Chapter 930
A Dead End
"Senior brother!" Zhao Hai, who had just rushed out of Baiyun Tower, was terrified when he saw this scene.
Instead of rescuing Wu Feng, he turned around without hesitation, transformed into a streak of light, and fled desperately towards the Qingyun Mountains.
He was afraid.
Faced with an army of mortals who disregarded the rules of the cultivation world and crushed everything with sheer steel and violence, he completely lost the courage to resist.
However, his escape light had only traveled less than five miles.
Suddenly, a blinding white light shone in the night sky ahead.
Iron One-Eye and several skilled men had long been waiting on his escape route. They were armed with a specially made, large-caliber hand-cranked crossbow.
"Get down here, you son of a bitch!"
Iron One-Eyed laughed wildly and pulled the trigger.
A massive animal-catching net, woven from top-grade silkworm silk mixed with black iron wire and covered with barbs, instantly unfolded in mid-air, trapping Zhao Hai and his flying sword within it.
"Zi la la-"
The barbs pierced the skin and flesh, and the more the silkworm struggled, the tighter the silk tightened.
Zhao Hai, like a moth caught in a spider web, screamed miserably as he fell straight to the ground from high above, breaking his bones and tendons.
At this moment, Baihebao had been completely turned into a sea of fire.
Three thousand Black Cloud Iron Cavalry charged into the fortress, taking no prisoners and conducting no interrogations. There was only the slashing of swords and the volleying of heavy crossbow bolts.
Guo Tianyou, carrying a blood-dripping sword, walked up to Wu Feng, who was half-buried under the rubble and still barely clinging to life.
Wu Feng's face was covered in blood. Looking at this mortal general who resembled a demon god, his eyes were filled with despair and fear.
"You...you dare to slaughter White Crane Fortress...Qingyun Sect...the sect leader...will not let you get away with this..."
Guo Tianyou looked at him expressionlessly and raised the horizontal sword in his hand.
"Our master said, 'Save these words for the underworld, and tell them to the old master of the Huang family.'"
Hand up, knife down.
Blood splattered.
Half an hour later.
The battle is completely over.
The once invincible White Crane Fortress has been reduced to ruins ablaze with blue flames. Nearly a thousand outer disciples of the Azure Cloud Sect, along with two inner sect deacons, were completely wiped out.
The darkness before dawn is the deepest, with even the starlight in the sky completely obscured by a thick layer of haze.
On the ruins of White Crane Fortress, the blue flames had gradually died down, leaving only large swathes of charred wood and shattered jade stones emitting acrid black smoke in the cold wind. The smell of burnt flesh mixed with the lime fumes from the broken jade stones made people cough.
Guo Tianyou planted the horizontal sword in his hand next to a mangled corpse, took off his heavy dark red helmet, and vigorously shook his hair, which was already soaked with sweat and blood.
"Old Zhao! Has the vault down there been pried open yet!" Guo Tianyou shouted towards a huge underground cave not far away, his voice echoing back and forth in the empty ruins.
Several dull metallic clanging sounds came from the cave. Then, Zhao Sanhuai's face, covered in soot, emerged as he coughed and crawled out, carrying half of a bronze lock pillar that had been violently broken in his hand.
"I managed to pry it open, damn it, these cultivators made the door thicker than a city wall, it broke three of my crowbars." Zhao Sanhuai crawled out of the hole, brushing the dust off his body, but his expression was a little strange. "However... Commander, something's not right down there."
"Something's not right? Is there a trap?" Guo Tianyou's eyes narrowed, and he drew his sword without thinking.
"It's not a security detail. It's just...too clean." Zhao Sanhuai scratched his head, his expression as awkward as if he'd swallowed a fly. "Go take a look and you'll see. Boss Tie and a few of his brothers are down there taking inventory."
Guo Tianyou frowned, quickly walked to the edge of the cave, and strode down the broken stone steps.
The underground vault of White Crane Fortress was enormous, roughly half the size of the drill ground. Most of the luminous pearls embedded in the walls had fallen and shattered in the tremors, leaving only a few still emitting a faint glow. Iron One-Eyed stood before rows of massive mahogany shelves, holding a torch, his single eye filled with a look of utter astonishment, as if he had seen a ghost.
"Boss Tie, what's going on?" Guo Tianyou walked over and asked in a deep voice.
Iron One-Eye turned his head, shone his torch on the empty shelves in front of him, and kicked a few wooden crates scattered on the ground.
"Old Guo, look for yourself." Iron One-Eyed's voice was filled with barely suppressed anger. "This is the Qingyun Sect's largest transit hub in Dingzhou? This is where those high and mighty immortals store their wealth?"
