At the same moment.
"Oh, in the mountains, I see. This thing is really useful."
At the rear of the Ming army's formation,參將 Zhao Muzhi and 游擊將軍 Yang Dengshan were ordered to transport a batch of strategic materials from Haizhou City to Kaicheng. Before their departure, they had already learned that the Japanese army would ambush and intercept them midway.
According to the plan, the general leading the way was a disguised soldier, while the two of them did not follow the main force. Instead, they occupied a hidden location and acted from behind, each holding two strange small cylindrical objects.
"These Westerners' things are really interesting. They can see so clearly from such a distance. The foreigner who bought the cursed land of Dongyue Temple, his name is Matteo Ricci, right?"
Zhao Muzhi played with the telescope in his hand. Westerners had many strange things. Although many of them existed in Chinese literature in earlier times, those were things that only existed in texts. There was no need to dwell on lost things.
"That Japanese general must be getting impatient. Let's hurry up and force him out."
Zhao Muzhi said this and then dispatched a 小旗官, telling him something.
Thus, the Ming army's transport speed suddenly began to increase.
In the silent mountains and wilderness, a sudden tremor and commotion occurred. Three different forces rushed out from three directions like hungry wolves descending the mountain, aiming to cut the entire transport team into two halves from the front, rear, and middle!
The sounds of charging and the firing of bird's eye guns were incessant. Along with the appearance of three roads out of nowhere, the Ming army's arrows and firearms missed their targets, their trajectory twisted by a strange force, making them unable to hit.
At this time.
Katagiri Katsumoto was charging excitedly. Amidst the chaos, he came to a transport cart and lifted the curtain!
The surprise instantly turned into fright!
Inside the curtain was not a cannon, but haystacks tied and shaped!
"It's a trap! Retreat quickly!"
Katagiri Katsumoto realized what was happening, but before he could escape, suddenly, horns blared from the mountains and wilderness in front and behind. From all directions, the previously silent areas were filled with earth-shattering charging sounds. Countless ambushing troops emerged from the mountains, trapping the Japanese soldiers!
"They're here!"
Zhao Muzhi and Yang Dengshan led their troops to charge out from a mountain path, and several more teams appeared abruptly from different locations. Katagiri Katsumoto roared, rallying the remaining soldiers: "Run into the mountains, retreat into the mountains!"
He possessed divine power and could create paths where there were none. It was absolutely impossible to figure out his escape route!
The Ming army fired their cannons, arrows, and firearms, and the several thousand Japanese soldiers immediately scattered, beginning to flee into the mountains. A road suddenly appeared in the western mountain range, guiding all the retreating soldiers into it.
Seeing the enemy using divine power to escape towards the sea,參將 Zhao Muzhi secretly thought that it was indeed as the intelligence reported: they were advancing by both land and sea. Therefore, other places where grain and fodder were being transported should also have been ambushed.
"No need to pursue, let's annihilate the thousand-man unit behind us first!"
Zhao Muzhi stopped others from pursuing and watched the fleeing Japanese soldiers without any intention of blocking them. He simply ordered other soldiers to annihilate the thousand-man rear guard that had fallen into the Ming army's formation. These fifteen hundred people were finished here.
The spoils were abundant!
Katagiri Katsumoto and Kasuya Takenori led the remaining men to retreat. They lost several hundred men in the engagement, and the Ming army's vanguard also suffered many casualties. Both sides exchanged lives, but they ultimately abandoned the fifteen hundred rear guards, which was a considerable loss.
Nearly five thousand people retreated in a dense mass. Using their divine power, they reached the location where their ships were previously placed in half an hour.
However!
At this moment, under the dark sky, the sea was lit by a raging fire!
Whoosh—
Warships appeared on the sea. The veteran admiral Deng Zilong, clad in armor, led his twenty thousand naval forces as if they were divine soldiers descending from heaven, appearing on the sea. Deng Zilong also held a red command flag.
Kasuya Takenori looked into the distance, greatly astonished: "Katagiri! Those are not our navy!"
Katagiri Katsumoto's expression also changed drastically. The distant firelight was dense, like a river of fire, and particularly dazzling in the night. He couldn't see the flags clearly, but he could see the formation. This was not a formation for reinforcement, but a encirclement formation to annihilate the enemy and prevent them from escaping!
"How could this be! We crossed the sea and climbed the mountains from here. How did they know about this place!"
From Kaicheng to Haizhou, there were countless ports and coastal cliffs along this route. Departing from Wangjing's Suwon Port, they quickly arrived here with the power of demons. Even if the Ming dynasty had scouts investigating day and night, it was impossible for them to grasp all the terrain, landforms, and the dynamics of enemy presence in every location.
