Chapter 49: The Same Sky In April
Shu Tian Calendar year twenty-eight, April fifteenth, the Yunmeng Marsh campaign concluded.
After the great seal chain formation, the Wu Family Army completed intelligence acquisition. The Water Tribe in Yunmeng Marsh used water caltrops as food, and water caltrops needed to be yin-dried or sun-dried for preservation. The former, sealed with mud, only required pit storage, while the latter needed large areas under the blazing sun for exposure.
Both methods could preserve water caltrops for long-term consumption and were daily practices among Yunmeng Marsh area residents. However, Da Yao’s mountains and rivers were alive, and when all Yao Calculation balances held, the mountains, rivers, and lakes posed no problem for the people. But now, Donghua Commandery’s Human Realm excessively practiced “take from the insufficient to give to the surplus,” causing the Way of Heaven to lose balance.
Sure enough, various mountain spirits appeared in the northern proud ridge, and the infamous Guiche was born; meanwhile, in the southern Yunmeng Marsh, when the people ate yin-dried water caltrops, yin energy accumulated in their bodies, mutating them into monsters, namely the Water Tribe inside and outside Yunmeng Marsh who now looked like shrimp soldiers and crab generals.
It could be said that two of the so-called “three harms” by the great clans and noble families in Changcheng were caused by their own lack of virtue.
During the Haotian Realm Dragon Clan’s guidance of the great vortex, Yu Li’s group mistakenly entered here and, unable to contact their northern kin, had to take on the heavy responsibility of guiding the local Water Tribe. It seemed that the more “Water Tribe” there were in this place, the greater her power, but that was not the case.
Yu Li had always been trying every means to reduce the yin energy in the bodies of the Water Tribe under her command, attempting to reconstruct harmony.
Because these people-mutated Water Tribe could only tolerate a limit of yin energy in their bodies. Currently, only scales had appeared, and in severe cases, hands turned into claws. Spiritual intelligence had not been significantly affected yet, but once yin energy accumulated to a certain level, they would fully mutate into demons and lose spiritual intelligence.
So Yu Li had always been seeking opportunities to set foot on the shore and camp. That is, they now needed an area for sun-drying to turn the harvested water caltrops into yang food to neutralize the yin energy in their bodies.
Thus, the Water Tribe under Yu Li’s leadership fell into a trap when seizing the sun-drying land.
…Swords slashed toward the farmer in the mud by the dry shore…
In the over half a year of standoff, the Wu Family Army trained a full eight hundred elite iron cavalry. On April fifteenth, when the Water Tribe came ashore again, the Wu Family Army suddenly charged out.
Since the Water Tribe was caught mid-river crossing, it was basically equivalent to an “ambush” for the cavalry. Wu Hengyu was lacking in battle formation changes and not skilled at shifts in formal array warfare. But his use of troops was like his spearmanship, finding the most opportune time to complete the assault.
This was also a talent for using troops. Such a war general did not need to be familiar with battle tactics from military treatises but had an innate intuition for offense. Once the assault direction was chosen, it was unstoppable like a boulder falling from a high mountain.
The Water Tribe on the southern shore of Yunmeng Marsh did not anticipate that the Wu Family Army would gather boats to cross the river proactively and seek battle at their chosen grain-drying site. When the war drums sounded, the Water Tribe hastily formed up, but before the formation took shape, heavy cavalry charging from the flank caused large swathes of Water Tribe to be thrown into chaos. The first to collapse were the fishing household hunters holding bird muskets, their ranks scattering like they had been hit by waves.
In these months, these fishing household hunters had been practicing firearms in the reeds, and in this army assault, they were the main force for ranged shooting in the formation, prepared to advance into the camp and set up a step-shooting square formation. But under the cavalry’s sudden assault, they all dropped their guns and fled in all directions, completely collapsing.
After the musket camp was scattered, next came the armored soldiers wearing reed mats. Without forming up, they were trampled by the clustered cavalry queues and collapsed in less than three minutes.
The subsequent Water Tribe with weak combat power and low morale faced the oncoming killing intent, their scales eroding and falling off piece by piece. These Water Tribe, trampling each other and barely standing, had bloodstains on their bodies. In the chaos, just like twenty-first century street crowds automatically parting for a road upon hearing sirens, they cleared a charging path for the iron hooves—but this blocked the movements of their own camp’s still-combat-capable units.
Some intact elite battle formation queues under Yu Li’s command soon deformed under the pressure of their own routed Water Tribe.
