Chapter 1630: Chapter 514: Return and War Machines, Resolution

Beishuo Town’s walls stretch fifteen kilometers on each side, with the main gate opened on the eastern face, directly facing the Moao Mountain Range, while the western side holds the rear gate.

Although the western side is only the rear gate, its scale is by no means small: the two gate doors are twelve meters high and four meters wide, enough to allow more than a dozen people to enter the city side by side at once.

Under the snowy night, Beishuo Town was like a pitch‑black steel behemoth, lying silently upon the earth. Above the tightly shut western gate, armored and armed soldiers would pass by from time to time, and atop the battlement towers there were quite a few men keeping constant watch on the outskirts of the city, clearly standing guard.

If one observed more closely, one would find that not only the city gate, but even the snowy ground for several kilometers outside the gate, was dotted with many plain‑clothed scouts, ceaselessly patrolling and shifting about, and from time to time one could even hear the sounds of skirmishes.

"I already came back on the night of the twenty‑seventh..."

High in the air roughly two li to the north of Beishuo City, Xia Hong was staring at Beishuo City. Sensing Xia Chuan and Xu Ning drawing near from behind, he simply waved his hand to signal them not to salute, then slowly spoke.

"Big Brother has been watching us from the shadows this whole time?"

Xia Hong turned his head. Seeing the excitement on Xia Chuan and Xu Ning’s faces, he couldn’t help but show a faint smile as well. He first set aside the matter of Yang Zhun for the moment, then nodded to the two, his expression approving as he said, "These three years, the surprises you’ve brought me are no small matter..."

Last night, he had emerged from the Jiuqu Blood Corridor, descended from Danxue Peak, and upon arriving at East River City, just by making a few casual inquiries in the city, he immediately figured out that a great war was underway.

The Great Xia’s four‑route army had launched war against the Northern Five Towns all at once!

When he first heard this news, Xia Hong had been both shocked and bewildered. Even though he had previously learned part of Great Xia’s situation from Jiang Xinfan, and had roughly guessed that the Camp was no longer what it once was, four‑front warfare at the same time still struck him as somewhat overreaching.

No matter how strong you are, you can’t fight like this!

But after observing the specific situation of the four Xia Armies, roughly discerning the Xia Army’s operational intent, and then, on top of that, personally witnessing Dragon Valley Army Chief Li Yangtian’s defection last night and Great Xia’s bloodless capture of Dragon Valley Town... after this whole series of events, Xia Hong’s view changed.

First was the Xia Army’s strength—not only did it far exceed his imagination, it was even much stronger than what Jiang Xinfan had previously described. Which made sense: Great Xia’s development was changing with each passing day, practically different every day. Jiang Xinfan had gone to Chen Cang back in March; nine full months had passed since then, so the changes were naturally immense.

The second point was the Xia Army’s operational intent this time. On the surface, the four Xia Armies all set out together on December twenty‑sixth, but up to now—it was already the latter half of the night on the twenty‑ninth—in these three days, truly erupting into major battle, as far as Xia Hong knew, there had only been two engagements. One was Dragon Valley Town, which was mainly Li Yangtian’s defection, with only Xianyang Level forces from Great Xia intervening; the other was the just‑concluded battle at Baimu City.

So it was obvious the simultaneous movement of the four armies was for show, most likely to divert the attention of the Northern Four Towns and cover the operation against Dragon Valley Town. Once Dragon Valley Town was taken, only then did Xia Chuan truly treat Baimu City as the first main battlefield and begin direct confrontation with Beishuo.

As for the other three Xia Army routes, which have shown no movement at all thus far, they are clearly meant purely to pin down the various towns.

Xia Chuan—no, the overall commander of this campaign was Li Xuanling. Li Xuanling was obviously well aware that opening multiple fronts simultaneously was extremely unwise. Not to mention that all the towns had already turtled up inside their walls; Great Xia would be the attacker no matter whom they fought, making it all the more impossible for all four armies to engage in actual battle at once.

The final point was Great Xia’s bloodless capture of Dragon Valley, which made Xia Hong realize that in the three years he’d been gone, Great Xia’s infiltration into the Northern Five Towns had reached a truly terrifying degree. If even Li Yangtian, the number two figure in Dragon Valley, could be turned, there was no need to mention those beneath him.

Li Xuanling had dared to directly declare war, and neither Xia Chuan, Yuwen Dao, nor the various Directors of Great Xia’s departments had raised any objections. This alone proved that Great Xia had ample confidence in the current war.

And this confidence had been built under the premise that he, the Lord, was absent.

Xia Hong’s mind stirred slightly. Looking at Xia Chuan, he chuckled and asked, "You had people watching outside the Jiuqu Blood Corridor to guard against reinforcements from Chen Cang. You took even the two vassal towns into account, and still dared to rashly move troops against Beishuo? At that critical moment just now, if I hadn’t been there..."

"Even if Big Brother hadn’t been there, Yang Zhun still wouldn’t have been able to kill me!"

Hearing this, Xia Hong smiled. He thought of that Black Blade hidden in the head of the Red Silver Blade Puppet earlier, as well as the twenty Divine Machine Crossbows already set up at the rear of the battlefield, and he nodded slightly.

Xia Chuan’s Black Blade came from the Wood Puppet Guic Inheritance. As far as he knew, that Black Blade did not only have the ability to freely change size; when paired with Transparent Silk Thread, it could also unleash far greater power.

In the battle of Baimu City, there had been five thousand Xia soldiers who never moved the whole time. Xia Hong had been on the battlefield then; he’d seen very clearly that after those five thousand stopped shooting arrows, only the outermost one thousand were on duty, while the four thousand in the center had long since finished setting up the twenty Divine Machine Crossbows, merely awaiting Xia Chuan’s order.

If he wasn’t mistaken, the form of those twenty Divine Machine Crossbows had also changed greatly compared to the Battle of Hongmen four years ago. It now took two hundred Cold Resistance Level soldiers to operate a single one. Barring any surprises, the power of the Divine Machine Crossbows must be much greater than before.

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