Another force made his choice for him. Far away yet rapidly crossing his patrolling swarm of flies was a group capable of causing his entire swarm to stop dead in their tracks multiple times in different places. From the patrol configurations he’d set, that meant an overwhelming number of people combined with Viscera Tempering experts.

  Lu Qingshan could tell they were heading to the fortress. He sent a fly to recall Meng Zhang from infiltrating the fort early. After double-checking the tick-mosquito-cicada was still incapacitated, he told the rest of the Elders about what was coming.

  “We should call off the attack,” Dong Qianyu argued. “Too much time is needed to gather everything and handle things afterwards. It all looks and seems suspicious.”

  Li Fanghua agreed with him. Surprisingly, Meng Zhang shook his head. “I think it’s feasible,” he said. “I have a bad feeling about it too, but if we want answers, we need to attack.”

  Qin Ye abstained, and Wu Ruoling leaned more towards attacking. That left Liu Yingting as the tiebreaker unless Lu Qingshan stepped in. Most expected him to stay silent on the issue, but the man unexpectedly agreed to attack as well.

  Lu Qingshan decided to listen to his Elders this time. Though the approaching armies looked dangerous, his Bloodseeker Flies were hungry. Such a massive amount of enemies would fully replenish his stock, restore his internal injuries, and give his sect a hefty amount of new supplies.

  The supplies inside this camp were the most plentiful, outweighing the previous three camps combined many times over. Medicine, meat, scriptures - everything a martial sect needed was stored in great abundance. It would fuel the Seven Mysteries Gate’s current status for years.

  On the basis of expansion, he needed such a large boost in supplies in order to continue recruiting new talents. With the costs and benefits weighed, Lu Qingshan also agreed with Meng Zhang, Liu Yingting, and Wu Ruoling. The decision was set.

  They ordered an attack soon after. With bandits keeping watch all over their walls, climbing into the fortress would have normally been very difficult. But it was impossible for these bandits to prepare against Lu Qingshan.

  Clusters of Bloodseeker Flies hung on the walls, crawling upwards until a wriggling mass formed right below the battlements. Once they were all in place, Lu Qingshan sent the signal. The swarm swallowed the fortress walls in a cloud of death, ripping and tearing at all flesh found within. Not a single bandit escaped.

  Scaling the walls posed no problem at all once the Bloodseeker Flies were finished. Lu Qingshan personally led the charge as the Seven Mysteries Gate flooded into the open fortress. They took over the walls, preparing a team of watchers to lock down the surrounding area. Meanwhile, the rest of the disciples began an assault against the fortress’ inhabitants.

  None of the bandits looked surprised at having people try and break down their defenses. Makeshift barricades had been quickly deployed to slow the Seven Mysteries Gate down. But Lu Qingshan shattered all their plans by simply charging straight through. As his fists sent people flying, the Seven Mysteries Gate took over most of the castle behind where he passed.

  These bandits lacked fighting spirit. They were constantly looking for ways to escape, eyes flickering to the sides even while locked in combat. But there was no way to run.

  A group of four worked together to push past an Iron Pine Sect’s defensive arrangement and managed to make it to the gates. Then a cluster of flies dropped onto them. They died howling in pain with flesh dripping off their bodies.

  Alarms rang from the walls as the Seven Mysteries Gate’s sentries spotted the incoming second enemy force. As Lu Qingshan had suspected, it was an army of troops, with a banner held high above their heads. Unlike the previous Iron Dragon, they had a golden tint. Golden Dragon, perhaps?

  Lu Qingshan did not care. He sent most of the disciples to man the walls with some of the Elders. Liu Yingting was especially looking forward to it, a manic grin on his face and a gleam in his eye. In the meantime, Lu Qingshan took Qin Ye with him to drive out the three unmoving Viscera Tempering experts.

  He targeted the first one closest to him, who had locked themselves inside a fancy bedroom. Lu Qingshan deflected the spear thrown at him and quickly rushed in. A few quick moves were all it took to disable the man’s joints.

  The second slept in a room high above the castle walls. Lu Qingshan had kept a cluster of flies waiting outside in fear the woman inside would jump off. Though the flies had not responded, when he smashed open the door, the woman had disappeared. He spotted a poorly-hidden trapdoor below the bed.

  Lu Qingshan told a passing disciple to spread the word. An enemy was loose in the fortress, hidden in secret tunnels. He didn’t know when she’d pop up again and so told everyone to be on guard. As the Seven Mysteries Gate stuck closer together, Lu Qingshan sent down a cluster of flies into the trapdoor.

  The last enemy was the injured one, and he should’ve been hiding in a room near the kitchen. But when Lu Qingshan descended down the stairs and opened the door, the man was already gone. Another trapdoor was discovered under a tattered mat of animal skin.

  Lu Qingshan needed to find the two escaped bandits quickly. After making sure the entire sect had gone outside, he had more of his flies carry pieces of meat into the trapdoors and spread them throughout the building. He waited a while, then he brought his flies all across the fortress, ordering them to find meat.

  The flies repeatedly bashed their bodies against a few places and rooms he noted down. With their meat-frenzied senses, as long as Lu Qingshan willed it, the old, damaged walls of the fort could not stop them from seeking their prey. A few clusters even broke through the aging trapdoors and flooded the hidden tunnels with the Bloodseeker Fly swarm.

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  Lu Qingshan stayed in the main castle entrance, waiting. From one of the rooms on the ground floor came the two escaped bandits covered in clouds of flies. They ran, trying to swat the swarm away, until Lu Qingshan’s roar forced them to a stop.

