Chapter 18: - Flying Against the Wind

A wolf would never allow a sheep to become its leader.

If that relationship could not be changed, then change the sheep instead.

Teach it to run.

Teach it to bite.

Teach it to fight.

Teach it to stand on a hillside and howl at the moon.

Teach it to believe grass was the most disgusting thing in the world.

Turn that sheep into something even more wolf-like than a real wolf.

The two Barbarian cavalrymen who had fought their way over here were dead.

Their luck had simply been bad.

The camp had already descended into chaos, with civilian laborers fleeing everywhere, yet they had somehow charged into this particular corner.

There were indeed only three laborers here.

Unfortunately for the Barbarians, these three were the pay-to-win players among the laborer population.

Xue San expertly used his dagger to cut off both heads.

Then he looked at Zheng Fan, whose face was covered in blood, smiled, and pulled a handkerchief from his clothes.

He handed it over.

Zheng Fan accepted it and wiped his face hard.

Truthfully, he would have been better off leaving the blood alone.

The moment he smeared it around, the sharp metallic stench exploded upward and seemed to burrow madly into his nose and mouth.

His stomach immediately churned.

Zheng Fan forcibly stopped himself from vomiting.

In an environment like this, bending over and retching somehow felt like it would ruin the mood.

He knew perfectly well he was a little “useless.”

Even so, Zheng Fan was doing his best to show the best version of himself in front of his subordinates.

“Master, the first time you kill someone, it’s inevitable to feel uncomfortable. Once you get used to it, though, you’ll understand the pleasure in it. Truly intoxicating. Here, Master. Have some wine.”

Zheng Fan accepted the wineskin.

He did not drink.

Instead, he poured the wine over his own face.

“Hoo...”

He breathed heavily several times.

Much better.

“All right. I’m fine now.”

Zheng Fan picked his saber back up.

Xue San moved the corpse off the wooden cart.

He had not paid much attention while cutting off the head earlier, but once he shifted the body and saw the wound on it, his tongue slipped out and ran across his lips.

That saber strike... had carried terrifying force.

Xue San was about to ask Liang Cheng about it when the situation inside the camp suddenly changed again.

Nearly two thousand Barbarian cavalry had entered easily with the help of their infiltrators.

They had smashed through the camp gates and run wild throughout the encampment.

But now, rapid hoofbeats suddenly thundered from outside.

“Tiger!”

“Tiger!”

“Tiger!”

The Barbarian cavalry, already scattered throughout the camp in the middle of slaughter, instinctively sensed that something was wrong.

That unease reached its peak when some of them discovered that many of the grain sacks were filled with stones.

Outside, the Yan cavalry forces that had arrived in time and completed a two-sided encirclement gave them no opportunity to reorganize or think.

The charge began.

The State of Yan had been founded through martial might.

Among the four great states, Yan possessed the poorest land and the worst geopolitical position.

One could say that since the day Yan was founded, it had effectively relied on the strength of one state to withstand the entire sea of Barbarian tribes in the desert.

Precisely because of this, leaving local garrison troops aside, Yan’s true field elites, its genuine cavalry armies, still carried the blood courage and ferocity of their ancestors even after a century of peace.

Even in a direct cavalry collision across open ground, Yan’s cavalry dared fight the Barbarians head-on and expected to win.

Their equipment and discipline were things the tribal riders simply could not match.

And right now, more than two thousand Barbarian cavalry had already been indulging themselves inside the camp.

Their organization was long gone.

They had no distance available to build momentum for a charge.

They had no coherent formation.

Faced with a real elite cavalry assault, the result had already been decided.

From front and rear, two Yan cavalry forces drove through the camp like a pair of sharp iron drills.

They punched straight through the Barbarian riders.

That one coordinated impact effectively broke the Barbarian cavalry force.

Everything remaining was merely the work of splitting into smaller groups and hunting the survivors down.

Two more panicked Barbarian riders stumbled toward Zheng Fan’s position.

This time Liang Cheng did not capture them for Zheng Fan to practice his courage on.

He and Xue San simply took one each and killed them outright.

Immediately afterward, a formation of Yan cavalry in black armor swept past not far ahead.

They paid no attention to Zheng Fan and the others.

Instead, they continued chasing a group of Barbarian riders farther in front.

Liang Cheng stepped backward and leaned against one of the carts.

Xue San smacked his lips.

“Whoever this general is, he really is ruthless. Using civilian laborers’ lives as bait, then coming back to catch the turtles in the jar.”

“Completely annihilating a cavalry force really is difficult,” Liang Cheng said, unexpectedly speaking in defense of the Yan commander. “And the Barbarians should use a tribal system. They basically have no cities. If you want to wipe out a tribe, you have to destroy all its young and able-bodied men. Otherwise, they can simply migrate again and...”

At that exact moment, Xue San, who had only just relaxed, suddenly sprang into the air.

Zheng Fan’s vision went dark.

Xue San knocked him flat onto the ground.

Thwack!

Thwack!

Thwack!

An arrow screamed through the exact spot where Zheng Fan had been standing and punched straight through the wooden cart on the other side.

Liang Cheng immediately grabbed his saber, vaulted over the cart, and charged toward the direction the arrow had come from.

A Barbarian nearly two meters tall, wearing armor and carrying a saber, met him head-on.

Clang!

Clang!

Their long sabers smashed together twice in midair.

Sparks flew.

But there was a difference in weapon quality.

Or rather, the Barbarian was probably holding a treasured blade.

On the third collision, Liang Cheng’s saber snapped outright.

The force drove Liang Cheng two steps backward.

