Chapter 408 : Expansion (3)

After the zealots' send-off ceremony wrapped up, the army of eighty thousand split into two columns and began their march.

Fifty thousand soldiers and eight hundred Heavenly Demon Divine Cult warriors headed south to rendezvous with the forces in Sichuan. Thirty thousand soldiers, three thousand cavalry, and roughly a hundred Cult warriors turned toward Qinghai.

Just as Il-mok had wanted, Dokgo Ryong and Baek Un-hak were moving separately.

Baek Un-hak accompanied the Provincial Military Commander to Sichuan.

"BWAHAHAHA! Finally! I've been itching for this for months!"

Dokgo Ryong was marching with Il-mok toward Qinghai.

‘Is it just me, or did the Commander pawn the crazier old master off on me?’              

Just listening to Dokgo Ryong's booming laughter echoing from the distant cavalry vanguard was enough to give him a throbbing migraine, and they hadn't even reached the battlefield yet.

In fairness, it was a sensible division of forces.

Nomadic cavalry was better suited for open-field engagements than siege defense. On the other side, while the Baek Family's hidden weapon arts were great in open combat, they truly shone in a defensive siege where the enemy was neatly separated from friendly forces. 

Il-mok personally leading the Qinghai division was also a calculated move on his part. Since the Qinghai high command was completely irredeemable, they were effectively just disposable trash waiting to be purged.

With zero need for the Provincial Military Commander to negotiate or play politics, it was far more efficient just to let Il-mok take the vanguard and completely nuke the enemy's morale with the World-Destroying Primordial Jade Palm

Besides, unleashing the World-Destroying Primordial Jade Palm during a siege would risk blowing the walls clean off. The move was an overpowered technique with an absurdly wide blast radius and zero regard for collateral damage.

All in all, there were perfectly rational reasons behind how the units and commanders were assigned.

"Young Master Il-mok! This time, I'm going to be the one to chop off the enemy general's head, so you'd better sit back and leave him to me!"

And yet, as he listened to Dokgo Ryong’s ramblings, Il-mok found himself second-guessing the Provincial Military Commander's motives more and more by the minute.

***

They departed Lanzhou at dawn and pushed forward until sundown, then set up a temporary camp and settled in for the night.

"Head of the Dokgo Family, I need you to have the cavalry take shifts scouting the Qinghai army's movements."

"Leave it to me!"

Il-mok swallowed his unease and added quickly, "I am strictly asking for reconnaissance. Under no circumstances are you to launch a lone cavalry charge."

"Oh, come on! Wouldn't it be better if I thinned out their numbers a bit before the main battle?"

He had a point.

If he actually has some sense and just harassed them and pulled back in a timely manner.

‘The problem is you'd just bulldoze your way straight into the middle of their lines like a complete retard.’

Since he couldn’t exactly say that to the patriarch of one of the Five Great Demonic Families, Il-mok quickly fed him an excuse he knew the old man would love.

"I'm planning to settle this tomorrow with a head-on clash. I want a clean victory."

"BWAHAHAHA! Well, look at that! It turns out Young Master Il-mok is a man I can actually communicate with!"

Dokgo Ryong took the bait without a second thought and laughed as he strode out of the command tent.

Roughly four hours later, when the moon was sitting high in the midnight sky, Dokgo Ryong stepped back inside the tent.

"According to my boys on patrol, those Qinghai bastards have also set up camp for the night."

"How far are they?"

"The scouts said it took them about two hours of riding to get there, so I'd say they're roughly twenty-five kilometers away."

Hearing Dokgo Ryong's answer, one of the generals standing in for the Provincial Military Commander chimed in.

"If both sides start advancing at dawn tomorrow, we should meet somewhere around here by midday."

The general tapped his finger on a spot on the war map that roughly detailed the borders of Gansu and Qinghai. Il-mok quietly pushed a wooden marker representing their allied forces to that exact spot before turning back to Dokgo Ryong.

"Did your men get a rough estimate of their numbers?"

"It was pitch black out there, so getting an exact headcount was impossible, but they reckon around thirty thousand, give or take."

Armed with the fresh intel provided by the nomad cavalry, the command staff dove right back into their strategy meeting.

Winning was a given. The real challenge was minimizing their own casualties while capturing as many enemy soldiers alive as possible, so they went back and forth on how best to use the terrain to their advantage.

"Why are we overcomplicating this?! We just need to smash straight through their front lines and chop off the enemy commander's head!"

All except Dokgo Ryong, of course.

***

The following morning.

After quickly throwing down a light breakfast, the Gansu army immediately broke camp and resumed its march. They successfully reached their predetermined battlefield ahead of schedule and locked down their formations.

Sure enough, the approaching Qinghai army soon appeared on the distant horizon.

"I have no idea what these people are doing."

