Whereabouts of the Fox (Part 1)
What was envisioned as a fight against perilous beasts turned into a standard military fight still to be settled after three days. Luckily, Ming Feizhen instructed Emperor Yuansheng to covertly march Xiuyu’s forces to Nieyao. The enemies lying in ambush ended up as idiots opening the door for an army to slaughter them. Heisina Tribe’s warriors’ morale remained at an all-time high without anyone needing to stoke their fires. Be it Nieyao’s soldiers or the mutated beasts, both groups suffered only defeats.
Emperor Yuansheng finished anyone who tried to flee the city as per Ming Feizhen’s instructions, and it wasn’t hard for those accompanying given the standard of his bodyguards. Although there were plenty of mutated beasts, there weren’t many routes out of the city, and Feng Xue possessed the knowledge to organise a formation that would catch them out.
Emperor Yuansheng’s unit lost any motivation to fight when life was so good outside the city, but his blade would’ve been unhappy about missing out on the action. He had nothing to worry about as his scouts notified him that the tide of battle was in their favour.
Emperor Yuansheng turned back to Chu He, a youth in presentable white attire, and fiddled with a complex apparatus the size of a checkers board. “Chu He, how is Navagraha Star Summoner? Do you know where it is?”
The quaint bronze, spiritual star instrument – which had what resembled three iron lines curved around each other in some sort of repetitive formation – was a secret item in the possession of Emperor’s Entourage. They used it to transmit messages over a thousand miles instantaneously regardless if there were mountains, rivers or walls between the sender and recipient.
Not a fan of the spiritual talk, the previous Emperor decreed the modification of spiritual descriptions. Following a long and arduous attempt, those responsible couldn’t draw a clear conclusion. That said, some scholars believed Navagraha Star Summoner operated around similar principles to sorcery since it utiliseed laws of nature, except at a more complex level.
While it could deliver messages over long distances, the messages could only be delivered in the form of secret codes to the primary board. Suffice to say, only he who possessed the primary board would receive the message, so it wasn’t exactly a speakerphone that could send messages over a thousand miles to anyone. Furthermore, it could only be employed at night, and it took almost all night to deliver just one message.
Because it was a waste to use the only copy of the tool for military transmissions, difficult to keep on hand at all times and easy to break, it wasn’t the best idea to have an intelligence agent carry it around for messaging. Only one post was permitted to use it later on – Emperor’s Entourage’s best messenger, which would make it one of the current The Ultimate Three, Tianhu.
In addition to Navagraha Star Summoner, Bai Laimu also brought back an officer from Directorate of Imperial Observatory by the name of Chu He, a young man who inherited blonde hair and blue eyes that would be most commonly found in Western Regions. Chu He wasn’t part of Emperor’s Entourage; he was Tianhu’s personal attendant, so they needed him to operate Navagraha Star Summoner.
Chu He scrubbed his head. “No, not yet. Ever since arriving at Nieyao, it has not worked properly. It might be that a powerful qi field is changing the trajectory of the stars, thereby ruining its system.”
Emperor Yuansheng saw the instrument when he was a kid and continued to be intrigued until today, but he could never understand what all the rotating-it-around business was all about… More than once, he questioned if it truly worked. His agents swore it could be used to summon Tianhu, while he dispatched a pigeon behind their backs to be safe. He never mentioned anything about the pigeon because he didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the earnest young man.
“Your Majesty, you sent an order to Master a few days ago. Based on his speed, he should be here by now. Also, is the battle in Nieyao not basically settled already? Why do you need him in such a hurry?”
“It’s… nothing major…” Emperor Yuansheng hadn’t given up on testing Ming Feizhen’s true capabilities; in his summon, he ordered Tianhu to test Ming Feizhen. If Tianhu remembered the order, Ming Feizhen would probably have to suffer… Emperor Yuansheng shook the nagging voice out of his head. “How is State Preceptor Lai?”
A guard enthused, “He has just woken! Please go see him now, Your Majesty.”
Not long after their forces entered Nieyao three days ago, Lai Jingzhen divined that a calamity, a big calamity, was going to visit the Central Plain’s soon. If they couldn’t stop it, there would be hell on earth. When asked if that meant they would lose the battle in Nieyao, Lai Jingzhen, beaming, replied, “Those dragon’s kids are nothing,” and then went to sleep to – in his words – find a solution in his dreams.
After three days or frowning and divining whilst sleeping, Lai Jingzhen finally smiled as he took in the sight of Nieyao. Anyone who saw how bright he looked would believe he had found the solution.
Elated, Emperor Yuansheng queried, “You truly are the pillar of our nation. What of the calamity?”
“Where is the loo? This daoist needs to answer nature’s call urgently.”
Later on, the soldiers guarding the entrance to Nieyao would remember that stopping Emperor Yuansheng from hacking apart State Preceptor Lai was the toughest task during the expedition at Nieyao.
***
Both the fighting on the surface and the fighting taking form in a more effective manner in the shadows gradually died down on the third night.
Approximately a thousand men from Nieyao’s force of ten thousand lost their lives to a group of murder specialists. The group of two hundred assassins under the leadership of Master Ku weren’t just adept at killing swiftly and stealthily but also proficient at taking advantage of situations. They were a feared force to those who knew their name.
A pretty boy with a jug of wine in one hand, a fan in his other and a spear carried on his back went straight up to Master Ku, who was hiding in the shadows, to say, “Excuse me, may I ask for some directions? Do you know where this Ming Feizhen is? I have business with him?” He then cracked a smile and added, “By the way, you people are members of League of Assassins, right? Could you give me a few heads to take back as evidence I worked? Let’s make this easy for all of us, hey?”
Glossary
“Fox” in the title – Refers to “Hu” in “Tianhu”.
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