Chapter 150: The Art of Ventriloquism, Three-Way Brawl

On the vast expanse of the sea outside the Prince Jinghai’s temporary palace.

"Fire! Fire! Our reinforcements are right behind us, they will be here in a quarter of an hour. The Grand Captain has given the order, as long as we breach the temporary palace of Prince Jinghai, our brothers are permitted to pillage freely for a full day. Gold, silver, jewels, brocades, and delicate palace beauties—all the loot shall belong entirely to us, and he will not take a single penny!"

The bow leaders and chieftains shouted at the top of their lungs to boost morale.

Naturally, they omitted the fact that the merchants accompanying the army were backed by Mao Haifeng, and that he would skim a layer off every single consumption, liquidation, and transaction. Following the Great Tang's principle of "three-way profit sharing," he would take two-thirds of the spoils.

Hearing this, the crew members—predominantly Japanese pirates—manipulated the cannons while laughing wildly and derisively:

"Hahaha, this temporary palace is even more magnificent than the Sovereign's Imperial Residence! This time, all the treasures inside belong to us!"

"I've long wanted to experience what the women of Great Zhao—who are taller than me—actually taste like. Long live the Grand Captain!"

"Support the Grand Captain to become the new Prince of Jinghai! Lead us to continue plundering Great Zhao, and distribute all the women of the East Sea Kingdom and Great Zhao among us!"

Instantly, artillery fire roared, and streaks of orange-red light illuminated the sea surface, hurtling toward the temporary palace nestled in the night.

Although these pirates were wretched in character, their discipline and combat proficiency were remarkably professional.

Mao Haifeng's motivations were impure to begin with, and when he gathered this core group of followers, he specifically chose them because they understood petty etiquette but possessed no grand righteousness, clinging to whoever fed them like infants to wet nurses.

Bribing them was far simpler than bribing ordinary Dan people.

Of course, when contending for the supreme throne, all factions pulling out all the stops to introduce external aid was standard operating procedure. The other two grand captains, Xu Weixue and Peng Laosheng, including Wang Cheng, were doing it as well.

However, Mao Haifeng was clearly acting somewhat recklessly, seeking medical help blindly; such external aid could not be introduced indiscriminately.

Just like back then, if the Tang army had not introduced the Uyghur troops, promising them they could sack Chang'an at will: "On the day the city is conquered, the land, scholars, and commoners shall belong to Tang, while gold, silk, and women shall all belong to the Uyghurs!"—they would not have been regarded as rebels by An Lushan's insurgent army, nor would they have fought the Battle of Xiangji Temple, which left such a profound and heavy stroke in history, let alone left behind that talismanic suppressing artifact.

After all, in this world where ghosts and deities hold sway, human hearts are, to a certain extent, the Mandate of Heaven. Could one still expect to maintain the Mandate of Heaven after committing such acts? It was utterly unthinkable.

Mao Haifeng was himself a rebel, yet he dared to employ such tactics. It could only be said that a prodigal son cares nothing for the fields of his adoptive father.

As the terrified riots spread through the harbor.

Wang Cheng acutely sensed the changes in the horizontal inscribed board reading "The Mandate of Heaven," and his own side's morale surged significantly. He turned his head and glanced at the louse sprite beside him.

"Grandpa Longwei!"

"Young Master, just watch and see. Don't look at how short the history of our East Sea Kingdom is; in terms of heritage, we are by no means inferior to those small nations in the Nanyang with ancient lineages. That ungrateful wolf Mao Haifeng still knows very little of the secrets."

The louse sprite, possessing two legs and four arms, exerted his strength to lift a piece of white jade array talisman roughly his own height, linking it with the [Five Mountains Magnificent Array] outside the temporary palace.

Although this old fellow's combat power was extremely low, he had lived long enough, and the masters he had served—Lord Yan, the Louse Mother Immortal, Liu Bowen, and Prince Jinghai—were all fiercely formidable without exception. His mastery of formations could be called the absolute greatest in the East Sea Kingdom.

He hurriedly chanted the incantation in his mouth:

"Northern Dipper Seven Yuans, Seven Governors Xuanming. Flying Step Envoys, Armored Mighty Deities. Driving the Five Sacred Mountains on the left, commanding the Six Ding on the right. Wherever the direct talisman arrives, a thunderclap sounds. Dare any defy this, and they shall be turned to dust. Swiftly as the statutes and commands decree!"

Boom!

Thunder suddenly exploded in the sky above the five semi-encircling peaks—Round, Straight, Crooked, Pointed, and Flat. Five deep and sonorous voices answered the command:

"Obey the decree!"

