Chapter 569: - Great Victory!

Night was always the finest camouflage.

At Count Pingye’s command, the Yan army, which had nearly surrendered every shred of strategic initiative before this, began moving swiftly and silently in one direction.

No one shouted.

No one worked themselves into hysterics.

Atmosphere was contagious, and everyone remained quiet.

That quietness was a kind of military quality that had sunk into their bones.

It was different from marching in perfect step, the sort of neatness a Lieutenant Commander could beat out of men with a leather whip.

It was not the impulse and fever produced by shouted slogans, promotions, and promised rewards either.

These soldiers had been on battlefields.

They had fought many victorious battles.

Not every last one, perhaps, but almost all were veterans.

The advantage of veterans was simple.

When the battlefield required something, they did it.

For example, at this moment, they were not consciously thinking that shouting might reveal them to the Chu too early.

Most of them had not considered that at all.

They simply believed that rather than waste strength yelling, they might as well save their breath for the killing that came next.

Veterans of a hundred battles could be a thousand different kinds of men in ordinary life.

But upon the battlefield, almost all of them shed the skin of humanity at once.

They became beasts.

For the hunt.

Only the hunt.

Everything existed for the hunt.

Tear open the enemy’s throat.

Crack apart his skull.

Rip down his command banner and trample it into the ground.

That was the collective conviction filling them now.

Kneading this many soldiers into a single whole was never simple. If anyone other than Count Pingye had personally held command, there was no chance the army could have reached this state.

His prestige was there.

The soldiers believed him because he had once ridden a thousand li and returned with a great victory and immense merit.

That created expectation.

Trust.

Recognition.

And even with all that, Count Pingye had kept this force tightly concealed and carefully preserved.

Liang Cheng’s side could be ignored for the moment. After seizing the Chu horse farm, his men had become cavalry again. For Yan troops, having a horse beneath the saddle changed their confidence completely.

Count Pingye, however, had left untouched a city containing the Regent of Chu.

He had refused to attack it for one purpose.

To keep this force from losing its spirit.

To keep that breath from breaking.

Everything had been preserved for this moment.

The Azure Luan Army’s Right Wing had already pulled westward beyond its original line of advance. Its objective was Juyang City.

Zhang Huang’s formation, meanwhile, served as the vanguard of the Central Army under Qu Peiluo. Because it had driven too far forward too early, then turned toward Juyang City, it had effectively moved south of the Yan army before anyone realized it.

Flatten the battlefield onto a map, and it could be divided into five sections.

The Chu occupied four.

The Yan occupied one.

The Right Wing was separating first.

The Central Army’s vanguard was driving south.

The Central Army itself lagged behind, but was also pushing forward.

The Left Wing remained at Dahe Town.

The enemy was many.

The Yan were few.

That did not mean the battle could not be fought.

From ancient times to the present, no battle had ever been decided simply by counting the heads on both sides and declaring the larger number victorious.

If warfare worked that way, the world would have achieved Great Unity long ago.

But when you were the side with fewer men, which enemy formation you chose to concentrate upon became critical.

Everything Gou Moli had done earlier had one purpose: tear the already deliberately stretched Azure Luan Army even farther apart.

His target had always remained the same.

The Central Army.

The place where Qu Peiluo stood.

Destroy the Central Army, and it was the same as stabbing a man through the heart.

The remaining limbs might still look thick and powerful, but they could no longer form a true threat.

Night battle presented an enormous challenge to attacker and defender alike.

Once armies spread through the darkness and fighting began, the command structure from top to bottom inevitably broke down. Generals could no longer control their own battlefield and formations as precisely as they might by day.

That meant the objective of a night battle had to be clear and simple.

Count Pingye’s order to the Yan army was exactly that.

Advance northeast.

Do not stop.

Punch all the way through until you reach the banks of Qingtan!

He gave them one broad direction.

Then let them kill.

...

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

The collision came with shocking suddenness.

At least, to the Azure Luan Army, it seemed to arrive from nowhere.

