Chapter 524: Forcing Ning Zhuo to Hand It Over
Sword Technique—Radiant Lotus Bloom!
Shuangjing floated in midair, brandishing the weapon sword in his hand. Within a few breaths, he unleashed streak after streak of sword light.
The sword lights briefly stalled in midair, assembling into the shape of a lotus flower.
The lotus of sword light enveloped a single Dragon Ginseng Root. In the next moment, it suddenly exploded, the sword lights scattering in all directions.
The Dragon Ginseng Root was struck consecutively by dozens of sword lights. Covered in wounds, it could no longer endure and snapped into two from the middle.
Shuangjing landed on the ground. His knees softened and he dropped directly to one knee.
Meanwhile, a Golden Core deputy general beside him immediately took over, slapping out numerous sealing talismans to rapidly seal the two halves of the Dragon Ginseng Root.
Another assistant cleared a small platform atop the pile of rubble, swiftly preparing tea and pastries. Then he helped Shuangjing up. “General, it is time to rest.”
“Mm.” Shuangjing stood up, walked to the platform, and sat down, drinking tea and eating spirit food to recuperate.
Even on the battlefield, he retained the mannerisms of a high-born noble.
“General, this is the latest intelligence.” A subordinate handed over a jade slip.
Shuangjing projected his spiritual sense into it, his brows slightly knitting together. “Why is Liu Er still at the top of the leaderboard? Ever since he took first place yesterday, he hasn’t come down.”
“To push him down, I’ve already gone all out, mobilizing nearly all the deputy generals to harvest Dragon Ginseng Roots together.”
“But looking at it now, it’s still not enough?”
“There must be something strange going on!”
Shuangjing needed the top position.
Not just him—many generals among the armies were eager for higher rankings.
The Military Merit Leaderboard updated every half day, and the entire army could see it. Thus it became a key point of competition among soldiers and officers.
The higher a general ranked within a particular army, the more recognition that army received, and the higher its morale would rise.
“The soldiers have removed the Iron Skin Flesh Armor from their bodies. After these days of recuperation, their combat strength has nearly fully recovered.”
“Scavenging spoils is only the prelude. The real main event will be each army launching successive offensives around the forward camp, sweeping away strongholds and enemy forces!”
“Morale is extremely important. The higher the morale, the greater the combat power our army can unleash.”
After leading troops for so many days and experiencing battles such as the ambush and the Iron Flow Across the Plains charge, Shuangjing had accumulated considerable command experience and deeply understood the importance of morale.
“The most crucial thing is that I need to use the Military Merit Leaderboard to demonstrate my value.”
“The higher my ranking, the more investment I can attract from the great clans of the Royal Capital.”
Compared to military talent, Shuangjing was even sharper and more seasoned politically.
He knew very clearly that if he could maintain the top spot on the leaderboard for a long time, he would certainly obtain more support. This support would include not only spirit stones and magical treasures but also soldiers and assistants.
Therefore, Shuangjing personally took to the field, continuously harvesting Dragon Ginseng Roots and repeatedly challenging the top position.
But now it seemed that all his efforts only allowed him to remain in second place, while the first position was always Liu Er’s.
“Men, conduct a thorough investigation. Find out what exactly is going on with Liu Er of the Three Generals Camp!”
Just as Shuangjing finished giving the order, a command arrived through a message bird.
It was from the Mechanism Princess, Shuang Ling.
Apparently, Shuang Ling had also noticed the situation on the leaderboard and directly ordered Shuangjing to investigate personally.
“If I go investigate, who will harvest the Dragon Ginseng Roots? I might not even be able to hold onto second place.”
Shuangjing was unwilling, but he had no choice. Shuang Ling was his aunt. Though both were Nascent Soul–level cultivators, Shuang Ling’s status as the Mechanism Princess was far higher.
Shuangjing could only endure it. Bringing two or three people with him, he concealed his presence and secretly approached Liu Er and Zhang Hei.
“Where is Ning Zhuo?” Shuangjing felt puzzled. He only saw the two Golden Core cultivators, Liu and Zhang.
