Chapter 527: - Break the Army!

Once a person got carried away, it became very easy to stop caring about anything else.

If he had a choice, nine and a half times out of ten Count Pingye would rather imitate Xie An: listen to Liu Ruqing sing while playing xiangqi with the Blind Man, reach out to accept a battlefield report from Xiao Yibo, read it, toss it aside casually, and say without the slightest concern:

“The young lads have routed the enemy.”

How to act with true elegance, how to look truly effortless, how to be genuinely romantic and dashing...

Count Pingye understood.

The Demon Kings understood too.

But among the Demon Kings, the Fourth Lady was always urging Zheng Fan to abduct some Commandery Princess and train her properly. The Commandery Princess never happened, but he stole a princess instead. A’Ming always emptied his waterskin before battle. Liang Cheng liked sitting alone on the battlefield for an entire night after every fight. The Blind Man could roll one orange around in his hands forever and still eat it even after it made him inflamed. The Demon Pill was obsessed with raising children. Xue San loved experimental research. Even Fan Li liked carrying that big little girl, the Sword Maid, around on his shoulders whenever he had nothing better to do.

So what?

Was he the only one who had to maintain some lofty, untouchable image forever?

It had taken enormous effort to finally catch A’Cheng stumbling once.

Count Pingye had at last found his own chance to shout:

“Take a blow from Old Sun!”

The Barbarian saber could not compare with the Kunwu Saber in the Prince of Jingnan’s hand, but it was still a treasured blade of the age.

In the past, Zheng Fan had mostly used it to practice saber techniques.

Now that he was actually hacking people apart on a battlefield, he discovered its ability to break armor was indeed much better than the sabers he had used before.

A’Ming stayed close against Zheng Fan’s side, blocking hidden arrows and treacherous blades.

The Sword Saint was more direct.

With the Longyuan Sword in hand, his blade moved like a swimming dragon as he slaughtered without restraint.

Longyuan killed outside.

Sword qi circled his body.

It was generally accepted beneath Heaven that a swordsman’s body was inferior to a Martial Artist’s.

But that depended entirely on which swordsman and which Martial Artist were being compared.

At the Sword Saint’s level, ordinary men could barely approach him.

If the enemy formed a complete battle line and he tried charging alone into a dragon’s pool, then just as the Sword Saint himself had once said, he would need to weigh the matter carefully.

Years ago, when the Baili siblings saw Great Yan’s iron cavalry thundering toward them, they had retreated without a second word.

But today was a melee.

The Chu formation had once been tightly ordered.

Count Pingye’s command carriage had gathered a snowball of Yan troops and smashed it apart.

Now the pot had no room to call the kettle black.

Apart from the body of guards still surrounding the Chu bronze chariot, everything else had become one giant boiling mess.

You hacked yours.

I stabbed mine.

The troops of both sides were entangled everywhere.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

Other men’s blood, wrapped in their screams, became the colors and music most capable of stirring hearts across the battlefield, as though it would never end.

No.

Not unless you fell.

And yet... one had to admit it.

The feeling of swinging a saber and hacking wildly through a crowd was genuinely exhilarating!

This was finally worthy of all those years he had spent practicing saber techniques!

...

Once Count Pingye’s command carriage gathered the Yan and smashed back into the battle, the Chu advance was visibly checked.

Shi Yuantang finally stopped humming his tune.

He stood with both hands behind his back and silently watched the fighting ahead.

At this moment, the situation still favored Chu.

At least, in this local section of the battlefield, it did.

Nearly two thousand Shi Clan personal guards still remained beside Shi Yuantang.

The Shi Clan was only a third-rank noble house of Great Chu, so the number of private troops it could legally maintain was tightly restricted.

The family had always “obeyed the law and disciplined itself.”

Other noble houses?

So long as conditions allowed it, which one did not secretly exceed its quota?

The Qu Clan’s Azure Luan Army had lost all fifty thousand men below Yupan City, yet almost immediately it managed to pull together the skeleton of another force.

If anyone insisted that had been built “from nothing,” only a fool would believe it.

The Shi Clan’s private army, however, had always remained at roughly three thousand men.

They were extraordinarily loyal and extremely strong.

Like the Shi Clan itself, they were pure.

And although the Chu offensive had been slowed, the overall scene still favored Chu.

Mu Yang said, “Without horses, without room to maneuver, without repeated mounted charges in separate waves, the supposedly invincible Yan look almost no different from a mob. Right now they’re surviving on nothing more than one breath of savage courage.”

“Every army has its own method of war that it excels at.” Shi Yuantang thought for a moment, then added, “Except Qian armies.”

