Huang Tian's heart stirred. He tried touching the voice from the Late Han Dynasty World with his own thoughts.
In a daze, a sliver of his consciousness seemed to fly out of his body, about to cross the boundary of spacetime and follow the voice into the Late Han Dynasty World.
But in the next instant,
Huang Tian felt himself stopped by a crystal-like "barrier." That sliver of consciousness crashed into it, cracking the crystal barrier in several places, but it also left him slightly dizzy as a wave of disorientation swept over him.
He couldn't help raising a hand to his forehead, then gently massaged his temples. Only after a while did he manage to recover.
"It seems I can travel to another world. It's just that I can't get through that spacetime barrier yet..."
Huang Tian thought it over. "No, that's not quite right. If I rammed the barrier with my consciousness without regard for the consequences, I might be able to break through. After all, I just managed to crack it in several places.
But there's no need to rush.
The strength of my consciousness should be related to my cultivation. If I can't break through in one go at the first level of Qi Refining, I might manage it at the second or third. There's no need to risk forcing my way across.
I'll keep cultivating and wait for the moment to come naturally."
For now, Huang Tian gave up on traveling to the Late Han Dynasty World and turned his attention to studying the scenes on the battlefield.
On the battlefield, the Yellow Turban Army numbered over ten thousand. They had the advantage in numbers, but their weapons and equipment were incomplete, and many of their ranks were filled with the old and weak.
The Han Army, by contrast, had far fewer men, just over a thousand. Their gear was complete, with halberds, spears, swords, crossbows, and armor, but they didn't seem to be regular troops either. Facing the fearless Yellow Turbans, they looked somewhat timid.
Huang Tian frowned slightly. As his gaze moved, the battlefield scene shifted with it.
On a mound, over a hundred Yellow Turban soldiers stood guard around an old man dressed in an apricot-yellow Daoist robe. He held a Nine-Section Staff in his hand. His face was dark, and his eyes slightly cloudy. Behind him flew a great banner bearing the words "General of Heaven," alongside a smaller flag inscribed with "Blue Heaven is dead; Yellow Heaven shall rise."
"General of Heaven... Is that Zhang Jiao?"
Huang Tian knew a little about the history of the Late Han. At the very least, he knew Zhang Jiao had called himself General of Heaven, while his two younger brothers, Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang, had each taken the titles General of Earth and General of People.
Thinking of this, he took out his phone and searched for the full course of the Yellow Turban Rebellion.
"In the seventh year of the Guanghe era, the Thirty-Six Regions of the Yellow Turbans rose up together, throwing seven provinces into turmoil. Emperor Liu Hong of Han lifted the proscription against the partisan factions, and commanders such as Lu Zhi led armies to suppress the Yellow Turbans. Zhang Jiao was besieged at Guangzong by Lu Zhi until he died of illness. Zhang Liang and Zhang Bao were both executed..."
After quickly browsing through the course of events, Huang Tian turned his attention back to the Late Han Dynasty World.
"Zhang Jiao seems to have only just raised his army. He doesn't have many Yellow Turban soldiers under his command yet, and the Han Court hasn't had time to mobilize its troops. So the ones fighting the Yellow Turban Army must be the local Commandery Soldiers."
Huang Tian soon reached that conclusion.
"In other words, the Late Han Dynasty World is probably somewhere around the end of February or the beginning of March. At the latest, it's May, since Lu Zhi had already defeated Zhang Jiao and besieged him at Guangzong by June."
Huang Tian silently calculated the date, then focused on the battle between the Yellow Turban Army and the Han Army.
In the Late Han Dynasty World, the sun was setting and the sky was darkening. After fighting for a long time, both the Yellow Turban and Han soldiers were utterly exhausted.
Just then, the great banner behind Zhang Jiao swept through the air. A series of shouts rang out, followed by the thunderous clatter of hooves as a hundred or so Yellow Turban cavalry joined the battle from the flank.
"Thwip, thwip—"
Over a hundred arrows arced through the air, killing only a handful of men at the front of the Han Army's left flank. Yet the sight of a hundred charging horses terrified the already-exhausted Han soldiers. One by one, their hands and feet turned cold.