Following this, fierce winds whipped up in Pinghu Harbor, and the scent of incense and earthen soil suddenly grew thick. At the boundary where mountain and sea met, five illusory divine generals clad in iron armor rapidly materialized.

Each had a battle banner stuck behind their back—red, black, white, yellow, and cyan, corresponding respectively to the five peaks and five colors. Each one was taller than the highest palace within the temporary palace.

Together, they raised their hands, making a single-palm gesture of passage prohibited.

Hum—!

Heavy ripples spread rapidly through the air.

Those cannonballs traversing the sky had just flown before the palace gates when they collided with an invisible deceleration zone, involuntarily slowing down bit by bit until they came to a complete halt.

They dropped to the ground in front of the palace gates with a clattering of pots and pans.

Mao Haifeng had thought those berths were coastal defense loopholes known only to himself.

Little did he know that the [Five Mountains Magnificent Array] was not merely for suppressing national fortune, and those loopholes were not loopholes at all.

It was simply that in the past, no external enemies had ever managed to fight their way to Pinghu Harbor, so he, the second-in-command, had never known that a defensive barrier was concealed within the temporary palace.

The changes in the Five Mountains Magnificent Array were clearly not within the plans of those suicide squads.

The bow leader shouted:

"Burn incense to worship the Artillery God, load stone projectiles! Load incendiary shells!"

Although the vanguard warships numbered only two, their equipment was by no means ordinary, consisting of artillery pieces consecrated and gilded with various precious metals by [Silversmiths].

If they were left to fire at full capacity with sustained bombardment, even these five iron-clad divine generals could not guarantee they could completely block them.

However, since Wang Cheng had known they were coming all along, he had never intended to give them the opportunity to launch a second volley.

Just as a group of pirates were frantically reloading, someone suddenly shouted:

"Listen, do you hear a sound? It seems to be right inside our cabin!"

Everyone hurriedly held their breath and strained their ears to listen.

"Woof, woof, woof!"

A dog barks from deep in a secluded alley, and a woman is startled awake, stretching and sighing as her husband mumbles in his sleep. Then the child wakes up and wails loudly. The husband also wakes up. The woman cradles the child to nurse; the child suckles while crying, and the woman pats and coos to him...

Suddenly someone shouts, "Fire!" The husband wakes and shouts loudly, the woman also wakes and shouts loudly, and the two children cry in unison.

Before long, hundreds and thousands of people are shouting, hundreds and thousands of children are crying, hundreds and thousands of dogs are barking, amidst the sounds of snapping and collapsing wood, roaring flames, and howling winds, all rising together...

Unawares, everyone was entranced, sinking into an illusion constructed of sounds around them, and then truly... falling into a sea of fire!

Everyone woke with a start, and upon opening their eyes, they found themselves completely surrounded by raging flames.

"This is bad!"

"The ship is on fire! Run!"

They scurried about like headless flies.

The acrid stench of burning timber and flesh penetrated their nasal cavities. Every breath felt as though their lung lobes were about to ignite, their skin suffered a scorching, burning pain, and their eyes had long been seared red by thick smoke, making it impossible to see anything...

By this point, their five senses had been completely dominated.

In the span of just a single cup of tea, the more than one hundred men across both ships were all burned alive into human charcoal, yet not a single piece of timber on the ships was ignited.

Even the pirates who accidentally fell into the water were burned alive within the water—it was bizarre to the point of being evil.

On the shore, a mere two hundred zhang in a straight line away from them, a scholar in white loudly concluded his "ventriloquism" performance:

"If you wish to know what happens next, please listen to the next installment! Oh, your curtain has already fallen, let's end it here."

Snap!

He opened his folding fan, revealing the characters "Open and Aboveboard," then turned and walked away leisurely with a gourd slung across his back.

This was precisely the unique skill—[Ventriloquism]—of this fifth-rank [Storyteller]!

As long as one stirred the emotions of numerous "listeners," immersing them in it and making them subconsciously believe everything depicted in the ventriloquism, those events would truly happen to them.

Of course, the degrees of difficulty varied vastly; hypnotic trance was the easiest, while generating life-threatening danger capable of killing people was the hardest.

Dong Piao's understatement of introducing them into a sea of fire this time, burning and killing over a hundred people in a single stroke, was sufficient to demonstrate that this Seventh Uncle Dong truly possessed extraordinary innate talent in the art of ventriloquism.

Having obtained the "Miscellany of Ballad Arts" casually written for him by Wang Cheng, he was already prepared to carve out a brand-new track in ballad arts, preparing to charge toward the fourth rank, with even the upper three ranks of [Living Ghosts and Deities] appearing within reach.

"Time is about right, it's time to set off."

Wang Cheng handed over this vanguard unit—destined to be abandoned pieces—to Seventh Uncle to resolve, without sparing them another glance.