They had never found the Yan main force beforehand.

More importantly, Zhang Huang’s vanguard stood in front of them. By ordinary reasoning, the vanguard should have contacted the enemy first and given the Central Army time to prepare.

Who could have imagined the Yan would simply bypass the vanguard and slam directly into the Central Army?

The Azure Luan Army had spent the entire day after landing engaged in a battle of wits against empty air under Qu Peiluo’s constant deployments.

Stand in armor.

Move formation.

Shift position.

Move again.

Even without actual combat, that was enough to exhaust soldiers.

The Yan, by contrast, had spent most of the day contracted in place and resting. Aside from Xue San taking one small group to make brief contact with Lin Rong’s formation, the main force had done almost nothing.

A daring tactical design had surrendered strategic initiative almost like a gambler throwing away his cards.

The risk had been enormous.

The purpose was to exchange it for rested men against exhausted ones.

At the same time, the Chu were now “racing to save the sovereign.”

They were force-marching.

Their own vanguard was ahead.

Their marching columns had no chance of preserving a proper formation.

The infantry square formations Chu took such pride in had become a joke.

So after the first wave of Yan troops made contact, the second, third, and fourth waves cut directly into the body of the Azure Luan Central Army like knives through tofu.

Slaughter in darkness often created the most extreme kind of terror and confusion.

The moment soldiers were split apart, they fell into a situation where troops could not find officers and officers could not find troops.

Under normal conditions, fragmenting a small force at night effectively removed it from the battlefield.

It could no longer influence the larger situation.

By day, scattered soldiers might still regroup around military banners, command flags, and the shouts of officers.

One knot could gather another.

Then another.

A snowball could begin rolling until a broken force formed again.

At night, that was almost impossible.

The Yan also advanced too quickly.

Once the Chu soldiers in front were broken, those behind had no time to form ranks.

Worse, comrades fleeing back from ahead might smash their own lines before the Yan even arrived.

And among those retreating comrades were often Yan soldiers charging with them.

Attack the shadow ahead, and you might cut down one of your own men.

Do not attack, and the shadow might be a Yan soldier who would immediately put a saber into you.

In some local areas, the Chu still held numerical superiority.

That quickly produced the absurd sight of Chu soldiers killing Chu soldiers.

Both sides hacked themselves red-eyed.

Some men regained enough clarity to try to stop the friendly slaughter, only for the other side to swing another saber at them.

What choice did they have?

If they wanted to live, they had to keep killing.

For a time, battle cries sounded everywhere.

To the soldiers of the Central Army, it seemed as though vast numbers of Yan were attacking from the east, south, and west all at once.

The true main force of the Azure Luan Army had been buried at Yupan City years ago.

This army had effectively been rebuilt around the old rear formations.

It could still be called elite.

But it lacked tempering.

Lacked experience.

It looked good.

Give it time to form ranks in daylight and meet the enemy head-on, and it could fight.

It could withstand pressure.

But faced with a complicated, unexpected night assault like this, it broke.

Collapse had already become inevitable.

Back when Count Pingye attacked East Mountain Fort, the Chu Pillar of State who charged from inside had nearly broken his army as well.

Soldiers could strip away their humanity until they became beasts.

But even beasts were not cold machines.

So the question now was whether, with the collapse already beginning, Qu Peiluo could do what Count Pingye had once done.

Force the situation steady.

Then reverse the disadvantage.

Unfortunately for him, he possessed one great disadvantage.

It was night.

When Count Pingye had faced that crisis, it had been day.

There had been a commander’s carriage.

Command banners.

Golden armor.

The soldiers could see him.

Stealth.

Rapid advance.

Contact.

Break the formation.

Drive forward like splitting bamboo.

Count Pingye rode his horse with Fourth Lady, A’Ming, and the Sword Saint beside him, together with ten personal guards.

That was every shred of protection he had around him at this moment.

Unless some Chu commander suddenly appeared out of the darkness with more than five hundred troops and surrounded him, his safety should not be much of a problem.