The Yellow Turban cavalry wore grim expressions as they raised their long spears and lances. Like earth-packing rollers, they crashed into the Han Army's already-loose formation. Their spears, surging with tremendous force, plunged into the Han soldiers' chests, lifting men into the air or hurling them aside.
In the blink of an eye, the Yellow Turban cavalry had cut through the Han Army's front line. Hundreds of Han soldiers fled in terror. Seeing this, the cavalry drove them toward the other formations, trying to throw the entire Han Army into disarray.
Only then did the Han commander manage to issue orders. He sent out a hundred or so fresh troops he had kept in reserve to reinforce the front. But he was a step too slow. The fleeing soldiers crashed into the Han ranks, and the army fell completely out of control. Across the flat plain, soldiers ran in panic, their courage shattered.
"Beat the drums! The whole army, advance!" Zhang Jiao tightened his grip on the Nine-Section Staff and shouted his order.
Boom, boom, boom—
The drums thundered in a steady, surging rhythm. More than ten thousand Yellow Turban soldiers shouted in unison, "Blue Heaven is dead; Yellow Heaven shall rise! In the year of Jiazi, all beneath Heaven shall prosper!" Their faces feverish with zeal, they pursued the fleeing Han Army.
Seeing that the battle could no longer be salvaged, the Han commander heaved a heavy sigh and decisively fled with several dozen bodyguards beneath the steadily darkening sky.
Just as he was watching, utterly absorbed, Huang Tian's vision blurred. His view returned to the apartment.
"The battlefield really is brutal. Every strike draws blood and flesh."
After taking a moment to calm himself, Huang Tian sighed and glanced at the time. Two in the morning.
At this hour, he would normally have been fast asleep, but now he was full of energy and not the least bit sleepy.
"Then I'll stay up cultivating! I'll try to break through as soon as possible, so I can see what the other world is really like, how it differs from Blue Star, and what I might gain from it..."
In the blink of an eye, five days passed.
Throughout those five days, Huang Tian had been able to reliably receive the "signal" from the Late Han Dynasty World every day.
This was completely different from the world of the Thick Earth Sect. So far, he had heard a voice from that world only once, while the Late Han Dynasty World came through every day.
What was more, Huang Tian discovered that time flowed very differently there than on Blue Star: roughly one day on Blue Star for every thirty days in the Late Han Dynasty World.
In those five days, Zhang Jiao had gone from just starting his rebellion to sweeping across the land like a tide, then suffering one defeat after another at Lu Zhi's hands, retreating from Ye City to Guangzong, his spirit broken and his sickbed his prison.
The contrast was so stark that one couldn't help but sigh, "When fortune smiled, Heaven and Earth lent their strength; when it turned, even a hero lost his freedom."
The Great Han, in the end, had not yet reached its hour of ruin.
The mighty Yellow Turban Rebellion had only delivered a hard kick to an old, decrepit house. The Great Han's house had wobbled, on the verge of collapse, but it had only wobbled.
Huang Tian shook his head and continued his cultivation for the day.
He had made rapid progress over the past five days and had already reached the threshold of the second level of Qi Refining. He was only missing a small opportunity to break through.
Forgetting himself and the world around him, he soon reached seven in the evening. Huang Tian came out of his meditation and was about to head downstairs to the Shihui Restaurant for dinner when Mo Qiu's weathered voice suddenly came to his ears for the first time in days.
"...Today is once again the day for a lecture. At our last small lecture gathering, I explained in detail the essentials of the early stages of Qi Refining in the Yellow Heaven Mountain-Suppressing Spirit Scripture. Today, I'll explain the essentials for cultivating from the fourth to the sixth levels of Qi Refining. Listen closely."
"Yes!" a chorus of voices answered.
Huang Tian's spirits lifted. He quickly took a pen and paper from his drawer, then tried to "look" along Mo Qiu's voice.
Whoosh—
An image appeared before his eyes:
A middle-aged cultivator in a blue Daoist robe, his face sallow, sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, his expression stern.
Seated opposite him were several dozen excited youths in gray Daoist robes. One by one, they took out blank jade slips, ready to record the middle-aged cultivator's lesson.
There was nothing much different about this scene from a class at a school on Blue Star.
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