The Qian seemed incapable of doing anything properly.

They simply relied on size and national wealth to keep one rotten army after another propped up.

“Young. In the end, still young.” Shi Yuantang’s gaze fell upon the faintly visible golden figure ahead. “What a pity for Great Chu’s Imperial Son-in-Law. Speaking purely for the public good, Count Pingye is actually more suitable to become Great Chu’s Imperial Son-in-Law than those so-called Qu Clan men. If that had truly happened, this old man would have been willing to lead his horse, stand behind the young man, fill the gaps he missed, and cover the empty heat in his temperament. Given time, perhaps Great Chu might have produced a Tian Wujing of our own.”

But Shi Yuantang’s attention quickly left the golden figure.

A white figure in front of him was far too conspicuous.

That one man almost held up an entire wall.

Chu soldiers could barely approach him.

Under the guidance of his sword, if the Chu still held an enormous advantage everywhere else, then here, the Yan were actually suppressing them.

“I heard the Sword Saint of Jin has always remained at Snow Sea Pass beside Count Pingye. It seems the rumors were true,” Shi Yuantang sighed.

One of the Four Great Swordsmen.

And judging from prestige and battle record over the last two years, clearly the foremost among them.

Mu Yang said, “If our own one were here, this would be easier.”

Shi Yuantang shook his head.

“I once asked the elder of the Dugu Clan. Even he does not know exactly what substance his own grandson possesses.”

The Swordsmith had never actually drawn his sword.

But Chu people still held hopes and fantasies about him.

They had not reached the point of people in other states, some of whom already called the Swordsmith a fraud who stole fame.

Shi Yuantang showed little reaction to the Sword Saint’s strength.

He simply pointed toward the white figure.

“Since ancient times people say heroes of the jianghu use martial strength to violate the law. But have you ever truly seen some wandering fish from the rivers and lakes leap the dragon gate and become a dragon? Especially on a battlefield like this, one Sword Saint is not enough to make this old man take him too seriously. Commander Mu.”

“This general is here.”

“Entangle him. If he wishes to leave, do not force him to stay. If he insists on being stubborn, then today this old man will leave him here forever. He once killed a thousand Savages before Snow Sea Pass, but those were trapped Savages with nowhere left to go.”

“This general obeys.”

Mu Yang descended from the chariot with bow in hand.

Shi Yuantang’s gaze drifted toward the distance.

In truth, as the commander and soul of an army, he was no different from Count Pingye when Zheng Fan had sat on the command carriage earlier.

It was not that men like them deliberately wanted to appear calm and unconcerned.

Even if the calmness was an act, it was still part of stabilizing the army.

But as a veteran of countless battles, Shi Yuantang had begun to smell something wrong.

His eyesight did not possess Mu Yang’s hawklike sharpness.

Still, he could feel that the outer battlefield was too quiet.

That should not have been possible.

Earlier, he had clearly seen signal after signal flare burning above the Yan command carriage.

Those were emergency orders from the commander to every loyal subordinate in the surrounding area, calling for reinforcement.

But sometimes, even after you noticed something, there was already no way to spare attention for it.

Earlier, the Yan had played out every card in their hand step by step, from laying siege to storming the wall.

Now Shi Yuantang and the Chu army had likewise played every card they possessed.

Risk always cut both ways.

It was true everywhere.

On a battlefield, when you suddenly force your opponent into a desperate situation, your own position cannot remain completely secure either.

Shi Yuantang remembered that Yao Zizhan, the Literary Sage of Qian, had once used leaf cards as a metaphor while praising the transformations of battlefield strategy.

There had certainly been some literati imagining warfare from the armchair in those words.

But after savoring them carefully, they were not entirely without reason.

It was not that Yao Zizhan had seen through the true essence of war.

Rather, principles in this world often connected to one another.

...

Bang!

Two Chu shield soldiers suddenly closed in from both sides.

A’Ming moved to block them for Zheng Fan.

Who could have expected the two shields to slam together and trap A’Ming between them?

As a vampire, A’Ming naturally would not be harmed much by something like that.

But for one instant, he lost sight of his Master.

At that exact moment, Zheng Fan had just hacked one Chu soldier backward when another Chu warrior appeared behind him with an axe.

The axe came down directly toward his back.

Zheng Fan immediately threw himself sideways and dodged.

Then, like a ghost, a shadow appeared beside him.

A short blade swept horizontally toward Zheng Fan’s throat, traditionally one of the weak points in a full suit of armor.

The Sword Saint, who had been fighting farther ahead, had actually kept constant awareness of Zheng Fan’s situation.

