Spiritual Energy Rejuvenation: I Began Cultivating By Farming

Chapter 2236 - 1258

The old General’s sons and grandsons were actually being tailed after they went down to the river, and there were Soldiers by the riverside as well.

They were only ordered not to get close, and everything they did was just watched from a distance.

There were water plants along the riverbank, and weeds by the roadside; because it was by the river, the weeds grew rather thick.

The army was camped here; besides solving the problem of drinking water, they could also let the horses graze on the wild grass by the river.

It was the hot season now, the water level was relatively low; because of drought, there was only a little bit of water. The river was fairly wide, and only the middle had water, while both sides were deep mud.

If you got close, you could see clearly what they were doing in the water.

Jiang Tang was on a Flying Treasure in the sky; seeing that in the "scene" these men were about to take off their outer coats, she stopped them from stripping.

Since going into the water and swimming might still require them to be ready for battle at any time, she laid a small Illusion Array for them; the ones going down didn’t know, the ones tailing them didn’t know, and they all thought the people in the river were practicing in the water.

Those who had seen the show knew the plot, knew that they were taking Pills in the water and practicing at the same time.

They let the impurities in their bodies be washed away in the river so others wouldn’t grow suspicious.

It was just that they were too high‑profile; aside from the Great General, all the Ye Family in the army were there.

As for their trusted aides and subordinates, they had no idea why they went down to the river, only that they went out after having been at the old General’s side.

They just assumed that after their morning practice, they had worked up a sweat and needed a bath.

They were all men; in summer, unless they were on a mission, they would all come to this river to bathe.

This river was not only for drinking, but also for bathing, and it was the water the horses drank as well.

Who knew whether upstream there might be even dirtier bathwater coming down?

Or water used for washing clothes flowing down.

The water looked clear; it was possible the filth had already settled down into the silt.

However, after they took the Pills and the impurities seeped out of their bodies, if they hadn’t been inside the Illusion Realm, people outside wouldn’t have smelled the stench.

In the river, though, they themselves could smell the stink coming off their own bodies, and it nearly made them retch in the water.

They hadn’t known the grime on their bodies stank this badly, as black sweat kept oozing out.

Normally they sweated too, but it had never smelled this foul.

Even in summer, they couldn’t bathe in the river every single day.

On missions, if they didn’t come across any water source, sometimes even drinking water was a problem, let alone bathing.

They were used to this kind of hardship in the army here; this kind of suffering could no longer crush their will.

Not afraid of hardship, not afraid of fatigue, as long as they could defend home and country.

When they had roughly scrubbed the mud off their bodies, they still couldn’t reach their backs.

At that point, they no longer cared about army carts or uniforms; they simply had their comrades scrub their backs clean as well.

After they had washed all the filth off their bodies, they felt a much greater sense of freshness, a kind of bodily sublimation; this was something people who trained in Martial Arts could feel—when their Martial Arts reached a certain level, they could use certain items to leap directly into Qinggong.

They felt now as light as swallows; when they later climbed ashore, they didn’t even need to step into the mud, not wanting to get their shoes any dirtier.

They had taken their shoes off when they went into the river; when they put them back on now, their old shoes just felt uncomfortable.

Perhaps their shoes were simply too dirty, but there was nothing they could do about it; even if they were fussy about cleanliness, they had to put up with it.

They remembered what the old General had said: after they took the Pills and washed off the stench, they were to return to their tents and see the old General again.

In truth, the old General wanted them to learn the Cultivation Technique in the Storage Bags once through and memorize its contents, so that when they went out to the front tomorrow, they could raise their own strength and reduce their risk a bit.

The old General actually had other ideas too; although they were urgently making explosive items right now...

He actually wanted each of them to carry on their person some explosive items that could suddenly turn the enemy into dead men, tools of death.

At a critical moment, they might save their lives.

Inside the Storage Bags—each of their Storage Bags already had Talismans.

Peace charms, Explosion Talismans, Instant-Shift Talismans, Escape Talismans—these Talismans could save their lives in battle, and the enemy would be unable to guard against them.

When they were on the city walls, if the enemy laid siege, they could toy with the enemy’s distant troops, hurling explosive items over and killing some of them, scaring them into retreat.

With the enemy ignorant of such things, they would exploit this information gap; at the moment the two sides clashed, they would rapidly wipe out the enemy’s men.

The old General in fact had another plan: to send out a cavalry unit to use these explosive items to attack the enemy’s logistics and operations.

But the old General had not yet issued that order.

From the information in the dream, the enemy would move tonight.

For now, things might seem calm, but the enemy might already be on the move without attacking yet.

They were always the ones who took the initiative to strike, and then the enemy would use that as a pretext to pin charges on them.

Information shifted endlessly; as Generals, they could not be the ones to launch attacks on the enemy troops.

Above them there was still the Emperor.

Although the Emperor was not present, the General was the Chief Commander, and his orders were the highest orders.

But in court, the enemy could use a single sentence of his, or some action of his, to turn the innocent into the guilty.

The old General watched his sons and grandsons come back from the river; they had already gone back and changed clothes.

He sent the others in the tent out, and instructed one of his sons to take another Storage Bag and deliver it to a certain lady of the family in the General’s Mansion.