Chapter 2766: Chapter 2766
Ye Liuyun’s repeated counter-ambushes had inflicted heavy casualties on the empire’s praetorian.
Seeing their weakened state, Ye Liuyun wasted no time in ordering Moran to reorganize the mercenary band into a full-scale rebellion against imperial rule. They began openly plundering resources from cities across the realm, leaving the planets for Ye Liuyun to claim.
No longer operating in the shadows, they now raided in broad daylight. With the Star Disk Empire too preoccupied to focus on Ye Liuyun, even if they sent elite martial cultivators, he remained unfazed.
News of the mercenary uprising spread like wildfire, drawing countless nearby mercenaries to join their ranks. The rebel forces swelled rapidly.
This mercenary army specialized in raiding city lord mansions, merchant guilds, and powerful factions, earning widespread support among mercenaries. Before long, their numbers exceeded a hundred thousand and continued to grow. Ye Liuyun didn’t micromanage them—instead, he recruited the strongest into his elite Wolf Hunt Corps to bolster his forces.
After the mercenaries stripped each region’s major factions of their wealth, Ye Liuyun would harvest the planet’s core energy before moving to the next world. His spatial domain overflowed with fresh recruits.
The empire dispatched experts to intercept them several times, but these attempts only supplied Ye Liuyun with more elite fighters for his vanguard. Meanwhile, martial cultivators at the third to fifth levels of Dominance became little more than training dummies for his forces.
Deploying troops for a full-scale suppression was impossible—the empire’s main army was locked in a standoff with hostile races. Even sending a hundred or two hundred thousand soldiers would barely make a dent against the mercenary tide.
Soon, the rebel mercenary army had swept across half the southern territories, and Ye Liuyun’s spatial domain grew ever stronger.
During a lull in the fighting, Pei Yong recruited another hundred thousand mercenaries for the Wolf Hunt Corps, expanding it to three hundred thousand strong. Even so, the rebel forces still numbered over two hundred thousand.
These mercenaries had endured oppression for far too long—treated as disposable tools, they harbored no loyalty to the Star Disk Empire.
Now, united under a common cause, they eagerly poured their pent-up rage into raiding city lord mansions, powerful factions, and merchant guilds. No one needed to force them—they fought with relentless fervor.
Surprisingly, discipline wasn’t an issue. Once united, they stopped preying on each other and turned their blades outward. But against the empire’s elites, they showed no mercy—slaughtering entire factions to prevent future retaliation.
The empire was in full panic. The mercenary rebellion wasn’t just spreading in the south—other regions soon saw copycat uprisings, each quickly gaining momentum.
The pattern was the same everywhere: raid the city lord’s mansion and local powerhouses, then rally the mercenaries and martial cultivators outside the walls.
Seeing this situation, the Star Disk Empire realized that if they didn’t suppress the mercenaries soon, the entire empire would be swallowed by them. They immediately ordered Liu Haotian to divide his forces to deal with the rebellious mercenaries, even capturing some to replenish their own troops.
Thus, Liu Haotian had no choice but to dispatch 300,000 soldiers. Meng Wenxiang was sent to the south, Han Qiao to the west, and another commander to the east, while Liu Haotian himself led his troops to resist the alien invaders while quelling the rebellious mercenaries in the north.
Before setting out, Meng Wenxiang was already worried about encountering Ye Liuyun. Each commander only had 100,000 troops, making it extremely difficult to suppress the mercenaries with such limited forces. But Liu Haotian was already stretched thin just allocating 300,000 soldiers and couldn’t spare any more.
"If you really run into Ye Liuyun, just put on a show—fight a little and then retreat," Liu Haotian advised Meng Wenxiang before departure, even suggesting he contact Ye Liuyun beforehand.
The reason he sent Meng Wenxiang to the south was precisely because he knew the man was cautious, unlike the reckless Han Qiao, and more skilled in military tactics than the other commanders. Liu Haotian had no intention of clashing with Ye Liuyun either.
Meng Wenxiang did reach out to Ye Liuyun in advance, informing him of Liu Haotian’s arrangements.
Though he didn’t say it outright, Ye Liuyun understood that Meng Wenxiang had no desire to fight him either.
Seizing the opportunity, Ye Liuyun ordered his mercenary army to accelerate their raids and recruitment, aiming to gather as many resources as possible before Meng Wenxiang’s arrival. By the time Meng Wenxiang’s forces arrived, Ye Liuyun had already seized ten more planets.
But soon after, his mercenary army boarded warships and retreated from the southern region, using the time to train and recuperate. Ye Liuyun instructed them to rest and regroup, waiting until Meng Wenxiang withdrew before striking back.
Meanwhile, Ye Liuyun himself rushed to the eastern front, ordering Pei Yong to unleash the newly recruited 100,000-strong army to plunder resources from local mercenaries while also engaging the imperial forces stationed there.
His army was disciplined and well-equipped. After a fierce battle between the local mercenaries and the imperial troops, Ye Liuyun struck decisively, crippling both sides and quickly establishing himself as the dominant mercenary force in the east.
Unlike previous mercenary groups in the region, who had merely occupied planets without extracting their essence, Ye Liuyun showed no restraint—he seized everything, even forcibly recruiting many martial artists from the conquered worlds.
Though his methods were initially harsh, his overwhelming strength allowed him to crush the imperial forces sent to suppress the mercenaries, earning him widespread support among the mercenary ranks.
The key was that his army was outfitted like a proper military force, making them appear far more promising than the ragtag mercenary bands of the past. As a result, many mercenaries flocked to join him, rapidly swelling his ranks.
The expansion happened so quickly that even Pei Yong struggled to keep up with training the new recruits. Ye Liuyun then consulted Yu Xiaofeng and brought in Meng Qingyin and Xiao Yunfang to assist Pei Yong in drilling the troops.
Meng Wenxiang encountered no resistance from Ye Liuyun in the southern campaign. After swiftly suppressing the local mercenaries with minimal effort, he successfully quelled the rebellion there. Meanwhile, Han Qiao fought several major battles against mercenary forces in the west. Leveraging tactical formations to his advantage, he eventually scattered the bulk of the mercenary troops, capturing numerous prisoners who were then conscripted to replenish his ranks—marking another successful suppression.
Subsequently, the empire dispatched both commanders to join forces in quelling the eastern rebellion.
Upon their arrival, Ye Liuyun strategically withdrew his forces and redirected them westward. Simultaneously, mercenary armies in the south resumed their relentless campaign to annex imperial planets.
It became a game of cat and mouse—Ye Liuyun deliberately avoided direct confrontation with the imperial suppression forces, instead engaging in sporadic skirmishes to train his troops while striking unpredictably across regions. Local mercenaries would feign compliance whenever imperial troops appeared, only to rejoin Ye Liuyun’s ranks once the coast was clear. The empire found itself powerless to contain the growing unrest among the martial cultivators.
Ye Liuyun expanded his forces rapidly through recruitment, soon swelling the ranks of his Wolfhunter Legion to 600,000 strong—all uniformly at the third level of Dominance realm or higher. Every 100,000-strong division was reinforced by an elite guard of martial cultivators at the fifth or sixth level of Dominance.
Lower-realm mercenaries operated as auxiliary rebel bands under Ye Liuyun’s banner, pillaging alongside him, while others were absorbed into his spatial world as reserve forces.
