Chapter 742: Offense and Defense Reversed

That was exactly right.

As commander of an entire army, Shang Chaozong had personally charged into battle and deliberately exposed himself to immense danger for one purpose: to lure large numbers of enemy cultivators into coming after him, creating the opening the Yingyang and Wulie Guards needed to launch their assault in one burst.

By the time Zhao Xingyan understood, it was already too late.

The Zhao troops in the rear had fallen into complete chaos.

Shang Chaozong had never intended to leave him time to react.

The Yingyang and Wulie Guards smashed into the Zhao army from the left and right flanks.

Their vicious momentum cut into the enemy formation like blades through tofu. They tore through the Zhao ranks like waves being split apart, charging back and forth without pause.

Some cultivators hurriedly pulled back in an attempt to salvage the disorder.

But the cultivators Shang Chaozong had positioned for exactly that purpose were not decorations. They tangled with them and blocked their return.

Even those who managed to get back could accomplish little.

The Yingyang and Wulie Guards were already rampaging through the Zhao formation and mixing completely with Zhao's own men. Zhao's cultivators could not unleash their attacks freely, especially while Yan cultivators continued harassing them.

The battle flags of the Yingyang and Wulie Guards fell after they broke into the enemy formation.

Amid the chaotic army, the troops lost the flags that had been guiding their direction of attack.

"Yingyang!"

"Wulie!"

The cries rose again.

The men used the direction of the shouts to gather and orient their charge.

No matter what obstacles appeared before them, their assault never fell into disorder.

They drove back and forth through the Zhao army again and again.

At the same time, Zhao's front came under the full force of Yan's frontal assault.

With no effective support left behind it, the entire Zhao formation rapidly collapsed.

When armies of this scale fought, disorder meant defeat.

And once defeat began, it became a landslide.

There was no stopping it.

The Zhao army lost the ability to organize any effective resistance.

Everything dissolved into chaos.

No matter how loudly someone shouted, there was no gathering the broken troops back into order.

Large sections of Zhao's army began to flee.

Once men started running, the panic spread in a chain reaction.

The whole force was finished.

The cultivators on both sides were still fighting with earthshaking intensity.

It no longer mattered.

No matter how fiercely they fought, the armies would not stop for them.

Yan's troops seized the advantage and pursued.

Two legs could not outrun four.

With the Yingyang and Wulie Guards in the lead, large numbers of Yan cavalry swept after the routed Zhao army and cut down the fleeing troops.

Across the chaotic battlefield, they used the opportunity to widen the rout and refused to give the enemy any chance to regroup.

Whenever cavalry caught up with the fugitives, saber-light flashed and blood sprayed.

Screams sounded without end.

One group of Zhao troops, more than ten thousand strong, fled together in a mass.

When they saw cavalry pursuing from behind, they knew they could not outrun the horses.

They rapidly closed ranks and prepared to resist.

Long spears were planted against the earth, their points angled in dense rows toward the incoming cavalry.

The Yingyang and Wulie Guards charging toward them did not simply crash headlong into the formation.

The commander leading that column gave a hand signal.

One thousand riders split away.

The main force curved around the clustered troops and continued pursuing the enemies farther ahead, refusing to give the routed army a chance to gather again.

The commander of the thousand riders slashed another signal with his saber.

The cavalry sheathed their blades and quickly seized the bows hanging from their saddles.

For the Yingyang and Wulie Guards, mastery of both saber and bow from horseback was a basic requirement.

They swept past the clustered Zhao troops like a gust of wind.

Bows opened from horseback.

Bowstrings snapped in a dense burst.

Arrows hissed from the racing cavalry.

The Zhao soldiers holding the spear formation immediately screamed and fell in swaths.

The thousand riders wheeled back and forth several times, loosing arrows with every pass.

Then, without warning, they put away their bows.

Picking out a weak point in the formation, they charged directly through it.

Saber-light screamed through the air.

Blood splashed.

The clustered defenders collapsed at once.

After cutting straight through the formation, the thousand riders did not linger.

They raced away to continue the pursuit farther ahead.

The Yan infantry rushing up behind them swallowed the broken group that remained.

Elsewhere, a Zhao general had become separated from his men.

Ahead, he saw a unit of the Yingyang and Wulie Guards cutting diagonally across his path.

"Kill!"

With nowhere left to flee, the general gave a grief-stricken roar and charged with his long spear.

The main body of the Yingyang and Wulie Guards did not stop for him.

Only a small group of ten riders peeled away and came straight at him.

At the instant they met, the general thrust his spear in fury.

