Chapter Sixty: A Moment of Fantasy

“In the region of Xuzhou, there have been more than fifty major battles throughout the dynasties.”
“The rights and wrongs are difficult to judge.”
“But historians have all taken note that it was on this ancient battlefield that the rise and fall of countless dynasties were decided, one prospering as another declined. That is why, since ancient times, there has been talk of vying for supremacy in the Central Plains.”

The current Emperor is but a child of three years.
And the chaos caused by women meddling in government—hens crowing at dawn, the inner palace interfering in state affairs—serves as a cautionary tale.
To resist the southern rebels and demonic cultists, the one who holds the reins of military and state power is none other than the young and vigorous Prince Regent, which is only fitting in the eyes of all.

This Prince Regent is indeed a man of remarkable talent.
He knows full well that his authority is rooted in the realization among the stubborn gentry that disaster looms—a calamity of epic proportions is about to sweep up from the south and crush them. The temporary retreat of the Westerners, together with their covert support and instigation, gave him the opportunity to play one faction against another and secure his grip on power.
If not for the pressure of the man-eating demons from the south,
the Prince Regent’s greatest headaches would have been assembling a cabinet and ensuring the Qing court’s dignified abdication.
But now—
Abdication?
If you step down, who will protect us from the demon Lan Yi? Who will stop those bloodthirsty warriors from bringing ruin to our ancestral estates?
As long as you can hold back Lan Yi,
then anything can be negotiated—money, manpower, Western armaments, the real monks and grandmasters we’ve invited, the warriors—yes, among the finest martial champions of our vast nation, we can select a dozen or so; with blessings from true monks and high priests, surely they are more formidable than that demonic sorcerer, right?

This decrepit war machine that is the Qing court, teetering on the verge of collapse, was, through the unwillingness of the land’s vested interests, somehow jolted back to movement. A patchwork army of more than a hundred thousand men of diverse backgrounds and complicated composition was assembled, marching south to do battle with the warrior factions.
The first battle would decide everything—the fate of the dynasty hung in the balance.
As the people of Dongyang would say, the very rise or fall of the Empire rests on this engagement!

Xuzhou.
This ancient battlefield became the focus of the Prince Regent’s attention.
The area boasted convenient transport by water and land, with both canal and railway. The movement of troops and supplies was easy to coordinate here; even with the Qing army’s pitiful mobilization abilities, they could, within a week and with total disregard for casualties, muster an army of one hundred thousand to march south—a force overwhelming in numbers compared to the warriors’ group.
According to reports from scouts,
the southern warriors, even counting all in Jinling, numbered no more than ten thousand.

A hundred thousand against ten thousand—overwhelming superiority!
The Prince Regent would have liked to say as much, but it was only fit to fool the soldiers, who might have been tilling their fields as peasants just days before.
Ten thousand warriors.
Even if not all of them were masters with bodies as hard as steel, nor all possessed of supernatural might, they were enough to strike terror into any army of the age in open battle. And a single Immortal Lan Yi was a nightmare with no solution.
The rank-and-file soldiers did not understand this,
but the upper echelons were well aware that, rather than a battle, it was more of a gathering of chips to take south—an armed parade before Lan Yi, hoping to negotiate. If Lan Yi refused to compromise, then all these men would die in front of him—yes, die in front of him!
As if, with enough deaths,
Lan Yi would be moved, would relent, would finally sit down to talk things through.
In any case, before the common soldiers were all dead, people like the Prince Regent, accustomed to comfort, would not die. As for the rest, after all the bluster and forced marches, deeply buried beneath their bravado was a gnawing anxiety. They had reached Xuzhou, and rumor had it that the warriors’ army was also approaching.
But as yet, no engagement.
The scouts were still out probing.
“Your Highness, our troops are in high spirits—why not seize the moment and attack at once?”
The speaker was Yuan Peng.
Though crippled by a foot ailment, he still commanded the Northern Army and had been summoned by the Prince Regent.
The Prince Regent was nothing if not audacious.
His promise to Lan Yi was the entire empire; to Yuan Peng, it was half the realm and the future promise of abdication, all to lure this military genius to his side.
“Do not be impatient, Lord Yuan. The blessings from Master Zhang and Master Nima are not yet complete; the golden-armored divine soldiers and silver-armored divine generals of our vanguard are still in preparation, their divine power not yet at its peak,” said the Prince Regent, brimming with confidence.
Yuan Peng’s large head visibly twitched.
“Besides the golden and silver divine soldiers, the shamans’ prayers will summon the northern dragon’s spirit to devour the demon’s luck. The spells cast by the many high masters will sap the demon’s will and cause him to perish on the battlefield.”
It’s over.
He’d come only to send his men to their deaths.
A trace of despair flickered in Yuan Peng’s eyes; he’d brought his thirty thousand men, only to find his allies were nothing but charlatans pretending at mysticism. If not for his own desperate ambition to be Emperor, he would have thrown it all away and left by now.
No, not yet—
A hundred thousand men are not a hundred thousand pigs.
There might yet be hope in this battle.
Those warriors still fear machine guns, bombs, and artillery; with careful planning, perhaps a blow could be struck, an opportunity created.
As Yuan Peng racked his brains for a way to grasp the throne,
a cold gleam flashed in the Prince Regent’s cheerful eyes.
Ha, they all want to push him into battle with the warriors, then when things go awry, shove him forward to bear Lan Yi’s wrath, then turn their coats and surrender, hoping to preserve more of their interests, perhaps even join the warriors and enjoy privileged resources?
Where in the world is there such a convenient outcome?
Since they were sending him to die, he would drag them all down with him.
A subtle madness flickered in the Prince Regent’s eyes!
His envoy to the south had already been flayed and hung from the gates of Jinling; Lan Yi’s attitude was unchanged—he meant to utterly destroy them! They had long since lost any path of retreat. The first targets for the upstart warrior clans would be the gentry, to establish a new order!
Before the Westerners left,
they had secretly produced a batch of special munitions for him in the munitions factory at Yanjing.
The power of these bombs was said to be astonishing—even warriors would have no way to evade their all-penetrating attack. If used unexpectedly, perhaps a number of warriors could be killed, and Lan Yi himself would feel the pain.
A wounded Lan Yi would surely fly into a rage.
Then they would all die together.
But if he were truly favored by fate, and luck allowed him to slay the arrogant Lan Yi, would that not be even better? He could then turn on all those covetous, treacherous men, kill them to the last, heads rolling in heaps!
Now was the hour of fantasy.
The Prince Regent, Yuan Peng, all the factions and eccentric talents indulged in their dreams.
In their fantasies,
they were like a runaway carriage, charging blindly, headlong into the great, silent, and unscalable wall named “the warriors,” hidden in the fog of war.