Witch Wind

Chapter 410 Unstoppable Momentum (Part 1)

Behind Ziyang Pass, separated by a stardust belt three to five light-years thick, are three narrow, winding waterways that connect to each other, leading to the three prefectures of the Dali Holy Dynasty.

The three prefectures are of similar size and each consists of more than thirty small star systems. Each prefecture has 150 to 160 habitable planets and hundreds of billions of people.

These prefectures, serving as rear support bases for Ziyang Pass, usually have few garrisons, but they contain various factories and have built numerous replenishment bases. If the war on the border of Bailuan Star and at Ziyang Pass becomes critical, these places can quickly build an astonishing number of warships and produce billions of civilian soldiers.

At the end of the shipping lanes leading to these three prefectures, a metal warship was built, equipped with the high-tech main cannons of the Dali Holy Dynasty. Combining the ingenious weapon-forging methods of the wooden horse and flowing ox provided by Shu Han, a fixed cannon position with enormous destructive power was constructed, firmly guarding these three shipping lanes.

These three warships not only guarded three shipping lanes, but also served as the signal exchange center between Ziyang Pass and the three prefectural capitals in the rear.

Even with the technological capabilities of the Dali Holy Dynasty, it was impossible to freely communicate with the rear by traversing a vast stardust belt spanning several light-years. Along the three winding shipping routes, numerous signal towers were built. All signals from Ziyang Pass would be relayed through these towers and converged at these three fortresses.

On the fortress, there were dedicated intelligence officers who reviewed and compiled the intelligence from Ziyang Pass, and then categorized and passed it on to the appropriate personnel in the three prefectural governments.

Military information belongs to the military.

Official information belongs to the government.

Civilian information involves charging high letter fees before being forwarded to the corresponding recipient.

However, just one day before Bai Luan Star was attacked by the Sima Jin Dynasty army, stardust storms simultaneously erupted in all three shipping lanes. Along these three winding lanes, spanning nearly ten light-years, most of the signal towers were destroyed by the stardust storms.

As for the three fortresses, by sheer bad luck and bad timing, a rookie intelligence officer took office and, in a moment of carelessness, accidentally increased the energy flow of the signal aggregation system, completely burning out several important information modules.

While preparing to replace these information modules, a shocking case broke out simultaneously in the three prefectures—a warehouse clerk in charge of storing these information modules had the audacity to steal all of these military-standard information modules and resell them!

And then, the incident occurred.

When the officials of the three prefectures ordered a thorough investigation into this major case of embezzlement of military supplies, they were surprised to find that more than a dozen warehouse clerks related to the case had all committed suicide by poisoning themselves at the same time, along with all their relatives and even their own old yellow dog!

They used a rare poison that could even annihilate one's soul.

This time, even the soul-searching technique could not be used, the case clues were completely cut off, and there was no way to continue the investigation.

As a result, the officials in the three prefectures slowly wrote documents and slowly transmitted them to their superiors, while at the same time slowly placing orders with the factories to replenish the required military information modules with meticulous workmanship.

During this process, all news from the direction of Bailuan Star and Ziyang Pass was completely cut off, and not a single piece of information was transmitted back.

Even civilian fleets that usually crisscross the waterway were all stuck in port due to the stardust storms in the shipping lanes.

Ever since.

It wasn't until the Yellow Turban Army, having received massive military aid from Xing Tianli, completely captured Ziyang Pass and even completed the standard procedures of mobilizing the people, fighting the local tyrants, and distributing land that the more than 10 billion people on dozens of habitable planets around Ziyang Pass had enthusiastically joined the Yellow Turban Army.

The stardust storms on the three shipping lanes stopped almost simultaneously.

On the three metal fortresses, the information modules were repaired, and the repair ships dispatched by the three prefectural governor's offices also traversed the waterway with the fastest efficiency to repair the damaged signal towers.

The three fortresses received intelligence almost simultaneously from the signal towers that had remained undamaged along the flight path for over half a month: Bai Luanxing Changlu Guan had been killed, the Sima Jin Dynasty army had been defeated, Sima Ping and his party had been captured, a large number of powerful cultivators from Ziyang Pass, including Ye Lan, had been killed, the Ziyang Pass garrison had been completely annihilated, and the Yellow Turban army had shouted treasonous slogans...