For example, a left-wing team of eighty golden-armored Dragon Guard, who came from Haotian Realm. In past years, facing assaults from several times their number from other Yao Army in the southern grand camp, they had been as solid as a rock.
Even now, in such unfavorable circumstances facing surrounding fleeing cannon fodder, their battalion officer was still striving to adjust the formation.
Finally, this team of golden-armored Dragon Guard barely carved a bloody swath with their halberds through the routed army, completing the diversion of the routed soldiers. Then they saw the cavalry driving the human tide and stood firm two hundred paces away.
In the Dragon Guard’s eyes, these Da Yao cavalry seemed to be mockingly pointing at the corpses of the unlucky routed soldiers in front of the Dragon Guard formation. The Dragon Guard’s halberds had not yet touched the enemy but were already stained with their own people’s blood.
Just as the Dragon Guard prepared to meet the first wave of impact from the Wu Family Army’s main formation head-on, hoofbeats sounded from other directions as well.
The first cavalry queue stopped one hundred twenty paces in front of the Dragon Guard; after the time for a cup of tea, the second team completed the rout on the east side and arrived to form up; soon after, the third and fourth teams arrived, taking positions on the northwest and southeast sides respectively.
Facing the “preparations” from cavalry on multiple directions, the Dragon Guard grew tense. They held their breath, not daring to exhale.
Wu Hengyu’s style was extremely bold, but bold did not mean reckless. He would gather the strongest momentum in one wave and personally lead the charge to the enemy’s fatal weakness.
After Wu Fei observed his style, he formed a corresponding understanding: these fatal weaknesses were the “benchmark points” maintaining the reassembly of large troop formations. That is, like aligning to a certain point during drill; as long as that certain one was speared down, the queue would lose its formation alignment standard.
The eastern cavalry began a slow charge, step by step pressing heavily, forcing the Dragon Guard to prepare facing east. But immediately after, the southern cavalry arrived first despite starting later, with an even stronger impact momentum. The Dragon Guard felt the ground trembling beneath their feet and had to glance left and right.
Of course, ultimately the eastern cavalry completed acceleration, charging before the southern cavalry.
The instant Wu Hengyu’s cavalry contacted the Water Tribe, there were mutual losses: horses were skewered like gourds, and the Dragon Guard halberds, shoulders pressed together, were toppled in large patches. The huge impact force transmitted from east to west, and to hold steady, the Heavenly Dragon Guard had to collectively shove westward.
Before such shoving ended, the southern charge also contacted the Dragon Guard formation. At this time, every soldier’s feet in the Dragon Guard array were still seeking a unified footing point against the eastern impact. Suddenly facing the southern impact force, far more people fell than in the previous impact—several times more. During the southern charge, three ranks of Dragon Guard collapsed at once.
By now, all Dragon Guard sensed something was wrong, and some turned to look toward the approaching hooves in the west. The western impact arrived too.
“Crash,” the sound of large-scale armor clashing; the western Dragon Guard were flung flying like ocean waves, a full five or six ranks.
Those who have fought know that to knock someone down, you wait for their foot to shift, then trip them hard.—Wu Hengyu, as a child, had done this every time to beat opponents to the ground, including those who bullied Wu Fei.
The Dragon Guard halberd soldiers lost their courage under the successive heavy hammers.
If the previous rout was just earth-shaking, the Dragon Guard rout was a mountain collapse and ground fissure.
Just as the central military camp’s flag falling would affect the entire army, the rout of such elite troops as the Heavenly Dragon Guard would make large swathes of shrimp soldiers and crab generals follow in flight.
The battalion officer commanding the Dragon Guard was exasperated. If they were facing the enemy squarely with enough “cannon fodder” miscellaneous soldiers on both flanks, these mere four cavalry teams could have been withstood.
But these cannon fodder collapsed too early, leaving them impacted from four sides—two fists hard to fend off four hands.
A knowledgeable general witnessing this would understand it was not the Dragon Guard’s bad luck, but that Wu Hengyu was a born cavalry officer, able to seize the best opportunities on such fleeting battlefields as impact battles.
Personally serving as the benchmark point for the cavalry brigade, Wu Hengyu did not need Wu Fei’s command ability to direct the whole army from under the central flag. With a great shout, he conveyed “Everyone look to me, I have big news!” then spurred his horse back, and everyone understood “where to direct their collective impact”.
