This attack by the State of Meng had been extremely perilous for the defenders of Green Mountain Pass. If not for Hong Linying's ruthless and decisive action, using over ten thousand of his soldiers to delay the enemy's assault, the city might have fallen before he even had time to fortify the walls.
The battle had also scared the city's residents witless. The sight of the enemy's ferocious faces appearing continuously over the city walls, so close they could almost touch them, was a memory that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. After the battle, blood coated the top of the walls, flowing in streams down the cracks in the stone, both into and out of the city. The area within half a li of the city walls was like a pool of blood. The once bright and clean main street was now so slick with blood that walking on it produced a squelching sound with every step.
Whenever Hong Linying thought back on this battle, even with his steadfast composure, he felt it had been incredibly dangerous. He remembered what Ji Wenhe had said the night before, mentioning the possibility of hidden elite troops waiting for an opportunity to strike. He couldn't help but sigh.
In the following months, Ji Wenhe visited him at night on two more occasions, informing him of the enemy's movements and deployments. This time, Hong Linying largely believed him. He arranged his forces specifically according to the information Ji Wenhe provided, and as a result, they achieved great victories with minimal losses.
The second matter was that Ji Wenhe began his search for a successor within the army. But his testing method was very strange. He didn't look at a person's martial aptitude, nor did he use his internal energy to test their body. Instead, he used silver needles to check their pulse. Ji Wenhe claimed that because his sect's internal energy technique was so unique, if someone who failed this test were to forcibly cultivate his sect's exclusive method, it would only lead to their internal qi reversing its flow, causing their meridians to burst and resulting in death. What puzzled Hong Linying was that despite the many physically robust men in the army, Ji Wenhe had not found a single suitable person in the year he had been there. This astonished him.
With Ji Wenhe's successive major victories in military affairs, Hong Linying simply had the original strategist step down to become the deputy strategist after a year, and appointed Ji Wenhe as the new strategist. As for how he obtained his intelligence on the enemy, Hong Linying no longer cared much. With Strategist Ji's skills, he surely had many methods. Moreover, the several pieces of intelligence he had provided had all been extremely accurate. If he were a spy, the price would be too high; it was impossible that he would sacrifice a total of seventy to eighty thousand lives over several battles just for a potential future ploy to succeed.
This move was initially met with disapproval from many generals in the army. However, in the subsequent battles, both large and small, all plans were orchestrated by Ji Wenhe, and they almost always resulted in the utter defeat of the invading enemy. This quickly solidified Ji Wenhe's position in the army, and his prestige grew daily.
His reputation reached its peak during a battle two and a half years ago. Before that battle, Ji Wenhe had gone to the central army camp thirty li north of the city to continue searching for his elusive "disciple." The local garrison numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and even with Ji Wenhe's immense abilities, if he did nothing else all day, he could at most test a few hundred people with his powers. So, in the past three years, besides having tested most of the tens of thousands of soldiers in Green Mountain Pass, he would also occasionally go to the central army camp to search for a disciple.
At first, the people in the army found this strange, but eventually, the officers at all levels grew accustomed to it. However, few outsiders knew about this matter, as Ji Wenhe was a low-key person who was usually silent and rarely socialized.
On the very afternoon that Ji Wenhe went to the central army camp, the State of Meng suddenly launched an attack. Hong Linying led his troops to meet the enemy and engaged them in fierce combat. This time, the enemy reinforcements arrived like a slow-dripping oil, gradually increasing in number, entangling Hong Linying so he could not escape and slowly falling into a heavy encirclement. By this time, Ji Wenhe, thirty li away, had received a swift report by horse and was leading troops from the central army camp to the rescue. When they arrived, Hong Linying and his men were in a precarious situation. Ji Wenhe ordered the main army to charge inwards from the perimeter in an Eight Trigrams Interlocking Formation, advancing step by step. As for himself, he revealed his terrifying martial prowess in front of others for the first time. With just a single sword, he moved like a Flying Immortal from Beyond the Heavens, weaving through the enemy ranks as if they weren't there. Besides occasionally deflecting an enemy weapon, anyone who stood in his way was killed with a single sword strike. He eventually fought his way to the enemy's central command. Leaping into the air like a goshawk diving for a rabbit, before the enemy guards could react, he had already landed among them and, with one stroke of his sword, took the head of their Vice Marshal. He then deflected the flurry of blades that came at him, gracefully leaped up, and in just a few steps, stood atop the enemy's ten-meter-high command flag. He held his sword in one hand and the enemy marshal's head high in the other. His presence was truly peerless and magnificent. The enemy's morale instantly collapsed, and they lost all will to fight, retreating in a great defeat. Only then was Hong Linying able to lead his troops to break out of the encirclement.
