Chapter 928
Defense and Counterattack
A beastly glint flashed in Iron One-Eyed's single eye.
"If the Qingyun Sect can drive demonic beasts mad, I'll show you what a real living Yama is like!"
A gust of cold wind blew by, and when Manager Sun looked up again...
The dark figures had vanished without a trace, leaving only the giant axe deeply embedded in the soil and a faint smell of blood lingering in the night air.
The morning mist had not yet completely dissipated from the black rock walls of Hongyun City. The air was dry and cold, like swallowing a handful of ice shards, after the first frost.
Outside the South Gate, on the wide and flat official road made of rammed iron and gravel, came a series of extremely dense sounds of horses' hooves and the rumbling of wheels rolling on the ground.
The city gates were wide open. The armored guards held loaded crossbows, their eyes fixed ahead like eagles.
Through the mist, the first caravan flag was raised. It was the black flag with gold lettering of "Fuyuan Trading Company," its surface damp with dew, hanging limply.
Immediately afterwards, one after another, horse-drawn carts piled high like small mountains emerged from the fog. The mules and horses pulling the carts were covered in mud, panting heavily, their hooves covered in dried black mud, some even with a few unknown weeds clinging to them.
Leading the way was Manager Sun, who had been smashed into the mud by Iron One-Eyed with an axe a few days earlier outside the Blackwater Forest.
At this moment, Manager Sun's eyes were sunken, and his dark circles were so large that it looked like he had been punched twice. He was wrapped in a dirty sheepskin coat, riding his horse, his body swaying with each step, as if he might fall off the horse at any moment.
"Whoa—"
Manager Sun jerked the reins at the city gate and dismounted. His legs buckled, and he stumbled on the wet flagstones. A quick-thinking waiter caught him.
"Manager Sun, please slow down." The waiter lowered his voice, glancing around in fear, as if afraid that several masked assassins would crawl out from the cracks in the city wall.
Han Wuhen had already received the report from the city wall. Today, he was wearing a brand-new purple satin robe, holding a hand warmer in his hands. His round face was full of the kind of bright smile that only appeared when he saw a mountain of gold. He ran out of the city gate like a ball of flesh.
"Oh my! Isn't this Manager Sun?" Han Wuhen stretched out a hand from a distance and greeted him warmly. "What brings you here? Didn't you say a few days ago that this road had bad feng shui and that we should take the dirt road to the west instead? What's wrong, were you having trouble walking through the muddy pits to the west?"
Upon hearing Han Wuhen's sarcastic remarks, Manager Sun's facial muscles twitched violently. He forced a smile that looked more like a grimace, then grabbed Han Wuhen's chubby wrist tightly, causing Han Wuhen to frown.
"Master Han! Uncle Han! Please stop making fun of a lowly errand boy like me!" Manager Sun's voice was clearly choked with sobs. "Our Fuyuan Trading Company admits defeat! From now on, whether we go to Dingzhou or Jiangnan, wherever we go, as long as we pass through this area, we will only take the official road of Hongyun City! Even if other roads are paved with gold bricks, we will not take them!"
"Oh?" Han Wuhen asked knowingly, drawing out the last syllable, and blinked his small eyes. "Why is that? Didn't the immortals of the Qingyun Sect say that you're not allowed to come within ten miles of our Hongyun City? Aren't you afraid that the immortals will blame you for doing this and cut off your pill business?"
Shopkeeper Sun trembled with fright and turned around sharply to look at the desolate wilderness behind him, as if countless bloodthirsty eyes were hiding there.
"Whether the Immortal Master blames me or not is a matter for tomorrow. Whether this living Yama in the wilderness is worth living for is a matter for tonight!" Manager Sun lowered his voice, almost whispering in Han Wuhen's ear, "Master Han, you have no idea how chaotic things have been on the road to Dingzhou these past few days!"
"What's wrong? Tell me about it." Han Wuhen switched the hand warmer to his other hand and asked with a smile.
"Li the Fatty of 'Sihai Trading Company' was eaten by a pack of crazed demon wolves, not even a bone fragment was left! You've heard about that, right?" Manager Sun said, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. "And that's not all! The night before last, the 'Tonghui Money Shop's' caravan transporting spirit stones was burned to the ground while detouring through Luoyan Gorge! The more than thirty skilled guards escorting the caravan all had their throats slit with poisoned daggers, and their corpses were hung in a row at the entrance of the gorge!"
Han Wuhen raised an eyebrow: "Oh, that's terrible? Who did it?"
