Chapter 1 A Glimpse of Sword Light

The moment Zhuo Xianchen lifted the curtain of the carriage, a flash of sword light stabbed towards him. A veteran soldier like Zhuo Xianchen simply twisted his wrist, directly disarming the short sword from the person inside the carriage. Inside, a young girl hugged a middle-aged woman, her face filled with panic.

Zhuo Xianchen, wearing a metal mask, looked sinister and terrifying, certainly justifying the anxiety of what appeared to be a mother and daughter in the carriage. But Zhuo Xianchen didn't say a word, only gestured for the soldiers beside the carriage to be extra vigilant, and nothing more.

After the brief skirmish, only less than twenty men remained alive from the entire three-hundred-man team, mostly those who had been hiding in the carriages without making a sound. After some questioning by the soldiers, they finally understood the origins of this Taizhou Administration Commission team. It turned out that the previous Taizhou Administration Commissioner, Zeng Jianian, was old and had fallen ill from exhaustion while arranging supplies for Jiang Xujing's army. Helplessly, he had to temporarily appoint Sun Boping, who was originally coordinating supplies in Subai Town and was familiar with the situation in Taizhou, to act as the Taizhou Administration Commissioner. Due to the urgency of the military situation, Sun Boping had already started working in Taizhou, while his family was still in Subai Town. Because conditions in Subai Town were harsh, and Sun Boping was unlikely to have another opportunity to return to Subai Town after his transfer, Sun Boping immediately sent for his family to come to Tianxu City, the capital of Taizhou, to enjoy life with him. Naturally, the wealth he had accumulated during his years of service in Subai Town had to be brought along. And this wealth was indeed conspicuous, traveling during the day would likely attract the covetous eyes of many, and might even attract some bold bandits willing to gamble everything. Therefore, they had chosen to travel by night, believing that with the escort of two hundred soldiers, they would be safe.

What they didn't expect was that, unfortunately, this group escorting his family ran into Zhuo Xianchen's unit.

The convoy included Sun Boping's wife and a concubine, two sons and a daughter. And the mother and daughter Zhuo Xianchen saw were Sun Boping's wife, Qin Shi, and daughter, Sun Meier.

They didn't linger in place. Although the night raid and battle were extremely short and didn't cause much commotion, they were still in enemy territory and had to be careful. After returning to their temporary camp in the mountains, the soldiers guarding Sun Boping's family still wore masks, while the officers gathered to discuss how to handle the matter.

"Indeed a big fish," after hearing his deputy, Hu Huaijing, briefly describe the situation, Zhuo Xianchen was thinking about how to maximize the value of these people. If they could use Sun Boping's family to at least throw Sun Boping into disarray, that could disrupt the supply of Jiang Xujing's army. And the even better news was that after Sun Boping's transfer to Taizhou Administration Commissioner, no one had yet replaced him in Subai Town. Subai Town was still operating according to the steps Sun Boping had previously arranged for transferring various supplies from the rear. Compared to blackmailing an official with the family members of an official in a key position, it seemed simpler to disrupt the transfer rhythm of Subai Town and cause considerable chaos in the front-line supply.

"Let's find a place to set up camp first, is there a suitable place nearby?" Zhuo Xianchen thought for a moment, his task seemed to have become much simpler in an instant.

Shang Suixun thought for a moment and said, "There is a place. There's a Li clan here, with a lot of property. As for the people... probably every tenant under them wants to kill them. He has a manor about forty *li* from here, built into a rather stylish castle. There are probably more than five hundred family soldiers guarding it... Boss, taking it down will be costly."

Zhuo Xianchen smiled and said, "No need to attack. We have the family of the newly appointed acting Taizhou Administration Commissioner in our hands, it shouldn't be a problem to borrow the place for a day, right? No matter how tyrannical the Li family is, they won't mess with an official with real power. Wait until tomorrow night, a combined attack from inside and outside, I don't believe that so-called castle is really made of iron."

Indeed, with Sun Boping's genuine family members and the full set of official documents and other paperwork they had seized, the Li family's castle was turned over in a matter of minutes. An army of a thousand men, led by Hu Huaijing, completed this simple task. The remaining two thousand men launched the first strike against Subai Town, which now had great hidden dangers.

Zhuo Xianchen led two thousand men in a surprise attack on two teams transporting supplies, burning all the military equipment and arrows, and most of the grain. Besides taking what they needed for their own consumption, they sent some of the grain to a nearby village inhabited by ordinary farmers and tenants. They didn't even stay in the village for a single step, each cavalryman throwing the bag of grain they were carrying into the village while moving, as if they had completed their task. And they left behind their deliberately mystifying second clue—they erected a triangular flag with the words "Tianwang Stronghold" written on it in the middle of the grain pile. And their first clue, of course, was to pile up the bodies of the Xiling soldiers who had protected Sun Boping's family, set them on fire, and erect a flag beside the fire... presumably these two clues would leave different impressions in different people's minds.

