Chapter 781: Heroes of the Grassland

Chapter 781: Heroes of the Grasslands

Chi Li led his men in a swift charge at the rear, shooting arrows toward the Han army's back lines.

They were not the small harassing squads of a few hundred men the Han army had imagined; this was a force of three thousand elite cavalry, hidden so well within the wind and sand that their numbers were impossible to gauge.

In a narrow encounter, one could not simply charge headlong into a bristling spear formation with a hot head; tactics were still essential. Grassland cavalry never directly assaulted a spear wall, and Chi Li's unit was no exception.

Once the Hu cavalry began to gallop and shoot, they became terrifyingly effective. If they found an opportunity to cut through and reap, no number of men could withstand their harvest. Earlier, when cavalry appeared suddenly out of the wind and sand, covering the hills, especially when the Han army had not yet formed ranks, the battle could have been declared over without a fight.

But the Han army had formed their ranks.

Commanding a force of a hundred thousand men was no easy feat. The fact that they had so swiftly and seamlessly arranged their formations, even if basic, made Tiemur willing to call Huangfu Yongxian the greatest general of the age: "I am not his equal." Any other commander would have caused chaos nine times out of ten, no matter how much Sanniang delayed the enemy.

This skill was not as flashy as martial valor, often overlooked, but it was the most essential quality of a commander. That was why Zhao Changhe could not do it.

Now that the square formation had been successfully established, they could deal with breaking it. But being trapped by marshlands on all sides, unable to maneuver, was fatal.

So this was the purpose of Zhao Changhe and the others sending Sanniang along this route... Who devised this strategy? Huangfu Yongxian? Or his daughter, the so-called commander of the three armies?

Tiemur had no time to ponder. While fighting and retreating, fending off the pincer attack of the two Sanniangs, he also released his inner energy to try to dry the ground, but that clearly took time. The marsh was gone, but the ground remained muddy, making it difficult to move flexibly. The grassland tribes lost most of their advantage.

If they dismounted for close combat, their armor was no match, let alone the tightly packed square formation. Vulture Fang had no idea how to fight. Fortunately, his mission was not to break the formation but to prevent Huangfu Yongxian from advancing, giving their rear cavalry a chance to regroup and Tiemur time to dry the ground. They didn't need it completely dry—just enough to run...

The three hundred thousand troops of the various tribes were not just a number; they filled the space. Endless troops were still marching in batches under the command of tribal leaders, not caught in the chaos at the front. With proper handling, they might still pull the battle back into their familiar rhythm.

During this time, the only cavalry that could still maneuver was Chi Li's unit at the rear.

Three thousand men seemed tiny in this battle, but for their usual tactics, it was not a small number. Used well, they could cause great trouble for the Han army's rear, and at best, they might even achieve a breakthrough and cut through. After all, with such a large scale, Huangfu Yongxian could not command every corner; it depended on the skill of each unit's commander.

Tiemur had high hopes for Chi Li. The outcome of this battle seemed to rest on this elite force, not on Vulture Fang, who was leading the charge head-on.

But once again, Chi Li saw the detestable face of Situ Xiao, who had time to drink a sip of wine and grin: "Xiao Cui and I each fought you a few times as tests, and finally decided it's better for me to play with you."

Chi Li held his breath and did not answer, directing his cavalry to shoot arrows.

In the earlier small skirmishes, you could block arrows alone. Can you block three thousand? Do you think you're your master?

"Swish, swish, swish!" Arrows rained down like locusts, but the soldiers beside Situ Xiao tore open their clothes, revealing steel-like bodies, each holding two small shields.

Chi Li: "?"

Pure shield soldiers? Why are you taking off your clothes?

The thought flashed by as a clatter of metallic sounds rang out. All the flying arrows were blocked by these men, leaping and intercepting left and right. Any arrows that missed the shields struck their bodies, making the same sound as hitting a shield, leaving only shallow marks.

Situ Xiao focused solely on Chi Li, intercepting only the arrows Chi Li shot, as no one else could catch them. The division of labor was clear and simple.

Chi Li's heart sank. The Divine Firmament Sect had not sent Li Shentong and his disciples here, but over a thousand elite disciples, all of whom had already entered the threshold of Iron Shirt technique! Weren't they advancing on Hanzhong? How could such elites come to the frontier?