  He sent his Bloodseeker Flies away and brought Qin Ye back inside. After the interrogations, all became clear. These three were mercenaries hired by the Song family of Great Wind City to carry out taboo actions. None of them were good people, and they definitely weren’t friends. They had only targeted the bandit fort in an attempt to recover from the injuries they incurred due to an attack on the kingdom’s forces.

  Their goal had been to steal something transported by the kingdom, but they had failed.

  Lu Qingshan was tempted to recruit them were it not for their strong wills. Having actual Viscera Tempering experts could improve the foundation of his sect rapidly, as long as they were convinced by his methods. Too bad an expert of this caliber rarely could be convinced to stay with the sect willingly. It was too much of a risk - without him to personally watch over the sect, a single traitorous Viscera Tempering stage expert would spell ruin for almost everybody.

  The Song family was powerful, but not much stronger than the destroyed Liu family. Of the eight families that held the greatest influence, two others were considered of highest esteem, and the Wu family was widely accepted as third. The last five were around similar levels of power.

  Lu Qingshan supposed the kingdom’s forces would become the strongest faction in the city. After finishing them off, absorbing their blood essence, and disposing of their corpses, he strode back out the fortress and onto the walls.

  “How are things?” he asked the others.

  “They’re surrounding the fortress but have not yet attacked,” Meng Zhang said. “I think they’re trying to wait for reinforcements...”

  Arrows flew towards them. The Seven Mysteries Gate ducked behind cover. Under the suppression of the enemy's archers, they couldn't really muster much defense.

  Lu Qingshan gathered the disciples and left decisively. Since they couldn’t take the walls, breaking the siege would need something else. His flies returned to a dormant state all around the fort - hiding just out of sight.

  They waited for the enemy army to climb upwards. At this distance, it became clear the teeming numbers of soldiers were indeed real, outnumbering the past ghost market conflict by multiple factors. Though their faces were grim, none of the Seven Mysteries Sect backed down. The Iron Pine Sect was also emboldened by their bravery.

  Liu Yingting’s traps were sent down the mountain the moment the disciples saw them reach the top of the trail. His poison-dispensing mechanisms activated moments later, washing the survivors in a toxic mist. Many died on impact, but many were still coming. The mist took down around a tenth of the force before the winds blew them away.

  Qin Ye withheld his powers for now. As Liu Yingting worked crazily to lace the entire inner fortress with lethal traps, the Seven Mysteries Gate defended the exterior. Lu Qingshan brought to bear his full regenerative powers and turned the front gates into a death trap.

  Another tenth of the enemy vanguard had fallen when they started to completely avoid Lu Qingshan, their faces in an expression of absolute fear. He killed, killed, and killed, letting the mountain path bathe in blood. Not a single enemy soldier was willing to confront him. The first that did was one of five Viscera Tempering commanders, who was obliterated in a single hit.

  From that point on, even the rest who were clearly stronger than their comrade actively avoided him. They scaled the walls instead and triggered more of Liu Yingting’s mechanisms. By the time they breached the fortress interior, a quarter of the army had died, with blood, poison, and organs splattered across every inch of stone.

  It was a scene ripped straight from hell. Lu Qingshan wanted to know why they kept pushing forwards with such reckless abandon, triggering trap after trap inside the building. His palm tore through a group of soldiers in front of him as they scrambled over each other to get inside.

  Were the three Viscera Tempering experts so important? Though they were already dead, there were still four here. He resolved himself to capture them alive if possible.

  Lu Qingshan began a low, ominous chanting, and the fly swarm descended onto his enemies. Poison and insect bites mixed together to create a devastating effect.

  The death toll rapidly climbed. In such a short amount of time, another quarter of the soldiers lay dead on the floor, and the fear it sparked sent the rest scattering back from where they came. But it was far too late to escape.

  Roots bound every exit point shut. The Seven Mysteries Gate had already left the building, leaving the soldiers inside to die from poison. Qin Ye kept an eye on the second Viscera Tempering expert who was desperately trying to break free. A mass of Bloodseeker Flies surrounded and tore him limb from limb.

  The roots parted halfway, sending a cloud of poison leaking out from the opening. Lu Qingshan quickly dashed in and dragged the half-dead body out. He began slapping the man, shouting questions at them, but there was no response.

  “Let me,” Qin Ye said, a pale-green energy around his fingertips. They poked and prodded around what remained of the man’s body. After a series of taps, the fallen man shuddered to life, eyes unfocused.

  "Who are you?" Lu Qingshan asked.

  “Tang Ri. Deputy General.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To k-kill the thieves.”

  “Who are you trying to kill?”

  “T-three villains…two men and a woman.” Blood dribbled from the man’s lips. It sounded like the attack had succeeded from the kingdom’s perspective, but Qin Ye had not detected any lies. A contradiction had appeared.

  “I can’t prolong their deaths for long while also muddling their minds too,” Qin Ye said. “Try to leave them more intact next time.”

  Lu Qingshan nodded, picking up the pace. “What is the realm after Viscera Tempering?”

  “G-Grandmaster,” the man hacked out a glob of blood. One word, but it immediately shifted Lu Qingshan's plans. The kingdom had either encountered experts of that level, or had such experts of their own.

  “What went missing?”

  “A grandmaster’s weapon…” the man whispered before his voice choked. Blood poured from the man's throat as he fell lifeless. It took Lu Qingshan a while to digest what he'd learned and to update his next move.

  After making sure none of his sect members had died, Lu Qingshan stepped back onto the walls. Below his vision were still a mass of archers, warriors, cavalry, logistical personnel, and their generals. He quickly identified the three most likely places for them to be.

  If they refused to retreat, they would regret it.