And when they returned to the Li family's castle with enough grain for about three thousand people to consume for a month, they didn't even stop at the castle gate to confirm whether the castle had indeed fallen into their own hands. They were too confident. If they couldn't even do this little thing well, what were they doing in Xiling territory?

From leaving the main force under Ye Tao's orders to march urgently towards Xiling, meeting up with Shang Suixun, sneaking into Xiling territory, to robbing Sun Boping's family, capturing Li's castle, and repeatedly attacking two supply teams before returning to Li's castle, a total of seven days had passed. During these seven days, Zhuo Xianchen's Forbidden Army had been marching and fighting continuously, without a good rest. And now, except for leaving more than two hundred men to secure the castle's defenses, guard the small number of people captured in Li's castle and Sun Boping's family, the rest of the troops could rest. Although the Li family's castle was designed to only accommodate a thousand family soldiers, the luxurious houses originally for the Li family members were perfectly fine to use as dormitories. The more troublesome thing was their more than three thousand horses, the feeding grounds and forage consumption, that was the super serious challenge.

While the soldiers rested, the officers thoroughly searched the Li family's castle. Besides discovering that the castle built on the hillside actually had a secretly tunneled mountain passage leading to the back mountain, wide enough for two people to lead horses side by side, there was also a dungeon. Although Zhuo Xianchen and others were not familiar with Xiling law, they at least knew that Xiling, like Dongping, had separated from the previous unified kingdom, and the basic laws were similar, only Dongping was more advanced and complete in commercial law and tax law compared to other countries. And in any country, private detention was a crime. And after they spent two days quietly gathering the hearts of the surrounding tenants, controlling those who might report to the Xiling government, and carefully investigating the identities of the various people locked in the dungeon. Then, they discovered that the people they needed in their immature plan began to appear one after another. A middle-aged man who had been exploited by the Li family and the local government, resulting in the destruction of his family; a small official who had no background, wholeheartedly pleaded for the people, but was thrown into the dungeon by the tyrannical Li family for requesting Li to provide a little insignificant grain to help the surrounding tenants and self-cultivating farmers who were exhausted after being requisitioned by the army to raise grain. Their backgrounds matched Ye Tao's requirements for two types of people, a peasant movement leader, and a covert agent who could be cultivated for a long time to infiltrate the Xiling official system.

After spending a few days completely controlling Li's castle and the surrounding affiliated estates, everything seemed to be the same as before. While quietly extending tentacles in all directions, they made various preparations, and the noose around Subai Town and the entire Xiling army supply line was tightened slowly. Zhuo Xianchen's unit still adhered to the principle of night marching and strict concealment of their tracks, preferring to take some detours rather than let Xiling suspect the area of Li's castle when tracing them. In the entire northern part of Taizhou, the entire Zhenbei Military Department, it would probably be difficult to find a better base.

Although Sun Boping had learned that his family had been kidnapped, the kidnappers were silent, and no one came to demand a ransom or offer any other news. What bothered him even more was that various abnormal situations began to appear near Subai Town, such as supply teams being attacked from time to time, or officials counting supplies at several open-air storage yards being assassinated. These had gradually begun to affect the efficiency of supplying Jiang Xujing's army.

But for the Xiling army, this was not the most worrying problem. Just when Jiang Xujing felt that he could launch an attack at any time to defeat the Yunzhou army in front of him in one battle and expand a large area of territory for Xiling, he received extremely reliable news: the Dongping army had arrived. Not only that, but the Dongping army's camp location made him feel extremely uncomfortable, precisely stuck between the Zijing Valley camp and the Mengnan Banner army camp. If the Yunzhou army dared to set up camp so arrogantly in this place, Jiang Xujing would probably have rushed over with his army long ago, but the Blood Kirin Army did not give him this opportunity. The Blood Kirin Army set up camp at an astonishing speed, a fairly complete defensive camp was built in a short day, and the periphery of the camp was undisguisedly equipped with Shenbi crossbows, trebuchets and other long-range weapons, and the Blood Kirin Army showed a clear posture of preparing to attack.

Jiang Xujing listened to the situation reported by his scout chief, extremely angry. Did the Blood Kirin Army think he was dead? Although this was his first time dealing with the Blood Kirin Army, he was indeed shocked by the Blood Kirin Army's sophisticated equipment and well-trained soldiers, but at most the Blood Kirin Army in front of him was just over twenty thousand. Realizing that with the arrival of the Blood Kirin Army, the morale of the Yunzhou army had also greatly improved, Jiang Xujing felt that instead of waiting for his side to be fully prepared, it would be better to start fighting when both sides had high morale and were not fully prepared. He believed that he would definitely be able to wipe out that arrogant group of young people.

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Second update, a little late.