally vanished, sinking into stillness; Li Guanyi held the utterly silent crystal, and with his legendary martial power, sensed a faint thread of divine essence still lingering at its very core.

Extremely faint.

Li Guanyi did not know whether this sliver of divine will was so weak because of the five-day, five-night, all-consuming battle with Bai Hu Da Zong Yuwen Lie—or because, after such exhaustion, the man had still left him one final "joke."

That man's tongue had always been as venomous as ever.

His spirit had always remained as carefree as the wind.

He truly was the same man who, after Chen Baxian's death, had stormed into his funeral, beaten a drum, and laughed aloud—the greatest under heaven.

Li Guanyi's taut spirit slowly relaxed.

General Xue Shen's divine essence still remained.

Though extremely faint, it was real; if he found a place rich in primordial energy and set up an array, he could use the array's power to slowly draw in heaven's qi and gradually restore General Xue Shen's divine essence.

But that would surely take an incredibly, incredibly long time.

If measured by reunion, perhaps he would never see General Xue Shen again in this life.

Li Guanyi suddenly understood what General Xue Shen's final words—"I'm off!"—meant: as a legendary martial cultivator, his life stretched long, but within these centuries he had lived, he might never see General Xue Shen again.

Now, he was bidding farewell to General Xue Shen's departure.

And when General Xue Shen awoke a thousand years later, he would see only a changed world, a human realm where he became a cold, solemn name in a thousand scrolls of history.

He would see the Qin Huang Li Guanyi as history remembered him.

At that time, it was General Xue Shen who saw Li Guanyi off.

In the end, it was so; they would never meet again.

The river's current surged and rushed.

Long Wang Kou Yulie of the Wrathful Scales, leading the main fleet that had been used to open up the Jiangnan region, arrived at this battlefield. Borrowing the river's power, he brought the army's wounded back. In this extremely brutal battlefield, the Fire Qilin Army's death toll was far lower than that of the State of Ying's army.

But the overall casualty figures were still shocking.

And the reason for this situation was that the military reforms Qin Huang had pushed from the very beginning—even though Qin Huang was poor, every coin of his was poured into the critical places. When spending on himself, he was stingy to the bone, wishing he could drag Nangong Wumeng off to rob desert bandits.

But at the places that truly mattered, he had never hesitated.

Shi Dalin, Lei Laomeng, and these old veterans of the Fire Qilin Army had prepared personal medicine pouches for the Fire Qilin Army's elite troops.

Inside were the five strongest medicinal powders of Hou Zhongyu.

Only now, their efficacy had already surpassed that of Hou Zhongyu's own era.

Those who came after carried the work forward.

Building on the foundation of Hou Zhongyu's hemostatic powder, and under the guidance of the old sorcerer, they successfully iterated the Fire Qilin Army's standard-issue medicine pouch. Perhaps it stung fiercely when used, bringing intense pain, but the effect was also extremely good.

At the very least, it could forcibly stanch the bleeding from a wound.

And that almost deliberately preserved, intense pain also stimulated the spirit. Wave after wave of throbbing pain kept the wounded conscious, unable to fall asleep. When injuries reached a certain severity, gritting one's teeth and staying awake versus slipping into unconsciousness was almost a matter of life and death.

Large numbers of wounded from the Fire Qilin Army were brought to the rear.

Lei Laomeng, Shi Dalin, and others worked almost without sleep or rest to treat these wounded. After returning to the rear, the auspicious radiance of the Nine-Colored Divine Deer barely paused. For these Fire Qilin Army soldiers, the moment they reached the rear, their chances of survival doubled.

And those who died in battle—

At Qin Huang's command, all were brought back to the homeland.

In death, too, one must return to one's native soil.

The Canglong warship cut through the river current. Long Wang of the Wrathful Scales stood at the prow of this treasure ship, the crimson Fire Qilin cloud-patterned banner whipping wildly in the wind. Within the great vessel were the wounded, and the brothers and comrades who had fallen in battle.

Long Wang of the Wrathful Scales looked at the people behind him and said softly:

"We're home, everyone…"

Long Wang of the Wrathful Scales cried out:

"Fire Qilin Army soldiers—return to the realm!!!"

And Fan Qing, even after losing an arm, still had not left the front-line battlefield. Having fought to this point, he would under no circumstances turn back, nor could he withdraw. After Yuwen Lie died in battle, Jiang Su was slain on the field, and Gao Xiang surrendered—

The entire army of the State of Ying had almost turned into a routed force.