He understood perfectly well that winning or losing this battle was secondary.

At least compared with Zheng Fan’s life or death, it unquestionably was.

But an arrow from the distance forced Longyuan to fly out and block again.

The timing of that arrow was perfect.

It consumed one use of the Sword Saint’s flying sword at exactly the right instant and created an opening for a death-warrior hidden in the formation behind them.

That was a battlefield.

Everything changed in the blink of an eye.

Anything could happen.

Tall men, short men, powerful men, weak men.

Amid tens of thousands slaughtering one another, everyone was still only a slightly larger or smaller ant.

A’Ming had lost sight of his Master.

The Sword Saint could not reach him.

The two security forces Zheng Fan relied upon most had both been grayed out at once.

Chu armies had people like Xue San too.

They hid among ordinary soldiers.

They did not strike casually.

But once they did, they inevitably chose important enemy commanders.

The short blade was already almost against Zheng Fan’s neck.

He could even feel the pressure of qi and blood wrapped around it.

Count Pingye was startled.

But not panicked.

At moments like this, he was usually very calm.

Because unlike other fathers, who might spend their final instant replaying memories of their adorable children, this father was much more direct.

Much simpler.

“Demon Pill.”

Buzz!

In an instant, Zheng Fan gave up defending his own body.

The Demon Pill’s power surged madly into him.

Father and son were already thoroughly familiar with this fusion.

The awkwardness of the earliest attempts had vanished long ago.

In the present round of advancement, once the Blind Man broke through as well, only the Demon Pill and Xue San had yet to advance.

But that did not mean the Demon Pill had become much weaker than the others.

In fact, every time Zheng Fan allowed the Demon Pill to enter his body, what he borrowed was not primarily the Demon Pill’s raw power.

What he borrowed was the Demon Pill’s precise control over strength and the terrifyingly rich combat experience belonging to a Demon King.

Xue San had once analyzed the situation and concluded that the Demon Pill had always been searching for a suitable body.

Considering Zheng Fan’s bizarre postures and movements every time he was possessed, followed by the “aching back and sore waist” afterward, apparently even his own “biological father’s” body did not truly satisfy the Demon Pill.

Unfortunately, only his father could allow the Demon Pill to lend out his power without the slightest reservation.

So the Demon Pill could only make do.

And if life was going to continue steadily, sometimes making do was indispensable.

For example, right now.

Zheng Fan’s pupils turned gray-white in an instant.

His body began twisting through angles ordinary people could barely understand.

His neck in particular snapped with a crack and twisted to the very limit of what a human neck should have been able to withstand.

His waist turned.

One leg kicked sideways.

There was no finger shattering Heaven and Earth.

Nothing grand.

Only plain fists and feet.

The Chu assassin reached out with one hand to seize Zheng Fan’s leg, hoping to maintain the close distance.

But Zheng Fan, or more precisely the Demon Pill, reacted even more directly.

The instant the assassin caught his ankle, Zheng Fan used that grip as leverage.

His upper body snapped inward.

The distance between them became even tighter.

At the same time, the Barbarian saber had already left Zheng Fan’s hand.

His wrist rolled downward.

A delicate military spike appeared in his palm.

At such close range, the Barbarian saber’s length became a burden.

A long saber favored broad, powerful movements.

A small, agile spike was far more suitable for grappling distance.

Do not ask why a regional commander had this sort of hidden mechanism inside his armor.

That came from one of Zheng Fan’s excellent long-standing habits.

Xue San had designed and forged this military spike for him years ago.

Hidden grooves ran along its surface.

Once qi and blood were channeled through them during use, poison was released.

The Chu assassin truly had not expected the opposing commander to react to a point-blank assassination more like an assassin than he did.

That bizarre flexibility was even more unexpected.

Pfft!

The spike did not stab into the assassin’s body.

Instead, it swept across his neck.

Zheng Fan planted one hand on the assassin’s shoulder and flipped his entire body backward.

Bang!

The heavily armored Chu strongman swung his axe again.

He had intended to chop Zheng Fan.

Because Zheng Fan moved too quickly, the axe instead took off one of the assassin’s arms.

Not that the assassin cared anymore.

The instant the poisoned spike sliced his neck, his fate for the day had already been decided.

Zheng Fan landed with his body spread low like a spider, hands and feet against the ground.

The armored strongman charged again.

Zheng Fan was just preparing to move when a body slammed savagely into the strongman.

Guo Dong crashed into him while roaring:

“Protect the Count!”

The strongman staggered.

Then a thin figure suddenly leapt up.

Xu An wrapped his left arm around the strongman’s neck.

