The violent collision, Qin sword slashing down with its majestic baleful aura, seemed to strike an impenetrable barrier before reaching Shi Yi's arm, vibrating and resonating intensely. Bai Qi's eyes widened in fury, both hands gripping the sword hilt, his entire body weight leaning forward to press down.

The sword's edge scraped, emitting a low whine.

But at this moment, even the power of the military formation was useless.

Shi Yi clenched his right fist.

Bai Qi grunted, blood flowing from the corner of his mouth, his feet scraping against the ground as he retreated. The Qin sword in his hand was almost broken, while Shi Yi was unharmed, advancing step by step, fist by fist: "Why, engage in meaningless slaughter?!"

"Why? Even dragging your own subordinates into this slaughter as the price?!"

"For a general, complete victory is paramount."

"Since you've already captured the general and seized the banner, that already counts as a complete victory, so why make a choice that causes such a huge loss to your own side?!"

"Are you truly a heartless, tearless fiend, knowing only how to kill?"

Each word filled with anger.

Shi Yi's strength belonged to the tier just below the Ten Greats of Heaven and Earth. His offensive power had always been lacking, but that was only when compared to existences who grasped mythical concepts, like how Zhuge Liang wasn't skilled in using unorthodox strategies; that also depended on who he was being compared to.

In that era, he created strategies that allowed infantry to defeat cavalry, strategies that would lead to death for whoever tried to chase them.

To say he wasn't skilled in strategies at all? Whoever believed that would fall for his trap.

Bai Qi, along with the remaining force of fifty thousand soldiers, was completely unable to confront Shi Yi head-on.

Did he need a million?

Or even more troops, joining forces in a military formation to elevate it to the level of a mythical concept?

Only then could they fight an opponent of this level…

Bai Qi sensed Shi Yi's heavy fist and foot strikes. Thoughts flashed through his mind, and he grunted, directly blasted away, heavily impacting against the mountain rocks. The Great Qin armor shattered, leaving only the white inner layer. He knelt on the ground, one knee down, holding his chest, the sword's edge propping him up, droplets of thick blood falling.

Another sanctimonious hypocrite.

Bai Qi grit his teeth and stood up, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth with his right hand, intending to draw his sword, but he paused slightly.

Shi Yi hadn't come to him to attack.

Because with the command ability of Lord Wu'an, Bai Qi, those fifty thousand yin spirits would naturally rearrange their formation to protect their commander. The reason he struggled so much was because he worried that these true spirits of Shenzhou would be completely killed and annihilated here by Shi Yi.

That wasn't the main point. The main point was that when Bai Qi raised his head, he discovered that these fifty thousand true spirits were being subdued one by one, but in the process, they even brought quite a bit of trouble to Shi Yi.

And Shi Yi, even in his rage, hadn't actually killed those warriors.

Bai Qi struggled to stand.

Not a sanctimonious hypocrite.

A fool?

The difference between gods and humans was vast. As Bai Qi rose, Shi Yi spun around, his right hand pulling out the sword of a true spirit warrior general, his left hand pressing on the warrior's neck, directly returning him to his wooden spirit tablet. His ink-colored sleeves fluttered as his right hand, clad in white bracers, inverted the longsword, the blade brushing past Lord Wu'an.

"Is slaughter your pleasure?"

Shi Yi asked.

Lord Wu'an replied, "It is not so."

His right hand held the Qin sword low, a Heibingtai dagger pressed against the deity's abdomen. Although it couldn't break Shi Yi's defense, it at least represented the human heart that would never give up the fight, answering, "Slaughter is a means, not an end."

"To stop war with war."

"To stop war with war?"

Far from Haoyue City, the two stood in a seemingly adversarial posture, murderous intent swirling. Shi Yi wasn't the type to simply impose his own thoughts and will based on what he saw and knew, without considering the other's perspective.

The arrogance of the gods didn't exist within him.

Shi Yi slowly said, "Meaningless slaughter is your so-called cessation of war?"

The sword in his hand slowly pressed down.

Bai Qi's pupils calmly stared at the deity before him, saying, "Have you ever witnessed a chaotic world? If the gods don't know, then I can tell you exactly what a chaotic world is like. Constant conquest, endless slaughter, and hatred will continue to accumulate."

"The lords of the world fight each other endlessly for profit and fame."

"The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were five hundred years of chaos, and the Three Kingdoms was also a hundred years of turmoil."

Lord Wu'an raised his hand, directly grasping the blade of Shi Yi's sword, his tone calm: "Since the so-called heroes and lords of the world are all like this, constantly fighting, causing endless suffering to the people, then let me ask you, thirty years of fierce fighting versus five hundred years of constant war and conquest…"

"Which is more devastating to the people?"

With blood flowing from his hand, Lord Wu'an slowly rose, his ink-colored eyes meeting Shi Yi's.

