Meng Kingdom's attack this time had been perilous in the extreme for the defenders of Green Mountain Pass. Had Hong Linying not acted with ruthless decisiveness, using more than ten thousand soldiers to hold up the enemy's siege, the walls would likely have fallen before they could even be properly deployed.
The battle had terrified the city's people out of their wits. Seeing those savage faces constantly rising above the battlements, so close at hand, was something they would never forget for the rest of their lives. After the battle, blood covered the city walls, streaming in rivulets through the cracks between the stones, flowing both outside and inside the city. For half a li around the walls within the city, the ground resembled a pool of blood. On streets that had once been bright and clean, shoes stuck to the bloody water with wet squelch, squelch sounds.
Whenever Hong Linying thought back on that battle afterward, even with his composure, he found it exceedingly perilous. Recalling what Ji Wenhe had said the previous night, including the possibility that the enemy army was concealing heavy forces and waiting for an opportunity to emerge, he could not help but sigh.
Over the next few months, Ji Wenhe came calling twice more in the middle of the night, informing him of the enemy's movements and deployments. Hong Linying basically believed him those two times and made targeted arrangements according to the information Ji Wenhe provided. The result was overwhelming victory, with minimal losses.
The second matter was that Ji Wenhe began searching through the army for someone to inherit his legacy. Yet his testing method was exceedingly strange. He did not examine one's martial foundations, nor did he use inner force to test the body. Instead, he used silver needles to diagnose the pulse of those being tested. Ji Wenhe said that because his sect's internal cultivation method was highly unusual, if those who failed this test forcibly cultivated their sect's secret technique, the result would only be their inner qi surging backward, their meridians reversing and blood bursting forth, killing them. What puzzled Hong Linying was that, despite the many powerfully built men in the army, Ji Wenhe had not found a suitable candidate during the year since entering the military. This greatly astonished him.
Following Ji Wenhe's several major military victories, Hong Linying simply had the original strategist step down to become deputy strategist after a year, while Ji Wenhe became the strategist. As for how Ji Wenhe learned the enemy's intelligence every time, Hong Linying did not care much. With Strategist Ji's skills, he surely had countless methods at his disposal. Besides, every piece of enemy intelligence he had provided had been exceptionally accurate. If he had been a spy, the price would have been far too great. No one would sacrifice the lives of seventy or eighty thousand men accumulated over several battles in exchange for some scheme that might succeed later.
This move initially left many generals in the army unconvinced. Yet in the next several engagements, large and small, every plan was devised by Ji Wenhe, and the invading enemy was slaughtered until they crumbled like rotten earth. Ji Wenhe's position in the army was instantly secured, and his prestige flourished by the day.
What brought his reputation to its peak was a battle two and a half years earlier. Before that battle, Ji Wenhe had gone to the central army camp thirty li north of the city to continue seeking the "disciple" whose existence he did not even know for certain. The local garrison numbered several hundred thousand. Even if Ji Wenhe possessed heaven-reaching abilities, if he did nothing but test people all day, his cultivation would only allow him to test a few hundred at most. Thus, over those more than three years, aside from testing nearly all the tens of thousands of soldiers at Green Mountain Pass, he would also occasionally visit the central army camp to search for a disciple.
At first, the people in the army found these matters very strange, but the officers at every rank gradually grew accustomed to them. Very few outsiders knew of it, however. Ji Wenhe kept a low profile, was usually taciturn, and rarely associated with others in private.
That afternoon, on the very day Ji Wenhe had gone to the central army camp, Meng Kingdom suddenly launched an attack. Hong Linying led his troops to meet the enemy and became locked in fierce combat. This time, however, the enemy reinforcements came like oil being added to a lamp, wave after wave slowly increasing in number, tangling Hong Linying up until he could neither advance nor retreat. He gradually fell into a heavy encirclement. At that moment, Ji Wenhe, thirty li away, received a swift rider's urgent report and rushed over with men from the central army camp. By the time they arrived, Hong Linying and the troops under his command were already hanging by a thread. Ji Wenhe had the army charge inward from the perimeter in the formation of an Eight Trigrams Linked Ring Array, advancing steadily and fighting with every step secured. As for himself, he revealed his terrifying martial arts before others for the first time. Alone with a single sword, like an immortal descending from beyond the heavens, he wove through the enemy ranks as though entering an uninhabited land. Other than occasionally deflecting enemy weapons, all who blocked him were slain with a single stroke. In the end, he actually cut his way to the enemy's central command. Leaping through the air like an eagle pouncing on a hare, before the opposing guards could react, he stepped and flew into their midst, taking the enemy deputy marshal's head with one slash. Then, brushing aside the weapons converging around him, he rose with a supple twist of his body. In only a few steps, he stood atop the enemy's command banner, more than ten meters high, sword in one hand and the enemy marshal's head held aloft in the other. His bearing was truly peerless beneath heaven. The enemy army's morale immediately collapsed. They had no will to fight further and fled in crushing defeat. Only then did Hong Linying lead his troops in breaking out of the encirclement.
