The Undying Immortal System

Chapter 477 – Life 120, Age 57, Martial Lord Peak

After their initial attack, Jon’s armies vanished into thin air. Over the next week and a half, not a single enemy soldier approached any of our cities, and none of our scouts found any trace of where they had gone.

At first, we remained in a state of absolute readiness. Soldiers patrolled the battlements day and night, while powerful defensive formations encased each of our cities in an impenetrable bubble, ensuring that no one could enter without explicit permission from the Lords themselves.

Such vigilance couldn’t be maintained long, however. Our soldiers could only stay on high alert for so long, and citywide defensive formations weren’t designed to operate indefinitely. Given enough time, either the qi that maintained them would wear down the inscribed stones, or the energy in the surrounding environment would be drained dry.

Reducing the strength of our defenses might have eased some of these problems, but it would not have solved the larger issue. Cities were not fortresses. Farmers had to leave the walls to tend their crops, and merchants had to travel to conduct trade. If we kept everything locked down for too long, Jon wouldn’t need to lift a finger. Our cities would collapse on their own.

Thus, ten days after Jon’s first strike, we lowered our defenses and allowed our cities to return to normal operation.

This lasted less than a day.

Shortly after the formations dropped, a harried messenger ran into my hall in Black Eagle City. “Supreme Elder, the Lord of Thunder Ox City has been assassinated.”

I shut my eyes and clenched my teeth, carefully weighing what this would mean.

Thunder Ox City was located deep within the Eastern Kingdom, with several cities standing between it and the front lines. And just like the other Lords that Jon had targeted, its Ruler had been one of the locals we recruited from villages near Pale Mist Mountain—not a member of either the Su or the Shi Clans.

Less than an hour after the death was confirmed, a furious shout rang through the halls of the Elder Council.

“Suliang Kan! My scouts have already confirmed it. The assassins both entered and exited our lands through your Northern Kingdom. Are you playing games with the lives of our disciples? Do you hate my followers that much, or is it that you believe these locals simply have no value?”

Suba HaoRong glared at Kan, eyes blazing, as he waited for an answer.

The worst part was that, as I studied HaoRong’s expression, I could tell this was not entirely an act. He truly believed that Kan, out of either carelessness or spite, had allowed his people to die.

Within moments, the council descended into chaos. Elders shouted over one another, accusations flew in every direction, and any hope of measured discussion quickly dissolved.

JiuLi released a wave of qi that swept through the hall like a silent blade, forcing every voice into stillness.

“The enemy infiltrated one of our cities and killed one of our Lords without any of us receiving so much as a warning,” she said coldly. “Barring the involvement of a higher-level cultivator, they must possess either a blessing or tools capable of extraordinary stealth. Instead of tearing one another apart, we need to decide how we are going to stop this from happening again.”

The elders fell silent, then began looking around the room uneasily.

In that moment, I understood why they had been so quick to blame Kan. It was not simply politics. Blame was the only weapon left to them. Faced with an enemy they couldn’t find, predict, or counter, anger became their only recourse.

Seeing this, I rose and left without another word.

Many of our elders were skilled fighters, but few had been given enough time to develop their professions. If I wanted to find a way to stop Jon’s assassins from striking again, then I could rely only on myself.

For several lifetimes, I had relied on Shadowed Soul Pills to move through both the wilderness and cities unnoticed. Because of this, whenever we conquered a new city, I had always been careful to install a formation in the City Lord’s Manor that was capable of detecting anyone who used such a pill.

Those formations were not limited to locating those who had hidden themselves through the use of Shadowed Soul Pills, though. In theory, they should have been able to detect nearly any method of stealth below Rank 6. For Jon’s assassins to slip past them, they would either need to possess a powerful blessing capable of hiding them from all forms of detection or one that could bypass my formations entirely.

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I could attempt to create a stronger detector, but without knowing the specific nature of the blessing I was trying to counter, I had no way to know if anything I developed would be effective. Therefore, I turned my attention toward ways to protect our people even should Jon’s assassins remain undetected.

In sects, such formations were commonplace. Anyone who entered a sect without the proper identity token would be dragged into an illusion and left there until the Law Enforcement Hall dealt with them.

Cities, however, were different. A sect could tightly regulate those who passed through its gates. A city could not. Distributing identity tokens to hundreds of thousands of mortal residents would be a logistical nightmare. Worse, such a formation would block merchants and traveling cultivators, causing the city’s growth and prosperity to grind to a halt.

Still, while I couldn’t apply such a formation to an entire city, I could apply it to the City Lord’s Manor. As long as our people didn’t leave their manors, no invisible assassins would be able to reach them.

