Chapter 422 - Return of Old Military Plans

Sometimes being neutral could bring great benefits. At the very least, it prevented unnecessary sacrifices in fights we shouldn't have been in. But other times, people took this silence as a sign of weakness.

I sat atop a boulder, staring at the written reports.

Swish!

Tingfeng swung a wooden sword nearby, moving and twirling the weapon like a toy.

“How did this happen?” I asked Tingfeng.

I shifted around, trying to find a more comfortable position on the boulder as I waited for his answer.

Just as I was about to wonder whether he had even heard me, Tingfeng stopped, sweat steaming off his body. Then the steam was cut into a thousand pieces as he released his sharp Qi. His presence alone felt like razors cutting against my skin.

“Am I now the one in charge of security?” Tingfeng asked. “If you want better coverage, give me a bigger team.”

“No, but I heard you were the one who killed most of the beasts who have approached the Misty Mountains.”

“That was just training. I did not ask them why they were there,” he said.

“Recently, we have been suffering from beast attacks, and no caravans have been able to reach this place,” I explained. “Also, many people traveled outside the mountains to meet with their families, trade, or do whatever else they wanted. Well, many of them have been indiscriminately killed.”

It could have been the Azure Frost Sect role-playing as beast attacks to get me on their side of the war. But I investigated, and they were real beasts. There were beast corpses too, and their neural signals appeared normal, meaning they weren't enslaved. Their bodies also showed signs of being untamed.

So they were just trying to pick a fight with me.

That was a bad move.

It was like fighting with someone and deciding to punch some random dude just to drag them into the fight, creating even more enemies for yourself.

“What do you think they’re doing this for? Should we fight?” Tingfeng’s gaze sharpened. “I volunteer to be in the vanguard, practice can only take swordsmanship so far.”

“We will see,” I said, followed by a brief smile.

The people in this world had personal power that, in some ways, surpassed all the military power of my previous world. But that didn’t mean they were better at war. Usually, you only needed to be a stage higher to deal with an entire war with a swing of your hand. With those options on the table, a detailed strategy had no room to develop.

“Now, let’s talk about what your job will be before and after the fighting comes,” I said, beginning to explain my plan for dealing with this crisis.

It was a shame, since it was going to be a massacre. How much talent was going to be lost amongst the beasts? If only they hadn’t wasted their time with things like war and trying to eliminate humanity.

…

A few days later, some important people showed up at my doorstep. We sat around a table in my office on the top floor of the Library Pagoda.

I never planned to have meetings here, so the office was decorated with weird artifacts and looked a bit out of place. Things like a statue of a many-armed naked goddess worshiped by one of the towns I traveled through back then, and stone tablets with drawings of ancient cultivators.

Kong Lijuan looked around with a calm, unimpressed gaze. She was taller than I remembered her, with longer dark hair.

A long time ago, during the tournament between the four great sects, she defeated Song San with a technical knockout. She was the equivalent of Song Song from the Void Piercing Sect, but calmer and a bit older.

From what I sensed, she was also a Core Formation Cultivator now, around two-star.

The other was a man with a young-looking face who kept fanning himself. He was from the Azure Frost Sect, and one of the few males who had reached Core Formation in that sect.

Rumors said he practiced a peculiar secret technique. His name was Huang Guan, and just from the glint in his eyes, I knew he was a scheming person. I was half a scheming person myself, but dealing with people like me was never something I enjoyed.

“Please, sit down. It is an honor to have you two here,” I said, sitting down on a wooden chair as the two took similar plain chairs.

“Where is Song Song?” Kong Lijuan asked.

“She is away for the moment, on a secret mission,” I lied.

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“Then are you sure you have the authority to talk this kind of high-level deal with us?” Kong Lijuan asked without missing a beat.

She really resembled Song Song a bit, and was just as blunt with her words and dull-headed when it came to politics.

“Well, I'm the leader of Wisdom Hall, and this is an organization,” I replied.

“But influence doesn't mean much. Only power does,” Kong Lijuan said, her eyes staring naturally at me with that same dullness about them.

“C'mon, you two, we are here for talks. Even though the other two great sects didn't send representatives, they are waiting and ready to follow our decisions,” Huang Guan intervened, his face turning serious as he stared at both of us. “Every second we waste here, there is a village attacked by beasts and massacred. Many mortals have gone to live in the mountains, not daring to return to their homes even after they're ravaged.”

He seemed quite the humanitarian type. I didn’t expect that woman to send someone like him to represent the Azure Frost Sect. Or perhaps it was a deliberate decision. From the brief time we spent together, she might have gotten a read on me and knew I liked working with kinder people.

Clearly, the Void Piercing Sect didn't know that, as they had sent quite the overbearing person.

