Fang Zhiyi did not answer Wang Hui's question. Instead, he looked at the generals behind him and said with a smile, "I must trouble you all to remain here for the time being."
The generals hurriedly shook their heads. "We are willing to follow the Grand General's orders!"
Of course they would say that—they weren't idiots. If they tried to leave now, their feet probably wouldn't even make it out the tent before they were chopped into mincemeat. Hadn't they just seen this madman cut down even his own personal guards?
A young general spoke up. "Grand General, if we pull back our defensive line now, we can certainly concentrate our forces, but..."
"But what?" Fang Zhiyi looked at the map before him without raising his head.
The general steeled himself. "But, Grand General, your people won't be able to take over the camps of Wu Xing'a, Ana, and the others. Their men are all ethnic Jurchen soldiers through and through—they won't accept your command... Without them, the strength of the frontier army will take a serious hit."
Fang Zhiyi laughed. "So I never sent anyone to take over."
The general was taken aback. He saw Fang Zhiyi make a mark on the map before him.
A thought occurred to him.
"General... you—you mean to pull the whole line back and leave the forces of Ana, Wu Xing'a, and Fu Sanshan exactly where they are?"
"Obviously. Since they're unwilling to follow my orders, might as well let them do what little they can."
Wang Hui trudged back to his own tent, weary. Before he could even sit down, someone lifted the tent flap.
"Deputy General Wang." Ma Xingwen's smile instantly reminded Wang Hui of the headless corpses of those generals earlier. His guard went up. "What is it?"
"Don't be nervous, Deputy General Wang. I'm just here to pass along a message from the general."
"What message?"
"Hold on." Ma Xingwen labored to pull four or five letters from inside the armor against his chest and handed them over. Wang Hui's face went pale.
"Ah, the Grand General said your handwriting is very nice, but he wasn't too fond of the content. He wants you to redo them."
Wang Hui's mind went completely blank.
When had Fang Zhiyi found out?
Back in the capital, while the emperor and his two rivals were busy fighting over He Yinqing, news arrived of an attack on the border.
"What? They launched an attack without declaring war?" The emperor was shocked, and hastily began the journey back. By the time he arrived, several of his senior ministers had already been waiting for some time.
"Your Majesty—the barbarian tribes of the steppe have united. They first struck Yongning. The garrison was caught off guard. Yilibu fled the field, and their ranks collapsed for a thousand li. The vice commander was shot dead by arrows! By the time the military dispatch was sent, they were already heading toward Nanwei!" The Minister of War pointed at the map.
The emperor's vision went dark for a moment. Then: "What is Fang Zhiyi doing? How did he fail to notice something this important?"
The ministers exchanged glances.
"Useless! A pack of useless scoundrels! The court pays out military salaries every month—is it so they can live in comfort?" The emperor paced in fury. "Send word to Fang Zhiyi at once. Give him three months—no, one month—to drive these barbarians out!"
The Minister of War suddenly spoke. "Your Majesty, this conflict may well have been triggered by Fang Zhiyi's earlier aggressive maneuvering..."
The emperor shot him a look. "You think I hadn't considered that? What, am I supposed to drag Fang Zhiyi back to the capital for trial now?"
A voice cut through.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible."
The emperor turned. Prince Min stood there, his face grim. After bowing to the emperor, he handed over a sealed letter. The emperor opened it, and his vision darkened again.
The letter was from Wang Hui. It stated that Wu Xing'a, Ana, and the others had refused the Grand General's orders, launched attacks on their own initiative, and were killed one after another. Fang Zhiyi had no choice but to send men to take over the remnants of their troops and temporarily pull back the defensive line.
"We cannot bring Fang Zhiyi back now," Prince Min said. "He may lack brains, but he's a first-rate commander on the battlefield. For now, the only option is to wait and see. Once Fang Zhiyi has driven off the steppe barbarians, we can deal with his crimes then."
No sooner had he spoken than another military dispatch came from the border.
"Report! Grand General of the Border Fang Zhiyi sends an urgent message—the front line is deadlocked. He needs grain and weapons!"
Along with the dispatch came a letter from Fang Zhiyi. The handwriting was a bit distorted, clearly written in a hurry.
Even so, Fang Zhiyi had begun his letter with lavish praise of the emperor, then proclaimed his resolve to serve the nation, passionate and high-flown.
The emperor read it for a long time before letting out a heavy sigh. "Issue my decree: mobilize grain and supplies to support Fang Zhiyi."
Wei An, having been passed over for the opportunity, was thoroughly annoyed. He was convinced the emperor was settling a personal grudge.
Looking dejected, Wei An arrived at the cosmetics shop. Seeing how crestfallen he was, He Yinqing came over to ask what was wrong.
"And here I thought it was something serious. It's just about drilling troops!"
"You know how to drill troops too?" Wei An grew excited. Yinqing was just too impressive.
"Of course! I'll teach you a secret training method that's never been passed down. I guarantee the emperor will think highly of you after seeing it! Before long, you could replace that Fang Zhiyi without any problem!"
Their hushed conversation was noticed by an ordinary passerby. Within an hour, the news reached Fang Yunlan's ears.
When she heard from her lookout that He Yinqing had said something about "military posture" and "goose-stepping," she nearly died laughing.
This was the ancient world! Standing at attention was meant to build uniformity and discipline, but on an ancient battlefield...
Fang Yunlan mulled it over. "Find someone to 'accidentally' let the princess hear about this."
Earlier, she had used servants to spread word, implying indirectly that she'd been grounded because of the princess and couldn't patronize the shop for a while. Then it just so happened that He Yinqing clashed with the princess. Knowing that her cash cow had been grounded because of the princess, He Yinqing grew to despise the overbearing princess even more.
All she had to do now was let the princess learn that He Yinqing and Wei An were growing even closer...
She had also noticed that in this world, whether emperor, princess, or marquis, every single one of them had romance on the brain above all else. Utterly brainless, weren't they?
The supreme commander of the steppe alliance felt something was off. By all rights, the Jin state's border forces should have reacted long ago. Especially that foul-mouthed Yilibu—he hadn't shown his face at all. But that was also fortunate, because their surprise attack had successfully breached the Yongning garrison's positions.
As they pressed their advance, they met with next to no real resistance—until they came before the Yongchang defense works. Though the soldiers there were on alert, no other Jin border forces had come to reinforce them.
It was all too strange.
His scouts had gone out without a break, and every report they brought back said no Jin border troops were anywhere to be found. Even the passes that had been set up to guard against them were now empty, abandoned with sizable stockpiles of supplies, as if the army had withdrawn in a panic. Even the surrounding civilians had apparently been evacuated.
But seeing how eager his men were for vengeance, he couldn't afford to dwell on it.
"Attack! Spare no one!"
u Chenyuan transmigrated into a female-oriented novel about a real and fake heiress, becoming the CEO elder brother of both. Unfortunately, the entire Lu family—including himself, the CEO—were mere cannon fodder in the story. Determined to save himself, Lu Chenyuan took action. The spoiled, attention-seeking fake heiress? Thrown into the harsh realities of the working class to learn humility. The love-struck real heiress? Pushed toward academic excellence, so lofty goals would blind her to trivial romances. As for the betrayed, vengeful arranged marriage wife… the plot hadn’t even begun yet. There was still time—if he couldn’t handle her, he could at least avoid her. "CEO Lu, are you avoiding me?" Mo Qingli fixed her gaze on Lu Chenyuan. For the first time, the shrewd and calculating Lu Chenyuan felt a flicker of unease.
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
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!
