Between the patches of dry grass and sandy dunes stood a small town protected by three layers of short earthen walls. Its flat buildings were built from various grey and yellow stones. Its name was Sucheng.

Drunk soldiers slouched against the sides of the main street. When they saw a young soldier walk alone towards the open plaza, many cheered.

“His squad finally deserted him! I finally won a pool!” a man shouted. Liquor fell from his jug.

“Oh please, the odds were stacked in the first place. Who can stand riding through the empty dunes every day? The youngster is such an idiot. He’ll have to spend his entire life on patrols until he is promoted.”

All the men began exchanging money.

“The pool on his identity is still open right?” the man asked.

“You just made up your losses and you're already going to give it away?”

“The leading theory is ‘illegitimate son disowned by the scheming enemy’,” someone said.

“What enemy?”

“Obviously it's the first son of the family that is overshadowed by his talented younger brother, who, with the help of a sly uncle, sent him out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Laughter erupted.

…

Liu Qian silently pulled his horse towards the crowd gathering at the plaza. The youth curled his hands into fists. How much time am I wasting?! I rejected attending the officer camps for a reason. I won’t gain anything here. And Commandant Tuoba still refuses to see me.

At the front of the group, Captain Fan, a large-framed man, shouted. “This patrol will be towards Ershan Pass! Halfway we will guard a Keruk caravan that’s headed west. My lieutenant has your assigned scouting locations.”

Everyone gave a half-hearted agreement. For them, it was their turn in the rotation, no one volunteered.

Spotting the lieutenant, Liu Qian mounted and rode towards him. From his angle, he saw the marked map the man held and memorized it.

The man turned around and glanced around the youth. “Just you?”

Before Liu Qian could reply, a hand was placed on his shoulder from behind.

“We’re a two-man squad,” a young Uyurta man said grinning.

“You two have regions eighty-six, forty-one, and thirty.” The lieutenant rode away.

Liu Qian creased his brows. “Silig? Why are you here? Didn't you hear from Captain Murong? I am no longer the squad leader.”

Silig, the young Uyurta man, smiled and turned his horse away. “I am also somewhat ambitious.”

“You also want to gain merit?”

“Not really. During the spar that decided the squad leader, I can tell you held back against the other nine of us. You’ve also clearly studied commanding. Youths from prominent military families don't belong in this place. When you eventually become a captain, make me your lieutenant.”

On paper, there was no difference between a common soldier and squad leader. The real first officer position was captain.

Liu Qian tugged his reins and followed along with the moving patrol group. “No. You’re not good enough.”

“Isn’t that too blunt?”

“I am just speaking the truth. Our spar didn’t impress me.” His horse passed Silig from behind.

The young man’s frozen smile twitched.

…

The blue sky was clear. The blinding sun was lowering at the west.

Both Liu Qian and Silig splintered off from the patrol group towards a distant rocky plateau.

“Nothing around. Region checked,” Silig said after drinking from his water bag.

Liu Qian pulled his reins again. “Let’s go. This way.”

As they rode, Silig noticed something. “Is this the right direction to meet up with the patrol?”

“We’re heading to the next area, eighty-five.”

“Why?”

“Captain Fan missed that region on the map.”

“Couldn’t you have corrected him earlier?”

“I shouldn’t have known in the first place. There is also a proper timing to correct your superiors. Finally, a Zhao soldier should always follow procedure, even if their superior forgets.

Silig pulled his reins and continued to follow silently. This youth is definitely weird.

There were some small plots of vegetable fields and dwellings interspersed throughout the area. In the distance was a small village of some dozen small houses. They were two clusters that were split in half by the main road. Yet, there was something lacking.

Liu Qian kicked the horse faster towards the village.

“What’s wrong?” Silig shouted as he struggled to follow behind.

On the main road, between the houses, Liu Qian leapted off. His legs dragged himself forward. He found Silig standing next to him.

There were mounds of corpses around the street. They were the villagers, tossed in piles like hay. While there was no blood, there was no breathing either.

Silig slowly went up to one to check the closest pile when Liu Qian’s eyes abruptly widened.

“Get away!”

Silig turned. “What?”

Liu Qian’s drawn saber swept past Silig’s head.

Thump!

A severed hand bled on the ground.

A male villager that just lost a hand was standing in a rigid posture, however, his eyes were white. The man ignored the blood pouring from his wound and raised it again.

The piles of bodies surrounding them began shaking.

Silig fell back with a disgusted frown. “What are they?”

“Corpse puppets.” Feng Clan. He gestured towards their horses.