After that battle, Strategist Ji's name was unrivaled for a time, even surpassing Marshal Hong's. People came to know that this strategist, who could do more than merely "discuss warfare on paper," was also a peerless expert. At the same time, the imperial army no longer focused solely on defense, often sending troops to raid the enemy border or pressing forward with vast armies. In the following years, the two sides each attacked and defended, more or less evenly matched. Even with Ji Wenhe's presence, one person's strength could not ultimately decide the outcome on a battlefield. Moreover, Meng Kingdom already knew that Green Mountain Pass had an expert capable of taking a man's head amid ten thousand troops, and had likewise gathered several first-rate and supreme experts from within the kingdom to hold the line.
Through this, Hong Linying could basically confirm that Ji Wenhe had reached the realm of transformation, perhaps even a realm beyond it, one Hong Linying knew nothing about. As a martial arts fanatic, he naturally understood that this was the result of Ji Wenhe's sect's martial arts. Though he had previously guessed at Ji Wenhe's realm, he had never expected him to be so formidable. After this incident, his heart could not help but grow feverish. Yet no matter how he investigated, he could not discover where this sect had come from.
Through occasional sparring with Ji Wenhe, he found the other man's martial arts even more exquisite. More precisely, it was the wondrousness of Ji Wenhe's internal cultivation. Any ordinary move, when Ji Wenhe imbued it with inner force, always made Hong Linying feel as though a great river flowed without end; at times, it was like a mountain pressing down on his head, crushing all in its path. He had no power to resist at all. This left him unable to stop thinking about Ji Wenhe's internal cultivation method. Once greed was born, he tried every possible means to obtain it.
Yet Ji Wenhe's search for a disciple continued without result, while his complexion grew worse and worse over the years, just as he had previously said. Even his face had aged considerably. Hong Linying therefore beat around the bush, hoping to inherit this supreme art himself. After one banquet, he said to Ji Wenhe, "Strategist, what kind of person are you looking for to inherit your sect? So many years have passed, yet you have encountered no one. What sort of constitution must they have?"
Ji Wenhe smiled faintly and replied, "The reason our sect has been passed down through only one person in each generation is not because we do not widely accept disciples, but because the requirements of our cultivation method are truly special. One could call it one in ten thousand. In truth, anyone whose body displays a unique reaction when their pulse is tested with silver needles empowered by my sect's secret method may have some hope."
"This is far more than one in ten thousand. Over these years, among the old troops and the new recruits in my army, you have probably tested seven or eight out of every ten. I would say it is one in over a hundred thousand," Hong Linying said, shaking his head with a sigh.
Then he added, "What kind of abnormal reaction must the body show beneath your silver needles before there is hope?"
Ji Wenhe said, "That is uncertain. It may be an unusual complexion, or an abnormality in the qi within the body. At that time, I must use the silver needles as guides and probe with inner force before I can know. Only if it is compatible with my internal cultivation can it be so."
Whenever Ji Wenhe conducted these tests, he always did so in a room or tent. Other than the person being tested, outsiders were never permitted inside. Therefore, whenever he heard these words, Hong Linying was always half-believing and half-doubting.
Pretending to be somewhat drunk, Hong Linying used the wine's courage to say, "Then, Strategist, why not take a look at this marshal's constitution?" He did not say what would happen if he was suitable, nor what would happen if he was not. The words made it seem like drunken banter, mere curiosity.
Ji Wenhe smiled faintly upon hearing this. As though it were simply something casually mentioned in the midst of conversation, he nodded and agreed. "There is nothing else to do, so we may as well try. Perhaps the Marshal truly has an affinity with my sect." He immediately took a cloth pouch from beside him, unfolded it, and removed silver needles to test Hong Linying's pulse.