After this battle, Strategist Ji's fame became unrivaled, even surpassing that of Marshal Hong. People now knew that this strategist, who could do more than just "command on paper," was also a peerless master. At the same time, the dynasty's army no longer focused solely on defense. They frequently sent out troops to raid the enemy's border or even launched large-scale invasions. In the following years, both sides had their share of attacks and defenses, and they were more or less evenly matched. Despite Ji Wenhe's presence, the strength of one person could not ultimately decide the outcome on the battlefield. Moreover, the State of Meng, now aware that Green Mountain Pass had a master who could take a general's head from within an army of ten thousand, had also summoned several first-rate and peerless masters from within their country to hold the line.
Through this event, Hong Linying was almost certain that Ji Wenhe had reached the Transformation Realm, and possibly even a realm above that—a realm he did not know. As a martial arts fanatic, he naturally knew this was due to Ji Wenhe's sect's martial arts. Although he had guessed at Ji Wenhe's realm before, he had never imagined it to be so powerful. After this incident, his heart began to burn with desire. But no matter how he investigated, he could not find out where this sect came from.
Through occasional sparring with Ji Wenhe, he became even more aware of the profoundness of his opponent's martial arts, or more accurately, the profoundness of his internal energy. Any ordinary move, when executed by Ji Wenhe with his internal energy, always felt to Hong Linying like the endless flow of a great river, or at other times, like a mountain crashing down with destructive force, completely irresistible. This made him obsessed with Ji Wenhe's internal energy technique, and a greedy thought took root in his mind, making him try every possible way to obtain it.
However, Ji Wenhe's search for a disciple was always delayed, and his complexion, as he had said before, had been getting worse over the years, to the point where he had aged considerably. Hong Linying began to subtly hint that he himself could inherit this peerless art. So, after a banquet one time, he said to Ji Wenhe, "Strategist, what kind of person are you looking for to inherit your sect's teachings? So many years have passed, and you still haven't found anyone. What kind of constitution is required?"
Ji Wenhe smiled faintly and replied, "The reason my sect has only a single heir each generation is not that we don't want to recruit more disciples, but that the requirements of our technique are truly special. You could say it's one in a million. In fact, only those whose bodies show a unique reaction under the pulse diagnosis with my sect's special silver needles have any hope."
"Yours is more than one in a million. In my army over these years, whether it's old soldiers or new recruits, you've probably tested most of them. I'd say it's more like one in hundreds of thousands," Hong Linying said, shaking his head and sighing.
He then added, "What kind of abnormal reaction must the body have when you insert the needle for there to be hope?"
Ji Wenhe said, "That's not certain. It could be an abnormal complexion, or an abnormal internal qi. I must use the silver needle as a guide and probe with my internal energy to know. Only if it is compatible with my internal energy will it work."
Whenever Ji Wenhe conducted his tests, he was always in a secluded place, either a room or a tent, and no one except the person being tested was allowed inside. So, Hong Linying was always half-convinced and half-skeptical of these words.
Hong Linying pretended to be slightly drunk and, using the excuse of the alcohol, said, "Then, Strategist, why don't you take a look at my constitution?" He didn't say what would happen if he was suitable or not. His words sounded like a drunken jest, as if he were just curious.
Ji Wenhe smiled at his words, as if it were just a casual remark made during a chat, and nodded in agreement. "Since we have nothing better to do, it's worth a try. Perhaps the Marshal is indeed fated with my sect." He then took out the cloth pouch from his side, unfolded it, and took out a silver needle to test his pulse.
