Inside Wuyi City

"Ha ha ha..."

A hearty laugh suddenly rang out from inside the room. Qin Ran hurriedly looked in the direction of the voice - it was Li Shiwen waking up.

He sat up in bed, looked at Qin Ran mockingly, and said with a laugh: "Brother Qin, you can't do that! I see you have no aura of a master at all."

In the room, only Li Shiyin could not make out that he was mocking Qin Ran.

Qin Ran could tell, but did not care at all about whether his ears were soft or hard. He smiled and asked Li Shiwen, "So what do you think would give a master's aura of authority?"

Li Shiwen did not answer him. Instead, he called out to Yu Chi Zhen, "Zhen Zhen, come here." Yu Chi Zhen obediently walked over to his side.

"Here, give me a kiss," he pointed to his scruffy, bearded cheek, hinting to Yu Chi Zhen.

With others present in the room, Yu Chi Zhen was very shy, but still blushed and kissed Li Shiwen on the cheek.

Li Shiwen raised his eyebrows at Qin Ran, bragging, "That's authority."

Watching Li Shiwen demonstrate his masculinity to him, Qin Ran saw it and laughed inside.

Li Shiwen thought he had everything under his grasp. Yu Chi Zhen was very obedient, and he had the final say on big and small matters at home. Little did he know that it was actually Yu Chi Zhen who called the shots in their home.

Yu Chi Zhen was a typical beauty who could sway hearts with her gentle touch. Li Shiwen had long fallen under Yu Chi Zhen's control without realizing it.

On the surface, it seemed that Li Shiwen doted on Yu Chi Zhen, but in reality, it was Yu Chi Zhen who doted on Li Shiwen. In Yu Chi Zhen's eyes, Li Shiwen was probably just a big boy.

Qin Ran saw it clearly and smiled, "Not bad."

But he wasn't praising Li Shiwen - he was praising Yu Chi Zhen.

The few continued their casual banter, but there was one dumb person in the room who didn't get it. She raised a doubt, "But brother, you're not sister-in-law's master!"

As soon as she said this, those who understood all understood. Everyone in the room suddenly burst out laughing.

Li Shiwen had been in a coma for so long because of an overdose of elixir. His injuries had actually long healed. Now Qin Ran had extracted the excess medicinal power from his body, so he was basically fine.

On the contrary, he had turned bad luck into good fortune. His physique had improved another step, becoming even stronger... Pushing the limits of a mortal's potential forward another step.

Yu Chi Zhen helped Li Shiwen put on his coat and shoes, and supported him as he got up from the bed.

"What is the specific situation in Wuyi City?" Li Shiwen asked aloud.

As Qin Ran had guessed, although Li Shiwen was still in a coma, he was already conscious. He had heard bits and pieces of the conversation in the room, and knew that it was thanks to Li Shiyin that Wuyi City had bought some time.

But he had only heard snippets. He didn't know the specifics.

"The situation is deadlocked," said not Li Shiyin or Qin Ran, but Yu Chi Zhen.

Li Shiwen frowned and asked, "Wuyi City hasn't fallen, and the Xuanqin army hasn't retreated either?"

"No," said Yu Chi Zhen.

Li Shiwen's face turned grave. He walked to the window, opened it, and saw the snow outside. He was very puzzled, "How can Xuanqin's logistics withstand this?"

"With cultivators, logistics is not actually a problem," Qin Ran gave him the answer.

Li Shiwen understood with a sigh.

He gazed up at the hazy gray sky for a while, then asked Qin Ran, "Logistics... Shiyin is so powerful, can she cut off their logistics?"

"Too difficult," Qin Ran replied. "It's not about whether she can beat them or not. It's about not being able to find them. In this vast world, trying to find a few cultivators transporting supplies..."

He shook his head. Like trying to fish a needle from the ocean.

Li Shiyin's combat power was very high. There were few below the Primordial Infant stage that she couldn't beat. And Primordial Infant stage powerhouses wouldn't be transporting supplies for the army. So if they could find people for Li Shiyin to raid supplies, it would be possible...

Just that there was no one to be found.

"Could it be..." said Li Shiwen, looking down at the thin layer of snow piled up on the ground. "Heaven wants to destroy my North Chu."

"Where is this heaven..." Qin Ran was about to comfort Li Shiwen - that man can prevail over heaven - but as he suddenly recalled his miserable tribulation when breaking through to the Golden Core stage, he realized that this world did seem to have a heaven. He looked outside at the sky and didn't continue.

"Now, Xuanqin has cultivators transporting supplies, while North Chu can only rely on the army for transport. On the contrary, it's Wuyi City that lacks resources..." Li Shiwen sighed. "How many commoners will freeze to death in this snow?"

Qin Ran kept silent. He wanted to say that if there were water-attributed cultivators, or cultivators with sufficient attainment, they would be able to control the weather - blocking out the cold air or shattering the cloud layer above... But he didn't say it, because he was a water-attributed cultivator, yet he couldn't do it.

After talking for a while in the room, they tidied up and prepared to go out into the city to see the actual situation. No matter how much they heard and thought about, it wasn't like seeing it with their own eyes.

Whether it was because Li Shiwen's injuries hadn't fully recovered or the medicinal potency was too strong and damaged his physique, in any case he seemed unable to walk and always needed Yu Chi Zhen's support beside him.

And whether it was because Qin Ran also couldn't walk, in any case Li Shiyin was also holding one of his hands as they walked side by side.

The four left the city lord's residence and came out onto the streets.

The streets were cold and deserted. Only a few sporadic people were coming and going, all hunched over to reduce contact between their bodies and the cold wind, then ran quickly past.

But the streets were not without people - on the contrary, there were many people on the streets!

One emaciated, shabbily clothed refugee after another crowded the sidewalks, piled up like a chaotic graveyard, cramming the streets.

Some had tattered coarse cloth quilts wrapped around them for warmth - but there was snow piled on the quilts; some had nothing covering them at all, huddling together for warmth, but there was snow on their bodies too. Some shivered violently in the cold wind; some were no longer shivering.

These were all North Chu commoners who had been chased by Xuanqin all the way to Wuyi City. Some commoners had been sent far to the rear; these were all those who hadn't been sent away for various reasons.

This sight was truly hell on earth.

As people passed by, they would numbly stretch out their hands begging for food, drink, clothes - anything.

Li Shiwen had nothing on him, so he took off his coat and handed it out. When more people asked, thinking that he was impervious to cold anyway, he took off his inner garments until only a pair of pants remained to cover himself.

But Li Shiyin could not take off her own clothes to give away. From one end of the street to the other, her cosmos pouch had emptied as she handed out every edible, usable, drinkable thing inside.

Yu Chi Zhen had nothing to give. But of the four, she was the most ordinary. Shivering in the cold wind like the rest, she could empathize with these people the most.

As for Qin Ran, he stayed silent throughout without distributing supplies or stopping the Li siblings' naive charity. He had thought himself numb to the various human states, only realizing now that he was not.

The four passed through streets until they finally arrived under the city wall. Chasing the Wind was draped over the wall, his large buttocks and long tail hanging off the edge, scorched yellow by the incense burners below the wall.

They climbed onto the wall and looked towards the Xuanqin camp in the distance. Across the great distance, cooking smoke could be seen rising over there.

Only then did Qin Ran truly understand what war was.