Chapter 640: Luo Zhao Is Still Too Young After All!

The Yan court was not the only side watching where that grain went.

After Wei received the report from its cultivators who had escorted the shipment, Xuan Wei immediately contacted Niu Youdao and demanded to know what he intended.

Niu Youdao’s reply was simple.

The grain in his hands was still grain in Yan’s hands.

He offered no further explanation.

Some things did not need explaining. So long as everyone kept watching what happened next, their anger would naturally subside when the time came.

Shao Pingbo, far away in Jin, was watching Niu Youdao’s movements even more closely.

The interception of Wei’s grain left him tossing and turning, unable to understand what Niu Youdao was doing.

Only after he learned that the cultivators of Han and Song had stopped attacking that particular shipment did he realize Niu Youdao had very likely reached some secret agreement with Han and Song.

Was Nanzhou preparing to rebel?

The thought circled through Shao Pingbo’s mind again and again, and each time he rejected it.

One reason was that he did not believe Shang Chaozong would easily betray Yan.

“Eldest Young Master, you should rest.”

Shao Pingbo stood by the window with his brows tightly furrowed, staring at snowflakes drifting outside.

Shao Sansheng came closer to persuade him, worry visible in his eyes.

Because of Niu Youdao’s interception of Wei’s grain, the Eldest Young Master had already gone two days and two nights without closing his eyes.

Yet Shao Pingbo still felt no sleepiness at all.

The present situation had been pushed forward partly by his own hand, and one of his goals had been to deal with Niu Youdao.

Even knowing that Niu Youdao had few choices left, Shao Pingbo still could not believe the man would rebel against Yan so easily.

Everything in Nanzhou, from top to bottom, was simply too calm, as though the war raging across Yan had nothing to do with them.

That calm itself felt abnormal.

From what Shao Pingbo knew of Niu Youdao, the matter could not possibly be so simple.

Where exactly was the flaw?

He had been thinking about nothing else.

“Has Grand General Yin arrived?” Shao Pingbo asked quietly.

After the grain was intercepted, the Cangzhou rebels had suddenly intensified their offensive. Shao Pingbo faintly suspected that might have some connection to Niu Youdao.

His thinking in this respect was much the same as Niu Youdao’s.

Whenever something happened, Niu Youdao’s first instinct was to suspect Shao Pingbo.

Shao Pingbo did the same in reverse.

At present, he needed someone truly proficient in military affairs to explain the purpose behind the Cangzhou rebels’ sudden offensive. Only once he understood that could he judge the other pieces properly.

Military affairs were one of his own weaknesses.

There had been major battles during Beizhou’s earlier period of independence, but the man who truly managed those campaigns had still been Shao Dengyun.

Shao Pingbo had only watched from the side and gained some exposure. From beginning to end, he had never properly joined the army himself.

His strength lay in civil administration.

Back in Beizhou, he had been handling too many matters to devote himself deeply to military study.

Of course, compared with Niu Youdao, he still understood a little more simply because he had been exposed to more.

For that reason, he had raised the problem with Taishu Xiong.

Taishu Xiong had readily agreed and directly assigned Yin Chu, Grand General of Jin, to act as Shao Pingbo’s military tutor from then on.

Shao Sansheng hesitated.

Shao Pingbo immediately sensed something was wrong.

Shao Sansheng knew perfectly well he was supposed to meet Yin Chu today, yet was still telling him to rest.

Shao Pingbo slowly turned his head and narrowed his eyes. “What happened?”

Shao Sansheng answered, “Someone from Grand General Yin’s residence sent word. They said heavy snow collapsed some barracks in the southern camp, and the Grand General hurried off to inspect the damage.”

Shao Pingbo’s cheeks tightened instantly.

He understood.

Yin Chu had patted his chest in front of Taishu Xiong and agreed to the arrangement. They had even fixed today as the date of their meeting. Shao Pingbo had specially prepared fine wine and good food for the occasion.

Then the moment Yin Chu turned away, he found an excuse and ran.

If barracks collapsed under snow under ordinary circumstances, a Grand General personally going to inspect the matter might be praised as diligence.

But if he abandoned an assignment from the Emperor of Jin over something like that, it could only mean one thing.

The powerful and noble figures of Jin still did not much care for Shao Pingbo...

...

Yan eventually realized something else as well.

Once the military grain entered Nanzhou, the journey became unusually smooth.

Why had the cultivators of Han and Song stopped attacking it?