Kong Lijuan… wasn't her brother, cousin, or some other relative killed by Song Song during that tournament more than a decade ago? Perhaps she held a grudge for that. But it would be a poor idea for her to try to stir things up.

I wasn't above keeping her here and giving the Void Piercing Sect her corpse later. Followed by showing my fangs and revealing that we also had a Nascent Soul powerhouse on our side. But that was an extreme resolution and a last resort. I wasn't in the business of killing people just because they annoyed me.

“Kong Lijuan, what would it take for you to be convinced and stop yapping like a dog about small things? After all, even the Void Piercing Sect needs this to work,” I said.

If it were me before creating Wisdom Hall, I wouldn't have minded her words. Heck, I didn't care about them now either. But as the leader of an organization, I had to preserve my reputation. Despite her higher cultivation, my status was much greater than hers.

Kong Lijuan stared at me with those dead-looking fish eyes that were difficult to read. Then she stood up and leaned forward, placing her hands on my desk.

She was not like Song Song, who would have flown into a rage and tried to kill me, diplomatic meeting or not.

“Why were you put in charge of Wisdom Hall?” She asked.

“Well, as is clear by the name. Because of my wisdom, of course,” I smiled smugly.

The condescending joke seemed to fly over her head as she returned to her seat, folded her arms, and looked ready to listen.

She backed down so easily?

Perhaps this was just her Sect testing my attitude. In that case, she could have just waited, and I would have revealed more of my “personality” during the war strategy discussions.

“Okay now, let's get to the crux of this meeting. We are facing an extreme humanitarian crisis,” I sighed, leaning back in my chair and staring at the ceiling.

“It has been the same everywhere.” Huang Guan shook his head. “Villages massacred, men mostly. As recently, the beasts have started using a tactic of letting the children, women, and the elderly leave. To tighten food resources during the winter for humans. They attack farms, always destroying the crops.”

That brought a frown to my face.

The beasts had never attacked with such strategy and precision. But this was not a good plan for them. Because it sent a signal to the human side that the chances of this war ending in some kind of ceasefire were slim to none.

“There are also suspicions that a lot of humans, or a powerful human organization, might be supporting the Beast Sect behind the scenes. Likely so they can gain an advantage, and they're sure the beasts will lose,” Kong Lijuan revealed.

Ah, yes. The human element of fucking everyone else over.

“How far does that cooperation go?” I asked Kong Lijuan. “Have they handed them systematic knowledge and human arts like arrays?”

“Yes, and some spies who use the Human-Beast Transformation Technique have learned that one of the Nascent Soul beast leaders has gotten their hands on a Sky Grade Technique,” she revealed.

That was bad. Real fucking bad.

“The humans behind this likely have someone who can use divination techniques. Those guys probably saw that humanity would win and believe that fate is unchangeable,” I put in my two pennies' worth. “This kind of arrogance can affect many people with future-sight techniques. They're just trying to milk the situation for benefits while weakening their partners.”

Kong Lijuan frowned.

“Then what should we do? What can we do? It isn't like we can send our Sect Leaders out there alone, or they will be surrounded and killed by the Nascent Soul beasts. But this is still just a slow death for humanity,” Huang Guan said.

I created Wisdom Hall too soon. It would have been better to establish it a bit later. Normally, I wouldn't have liked to start this early. But plans rarely kept up with reality, and a certain regressor had pushed things in this direction.

“We can try this,” I said, taking out two identical notebooks from my storage ring and pushing them across the table.

The books had no titles on their covers, and the two delegates took them and began reading.

Huang Guan's eyes widened.

“Chemical warfare? Never heard that term before,” Huang Guan inquired.

“He did something similar before when he was with the Blazing Sun Sect and in charge of defending cities every winter,” Kong Lijuan pointed out. “That strategy and his books on Monstrous Beasts have made him quite well-known.”

She was quite knowledgeable about what happened during that time. It seemed she wasn't as displeased with me as she initially appeared to be. Which pointed even more toward the Void Piercing Sect having sent her to test me.

Why? Were they planning an assault on Wisdom Hall after this ordeal with the beasts was finished? Well, I could only deal with problems as they came along. It was useless to think too much about them now. But showing my fangs a bit during this conflict should make them back off, or at least take longer when deciding whether to do whatever they were planning.

“There are plans, weapons, and arrays that increase poison spread and potency in there. Which should kill most at Foundation Establishment and everything below,” I said.

My knowledge of poison was not as vast as Song San's, nor were my Foundation Techniques centered in that direction. With him around, we could have created something that would have killed even Core Formation beasts. Essentially ending the war in one swoop.

But for now, the best we could do was eliminate the lower-ranking troops.