One man charging straight led a thousand to move, and a thousand moving shook mountains and rivers. With Wu Hengyu at the center, killing intent condensed into a twenty-meter heavy hammer. Each collision of the heavy hammer with the enemy array produced a hundred-zhang killing intent shockwave, and those swept by it felt like facing a tiger’s roar on a mountain ridge.
Yunmeng Marsh water bandits’ morale was already in chaos; the core elite of the whole army was pinned down and beaten, and the other water bandit units? Whoever dared raise their head got charged.
Next, the Wu Family Army’s follow-up battle soldiers made three advances and retreats, three cuts and six holes, severing the connection between their left and right armies.
After leading the ground cavalry assault, Wu Hengyu’s mount Wuzhui transformed into cloud-riding state, merged with the sky dragon horse formation, then skimmed across the lake surface, finally boarding the deck of the giant warship.
On the forty-zhang sailboat, the towering wind sails’ cables snapped and fell with a crash; then the whole ship, losing wind power support, crashed onto the riverbank. Wu Hengyu saw the dragon descendant woman surrounded on the bow deck and charged ahead first.
After Wu Hengyu boarded, the guards beside Yu Li spat out her dragon pearl to release an energy shield for defense, but it was pierced by the Star River Spear, with killing intent condensing at her brow center.
The two locked eyes, as if across a millennium.
After a long while, Wu Hengyu pressed the spear tip to her neck: “I don’t kill women.”
After Wu Hengyu captured the general, the Yunmeng Marsh navy scattered like birds and beasts! The Wu Family Army achieved total victory.
…Was it really over?…
Shu Tian Calendar year 28, May: with the year-long Yunmeng Marsh Water Tribe chaos pacified, Da Yao regained control of this land.
The Wu Family Army, by royal order, was to exterminate remaining enemies here while escorting money and grain levied from neighboring Ji Prefecture through the pass. This resolved the imperial court’s urgent crisis. Yes, previously Ji Prefecture always used excuses of Donghua Commandery bandits rising and harassing the border to stall trade routes, block southern merchants, and evade taxes, forcing the court to redistribute tax burdens to prefectures and counties south of Donghua Commandery. Now that Donghua Commandery had restored peace, Ji Prefecture should resume “heavenly granary regular supply.”
Wu Hanluan knew clearly, and so did Donghua Commandery’s prefect, that the real reason Ji Prefecture stalled these years with “bandits plundering, taxes hard to transport to the capital”—but the Ji Prefecture prefect was an imperial relative, so they could only let him shift blame until now, with the “bandit suppression” merit, this move could remove that black pot.
…One pot unresolved, another arises…
May twenty-seventh, Ji Pass: the imperial grain transit vehicles were delayed a full four hours. The fat-headed, big-eared gate-guarding officer—actually the prefect’s family slave—chewing a toothpick, nostrils upturned, approached the entering grain and made endless trouble, blurting suspicion: “This grain vehicle has contraband, we must confiscate it for checking!”
The soldiers escorting the national taxes, fresh from the battlefield, had waited four hours just for the gate to open. They were already furious.
Then they faced “confiscation,” and without any receipt. They were immediately enraged.
Soldier: “Elder has come from Changcheng a thousand li to here with the imperial supply, and you ‘maybe’ just seize it?”
The fat officer, having feasted on alcohol and meat these years and fondled beautiful maidservants, had his eyes blurred by wine and lust, sensing no killing intent but thinking: these troop escorts didn’t know rules, cheap lives daring to demand explanation from him.
Immediately, he barbarically bared his neck: “Know how to draw a knife? Dare you touch?”
Words just spoken, a great saber swept over; the fat pig head rolled on the ground, eyes wide in death. The headless body sprayed blood, splattering a streak of crimson beside the vehicle. This flowing trace was as vulgar as his usual urination.
…Blood-reward-lacking soldiers were this straightforward…
May fourth, Ji Prefecture’s blood case: the court successively received two accounts.
From Ji Prefecture prefect’s account: “Wu Family Army arrogant soldiers and fierce generals overstepped duties, attempting to seize the checkpoint by force. The court should severely punish, etc.”
However, Wu Hanluan of Donghua Prefecture pleaded guilty: “This minister failed to strictly control subordinates; this time soldiers, eager to transport national taxes, clashed with Ji Prefecture officials in haste, committing a grave error.”
Since Ji Prefecture’s complaint arrived at court first, the censors on the imperial court first attacked the southern route army. Even the Son of Heaven was led by the rhythm. For a moment, there was real suspicion that the just-victorious arrogant soldiers were stirring trouble.