The reason Yan noticed this was that after being burned once, Jin and Qi deliberately routed their aid supplies around Nanzhou and tried moving them through other areas instead.

The harassment continued as before.

Only Wei’s grain had become completely safe after entering Nanzhou, where Nanzhou then swallowed most of it whole.

Once people looked back at the whole sequence, the implication became terrifying.

The more they thought about it, the colder they felt.

The Yan court therefore stopped pressing Shang Chaozong to send the grain onward.

The three major sects likewise stopped pressuring Niu Youdao.

Instead, both sides suddenly began speaking to Nanzhou in gentle, reassuring tones, afraid some sudden impulse might push it over the edge.

And it was not merely them.

Jin, Wei, and Qi also noticed that something was wrong and urgently reminded the Yan court not to pursue the intercepted grain for the time being.

Nanzhou was still releasing ten or twenty cartloads now and then.

That meant it had not yet made its final decision.

It was still hesitating.

The sudden disappearance of pressure changed little at Maolu Villa. This had been expected.

Dachan Mountain and Shang Chaozong, on the other hand, found themselves somewhat unused to it.

So much grain, and now the imperial court did not want it?

“I don’t even know what trick that fellow pulled. I admit defeat. Back when he intercepted the grain like that, my heart was practically jumping out of my chest!”

Inside Dachan Mountain’s sect hall, Huang Lie shook his head and sighed before a group of senior sect figures as the subject came up.

After sighing, he sighed again.

He truly felt helpless.

Dachan Mountain could neither retreat nor advance now.

With Yan in its present state, the sect had no choice but to bind itself tightly to Niu Youdao and share both advance and retreat with him.

Niu Youdao intercepted the grain. Dachan Mountain could not stop him.

If he insisted on doing it, what was Dachan Mountain supposed to do? Turn hostile against him?

All it could do was pretend to be deaf and blind and act as though it had seen nothing.

Niu Youdao had people disguise themselves as brigands and burn the grain carts requisitioned from Dingzhou.

Nothing happened to Niu Youdao.

Instead, the three major sects put the account on Dachan Mountain’s head.

Dachan Mountain was like a mute who had eaten bitter herbs and could not speak of the bitterness. Worse, it still had to follow along and brazenly deceive the three major sects.

What else could it do but lie openly with him?

Stand up and denounce Niu Youdao?

That would accomplish nothing. It would only force Dachan Mountain into a fight with him first.

With Great Yan in its current state, was that worth it?

Dachan Mountain was not stupid either. It had sensed some of the signs.

Niu Youdao might very well have secured a road of retreat through Han and Song.

Staying tied to him might at least preserve the sect.

Even so, Huang Lie understood perfectly well that this time they had thoroughly offended Yan’s three major sects.

Niu Youdao had dragged Dachan Mountain into deep water for real.

“Ah...”

The senior figures of Dachan Mountain sighed one after another, every face pinched with worry.

...

Five li from the riverbank, inside the central command tent, Luo Zhao sat behind his desk reading battle report after battle report from the Cangzhou rebels.

His brows drew tighter and tighter.

In the end, he rose with several reports in hand and walked to the map, repeatedly comparing the written accounts against the terrain.

“Something’s wrong!” Luo Zhao suddenly said in a heavy voice, staring at the map. “There may be a trap.”

Wen You hurried over. “What is it?”

Luo Zhao pointed at the map. “Wu Gongling’s advance is too fast!”

Wen You replied, “The offensive became so fierce because Han and Song sent people to negotiate with Niu Youdao. Wu Gongling was specifically told to intensify the attack in order to push Nanzhou into rebellion.”

Luo Zhao abruptly turned toward him. “At first, meeting almost no serious resistance could still be explained. But look how far this has gone.”

“Wu Gongling has nearly taken another entire province, yet the Yan court’s forces are still retreating defeat after defeat. Doesn’t it look to you as though they’re cooperating with Wu Gongling’s advance?”

Put that way, Wen You suddenly woke to the danger as well. His gaze snapped toward the map.

Luo Zhao swept one hand across it. “The front has stretched and expanded too far. Wu Gongling’s forces are now scattered over too wide an area. If anything happens, head and tail will not be able to support each other. Reinforcements won’t even arrive in time.”

“This may very well be a trap laid by Yan’s armies. Once they counterattack, the consequences could be disastrous.”

“We may have fallen into Niu Youdao’s scheme!”

He turned sharply. “Contact Wu Gongling immediately. Have him halt the offensive. No more attacks in every direction. Any forces that should contract are to contract at once, before something goes wrong.”