The only difficulty was that the army was advancing too quickly.

Count Pingye himself had to urge his horse faster to keep up.

Yet riding faster in the darkness also made him worry he might drift away from the battlefield entirely.

The night attack had worked too well.

Far better than Count Pingye himself expected.

At this point, there was no longer any need to issue additional orders.

The soldiers would simply keep killing northeast.

Kill until they reached Qingtan.

Kill until water blocked the road and they could go no farther without swimming.

If this boring-through assault succeeded, the Central Army of the Azure Luan Army would be completely shattered.

As he urged his horse onward, Count Pingye said to the Sword Saint beside him:

“I’ve never liked that whole ‘fated lifelong rival’ arrangement. The moment you become exceptional, someone always drags out a target and insists the two of you are equals. You have your Four Great Swordsmen. Didn’t people two years ago still talk about Four Great Rising Generals on my side?”

Even around Qu Peiluo, the common people had spread plenty of stories about “sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall.”

Partly, ordinary people had always loved pairing people together. Not only in marriage, but in everything. People broadly disliked a story with only one unmatched figure towering above everyone else.

And Qu Peiluo was the direct heir of the Qu Clan, backed by its resources.

With Yan and Chu already mortal enemies, the two men were almost certain to meet again on future battlefields.

Naturally, busybodies were willing to spend extra ink writing the story.

You steal his wife.

He returns for revenge.

That kind of story had conflict.

Waves.

Something worth watching.

Of course, people in Yan and people elsewhere would have very different emotional loyalties when hearing it.

But everyone shared the same love of spectacle.

“Existence has its reason,” the Sword Saint said. “Anyone who can reach that position must possess some ability.”

“Can Baili Sword compare with you? Can the Swordsmith compare with you? Can Li Liangshen, who has spent so long in the army that the edge of his sword must be rusting, compare with you? Which one is supposed to be your lifelong rival? Do two men standing in place and insulting each other for an entire lifetime truly count as lifelong enemies?”

“You’re about to win a battle. Whatever you say is right,” the Sword Saint replied.

“That’s no fun. You’re supposed to flatter me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m about to win a battle and I’m happy. As my friend, you should let me stay happy a little longer.”

“But Gou Moli commanded this battle from beginning to end.”

“When you kill someone, do people say Longyuan killed him and it had nothing to do with Yu Huaping?”

“That is true.”

“See?”

“Then congratulations to Count Pingye for commanding from the center and earning another great merit.”

“New merit or not, I don’t really care anymore. I already have plenty. On this expedition into Chu, the moment Jing City burned, my great task was complete. Everything I’m doing now is only flowers added to brocade.”

That was the advantage of following a superior who was willing to promote you without reservation.

Your contribution had already been calculated.

The reward you would receive had already been calculated.

It was genuine compensation according to work.

More than that, you could even afford the leisure to do things that did not strictly need doing.

Like watering flowers.

Raising fish.

Brewing tea.

Or stepping once more on that direct heir of the Qu Clan who, truthfully, had never once wronged Zheng Fan, while Zheng Fan himself had already wronged him in more ways than one.

This battle did not need to be fought.

They could have openly withdrawn into the Great Marsh and waited for the Prince of Jingnan’s iron cavalry to come receive them.

That would have been safer.

But now that the battle was going this well?

Wonderful.

Count Pingye could remain leisurely in Great Chu’s capital region for a while longer.

No need to hurry into the muddy filth of the Great Marsh and roll around.

“Mm? Why does it feel clogged ahead?”

Visibility was poor, but from the pace of the Yan soldiers around him and the sounds of killing ahead, it seemed they had finally encountered genuine organized resistance from the Chu.

“A’Li!”

Count Pingye shouted directly.

“Smash them apart for me!”

A tremendous roar came from ahead.

“Ura!”

A mass of soldiers immediately shouted with him:

“Ura!”

“Ura!”

A giant man built like an iron tower and wrapped in heavy armor charged straight ahead like a wild bull, swinging an enormous axe.