"Warlords, heroes, champions?"

"Those are the very roots of chaos!"

"If I were in the Three Kingdoms period, I would first kill Cao Cao, then kill Liu Xuande!"

"And finally wipe out Sun Wu completely. The heroes of the world will only allow the war to continue to drag on endlessly. One state becomes strong, and another state follows suit, and such battles will never stop. Since hatred cannot be severed, instead of continuing hundreds of years of constant war, it is better to use the strongest state to quickly sweep across the world. Only then, when the world is one state, can there be a true possibility of completely ending the war."

"Since those warriors are destined to die in that chaotic era."

Bai Qi's voice calmed down, but it was unknown whether he was talking about the Battle of Changping, every great battle of his past, or the fifty thousand killed earlier. His eyes still burned with a fierce and dangerous flame: "Since they raised their swords and stepped onto the battlefield."

"They should have already prepared themselves to kill, and at the same time, they should have the awareness of death. Since these people are going to die in that absurd chaotic world, why can't they die at my hands?"

"Since each state's victories and defeats only prolong the war."

"Then why can't we use the undefeated streak of sweeping through the Six Kingdoms to nurture a true soaring dragon, and then completely end the five hundred years of suffering in Shenzhou?!"

Shi Yi's pupils contracted. He seemed to see behind Bai Qi, war flags fluttering, countless slaughters and bloodshed, countless blood debts, all to fulfill the absurd ambition in this seemingly quiet man's heart—to end the five hundred years of chaos of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in his generation.

Or rather, starting from his generation.

The eyes of this seemingly gentle and quiet man seemed to burn with flames. At this moment, his aura was not at all inferior to the deity before him, saying: "Therefore, I will use even greater slaughter to end the wars of Shenzhou, so that the victories of all the states will belong to Great Qin. I, Bai Qi, will naturally be guilty before Heaven, my sins rolling in, and I will not die well, but even if my hands are stained with blood."

"I will also dot the eyes of this sleeping dragon that is Great Qin!"

"Let my Great Qin truly march west out of the Hangu Pass, looking down upon the world, Shenzhou as one state, ending the chaos!"

Many heroes in Shenzhou are lunatics.

Shi Yi could see that Lord Wu'an in front of him was not lying, and he had indeed completed his goal. As Lord Wu'an, who possessed half of the total war deaths in the Warring States period, after him, Han, Wei, Zhao, and Chu all declined, also removing all obstacles for Great Qin to march west out of the Hangu Pass.

No wonder he could suppress such terrifying murderous intent.

He had a goal far greater than these slaughters in his heart.

To gather the slaughter of an era upon himself, and then personally usher in a future where one state dominates, and then annexes the world. And Shi Yi also understood why Bai Qi had buried all those wild wasteland soldiers in the Land of Heavenly Disaster—

To beat the enemy until they dare not fight, cannot fight!

"Since there will always be a price to pay, then, as a person of Shenzhou, I naturally hope that the price is not paid by Shenzhou… just like back then."

Bai Qi whispered. Shi Yi encountered a new idea.

His first reaction was absurdity and stubbornness!

His second reaction, from the perspective of the God of Years, was that such absurdity could not be denied to have its own rationality. To pacify the world at the fastest speed, and then allow the people to recuperate and recover. If viewed over a period of three hundred years, thirty years of fierce fighting and two hundred and seventy years of recuperation were far better than three hundred years of non-stop war.

While Shi Yi was lost in thought, Bai Qi suddenly raised his hand to attack.

A baleful aura comparable to that of Chi You in the past erupted.

Shi Yi subconsciously made a move. Bai Qi relied on the soul-slaying intent, his only means of causing damage to a god, and fiercely crashed into him. But he misjudged Shi Yi's reaction. The God of Years did not make mistakes by even a fraction. As a result, the souls of the two collided at the same time.

Shi Yi withdrew his hand.

Wu'an stepped forward.

Both of them grunted at the same time, because of the close-range intertwining of their souls, scenes appeared before their eyes.

Shi Yi, with a resolute face and short, sharp hair, covered his eyes, his eyes stinging.

It was as if someone had slammed their forehead hard on his nose.

Before Bai Qi's eyes, three or five afterimages flickered.

It was as if he had been forced to drink a lot of strong liquor.

In the scene that appeared before Shi Yi's eyes, there was a young man whose face, although not handsome, was at least clean. As a youth from the Bai Family Village in Mei County of Great Qin, he naturally joined the army, holding a sword in his hand. The Qin King at that time had formulated a strategy to advance east to defeat Jin in order to annex the world.

The youth from Bai Family Village naturally stepped onto the battlefield.

He seemed to be the most suitable person for the battlefield.