The huge Barbarian still had his weapon intact, but he himself staggered back four steps and nearly fell.

“Forget me. Go help him. I’ll hide on my own!”

Zheng Fan shoved Xue San, who had remained crouched protectively beside him after knocking him down.

Then, without wasting a word, already lying on the ground, he rolled twice to the left and disappeared beneath a cart.

At a time like this, shouting, “Don’t worry about me, let’s all charge up together!” would have been idiotic.

Zheng Fan knew exactly what he was worth.

If he insisted on showing off, or tried to perform some melodramatic “I’ll never leave you” scene from a romance drama, that would be what truly dragged everyone down.

If he stood out in the open, Liang Cheng and Xue San would also be forced to worry about him.

Better to be shamelessly honest, admit he was scared, and hide first.

Most importantly, when Liang Cheng and the huge Barbarian had clashed sabers just now, Zheng Fan had clearly seen gray light flash across the Barbarian’s body several times.

The Martial Artists of this world were divided into nine Grades.

Zheng Fan still did not know the details of the system.

But there was one principle he understood perfectly: any motherfucker who glowed was bad news.

“Hehehehehe.”

Xue San let out a sinister chuckle.

Then, copying Zheng Fan, he began rolling too.

Except he rolled in the opposite direction.

Liang Cheng tossed the broken saber aside.

Both hands dropped to his sides.

His back bent slightly.

His whole body leaned faintly forward.

His eyes, however, never left the tall opponent in front of him.

“Your saber... broke.”

The huge Barbarian rolled his neck and tightened his grip on his own weapon.

Liang Cheng answered without expression:

“Doesn’t matter. I was never very good with sabers anyway.”

The Barbarian wasted no more time.

He raised his weapon and attacked again.

This time, perhaps because Liang Cheng no longer had a weapon, he stopped trying to meet the strikes head-on and began dodging instead.

The Barbarian hacked at him again and again.

Not one strike landed.

The huge man began growing anxious.

The situation had turned extremely unfavorable for the Barbarians.

They had to break out as soon as possible.

Once the Yan cavalry finished sweeping away the main body and took full control of the camp, escape would become much harder.

These damned Yan dogs!

They had actually used human lives as bait!

The Barbarian brought his saber down again.

Liang Cheng sidestepped once more.

This time, however, the huge man drove his whole body forward at the same moment.

Bang!

His shoulder smashed heavily into Liang Cheng’s chest.

The one most surprised by the impact was the Barbarian himself.

He was one of the rare warriors of his tribe.

His physique was particularly powerful.

Few opponents could match him in wrestling.

Yet the chest of this Yan man dressed like an ordinary laborer was so hard it defied common sense.

And indeed, it was not very reasonable.

Normal people did not go around wrestling zombies.

The instant their collision brought them closer together, the Barbarian instinctively raised his saber to cut across Liang Cheng’s body.

Then resistance suddenly came through the blade.

He looked down in surprise.

The Barbarian’s eyes widened.

The Yan man in front of him had caught the weapon with his hand.

No.

More precisely, his fingernails had wedged themselves against the saber blade.

Humm!

Gray light flashed across the Barbarian’s body once again.

His strength surged.

Blade and fingernails ground violently against one another.

Yet the nails did not break.

Instead, they remained deadlocked against the razor-sharp edge.

Deep within Liang Cheng’s eyes, blood-red light began to spread.

He spoke in a low voice.

“I still prefer using my nails.”

His free hand rose.

Those fingernails had lengthened considerably too.

He stabbed directly toward the Barbarian’s chest.

Pshk!

The Barbarian’s armor offered little protection against those bizarre black nails wreathed in dark qi.

It slowed them for only an instant.

Then the nails pierced through the armor and entered the man’s body.

Thwip!

Another arrow came.

It struck Liang Cheng directly in the left arm.

Bone cracked.

The entire arm instantly lost its strength.

The huge Barbarian seized the opportunity to wrench Liang Cheng aside, then kicked him violently.

Bang!

Liang Cheng flew backward and smashed into a wooden cart.

The planks beneath him snapped apart.

Farther back, the lean man who had just fired the arrow stared in confusion.

He had deliberately avoided shooting Liang Cheng through the back earlier because he feared the arrow might punch through him and injure his own companion too.

But even from the side, he knew the power of his bow.

He had expected the arrow to bury itself completely inside the target, practically nailing the man in place.

Instead, only the arrowhead had entered Liang Cheng’s left arm.

And the archer was certain of one thing.

There had been no armor covering that part of his arm.

“Aligu, be careful! There’s something wrong with that man!”

“You should worry about yourself.”

A sinister voice drifted from behind the lean archer.

The man’s heart jolted.

He was the tribe’s master archer.

His senses were exceptionally sharp.

How could someone possibly approach him without making the slightest sound?

And yet

Xue San had truly appeared behind him.

At the same time, he offered the man his dagger.

This time the blade did not cut the throat.

It stabbed directly into the archer’s back.

Before the man could react, Xue San wrapped both hands around the dagger hilt and hauled downward with all his strength.

Riiiip!

When slaughtering sheep at a mutton shop, the carcass was soaked in boiling water, hung up, then cut from the neck downward as though stripping off its clothes.

Xue San was doing much the same thing.

Only in reverse.

At least for a creature like Xue San, there seemed to be very few pleasures in this world more satisfying than bathing in an enemy’s blood.

But then, perhaps because of the angle, as the blood sprayed out, Xue San suddenly froze where he stood.

His entire body began trembling uncontrollably.

“Fuck your uncle!”

[End of Chapter 18]