Miss Fairy, Please Hear Me Out

Within the library of the Xu residence in Stillwater, Xu Yuan sat quietly by the window, leafing through the C-grade internal briefings that Ying’er had personally delivered to him only moments ago.

The communication he had with Lou Ji two days ago had taught Xu Yuan that even his family’s internal reference materials were divided into ranks.

It was a very strict ranking system, too. From top to bottom, there were ten grades, A through J. What level of internal briefing a person could read depended on their status, strength, and contributions, all of it laid out in very clear detail.

The full intelligence on the northern war belonged to the third grade, C-grade. Because of all the ridiculous things he had done in the past, even Lou Ji could not conveniently tell him outright. She had to go ask his old man first. After all, if he took it out and sold it again, that would be one hell of a joke. It had taken two full days for the file to arrive, so his old man had probably agreed.

The sunlight was just right. Birds and wild geese rose and fell beyond the window as a gentle breeze passed through.

Xu Yuan had liked this feeling even in his previous life. A cup of tea, a book, an entire afternoon, leisurely and carefree... But the more he read through the internal briefings, the less carefree he felt.

The barbarians... Xu Yuan rubbed the space between his brows.

In Azure Point, there was one story branch where the final boss the player had to face was the barbarian force that swept down from the north. But the plot had never mentioned this current war at all. Now that he was seeing it for himself, things were honestly far worse than he had expected.

Seven years ago, when Marquis Wucheng was still guarding the northern border, those barbarians beyond the frontier had been beaten so badly they could not even raise their heads. But ever since Marquis Wucheng, that stabilizing pillar of the north, was recalled to the Imperial Capital seven years ago for certain reasons, the situation had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

In broad strokes, internal strife had caused the classic trick of keeping enemies around to inflate one’s own importance to spiral completely out of control.

The relationships within the Great Flame Empire’s border armies were extremely complicated. Because of the laws established by the founding emperor of the dynasty and the various sects back then, the sects did not have to pay taxes, but that privilege came at a price. In local governance, they had to assist the court unconditionally in protecting the people of their region.

In the military system, every year the sects also had to send a portion of their disciples to be broken up and incorporated into the armies stationed across the Great Flame Empire, where they would accept military command, among other obligations.

The original intention was good. When imperial power was strong, these laws had indeed played a very positive role. But after a thousand years of change, and after imperial authority had risen and fallen several times, those same laws gradually began to lose their original flavor.

The border armies were now riddled with factions. The court and the sects, the sects and other sects, the sects and the great clans, all of them shirked responsibility whenever war broke out.

The most typical example was the northern border right now. Once Marquis Wucheng was transferred back to the Imperial Capital, the north no longer had a single ruthless heavyweight who could suppress every faction. The various power blocs instantly scattered like a plate of loose sand.

Ten miles ahead, allied troops fought alone in a bloody battle. Ten miles behind, another group of allied troops sat around eating melons and supervising the war. That was the norm.

The only reason Frostnorth still had not fallen was because the Great Flame Empire’s reserves were simply too deep. Even with all the infighting, the barbarians on the other side could still only chip away at it bit by bit. That, at least, was more or less what Xu Yuan had understood in his previous life.

The Great Flame Empire truly deserved its reputation. Whether it was the Ancient Abyss in the southwest, the barbarians in the north, or the great desert in the northwest, they all basically waited until the warring factions inside the empire had beaten each other senseless before daring to rush in and pick the spoils.

Then in the end, they all became final bosses for the protagonist... Reining in his thoughts, Xu Yuan sat in the side room with nothing around him but the gentle breeze and the soft rustle of turning pages.

Suddenly, a flicker of surprise flashed across his eyes, and the fingers turning the page came to a slight halt.

Wait. These barbarians aren’t human? In the internal report Lou Ji had sent over, Xu Yuan found an illustration. It was not a photograph, but the brushwork was concise and strikingly realistic, depicting a battlefield scene.

On a shattered city wall, corpses lay everywhere. There were soldiers in border-army uniforms, cultivators dressed in sect robes, and also the northern barbarians. And those barbarians looked nothing like humans.

After two seconds of silence, Xu Yuan slowly got up and walked to the bookshelf.

A quarter of an hour later, he returned to the window seat, a fairly new copy of Record of the Northern Barbarians in hand. After giving it a quick read, his expression turned a little strange.