Starting as the most ordinary soldier, it was not enough to kill ordinary soldiers to be promoted in rank. He needed to kill warriors, those who wore armor. The youth was like a hero bestowed by Heaven, growing step by step, but with more and more injuries on his body.

Chatting with the teacher who taught him swordsmanship, he had obtained many military merits on the battlefield.

So he didn't need to pay taxes anymore. Slaughter relied on courage.

Surviving after killing the enemy relied on intelligence and luck.

Why was there war?

In the end, the teacher died in a battle against an enemy state. At the beginning of the first battle, the teacher told the youth from Bai Family Village that he was afraid he would die in this battle. He had killed many people in the previous battle against Zhao, and there must be descendants of those families who had joined the army, fighting with the anger of avenging their fathers and brothers.

Their morale must be very strong.

And the teacher did indeed die under the sword of a naive young man.

When the young Bai Qi killed the enemy who killed the teacher, the warrior wearing the helmet was still ecstatically saying that he had avenged his father, crying to the sky when he got emotional, and then Bai Qi chopped off his head.

He had never lost.

In the life of this commoner youth from Bai Family Village.

In his life, he had fought more than seventy battles, large and small, without a single defeat.

That face, which looked even younger than Bai Qi, turned around, and a pair of bloodshot eyes looked at the cold-faced Qin warrior, saying: "My children will still take revenge… you, damn Qin barbarians, my children, my grandchildren, will cut off…"

Bai Qi's short sword was unsheathed, cutting off the young man's head.

Even he himself didn't know whether he was cold-blooded enough to reap the heads and lives of the enemies, or whether he didn't want to hear what would be said afterwards.

"Teacher, Bai Qi has avenged you."

"I also understand the reason why war continues."

"Teacher, you killed the enemy's warriors for national vengeance, which is where righteousness lies. His children killed you, which is also in accordance with filial piety. I am your disciple, and I killed him to avenge you, which is also appropriate, but what about next? His children, my children? His disciples? My disciples?"

"People are like this, and countries are like this."

"Taking a step back is wise, but most people in the world are ordinary people, and hatred cannot be stopped. Bai Qi understands this, but I am unwilling to let this centuries-long chaos continue any longer. Teacher, I can no longer do what you said you hoped I would do, to be a military instructor and leave the battlefield as soon as possible."

The young man's voice was low:

"I will end the blood debts of this chaotic world in my hands, using the defeat of the Six Kingdoms to create a unified world."

"No matter who I kill is the newly married husband who left home."

"Is the only son that some old woman bitterly hopes to see again."

"Is the father whom the children haven't seen for years."

"Or someone's brother."

"Qi will no longer hesitate."

"They will all be obstacles for me to end this centuries-long chaos."

"May the future of Shenzhou no longer be divided, no longer slaughter each other…"

The young man in plain white clothes stood up, turned and walked out. Autumn leaves fell down and were gently caught by him. He did not know that he was about to be appointed to the position of Zuo Shuzhang and would ascend the stage built for him by the God of Years in the battle where Qin attacked the state of Han.

Perhaps having the name "Qi" was an unlucky thing in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.

Wu Qi killed his wife to seek command, and Bai Qi used martial prowess to stop war.

When that young man walked out, the man outside asked him about his ambitions. After listening, he was lost in thought for a long time, and then shook his head again and again, blurting out:

"If you can succeed."

"You should be named Wu'an…"

And before Bai Qi's eyes, Shi Yi, the Heavenly God of the Great Wilderness, was standing on the mountain, watching the births, growths, joys, sorrows, and moments of countless mortals. Because he watched their birth, aging, sickness, and death, he naturally felt pity for them, hoping that they could break free from oppression and bondage. Gods love the world; it was not a lie.

In the end, the two men who saw different scenes groaned at the same time and retreated again and again.

Shi Yi covered his forehead: "Madman…"

Bai Qi grunted, his expression unchanged, but blood flowed from his nose.

Lord Wu'an sneered: "A fool who longs to pacify the world with peaceful methods."

The god and the man looked at each other.

For some reason, that confrontational situation was not so tense anymore.

The two were silent, looking at each other. Although they knew that their ultimate goals seemed to be completely the same, this god and man were even more displeased with each other than before. It was that kind of very, very displeased feeling.

Wishing that they could turn around and knock the other to the ground, and then step on their face, the kind where, if possible, they would best step on it in the mud and grind it.

Shi Yi deliberated for a moment, and under Bai Qi's surprised gaze, suddenly opened his mouth: "Where are you going next?"

"Huh?? What do you mean?"

"To prevent you from completely falling into madness, to correct your erroneous and obsessive thinking."

The Great Wilderness Heavenly God spoke as a matter of course, his tone calm and rational: "I have decided to keep an eye on you for a while."

"To prevent your thinking from continuing to deteriorate."

Lord Wu'an: "Huh??!"

PS: Second update today…