Dragon Canon

Dingbian City.

Chen Dao gently placed down a white stone. He had already gained the upper hand on the board. Across the table, Yue Jinshan was furrowing his brows and staring intently at the board, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find a single flaw in his opponent’s play.

Chen Dao’s playing style mirrored his personality: no aggression, no relentless pressure. He appeared to be on the defensive at every turn, yet he was meticulous about securing territory. Before anyone realized it, he had already secured the advantage.

Yue Jinshan was no slouch at Go,but he still fell short of Chen Dao, a national-level player.

Suddenly, Yue Jinshan disregarded his larger strategic position and placed down a black stone. He began desperately trying to save an isolated group trapped within the white stone’s formation.

A smile crossed Chen Dao’s face. With this move, Yue Jinshan’s defeat was all but certain.

He responded casually, but this time Yue Jinshan played with extreme haste, single-mindedly determined to save that isolated group. He went so far to resort to all manners of relentless harassment and unreasonable tactics.

With Chen Dao’s experience, he couldn’t be swayed by such petty tricks as a matter of course. He remained calm and composed, tightening the noose with every move, until finally, he placed one last stone and delivered the decisive blow to that isolated group.

Chen Dao smiled faintly, “You lost a bit too quickly today, Old Yue. If you hadn’t made those unreasonable moves, your skill would have reached a higher level.”

Yue Jinshan did not resign by dropping his stones. Instead, he replied, “My inability to save that group was due to my own lack of skill; it does not mean that group was doomed. If someone else had played this game, the outcome might have been different.”

Chen Dao argued, “That group should never have existed in the first place. The tide of history is against them—how could they possibly hope to survive?”

Yue Jinshan let out a scoff. “If the so-called ‘will of heaven’ or ‘tide of history’ were truly unstoppable, then the Great Li Dynasty would have endured for all eternity, and there would never have been any subsequent dynasties, let alone the Great Tang.”

Chen Dao frowned. “That’s a rather treasonous thing to say.”

“You lot are always spouting about loyalty and righteousness, yet you are really pushing the Great Tang bit by bit toward the abyss. My treachery is nothing compared to it.”

Chen Dao’s expression darkened. “Old Yue, for the sake of our comradeship, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you just said. But if you continue to speak so recklessly, and someone were to overhear it and report it to the higher-ups, then no one will be able to save you.”

Yue Jinshan made another move and said, “Make no mistake, I’m grateful you saved me from the eunuchs’ faction. I owe you a favor for that. But comradeship? It was pretty much exhausted the moment you called me over to play this game of Go.”

“When two tigers fight, we reap the benefits—what’s wrong with that?”

Yue Jinshan replied, “I can’t win an argument with you; you and your lot always have a pile of twisted logic to spout. I know the ministers in the court have been saying that Qingming is splendid, it’s just a ‘shame’ that it isn’t ours. But so long as it is recovered, even if it were to shatter and retain only twenty or thirty percent of its original power, it would still be a realm stone of Western Jin.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“From the Western Jin’s perspective, none whatsoever. But from the Great Tang’s perspective, from all of humanity’s perspective, the shattering of Qingming represents a tangible loss of eighty percent of our territory!”

Chen Dao sighed. “After all, we are ministers of Jin.”

“A loyal minister of Jin, a treacherous villain of Tang!”

Chen Dao actually had nothing to say against that.

Yue Jinshan spoke slowly, “I have spent my whole life on the battlefield. You might say that I am born with a wretched spirit that simply cannot bear to stand idly by while others fight to the death against foreign invaders.”

Yue Jinshan reached out, picked up a white stone from the board, and tossed it into the box. With that white stone gone, the isolated group suddenly came back to life.

“Lord Chen, if you lift your hand just a little, this group could survive.”

Chen Dao looked pensive, but did not relent.

Yue Jinshan rose to his feet and said calmly, “No stone is destined to die. If another expert was playing this game instead of me, it could survive.”

Yue Jinshan pushed open the door and left after that. Chen Dao knew that their long-time relationship was just like that of Yue Jinshan’s receding figure—growing ever farther apart.

..................

Realm of Qingming.

The battle between the two sides had reached its most brutal stage.

Wei Yuan had already retreated to the fifth defense line. All of the gunpowder they had stockpiled had been exhausted as well. At the moment, they were activating Life in a Flash and engaging in a bloody, hand-to-hand struggle with the Shaman forces.