They no longer had the will to fight, and they knew there was no way to defeat Qin Huang. But in every era of great change, in the great waves where the new era replaces the old, there are always those who try to profit from the chaos.

They could not see the future of the times, or even if they could see the direction the times were heading, they still chose to follow their own desires, their own obsessions, pursuing personal glory and wealth.

Unwilling to surrender, unwilling to hand over military authority, and unwilling to die for the State of Ying.

They planned to flee into the mountains and forests to build their own power.

But Pojun and Wen Qingyu had long anticipated this development. The Fire Qilin Army's battle formations, together with Yuan Zhi's Eight-Gate Golden Lock Formation, turned the entire realm into a battlefield, with Qin Huang's armies on every side.

Almost every direction held one of the Fire Qilin Army's main corps, with famed generals taking the field.

Even if there were, among the routed troops, existences ranked within the top hundred of the Famed Generals List—

The Fire Qilin Army had even more famed generals.

When great armies faced off, morale was an enormous factor.

At this moment, the State of Ying's army was almost entirely in a state of low morale. Facing the Fire Qilin Army, whose morale soared like a rainbow, even equal numbers would not be a match. On top of that, the Fire Qilin Army rode the momentum of great victory, harboring the ambition to pacify the realm, while their opponents only thought of clinging to one corner of land, holding on as long as they could.

After such comparisons, victory and defeat were already decided.

Under the stratagems of Pojun, Wen Qingyu, Yan Daiqing, and others, the Fire Qilin Army's soldiers fought bravely. Within this massive Eight-Gate Golden Lock Formation tightening and encircling to kill, the total annihilation of the routed army was only a matter of time.

The one-armed Fan Qing stepped onto the battlefield and began launching powerful political and psychological offensives against the State of Ying's forces, ceaselessly calling for surrender, eroding their will to fight. Vast numbers of Ying's routed troops surrendered.

Those who remained unreconciled, the die-hard loyalists of the State of Ying, were completely encircled and slain.

General Yue Qianfeng brandished his battle-halberd and laughed uproariously. The Crimson Dragon Dharma Aspect stretched its body across the battlefield, and accompanying his wild laughter, one after another, the State of Ying's struggling war-generals spat blood and crashed to the ground.

"You can't fight after spitting just this little blood?!"

"Are you lot just toying with me!"

"Spitting just a few mouthfuls of blood—isn't that just the battlefield warm-up!?"

"Come on, keep fighting, keep fighting!"

Qin Huang's orders were completely different from what these routed troops had in mind.

By their thinking, by the choices of those overlords and kings in the old histories, after defeating the enemy's main force, Qin Huang would have temporarily lowered his banner and rested. But this time, Qin Huang seemed intent on finishing this battle completely.

He would fight until the day of total victory.

After simple treatment of his wounds, Qin Huang Li Guanyi once again personally set foot on the battlefield.

With Qin Huang personally taking the field, and with the Fire Qilin Army continually routing the routed forces and seizing greater and greater advantage, the morale and fighting spirit of the remaining routed troops plummeted day by day.

Fan Qing and the Fire Qilin Army mobilized the common people.

The commoners guided their paths. And there was also the 【Popularization of Astronomical Arts】 that the silver-haired girl herself had led to completion eight years ago in the Western Regions. The Fire Qilin Army's ability to track and identify directions surpassed that of any army in history.

In the sky, the divine eagle auspicious beast from the grasslands swept across the heavens.

Those eyes easily found one hidden corps after another.

Every preparation made before now played a tremendous role in this final great battle. The layouts and preparations of these past ten-odd years drove the final outcome.

The Fire Qilin Army and Qin Huang brought tremendous pressure, and combined with Fan Qing's calls for surrender, it amounted to a psychological 【besiege three sides, leave one open】, causing many soldiers to flee their camps at night and go surrender to the Fire Qilin Army.

When one person flees, he can lead ten others.

When ten flee, that is enough to lead a hundred.

When a hundred flee, an entire army will completely collapse and scatter. And when those who surrendered from different places and different battlefields gathered together, they became a flood called the tide of the times.

The great momentum surged, already become a wave. When the wave crashed forward, it was irresistible.

Three hundred years of chaos, the realm's people yearned for peace and stability — how could a single person hope to resist that?

