Chapter 229: Blood Clan

Dawn arrived.

Corpses covered the mountain hollow.

Because the savages had mobilized their entire communities, the dead scattered across the ground included men and women, old and young alike. For that very reason, the scene was even more horrific than an ordinary battlefield.

Groups of Jin soldiers sat together.

Some drank.

Some laughed and talked.

Others helped bandage the wounds of their comrades.

They had spent the past several months stumbling through one disaster after another: the destruction of the Helian Clan and the Wenren Clan, the trampling of the imperial region, and finally their reduction to something resembling auxiliary troops.

At last, against the savages, they had recovered their confidence.

Armies were like that.

A reputation for a hundred victories or the title of an iron army might not seem to provide any tangible benefit, but at crucial moments, such things could ignite terrifying explosive strength.

An army accustomed to defeat would ultimately prove useless no matter how plentiful its troops and provisions.

An army accustomed to victory naturally carried an air that said:

Who else but us?

Liang Cheng had said that training through battle was best.

Now the results were plain to see.

At last, Zheng Fan could see the beginnings of a true army in these Jin auxiliary troops.

During the previous night’s fighting, they had actually been the fiercest troops on the field.

They charged in the first wave.

Whenever they saw a savage, they hacked him down.

Perhaps they had poured all the resentment accumulated over the past months directly onto the savages.

And the savages, to their credit, had not disappointed them.

Could one truly say the savages were weak?

How could a people who survived in such barren mountains and treacherous waters possibly be physically weak?

Yet they simply could not withstand a real army.

They were much like peasant rebel forces within the Four Great States: once they collided with regular troops, they immediately collapsed.

The savages had also suffered from terrible luck.

They had been suppressed by the Jin people for so many years, and Jin’s military strength had never been poor.

The political order in which the Three Clans divided Jin had existed for many years, but both the Helian Clan and the Situ Clan had always maintained the same attitude toward the savages of the Tianduan Mountains: those not of our people were to be suppressed and killed.

At long last, the State of Jin had vanished.

The Helian Clan had fallen too.

And then, who could have expected the Yan people to arrive?

Yan was even better at fighting than Jin.

In the end, Zheng Fan never drew his saber the previous night.

He had already been thoroughly protected. By the time the forces outside returned and struck the savages from the rear, the savage army quickly collapsed and scattered.

The battle immediately transformed into a one-sided slaughter.

The armored soldiers under Zheng Fan’s command threw themselves into the pursuit, terrified they might miss out on the bloody game.

It left Zheng Fan with the peculiar feeling of having drawn his blade only to look around in bewilderment, with no one left to cut.

“Master.”

A’Ming sat atop a mound of earth.

A bulging waterskin rested in his hand.

He sipped from it slowly.

There were probably experts among the savages as well.

But on a battlefield of this scale, unless several figures on Tian Wujing’s level appeared, individual experts simply could not determine the outcome.

So A’Ming had smoothly brought down two of them, drained their blood, and used his own belly to send their souls onward.

“Mm.”

Zheng Fan nodded at A’Ming.

Then he couldn’t help yawning.

Back when he had followed Li Fusheng south into the State of Qian, he had endured continuous forced marches without rest and still managed to keep going.

This time, perhaps because the enemy had collapsed too easily, Zheng Fan simply couldn’t summon much enthusiasm.

Liang Cheng walked over.

He sounded somewhat helpless.

“These fellows got carried away with the killing. We captured fewer than a thousand prisoners.”

Most had been hacked to death.

Another portion had fled into the forests.

So the number of captives was far smaller than expected.

“Doesn’t matter. Leave some men to clean up the battlefield. Take another force and let’s seize that savage stronghold up above first.”

Zheng Fan wanted to rest.

No matter how crude the savage settlement was, its chiefs should still have enjoyed decent living conditions.

And in their taste for luxury, these tamed savages were even more extravagant than the Jin people.

Liang Cheng nodded.

He personally selected eight hundred barbarian soldiers.

Together with A’Ming and Xue San, they escorted Zheng Fan toward the stronghold on the mountain.

At the same time, Tufa Chengji and Zuo Jiqian each led a separate force toward the two more distant savage settlements.

The Blind Man remained behind with the rest of the army to clean up the battlefield and gather the captives.

The fighting strength of all three savage settlements had already been exhausted here.

Only the truly old, weak, women, and children remained in the settlements.

They posed almost no threat.

Even so, the settlements needed to be occupied quickly to prevent the wealth inside from disappearing.

Zheng Fan’s force had only just climbed the mountain and caught sight of the settlement gate when an elderly savage walked out.

The old man wore the kind of brocade robe favored by wealthy Jin householders, with enormous sleeves dragging low beside him.

Zheng Fan pulled on the reins.

The barbarian soldiers around him stopped as well.

Several children ran out of the settlement.

They led a sheep with them.

The old man hurriedly removed his robe, revealing a white garment underneath.

He took the rope attached to the sheep from the children.

Then he slowly continued toward Zheng Fan.

“Heh. Even surrender has to have a sense of ceremony.”

Liang Cheng agreed.

“Indeed.”

Call the savages uncultured, and they could still produce something like this.

Call them cultured, and it was difficult to see much genuine culture in it.

The old man was probably the chief of the settlement.

Leading the white goat, he approached one step at a time.

The savage children looked at the barbarian soldiers and instinctively became frightened.

They no longer dared follow.

When the distance had closed to less than ten meters, the old man tremblingly knelt.