Beneath Xuanwei Six, the lives of Shaman soldiers were vanishing at a pace akin to a floodgate being opened. In the underground passages, Qingming soldiers were wielding heavy shields nearly as tall as a man. Just two of them were enough to completely block the passage and fire their guns from above, the side, and even from the gaps below.

Wei Yuan had charged back and forth on his horse countless times at this point. He remained the most conspicuous figure on the entire battlefield as well. Wherever he went, the supreme commander’s banner behind him stood tall and unwavering.

Following closely behind him, Hsu Yi was holding the banner in one hand and a sword in the other. Her mission in this battle was to protect the banner and charge into the enemy ranks alongside Wei Yuan.

He wanted to leave no doubt to everyone exactly where the human’s supreme commander was and what he was doing.

Watching from afar, Rock Heart sneered coldly. “Fool. He’s the commanding general, yet he’s charging into the enemy lines himself. Does he have a death wish?”

A Great Warlock beside him asked, “My lord, shouldn’t we join the fray as well?”

Rock Heart flashed a cruel, bloodthirsty smile and replied slowly, “Why the rush? Let the soldiers below die a little more. Only a little over twenty percent have fallen so far. That’s nowhere near enough. The tribes under Lord Redleaf’s command are reputed to be the finest in the land, aren’t they? They shouldn’t collapse until three or four-tenths of them are dead, right?”

The Great Warlocks were wearing ugly expressions to say the least. These fighters were the cream of their entire tribe, and many of them had the potential to become future Great Warlocks. Yet now, they lay as corpses on the battlefield.

One Great Warlock’s expression suddenly shifted. He sensed that casualties in the underground of Xuanwei Six were mounting faster than expected—more than half had already been killed or wounded. He immediately ordered another five thousand reinforcements to be dispatched from the main army.

As soon as the order was given, Rock Heart suddenly said, “Add another ten thousand.”

“What?” The Great Warlock thought he must have misheard. Since the battle began, Rock Heart had not once interfered with the command.

Rock Heart replied, “He’s stationed an elite unit underground in the city—it’s a death trap. Send more men down, and you can trap and annihilate those elite units instead. Oh, there’s also a passage leading to the surface. I’ll tell you the location of the exit; just station a detachment there to guard it.”

The Great Warlock quickly went to carry out the orders.

Wei Yuan burst out of an enemy formation once more, his body covered in the blood of the Shamans. His warhorse, the blue steed, was soaked through as well.

Suddenly from a distance, he saw that more than half of the Shamans’ rear guard had split off to attack Xuanwei Six, and his heart sank.

Unlike the previous time, where most of the troops were civilians living in the city, Wei Yuan had stationed a force of two thousand elite troops beneath Xuanwei Six this time.

Clearly, the Shamans had detected something amiss and had begun diverting troops to wipe them out. However, they were sending far too many soldiers—it was as if they intended to exterminate everyone underground.

Fortunately, there was one last escape route. Wei Yuan breathed a slight sigh of relief. Although the passage was narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side and so wouldn’t allow many to escape, it was at least a glimmer of hope.

In the northern sky, the Great Warlocks continued to watch the bloody battle happening on the ground. They showed no intentions of intervening thus far.

The bloody battle was actually a strategy devised by Wei Yuan. The firearms and Life is a Flash allowed them to trade a human in the initial stages of the Body-tempering stage for an elite Shaman fighter. There was no way the Great Warlocks couldn’t tell that these humans were originally just ordinary people. This was essentially a game of sacrifice where they were exchanging individuals worth ten times more than the opposition to obtain victory. They couldn’t possibly not feel the pain.

But still, the Great Warlocks remained unmoved. It was as if Wei Yuan was the one who should be feeling the pain.

Suddenly, Wei Yuan felt a searing pain in his back. He had no idea when the wound had appeared there. There was no time to tend to it, though. Pointing his spear forward, he charged once more into the enemy fray!

Wei Yuan’s timing and angle of charge were always perfect, shaking the Shamans’ military formation to its core and forcing the standard-bearer raising the commanding general’s flag to shift positions on multiple occasions. However, the Shamans were simply too numerous. The size of this force was equivalent to the entire population of Qingming. No matter how many Wei Yuan killed, there were always more ahead.

