Take control of Wei Zhongxian at the start and confiscate 100 million from him!

Chapter 133 An Impossible and Absurd Truth

The sky over the Guanzhong Plain was a despairing leaden gray, as if some deity had overturned an inkstone, and thick ink was spreading aimlessly across the sky, weighing heavily on people's hearts and making it hard to breathe.

The wind is the sole ruler of this wasteland.

It came from afar, stirring up dust and mercilessly whipping the withered grass. The grass lay limply on the ground, rustling as if in its final moments.

The air was filled with a complex and nauseating smell—the burnt smell of dried soil, the rotten smell of decaying vegetation, and a faint, lingering stench of death!
On the south bank of the Wei River, on this vast wilderness that has been a strategic location fought over by military strategists since ancient times, a strange standoff is unfolding at this moment.

The two armies stood hundreds of paces apart, facing each other in silence.

To the north was an army of about three thousand men.

They formed imposing square formations, like blocks of black tofu measured with a ruler.

Although they had traveled thousands of miles and their armor was covered with a thick layer of yellow earth, their ingrained uniformity remained undiminished.

The long spear and shield reflected a cold and restrained light in the dim daylight, while the large banner embroidered with the character "Ming" fluttered straight and loudly in the strong wind.

This is an elite new army selected from the Beijing Garrison.

To their south was another force of about three thousand people.

Compared to the splendid appearance of the new Beijing garrison, this army looked rather shabby.

Their armor was far less uniform than that of the Beijing garrison, covered in mottled rust, and even showing many signs of battle damage from being hacked and slashed.

Their ranks were far less orderly than those of the Beijing garrison; they were more like a pack of unruly wolves that had gathered randomly.

However, this seemingly ragtag army exuded a sense of oppression that even made the elite troops of the Beijing Garrison on the other side feel uneasy.

Each of them held a peculiar weapon—a long spear with a pure white wooden shaft, much longer than their own height. The shaft was made of white ash wood, unique to the southwest, using a special process, making it extremely tough and harder than iron or stone.

Three thousand ash wood spears formed a white jungle in their hands, the three-inch-long blades at the tips of the spears humming in the wind like the hiss of a venomous snake.

They stood there silently, like three thousand lifeless statues. But the fierce courage and wildness that emanated from their very bones, the murderous aura honed in mountains of corpses and seas of blood, enveloped the entire world like an invisible giant net!
This is the legend of the Ming Dynasty, the White-Spear Soldiers who struck fear into the hearts of the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Thanks to the secret coordination and guidance of the Embroidered Uniform Guard envoy over the past two weeks, these two elite armies, which should have been thousands of miles apart, have arrived at the ancient capital of Xi'an at the same time today.

……

Before the White Spear Army, a female general, clad in a gleaming silver unicorn armor, with graying temples but a back as straight as a spear, deftly dismounted.

Her movements were swift and decisive, possessing a crisp and clean aesthetic unique to soldiers.

She was Qin Liangyu, the creator of this legendary army.

Now in her fifties, her face is etched with the marks of time.

But those eyes were surprisingly bright, showing no signs of aging or fatigue.

Yes, it is the sharpness and composure that have settled after surviving countless battles.

She dismounted, and several of her personal guards immediately surrounded her, forming a small protective circle.

Qin Liangyu ignored them, simply adjusting her armor as usual. Then, her gaze fell upon the Ming army formation opposite her, a formation that even she found somewhat novel.

As one of the top generals of the Ming Dynasty, she recognized the extraordinary nature of that army at a glance.

That was no garrison she had ever seen before, nor was it one of those border troops that would collapse at the first sign of trouble. It was a completely new Ming army that she had never seen before, and its strict discipline made even this veteran general, who had spent her entire life on the battlefield, feel a strange pressure.

Is this the new emperor's... personal guard? A little over a month ago, a secret order, not drafted by the cabinet but issued directly from the depths of the Qianqing Palace and bearing the seal of the Directorate of Ceremonial, was delivered to her military camp.

The contents of the secret order were both simple and strange.

—He ordered her to lead her three thousand most elite White Spear Soldiers to set off immediately and arrive outside Xi'an before July 16th to await the imperial decree.

Despite her doubts about this somewhat nonsensical order, Qin Liangyu carried it out without hesitation.

Because after the military order came the empty promise from the Ministry of Revenue, which was always on the way and could never be fulfilled.

Instead, there were 50,000 taels of silver, neatly stacked in boxes, so large that even in the dim military tent, the sheer volume of silver was dazzling.

The accompanying commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard simply stated that this was the initial payment.

The secret order clearly stated that another 50,000 taels were still en route.

Money is a soldier's courage.

Especially in these years of continuous wage arrears, money is not just courage, but also life, reason, and the hardest truth in the world!

Since the Tianqi era, the imperial court had been owing her White-Spear Army a mountain of grain and salary.

She submitted memorials to the emperor several times, but they all sank without a trace, failing to even cause a ripple. At one point, she even had to sell her ancestral property and rely on her meager marquis's salary to barely maintain the only army willing to fight to the death for the Ming Dynasty.

The newly enthroned emperor, without uttering a word, directly slapped her in the face with 50,000 taels of real cash and a total promise of 100,000 taels.

This is far more effective at winning people's hearts than any fancy imperial edict or any empty talk of "sharing the national crisis"!

So, here she comes.

She wanted to see what this emperor, who had shaken the court and the public with his thunderous methods since his ascension to the throne, was really planning to do.

According to custom, at this moment a chief eunuch from the Directorate of Ceremonial Affairs should have arranged a procession to read out the imperial edict.

Qin Liangyu's gaze swept back and forth across the opposing army formation, secretly pondering the true intentions of this new ruler.

However, the expected honor guard did not appear.

Suddenly, the opposing army formation seemed to be cleaved in two by an invisible blade, and thousands of brightly armored new soldiers of the Beijing Garrison parted to the sides, making way for a passage.

Then, a figure walked out from it.

It was neither the grand eunuch holding the imperial edict nor the heavily armored general delivering the decree.

Instead, it was a young man wearing light black armor.

Beneath the armor was a sleek, matching outfit, and his jet-black hair was simply tied up with a jade hairpin, making him look like a general from a prominent family with a promising future in the capital garrison.

Most importantly, that excessively young face was clearly exposed to the bleak autumn winds of Guanzhong from the very beginning.

His steps were neither fast nor slow, yet they seemed to carry the weight of the entire land. With each step, he added a strange tremor to this desolate wasteland.

He walked towards Qin Liangyu all by himself.

No guards followed behind him, no entourage lined up on either side; behind him was the passage forged by swords and loyalty, and the thousands of pairs of eyes filled with utmost awe were his most powerful entourage.

This time, Qin Liangyu's brows weren't furrowed, but tightly locked, as if she were trying her best to discern an impossible and absurd truth!
(End of this chapter)