Battle Royale of the Sinners Chapter 174

Chapter 174
Chapter 174 – Battle of Liyang - Part 4
Hua Xiong, the grand commander under Dong Zhuo, led his men to scout the Taihang Mountain, north of their current camp . He was ordered by Li Ru to monitor every pathway from Ye territory toward the west through this mountain range .
Taihang Mountain Range located on the west of Julu, east of Jinyang, west of Ye City, northwest of Liyang City, and north of Henei City . This mountain separated the Ji Province and the Bing Province which extended over 400 kilometers from north to south . This mountain range was one of the strategic locations suitable for the defenders as one of the ancient checkpoint, "The Hu Gate", was built between the west of Ye City and east of Shangdang City of Zhang Yang, the city which Liu Ping Army was heading to at the moment .
This was his fifth day of monitoring . He began questioning Li Ru if he was sane or why he had told himself to wait here .
However, today, he was not disappointed . A group of cavalries passed through this valley as Li Ru had predicted . The flag of the group was "Bao", and their uniforms were from the imperial troops .
"Bao flags? Bao Xin?" Hua Xiong pondered .
'Let's see here . 3 . . . 6 . . . 9… ten thousand men?'
'Whoops, the leading guy is not Bao Xin . I have to note that . '
'Whatever, I've completed my job . He told me to watch the valley, SO I WATCH!'
'He didn't tell me to ambush anyone . So no action . '
Hua Xiong was a straight man . He took all orders from his superiors word by word . If he was not told to do something, he would not do it .
His colleagues, Li Jue, Guo Si, and Niu Fu, thought Hua Xiong was naïve and inept as he did not think for himself during any combat . But their thought was wrong, Hua Xiong was smarter than every single of them .
He understood his superiors and his roles very well when the battle happened, and he only acted if he thoroughly understood Li Ru and Dong Zhuo's intention . Every time he acted without order, he would be more efficient and fiercer than all generals in Dong Zhuo Army .
With such a basic insight and his wits, he managed to get Dong Zhuo's trust and became the grand commander of his army .
In this case, he could not understand what Li Ru and Dong Zhuo were planning to do . Thus, he chose not to act .
"Withdraw! Let's get back to the camp and inform our lord about this movement!"
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October 4th, 182 A . D .
3 PM .
Tong and his men returned to Liyang City . Everyone was exhausted from the long trip back and forth . The horses were also tired from the long distance journey . The moment they got to the stables, they drank water as if they had not seen it for years .
Tong got on top of the west gate wall and sat down cross-legs to meditate instead of sleeping again .
'Time is precious . Calm myself…'
After realizing that meditation could slowly decrease the takeover chance of his sins, he began acting like a cultivator in the fantasy novels . Every chance he had or if he had free times, he would sit down to cultivate instead of wandering around and waste times .
10 Minutes later .
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For every 10 minutes he meditated, at least one of his sins would magically reduce by 0 . 01 percent or more .
Tong summed the total of the percentages he had . If one sin decreased by 0 . 01 percent per 10 minutes of cultivation, then he would need to cultivate for 102,050 minutes or roughly 71 days without resting to get all of his sins down to 0 percent .
It sounded easy at first glance . However, these [Sins] could increase if he had negative emotions during the days as well . Each of his [Sins] never increased by 0 . 01 percent like when he cultivated . It always rose by one percent to 20 percent at once!
His mental and his thought had to be as serene as tranquil water, or his [Sins] would rise instead of reducing .
Furthermore, he could not awaken his [Soul of Sins] this way . His [Greed] stuck at the bottleneck of 0 percent for a while now, but he could not get his [Greed] to disappear from the system . Tong figured that he had to commit an opposite act of greed one more time . However, such action had to be significant enough to make him feel that he had to make a dilemma choice, just like the time he threw away 100,000 lifespans to upgrade his radar for the people .
For now, Tong could not get his [Soul of Greed], so he could only reduce his other sins .
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"This one with seven question marks, it should have been 9 . 60 previously . It increased from the night raid?"
Tong read this message with a frown . There were three [???] sins that he did not know, but the number of ??? on each sin was different . He guessed that it should have been censored by the system goddess or there was an error somewhere .