Of course, this solution came with its own problems.

Commoners might not enter their City Lord’s Manor that often, but wealthy merchant families did. They came to discuss taxes, security, trade, and the countless small matters that kept a city functioning. Giving such outsiders tokens that would allow them to pass through our formations would undermine their entire purpose. Ideally, as few people as possible would be allowed inside.

So, I chose to compromise. Each manor would be split into an inner court and an outer court.

The City Lord, along with any officials who were members of our sect, would remain within the inner court. Outsiders and local functionaries would be restricted to the outer court. Matters concerning the city could still be conducted, but contact between these two groups would only take place in specially designed meeting rooms.

This was far from ideal, since it meant forcing our people to hide inside their manors like turtles. However, with Jon’s daggers lurking in the dark, practicality mattered more than dignity.

To keep things simple, I designed our new defenses around a basic darkness illusion.

Anyone who entered a protected area without the proper identity jade would be plunged into a world of absolute darkness, stripped not only of sight, but also of sound and touch. The simplicity of this illusion allowed me to create the formation plates and begin installing them within a matter of days.

Surprisingly, Jon gave us the time we needed. No more assassins appeared, and no more Lords were killed. However, just as I finished responding to his last attack, Jon launched an entirely new offensive.

Six armies advanced toward our territory. Three were smaller forces that looked like feints, while the other three were larger forces that looked ready to launch a series of coordinated attacks.

The smaller forces attacked the Western, Southern, and Eastern Kingdoms, while the three larger armies all targeted the Northern Kingdom. Kan, with only a fraction of our total manpower under his direct command, would have struggled to deal with so many enemies on his own. So, he immediately sent requests for support to the other kingdoms.

Both JiuLi, stationed in the Central Kingdom, and YuLong, stationed in the Southern Kingdom, responded immediately. The Lord overseeing the Western Kingdom eventually sent support as well, though his response was noticeably delayed. Suba HaoRong, in contrast, only sent a token force, claiming that he couldn’t afford to leave the Eastern Kingdom undefended.

As it turned out, HaoRong’s worries weren’t entirely unfounded.

As reinforcements flooded into the Northern Kingdom, Jon’s forces withdrew, melting back into the wilderness. At the same time, two new armies appeared—one attacking HaoRong’s Eastern Kingdom, the other striking the Western Kingdom.

HaoRong, who had kept his strength close, repelled this attack without difficulty.

The Western Kingdom was less fortunate.

Jon’s army tore through the walls of one of the Western Kingdom’s cities with overwhelming bombardment, annihilating its entire militia in the process. Following the protocol we had established for such a breach, the City Lord and his direct subordinates immediately fled, preserving their lives. The mortal officials they left behind had no way to save themselves. All were put to the sword by the invading army.

The invaders didn’t stick around, however. Before our armies could respond, Jon’s forces had already vanished. We were able to take the city back without a fight, but this didn’t change anything for the mortals who had already perished.

In the days that followed, the atmosphere in the Elder Council grew increasingly tense. With every new clash, more elders shifted their support to Suba HaoRong, convinced that Kan was no longer fit to remain Sect Master.

I could see exactly what Jon was doing. Somehow, he had learned enough about our internal politics to exploit them. His attacks weren’t about killing one or two random Lords. They were meant to destabilize our sect from within. He was trying to paralyze us, making us unable to respond.

I understood this, but just because I understood didn’t mean that I knew how to counter him.

HaoRong’s ambitions were a problem, but they weren’t the true root of the council’s infighting. The real issue was that, aside from blaming one another, no one had any way to vent their fear and frustration. We were being bled slowly, city by city, life by life, and we didn’t have a way to strike back. Every time we tried to retaliate, it felt like we were punching cotton. Jon’s forces would vanish the moment we moved against them, only to reappear somewhere even worse.

To steady the council, we needed a win.

We had sent scouts in every direction, but none of them had been able to locate Jon’s army. Therefore, instead of attacking Jon directly, I ordered a contingent of soldiers to attack a series of nearby cities, in the hopes of drawing him out.

The result was almost laughable.

Wherever our soldiers went, the cities were empty. They weren’t abandoned—there were still mortals living their lives and guardsmen keeping the peace. There were just no enemies. No soldiers, and no City Lords.

If we had wanted to, we could have claimed these cities with ease. Ten, twenty, even thirty or more might have fallen. We might have even been able to claim enough to found an empire.

But what would that have accomplished? It would have only spread our people thinner and made defending against Jon’s attacks more difficult.

In the end, all we could do was strip the cities of whatever resources their Lords had left behind, then return to our lands and focus on defense.