The first Yingyang and Wulie Guardsman in his path swung his saber and blocked the strike head-on.

The rider immediately behind him suddenly flattened himself against his horse, ducking beneath the long spear as it swept overhead.

His saber slashed toward the Zhao general's horse's legs.

The warhorse screamed and toppled.

The general was hurled into the air.

Several riders behind flashed past in succession.

Their sabers carved through him again and again, raising streaks of blood.

He crashed heavily to the ground and convulsed, blood running from his mouth and nose.

The ten riders were already gone.

Yan infantry came rushing up behind them.

One soldier raised his weapon.

The blade fell.

Across the spreading battlefield of pursuit and slaughter, no one knew how many men lay on the ground moaning in pain.

No one knew how many lay whimpering in pools of blood.

The infantry arriving behind used spears and lances to finish the wounded.

There was no question of mercy.

There was no warmth in the killing of a battlefield.

A million-man army.

Finished.

Standing atop the battle wagon and looking across the surrounding chaos, Zhao Xingyan went blank.

He ignored the cultivators fighting violently around him.

Slowly, dazedly, he drew his sword.

At that moment, he had no other thought.

In utter despair, his instincts sought only death.

At the critical moment, a cultivator seized his arm.

"Great General, we've lost. Go!"

The army was defeated.

There was no point in the cultivators staying behind to fight Yan's cultivators to the death.

They could not possibly slaughter every Yan soldier running across a battlefield this large.

"Ah..."

Zhao Xingyan finally came back to himself and suddenly burst into anguished sobs.

"Go!"

A cultivator shouted.

Two men seized Zhao Xingyan together and shot away with him.

Large numbers of Zhao cultivators flew back and forth, fighting as they retreated and covering Zhao Xingyan's withdrawal.

Only after he had been carried far from the battlefield did they finally stop holding back and rapidly disengage from the fighting.

Shang Chaozong stood with his saber planted against the ground, his battle robe soaked in blood.

He panted heavily and looked around the battlefield.

Then a smile appeared on his face.

They had won.

He had taken an enormous risk and used himself to lure the enemy.

And he had won.

The joy in his heart was easy to imagine.

Sprays of blood covered his face, making his smile look almost ferocious.

Feng Ruonan, equally drenched in blood, jumped down from her horse.

Her face too was covered in blood.

Holding her spear in one hand, she wiped the sticky blood from her face with the other and blinked as she called, "Your Highness! You're wounded?"

Her gaze locked on the place where Shang Chaozong's armor had been cut open at the arm.

Several cultivators stood with their backs toward the husband and wife, forming a protective ring while vigilantly watching the surroundings.

In the air above, Huang Lie joined others in killing a Zhao cultivator, then flashed down to the ground.

He swept one glance across the battlefield and naturally understood that they had won.

His face lit with wild delight.

But when he turned and saw Shang Chaozong, Huang Lie's expression immediately darkened.

Sword in hand, he strode over quickly and said in a deep voice, "Your Highness, as commander-in-chief, your task is to command the army in battle, not to charge into the enemy yourself. There had better not be a second time!"

It had been far too dangerous.

What happened earlier had nearly frightened Huang Lie out of his wits.

If anything happened to Shang Chaozong, then the army collapsing like a landslide might not have been Zhao's.

It might have been Zhao's troops pursuing a broken Nanzhou army instead.

If Nanzhou's strength collapsed, the consequences for Dachan Mountain were obvious.

When Huang Lie had rushed over earlier, he had personally watched Shang Chaozong's horse go down beneath him and seen him fall into the middle of the chaotic enemy formation.

How could the man not still be shaken by it?

A battle wagon rolled to a stop nearby.

Shang Shuqing jumped down.

When she saw her brother and sister-in-law standing there covered in blood, her emotions surged so strongly that for a moment she could not speak.

All the tension and fear she had felt earlier had been poured into beating that drum with everything she possessed.

Now her arms trembled from overexertion.

From behind, Lan Ruoting came galloping over under the protection of several cultivators.

When he jumped from his horse, his legs were so weak that he staggered and nearly failed to stand.

After learning Shang Chaozong's decision and personally watching him charge into battle, Lan Ruoting had truly been frightened until his legs went soft.

Even now, his scalp still tingled.

It came back to the same point.

It had been too dangerous.

"His Highness is wounded! Quickly!"

Noticing the injury on Shang Chaozong's arm, Lan Ruoting began shouting in alarm and hurriedly called cultivators over to treat him.

...

"We won?"

On the northern front, Gong Lince stared at the battle report in his hands.

He raised his head blankly and looked toward Meng Shanming.

