The mid-level commanders of the Jin army shared the same confusion. Though they had organized resistance and lit beacon fires, a full six hours had passed without a single reinforcement arriving from the nearest stronghold.
What in the world was going on?
"Those damn Han civilians—I knew they couldn't be trusted! They must have fled!" someone cursed.
"We should have killed them all back then! Killed them all! It was only the late emperor's benevolence that made him promote Han civilians! That Fang Zhiyi is a fool too!"
"Enough arguing! The barbarians are coming! Prepare to meet the enemy!"
A hundred li away, a massive force of border troops had made camp. They were utterly baffled, but facing orders from above, they had no choice but to obey.
The veterans of the former vanguard battalion were just as confused, yet they trusted that the Grand General must have his reasons.
Still, retreating without a fight took a heavy toll on morale.
The gloom persisted until a group of riders came charging in haste—a white horse in the lead, followed by dozens of black ones. Many turned to look, and a burly figure appeared before their eyes.
"Greetings, Grand General!" someone shouted, and the soldiers who had been standing dumbfounded joined in: "Greetings, Grand General!"
It was customary to kneel before a man of such rank, and the soldiers had long formed the habit.
But the burly general yanked hard on his reins: "All of you, get up! No kneeling!"
The soldiers exchanged bewildered glances.
Fang Zhiyi looked out over the vast number of troops before him and felt a hint of emotion. If this had been any other dynasty in the past, he would never have dared squander troops like this. But this time was different.
If all went according to plan, within ten days the so-called two hundred thousand border troops would likely be reduced to just over a hundred thousand.
But for him, a hundred thousand was more than enough.
Sometimes, winning a battle didn't depend on numbers.
"Whoever you are, whatever name you kneel to—I don't care. Now I, Fang Zhiyi, order you to stand! You are all my brothers, my own flesh and blood!" Fang Zhiyi began his speech.
"Look closely!" Fang Zhiyi pointed with his whip. "That is them buying us time with their lives! I want you to watch, to remember well!"
Wang Hui cursed inwardly. Damn, you really don't blink when you spin a lie!
Was that them willingly sacrificing their lives to hold off the enemy?
But Fang Zhiyi's words had the soldiers staring intently toward the distant beacon smoke as it gradually faded.
By afternoon, Yongchang fell.
Wang Hui had gone numb. He knew he'd long been exposed under Fang Zhiyi's watchful eye—and not just him; countless other informants had been rooted out and executed under various pretexts. Remnants of other factions were also being purged.
Wang Hui didn't know why Fang Zhiyi had spared his life, but he had finally figured it all out.
Fang Zhiyi used to be just a general in name only. But ever since he formed that vanguard battalion, everything changed—it became the sharpest blade in the Grand General's hand.
If the Grand General ordered these men to cut down the emperor himself, they wouldn't hesitate.
Then came the stirring of war: provoking the grassland tribes into an alliance, launching the invasion, all of it part of the Grand General's scheme. And in the chaos, he killed the officers who disobeyed him, installed his own people in their places, tightened the defensive line, and sold the Jin soldiers to the grassland barbarians.
Finally, he began the internal purge, executing the loyal followers of every dead officer.
At this point, there was only one voice left in the entire border army.
If Wang Hui couldn't guess what Fang Zhiyi was really after by now, he'd call himself an idiot.
But barring a miracle, even if they held off the united forces of the grassland tribes, reckoning would follow for Fang Zhiyi. The court officials had plenty of tricks up their sleeves.
And looking at it now, there seemed to be almost no chance of victory.
Wang Hui felt his life was over.
"Deputy General Wang, the General summons all officers to the main tent for a council."
A messenger ran up breathlessly. Wang Hui nodded, stood, and walked out. Stepping into the main tent, he saw few familiar faces—the men standing here now were all Fang Zhiyi's loyalists.
And the four commanders who had clearly already pledged themselves to Fang Zhiyi.
"General! Huang Pass has fallen! The barbarian allied forces have made camp on the spot. Scouts report that though they took Yongning and Wuwei, they've suffered heavy losses because they're unskilled in siege warfare."
Fang Zhiyi merely nodded.
Wang Hui's eyes lit up. He quickly spoke up: "General, shouldn't we attack now?" The fall of Huang Pass meant every Jin soldier Fang Zhiyi had planted up front was wiped out.
Next up: facing those tens of thousands of grassland cavalry head-on.
Fang Zhiyi smiled and looked at him. "No matter."
If this had been before, generals would have jumped up and cursed at him for saying "no matter." But now the tent was dead silent. Wang Hui couldn't understand it—had Fang Zhiyi fed every one of these men some kind of enchantment? If they kept fighting like this, everyone would be finished!
After some time, an uproar arose outside, and then a man stumbled into the tent.
Wang Hui squinted. That face looked familiar—right, wasn't it... Zeng Jiaye? He suddenly remembered something and glanced around. A few men were missing; the fat cook wasn't there, either.
Fang Zhiyi stepped forward to help Zeng Jiaye up. Zeng Jiaye gasped for air, nodded at Fang Zhiyi, his eyes full of resolve.
Fang Zhiyi drew a deep breath: "Pass the order! Full force, attack! Tell the brothers, the time to earn their merits is here!"
The grassland alliance also sensed the Jin border army arrayed for battle. When the Great Leader learned of it, he felt an inexplicable relief—looked like he'd been worrying over nothing.
But suddenly, hoofbeats erupted outside the tent, and a soldier drenched in blood collapsed through the entrance.
"Leader, Leader, something terrible has happened!"
"What is it?" The tribal leaders who had been drinking and laughing inside all turned their heads.
"On the grasslands... tens of thousands of Jin troops have appeared. They... they split into several columns and struck our rear!"
"What?!" The Great Leader was stunned.
He immediately ordered the news suppressed, but the word still leaked out. The grassland soldiers, who had been lost in their victory, panicked—their wives, children, and elders were all back on the steppe!
How the hell had those cursed Jin troops found their strongholds? How had they slipped past their defenses?
Only the Great Leader understood: the Jin army must have dispatched those forces through another route into the grasslands the moment they surrounded Wuwei! The Jin border commander was a lunatic—he'd abandoned his own defensive line just to trade blows, to strike at their homeland!
Some of the tribal leaders could no longer sit still. They called for their men on the spot and prepared to ride back. There was no point dwelling on how Jin troops had ended up behind them—every passing second put their families in greater danger.
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.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