His right hand laid a saber across the throat.

He leaned his entire body backward.

Xu An knew he lacked raw strength.

So he used his entire body to pull the blade.

Scrrrk...

The strongman roared.

Yet his body still tilted backward against his will.

If he resisted too stubbornly, the only result would be pressing his vulnerable throat harder against the blade.

“Roar!”

The fallen strongman swung his axe.

Guo Dong grabbed his shield and threw himself forward.

Clang!

The axe buried itself in the shield.

The strongman was lying down and could not use his full strength.

Otherwise, with one proper frontal strike, Guo Dong’s shield would probably have shattered.

Xu An was even more decisive.

He jumped forward and used both knees to press down on the saber’s hilt and spine.

Using his entire body weight, he forced the blade deeper into the strongman’s neck.

The man’s limbs thrashed violently.

Neither Guo Dong nor Xu An let go.

At last, the strongman stopped moving.

What Grade had he been?

Zheng Fan did not know.

But the man had unquestionably been a skilled fighter, and one highly suited to battlefield slaughter.

Yet two auxiliaries killed him.

That was a battlefield.

Either you were like the Sword Saint, sword qi sweeping in all directions and reinforcing your body so ordinary men could barely approach before that qi dispersed, though even then caution remained necessary.

Or you were like Sha Tuo Queshi in the past or the present Prince of Jingnan, peak Third Grade Martial Artists whose bodies could dominate for a time amid chaotic armies.

But how many Sword Saints, Princes of Jingnan, or Sha Tuo Queshis existed beneath Heaven?

Almost everyone else, excluding those handful of monstrous exceptions, had to prepare himself for the possibility of dying in some ridiculous, inexplicable way the moment he entered this kind of chaotic battlefield.

A’Ming’s nails pierced one Chu shield soldier.

He twisted the man’s neck apart.

Then he kicked the second shield bearer away, opened the distance, and rushed back to Zheng Fan.

The Demon Pill still occupied Zheng Fan’s body.

A’Ming roared:

“Demon Pill, get out!”

Possession placed an enormous burden on Zheng Fan’s body.

As Zheng Fan grew stronger and both father and son gained more experience, he no longer needed to lie in bed for half a month after possession as he had during the earliest attempts.

But remaining possessed too long would still push his body into extreme exhaustion afterward.

Zheng Fan, or rather the Demon Pill inside Zheng Fan, raised his head.

He growled at A’Ming.

Clearly he was unhappy.

Clearly he had not played enough!

This chaotic melee was exactly the kind of fighting he loved and missed.

But as Count Pingye’s status rose, Zheng Fan stood farther and farther from the front in every battle.

His chances to personally fight had diminished.

Naturally, the Demon Pill had fewer opportunities to play as well.

At that moment, the Longyuan Sword punched through the chest of a Chu armored soldier.

White robes fluttering, the Sword Saint finally arrived.

A’Ming growled again:

“Demon Pill. Leave.”

The Demon Pill glared viciously at A’Ming.

Then, reluctantly, he withdrew his power from his “father.”

Zheng Fan looked like a drowning man who had finally broken the surface.

He sucked in one enormous breath.

Then dizziness struck the back of his head.

A’Ming caught him.

Zheng Fan immediately pushed him away, signaling that he was fine.

He was weak.

But not helpless.

Guo Dong picked up the Barbarian saber.

Without even wiping the blood and filth from himself, he offered the blade to Count Pingye.

Zheng Fan took it and looked around.

The battlefield was like waves.

One surge passed.

Another came.

Earlier, there had been many Chu soldiers near him.

Now, looking around, most of the men fighting nearby were Yan.

The space immediately around Zheng Fan had actually opened.

Because the command carriage was here.

Because Count Pingye stood here in golden armor.

Yan soldiers fighting nearby inevitably converged toward him.

The Chu desperately wanted to kill their way back in.

For a time, they had succeeded.

Now the battlefield had pushed them outward again.

Count Pingye rested both hands on the Barbarian saber.

At this point, shouting slogans or waving banners would no longer change anything.

There was only one thing left to do: grit their teeth and keep killing.

So long as his central army and his command carriage did not collapse, the greater situation would not collapse.

Ultimately, everything came back to one fact.

Count Pingye himself was here.

A general was the courage of his army.

And the Snow Sea Army was a force Count Pingye had personally created.

Certainly, he had become a hands-off manager very early, leaving most specific matters to the Demon Kings.

Count Pingye had mostly become a “spiritual” figure.

Elsewhere, a “spiritual figure” often meant a puppet stripped of power.

But Zheng Fan had genuinely carved his soul into this army.