One by one, the routed armies surrendered, conceding defeat. The last rebel force held out stubbornly, hiding in the mountains, refusing to surrender. By late September, a heavy snow fell from the sky, sealing the mountains and the roads alike; bitter cold on all sides, lacking logistical supplies, it finally dealt a devastating blow to this last legion's morale.

Qin Huang personally led the troops, Yue Pengwu on the left flank, General Yue Qianfeng on the right, attacking in concert.

The battle lasted less than one shi-chen.

Marked by the beheading of Ying Kingdom's final Minister of War general.

Ying Kingdom's last resisting routed army was utterly annihilated. From late June to late September, this grand decisive battle that staked the realm and the future consumed a hundred days; at last, the realm returned to a general state of peace.

Yet during this period, Master Wen Qingyu still kept Dongdu City surrounded.

That fellow could be called the foremost schemer in the world — he had nearly calculated through every stratagem of those inside the city.

As for how he calculated?

He only needed to put himself in the situation inside the city, then think about what he himself would do, and then seal off every one of those actions.

Very simple.

Qin Huang personally went to Dongdu City.

This battle, in the history of the entire realm, is ranked among the first tier of grand campaigns; but the grandeur in military treatises and history books often also represents prolonged chaos and slaughter, representing the absolute cruelty of the battlefield.

Both sides successively committed forces on the order of a million. Even the Fire Qilin army, which held absolute strategic superiority, suffered casualties approaching one-tenth in this battle — nearly a hundred thousand fell in this great war to pacify the realm.

The number of wounded reached an astonishing three-tenths.

The casualty figures for Ying Kingdom's army were even higher. This vast realm was nearly dyed red by the blood of fallen warriors on both sides. Each had paid such an enormous price, sacrificed countless lives, to reach this point.

This is the will of the people — the overwhelming tide of the times.

In the end, the main force of the Fire Qilin army, after sweeping away the routed armies on all sides, gathered beneath Ying Kingdom's capital, Dongdu City.

Dongdu City's gates remained tightly shut. The Fire Qilin army, the Taiping army, the Yue family army, Tiance Prefecture — crimson banners embroidered with the Fire Qilin cloud pattern encircled the entire Dongdu City, like flames gathered from across the realm, ready to burn away the old world.

Qin Huang rode his divine steed, the warhorse's hooves striking the earth with a crisp, martial ring. Before he arrived with the great army, Gao Xiang had once come to pay a visit, requesting that Qin Huang spare Jiang Gao's life.

This man, though possessing tremendous fame across the realm, had spent it almost entirely beyond the northern passes, never participating in the Central Plains campaigns. The only key battles he took part in were the final battle and the assassination of the Great Khan. He bowed his head and pleaded:

"Jiang Gao is not of the same disposition as Jiang Yuan; rather, he was forced by Jiang Su's schemes to stand up, bearing the weight of the realm and the people of Ying Kingdom. Your Majesty's Wu Gong is unrivaled under heaven, and you have a great army — use blades, swords, and soldiers to pacify the realm."

"Wu Gong such as yours has no equal even in the annals of history."

"Jiang Gao's cause is already lost, and he absolutely cannot pose any threat to Your Majesty. Please spare his life, as a fitting end to this chaotic age. Let Ying Kingdom's former sovereign live out his days in the prosperous peace you have founded — is that not itself a magnanimous gesture of peace?"

Yet when Qin Huang personally arrived at Dongdu City, the gates of this majestic fortress slowly opened. Ying Emperor Jiang Gao, clad in the emperor's ceremonial robes, appeared before the city gate, gazing at Qin Huang ahead.

One hand held a pot of wine; the other clutched a seal wrapped in bright yellow silk, the silk bearing a dark-gold coiling-dragon pattern.

When Jiang Gao stepped out, the Fire Qilin army immediately went on alert. Among those crimson Fire Qilin banners, generation's top generals each gripped their weapons, some relying on valor, surges of fierce martial spirit rising to the heavens.

Jiang Gao's expression was calm. He gazed at the sovereign beneath those flaring great standards — mounted on a dragon steed, clad in dark armor, draped in a crimson civil-and-martial-sleeved battle robe — at his composed, cool brow, bearing the might of a conquering king.

Truly, the bearing of a founding emperor.

—

He was, in fact, a founding emperor.

Jiang Gao drew a deep breath, smiled openly, and before the thousands of troops, laughed aloud: "Your Majesty Qin Huang — do you still remember the promise of our youth?"

"Might you share a cup of wine with me?"

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