Spreading his arms, his Senior Sister Shen Yueye personally draped a dark-black, four-clawed python robe over him, fastened a jade belt around his waist, and fitted his feet with satin-faced black boots.

He then shouldered a sandalwood sword case containing the [Five Emperors' Cash Swords], exuding an overwhelming aura of nobility and imposing majesty.

"A man on the path as jade, a young lord peerless in the world" seemed to be materialized right here.

Even a great beauty like Shen Yueye was almost unable to tear her gaze away, thinking to herself:

"If there were some official rank whose combat power was determined by handsomeness, Fuguai would already be able to say to everyone: 'You must all die,' right?"

Wang Cheng had no idea what his Senior Sister was thinking. He turned and strode out of Litang Hall.

The core faction left to him by his late father was already fully armored and armed, standing in a dense, dark mass outside the hall doors, each person with a red cord tied around their arm to distinguish them from the others wearing the Five Peaks flags.

Wang Cheng's expression was cold and solemn:

"Everyone, we are setting out today to suppress the rebels! To avenge the old Grand Captain!"

The core members here had all learned that Mao Haifeng was the traitor who had colluded with the gentry to stab Prince Jinghai in the back, extinguishing the Dan people's hopes of rising up.

The hatred in their hearts had long been burning fiercely.

Finally awaiting this day, shouts of fury tore through the clouds:

"Vengeance! Vengeance!..."

Then, parting like flowing water, Wang Cheng took the lead in stepping out of the palace gates. Along the way, people with red cords tied around their arms continuously joined in, and the procession grew larger and larger.

Passing the ancestral temple and divine statues on the edge of the harbor, they bowed deeply to the old father/Prince Jinghai, and then filed onto the warships waiting to greet them.

The white sails of the naval fleet connected into a sea of clouds, activating [Openly repairing the gallery road while secretly crossing Chencang], and swept toward the Black Peak Flag encampment with overwhelming momentum.

Just as those suicide squads bombarding the temporary palace were completely annihilated,

The main forces of the [Thousand-Gold Peddler] Xu Weixue and the [Credit-Knife Man] Peng Laosheng had also arrived at the Black Peak Flag encampment from left and right.

Although the "money slaves" within their ranks—who had been secretly bribed by Wang Cheng and tasked with stoking the flames—had mostly died in battle and fled in terror before Mao Haifeng,

The arrow was now on the bow and had to be released.

At the signal of the two grand captains, voices shouted from all directions:

"Mao Haifeng is the Sima Yi of our time, harboring malicious intentions and coveting the family estate of Prince Jinghai!"

"Mao Haifeng secretly harmed the Heir Apparent, his crimes are unpardonable!"

"Brothers, clear the imperial court of bad ministers, kill the treacherous sycophants!"

There was no need for on-site investigation; as long as one possessed a shred of political wisdom, it did not hinder them from directly shifting the blame onto Mao Haifeng.

Anyway, it had already come to drawn blades and bloodshed; right now, it was a contest of who had the louder voice and the harder fists!

Ever since the Jin dynasty, no matter which powerful minister you wanted to kill in broad daylight, as long as you claimed he was Sima Yi, and he looked sufficiently similar, it sufficed.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Tan Daoji; during Emperor Gaozong of Tang's reign, Changsun Wuji... and most recently in their own dynasty, Li Shanchang. At least six or seven people had died because of this name.

The one who had narrowly escaped death by the skin of his teeth was the Great Tang Military God, Li Jing.

This was solely because he died eight days ahead of Emperor Taizhou to show respect, transforming from a first-rank [Living Ghost and Deity] into a true heavenly-class [Ghost and Deity]!

People of the time all said: The lead bullet fired by Old Thief Sima at the banks of the Luo River grazed the top of Li Jing's head and struck dead center between Li Shanchang's eyebrows. This was not without reason.

For thousands of years, this name itself had already become a terrifying evil spirit lingering in the upper echelons of the ancient empire; merely shouting it aloud was enough to kill a powerful minister.

Although Mao Haifeng was not yet old enough, considering the cultural level of the subordinates, pirates, and sailors, this name was already vivid and graphic enough.

The number of wind-driven warships in the hands of the Xu and Peng families was far inferior to Mao Haifeng's, so they coincidentally adopted traditional tactics.

They kept the sailing warships as a reserve force, while all remaining, less heavily-firepowered flat-bottomed sailing vessels pressed forward in an all-out assault.

"Board the ships! Close-quarters combat!"

Moreover, with no knowing how much sand Wang Cheng had mixed into their troops, the moment the three naval fleets exchanged fire, they plunged into a chaotic melee.