A round of archery didn't even scratch the enemy. The martial artists blocked arrows nimbly, more effectively than any shield formation. The Han soldiers behind them looked at them with eyes that seemed to smile...

Then they drew their bows and shot back.

Chi Li's men came a little closer, and some were shot off their horses.

Chi Li was furious but helpless. He couldn't get closer to shoot arrows into the formation's interior, so he had to circle around and shoot from another direction.

But Situ Xiao and his men followed like a shadow, no matter where Chi Li circled. Every method that had previously yielded results from some angle was now completely thwarted by this relentless pursuit.

Chi Li's sharp eyes spotted a small number of cavalry from the enemy's distant formation galloping toward him, led by a familiar veteran from Yanmen. He glanced at Situ Xiao, who refused to advance a single step, determined to guard the formation. Chi Li, frustrated and helpless, had to lead his men to rein in and retreat, waiting for another opportunity.

He was recognized by the Chaos Scroll as the "Fox Demon," known for his elusive, ghostly guerrilla tactics, not just his fox-like blade skills. But in this battle, his specialty was countered so thoroughly that he couldn't even make a splash.

Chi Li was certain his talent surpassed Situ Xiao's; being the top of the Hidden Dragon list back then was no joke, and his current cultivation was indeed higher. But his strength lay in agility, not brute force. His archery power was not impressive, and facing Situ Xiao was a perfect counter.

Even as Chi Li rode far away, his voice, full of frustration, reached Situ Xiao's ears: "Isn't your Divine Firmament Sect rebelling? Why do you look like dogs of the Great Han?"

Situ Xiao laughed heartily: "Your grandpas love beating Hu people. When the divine land was surnamed Xia, your grandpas beat you too. Now that it's surnamed Zhao, your grandpas are even more willing!"

The current emperor of the divine land is still surnamed Xia! Chi Li couldn't be bothered to retort and quickly disappeared into the distance.

Situ Xiao spat and muttered to himself: "You're lucky. There are too few 'Divine Punishments,' and the front lines are many. That stingy Zhao Changhe said the battle here is too big, and splitting a few units would be useless, so he didn't give any. If all the 'Divine Punishments' were here, I'd blast your bastard heads off! Still trying to shoot and run!"

Thinking of the power of the "Divine Punishments," Situ Xiao shuddered, feeling he couldn't withstand them. He wondered how the temple's guardian army on the other battlefield was holding up...

But while they had few cannons, Chi Li had a similar problem—they were running out of arrows.

They were just a harassing unit that had left the main force for several days. How many arrows could they carry with their food and water? They had used many in the previous days, and now each man had only one or two quivers left...

One or two quivers might be enough to tear open a gap in an ordinary battle. But in this stalemate, they might not even cause a single light wound.

"Our arrows are running out," the deputy said to Chi Li. "And the Khan doesn't want this kind of result..."

Chi Li reined in his horse and looked into the distance. His face was covered with wind and sand, sweat streaking through, obscuring his once-handsome features.

From their position, they couldn't see the battle at the front, but they could roughly tell that the Han army's vanguard had slowly advanced a little. It was easy to imagine the pressure Vulture's tribe had endured in this short time.

The grassland tribes operated differently from the Central Plains armies. They wouldn't sacrifice their entire tribe. Once casualties became heavy, Chi Li could guarantee that Vulture Fang would turn and flee. But they really couldn't flee this battle. If they did, the Eternal Heaven would decline.

Chi Li was a man of the temple, not of any tribe. Now, the most battle-ready forces on the grassland were Tiemur's Golden Wolf Army and the temple's guardian army. The Han army's assumption of discord between them did not exist. No matter how much the leaders disagreed, there was still the Heavenly God above to unite them. In this life-or-death crisis, they could cooperate sincerely. Bo'e had willingly taken a subordinate role, fully supporting Tiemur.

But their cooperation alone was not enough; not all tribes would follow. Apart from the temple's people, others' faith in the Heavenly God was not so devout when faced with their own clans and lives. They needed an advantage. If they fell into a disadvantage, their resilience was far inferior to Huangfu Yongxian's iron army, which had fought alongside him for so many years.