Silig understood and nodded when three villagers crawled like animals to block his path. When one leapt, he unsheathed one of the two sabers at his side and slashed horizontally. A head was cleanly severed.

The young Uryuta man achieved the middle state of Perception through his saber skills alone. Out of their now-disbanded ten-man squad, he was the only besides Liu Qian who stepped onto the road of cultivation.

The remaining two corpses stood up and were joined by three others which successfully untangled themselves from the nearby piles.

While thinking of his one advantage of a weapon, he saw the moving corpses dig their fingers into their mouths. Saliva dripped.

“Feng Clan puppets all have corpse poison in them. Careful of their fingers and spit.” Liu Qian kicked the puppet of a woman away and cut off a hand that lunged towards his left side. He was at the peak of Dao Seed and the upper state of Perception, but it was not enough to fight all of them off. Someone in the first realm still needed to rely on mortal fighting abilities. Six corpses surrounded him, however, the reason he could get by was that he kept his back open to retreat. Once he was truly surrounded, the puppets would fearlessly grab hold of him.

“Our horses!”

Liu Qian looked and grimaced. Their two horses along with their bows and arrows galloped away. They would need to find them later if they survived. A puppet holding a pitchfork had caused it. With their quick escape lost, he only had his scale tunic and two sabers to rely on.

He severed another head with a grim expression and the corpse fell motionless. In the time that he did, a dozen more puppets had stood up in his surroundings and three joined the ones after him.

One got behind him. His sleeves were momentarily grabbed. He ducked, bent his leg, and pivoted his foot backward, rolling between the corpses’ legs. After the roll, he pushed his palms against the hard ground when he saw the shadows over him. He expected a doomed struggle to escape when nothing occurred.

The corpse puppets near him stopped moving.

They stood over him while he sat on the ground. He turned towards Silig who just freed himself from a grasped leg using a practiced backhanded slice. He looked around and realized that the puppets and piles were only on the main road. “Head towards the houses!”

Silig wasn’t even thinking, he did everything to ward off a dozen hands that reached after him. When he heard the yell, he pushed past the corpse of an old villager to the side of a house.

All the corpses stopped moving. The piled villagers were still standing up. There were at least a hundred and more still from the piles.

They began walking away from them, dispersing in every direction. Some even entered the side road Liu Qian was standing up in but ignored him.

Silig walked over to Liu Qian. “Why did they stop?”

Liu Qian took a deep breath and fell back onto the ground. He sat crossed legged and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“I am thinking.”

“Is it a plan?”

“It’s sight.”

“Sight?”

“The reason they stopped. The controller must only be in the second realm. Feng Clan members all cultivate great eyesight because, at the second realm, they can only direct puppets within their vision. We were attacked while on the main road that cuts the village from east to west. The puppets stopped attacking because they can’t see us while we’re behind these houses. This also means they must be outside of the village, hiding in or behind one of the surrounding buildings.”

Stuck near the buildings, Silig went up to the main road and looked east and west. “I don’t see this controller. The corpses are all leaving the village. Once we get out in the open, we’ll be outnumbered again.”

“They are controlling the corpses to form a dense circle around the town. After that, they will slowly march inwardly so that there’s no chance we could escape once the controller appears here to better see the fighting. The good news is that this means there’s likely only one or two cultivators because it’s facing us with precaution. The bad news is that the more time we wait, the more certain of our death.”

“Can we live?”

“There is one way to live. Gamble east or west.”

“Gamble how?”

“Their weakness is their sight. They are far enough away to see most of the village surroundings, but there is still a blindspot. Since they can see inside the main road, they are either hiding directly east or west of the village. Therefore, behind this village cluster, but the opposite direction of their hiding place, is the blindspot. At the blindspot, we can walk past the puppets without notice. They’re hiding either east or west. Our path to safety is either east or west. Which will you choose?”

Silig was in a stupor. “East.”

Liu Qian smiled. “Then I’ll go west.”

“Why not together?”

“It’s more important that at least one of us survives, so they can return to the base and reveal what happened. Got it?”

Silig nodded and ran through the alleys of the houses towards the east.

Liu Qian smirked and ran in the opposite direction. Along the way, he found an iron plow for oxen. Good shape. He removed the blade and carried the oddly curved metal frame, gripping it tightly and feeling it out.

At the edge of the village, he discarded his scale-tunic armor and placed some of its iron scales inside his boots before he stepped into the open plain of sparse grass. The nearby corpses did not react. When he was at the center of the puppets’ perimeter, the puppets froze. Simultaneously, he dropped the plow and he drew his saber. “I’m already here. Are you still hiding behind there?”

