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Chapter 222 - 222: 152: Fish in the Net

Mount Yuanluo was just too vast. Even though Lu Yuan had divided it into four parts and searched each southeast, northeast, southwest, and northwest area separately, each divided area still covered a range of over a dozen miles.

With such a vast area, so many mountain ridges, trees, and even cliffs and caves, there were too many places to hide.

Although a cow is rather large, compared to these hiding places, it is still like finding a needle in a haystack, and hard to find.

Lu Yuan led a team to search the southeast area of Mount Yuanluo for three days. Despite turning the whole area upside down, they found nothing after three days.

Helplessly, he could only continue to lead his team searching the northeast area for another three days, but still found nothing. They then went to the southwest and northwest areas, but after searching through all of them, there were no results.

After such searching, Lu Yuan realized that it would be fruitless for the time being.

“There are many caves in Mount Yuanluo, as well as many underground rivers. Perhaps Qiao Xiuyuan from the Seven Star Sect made use of these natural caves and rivers to build some mechanism and hid the Xuan Niu somewhere underground.”

Lu Yuan thought of the tomb-robbing novels he had read before.

In those novels, the Royal Nobles would build intricate tombs for themselves, tightly concealing their corpses.

Now, having searched the entire Mount Yuanluo’s surface area and found nothing, the only explanation was that the Pure Water Xuan Niu couldn’t leave it, which meant only this possibility remained.

Although the Seven Star Sect was not imperial nobility, they were a powerful faction holding sway over Fu City. With the manpower and resources at their disposal over the centuries, they could certainly construct a treasure hiding place or a secret tunnel, not necessarily inferior to those of the Royal Nobles. It took a few hundred years, but building their own treasure hiding place and a secret tunnel for a retreat was not difficult for them.

“It seems that there won’t be any results in the short term.”

After confirming this, Lu Yuan sighed and could only helplessly withdraw his troops.

With the army currently fighting, as the commander, even if he tried to delegate as much military affairs as possible, he could not stay away forever.

A few days ago, Zhou Qing reported from the outside of Luyang Fu City that the strategy of using family members to shake the loyalty of the defending soldiers had been successful.

Although the city’s traitors hadn’t surrendered like in Linwu county town, many of them, with their families being controlled, couldn’t help but sneak out of the city in the middle of the night to surrender.

The high-ranking members of the Seven Star Sect were furious about this and ferociously executed a group of deserters. They even arranged for their disciples to strictly guard the city walls at night, preventing the deserters from succeeding.

Nevertheless, they could not stop this trend of escaping and surrendering.

The reason was simple.

Many of the Seven Star Sect’s disciples who were responsible for supervision also had their families in Linwu County, and those families were currently controlled by the imperial court.

Under such circumstances, how could they supervise the deserters?

Were they not afraid that once the news spread outside the city, their own family would be targeted and retaliated against by those who had escaped?

These Seven Star Sect disciples might not be able to escape and surrender like the deserters due to their master’s kindness, but they likewise couldn’t disregard their own families’ lives and bring matters to extremes either.

Therefore, trapped between two dilemmas, they could only let the deserters leave the city, hoping that this action would send a bit of goodwill and benefit to their families outside the city.

However, other Seven Star Sect disciples whose families were not outside the city, also didn’t dare to act forcefully due to their friends’ and relatives’ requests, their own ties to the deserters, and their relationships with their rural brethren.

In the end, they just turned a blind eye and allowed people to escape.

As a result of this operation, almost every night, hundreds of traitors escaped from the city and surrendered to the imperial court.

This trend of whole squads or even camps of traitors escaping and surrendering inevitably affected the morale of the other Seven Star Sect traitorous soldiers who were not from Linwu County.

As a result, the morale of the entire traitorous army plummeted like a cliff.

There was no way around it.

Even the most loyal Seven Star Sect members from Linwu County, who had received countless benefits during this time, had begun sneaking out of the city and surrendering.

So why should they, who had simply been coerced or were part of the periphery from other counties, remain and die for these traitors?

Eventually, traitors from other counties followed suit and began leaving the city to surrender as well.

However, the relationship between these deserters and the Seven Star Sect disciples was not as close as that of the deserters from Linwu County.

So, in order to give an explanation to the sect, they did not catch the deserters from Linwu County but instead severely pursued the deserters from other counties.

It was difficult to manage one’s own door, but these outsiders dared to take advantage of it?

Once the deserters from other counties were caught, the Seven Star Sect disciples supervising them showed no mercy and beheaded them on the spot.

The corpses and heads were hung on the city walls to intimidate the army.

Every night, a dozen or so deserters from other counties were caught and beheaded in public.

Such outrageous and unfair treatment naturally aroused the discontent of many people from other counties.

As a result, those misguided traitors from other counties grew further discontent with the Seven Star Sect after being discriminated against and even forcibly conscripted into service.

In the end, the fugitives from these foreign lands no longer escaped in small groups of one or two or even a dozen people..