"Who did this? Everyone knows who did it!" Manager Sun stamped his feet anxiously, but dared not shout. "A giant axe with barbs was left at the scene, along with a sentence! It said... it said that anyone who dares to take a detour again is tantamount to robbing the King of Hell of business!"
Shopkeeper Sun gripped Han Wuhen's sleeve tightly: "Master Han, we're just mortals trying to make money. Even if the gods fight, we can't afford to offend the Qingyun Sect, but we certainly can't afford to offend those ruthless, bloodthirsty ancestors! If the immortals cut off our medicine supply, we can always get supplies from elsewhere; we can just earn a little less. But if we lose our lives in a mud pit, who will we spend all the money we earn?"
Han Wuhen felt incredibly relieved to see Manager Sun looking so terrified.
He withdrew his hand, patted Manager Sun on the shoulder, and his tone became earnest: "Old Sun, wouldn't it have been better if you had thought of this earlier? In Hongyun City, the key to doing business is stability. Look at this road, how smooth it is! Look at these crossbows on the city wall, how reassuring they are! Once you step through our black iron gate, let alone a few mad wolves, even if a real dragon falls from the sky, it will have to coil up!"
"Yes, yes, Master Han is right." Manager Sun nodded repeatedly, like a chicken pecking at rice. "Then...then the customs duty..."
"Commercial taxes remain the same." Han Wuhen waved his hand, exuding a heroic air. "Not only will they remain the same, but today, considering how worried you've been these past few days, I'll waive the tea fee for entering the city! Let's go to Jucai Tower, and we'll provide all the brothers with the best wine and meat!"
"Thank you, Master Han! Thank you, Master Han!" Manager Sun breathed a sigh of relief and turned to shout to the caravan behind him, "What are you all standing there for! Hurry up and thank Master Han! Let's go into town! Let's go into town and rest!"
The massive convoy slowly began to move, the wooden wheels grinding against the iron road with a sound that was both teeth-grinding and incredibly reassuring.
Han Wuhen stood by the city gate, looking at the relief on the faces of his men who had survived the ordeal, his fat face squishing into a bunch of smiles.
Not far away, Guo Tianyou, dressed in dark red bone armor, leaned against the base of the city wall with his arms crossed, coldly watching this scene.
"Fatty, your ability to bully others by borrowing their power is getting better and better." Guo Tianyou stepped forward and poked Han Wuhen in the lower back with the scabbard of his knife.
"Ouch, Lao Guo, take it easy, don't tear my new robe." Han Wuhen rubbed his back and turned around, his smile wide and uncontrollable. "What do you mean by 'borrowing the tiger's might'? This is the master's brilliant method! Violence for violence, black for black! The Qingyun Sect tried to cut us with soft knives, so the master just chopped off their hands with a big axe! Look, aren't these merchants obediently rolling back?" "They've rolled back, but that's only treating the symptoms, not the root cause." Guo Tianyou looked up at the gray sky, his eyes revealing a bloodthirsty frenzy. "As long as those bastards from the Qingyun Sect don't bow their heads, these underhanded sabotages won't stop. If we really want those bastards to be completely obedient, we'll have to really take down a few of their big strongholds!"
Just then, the sound of rapid hoofbeats suddenly came from inside the city.
A tall, black horse with white mane around its hooves galloped from the end of the street. The rider, dressed in a tight-fitting black night suit and wearing a hideous ghost mask, was none other than Iron One-Eye, who had rushed back overnight.
"Whoa—"
Iron Eyes suddenly pulled on the reins in front of the two men, and the Black Cloud Horse let out a high-pitched neigh, its front hooves leaping high and slamming heavily onto the bluestone slabs, sending up a trail of sparks.
"Old Guo! Fatty! Where is the master?" Iron One-Eye dismounted, ripped off the ghost mask from his face, revealing a single, bloodshot eye. He reeked of an overwhelming, pungent smell of blood and burnt ashes.
"The master is looking at a map in the study in the backyard. You're in such a hurry, have you finished?" Guo Tianyou stepped forward, sniffed Tie Duyan's scent, and grinned. "That smell is strong enough, you must have cooked a lot of good stuff, right?"
"Hey, more than a lot!" Iron One-Eyed wiped the soot off his face, revealing a ferocious grin. "Hundred Herbs Valley, Spirit Flame Stone Mine, Cloud Marsh Herb Field. Three huge fires, burned it all to the ground! Those outer disciples of the Azure Cloud Sect were still dreaming in their beds when our brothers' repeating crossbows nailed them to their beds. All the good stuff we could bring back is on the carts behind; what we couldn't take, we burned to a crisp! Let's go see the Master!"