It must be said that the mid-level officials of Ziyang Pass were quite capable.

Among these remaining intelligence reports were even detailed investigative materials on the Yellow Turban Army, the Taiping Sect, and others, including the Heavenly King Xiao Li Wu.

Including where they came from, why they were thrown into prison, who was behind it, what conflict of interest led to these events, whether Xiao Li Wu and his men had committed a crime or were deliberately framed, etc... After investigating the matter in a very short time, they used the most urgent military channel to transmit the information to the three prefectures in the rear!
Unfortunately, all three routes simultaneously unleashed stardust storms.

Unfortunately, the information modules of all three fortresses were destroyed simultaneously.

Unfortunately, major corruption cases broke out simultaneously in all three prefectures.

In the three fortresses, the officers in charge of intelligence were all covered in cold sweat and their faces were ashen—the information system had just been repaired when they received a flood of information from the directions of Bailuanxing and Ziyangguan.

The last message they received was a farewell letter from the planet of the most remote habitable planet in Ziyang Pass, a planet inhabited by the gentry.

The letter was simple: "The enemy has surrounded the city with heavy troops, and there is no way out. Your subject is ready to die for your country!"

Inside the Ziyan Mansion, in the metal fortress and data center, Ye Mo, who was young but already had a golden seal at his waist and the rank of general, trembled slightly. His face was pale, he was covered in cold sweat, his legs were weak, and he almost collapsed to the ground.

Before him, on several large screens, scarlet blood-red words were flashing.

Those were farewell messages sent out intensively by the leaders of dozens of habitable planets in Ziyang Pass within just two or three days.

Ye Mo gripped an exquisite teacup tightly with both hands. His fingers spasmed, squeezing the teacup so hard that it cracked into countless tiny fissures. His powerful Golden Immortal magic emitted a chilling golden light, forcibly maintaining the shattered teacup in its original state.

Finally, his emotions surged, golden light flashed in his palm, and the teacup and tea were completely annihilated, disappearing without a trace with a 'poof'.

"Something terrible has happened." Ye Mo's mind went blank.

He is a member of the Ye family.

The Ye in Ye Lan, the commander-in-chief of Ziyang Pass.

In terms of seniority, Ye Lan was Ye Mo's great-uncle, a direct descendant of the same branch of the family. It was precisely because of the powerful Ye family, a prominent clan in the Great Li Dynasty, that Ye Mo was able to achieve such a high ranking at such a young age, even after just graduating from the Great Li Dynasty's military academy, surpassing thousands of his classmates with a comprehensive academic record that placed him well above the top thousand, earning him the title of general and the golden seal!

His first position was in the data center of the Ziyan Mansion fortress.

Ye Mo was fully aware of what had happened over the past two weeks—someone had deliberately used great supernatural powers to stir up a stardust storm, intending to isolate military intelligence between the border regions and the heartland of the Holy Dynasty.

That person—no, not just one person, but several—were all powerful figures whom the Ye family also wanted to befriend, and they all made their move at the same time.

Therefore, Ye Mo, along with many others, quietly cooperated with their actions.

The damaged signal towers and the sold information modules were all the result of their cooperation.

But Ye Mo never dreamed, not even in his nightmares, that such a thing would happen—his great-uncle, the commander-in-chief of Ziyang Pass, a man of high rank and great power, with extraordinary cultivation, Ye Lan, was actually killed.

The entire Ziyang Pass was captured by a group of suddenly rising up rebels?

Countless nobles had their heads chopped off by those lowly commoners.
The wealth of the nobles was wantonly divided up by the lowly commoners.
Those lowly people even convened a so-called 'public trial,' where they acted as judges and used their own drafted legal provisions to directly execute those nobles who had committed the slightest 'minor trouble.'
"Turning the world upside down, disrupting the court... They deserve to die!" Ye Mo stomped his foot fiercely and roared hoarsely. He suddenly saw several officials of commoner origin frantically operating something in front of the huge control panel—those movements looked familiar to him. Frustrated, he stared at these lowly officials' actions for a while before realizing with horror that they were actually following standard reporting procedures!
"What are you doing?" Ye Mo roared hoarsely, grabbing a teapot beside him and hurling it viciously. The teapot whistled as it struck a commoner official in the back, piercing through his frail body, causing large chunks of flesh to explode and splatter across the entire worktable.

