Demoness, where are you Fleeing to?
Chapter 1018 - 826: Steel War Chariot

Chapter 1018: Chapter 826: Steel War Chariot

Outside Xi’an City, the cannon fire roared.

Billows of flame spewed from the muzzles, followed by thick plumes of blue smoke rising to the sky.

Prince Yi, Yu Jianshen, stood on the city wall with hands clasped behind his back, his eyes profoundly somber as he gazed into the distance at the battlefield ahead.

At this moment, nearly half of the entire western wall of Xi’an had collapsed, and the areas before and behind it were nothing but ruins and broken walls.

Prince Yi’s army had been steadfastly defending Xi’an for close to four years, having been dangerously close to being overrun by the Jin Army right beneath the city walls.

Fortunately, with the aid of Buddhism, they had gradually reclaimed lost ground. At their zenith, they expanded their territory in all directions for three hundred miles, and Yu Jianshen had even organized the old and the weak in the city to grow crops both inside and outside the city walls.

At this time, although the Great Jin Dynasty was never-ending in calamities, it had consecutive years of bumper harvests, which indirectly benefited Xi’an City as well.

The South Palace of Jinque and Dasiming continually smuggled grain from the Central Plains to support the food trade in the Outer Void and Prince Yi’s great army.

But Yu Jianshen also knew that the situation in the South Palace of Jinque was difficult to maintain, and the Great Jin court was cracking down ever harder on grain smuggling.

In order to be thoroughly prepared, it was best for Xi’an City to be self-sufficient in terms of food.

However, when Shaofu Yu Jie arrived with 370,000 men from the Jingying Forbidden Army, the situation that Yu Jianshen had built up over two years was ruined in an instant.

This current Shaofu didn’t resort to any advanced military strategies, simply crushing forward in a straightforward and overwhelming manner.

They brought with them one hundred and fifty cannons forged by the Shenqi Union, each with a weight of three thousand jin and a range of thirty miles, along with twelve electromagnetic guns and five Yunzhong warships. From dozens of miles away, they could easily bombard and incrementally shred their defensive works.

The Arhats, along with Devaraja and the Bodhisattvas, descended from Buddhism, could intimidate the Court’s army of Weisuo, pushing them back three hundred miles.

But against the bombardment from these hundreds of thousands of long guns and cannons, they were helpless.

Although those bullets couldn’t injure their Buddhist bodies in a moment or even penetrate their protective Buddhist Yuan Qi, each coordinated strike aimed at them would cause these heavenly-level Buddhist cultivators to expend a huge amount of Yuan Qi.

Especially Shaofu Yu Jie himself, with his middle heaven level Haoqi cultivation combined with the force of 370,000 men from the Jingying Forbidden Army and 1.2 million from the army of Weisuo, he swept across the battlefield, suppressing and overpowering everything in his path.

His "Zhenya" technique was already progressing towards the level of Holy Heaven, and he had also awakened a second technique from the Rule of Extreme Heaven named "Dongcha," which complemented his suppression technique.

As a result, powerful beings such as Randeng and Maitreya, the True Spirits of Buddhism, could only temporarily retreat and keep a low profile.

They had no choice but to slowly withdraw back into Xi’an City, handing back the territories they had earlier reclaimed to the Court.

Prince Yi, Yu Jianshen, gazed into the distance, with a somewhat dazed expression.

He saw the Jin Army’s camps in the far distance cooking up a storm, their Fire-Head Army boiling water, butchering pigs, and slaughtering sheep. The aroma of the meat, drifting over dozens of miles, plummeted the morale of Prince Yi’s army to rock bottom.

The Ice Age disaster sparked by Jinque Heaven Palace and the four years of fierce battles in Xi’an Prefecture hadn’t weakened the Jin Dynasty’s Yuan Qi; instead, they strengthened the power of the Jin nation, growing more formidable by the day.

The Court was not only able to support the rotation of several million soldiers in the Xi’an campaign, sharpening the previously decaying army of Weisuo as sharp as a knife’s edge, but also managed to increase the regular provision of meat from once every five days to every two days.

It was said that Prince Fenyang had invented a dish called "braised pork," which turned pork with a strong smell into an extremely delicious meal.

It was the provision of this meat that made the Weisuo soldiers see the rotation system not as a dreadful obligation but as an opportunity they were eager to join in droves.

Once the Court intended to withdraw them from the front lines, it would incite wails and tears among the Jin soldiers, leading to profound discouragement.

The heart of Prince Yi, Yu Jianshen, clenched tightly as he wondered just how wealthy the Jin Dynasty had become to allow such extravagance?

Reportedly, Prince Fenyang also called for the large-scale breeding of pigs and sheep by the people of Henan, Shanxi, and other places, to use up the surplus grain.

Although Yu Jianshen sternly suppressed it, envy still inevitably burgeoned in his chest.

He thought that all this should have been his—potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and even that hybrid wheat.

If he were the Emperor of the Jin Dynasty, then surely his prosperous reign would be far superior to the present.

Yu Jianshen’s train of thought halted abruptly, only because a woman’s figure arrived at his side.

It was Dasiming, her expression equally grim as she looked towards the west. Watching how the incoming cannonballs flattened and shattered the dilapidated walls and ruins.

"Please, your Highness Prince Yi, do not worry. This is merely a temporary setback,"

Dasiming said with an icy tone: "This time, I have brought two million shi of grain, including 1.4 million shi of wheat, and also 300,000 jin of gunpowder, sufficient to support the Xi’an great army for several months."

Her mood was far from pleasant, given that the South Palace of Jinque could procure so much grain solely because of the bumper harvests in Hebei, Henan, Liaodong, and Shandong.

The abundant harvest was flooding the market, and even with strict control by the Court, it was hard to cover all bases.

This also demonstrated the great power of the Jin Dynasty; even the storied prosperity of the Rule of the Three Dynasties was nothing compared to the current situation where surplus grain had to be dumped.

Yu Jianshen felt a slight easing of his mind; although they lacked meat to boost morale, wheat could still quell the grievances among his men.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes could fill stomachs, but one could not subsist on them daily.

"Regrettably, I couldn’t find wheat seeds. It seems that only the Shen Nong Institution can cultivate hybrid wheat seeds, sowing them once a season. However, those seeds would now be of no use to you."