What’s strange is that Il-mok hadn't received a single report of enemy scouts probing their lines. These people were marching without sending any advance units or conducting any reconnaissance at all.

The general beside Il-mok gave a wry smile at the remark.

"Perhaps they are acting this way because the news of the Western Military Command's defeat has not yet reached them."

It was a reasonable theory, so Il-mok nodded.

But as the enemy forces marched closer, Il-mok cocked his head in confusion.

"I was puzzled when I heard the cavalry's report, but they really do look to be just over thirty thousand. Wasn't the Qinghai army's official formation supposed to be thirty-five thousand?"

Even factoring in their civilian militias, the official quota drafted by the imperial command was firmly set at thirty-five thousand.

Because Qinghai's total population was significantly lower than Gansu's, they had naturally been assigned a smaller quota to fill. Shaanxi, on the other hand, had a quota much larger than Gansu's. Either way, the army marching toward them was only thirty thousand strong, missing a solid five thousand men.

"It seems Qinghai’s Provincial Military Commander has been falsifying his troop rosters to embezzle military supplies."

The Gansu general answered with a humiliated expression, looking as if he had just been personally insulted by the corruption.

"Ha."

A humorless laugh slipped out of Il-mok before he could stop it.

‘They really maxed every single branch on the corruption tree.’

They had probably been siphoning off the gear meant for the civilian militias rather than the standing army's official supplies. After all, those items are rarely used unless a rebellion occurs. But even corruption had to have a reasonable limit. The fact that they had embezzled the supplies of five thousand soldiers proved they were absolutely blinded by greed.

They had almost certainly siphoned off the resources allocated to the reserve troops — soldiers who wouldn't be called up unless there was a rebellion or a war. Things that, in theory, would never be needed. But even so, there was a limit. Five thousand men's worth of supplies was a lot of skimming. Someone had been extraordinarily greedy.

After chuckling to himself, Il-mok stepped forward as the enemy line came to a stop.

As Il-mok moved to the front lines, his soldiers immediately parted like the Red Sea to clear a path for him.

Every single man stared at Il-mok with eyes brimming with religious awe as he walked past them. The weight of their fanatical gazes was incredibly burdensome, but Il-mok forced his face to remain completely stoic.

This was an army held together by faith, which meant he had no choice but to keep playing the part of the Divine Envoy.

Closely following right behind Il-mok were Jin Hayeon, Hyeokryeon Seon-ah, and Ju Seo-yeon.

They passed through their own lines and kept going until they reached roughly the midpoint between the two armies before stopping.

"I am Il-mok, the Eighth Disciple of the late Heavenly Demon and the youngest brother of the current Cult Leader! Why are you allowing yourselves to bleed for those wicked eunuchs currently rotting the Imperial Court from the inside out?!"

The moment Il-mok infused his voice with internal energy and projected it across the battlefield, an enraged scream echoed back from the Qinghai lines.

"You filthy traitor?! How dare a filthy rebel like you mock the Imperial Family and His Majesty's servants?!"

As expected of a bastard known for flattering the Eastern Depot, a rather passionate reaction popped out.

"Shut your mouth! I wasn't talking to you!"

Il-mok bluntly cut off the Qinghai Provincial Commander before immediately turning his attention back to the enemy soldiers.

"We are here to completely eradicate the corrupt eunuchs who couldn't care less if you commoners live or die! We will forge a brand new world!

"We are going to purge the Imperial Family and the eunuchs who care nothing for your lives, and we will usher in a new era! It's still not too late! Those of you who actually care about the people, drop your weapons and surrender now!"

Before his words had even finished echoing, the murmuring spread through the Qinghai ranks like a ripple.

"Don't let that rebel's words get to you!!"

After another shout from Qinghai’s Provincial Military Commander, drums and war horns sounded from within the enemy formation.

It was a comical spectacle.

The Western Military Command's soldiers had moved with sharp discipline when those signals rang out. The Qinghai army, on the other hand, was a disorganized mess that was painful to watch.

For a few seconds, the entire front line just awkwardly bumped and tangled into each other.

"What are you waiting for?! Bring me that rebel's head and you'll be rewarded handsomely!!"

Spurred on by the Qinghai Commander's bribe, random soldiers broke formation from all over the enemy camp and charged madly toward Il-mok.

‘Tsk. These guys don't even hold a candle to the Western Military Command.’

There were barely a hundred of them and it wasn't even an organized unit response. It was literally just a disorganized mob of individuals so blinded by greed and military glory that they had broken ranks to claim the bounty. 

Two-thirds of them were rogue cavalrymen, while the remaining third seemed to be low-level martial artists, judging by the lightness of their footwork as they came sprinting over.

Il-mok shook off his disappointment and began cycling the Qi of all three dantians simultaneously.

Although he couldn't dispose of hundreds of men at once like he had during the war with the Western Military Command, Il-mok decided to place more significance on suppressing their momentum.