The three of them quickly crossed the South Market and went straight to the backyard of the City Lord's Mansion.
The study door was ajar. Zheng Yi was still sitting behind his desk, holding a small pair of orchid pruning shears, fiddling with a newly transplanted Cymbidium orchid. Zhao Sanhuai and Elder Liu stood on either side of the desk.
"boom!"
Iron One-Eyed kicked open the half-closed door, strode in, and slammed a bulging storage bag onto the desk with a "thud".
"Sir! The matter is settled!" Iron One-Eyed panted heavily, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a wolf that had just eaten its fill. "Three outposts, not one left. The Qingyun Sect's outer sect's supply of medicinal herbs and ores for this year is completely cut off!"
Zheng Yi didn't look up immediately. He carefully cut off a withered leaf from the orchid with scissors, then put down the scissors, took a cotton cloth from the table to wipe his hands, and then slowly untied the storage bag.
"Crash..."
Zheng Yi turned the storage bag upside down, and a pile of items exuding a rich spiritual energy and medicinal fragrance spilled onto the desk.
Inside were bundles of century-old ginseng, fire-spirit mushrooms in jade boxes, and a dozen fist-sized, crimson-red top-grade spirit flame stones with faint flames burning on their surfaces. These were strategic resources that the outer sect of the Qingyun Sect treasured, but now they were piled up in front of Zheng Yi like a pile of scrap metal.
Elder Liu's hands trembled as he looked at these things.
"This...this is a hundred-year-old 'Dragon Blood Essence'? And this...this Spirit Flame Stone, its quality is at least from the core of the mine!" Elder Liu's beard bristled with excitement. "Sir, just these things alone, if we took them to the black market in Dingzhou City, could fetch at least 20,000 mid-grade spirit stones!"
"Why exchange them for spirit stones?" Zheng Yi glanced at the treasures indifferently. "Send them to the armory. Grind all these spirit flame stones into powder and mix them into the bolts of the heavy crossbows. I want every crossbow bolt that leaves Hongyun City to carry the Qingyun Sect's own fire poison."
Han Wuhen also squeezed into the study at this moment, and his eyes widened when he saw the things on the table.
"Sir, those caravans started returning one after another this morning. With Iron Boss's 'Ghost Face' now out there, the merchants on the Dingzhou Road would rather offend the Qingyun Sect than mess with us." Han Wuhen rubbed his hands excitedly. "We've killed two birds with one stone! Not only have we cut off their supplies, but we've also reclaimed the trade route!"
Everyone in the study wore victorious smiles, and Guo Tianyou even laughed heartily, feeling that the anger he had been holding in for the past two weeks had finally been released.
However, Zheng Yi showed no joy on his face.
He pushed the pile of treasures aside, crossed his hands on the table, and swept his gaze across everyone present with a sharp, piercing look.
"You think this is how you win?" Zheng Yi's voice was cold, like a bucket of ice water, directly extinguishing the fire in everyone's hearts.
The laughter in the study stopped abruptly.
Guo Tianyou was taken aback for a moment: "Sir, we burned their mines and raided their medicinal herb fields. They're probably still jumping up and down on the mountain cursing us right now. The trade routes are open too, so what do we have to worry about?"
“I’m worried they’re not cursing loud enough.” Zheng Yi stood up and walked to the huge sheepskin map on the wall.
“The Qingyun Sect is a behemoth. While the Hundred Herbs Valley and the Spirit Flame Stone Mine may be painful for their outer disciples, they are nothing more than a drop in the ocean for those high-ranking inner disciples.” Zheng Yi’s finger traced heavily across the map. “People like Mo Ku value face and long-term interests the most. By sending people to intercept the caravan, he is testing our bottom line and waging a war of attrition.”
“We burned down these three places, which did break their blockade.” Zheng Yi turned around, his gaze sharp. “But this was only a defensive counterattack. In the eyes of cultivators, we are still just a group of mortal bandits who can only survive by sneak attacks and assassinations.”
"As long as this mindset is not broken, the Qingyun Sect's retaliation will be like a persistent leech, never ending. Today they drive away the demonic beasts, tomorrow they can bribe assassins, and the day after tomorrow they might even poison the water source in Hongyun City."
Zheng Yi walked to the table, placed his hands on the surface, and leaned forward slightly. The terrifying sense of oppression that he usually hid under his cotton robe, the sense that belonged to a superior, instantly enveloped the entire study.
"I don't want them to feel the pain, I want them to feel fear. I want them to be so terrified that they can't even hold their flying swords steady when they hear the name 'Hongyun City'." (End of Chapter)