By this point of the battle, the Shamans had suffered over twenty thousand casualties, while Qingming’s losses were less than ten thousand. But there would be no more luck or miracles for the upcoming battle—it would be a pure contest of will and fighting spirit.

Wei Yuan broke through the Shamans’ formation once more and returned to his own ranks. He swept his perception across the battlefield, located Cui Yu, and teleported over to him.

Cui Yu, blood-soaked from head to toe, was currently leaning on his saber for support as he caught his breath. A cultivator standing nearby was treating his fresh wounds.

Cui Yu and Wei Yuan exchanged glances with each other. They both found the other looking more bedraggled than they had ever seen and burst into laughter. But the moment he laughed, Cui Yu’s wound flared up and contorted his face into a grimace of agony instead.

Without a word, Sun Yu pulled out a pill and swallowed it. Also crafted by Sun Yu, the pill drew out one’s hidden potential, numbed pain, and granted immense strength. It was the third one Cui Yu had taken since the battle began, and each one was lasting shorter than the last.

Wei Yuan pointed a finger at the Great Warlocks in the distant sky and asked, “Do you think you can cuss them down from up there?”

The question caught Cui Yu off guard. “The Shamans are shameless though. How can you insult someone with no shame?”

Wei Yuan thought for a moment. “They should be under the command of a Shadow Warlock named Shu Li. Why don’t we try insulting Shu Li?”

Every inch of Cui Yu’s body was throbbing with pain at the moment. He simply wasn’t in a state where he could wring out even a speck of imagination. “How does, ‘your children are born without assholes!’ sound to you?

Wei Yuan pondered, “Do they even have assholes?”

“How about, ‘Come down and fight if you’re a man?’”

“They aren’t human to begin with.”

Cui Yu snapped, “Not this, not that! You do the cursing then!”

“Forget it, I’ll just charge one more time.” Wei Yuan raised his spear and plunged into the Shamans’ formation once more.

Deep within Xuanwei Six, the defending forces had been pushed back to the lowest level. In an empty hall, Yun Feifei stood with her upper body half-bared, while a young master from a noble clan worked desperately to staunch the wound on her back. However, the gash was simply too deep. Despite his frantic infusion of Dao energy, blood continued to gush out like a little spring and soaking through the robe pressed against the wound.

The young master was so frantic there were tears in his eyes, yet when he looked around for help, all he saw were critically wounded soldiers who were beyond help. They had long since run out of medicine.

Yun Feifei let out a moan of pain and awoke from her semi-conscious state. Her bleeding slowed considerably after she regained her consciousness and channeled her Dao energy. The first thing she asked upon waking was, “How many of us are left?”

The young master replied, “We had four hundred a moment ago. It might be three hundred and seventy now. Half of them are lying here.”

Yun Feifei listened intently for a moment before remarking, “They really respect us, don’t they, to send down another ten thousand. You rest here; I’m going to go kill a few more!”

The young master suddenly asked, “Aren’t we withdrawing?”

Yun Feifei slowly shook her head. “If we retreat to the surface, these ten thousand soldiers will simply follow us up. It’ll be an even harder fight then.”

Staring at Yun Feifei’s retreating figure, the young master suddenly mustered his courage and called out, “Sister Feifei, I... I like you! If we survive this battle, I’ll report back to the family and marry you!”

Yun Feifei turned around, looked into the young master’s eyes, and asked softly, “Do you really like me?”

The young master’s gaze remained firm. “I’ve liked you since the first moment I saw you! I know the one you like is the realm lord, but if I don’t speak up now, I’m afraid I’d never get the chance!”

Yun Feifei opened her arms and gave him a gentle hug. She then whispered in his ear, “If you truly like me, then die with me.”

Yun Feifei picked up a steel pipe and hurled it into the escape passage.

The young master watched the steel pipe roll into the depths of the tunnel. Dozens of critically wounded soldiers in the hall were watching as well. Yet, their eyes held only calm and resolve. Not a single person had tried to stop her.

There was a thunderous crash, and the escape passage collapsed.

Amid the smoke and dust, Yun Feifei’s voice rang out: “This is my home. I’m not going anywhere!”

The earth suddenly trembled, and the entire Xuanwei Six sank a full zhang. The city that had once stood there was now a deep pit, burying over ten thousand elite troops of the Shamans beneath it.

[1]

1. Did you ever really know her, Wei Yuan? ☜

Zhang Sheng's First Official Art: