“How long do we wait?”

“Depends on how much internal power Brother Rong exhausted from him during their fight just now, and what kind of injuries he inflicted.”

“I didn’t do much,” Feiyu said calmly. “It’s just that last time two of his fingers were cut off, so I kept attacking those finger wounds, trying to stick needle points into them, which kept him very tense.”

Everyone: …Could you please not sound so pleased when describing your wickedness?

Seeing everyone silently move a bit further from Feiyu, Tie Ci hurried to smooth things over: “Then I estimate three hours should be enough. Let’s rest here and don’t wander far.”

Rong Pu nodded in agreement, and no one objected. Though they didn’t know what Tie Ci planned to do, they inexplicably had great confidence in her.

The desert night after snowfall was very cold with nowhere to stay. Like magic, Feiyu produced a fox pelt from his chest to give Tie Ci as cushioning.

Tie Ci took the fox pelt and gave it to Rong Pu.

Feiyu raised an eyebrow. Tie Ci was already stroking the back of his hand: “Beloved consort, you must understand—if Master Rong falls ill from helping me, my family might very well marry me off to him in apology.”

“Your Majesty,” Feiyu said, “possessing such peerless beauty as myself, how could you settle for a mere little white flower?”

“So you must be considerate of me.”

Feiyu laughed heartily, pinching her nose tip: “You talk as if you’re really the Crown Princess.”

Tie Ci paused, then looked up with a smile: “Aren’t I just?”

I’ve told you now.

She stared at Feiyu.

But Feiyu wasn’t listening at all. He produced a handkerchief from his chest, looked left and right at her nose, then covered her nose tip: “Seeing your nose tip so cold, I thought you were about to get a runny nose, but surprisingly you don’t have one.”

“No runny nose and you seem regretful—what kind of perverse taste is this?”

“Because then I could pinch your nose, you’d open your mouth, and then I could…”

Tie Ci grabbed the handkerchief, wanting to stuff it into his flirtatious mouth.

Feiyu laughed and dodged away: “I’ll go build a fire.”

Tie Ci watched his retreating figure and sighed quietly.

People—the more truth you tell them, the less they believe.

Those in power are suspicious by nature, making this trick especially effective on them.

She silently warned herself not to make the same mistake in the future, then began breathing exercises and meditation.

Three hours later, she and the others silently rose. Rong Pu, wrapped in fox fur, looked up with clear, bright eyes.

He said: “Be careful.”

Tie Ci smiled.

Rong Pu smiled again: “Very warm. I’m fine, you needn’t worry.”

Tie Ci paused, then could only say: “That’s good then.”

She strode away. Yang Yixiu winked at Qi Yuansi: “Did you notice? The Crown Princess’s attitude toward Supervisor Rong is getting gentler and gentler.”

Qi Yuansi said coldly: “So what?”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe a grown man with such a loose tongue would be perfect scorpion food.” Qi Yuansi walked away coldly and arrogantly.

Yang Yixiu: …You men who’ve fallen at the Crown Princess’s feet!

…

In the night, the calm desert seemed to slowly change.

Those smooth, undulating lines appeared motionless at first glance, but after watching long enough, one could seemingly see the lines slowly rising and falling.

Like the desert had suddenly gained breath, enduring pain in the deep night silence, breathing lightly.

But such changes, being too vast in scope, remained difficult for people to detect.

Da Wu and Xiao Wu stood on a sand slope. Da Wu said: “I can feel this entire area of ground is… writhing.”

Xiao Wu said: “I smell blood and fishy scents not far away.”

Feiyu carried a large bag—heavy with ice spikes he’d collected from ice and snow during those three hours, freezing them with internal power.

The ice spikes were thin and long, glinting faintly like needles.

Feiyu flicked his small fan, and the bag flew up and split open, ice spikes cascading down with flashes of light.

Tie Ci and he struck out simultaneously.

Their palm wind made everyone around sway unsteadily. The ice spikes spread out with a whoosh. The two swept their sleeves, arranging the ice spikes in formation mid-air like stars in array, brilliantly gleaming.