Its composition was extraordinarily complicated.

Its men came from many peoples.

Yet every one of them gathered around him.

For Gongsun Zhi’s and Gong Wang’s forces, the matter was even simpler.

Their own commanders were still fighting atop the walls of East Mountain Fort.

If the Snow Sea Army withdrew, they would probably withdraw in confusion too.

If the Snow Sea troops kept holding, then there was nothing left to say.

Everyone could only grit his teeth and keep holding.

Because Count Pingye had staked everything on this position, the Chu, despite surging out with murderous momentum, neat formations, highly practiced infantry coordination, fine armor, and every other advantage, still failed to rip open this line.

In an age of cold weapons, with both sides fielding large numbers, if one army absolutely refused to break, destroying it quickly was extraordinarily difficult.

The Yan were passive in every respect.

Most Yan soldiers had dismounted for the siege and did not have horses beneath them.

And even cavalry could not display its advantages inside this sticky, congested battle.

So they ground on.

The Chu were sharp.

But the Yan possessed a stubborn toughness.

Even after you bit them, you could not chew through.

They stuck between your teeth.

You could neither spit them out nor swallow them.

And the three forces beneath Count Pingye were not weak.

The quality of the Snow Sea Iron Cavalry needed no explanation.

Gong Wang’s Jin troops might be a little worse.

But Gongsun Zhi’s men?

Their old foundation was the Zhenbei Army.

The generally high individual quality of these soldiers revealed its full value inside a grinding melee.

Count Pingye continued fighting.

The Sword Saint came back.

Then killed his way outward again.

Then came back once more.

Zheng Fan was simply too conspicuous a target.

The Sword Saint had no choice but to move back and forth repeatedly to cover him.

After enough cycles, even the Sword Saint’s steps had begun to look unsteady.

Charging in and out of chaotic fighting again and again could burn through qi and blood with astonishing speed.

Even Sha Tuo Queshi had been rapidly ground down by repeated cavalry attacks years ago.

And swordsmen specialized in decisive killing with one sword, emphasizing sharpness and speed.

They had never been famous for prolonged battles of endurance.

Yet the Sword Saint kept forcing himself onward.

With him present, Count Pingye could still keep the great banner standing.

It did not mean the banner could never fall.

But unless the Yan around them completely collapsed and Chu soldiers fully surrounded the area, the Sword Saint could at least make it unlikely for Zheng Fan to die anonymously in the melee.

With A’Ming carefully covering him as well, Count Pingye’s safety regained some assurance.

Of course, the Barbarian saber in his own hand had killed plenty of people too.

As more and more Yan soldiers gathered nearby, situations where he had to fight two or three men alone became rare.

One against one?

Count Pingye was not especially afraid.

He was, after all, a mighty Sixth Grade “peerless master.”

Thrum!

An arrow struck A’Ming through the abdomen.

The arrowhead protruded from the other side.

A’Ming’s gaze swept around.

He knew a Chu divine archer had been active not far from the battle circle for a long time.

That archer was exactly why the Sword Saint had repeatedly been forced to come back, exhausting himself through constant movement.

“If San’er were here, this would be easier,” A’Ming said.

If Xue San were here, they could simply send him to creep over and remove that divine archer.

“If he stays away any longer, I’m going to forget he exists.”

Zheng Fan laughed and pulled the arrow out of A’Ming, casually tossing it aside.

A’Ming turned.

Bang!

A flying axe struck him in the back and staggered him forward.

Still facing Zheng Fan, A’Ming said calmly:

“He’s probably living pretty comfortably right now. Maybe he truly found a size in the State of Liang that suits him.”

Zheng Fan nodded.

Once A’Ming turned around again, he pulled the axe from A’Ming’s back and flung it toward a Chu formation in the distance.

With two holes opened through his body, A’Ming’s voice sounded faintly leaky.

“Master, if I have to lie in a coffin for a long time again after this battle, remember to tell A’Cheng to pour blood on me on schedule like last time.”

“It’s fine. Maybe we’ll be lying in the same coffin.”

A’Ming reached out barehanded, seized a Chu soldier’s weapon, forced the blade down across its owner’s throat, and said:

“That would be too crowded.”

At a moment like this, they were actually arguing over whether the coffin would feel crowded.

Guo Dong and Xu An, who had stayed at some distance protecting Zheng Fan, were stunned.

The image of Count Pingye calmly pulling an arrow and an axe out of A’Ming as though nothing had happened attacked their understanding of reality particularly hard.

This should have been a tragic and heroic scene.

In their hands, it somehow looked like children playing house.

...

“Press forward!”