“Right!” Wen You nodded hard and almost ran from the tent.

...

The Yan court was seeing an entirely different picture.

The imperial armies were losing far too quickly, almost as quickly as Xue Xiao had lost those three commanderies.

One disastrous report after another arrived, and panic spread throughout the court.

If this continued, what would become of the state?

Among the heavy armies concentrated along the borders, some officers, seeing the situation turning bad, had already led their troops over to the enemy.

Only after ruthlessly executing a number of people did the court manage to stabilize the line.

How exactly was this war being fought?

How had they managed to lose this badly?

Even Tong Mo began openly cursing in front of cultivators from the three major sects.

When they wanted money and grain, every one of them had been more urgent than the next. But now that they were losing battles, they were racing one another to lose too.

A pack of useless fools!

The cultivators of the three major sects simply endured the insult as though they had heard nothing.

Emperor Shang Jianxiong of Yan was both terrified and furious.

He went directly to the Sect Leaders of the three major sects and erupted, warning them that if they still refused to put in real effort, then everyone could go down together.

The deterioration was already affecting the heavy forces gathered along the borders.

The three Sect Leaders finally grew nervous.

After urgent discussion, they at last decided to gather their strength and launch a counterattack.

But then a new problem appeared.

Whose men would hold command?

They had no choice but to fight over it.

If the battle was won but the forces under one faction were almost completely spent in the process, who could accept that?

The identity of the commander was a subtle and crucial point.

No side was willing to yield easily.

When the struggle over command produced no result, they finally settled on a compromise.

Each regional lord would be responsible for his own sector, while each of the three sects would separately pressure its own people to fight with full effort.

At last, the five regional armies presented the appearance of a joint counterattack and actively struck at the rebels together.

The result frightened even the three Sect Leaders.

Every one of them was defeated!

This time, it was not only Yan’s three sects that were enraged.

The people from Jin, Wei, and Qi were furious too.

Their three states had sent large numbers of cultivators to assist the fighting.

Earlier defeats could still be understood, so no one had said too much.

This time, they believed Yan was finally going to fight seriously.

The three states also wanted this torment to end as quickly as possible. They truly could not keep enduring such losses.

Who could have imagined that the cultivators of Jin, Wei, and Qi would go all-out, while the Yan armies beside them would turn and flee after barely clashing with the enemy?

The rout caught the three states’ cultivators completely off guard.

They had rushed forward to fight with their lives, only to discover the army had abandoned them and run.

Suddenly, they were the ones left holding off tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of enemy troops.

Worse, the rebel armies also contained large numbers of cultivators.

So while fighting enemy cultivators, the men from Jin, Wei, and Qi also had to survive a sea of blades, spears, and arrow rain from ordinary troops.

It was murderous.

Even escaping became difficult.

No one knew how many cultivators from the three states were shot down by volleys of arrows while trying to flee.

It had genuinely become a scene of cultivators from Jin, Wei, and Qi fighting Yan’s war for it.

Hundreds or thousands of cultivators were left fearlessly facing enemy armies numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

The spectacle was magnificent.

The losses were appalling.

How could Jin, Wei, and Qi not be furious?

...

On a hill, Wu Gongling sat astride a magnificent black horse.

He was broad-faced, fleshy, and covered in a thick beard. Watching the battlefield being cleared below, he threw his head back and laughed loudly.

“Hahaha!”

After laughing his fill, he turned to the people around him.

“That brat Luo Zhao is still too young after all. He worried over nothing and nearly unsettled my army!”

The Song cultivators present were left utterly speechless by the remark.

Hui Qingping and Quan Taifeng exchanged looks.

When they had received Luo Zhao’s warning earlier, both of their hearts had sunk.

Now, however, it seemed they might have misunderstood their sworn younger brother Niu Youdao after all...

...

Inside the central command tent beside the river, the news eventually reached Luo Zhao.

He stood before the map, face taut, and remained silent for a very long time.

Earlier, when he heard Yan’s regional armies had begun counterattacking, he had said his worst suspicion had indeed come true.

Yet the result was completely different from what he had imagined.

There had been no trap at all.

Standing nearby, Wen You said nothing.

After quietly withdrawing from the tent, he lifted his face to Heaven and released a long breath.

The judgment had been badly wrong.

They had actually been looked down upon by Wu Gongling, and worse, there was no answer to give.

Wen You could understand the Grand Commander-in-Chief’s embarrassment.

[End of Chapter 640]