The officials froze in their tracks.

They slowly turned around and looked at Ye Mo with disbelief.

War broke out on the border, with an enemy army suddenly invading Bailuan Star. Zhang Bao and his Shu Han army came to Bailuan Star's aid, but a conflict erupted with Lu Guan, resulting in the complete annihilation of Lu Guan and other high-ranking Bailuan Star officials. Immediately following, a rebellion broke out at Ziyang Pass. A large group of rebels inexplicably gained terrifying cultivation levels and weaponry, and within a few days, they conquered the entire Ziyang Pass!
Any one of these messages could be fatal.

These messages were beyond the authority of their fortress... no, even the Ziyan Mansion, to handle. They were marked with nine blood-red feathers, the most urgent military and political documents.

They must, immediately and as quickly as possible, use the remote information module on the fortress to transmit this damned intelligence back to the capital!
But Ye Mo.

Ye Mo actually killed his colleague who was performing his duties!
Several civilian officers, because of their humble origins, no matter how shrewd and capable they were, no matter how many merits they had made, had no qualification or opportunity to cultivate. They were just commoners, just mortals... while Ye Mo was a member of the Ye family, a Golden Immortal powerhouse.

A terrifying aura of golden immortality enveloped the entire data center.

Several civilian officers stared at Ye Mo, their bodies stiff and their minds blank. They had a thousand words and countless questions on the tip of their tongues, but they couldn't utter a single one.

Ye Mo coldly stared at them, pointed, and several civilian officers, along with all the other civilian officials and soldiers in the entire data center, exploded and died. With a wave of his hand, the power of a Golden Immortal was activated, and all the flesh and remains of the officers and soldiers evaporated completely, vanishing without a trace.

Ye Mo closed the data center door and walked expressionlessly to the control panel.

He took out a blood-red jade pendant and inserted it into a notch on the control panel. He placed his palm on a raised blood-red crystal ball on the control panel and rapidly pulsed and changed it at a special frequency. In the blink of an eye, he input a wisp of magical power that pulsed a million times.

Inside the control panel, a top-secret passage belonging exclusively to the powerful and noble families of the Great Li Holy Dynasty was opened.

On the huge screen, a faint light flickered for a full quarter of an hour... During the wait, strange runes occasionally flashed on the screen. Each time a rune flashed, Ye Mo would quickly inject a wisp of Golden Immortal magic power with an ever-changing frequency to perform multiple layers of identity verification.

After a long wait of half an hour, Ye Mo was drenched in sweat. Finally, an old man dressed in a black robe, with white hair and beard, and whose body was filled with Daoist energy that had condensed into visible Daoist flowers, appeared silently on the screen.

"Little Mo'er, what is it?" the old man murmured softly.

Ye Mo quickly packaged all the intelligence he received, processed it with special encoding, and then transmitted it through a top-secret channel.

The Ziyan Prefecture is too far from the capital of the Dali Holy Dynasty. Even though the Dali Holy Dynasty, with the help of Shu Han, combined the best of technological and cultivation civilizations and built an ultra-long-distance information transmission mechanism with the help of the Void Teleportation Array.

To transmit information from Ziyan Mansion back to the capital, it would have to go through at least twenty data centers similar to Ziyan Mansion's fortress before it could finally be delivered.

After another long 35 minutes of waiting, the screen blazed with light and shadow, displaying the immense power of a quasi-saint level being that, through the convergence, transfer, and continuous amplification and enhancement of data centers, finally descended upon this place.

A faint light reappeared behind Ye Mo.

Three elderly men with gaunt faces, wearing black robes with the faintly visible Ye family crest on their sleeves, descended through the air in just a quarter of an hour, thanks to a sophisticated void teleportation array system that spared no expense in expending their vital energy.

"Little Mo'er, well done. Is this place cleaned up?" An elder of the Ye family with the cultivation of a quasi-saint looked at Ye Mo with satisfaction. As expected of the young talent carefully cultivated by their Ye family, such important military and political intelligence should naturally be reported to the family as soon as possible. Only after the family has grasped all the details and considered all the plans and countermeasures can outsiders know about it!