From the bronze chariot, Shi Yuantang committed his personal guards.

This was not merely the addition of one elite fresh force.

It also told every commander among the Imperial Clan Guards fighting ahead that Lord Shi was deeply dissatisfied with their performance.

The Shi Clan ruled its household with severe discipline.

Its military discipline was even harsher.

Normally, noble private armies possessed great cohesion, but strict military law was difficult to maintain because everyone inside was connected through one aunt, uncle, cousin, or marriage after another.

The Imperial Clan Guards did not have that problem.

And the Shi Clan would never permit the branch of Imperial Clan Guards under its authority to develop it.

So when the personal guards joined the fighting, Chu morale surged once more.

The section they reinforced was exactly the one around Count Pingye.

Their objective was simple: smash the Yan command carriage.

...

At another end of the battlefield, some distance from Count Pingye’s command carriage, Liang Cheng was still leading his troops against the Chu.

The battlefield had been divided into several separate sections earlier.

After this much fighting, each of those sections had fractured again.

The most intense, grinding struggle occurred exactly where the Yan command carriage stood.

That area had become the bloodiest point on the whole field.

And the place where victory would be decided.

“We’re finished. We can’t hold much longer.”

The Blind Man sounded exhausted.

He had consumed far too much telekinetic power.

“No. We can.”

Liang Cheng rejected him immediately.

Hope suddenly rose inside the Blind Man.

“Hurry and tell me you still kept some reserve trick hidden. I’ll blame you for not warning me beforehand, but I’ll reluctantly forgive you.”

Liang Cheng shook his head.

“I already told you. I genuinely did not know the Imperial Clan Guards of Chu were here.”

“Then what did what you just said mean? You want me to die carrying hope in my heart?”

“Master fired the signal flares. When we began the siege, we deployed many roaming detachments around the perimeter, and even more mounted scouts. But have you seen many of them galloping back here to reinforce us?”

“They haven’t returned?” the Blind Man asked.

Liang Cheng nodded.

“They haven’t. But even if they returned one small group at a time, it would be useless. Either the Chu troops that Pillar of State deliberately positioned on the perimeter would intercept and entangle them, or they would enter the battle piecemeal and become nothing more than drops in the sea, feeding fuel into the fight without changing anything.”

“Then why haven’t they come?”

Liang Cheng did not answer directly.

Instead he said:

“When the Prince of Jingnan broke the main force of the Savage King beside the Wang River, what did he rely upon? We rushed a thousand li and took Snow Sea Pass, cutting off the Savage King’s retreat and forcing him into an aggressive decisive battle. Tian Wujing himself had not anticipated that. We acted on our own. But sometimes, acting on your own produces miraculous effects. War needs inspired strokes. And an inspired stroke needs a general who truly understands the commander well enough to wield and execute it. The Prince of Jingnan had our Master back then. We... can have someone like that too. And judging from the situation, we truly do.”

...

“Still not moving? Still not moving?”

Keyan Dongge was almost roaring into Jin Shuke’s face.

During the siege, most of their direct troops had been reassigned.

The two men had retained only five hundred riders each to roam outside East Mountain Fort as a support force.

Normally, the greatest fear during a siege was an enemy reinforcement army suddenly appearing from outside and striking you.

Defenders inside the fort were less urgent.

If they possessed the courage and ability to ride out and beat you in the field, why would they have hidden inside their walls waiting for you to attack?

East Mountain Fort had broken that rule today.

Its defenders poured out while the Yan were deep in the assault and launched a massive counterattack.

“The Count fired his signal flares a long time ago, and you’re still waiting? You’re actually still waiting? You still dare to wait!”

Keyan Dongge was nearly mad.

He had wanted to take his troops directly back to rescue the Count.

Jin Shuke stopped him.

Not only that, Jin Shuke had intercepted the scattered mounted scouts and roaming groups nearby, including detachments from Gong Wang’s and Gongsun Zhi’s forces.

He pressed them down and refused to let them enter the battle now.

Jin Shuke explained with rising excitement:

“Instead of sending one small group in after another and feeding troops into the fire, it is better to gather one cavalry force large enough to matter. When we finally move, the effect will be far greater. We might even kill the Chu with a single strike! You can see the battlefield. It looks chaotic, but the key points are still clear. The Chu appear strong, but the outer field remains under our control. Our people are still fighting on the walls. The Chu are gambling with danger. We can seize their weak point. We can overturn the entire battle!”

“No, Jin Shuke. You need to understand something. Sometimes this is not a question of whether you win. This is a question of seeing the Count’s emergency signal and still daring to remain motionless, even preventing other forces from going to rescue him. Even if you win in the end, do you really think you’ll have won?”