Guo Tianyou stepped forward and peered into the boxes.
The first box contained low-grade spirit stones. However, these low-grade spirit stones were of extremely poor quality, their surfaces were covered with impurities, and some had even turned grayish-white. Their spiritual energy was pitifully thin, as if they were the residue left after someone had drained their essence.
The second box was labeled "Rejuvenation Pill." Guo Tianyou used the tip of his knife to pry open the lid; inside were indeed bottles of pills. But when he picked one up and shook it, it felt incredibly light. He uncorked it and poured some into his palm; instead of smooth, round pills, a pile of black powder emitting a pungent, medicinal dregs smell poured out.
"What the hell is this stuff?" Guo Tianyou couldn't help but curse. "This can be called a pill? If you fed this to the draft horses in Hongyun City, they'd have diarrhea for three days straight!"
"The really weird stuff is yet to come." Iron One-Eye walked to the deepest part of the vault, where there was a separate safe made of refined iron, its door already cleaved open by Iron One-Eye's giant axe. "This was supposed to store mid-grade spirit stones and high-level magic artifacts. But guess what?"
Iron One-Eyed pointed to several exquisite sandalwood boxes inside: "I happily chopped them open and found only three mid-grade spirit stones! Three! The rest are just stone slabs carved from ordinary jade, with some spirit-gathering array runes drawn on them, used to impersonate spirit stones and make a show of it!"
Guo Tianyou was stunned.
Although he was just an ordinary military general, he knew what a stronghold of White Crane Fortress meant. It was like a country's important border town and main granary; how could it be filled with moldy bran and stones?
"This is all the junk?" Guo Tianyou looked around in disbelief. "Where's the ledger? Did you find it?"
“Found it, it’s on that stone table over there.” Zhao Sanhuai followed, pointing to a stone platform in the corner.
Guo Tianyou strode over, picked up a thick ledger, and casually flipped through a few pages. Although he wasn't very literate, he could still make out the densely packed deficits and records of patching up one problem with another. "Something's not right... something's not right." Guo Tianyou closed the ledger, his eyes becoming extremely serious. "This doesn't look like it was moved beforehand. Judging by this, the place has been empty for a long time. These bastards are trying to make a show of wealth with empty boxes!"
"Who cares if it's empty or not! It's their territory anyway, so even if it's just a pile of junk, I'll take it all back!" Iron One-Eyed spat. "Turn over all those broken bricks and tiles too, and see if there are any valuable array base materials. We have to leave before dawn!"
……
Two hours later.
The sky was bright.
On the official road outside the north gate of Hongyun City, three thousand Black Cloud Cavalrymen, like a dark cloud, carrying a strong stench of blood, slowly drove into the city gate.
In the center of the procession were more than a dozen large carts. However, compared to the imposing momentum when they set out, the convoy returning with spoils of war looked rather meager. Apart from the dismantled eight-ox crossbows, the carts were mostly loaded with array materials salvaged from the walls of White Crane Fortress, as well as some weapons and medicinal herbs of extremely poor quality.
Zheng Yi was still wearing that gray-blue cotton robe, standing in front of the largest armory in Nanshi.
Han Wuhen and Elder Liu stood behind him, both craning their necks to look towards the city gate.
"They're back! They're back!" Han Wuhen rubbed his hands excitedly. "Sir, listen to the sound of those hooves, how exhilarating! I knew it! With our Black Cloud Heavy Cavalry out, that worthless White Crane Fortress is nothing but a piece of cake! They must have gotten a lot of good stuff this time!"
Zheng Yi didn't speak, but just watched quietly as Guo Tianyou rode his horse closer.
Guo Tianyou dismounted, knelt on one knee, and clasped his hands in a fist salute: "Sir! White Crane Fortress has been pacified. A thousand outer disciples and two Foundation Establishment deacons have all been killed. Not a single one escaped."
"What about the casualties?" Zheng Yi reached out to help him up and asked calmly.
"The heavy armor battalion suffered 12 dead and 40 lightly wounded. Most of them were injured by dying cultivators who self-destructed their magical artifacts." Guo Tianyou gritted his teeth.
Zheng Yi nodded: "Okay. Let him rest in peace, and the compensation will be paid at the highest level."
“Sir…” Guo Tianyou stood up, hesitated for a moment, then turned and pointed to the large cart behind him, “We won this battle, but… we are too ashamed to show you the spoils. These scum of the Qingyun Sect are dirt poor. The entire White Crane Fort’s treasury contains less usable items than a fraction of what our Huang family found during their raid.”