Ji Wenhe had said that he always kept this cloth pouch at hand, because whenever he had spare time, he would seek out soldiers to test. When the silver needle went in, Hong Linying only felt his wrist go numb. After that, there was not the slightest abnormality, nor did he sense any inner force entering him.
Ji Wenhe shook his head in disappointment and put away the silver needles. "It seems the Marshal also has no affinity with my sect. There is no need to inspect you with inner force."
This meant that Hong Linying, too, could not learn this technique. But how could such an explanation convince him? He had practiced martial arts since childhood. Along his path, there had only ever been difficulties he could overcome, never a technique he had seen yet could not learn. The only question was whether he wished to cultivate it.
Yet he could not use force against Ji Wenhe. He knew he was absolutely no match for him. Even though Ji Wenhe appeared to worsen year by year, he likely needed only a few moves—or perhaps merely a gesture—to deal with someone like Hong Linying. Though Hong Linying was already a supreme expert in the martial world, that depended on whom he was compared with.
It was not until the beginning of the previous year that Ji Wenhe finally found the disciple he had been seeking in the central army camp. Hong Linying found an excuse to privately approach this disciple, who Ji Wenhe had located as though seeking a drop of water in the vast sea of people. He had even used inner force to probe the youth's meridians, but felt nothing unusual about them. This made him feel even more strongly that Ji Wenhe was concealing something, and it was precisely these matters that left him unable to understand no matter how much he pondered.
Yet merely one month after Ji Wenhe found his disciple, this newly initiated disciple suddenly died violently one night. Ji Wenhe afterward wore an expression of pain and regret, saying that the disciple was illiterate and had misunderstood the sect's martial arts. He had cultivated improperly, causing his qi and blood to surge backward and kill him.
Hong Linying had also seen the man's miserable corpse. His entire body had blackened and swollen, which did not resemble a mishap in cultivation but rather death by a potent poison. This gave him two thoughts. First, Ji Wenhe might have used the man as a poison vessel, intending to employ some method to force the deadly poison in his own body into the other's, thus relieving his own poison. Presumably, this poison vessel had to be connected somehow to his sect's cultivation method or to this deadly poison for the method to work; otherwise, he could simply seize anyone to serve as the vessel. But later, Ji Wenhe's complexion did not seem to improve much, making Hong Linying doubt the accuracy of this judgment. Second, Ji Wenhe's cultivation method might be exceedingly tyrannical. Perhaps the newly initiated disciple truly had cultivated improperly, causing his qi to rush upward in reverse, his blood to flow backward, his organs to rupture, and strange changes to appear throughout his body. But a man like Ji Wenhe, since he knew his disciple was illiterate, should have had some compromise method to resolve it, or supervised his cultivation through the slow work of water grinding stone. Could it be that he truly had little time left? Beyond all this, there were still other points Hong Linying could not connect or understand. If he wanted answers, he would have to begin with the pulse tests. Perhaps some clue might reveal itself.
Ji Wenhe later continued to seek out troops in the army for pulse tests, but Hong Linying had no reason to follow him. If he went to watch once or twice, he could claim it was out of interest, but if it happened too often, his intentions would be obvious. Moreover, this involved certain private matters of martial sects. In the martial world, prying into another sect's secrets was a great taboo; killing someone to silence them would not be considered excessive. Only when new recruits enlisted did he have a reason to be present, to observe the recruits' quality and enlistment situation.
In truth, Hong Linying guessed that Ji Wenhe understood why he came to inspect the new recruits each time. For someone like Ji Wenhe, seeing through this was no difficult matter. But Hong Linying had no other way. For now, he could only begin here. He wanted to obtain clues from the slightest traces, then make plans for the next step. Only then could he draw closer to the supreme cultivation method of his dreams. Yet Ji Wenhe completed every pulse test inside the tent, and Hong Linying could not conveniently enter.
Even so, he still wished to see at the first opportunity what sort of person Ji Wenhe selected as a disciple, and whether there were any clues to seize upon. Naturally, such things had to be seen with his own eyes and handled personally. What others said could never be as clear as what he saw for himself.
Hong Linying leaned back in his chair and stared at the tent. His narrowed eyes flickered constantly as thoughts churned in his mind. This matter is truly thorny. Over these years, I have used both soft and hard methods, yet I have failed to get my hands on it. If his words are true, he has only one or two years left to live—but is that true or false? Even if it is true, what if he would rather let it be lost than hand it over? What then?