A man in his twenties with sunken eyes stepped out from behind a storage shed.

“I am Liu Qian, son of Liu Yaoshan and Princess Jiading.”

The man did not respond. The corpses around him all ran towards the youth simultaneously. Their movements were all finer than before.

So he doesn't believe me either. Well, I didn’t want to negotiate anyway.

Liu Qian crouched down.

The law he chose on the Heart Path was one that many in the military did. Iron. Found in both armor and steel weapons.

As someone at the peak of Dao Seed, Liu Qian has been studying the control methods of the Dao Tree realm, which he could achieve using the energy inside his body. Without being within the proper realm, the energy easily depletes without recovering. If he used all of it, his body would give in to exhaustion and collapse, but if he was able to get close enough to the puppet controller, he could easily see victory.

He would have preferred controlling his saber to fly, but only being at the peak of the first realm, he couldn’t practice enough to accurately cut with it, so he needed to get his body over the blocking corpses instead.

His intent connected the iron in his boots to the very end of the nearby plow’s frame. Then, he reached his arm out and grasped the empty air in front of him, but in his mind, he took hold of the other end of the plow’s frame.

The muscles of his entire body strained. The effort he exerted was the same as lifting his own body weight and throwing it, something a first or even second realm cultivator normally couldn’t exert, but, the oddly curved plow acted as a lever.

Liu Qian jumped while pulling his arm. His body launched off the ground and over the corpse puppets. In the air, he tucked in his feet and raised his saber with both hands as it came down on the man whose eyes widened in shock.

Before his blade reached the man, a new corpse puppet leaped out from behind the shed where it hid.

The corpse was nothing like the villagers, it’s flesh was literal bronze. The personal puppet of the cultivator!

Clang!

He had swept his saber and blocked the bronze fist, before crashing towards the ground and rolling to stand.

The bronze corpse puppet obstructed his path to the man.

“Too bad, Soldier Boy. That was impressive too,” the man said while smiling.

Liu Qian unsheathed his second saber and held it parallel with his first. Fifth Military Saber Manual, Fangs of the Tiger.

Like the wind, his sabers danced left to right, right to left. His footwork kept him stable as he dodged the fists of the puppet. Although the bronze puppet was cut and scratched, its limbs were not any closer to being severed.

He bit his lips. The puppet was stalling him. Before he can get past, the villager corpses behind him would get close enough to restrain him. As his blade continuously slashed, he listened to the footsteps of the villagers’ corpses come closer. He couldn’t do anything about them, the puppet occupied all his attention.

There was a yell. Liu Qian grinned. He didn’t even need to turn around to know what happened. Behind him, Silig tore his saber at the surrounding puppets. It is not over. Silig bought him time, but that time was just until the young man got overwhelmed. A breath at most.

He had used most of his inner energy, but he still had enough for one more control method that was simple in complexity.

Liu Qian temporarily sheathed one of his sabers and held the other with both hands. He thrust it forwards like a sword. It stabbed the center of the puppet’s chest and remained stuck there.

The puppet continued its strikes. It didn’t seem affected at all. The puppet controller smirked.

Liu Qian smirked as well. The saber wasn’t meant to damage the bronze corpse puppet. He held up his remaining saber and dug his feet into the ground before pushing himself towards the man.

The bronze corpse puppet immediately pounced at him. Its fist was about to hit Liu Qian’s head when it suddenly jolted back. It was the steel saber stuck in its chest which Liu Qian used to push it back through his control method.

Fear flashed across the eyes of the Feng Clan member who took a quick step back, but Liu Qian’s saber was already against his neck.

Liu Qian wanted to kill him but had stopped when he realized this would truly be the first time he took a life.

Silig screamed.

His hand twisted.

A head rolled.

All the corpse puppets fell motionless onto the ground.

Liu Qian did as well. He used up all his inner energy to form connections. His body wouldn’t move, but he still turned his head to see Silig push three corpses off himself. “If you’re poisoned, the chance is low, but this man might have an antidote on him.”

Silig shakily made his way next to Liu Qian and fell onto the ground as well.

They were now both looking up at the sky.

“I think I'll be fine. One of them was biting me, but my shirt sleeve protected my skin long enough for the puppets to suddenly stop.”

Liu Qian realized how Silig was able to get here. “You didn’t go east, but followed and waited at the village to watch how it went for me first.”