This was absolutely impossible!
But it was happening right before his eyes!
"Baga yaro!"
Katagiri Katsumoto trembled uncontrollably!
Leading several thousand men, he was almost caught in a trap. He thought it was just the enemy guessing their strategic intentions and making arrangements, but everything he was facing now was as if the enemy had a precise prophet...
A prophet?
It must be that immortal!
"It must be that Ming immortal. He has the ability to divine heavenly secrets! How could we have forgotten this, damn it!"
Katagiri Katsumoto was furious and regretful. Kasuya Takenori was somewhat puzzled: "Onmyoji can also divine heavenly secrets, but they can't divine the newly established strategy and our surprise attack coordinates so clearly!"
"I remember that heavenly secrets are not something ordinary immortals can divine!"
This was because the fake immortals of Japan dared not divine heavenly secrets, fearing damage to their lifespan and spirit. Even in China, only those who followed the Taiyi Dao and had achieved great cultivation could divine heavenly secrets. Otherwise, they would become scattered Taiyi numbers, and the divined heavenly secrets would inevitably be ambiguous. In such ever-changing wars, each divination would consume one's lifespan. Who would dare to divine for you casually?
This was not calculating a person's birth date and time!
It was not calculating a person's life and death!
It was calculating the lives and deaths of thousands or tens of thousands of people!
Kasuya Takenori's expression grew paler and paler. The warships in the distance had already closed in!
"Let's fight them. I'll lead the way, follow me, and break through!"
Katagiri Katsumoto's divine power surged. He was going to make a desperate struggle. Kasuya Takenori also showed a fierce expression, knowing that if they didn't fight to the death this time, there would be no way out!
Thus, a large number of warships began to charge towards the center of the Ming navy's encirclement!
Seeing the Japanese soldiers boarding ships and charging towards their formation, the old general Deng Zilong raised the red command flag and waved it forward forcefully!
This command flag was the Fire God Flag held by Ji Xiang!
Immense flames appeared out of nowhere, burning forward along the sea until the entire mountain range was engulfed in a sea of fire!
And beside Deng Zilong, a Japanese samurai appeared, watching Katagiri and Kasuya in the sea of fire.
"Kishima Naoshige, it's you! You betrayed Lord Kobayakawa!"
Katagiri Katsumoto saw the Japanese samurai in full armor and cried out in his heart, "Damn it!"
This guy was actually a mole!
However, another person emerged from behind Kishima Naoshige, it was Ikoma Chikamasa from another team. This completely bewildered Katagiri Katsumoto. Of the four legion commanders who came to intercept the supply lines, two were moles?
He charged madly towards the opposite side, opening a great road on the sea, but then, those giant cannons that had appeared on the Ming dynasty's large ships reappeared!
Deng Zilong waved the command flag to ignite the fire and shouted:
"Warship God! Fire!"
The Five Military Commissions, one of the Eight War Gods, the God who controls warships!
A divine position emerged from the warship, unleashing vast divine power! In the next moment, it propelled dozens of divine cannons to bombard!
With the momentum of collapsing mountains and cracking earth, the might of the Hongyi Great Cannon pierced the heavens. Its terrifying power, amplified by the Warship God and supplemented by the Five Thunder Divine Curses, instantly shattered Katagiri Katsumoto's divine power into pieces!
The God of Heavenly Narrow Land fell with a roar!
Kasuya Takenori, with bloodshot eyes, roared and came to rescue!
"Sambō Kōjin!"
The armor on his body transformed into the patterns of a kasaya, with three faces and six arms, one of the guardian deities unique to Japanese Buddhism. He protects the Three Jewels of Buddhism, Sangha, and Dharma, and detests impurity. Because he punishes the violent and evil, he appears with his hair standing on end in a wrathful state, capable of removing impurity and disaster, and also existing as a hearth god.
He thrust his cross-shaped great spear forward, following the sea path opened by the God of Heavenly Narrow Land, charging unimpeded to the Ming army's warships! At the same time, those soldiers who had not yet been burned to death or blown up by cannons also made a desperate struggle forward!
It wasn't that they were particularly heroic or unafraid of death!
It was that at this moment, there was basically no possibility of survival!
If they could kill one, they would. Even if they charged to the very front of the encirclement, it would be considered a great victory!
If they were lucky, if the enemy needed prisoners...!
It wasn't that no one thought this way. By showing fearless courage first, they could be valued when they surrendered. But all of this depended on surviving the current sea of fire and bombardment!
"I'll kill you!"
Kasuya Takenori brandished his great spear, splitting the cannonballs. His divine power and the national prestige on his body were also riddled with holes. The Ming army organized a fierce counterattack. He rushed onto a warship, and soon four divine generals came to meet him!