The next instant, these ice spikes whistled as they drilled into the flat desert ahead.

The next instant, massive numbers of scorpions hidden underground were forced out of the sand layer. Countless thin black streams rolled out.

The next instant, a muffled roar came from underground, and the ground began forming whirlwinds.

The moment the whirlwinds formed, Tie Ci and Feiyu both dove toward the eye of the wind.

The iron fan spun, scraping away layers of sand surface, seemingly peeling this giant desert kiwi fruit.

The jade brush rotated like a drill bit, boring deep downward.

After just a few strikes, the roaring intensified, and a sand column several times larger than before shot skyward.

The jade brush and iron fan, when the waterfall-like sand stream arrived, nimbly passed through sand gaps and vanished in a flash.

The sand-wrapped whirlwind rushed up from underground. In the center of the tornado-like sandstorm, black and bronze-colored figures were faintly visible.

But this time, unlike the previous pure black figure like someone wearing black robes, this time the opponent revealed more bronze-colored torso, and that bronze color wasn’t as lustrous with metallic sheen as before.

The sandstorm instantly swept Feiyu and Tie Ci away from their original position by several li.

Everyone instinctively tensed to pursue, but Rong Pu said: “No need to chase.”

Everyone instinctively trusted him and turned to look at him.

“If even the strongest fighters can’t solve Chen Tuntian, the rest of us going would just add another dish.” Rong Pu held a curved blade, pointing at the ground: “We just need to do our own job. Hurry up—get more scorpions so I can make medicine too.”

Only then did everyone remember their main task this time was dealing with scorpions.

Shiba had said the more scorpions killed the better—some for medicine, some for roasting, work calculated by labor.

Related to food and health, everyone worked with great enthusiasm.

During the first battle earlier, both Tie Ci and Rong Pu had noticed that Chen Tuntian’s body would tremble slightly.

Because he was always draped in a scorpion cloak with scorpions crawling around, plus wind and sand obscuring his body, this trembling wasn’t obvious.

Feiyu’s brief combat with Chen Tuntian confirmed he was indeed trembling uncontrollably.

Clearly he was either injured or ill.

Connecting this to scorpions’ effectiveness in treating convulsions, several people unanimously believed the scorpion cloak served two purposes: first, to show off and frighten people; second, actually for constant medical treatment.

Rong Pu had tried poisoning the fires he lit, but the fires were instantly extinguished by sand, smoke was swept away by wind—it couldn’t get near Chen Tuntian at all.

So they targeted the scorpions.

Scorpions that crawled over the fires were contaminated with poison. When they returned to Chen Tuntian’s body, though Chen Tuntian wasn’t afraid of the scorpions’ natural toxins, the scorpions carried other poisons. Even if each scorpion carried only a trace, the total was a terrifying amount.

And he couldn’t do without scorpions.

The three hours Tie Ci waited was the process after fighting him once, forcing him to use scorpions to replenish his vitality, then poison slowly taking effect as it entered his body with the scorpions.

Half the scorpions died, and Chen Tuntian was poisoned.

So this time there were obviously fewer scorpions than three hours ago, less vigorous too. Everyone protected themselves well and hunted scorpions in large swaths.

Killing the scorpions meant Chen Tuntian lost his readily available healing medicine.

The Eagle Master and his subordinates had suffered plenty from scorpion armies before. This time they stayed behind to focus on dealing with scorpions, curved blades spinning close to the ground, killing patches at a time.

Here they enthusiastically killed scorpions to cut off Chen Tuntian’s retreat, while over there combat had already begun.

Chen Tuntian had first been careless and injured, then harassed and entangled. After driving people away, barely three hours had passed before they returned, plus unexpected incidents during those three hours. Now irritated and angry, his wind and sand swirled more fiercely.

In such fierce wind, people couldn’t possibly make any smooth movements. Even standing steady was difficult. Both Tie Ci and Feiyu used the Thousand Jin Drop technique to barely stabilize their forms, but their attacks were obviously difficult and slow. They expended ten parts of energy but achieved less than half their usual power.