Given Ye Mo's status, wasn't the family's initial intention in going to great lengths to place him in the data center of the Ziyan Mansion's fortress precisely this?

"There's a slight lingering issue. The stardust storm a few days ago, the damage to those signal towers, and the private sale of information modules—it was all handled a bit hastily," Ye Mo said urgently. "Of course, the person in charge of this matter..."

Elder Ye shook his head slightly: "These are minor matters. The other two families should have arrived by now, right?"

Before the words were even finished, the dim light inside the data center shone again.

Of the three prefectures connected to Ziyang Pass, the elders of the powerful families behind a key figure in the metal fortresses of Ziyun and Zijue, which are of equal status to Ziyan Prefecture, have all arrived here.

The nine quasi-saint level elders made a joint decision in just a few words.

A quarter of an hour later, the governors of the three prefectures of Ziyan, Ziyun, and Zijue were captured alive by the elders of the Ye, Wang, and Na families. Their confession to the outside world was that the governors of the three prefectures colluded with outsiders to cut off the intelligence system between the three prefectures and the capital, delaying crucial military intelligence concerning the life and death of the Holy Dynasty for nearly a month.

Under the influence of the elders of the three families, the governor of the three prefectures "happily confessed" and wrote a lengthy confession of over ten thousand words.

Subsequently, feeling ashamed before the imperial court and unable to face the elders of Jiangdong, they voluntarily detonated their immortal souls in front of numerous officials from the three prefectures, their souls scattering away.

The three elders were quite satisfied. They immediately carefully considered the words and drafted a long article detailing everything that had happened there. They then sent it to the capital city of Lixing through the most orthodox official channels.

While the three elders were drafting official documents, a violent military conflict suddenly broke out in the three prefectural capitals.

Ye Mo, Wang Xin, and Na Zheng, three outstanding talents from prominent families, carrying the orders of their elders, led elite troops dispatched from three fortresses directly into the territory of the three prefectures, and launched a large-scale search for the trusted officials under the three governors.

Warships dispatched by the fortresses rushed toward habitable planets.

On the planet's surface, turrets lit up one after another, their blinding streaks of light tearing through the atmosphere and violently colliding with the energy shields of the warships. The intense flames that erupted were enough to illuminate the void for thousands of miles around.

Three high-level cultivators, brought by the elders of the three families, withstood the firepower of the cannons and transformed into streaks of light, rushing down from the sky.

On the ground, three of the governor's trusted officials roared and charged at Ye Mo and his group, some riding their escape lights and others piloting warships.

The war broke out.

Ye Mo and the others repeatedly accused the three governors of "colluding with enemy countries, plotting treason, and deserving to die a thousand deaths."

The governor's trusted officials, most of whom were his relatives, were furious and accused Ye Mo and his associates of 'framing, slandering, and persecuting loyal officials'!
Just as the two sides were locked in a fierce and protracted battle, a massive fleet, consisting of nearly a million warships and stretching as far as the eye could see, burst out of the Stardust Channel at a terrifying speed and headed straight for the Ziyan Mansion!
Ye Mo and his group have already gone to capture the trusted officials under the three governors.

The fortress guarding the waterway in Ziyan Prefecture has deployed 99% of its 3,000 warships, leaving only a few scattered warships patrolling the vicinity listlessly.

The million-strong fleet surged forth like a madman, each ship gleaming with golden light, as if cast from pure gold. Even more extravagant magic arrays were inscribed on the warships' outer armor, their golden brilliance illuminating a million miles around.

A shower of light descended, annihilating the few scattered patrol warships in a single strike. The metal fortress, with a diameter of ten thousand miles, with its thick armor, only managed to withstand the barrage of main gun fire for twenty-three counts before being completely obliterated.

Powerful ripples surged from these warships, spreading throughout the more than one hundred habitable planets of the Ziyan Prefecture in the blink of an eye.

All cultivators from major clans with cultivation levels above Celestial Immortal, and all warships of the Great Li Holy Dynasty, simultaneously received the information from the ripples.

"Li Tian is dead, the Imperial Han shall rise!"

(End of this chapter)