"Circle to the left wing of the rear army..." Chi Li said in a low voice. "I saw Cui Yuanyong over there... If I'm not mistaken, Situ Xiao is only responsible for the right wing. He won't casually go to the left wing to crowd Cui Yuanyong's defense zone. There's no such arrangement, and their mutual pride wouldn't allow it."

"And then? We don't have enough arrows. It's meaningless!"

"We saw earlier that the flanks don't have the spear formations of the front. One volley of arrows is enough to open the way." Chi Li paused and took a deep breath. "A few who aren't afraid to die, come with me to charge the formation. Once we tear open the line, the rest will break through and tear apart their rear."

The three thousand elite cavalry fell silent.

Charging the rear flank... If there were ten thousand, it might be worth discussing. But we only have three thousand.

This was a gamble with their lives.

"Tactics, in the end, require force and courage. If we don't gamble this life, we can't win this battle." Chi Li's expression was calm. "Those who aren't afraid to die, follow me."

Cui Yuanyong pressed his sword and looked up at the charging troops ahead. The rain of arrows above was like the wind that had just risen.

He could feel the violent determination within it.

When a martial artist known for agility and change abandoned his signature tactics to charge a well-prepared army... Cui Yuanyong knew that this grassland prodigy, who had once looked down upon the Hidden Dragon list of the Central Plains, had no intention of returning alive.

He was the top of the Hidden Dragon list during the time of Yue Hongling and Zhao Changhe, a list of unparalleled quality. Given time, he would surely become the new Bo'e of the temple.

But the tide was overwhelming. A single hero could not change the outcome.

"Clang!" The long sword met the curved blade sweeping in from the horse, halting Chi Li's forward momentum.

Spears rose all around.

"Brother Chi Li, this road is blocked." Purple energy rose around Cui Yuanyong, spreading over the bloodstains nearby. "I wonder if Brother Chi Li believes that by now, Vulture's tribe has likely fled."

"The Golden Wolf Army holding the line will keep them moving forward," Chi Li said in a low voice, whether to refute Cui Yuanyong or to convince himself.

"Abandoning change for directness, Brother Chi Li, in this battle, you are no match for me."

"Then let's try."

...

At that moment, Vulture's tribe had not fled.

"Clang!" Spear and lance clashed. Vulture Fang leaned back slightly, dodging countless thrusts from all sides, and retreated a few steps.

Before him stood Huangfu Yongxian himself, his spear held horizontally, the entire formation advancing a few more steps.

On the Chaos Scroll rankings, Huangfu Yongxian had long been ninth on the Earth List. Though embarrassingly lower than his daughter, he was still among the top tiers. Unfortunately, he was old and burdened by military affairs. His cultivation had not improved much in the past two years, still stuck at the second level of the Secret Realm, unable to break through to the third. But many of those ranked above him had either risen or fallen, and now his rank had quietly become second on the Earth List, with Tang Wanzhuang first.

In truth, Huangfu Yongxian knew his own cultivation today did not merit his second-place rank on the Earth Rankings; the Vulture Lieya before him, for instance, was stronger than he.

This former number one of the Human Rankings, who had once suppressed Zhao Changhe so thoroughly that the youth could barely withstand a single spear strike, the universally recognized "King of Men" before Zhao Changhe's rise... was in the very prime of his life, having broken through to the Second Secret Realm immediately after that war. In the tempestuous era of gods and demons that followed, he had forged ahead with courageous diligence and had now clearly broken through to the Third Realm. Though only in its early stages, this would have placed him on the Heaven Rankings in years past; but now, lacking recent battle achievements, he was listed only in the lower-middle tiers of the Earth Rankings.

How numerous indeed were the heroes of the steppes... which was precisely why they had waged ceaseless wars against the Central Plains for the past millennium.

Regrettably, although Huangfu Yongxian was stuck at a bottleneck and could not break through to the Third Realm, the gap between him and Vulture Lieya, who had newly reached the Third Realm, was not so vast that he could be slaughtered like a common fowl. Yet amidst these myriad troops, where spears thrust in dense arrays, Vulture Lieya found himself in a frustratingly familiar environment, exactly like the one when he fought Zhao Changhe; though a single strike from his spear could send Huangfu Yongxian's blood churning, countless spears and pikes surged from all sides, preventing him from securing victory or breaking the formation.