While fighting, they had to guard against sand getting in their eyes and various things flying through the windstorm—scorpions, wild beasts, stones, camel skulls, even entire trees.

This kind of fighting was like one person against a hundred—exhaustion alone would kill you first.

Tie Ci thought no wonder the Three Mad and Five Emperors had been famous for half a lifetime. Apart from battles among themselves, they were almost never defeated. Now she was half a grandmaster herself with rich combat experience, while her opponent had been in retirement for years with old injuries and illnesses. Even with Feiyu, whose strength was comparable to hers, trying to deal with him still required so much effort and maneuvering.

Feiyu’s iron fan was well-suited for this situation, constantly deflecting various obstacles, following wind traces to cut into the sandstorm’s center like a graceful black butterfly. Each wing movement swept away a patch of golden sand. Each full wing spread thinned the dust by one layer. Blue scorpions constantly shattered in the fan’s light and shadow, and bronze-colored skin became increasingly distinct in the dust.

The jade brush was like a sharp needle, a lightning rod, always finding gaps torn by the iron fan to dart in ghostlike. The brush tip flickered with tiny white electric light, seemingly crackling. Those white electric lights flowed along that bronze-colored figure, washing over it repeatedly.

The sandstorm was weakening. Tie Ci could already see that person’s huge eyes. On the metallic-colored shoulder toward the right chest, under her precise repeated strikes, a crack had appeared.

Legend said Chen Tuntian was impervious to blades and spears.

Because besides his external training, he was always surrounded by a ring of scorpions, densely forming poisonous armor.

And in front of him, within one inch, always swirled a layer of dense wind and sand, rotating at high speed constantly like a meat grinder. All weapon tips, upon touching that wind and sand, would be ground into fragments.

But even the densest protective shield has gaps.

Those gaps couldn’t let weapons through, but electric light could pass.

She had pointed her jade brush at the same spot countless times, finally making him show a wound.

Those huge eyes stared at that wound, revealing mocking amusement.

So what if you know some lightning power?

So what if there’s a wound?

Can you still stick a weapon in?

Last time he was careless, not controlling his sand shield because he thought a few young people weren’t worth expending great power on.

This time his wind and sand spun like a whirlpool—even divine weapons would disappear upon contact.

Though this time was somewhat unfavorable.

Suddenly all the scorpions were poisoned. When he used scorpion blood for healing, he was also poisoned.

While expelling poison, he was attacked again. His scorpions died in large numbers, unable even to provide constant protection.

His sandstorm’s power was greatly reduced, outer sand layers peeled away by the two beautiful young people before him.

But he wasn’t anxious.

The desert was his home field. As long as he was in the desert he wouldn’t lose. Heaven and earth were his power. As long as they couldn’t injure him, he’d eventually turn these brats into jerky and slowly feed them to scorpions.

Thinking this, he saw that exquisite iron fan and jade brush had already scraped away the last layer of dust.

Then they recklessly crashed into the frantically rotating sand curtain around him.

Amusement appeared in his eyes.

He watched the iron fan and jade brush instantly disappear.

He could even see the iron fan and jade brush instantly ground to fragments by the frantically rotating sand, becoming patches of blue-black and white light and shadow.

He looked up, waiting to see the shocked, despairing expressions on the two people’s faces.

Just like many times he’d seen before.

His hand was already raised.

Every time at moments like this was when he took advantage of the opponent’s shock and killed them.

He loved seeing such expressions of collapse when thinking victory was near but failing at the last moment.

As his hand raised, he suddenly felt severe pain.

He lowered his eyelids and discovered that somehow an iron fan and a jade brush were now inserted in his thin wound!

Chen Tuntian: “!!!”

Hadn’t the iron fan and jade brush already been destroyed?

Why were they appearing intact in his wound again?

This wasn’t over.

A scorpion was thrown over, passing through the sand curtain, ground to powder, then…

Chen Tuntian widened his already huge ox eyes.

He watched helplessly as that mass of black powder gradually took shape before his wound, then… was stuffed into the wound.