The term barbarian was not some contemptuous label the Great Flame Empire used for the nomadic tribes beyond the frontier. The barbarians were literal savages. They were humanoid, yes, but more like green-skins or dark-skins, a race of humanlike creatures.

This was something Xu Yuan had never known in his previous life. Or rather, there had been no reason for him to know. He knew about the Ancient Abyss because siding with them could let him play the role of an outlaw hero, maybe even become a dragon rider.

But the northern barbarians had jack shit to offer. No paper-waifu to chase after, so why would he care? There was barely any introduction to them. Even several important bosses had no character art at all. And in a 2.5D pixel-style game, expecting exquisitely detailed monster models was pure fantasy. A lot of the sprite assets were basically just palette swaps.

Xu Yuan had always assumed the barbarians were just a bunch of somewhat more burly humans. Only now did he realize they were not human at all.

The average adult barbarian stood over ten feet tall. Their birth in a land of bitter cold had given them dark brown, hardened skin that blades could barely pierce. Their fists and major joints were lined with sharp bone spurs, as if they had been born for battle.

An intelligent humanoid monster race...

After learning that, Xu Yuan was not especially shocked. After seeing the Stone Buddha and the Seven Life Python, naturally he was not going to be too shocked by a humanoid monster race. That did explain one thing, though. Out of all the outside forces, why were the barbarians the only ones without any paper-waifu? Because they were ugly as hell.

Putting down Record of the Northern Barbarians, Xu Yuan returned his attention to the internal briefing.

Near the end of the briefing was the northern border’s battle report from the past week. It was updated as of the day before yesterday.

After more than a month of bitter fighting, Princess Wuyuan had finally broken the siege of Frostnorth. Of course, breaking the siege was not something the 30,000 imperial guards she had brought with her could have achieved on their own. More of it came down to compromise among the local powers.

Even so, the process described in the briefing truly opened Xu Yuan’s eyes. Damn it. So there really are people who would keep fighting among themselves even with an enemy army at the gates.

Before Princess Wuyuan led her troops to Frostnorth, the factions trapped inside by the barbarians had still possessed the strength to fight them. In terms of raw power, they might even have had the advantage. But they just would not fight. They stayed holed up in the city and fought each other instead.

No one wanted to go first. Everyone wanted to preserve their own strength. After all, with all the formations protecting Frostnorth, there was no way the barbarians could break in anytime soon.

Besides, the message had already been sent out. They only had to wait for the imperial court to send reinforcements. And if the reinforcements never came, then they would simply compete to see whose military grain reserves lasted longer.

Your family has run out of rations? Your soldiers still need to eat, do they not? You want food without doing any work? Isn’t that a little unreasonable?

As for a mutiny inside the city? Going outside to serve as the vanguard against the barbarians still gave the civilians a chance to live. Starting a mutiny inside the city while the grand formations were active was just waiting to die. As a bonus, the entire clan of the perpetrator might be exterminated down to the ninth degree.

This situation was not truly resolved until Princess Wuyuan arrived with the imperial guards.

The former Ninth Princess had once been sent by the imperial clan to Marquis Wucheng’s estate in the northern border as a hostage. But because Marquis Wucheng was a loyal royalist, the Ninth Princess was treated even better than the heirs in his own household.

When the young Ninth Princess showed an interest in war, Marquis Wucheng brought her with him whenever he went out to fight. After she grew older, he even let her personally command troops. She had been raised in the army by Marquis Wucheng himself. With that built up little by little over the years, her prestige in the army was quite high. In honor of the marquis, she had taken up a courtesy name. That was how she came to be known as Wuyuan, the First Martial Princess.

Of course, the main reason those slippery old foxes cooperated so readily was that the first thing this madwoman did after entering the city was summon everyone to a meeting and start chopping off heads. Neglecting one’s duty until the battle situation rotted beyond repair was a capital crime.

The moment those words fell, one third rank Grandmaster and eight fourth rank deputy generals were blasted into meat paste right there in the hall.

She used the city’s grand formation. Under normal circumstances, imperial bloodlines always held the highest control priority over the formations of every major city.

And just like that, under Princess Wuyuan’s overall command, the siege of Frostnorth was lifted. They had now begun gradually reclaiming lost territory. They might not have been of one heart, but at least they could barely be called united in effort.