The Four Divisions of Merit Officers!
Four innate realm divine generals!
The four divine generals suppressed Kasuya Takenori, and then some soldiers took out a strange firearm with six dark barrels in front and a shield sandwiched in the middle.
It was the Swift Thunder Gun!
Under a concentrated volley of fireballs, accompanied by the power of the Five Thunder Talismans, Kasuya Takenori was completely riddled with holes!
The naval battle concluded amidst the raging flames.
However, a new change occurred in the seawater.
After killing those Japanese bandits who wanted to surrender, two shadows in the seawater began to writhe, seemingly replicating two people who had charged over earlier. Thus, they slowly stood up from the sea surface, and after a series of transformations, they froze into the likenesses of Katagiri Katsumoto and Kasuya Takenori.
Deng Zilong looked at Kishima Naoshige beside him and exclaimed: "The changes of these shadow soldiers are so perfect!"
"Kishima Naoshige" laughed: "However, shadow soldiers basically have no combat power. Even for surprise assassinations, they cannot inflict enough damage. But they can stand in place to intimidate."
The shadow soldiers meant, "I'll handle the disguise, you go fight, I'll be the 'ga ga', you be the '乱杀'."
This shadow soldier naturally could not tell Deng Zilong that Ji Xiang had immortal-grade Meng Han Medicine. Some things were better kept from the court to avoid apprehension.
Deng Zilong brought the other two shadow soldiers onto the ship, then ordered a group of people to put on Japanese armor, and the navy immediately set sail for Wangjing's Suwon Port!
"Very good, this is how we'll trick them into opening the port gate and capture Wangjing in one fell swoop!"
......
Kaicheng, harassment and siege had already begun, but Uesugi Kagekatsu felt a strange emotion in his heart.
"No, that immortal should not be in the city!"
Uesugi Kagekatsu seemed to recall something and asked the two fake immortals: "The Ming immortal who appeared before us that day, could it have been a Yang Shen avatar?"
"No, we can be sure it wasn't. You can rest assured about this!"
A fake immortal immediately replied: "This kind of move, the Yang Shen avatar, can be performed from the Nascent Soul stage. There is a difference between an avatar and the true body, and this difference lies in the flow of qi. The qi within the Yang Shen avatar is fixed, because it is just an avatar."
"The immortal we saw that day, his qi was flowing. It was definitely his true body!"
"Mr. Uesugi, are you afraid that the immortal is not in the city and has gone to attack other cities?"
Uesugi Kagekatsu nodded: "That's exactly what I was thinking... I'm afraid..."
"No need to worry. There are no problems on the western front. On the eastern front, there are several legion commanders, Onmyoji, and swordsmen guarding. Let alone the fact that sending an avatar would consume a lot of the main body's energy, if he sent an avatar to the eastern front, it would be a good opportunity for us."
"Moreover, didn't we have a battle report from the east yesterday? There were no problems there. And you can rest assured, at such a critical juncture of confrontation, this Ming immortal would absolutely not dare to divide his strength and go to the eastern front. Otherwise, we could advance unimpeded and take back Kaicheng directly."
"If he leaves, the Ming army here will be不堪一击. Even if we don't make a move, they will be routed with a wave of our sleeves. After all, His Majesty the Emperor has also given us some震器法宝. When necessary, they are by no means something that ordinary cultivators can resist."
Uesugi Kagekatsu listened to their explanation, and his unease slightly lessened.
But...
"But what if the battle report that came was fake? Or what if the eastern front was destroyed after that battle report was sent out?"
The two fake immortals exchanged glances, then couldn't help but chuckle, almost laughing:
"We understand your concerns!"
"But! This is also absolutely impossible! It's one thing to attack some strongholds, but as I said, there are several legion commanders, many great generals guarding the eastern front. For a true immortal to simultaneously confront so many strong individuals, coupled with the weakening effect of national prestige, if he left the coverage of the Ming army's national prestige, and faced our national prestige alone, along with the encirclement and pursuit of demon king legions and swordsmen, if he really went..."
"I'm afraid someone will gain great merit and the reputation of 'slaying an immortal'!"
The two fake immortals laughed heartily, and Shimazu Tadatsune also thoughtfully offered Uesugi Kagekatsu advice:
"These petty people are not worth worrying about! We only need to attack this city with all our might. Even if the true immortal is not here, he will return to reinforce sooner or later!"
"We only need to wait here for the rabbit!"
Such "prudent" words made Uesugi Kagekatsu feel that they made sense.
And at this moment, the horn for the first general offensive had already sounded...