“Although it’s unfair, it was the third option that you didn’t talk about. At first, I thought you were tricking me, but when I saw you draw your saber, I realized that you did trick me, but in a completely opposite manner. You knew which direction the controller was at the entire time, and went towards him while sending me away. At that moment, I suddenly wanted to ask why you would rather fight, more than I wanted to escape.

Liu Qian hummed.

“I was the one who led the other eight to speak to Captain Murong and abandon you,” Silig said.

“Is that so?”

“How did you know which direction the controller was in?”

“The sun.”

Silig looked west and immediately squinted. He understood.

“My turn. The villagers. What did you see?” Liu Qian said.

“They were a mixture of Zhao and Kerurk lineages.”

“I saw subjects of Zhao."

...

Two soldiers walked into the military town with a corpse strapped on a single horse. The younger of the two held up a white banner with words written in blood. ‘Here lies a Feng Clan cultivator, executed for the murder of Zhao subjects.” They immediately attracted the entire base’s attention.

A man blocked their path.

“Hello, Commandant Tuoba. What a nice day,” Liu Qian said with a wide smile.

Silig waved.

“What is this!? Explain yourself.”

“While on patrol, I witnessed this man massacre a village. In response, I killed him. So anyway, I want a promotion to captain and reassignment to one of the forts in the Western Protectorate.” Although he would much rather transfer into the Banner Armies, he needed to be personally recruited for that. At least by staying in the Circuit Guard, but going to the protectorate, he could gain promotions from battle.

Commandant Tuoba took a heavy breath. He understood what was going on. “General Liu specifically placed you here so that you understand the hardships of the common soldier before letting you become an officer. Do you think you can survive in the protectorate? Besieged by the Western Keruk from the north and the Tsang from the south? Do you know how many soldiers die each day just to keep our hold on the western trade routes? Your father wants to specifically curb this ego of yours!”

“Hey, didn’t General Liu marry some princess,” someone said.

“I knew it! He’s royalty! I won the pool!” a drunk man yelled amid silence.

Hardship? What hardship? Father wants to baby me. Ego? What ego? After being bested by Xiyun in every lesson when the boy clearly didn’t even care or try, my ego was destroyed long ago. “Captain Fan colluded with a Feng Clan member to harvest Zhao subjects for corpses! I am not negotiating. I am simply telling you what will happen because I know my father well. Captain Fan will be similarly executed for his cooperation. You will also be investigated for guilt.”

“This is blackmail.”

“I am not using this fact to blackmail you. It will occur no matter what I think. Instead, I am using another fact."

“What fact?”

“I killed a Feng Clan member! Do you understand the powers in this world, you idiot!? If I was an ordinary soldier, I would be writing my will right now. Any second, they will come and kill anyone and everyone even remotely involved with the death of one of their members. It's how cultivator clans treat their valuable bloodline and anything that threatens it. When they realize that they can’t kill me, what do you think they’ll do to you?”

“This is a treat! You’re threatening me!”

Liu Qian grinned. “They’re here.”

In the reddening sky, a great black vulture the size of a building flew above them. Around fifty figures scattered and dropped from the sky before stopping to suspend in the air.

Almost all the fifty figures were all draped in cloaks. Their exposed skin was dark grey. Every lower section of their limbs was cut off and replaced with blades.

Only one figure was a real person, a bald man who still had his limbs. The rest were puppets controlled by him. What was remarkable was that every puppet intentionally exuded the pressure of a cultivator in the second realm. He himself exuded the pressure of a cultivator at the upper state of the third realm.

The spectating soldiers were stupefied. None of them knew what was happening. Even the drunks were speechless and some were silenced by a blade placed against their necks from the puppets.

The man glanced at Commandant Tuoba, the highest-ranked person at this small base. “Who killed my junior?”

Commandant Tuaba felt his insides twist in two different directions. “Captain Liu, please address him…” the words fell from his lips.

Liu Qian gave Silig a glance and mouthed ‘lieutenant’ before walking to the center of the plaza. “I did.”

Killing intent gathered and then abruptly dispersed.

He chuckled. “So at least one person recognizes me. Well, we did meet only one or two months ago, Feng Sheng.”

The man remained silent.

Liu Qian coughed. “Your other junior didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t allow myself to die and have the alliance between the Liu Family and Feng Clan be ruined, now can I?”

Feng Sheng closed his eyes. “That’s true. I will need to confirm this matter with the clan. Can I ask Young Master Liu to cooperate?”

“Of course.” This is going to be a long day. Liu Qian looked up at the sky and wondered if Xiyun was doing better than him right now.