He raised the rope of the white goat over his head.

Liang Cheng looked toward Zheng Fan.

“Master?”

Zheng Fan instead looked toward A’Ming.

A’Ming was still drinking his “wine.”

Noticing Zheng Fan’s gaze, he looked faintly puzzled.

Then pointed at himself.

Zheng Fan nodded.

“We can’t let me take all the glory. You and I are family.”

“Hehehehe…”

A’Ming laughed.

He wiped the crimson liquid from the corner of his mouth.

Xue San pretended to be completely serious as he urged, “A’Ming, go on. This is Master’s cultivation and affection for you!”

A’Ming turned toward Xue San.

“How about I give this opportunity for deeper cultivation to you?”

Xue San swayed his upper body and spread his hands without the slightest shame.

“Even an idiot knows someone who looks like me could never be mistaken for the boss.”

Xue San possessed excellent self-awareness.

A’Ming had nothing to say to that.

Finally, A’Ming rode out from the formation.

He sat perfectly straight in the saddle.

A vampire naturally possessed an aristocratic air. Whenever A’Ming wasn’t together with Liang Cheng, he still looked proper and dignified.

The old man raised his head.

He looked at A’Ming and offered up the rope.

A’Ming reached out and took it.

The old man said nothing.

A’Ming said nothing either.

Xue San tilted his head.

“That’s it?”

The instant he finished speaking, the old man suddenly flipped his left palm.

The white goat released a miserable—

“BAAAAH!”

A dagger punched through the goat’s belly and dropped into the old man’s palm.

The old man, who had previously looked unsteady even while walking, suddenly changed completely.

He sprang upward.

In an instant, he was beside A’Ming.

The dagger plunged directly into A’Ming’s heart.

Then twisted!

The entire sequence flowed without the slightest pause.

Only afterward did red light flare around the old man’s body, almost as though his aura had lagged behind his movements.

This old man was astonishingly an Eighth Grade expert.

However, what he cultivated was probably not the path of a pure Martial Artist. It might have been some ancestral savage discipline.

“Fuck!”

Xue San cried out immediately.

Liang Cheng’s gaze sharpened.

Zheng Fan slowly exhaled.

The old man’s previous movements had possessed an eerie quality.

They gave the target virtually no time to react.

Zheng Fan instinctively began considering what would have happened if he himself had gone forward to accept the surrender.

Even though he was now a Seventh Grade Martial Artist, even with the Demon Child on him, would there truly have been enough time to stop the old man’s killing strike?

“Pfft!”

The old man pulled the dagger from A’Ming’s chest.

His left hand clamped around A’Ming’s neck like an eagle’s talon.

Holding him aloft, the old man roared toward Zheng Fan’s group like a madman.

“Come!

“Come!

“Come!

“The souls of the Holy Race will never perish!

“The radiance of the Holy Race shall forever illuminate the earth and shelter her children!”

There were probably still many elderly people, women, and children inside the stronghold.

With this act, the old man had effectively marked every tribesman behind him for death.

He had not chosen to endure humiliation for the sake of survival.

He had not chosen groveling submission.

Instead, he chose the fiercest possible posture with which to face the invaders.

Indeed, from the perspective of the savages living in this settlement, Zheng Fan and his people were invaders in every sense of the word.

Submit.

Hand over the young heirs of your leaders as hostages.

Hand over wealth.

Hand over the warriors of your people to sell their lives as expendable soldiers.

When they refused, an army was sent to suppress them.

If that wasn’t invasion, what was?

The three savage settlements had united to resist.

But they had lost.

What surprised the old man, however, was that the Yan dogs opposite him showed little panic.

They did not even charge forward in the furious rage he had expected, hacking him apart beneath a storm of blades.

The old man roared, “Come!

“Come!

“Kill me!

“Kill me!

“Aren’t you people good at killing?

“Kill me!”

At that moment, Xue San suddenly cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “If you’ve got the guts, cut off our general’s head first!”

Zheng Fan immediately glared at Xue San.

Xue San guiltily lowered his head and covered his mouth.

The old man frowned slightly.

Still, almost instinctively, he tightened his grip on the dagger and stabbed toward A’Ming’s head.

Zheng Fan’s heart suddenly lurched.

He was genuinely worried that if A’Ming’s head were cut off, he might die for good!

At that exact moment, A’Ming’s eyes suddenly opened.

His aura erupted violently!

The blood inside both of the old man’s arms abruptly stagnated.

His movements slowed with it.

A’Ming’s entire body dropped downward with the motion.

As he fell, he opened his mouth.

Two fangs emerged.

With an almost exquisitely graceful motion, they pierced the old man’s neck.

The old man instinctively tried to mobilize the qi and blood inside his body to resist.

But a bone-chilling cold surged through the fangs and flooded his limbs and bones.

His entire body stiffened.

All he could hear was the sound of his own blood being continuously drawn from his neck.

Gulp…

Gulp…

Gulp…

Gulp…

The old A’Ming could not have suppressed him this completely.

But the A’Ming of this moment could.

At the very instant Zheng Fan had become anxious and worried for him—

A’Ming raised his head.

An intoxicated expression appeared on his face.

Then he looked toward Xue San, whose eyes were filled with envy, jealousy, and hatred.

A faint smile appeared at the corner of A’Ming’s mouth.

Silently, he mouthed:

“Thank you.”

Thank you for the assist.

I advanced.

[End of Chapter 229]