Besides, it was a massive area-of-effect technique he wouldn't be able to use once a chaotic close-quarters melee began anyway.

In a matter of seconds, the pack of greedy jackals reached his immediate striking distance.

The condensed Taiji sphere Il-mok had molded between his twin palms shot out of his hands and flew straight into the charging mob. 

Then the world turned white.

BOOM!!!

As always, nothing remained at the epicenter of the World-Destroying Primordial Jade Palm. Every single man caught at the epicenter was instantly vaporized into dust. Even the unlucky bastards caught on the outer edges got torn apart by the blast.

A second later, a deafening roar that completely drowned out the cataclysmic blast of the World-Destroying Primordial Jade Palm erupted from the allied army behind him.

"WAAAAAH!!!!!"

"MIGHTY IS OUR GOD!!!"

Il-mok didn't even need to look over his shoulder to know what was happening. He could perfectly picture the bloodshot eyes of his fanatical zealots, completely consumed by religious madness.

"All forces! Charge!!"

He drew the Ascension Sword and shouted the order, then charged toward the enemy with his three maids at his heels.

Bwoooooo!!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The war horns and drums rang out from the Gansu lines, and then the rhythmic thunder of thirty thousand pairs of feet hit the earth all at once. The sound had an uncanny, unified quality to it because the soldiers were keeping time to a hymn as they charged.

The craziest part was that nearly two-thirds of these men were imperial soldiers who had just surrendered from the Western Military Command a few days ago. And yet, they were screaming the Cult's hymns right alongside the others. 

They had apparently memorized the lyrics from the original Lanzhou veterans during the long march here.

“GLO~RY! GLORY! O ’ DIVINE CULT!!”

Il-mok had been desperately trying to hold back a laugh as the hymn kept pouring in from behind him, but he finally lost the battle.

"These people really are something else."

The shield-bearers at the front of the enemy line were throwing down their weapons and dropping to their knees one after another.

"W-We surrender!"

"P-Please spare us!!"

The vast majority of the people belonging to the front line were those who had simply been dragged away from their daily livelihoods to be used as a kind of arrow fodder. 

It was an impossible task for everyday people to maintain their sanity and hold the line after watching a man vaporize a hundred soldiers, only to immediately see an army of thirty thousand zealots with crazed eyes charging at them while screaming religious hymns.

However, Il-mok wasn't laughing at their cowardice.

He was laughing at the sheer incompetence of the enemy commander who had thought that putting untrained peasants in the vanguard was a smart idea.

"Mercy will be granted to any man who drops his weapon and surrenders!!"

Il-mok let out a thunderous roar as he carved his way into the enemy lines.

"Pick up your weapons this instant!! Any man who surrenders will have three generations of his family wiped out!!"

Il-mok's answer to the officer threatening his own soldiers with annihilation was the Ascension Sword across his throat.

Slick.

While Il-mok and his three maids ripped through the enemy front line—

Swoosh.

—It turned out the enemy wasn't entirely made of scarecrows as a volley of arrows came raining down from above.

However, it was a completely laughable display.

The Gansu army hadn't even gotten into arrow range yet, and they were already firing volleys.

Swoosh.

Where the Western Military Command had fired in devastating waves with consistent timing, the Qinghai army's arrows came down completely at random. If the Western Military Command's volleys had been a roaring downpour, this was a light drizzle. It was nowhere near enough to slow down the Gansu advance, which had already pushed through the Western Military Command's arrows without stopping.

"Keep pushing!!"

"THE ENVOY OF GOD MARCHES WITH US!!"

"RAAAGGGGGHHHH!!"

The horde of screaming zealots easily brushed off the feeble rain of arrows and crashed into the enemy camp, bringing another wave of surrender from the enemy’s line.

"W-We surrender!"

"P-Please, have mercy!"

Surprisingly, even though the zealots were completely blinded by bloodlust, they completely ignored the men who had surrendered.

Instead, they ruthlessly hunted down and slaughtered those who were still foolishly gripping their weapons.

Il-mok and his attendants were at the very front of that push.

After breaking through the front line and carving his way into the enemy's center, Il-mok let out another dry laugh.

"What the fuck."

As he pushed deeper into the formation, he was starting to see men who weren't even wearing armor. He even spotted terrified men trembling as they gripped actual farming hoes instead of military spears.

He had initially assumed the corrupt command merely siphoned off five thousand men's worth of supplies, but it seemed they had siphoned off far more military supplies than that.

Since showing up to the Western Military Command's inspection with that many gaps in their roster would have meant punishment, they had stuffed their numbers by dragging in men who had never even been issued equipment and hid them deep in the formation where nobody would look twice.

"You greedy bastards really bled your own province completely dry, didn't you?"

Despite standing in the center of a raging battlefield, Il-mok couldn't help but shake his head in dismay.