Keyan Dongge’s father and several elders of his tribe were currently serving as personal guards beside the Prince of Jingnan.

He naturally understood why.

Suppression.

Precaution.

Count Pingye was a Yan man.

You, Jin Shuke, were a Barbarian.

Jin Shuke opened his mouth.

Keyan Dongge continued:

“You dare disregard the Count’s safety...”

Jin Shuke smiled.

“The Count isn’t that kind of man.”

“You...”

Jin Shuke shook his head firmly.

“The Count truly isn’t that kind of man. So long as we win, it’s enough.”

“You aren’t afraid that later...”

“No.” Jin Shuke licked his lips. “The First Prince once tried to ask the Count to hand me over to him. I refused. Because I understood something very early. The Count and those gentlemen around him think completely differently from the so-called chieftains and nobles. Following the Count... life is actually quite interesting.”

Keyan Dongge shook his head.

“I don’t believe it.”

Jin Shuke reached out and patted Keyan Dongge’s shoulder.

“Then you’ve narrowed your own road.”

After saying that, Jin Shuke looked behind him.

He had already gathered and intercepted a little over two thousand, but fewer than three thousand, cavalry.

Almost enough.

Enough.

Jin Shuke mounted.

His eyes fixed on the battlefield.

He had always regarded himself as a very lucky man.

Born as a Barbarian convict soldier, reaching his present position had been extraordinarily difficult.

Keyan Dongge was also the commander of one Command.

But Jin Shuke knew perfectly well that the two of them were different.

Keyan Dongge had the entire Keyan Tribe behind him.

Jin Shuke had no such backing.

It was the Sword Saint’s recommendation that first brought him to Count Pingye’s attention.

Afterward, the Count promoted him again and again, showing him favor and entrusting him with important responsibilities.

After learning that the man who had once guarded the city gate beside him was actually the Sword Saint, Jin Shuke cherished those old days even more.

And every time the Count patted him on the shoulder, he felt an indescribable warmth.

Count Pingye often thought that despite his undefeated record, he still lacked one grand victory he had won entirely on his own to serve as the perfect capstone.

Jin Shuke felt something similar.

The Count’s favor toward him was as heavy as a mountain.

Yet Jin Shuke had never produced one truly dazzling performance to prove to all his comrades that Count Pingye’s judgment had been far-sighted.

That was his regret.

Fortunately, the chance to erase that regret had arrived.

Jin Shuke raised his saber.

In Xia speech that still carried a faint accent but was already very fluent, he shouted:

“For Snow Sea Pass! For the Count! Follow me! Charge!”

...

The Sword Saint returned again, covered in blood.

One could see that the blood was not his.

But for the white-robed Sword Saint to look like this at all meant he was already approaching his limit.

“We can’t stop the momentum,” the Sword Saint said.

It was true.

Using the command carriage as the center point, one could clearly see that the Chu offensive had become far fiercer than before.

The Yan line kept being compressed.

Compressed.

Compressed again.

Even Zheng Fan and the people around him had been pushed behind the command carriage.

Ultimately, the Chu had surged out in formation at the beginning and caught the Yan completely by surprise.

Zheng Fan then used his command carriage as a rallying point, forcibly gathered the center and the broken troops, and smashed them back into the fight.

The Yan had been forced to continue fighting in this confused, chaotic mode.

They had never gained the chance to calmly form ranks and deploy properly.

That meant the disadvantage suffered at the very beginning had never disappeared.

They had been carrying it forward the entire time.

Liang Cheng’s original recommendation, and the choice Shi Yuantang believed Zheng Fan should make, had both been timely withdrawal.

Step back.

The sea and sky would broaden.

Even after losing this one battle, once the army reorganized, if the Yan arrayed themselves properly in the field and fought again, the Chu would probably have to withdraw back into the fort and continue defending.

That was the safest and most rational choice.

Count Pingye had not chosen it.

He had simply slammed forward.

A man lived only one life.

How could he remain rational in every single matter?

A life like that would be unbearably dull.

Sometimes one had to get carried away.

Float a little.

Only then did life truly have flavor.

But if one genuinely overplayed the hand until there was no way to recover... that feeling was undeniably bleak.

“I’ll take you out,” the Sword Saint said. “At this point I cannot guarantee we will definitely leave alive.”

Zheng Fan shook his head.

“If I stay, they die fighting. If I leave, they collapse immediately.”

He tightened his grip around the Barbarian saber.