The sudden great victory was difficult for him to believe.

Meng Shanming's expression remained unchanged.

He gave a slight nod. "His Highness would never report false military results. There is no mistake. His Highness has broken through Zhao's offensive and defensive line. Pang Teng on the opposite side will now have no choice but to detach a large force to intercept and block him. Otherwise, His Highness's army will drive deep into Zhao's interior. Pang Teng cannot bear that consequence, and neither can the Zhao court."

"Move one hair and the whole body follows. The moment the defensive strength opposite us loosens, it will be our turn to launch a full counteroffensive."

Shang Chaozong was the commander-in-chief of Yan's forces in this campaign.

Yet the Zhao main force Pang Teng personally commanded was confronting Meng Shanming.

To a certain degree, Pang Teng clearly regarded Meng Shanming as the greater threat, with Shang Chaozong only the secondary one.

"Good!" Gong Lince exclaimed with delight. "Outnumbered two to one, Prince Yong used only five hundred thousand men to smash one million Zhao elites in a single battle—and he did it in a head-on clash. He fought a beautiful battle!"

How could Gong Lince not be pleased?

This Nanzhou force, powerful enough to influence the direction of Yan itself, was soon going to fall under his control.

Naturally he was happy to see it preserved.

Meng Shanming, however, could not feel pleased.

It came back to the same matter.

To obtain victory, Shang Chaozong had actually used such a dangerous plan.

He had even been wounded.

Meng Shanming remained badly shaken by the thought and was angry at Shang Chaozong's recklessness in being too eager for a decisive result.

Yet he also had to admit that Shang Chaozong's battle had played a decisive role in the grinding war between the two states.

This victory had punched straight through Zhao's offensive and defensive line.

A vast breach had appeared in Zhao's defenses.

In an instant, Zhao's offensive posture was about to become a defensive one.

The positions of attacker and defender had undergone a tremendous reversal.

...

"Grand Commander-in-Chief! This subordinate deserves ten thousand deaths!"

Inside the central command tent of Zhao's Grand Commander-in-Chief, Zhao Xingyan appeared without his helmet.

Still dressed in armor, he dropped heavily to his knees before Pang Teng, kowtowed to the ground, and remained there sobbing.

The generals standing to either side all wore ugly expressions.

Every one of them understood what Zhao Xingyan's defeat meant.

How could Zhao Xingyan himself not understand?

One million elite troops had simply vanished.

Afterward, only several tens of thousands of broken survivors had been gathered back together.

The losses were disastrous.

"You..."

Pang Teng trembled with rage.

He pointed at Zhao Xingyan for a long time before finally saying in anguish, "I placed such trust in you, yet you dared underestimate the enemy so badly. One million troops wiped out in an instant! You have harmed yourself, harmed me, and harmed Great Zhao. If I do not kill you, how am I to answer to the people of Zhao and to the officers and soldiers of the entire army?"

"Men! Drag him out and behead him!"

Executioners immediately rushed in like wolves and tigers.

They hauled Zhao Xingyan up from the floor and began dragging him away.

"Wait!"

One general stepped forward and pleaded, "Grand Commander-in-Chief, the two states are at war. This is precisely the time when men are needed. Beheading a general in front of the enemy is improper. I ask the Grand Commander-in-Chief to spare him beneath the blade and allow Zhao Xingyan to redeem his crime through merit, so that—"

"Behead him!"

Pang Teng cut him off with an angry roar.

He snatched a command arrow from the desk and flung it out.

A military order was as immovable as a mountain.

The generals' faces turned bleak.

They could only watch as Zhao Xingyan was dragged outside to be executed.

Tears streamed down Zhao Xingyan's face as he was taken away.

He said nothing.

Even he no longer had the face to plead for himself.

Not long afterward, Zhao Xingyan's blood-soaked head was carried in on a tray to report completion of the order.

The cultivators watching from the side sighed inwardly.

Under ordinary circumstances, a great general of Zhao Xingyan's rank was not someone who could simply be killed whenever one wished.

Yet the cruelty of the battlefield had reduced everything to one stroke of a blade.

Even the man being killed had no argument left.

The cultivators who had rescued Zhao Xingyan felt it most keenly.

They had risked themselves to snatch him back from the battlefield, only to discover that all they had really done was deliver Zhao Xingyan to the executioner's blade.

Pang Teng waved for the head to be removed.

Then he began discussing a new deployment of forces with his generals.

There was no alternative.

Shang Chaozong's army was already advancing toward Zhao's interior.

If Pang Teng could not stop them, Zhao itself would be thrown into chaos.

[End of Chapter 742]