Tong ignored these unknown factors and continued meditated like a monk . He cultivated for the rest of the day without bothering with his soldiers .
His men began to notice about Tong's behavior and thought that he was meditating to plan about the future strategies of war . Some thought that meditating could sharpen their mind . Another group thought that it helped their mentality . They ended up gazing at Tong with respect and admiration . Some of them mimicked the meditation posture and meditated on the wall as well .
By the time before the dinner, the top of the wall was full of meditating soldiers . They sat in rows and columns as if they were in a formation . Tong opened his eyes and observed his men with cringe expression on his face .
'I haven't started a sect, have I?'
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After dinner, Tong checked his radar map again . Today, Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun did not move further from last night . Black smoke could still be seen from the distance away .
Seeing that their advancement had been stopped, Tong breathed out a relieved sigh .
'Stay there forever! Stay there until the winter arrives!'
'Once the winter arrives, I'll have more tricks to play with you!'
Had Tong failed to capture this city, they would have had to retreat back to Ye City and lost the strategic choke point . Jia Xu's plan could also be ruined if they secured their foothold inside Liyang City before Tong as they could have imported food supplies from the south, across the Yellow River . Liyang Port was close by, so they could control the river passage for the logistic troops .
But the worst-case scenario did not happen . Tong had full control of Liyang City, and he could raid the port at any moment . Even if Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun got their supplies through the port, they were vulnerable to Tong's surprise attacks . Tong doubted that those two generals would be stupid enough to choose the Yellow River as their logistic route at the moment .
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October 5th . 6 AM .
Tong woke up from his meditation . He updated his sin status again .
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All of his [Sins] dropped their percentage by a little, but it showed that the meditation worked . It might take times, but it was an alternative effective method to handle their growth . In addition, his mind was refreshed from the stabilization of his brain . His thinking was clearer and smoother than the earlier years when Tong had not practiced this kind of cultivation yet .
Within the back of his brain, Tong had a silly idea that he was about to mutter "Can I consider myself a cultivator, now?", but he stopped his train of thought as he was afraid that one of the [Sins] would increase .
"Chunnibyou is a sin, I am calm . "
Tong exhaled slowly . Nothing happened, no message showed up as a consequence of his silly thought .
'I have to be careful with my thought . '
'For now, it's time to harass those guys some more…'
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Meanwhile, at Dong Zhuo's camp .
The grease firewall had not been extinguished yet . The temperature of the surrounding areas of the former Huangfu Song's camp was over 70 degrees Celsius, which was not a place for any ordinary human to step inside .
Furthermore, Tong set off the fire in a swamp trap when he retreated the other day, causing a forest fire! The wind also carried the fire southwest, which blocked the path of their progress .
Dong Zhuo camp was a kilometer away from Huangfu Song's former camp and the great firewall from the grease fire and the forest fire . Despite the fact that the winter was getting close, the temperature in this camp was over 35 degrees Celsius . All soldiers here were sweating profusely from the heat . A few of them already had a heat stroke and had to retreat further back to the logistic camp .
Zhu Jun, Huangfu Song, and Dong Zhuo sat around in a tent, having a serious discussion about how they could march forward .
Dong Zhuo did not care about the progress of this campaign . He suggested without thinking too much into it .
"How about we retreat back to the west for 10 li? The winter is coming soon, so the fire will disappear by itself once the snow arrives . Normally, forest fire only lasts for 6 to 7 days in these areas . We all just have to wait and it will go down eventually . "
Zhu Jun shook his head . "No, we have to take down Liyang City before the end of this month, or we will have to retreat back to Henei in November! We can't risk getting our men to freeze to death here . "
Dong Zhuo laughed in his mind .
'And who asked you to deploy on September!? You should have waited until spring arrived first! Being on the frontlines for a decade ruins your puny monkey brain or something? HAHAHA!'
As Dong Zhuo was having fun mocking the two Imperial generals, Huangfu Song peered at him and asked .
"Come to think of it, I heard that you have been preparing boats recently . Are you perhaps trying to desert us?"