"What?!" Han Wuhen's smile froze instantly. "Old Guo, are you kidding me? White Crane Fort is a major stronghold, how could there be nothing there? Did they hide it? Or did you not search carefully enough?"
"My men even pried open the floor tiles to check! Boss Tie and his gang didn't even leave the rat holes unchecked!" Guo Tianyou glared at Han Wuhen, annoyed. "Go see for yourself! It's all fake medicine and worthless spirit stones! Do you really think I wanted to bring back a bunch of junk?"
Han Wuhen refused to believe it and quickly ran to the front of the cart with his two chubby little legs. He lifted the tarpaulin to protect it from the rain and grabbed a handful of spirit stones.
Han Wuhen's chubby face fell after just one glance.
"This...this isn't even a low-grade spirit stone! The spiritual energy is almost completely leaked out; it's just a pile of useless stones!" Han Wuhen hurriedly opened the medicine box next to him. "This medicine is also...it's all pills made from old, rotten wood and medicinal dregs!"
Elder Liu also stepped forward, picked up a broken jade slip, probed it with his divine sense for a moment, and his brows furrowed deeply.
“Sir.” Elder Liu walked to Zheng Yi’s side, his expression extremely solemn. “Commander Guo is right. White Crane Fortress wasn’t looted; it was just an empty shell. This jade slip records the supply allocation for White Crane Fortress over the past six months. Starting three months ago, the inner sect of the Azure Cloud Sect stopped allocating cultivation resources of mid-grade or higher to White Crane Fortress. They even withheld 70% of the daily Qi Gathering Pills.”
Zheng Yi's gaze swept across the crowd and landed on the car at the front, which was full of account books.
"Move all the account books, jade slips, and letters to my study." Zheng Yi's voice wasn't loud, but it carried an irresistible air of authority.
"Fatty, Old Liu, you two come with me."
……
The city lord's mansion, study.
The once spacious study was now crammed full of dozens of dusty wooden crates. The air was thick with the smell of stale paper.
Han Wuhen and Elder Liu had been engrossed in examining the documents for three whole hours. Guo Tianyou and Zhao Sanhuai stood outside the door, guarding it like two door gods.
"Snapped!"
Han Wuhen slammed a thick ledger onto the desk, wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, and said breathlessly, "Sir, it all matches up. I've turned the accounts for the past six months upside down."
Zheng Yi sat in a chair, holding a cup of tea that had gone cold, and looked at him: "What did you see?"
"They're empty! They're completely empty!" Han Wuhen's eyes gleamed with the shrewdness and fervor of a businessman. "These dozens of outposts of the Qingyun Sect's outer sect still have the same high expenses on the surface, but their actual income has long since dried up! Especially after we wiped out the Huang family, the iron mines and medicinal fields in Baishi City were cut off from their supply. They're like wild boars whose main blood vessels have been severed!"
Elder Liu also put down a jade slip in his hand, took a deep breath, and his tone was filled with undisguised shock.
“It’s not just the outer sect. Sir, this is an encrypted jade slip used by Wu Feng and Zhao Hai to communicate with the inner sect elders. I went through a lot of trouble to break through a small part of the restriction.” Elder Liu handed the jade slip to Zheng Yi.
"It mentioned the phrase 'depleted spiritual veins.'" Elder Liu swallowed hard. "The underground spiritual veins of Qingyun Mountain's main peak seem to be in serious trouble. The inner sect's resources are currently entirely dependent on exploiting the outer sect and secular affiliated families. The reason they are so envious of the Huang family's tens of thousands of mid-grade spirit stones and that fictitious 'Purple Gold Fire Sword' is not because of greed, but because they... are starving!"
The study fell silent instantly.
The cold wind outside made the windowpane rustle.
Zheng Yi did not take the jade slip. He simply placed the teacup in his hand gently on the table, making a crisp ceramic clinking sound.
He stood up and walked to the huge sheepskin map.
On that map, the Qingyun Mountain Range, where the Qingyun Sect is located, was depicted as extremely majestic, seemingly unshakeable.
No wonder.
Zheng Yi looked at the continuous mountain range, and a cold and mocking smile gradually appeared on his lips.
"No wonder they used berserk talismans to drive away the monsters, no wonder Mo Ku risked offending Tuoba Hong to launch a strong attack on Hongyun City, no wonder they resorted to such underhanded tactics on the trade route."
Zheng Yi turned around and looked at Han Wuhen and Elder Liu. His deep eyes gleamed with a chillingly wise light.
"This is not arrogance. This is despair at the end of the road." (End of Chapter)