This cloth pouch, Ji Wenhe always carried with him, because whenever he had free time, he would go and find some soldiers to test. When the needle went in, Hong Linying only felt a numbness in his wrist, and then nothing else abnormal. He certainly didn't feel any internal energy probing him.
Ji Wenhe shook his head in disappointment and put away the needle. "It seems the Marshal is also not fated with my sect. There is no need to check with my internal energy."
This meant that Hong Linying could not learn his technique. But how could such an explanation convince Hong Linying? He had practiced martial arts since he was a child and had only encountered difficulties he could overcome, never a technique he had seen but could not learn. It was only a matter of whether he was willing to cultivate it.
But he couldn't use force against Ji Wenhe. He knew he was no match for him. Even though the man seemed to be getting weaker year by year, dealing with someone like him would probably only take a few moves, or perhaps even just a wave of his hand. Although he was a peerless master in the current martial world, that was relative to whom he was being compared.
Finally, at the beginning of last year, Ji Wenhe found the disciple he was looking for in the central army camp. Hong Linying had also used some pretext to secretly meet this disciple whom Ji Wenhe had found as if from "a drop of water in the vast ocean." He had even used his internal energy to probe the boy's meridians but did not feel anything special about them. This made him even more certain that Ji Wenhe was hiding something, and it was these things that he could not figure out.
But just a month after Ji Wenhe found his disciple, the newly initiated disciple suddenly died one night. Afterwards, Ji Wenhe wore an expression of pain and regret, saying that the boy was illiterate and had misunderstood the sect's teachings, leading to improper cultivation and death from the reverse flow of qi and blood.
Hong Linying had also seen the gruesome state of the man's death. His entire body was black and swollen, which didn't look like a cultivation deviation, but more like death from a potent poison. This led him to two theories: One, Ji Wenhe had used the man as a "poison vessel," trying to use some method to force the poison from his own body into the other's to cure himself. This "poison vessel" must have had some connection to his sect's technique or the poison itself to work; otherwise, he could have just grabbed anyone. But later, looking at Ji Wenhe's appearance, his complexion didn't seem to have improved much, which made him doubt the correctness of this judgment. Two, Ji Wenhe's technique was extremely domineering, and it was possible that the new disciple had indeed practiced improperly, causing his qi to rush upwards, leading to the rupture of his internal organs and the abnormal state of his body. But for someone like Ji Wenhe, knowing that his disciple was illiterate, he should have had a compromise solution or supervised his practice with great patience. Was it really that he was running out of time? Besides these, there were still other things that Hong Linying couldn't figure out. If he wanted to know the truth, he would have to start by observing the pulse-testing process. Perhaps some clue would reveal itself.
Ji Wenhe continued to go into the army to test soldiers, but Hong Linying had no reason to follow him. If he went to watch, once or twice might be explained away as interest, but doing it too many times would make his intentions obvious. Moreover, this involved the private affairs of a martial sect. Prying into another sect's secrets was a major taboo in the martial world, and being killed for it would not be considered excessive. However, he did have a reason to come during the recruitment of new soldiers, to observe the quality of the new recruits and the enlistment situation.
In fact, Hong Linying guessed that Ji Wenhe was aware of his intentions every time he came to inspect the new recruits. For someone like Ji Wenhe, it wouldn't be difficult to see through it. But Hong Linying had no other choice. For now, this was his only starting point. He wanted to find some clue from the smallest of traces to plan his next move, which would bring him one step closer to the peerless technique he dreamed of. Unfortunately, Ji Wenhe always conducted the pulse-testing in a tent, and he couldn't just go inside.
Even so, he still wanted to see for himself what kind of person Ji Wenhe would choose as a disciple and if there were any clues he could grasp. Such matters had to be witnessed with his own eyes. What others said was, after all, not as clear as seeing it for himself.
Hong Linying leaned against the chair, looking at the tent. His half-closed eyes flickered continuously as he thought, "This matter is truly thorny. For years, I've tried both soft and hard approaches, but to no avail. If what he says is true, he only has one or two years left to live. Is that true or false? Even if it is true, what if he would rather let the technique be lost than hand it over? What then?"