As for Guan Hong being absent, Shuangjing could guess the reason.
The Three Generals Camp could not be left without command. Moreover, since the soldiers were now able to move again, they needed low-intensity training to maintain combat readiness.
Before Shuangjing could resolve his doubts, his attention was drawn to the battle.
Liu Er and Zhang Hei were attacking a Dragon Ginseng Root.
Liu Er held the Primal Yellow Sword, reinforcing himself with various defensive spells, and charged forward—only to take the hits.
The Dragon Ginseng Root possessed little intelligence. Acting purely on instinct, it regarded the nearest and strongest aura as its opponent.
Bang, bang, bang.
Each strike and smash sounded like muffled thunder. Dust billowed, and rocks scattered everywhere.
Liu Er occasionally dodged but often endured the blows directly. At that moment, he had completely drawn the Dragon Ginseng Root’s attention.
Taking advantage of this moment, Zhang Hei retrieved a set of Rolling Lightning Sphere Cages from his storage belt.
The cages nested one within another in varying sizes. When they flew into the air, they separated into seven spheres and rolled onto the ground.
The spheres flickered with lightning, moving faster and faster as they roamed around the Dragon Ginseng Root.
A flash of understanding passed through Shuangjing’s eyes.
“This spherical mechanism is drawing a formation.”
Wherever the spheres rolled, they left behind trails of lightning marks.
These marks combined with one another, quickly forming a formation.
The spheres erupted with intense lightning. The smallest and most agile sphere served as the formation core, three slightly larger ones became formation nodes, and the last three larger ones formed the base pillars. Together with the formation runes drawn on the ground, they created a Static Electricity Needle Formation.
Countless lightning streaks condensed into fine needles and stabbed into the Dragon Ginseng Root.
The lightning’s destructive power was extremely weak. The Dragon Ginseng Root ignored it and continued attacking Liu Er.
However, the lightning accumulated inside its body, interfering with its movements. Paralysis and distorted motions became increasingly obvious.
The pressure on Liu Er dropped sharply.
Zhang Hei then took out a Root-Drilling Hammer and dropped it onto the ground.
This hammer-shaped mechanism immediately burrowed underground, rapidly approaching the Dragon Ginseng Root.
Zhang Hei also released the Golden-Scale Saw Serpent.
The latter moved extremely quickly, like a brilliant golden thread. In the blink of an eye, it too drilled underground.
The Golden-Scale Saw Serpent was far more agile than the cumbersome Root-Drilling Hammer and swiftly approached the Dragon Ginseng Root.
The Root-Drilling Hammer stopped one zhang away from the root.
Several wooden rods extended from its body, stretching outward and embedding themselves into surrounding rubble to anchor it in place.
A small opening appeared on the hammerhead.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
In the next moment, iron nails shot out from the opening.
Each nail was about the length and thickness of an adult finger. Their firing speed was extremely fast, and three kinds of talismans were drawn on them, making them extremely sharp.
The nails repeatedly pierced the Dragon Ginseng Root, drilling into its body and traveling to fixed positions.
When the number of nails exceeded fifty, the interference they caused became visible to the naked eye.
Originally, every strike of the Dragon Ginseng Root flowed naturally and flexibly, its entire body moving like a snake or willow branch. Now it seemed stuck, as if every joint had frozen, its movements jerky and interrupted.
The Golden-Scale Saw Serpent seized the opportunity to coil around the base.
Its scales stood upright, continuously cutting as it burrowed rapidly inward.
Using his spiritual sense, Shuangjing observed in astonishment: the Golden-Scale Saw Serpent moved as fast as a golden line, circling the base of the Dragon Ginseng Root more than a dozen times in a very short time, easily sawing through the thick root!
Deprived of support, the Dragon Ginseng Root toppled into the pile of rubble with its violent movements.
At that moment it went mad, no longer focusing on Liu Er but attacking anything that threatened it.
The Root-Drilling Hammer was quickly destroyed, and five of the Rolling Lightning Sphere Cages were smashed, leaving only the two smallest ones.