Chen Tuntian looked up in confusion to see through the thin sand curtain that Tie Ci had one hand on the thin chain connected to her jade brush and one hand on the chain connected to the iron fan. Where those chains passed through the sand curtain, they continuously disappeared and reappeared.

Chen Tuntian was somewhat confused.

He knew this person had lightning abilities, but they weren’t very powerful. Once he determined this person wasn’t Guihai Sheng’s successor, he felt relieved.

But who would tell him how there was also restoration ability!

Only now did he understand these little brats’ viciousness.

They targeted his impervious golden body, using faint electric light to continuously impact and create wounds, then used restoration ability to break through the final barrier. They destroyed and restored simultaneously, inserting weapons into his wounds!

With a pop, the jade brush and iron fan were pulled out of the wound, bringing a stream of blood.

Chen Tuntian’s body began convulsing, more and more violently.

People who rarely got injured had especially fierce reactions when they did.

He collapsed with a thud, wind and sand ceasing. He lay prone on the sand, convulsing all over, fingers deeply inserted into sand, constantly muttering: “Scorpions… where are the scorpions…”

But there were no more scorpions.

In the distance, someone called out joyfully: “We’re done with scorpions! Supervisor Rong says they can be exchanged for a lot of money!”

Chen Tuntian spat out a mouthful of blood.

Rong Pu walked over slowly, followed by Da Wu and Xiao Wu carrying a basket of particularly lively scorpions.

Chen Tuntian crawled up like a starving ghost seeing food and rushed over. A jade brush blocked him.

Chen Tuntian was now practically allergic to this jade brush and immediately stepped back.

Tie Ci smiled: “Big boss, even beggars know to sing a lotus song when they come asking.”

A flash of humiliated anger crossed Chen Tuntian’s bronze-colored face.

When he commanded wind and rain, this little brat was still dog-paddling in her mother’s belly!

But circumstances were stronger than people—he could no longer stir up sandstorms now.

He could only swallow his anger and say: “What do you want? Speak.”

…

Another nightfall. On the desert’s edge, star-like fires dotted the landscape, military tents stretching in rows.

This was Daur Banner Town, the settlement closest to the desert within Western Rong territory, also a major northern town. North led to Hanli Hanmo near Da Qian, while west through the Myriad Tree Great Forest entered Liaodong’s Xining Pass.

Part of Western Rong’s Great Prince’s army was here, coldly watching the desert while shouldering the task of completely eliminating the remnant soldiers within. They also vigilantly monitored Qiu Wujiu’s army in Zeye City to the west, preventing the opponent from breaking agreements at any time and invading Western Rong’s interior.

After all, though Qiu Wujiu said he didn’t seek the throne, his heavy troops weren’t far from the royal city either.

Two days ago this army had just harassed those remnant soldiers in the desert. Unexpectedly, their usually invincible battles suffered defeat this time, and even their greatest support, that Desert God, was injured.

This caused the army’s morale to plummet. After all, they’d been out for over half a year, from midsummer through severe winter. Now enduring cold wind and sand daily, they’d thought those remnant soldiers in the oasis couldn’t hold out much longer. With the Desert God’s help, at most one or two more battles and they could go home.

But this defeat shattered their dreams of soon returning home to eat mutton and drink hot soup.

From midnight tents came leisurely bone flute melodies, playing homesick tunes.

The desolate, lengthy melody crossed desert and mountain passes, sounding beside every weary traveler’s pillow.

The leading general roughly stopped the flute player, but in everyone’s dreams, brushing away wind and sand, there were still their own felt tents by red willows, smiling dark wives with longing written in their eyes.

In dreams there seemed to be weeping sounds too, continuous sobbing.

Suddenly someone shouted: “Sandstorm! Sandstorm!”

When soldiers were awakened, some slept confusedly, thinking they’d returned to the battlefield days before, remembering the terrified shouts of oasis soldiers earlier.

Then they discovered their own people were running around, while in the distance a huge deep yellow smoke column had risen.

They’d seen such scenes often during this half year. Each time they felt shocked but also proud, because this smoke column belonged to them.

But now, this usually familiar smoke column was heading straight for their camp.