After all, he had not yet broken through to the Imperial Realm, nor did he belong to the Sacred Brilliance Sect's school of iron shirt techniques; he was, in the end, mere flesh and blood. Meanwhile, the generals and officers flanking Huangfu Yongxian were all experts of the eighth or ninth level of the Profound Pass, or had even recently unlocked the Secret Realms, far from ordinary, expendable foot soldiers.

As the elites of the Vulture Tribe fell one after another around them, Huangfu Yongxian's formation was imperceptibly driving forward.

Unable to hold the line, Lieya retreated step by step, doing almost nothing to impede the march of this iron torrent of the Han army, while the elites of his Vulture Tribe suffered devastating casualties.

To be frank, Vulture Lieya was willing to fight Huangfu Yongxian to the death, but he was unwilling to bury all the warriors of his tribe here; for what purpose? Yet with the Golden Wolf Army pressing from behind, if he turned and fled now, his tribe would likely perish at the hands of the Golden Wolf Army anyway, making little difference.

Unless... Huangfu Yongxian had a way to throw the Golden Wolf Army into chaos?

Vulture Lieya fought as he retreated, releasing his barely usable divine sense to sweep backward.

While he had been blocking Huangfu Yongxian's advance, the chaos in the rear had subsided somewhat, and the so-called marshland seemed much improved under the Khagan's relentless efforts, with many men already remounting their horses... If they could just hold on, could they drag the battle back to a familiar rhythm?

Lieya instinctively felt that Huangfu Yongxian would not rely solely on this straightforward, orthodox advance, sitting idly by while his massive advantage was whittled away.

Engage with the orthodox, conquer with the unorthodox. As a renowned general of the age, Huangfu Yongxian could not possibly be ignorant of this.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, a great cloud of dust and smoke billowed up in the west.

Someone was attacking the Golden Wolf rear guard!

Temür's furious roar also echoed from the sky: "Batu, this Khagan has been waiting for you for a long time! With this rabble of scantily clad beggars of yours, do you still delusionally hope to repeat the deeds of yesteryear?"

It was Batu, of course. Vulture Lieya felt a tinge of disappointment; this "surprise force" was no surprise at all, it was something everyone had anticipated, and Temür had naturally made specific preparations long ago.

He saw the tribes in the rear wheeling their horses to flank them, waiting for Batu to march right into the trap.

Yet at the very moment the army in the rear shifted slightly, dust and smoke rose again in the east, countless times greater than the commotion caused by Batu's tribe in the west, and the earth shook with the thunderous, uniform trampling of iron hooves.

Vulture Lieya's heart leaped, and he strained his divine sense to take a closer look.

Temür, too, failed to realize for a moment where this army had come from, and upon seeing them, everyone stood stunned.

—When Huangfu Qing had just launched her northern campaign out of Shannan, she claimed her judgment was that the western front would be the primary battlefield, and dispatched the Demon Suppression Bureau general Wu Weiyang with ten thousand light cavalry to rush to their aid. Subsequently, in a game of mutual deception, after Temür's soul collided with Zhao Changhe's, everyone seemed to redefine the eastern front as the primary battlefield. Yet no matter how the definitions shifted, Wu Weiyang's light cavalry had never returned.

Huangfu Qing's seemingly naive strategic judgments, which appeared to change three times in a matter of days, had in fact never altered from the very beginning.

Wu Weiyang's reinforcements had been riding directly to rendezvous with Huangfu Yongxian all along!

The vast desert was boundless, so it was understandable that no one could find their whereabouts; but how could they appear at this precise moment, at this exact location on a battlefield encountered by chance mid-journey?

And it happened precisely at the moment the marsh disappeared and horses could gallop, just when the chaos on this side had not yet been sorted out, that they charged forth in perfect, unified stride.

How could they time it so perfectly?

Vulture Lieya suddenly looked up, gazing at the condor circling in the sky.

The vultures of his Vulture Tribe had long since been pecked to nothing...

"Clang!" A powerful force surged forward, and the distracted Vulture Lieya was nearly brushed aside, his spear almost deflected by Huangfu Yongxian. His mind snapped back to the combat, just as Huangfu Yongxian's roar boomed in his ears: "The enemy's rear is unstable, crush the Vulture Tribe!"