As for the Golden-Scale Saw Serpent, it had long since burrowed deeper underground and avoided the disaster.
The Dragon Ginseng Root’s frenzy did not last long.
The nails and lightning needles inside its body continued exerting their effects.
Soon after, the Dragon Ginseng Root lay twitching in the rubble, its body spasming.
Liu Er let out a long breath, stepped forward, pasted sealing talismans onto it, and collected it.
“That’s it?” Shuangjing stared wide-eyed.
He recalled his own battle against the Dragon Ginseng Root—it had been at least ten times more difficult.
It wasn’t that Shuangjing was weaker than Liu Er and Zhang Hei. On the contrary, as a Nascent Soul–level cultivator, his cultivation and combat power far exceeded the three of them.
Unless Liu, Guan, and Zhang relied on their army to leverage greater strength, they would not even be able to fight him.
The difficulty lay in the fact that Shuangjing had to preserve the quality of the Dragon Ginseng Root as much as possible, rather than simply attacking with full force.
The better the quality of the Dragon Ginseng Root, the more military merit he would obtain.
But as a Nascent Soul cultivator, many of his techniques were powerful yet lacked the required precision. Thus he could only rely on sword techniques to achieve such delicate control.
Over the past two days of battlefield scavenging, his swordsmanship had indeed received considerable training.
Shuangjing was a noble-born cultivator. Cleaning the battlefield was essentially a harvesting job—something he rarely did in daily life.
“Liu Er is only drawing the fire. Though he has the highest cultivation, he isn’t the key.”
“The real key lies in those three mechanical constructs.”
“They cooperate with one another perfectly. Each one is extremely specialized against the Dragon Ginseng Root, showing powerful restraint in actual combat.”
“Among the three constructs, the best quality one is that golden serpent. But even that is only at the Golden Core level.”
“As for the sphere cages and the hammer, they are only Foundation Establishment level.”
After calculating this, Shuangjing realized that Liu Er and Zhang Hei’s cost was ridiculously low.
After the entire battle, they had only lost six or seven Foundation Establishment–level mechanisms.
“Oh, the serpent’s scales need replacement—they were heavily worn.”
“Liu Er also consumed a lot of mana, and his weapon sword suffered some wear.”
“But that’s still far too little!”
“Zhang Hei didn’t even fight personally. He just deployed mechanisms.”
Shuangjing felt a surge of envy.
Comparing it with his own battles, he had to remain constantly focused, precisely controlling sword light to avoid damaging the Dragon Ginseng Root too much.
After several battles, his mana consumption wasn’t great, but mentally he was exhausted. He had to drink tea and eat pastries to replenish his spiritual sense and maintain alertness.
And those spirit foods cost money.
More importantly, the Dragon Ginseng Roots he cut with sword qi were still inferior in quality compared to Liu Er’s harvest.
For this kind of task, the weaker the attack used to defeat the Dragon Ginseng Root, the better.
Liu Er and Zhang Hei’s attacks were exactly like that—perfectly weak, unbelievably precise!
In fact, Liu Er didn’t even attack at all. He just endured the blows.
“Third Brother, it’s your turn next round.” Liu Er grimaced in pain, his body covered in bruises. While speaking, he cast healing spells on himself.
Zhang Hei responded with an “Oh,” looking dispirited.
Compared to staying in the camp to train soldiers, he originally preferred going out to fight.
But this style of fighting was utterly boring to him—just standing there and getting beaten.
Yet following the battle procedure designed by Ning Zhuo gave them the greatest profit.
First place on the Military Merit Leaderboard was the best proof.
Hearing their conversation, ripples rose in Shuangjing’s heart.
“So Liu Er and Zhang Hei are just taking turns acting as living targets.”
“Liu, Guan, and Zhang are all rough men. How could they understand mechanism arts?”
“It must be Ning Zhuo’s creation!”
“Good. I underestimated you. I knew before that you were good with mechanical puppets, but I never expected such ingenious mechanical designs.”
“Could it be that mechanism arts are actually your main cultivation?”