“And besides, if the Chu press us down, we can still try pushing them back. I’m not simply throwing a tantrum. Tian Wujing taught me warfare. If there were truly no chance at all, I wouldn’t stubbornly die here. Do you think I’m risking everything only because I can’t swallow one defeat?”

The words had barely left his mouth when urgent hoofbeats thundered across the field.

Nearly three thousand cavalry swept directly into the battle like lightning.

Under Jin Shuke’s leadership, they completely ignored the Chu troops positioned on the perimeter to block reinforcements.

They simply circled around them at speed.

Nor did they choose some random section of the battlefield and charge in.

They hugged the outer edge of the fighting, drove their horses without sparing strength, and thundered toward one target: the bronze chariot beneath the Fire-Phoenix Banner.

Shi Yuantang’s eyes narrowed.

He ordered:

“Send word to the forces ahead. Ignore this old man. Continue pressing forward. Break through the Yan main formation for me!”

But on a battlefield this chaotic, orders could no longer travel quickly.

And when a whole formation of Yan cavalry suddenly aimed straight at the bronze chariot carrying their own Pillar of State, many Chu soldiers fighting ahead instinctively chose to fall back and reinforce him.

The pressure on the Yan center immediately eased.

Jin Shuke did not intend to “capture the bandit by taking the king first.”

Because he knew the king was not there.

More precisely, in Jin Shuke’s eyes, this entire battlefield had only one king.

His Count.

Charging directly into the Fire-Phoenix Banner now might indeed win him the achievement of killing an enemy commander.

But more likely, the Chu would entangle his cavalry there.

Once this organized mobile force became stuck as well, the battlefield would return to the same swamp.

Jin Shuke refused to waste his troops that way.

To him, it would be a colossal waste.

Some people might truly be born knowing how to fight wars.

Some people, once discovered, simply possessed instincts sharper than ordinary men.

Across the enormous battlefield north of East Mountain Fort, Jin Shuke identified the true key point at one glance.

More precisely, he saw the exact place both Yan and Chu were fighting to control.

But he did not charge directly into it.

Instead, he led his cavalry around the bronze chariot in a feint.

The moment large numbers of Chu troops began pulling back to protect their Pillar of State, Jin Shuke leveled his cavalry lance.

A clear Barbarian roar burst from his throat.

Then he led every rider behind him with an unstoppable momentum and smashed directly toward the central battlefield, the place where Count Pingye’s command carriage stood.

Boom!

First he avoided the Chu blocking forces on the perimeter.

Then he used his own movement across the battlefield to drag Chu troops from one place to another.

And while those troops were redeploying, Jin Shuke turned himself into a saber and drove it without reservation into the heart of the enemy position.

The Chu troops before Count Pingye’s own formation finally broke.

Once this point broke, the Yan center could counter-push.

And that one movement would pull the entire battlefield with it.

The whole situation would reverse.

As for the Chu... the Chu... the Chu... they would not even be able to return to the fort.

Fan Li, Gongsun Zhi, and Gong Wang were still on those walls.

They were not vegetarians.

A siege battle had transformed into a field battle.

If the Yan won in the end, they would profit in blood.

Truly profit in blood.

Because the troops originally garrisoning the fort were the Imperial Clan Guards of Great Chu.

Count Pingye held his Barbarian saber and watched the scene unfold.

Then he burst into loud laughter.

The Sword Saint planted the Longyuan Sword against the ground like a walking stick.

Seeing Zheng Fan’s expression, he asked:

“Is it really worth that?”

The unspoken meaning was obvious.

Look at you.

Anyone would think you had never won a battle before.

Count Pingye shook his head.

He pointed at himself.

“I finally understand how happy Tian Wujing must have been to have me beneath his command.”

A subordinate who could suddenly produce a stroke of divine inspiration at the most unexpected moment... for a chief commander, there was no way to love such a man enough.

What Jin Shuke had done today was exactly the role Count Pingye himself had once played for Tian Wujing.

Right now Zheng Fan wanted to grab Jin Shuke and kiss him twice.

So this... this was how Old Tian had once looked at him.

“Hoo...”

Count Pingye let out a long breath.

Dragging his exhausted body, he climbed back onto the command carriage and looked around.

Yan soldiers all around were looking at him too.

Count Pingye sighed deeply.

He drove the Barbarian saber into the deck of the command carriage once more.

Then he staggered backward two steps.

Two arrows had lodged in the commander’s seat.

He pulled them out.

And sat down.

No grand declaration.

No roaring speech.

No hysterical scream with saber raised to the heavens.

He simply said, very calmly:

“This Count is tired. All of you, escort this Count into the fort so I can rest.”

[End of Chapter 527]