However, that evening, with Wu Hanluan’s guilt-pleading memorial arriving via eight-hundred-li military express, Emperor Shu fell into a terrible silence!
After reading the military report, Emperor Shu asked: “Have bandits rampaged in Ji Prefecture these years, making travel difficult for the people?”
Though long in the palace, handling myriad state affairs daily, Emperor Shu could not attend to every detail of the dynasty. But he was not foolish. Local powerful clans might deceive him for a time, but ultimately this emperor would notice something amiss.
In these years of southern great war, how much national tax vanished inexplicably.—At that time Emperor Shu tentatively believed the local prefectures’ accounts. But now, recalling some circumstances, he found inconsistencies.
Emperor Shu remembered last year, his Prefect Yan returned home; this childhood friend who grew up with him used rolled cloth to make over ten li of canopy, then hailed as a literary anecdote. But! If bandits truly rampaged, such extravagance went unscathed? Yet court national taxes vanished due to war?
Combining now, Wu Hanluan personally had his personal troops escort the annual taxes, yet caused a blood case at the checkpoint!
Once upon a time, Emperor Shu’s absolute trust in Prefect Yan now quietly developed cracks. He wanted to thunder in rage but ultimately suppressed his anger, sighed, and said: “Draft decree.”
Emperor Shu rebuked Wu Hanluan, aligning with prior court stance, but in the decree content, glossed over the “Ji Prefecture wounding” incident, instead scolding him for failing to swiftly exterminate bandits, wasting national treasury in vain.
…Spreading influence…
Wu Fei at Yongji Pass, suppressing the south, learned of this Wu Family reprimand ten days later.
For Xuan Chong, who had read dozens of leadership speeches, the essence of this reprimand lay in the “matters” mentioned, and the lack of any mention of Ji Prefecture side meant His Majesty had already taken note of them.
Wu Fei gazed north at Xuan Tian, murmuring: “Can our Majesty rise up? Sigh, this means touching the most entrenched interests.” Noble family groups had grown too large, fully monopolizing the “worthy” concept, tightly gripping interpretive power over state-governing classics. Now, even slightly “negating” them could not spread in the world.
As a modern person, Xuan Chong had no “I can do it” confidence in this emperor but held a bit of respect and understanding for this ruler.
…The army’s flags moved again, inconsistent with the court’s command insignia direction…
In Donghua Prefecture’s main camp, a beautiful woman gazed at the sky; at this time, the chains on her shoulder blades had just been removed. Of course, Wu Hengyu was guarding her nearby.
Yu Li gazed at the sky, revealing double pupils. Wu Hengyu followed her gaze upward and asked: “What are you looking at?”
Yu Li: “I’m observing your world’s star divination.” (This is a divination method, judging a world’s general fortune via stellar patterns)
Wu Hengyu knew the great tribulation was now upon the land, but he was unconvinced by this woman: “Xi Ren Realm from ancient omens has lasted seventy-eight thousand years; as an outsider, what ability do you have to divine it?”
Yu Li: “Yes, this realm has endured for tens of thousands of years, amassing vast greed, hatred, and delusion, summoning outer realm filthy demons.”
Wu Hengyu sneered and shook his head.
Yu Li raised a finger, pointing to the empty sky, “Right there, there’s a moon you can’t see, hmm, and there too, another one—a total of four moons, all nurtured by this world’s greed, hatred, and delusion. Once these four moons are nurtured to a certain extent, they will tear at your world. Then, starting from north and south poles, the earth will wither, heaven and earth will lose order (gravity disrupted), massive rock chunks will flow to the sky, and in the scarred earth, void gates will form swallowing all mud, stone, and plants—those gates are entrances reflected by the four moons. While swallowing, some demons will also emerge.”
Wu Hengyu: “You say there are four ever-growing moons in the sky?”
Yu Li nodded.
Wu Hengyu scratched his head: “Then these four growing moons shouldn’t fall down?” By his logic, it was hard to grasp the universe under universal gravitation system.
Of course, Wu Fei, currently receiving “liberal arts education,” was also puzzled about this world’s physics. Wu Fei: The emotions of beings in this world can actually cause corresponding celestial bodies in the sky to gain mass. So what exactly is our consciousness? A fifth force inserted into the four fundamental forces?
Yu Li looked to the horizon, murmuring: “Haotian Dragon Realm, my homeland, was destroyed just like this. I wonder if my clansmen have found other ‘living realms’ to settle.”
Her robes billowed with the wind; on the soil passed by the robes, those blue little wildflowers turned purplish-red.