The problem was that Ning Zhuo’s performance in Five Elements spells had been far too dazzling.
Even now, though Shuangjing had guessed the truth, he immediately doubted himself.
“Not likely… If Ning Zhuo truly specialized in mechanism arts, how would his Five Elements spells be explained?”
“With such mastery of the Five Elements, why bother cultivating mechanism arts?”
Shuangjing shook his head and quietly left.
He quickly returned to the forward camp and personally reported to Shuang Ling.
Holding the jade slip, Shuang Ling watched the recorded image once before slowly opening her eyes.
Observing her expression, Shuangjing noticed a rare trace of surprise and spoke carefully.
“Aunt, now that the secret behind Liu Er dominating the leaderboard has been uncovered, the rest will be easy.”
“With your mastery of mechanism arts, you could easily improve upon Ning Zhuo’s design and help me reach the top position.”
Unexpectedly, Shuang Ling shook her head calmly.
“I can’t do it.”
Shuangjing froze, staring at her in disbelief.
He knew very well that his aunt was one of the Nascent Soul–level figureheads of Liangzhu Kingdom, renowned for her expertise in mechanism arts and extremely proud. It was exceedingly rare for her to admit inferiority.
Shuangjing sucked in a cold breath.
“Could it be that Ning Zhuo is some once-in-a-generation genius whose mechanism mastery already surpasses yours at such a young age?”
“How ridiculous.” Shuang Ling snorted coldly. “The structures of these three constructs are simple. I understood them at a glance.”
“The true difficulty is not the mechanisms themselves, but the formations and talismans embedded within them.”
“These formations and talismans cooperate with one another to construct three types of spells—Metal, Fire, and Earth.”
“The reason these constructs counter the Dragon Ginseng Root so well is essentially because those three spells are exceptionally suitable for dealing with it.”
“You couldn’t see through it because Ning Zhuo transformed these spells into mechanism constructs.”
As the Mechanism Princess, Shuang Ling had cultivated for far longer than Ning Zhuo. The depth of mechanism knowledge she accumulated over such a long life was not something Ning Zhuo could match.
She saw the essence instantly.
Ning Zhuo’s mechanism mastery only made her think that for someone of his age, reaching such a level was decent. But compared to outstanding disciples of mechanism sects, there was still a considerable gap.
However, the formations and talismans Ning Zhuo embedded within the mechanisms made her secretly surprised.
“It seems this boy is extremely proficient in Five Elements spells and has learned a wide variety of them. That’s why he was able to pick the exact spells that counter the Dragon Ginseng Root.”
“He also has some cleverness, using mechanism arts to cleverly combine these spells.”
“For someone his age to have such Five Elements attainment is quite unusual. I suspect he likely possesses some excellent innate talent that helps him quickly master Five Elements spells.”
Shuangjing frowned. “But the Ning Family specializes in frost talismans.”
By now, the spies Shuangjing had sent out had already gathered considerable information about Ning Zhuo and the Ning Family.
Shuang Ling shook her head.
“That isn’t the key point.”
“I cannot replicate these three constructs, nor do I have the interest to.”
“I have more important military matters to deal with.”
“So—you know what to do now, don’t you?”
Shuangjing froze for a moment before replying, “I will approach Ning Zhuo and purchase his mechanisms.”
“Difficult.” Shuang Ling shook her head. “Ning Zhuo is still very much a youth at heart. You yourself said that when you framed Mu Lan before, he publicly rebuked you in the restaurant. I also made things difficult for him at the auction.”
“The chances of him agreeing to you are very small.”
A sharp glint flashed in Shuangjing’s eyes.
“Heh, Aunt, I understand.”
“Ning Zhuo and the Three Generals are outsiders.”
“But we belong to the Double Surname.”
“I’ll go to the quartermaster and inform him that someone has created these three constructs. If they are widely adopted, our army could clear the battlefield faster, which would benefit the overall war effort.”
“Let the quartermaster apply pressure. Ning Zhuo will have no choice but to hand them over.”
Only then did Shuang Ling nod in satisfaction and wave her hand.
“Go handle it.”