"Remember, when you get there, strike directly—no trash talk, no formations, just plain old kill and plunder! We only brought five days' worth of dry rations on this trip! Don't get greedy, hit and run. However many men you take out, bring that many back—if even one is missing, I'll hold you all accountable!"
With that, the sense of urgency immediately kicked in.
"Yes!"
The five of them felt a sudden tension, but Fang Zhiyi didn't give them any more time to think. He assigned the manpower on the spot and they set off.
"Chief, I hear that Fang fellow is personally leading troops into the grassland!"
"Hmph... trying to catch us out here on the steppe? He must be dreaming!"
"Want me to..." The foreign tribesman made a slashing gesture with his hand.
The chief shook his head: "This is prime grazing season; the clansmen are all out herding scattered across the land. Have some men keep an eye on them. We'll lie low for now."
"Yes."
But just then, shouts erupted from outside. The chief overheard someone yelling about an enemy attack.
He sprang up and stepped out of his tent, only to see several warhorses charging into the tribe. There was no formation to speak of—these men simply hurled torches at every tent they passed and slashed at anyone trying to run.
Many of the tribe's warriors were scattered far and wide tending to the herds. The camp was undermanned at that moment and couldn't organize an effective counterattack. What baffled the chief even more was—how in the world did they find them?
The chaos lasted less than half an hour before the raiders, Jin soldiers, simply rode off—and took their water and grain with them.
The chief was in a daze the whole time.
"They're gone?"
"Chief, they're gone."
"They... just left like that?" The chief looked at the warriors who had finally mustered behind him.
"Chief, let's chase them!" someone shouted. Looking out, fires blazed everywhere across the camp, and the sound of weeping filled the air.
"Slow down!" The chief had a thought. "When have the Jin ever been this reckless? A sudden raid and they don't linger? This is bait! There's probably a trap outside waiting to lure us into a pursuit!"
"Huh? Then what do we do?"
"Round up everyone. We move out tonight and find a new camp!"
Fatty Liu led his men a good fifty or sixty li before realizing no one was chasing them. The tension eased considerably.
The soldiers laughed and jibed at each other about how pathetic their enemies had looked. For some, it was their first taste of close combat—one man nearly dropped his blade, another managed to toss his torch onto the head of one of his own.
Fatty Liu reined in his horse. Strange, he thought—before this, riding had always felt uncomfortable. But after that good charge, he found he'd gotten used to it.
"Leave two hundred men to haul the loot back to camp. The rest of you, follow me!"
No one questioned him. His force split in two—some turned back, the rest pressed on behind him.
Fang Zhiyi sat by the campfire, staring at the flickering flames, when Little Hei came rushing back, breathless.
"That cook's gone mad—he took three hundred men and charged back into the fight!"
Fang Zhiyi paused, then smiled. "Now there's a find..." He'd originally planned a strategy of relentless harassment, using these scattered tribes as live-fire training for his vanguard battalions. Who knew he'd spot a diamond on the very first day?
By dawn, the dispatched men returned.
Only Fatty Liu's group had yet to come back.
Many soldiers excitedly swapped tales of last night's raid. By now, they regarded Fang Zhiyi with complete reverence—the General had to be a god descended to earth, otherwise how else could he know where those packs of wild jackals camped?
But there were also those who came back looking battered. Two groups had lost more than half their men and brought back no plunder. They just stood there, silent.
Fang Zhiyi strolled over with ease.
"Zeng Jiaye, I gave you five hundred men. Tell me, why did only a little over a hundred come back?"
Zeng Jiaye gritted his teeth. "I—I—I gave poor orders! I'll accept the punishment!" He dropped to one knee.
But Fang Zhiyi's eyes turned cold. "Stand up! No kneeling!"
Zeng Jiaye looked up, bewildered.
Fang Zhiyi lowered his gaze to meet his eyes. "A man's knees are worth more than gold. If you must kneel, don't kneel to me—kneel to the several hundred brothers who died under your command!"
Zeng Jiaye was shaken. Last night, surrounded, he hadn't cried. When he watched friends he knew die under a hail of arrows, he hadn't cried. But now, tears suddenly poured out.
Fang Zhiyi raised his head and swept his gaze across the crowd. "Men die in war. It's a fact of life."
Everyone was watching him.
"Dead brothers are still watching you, waiting for you to avenge them! Those of you who survived, think hard—where did it all go wrong? Was it your training? Your carelessness? Or are those wild jackals better than you?"
He walked over to a young soldier who had a fresh gash across his cheek. He reached out and tightened the boy's loose jerkin.
"There's no shame in losing a battle. What's shameful is losing your spirit. Every one of you was personally chosen—every one of you has the mettle to earn a noble title! Don't let a single defeat break you!"
"Plenty of people can handle victory. But only those who can swallow defeat come out on top in the end."
The soldiers stared, stunned, as the hulking figure slowly turned toward the grassland.
Fang Zhiyi looked in that direction—the way the Zeng Jiaye's unit had come back. Under everyone's gaze, Fang Zhiyi suddenly dropped to one knee. "You are all my sworn brothers! I brought you out and got you killed—that failure is mine. I bow to you all as my apology!"
That bow shocked every soldier present.
Zeng Jiaye was weeping like a child. "General, it's not on you! I was too rash—it's my fault!"
Fang Zhiyi rose and looked back at him. "Cry if you must. And when you're done crying, go report to the quartermaster for your flogging."
"Yes!"
Ma Xingwen, too, responded without hesitation—stripping off his armor on the spot. "This humiliation! I'll carry it to my grave!"
"Gotta admit, that's the real deal," Little Hei remarked.
Meanwhile, the tribe that Fatty Liu had raided was now truly in a quandary. They'd thought moving camp would fix things. But no sooner had they picked a new spot to pitch tents than those bastards came back—this time more ferocious, no longer bothering to steal, just killing everything that moved and burning everything in sight, then riding off.
But the more they acted this way, the more convinced the chief was of his theory.
"Bait! It has to be bait! Do not pursue! Heighten our guard!"
Fatty Liu headed back to camp in perfect contentment.
When he saw the state of things back at base—and Zeng Jiaye lying flat on his belly, unable to get up—something in Fatty Liu's heart skipped a beat.
When he finally stood before Fang Zhiyi, he quickly plastered a grin on his face: "General, we made out like bandits!"
But Fang Zhiyi's face was stone cold. "What did I say before we set out?"
"Uh..."
"SPEAK!"
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ine. During your journey, you save an abandoned baby girl and become her elder brother】 【You rely on each other, becoming each other's support】 【At the end of the simulation, you shield the now-grown girl with your life, sacrificing yourself to block numerous demonic cultivators. You die, and the light in the girl's eyes fades】 …… 【Second Simulation: You are transported to a world where steam and magic coexist】 【You immerse yourself in the study of magic, obsessed with its research. One day, while out, you encounter a half-blooded demon girl wandering the streets. You take her in as your student】 【You teach the demoness what it means to be human, show her the beauty of the world, and nurture her into a miracle that surpasses even the gods】 【At the end of the simulation, you die of old age in front of the nearly immortal demoness due to your mortal lifespan】 …… One simulation after another, one encounter after another. Xu Xi suddenly felt something was off: "Wait, you said you're coming to the real world to find me?"
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