If this had been day, with the Chu properly formed, a charge like Fan Li’s would quickly have been caught by long spears, pinned down, and either subdued or killed.

But this was night.

The Chu had managed to organize resistance here, yet they were still far from forming a proper battle line.

Some officer had simply relied on his prestige to gather a group of men at the exact moment the Yan charge had exhausted one breath and needed the next.

That was how they had managed to block the attack briefly.

Fan Li led the soldiers around him in an almost fearless collision.

They smashed open a gap.

At night, once the Chu were split apart, their resistance immediately weakened to the extreme.

The Yan behind poured through.

The interception collapsed completely.

After being delayed only a moment, the curtain of slaughter rolled upward again.

Yan soldiers seemed tireless.

More importantly, their strength had been preserved far better than that of the Chu, who had only just come ashore after days on ships and had then spent the entire day being moved around.

There was no concept of a Marine Corps in this era.

Infantry were infantry.

The Chu navy was powerful and numerous.

Great Yan’s newly established navy could not compare in the slightest.

But that did not mean Chu infantry spent their free time doing training cruises from one end of the country to the other.

Especially not this new Azure Luan Army rebuilt mainly from the old rear formations.

Many of these men had little experience with long-distance transport by ship.

The Yan, by contrast, had floated south after taking Jing City and then rested for many days beneath Juyang City.

Aside from the scouts, who remained constantly busy, the main force had spent each day watching the Great Chu “emperor” inside the city and their own Count exchange food and perform a heartwarming display of family affection.

Most importantly, Count Pingye’s troops were elites pieced together from other elite formations.

Without warhorses, their coordination in combined battle might still be somewhat unfamiliar.

But at night, when everyone simply rolled up his sleeves, charged forward, and hacked whatever enemy stood before him?

That perfectly displayed the Yan soldier’s superior individual quality.

Count everything up.

Aside from having fewer men than the Chu, the Yan held the advantage in practically every other category.

Then add a surprise attack prepared with knowledge against ignorance.

The Chu collapsing was not strange.

The strange thing would have been if they did not collapse.

Guo Dong and Xu An were together no matter what they did.

They slept in one tent.

Ate from one pot.

And now, when charging, they remained side by side.

Of course, they were no longer auxiliary troops who did nothing but carry large shields.

In a charge where every man shared one heart, there was no room for them to loaf.

Every Yan soldier understood something clearly.

The Chu outnumbered them.

If this charge failed to smash through and split the Chu, what awaited them was encirclement by several times their number.

Guo Dong carried his shield and charged.

One man in the way?

Ram him aside.

Then the next.

Xu An carried a saber and cut whenever he found an opening.

The two worked together with practiced ease.

The darkness held few torches.

Visibility was poor.

But after half a year of eating and sleeping together, they understood one another well enough that even with their eyes closed, they could almost sense the other’s movement.

Bang!

A Chu soldier tackled Guo Dong to the ground.

Xu An stepped in and killed the man with one saber.

After pulling Guo Dong back up, Xu An immediately leapt forward and knocked another Chu soldier down.

Guo Dong came over without a word and began smashing that man’s head with his shield.

Count Pingye’s Snow Sea Army already had an extremely high rate of armor, no worse than elite armies like the Jingnan Army or Zhenbei Army.

After breaking Central Mountain Camp and East Mountain Fort, they had also captured enormous quantities of Chu armor.

The elites selected and pieced together from the various formations now wore excellent equipment.

In quality of armor, the Yan had the Chu beaten badly.

More than forty thousand of the Azure Luan Army’s original main force had been buried at Yupan City.

The Yan had not politely sent their armor home afterward.

No matter how deep the Qu Clan’s warehouses might be, they could not possibly have held enough replacement armor for everyone.

Nor could new suits be forged that quickly.

So the Yan could now use their equipment advantage to bully the Chu.

A move like throwing your own body straight into an opponent’s blade was not something only Fan Li could use.

Normally, if you denied the enemy enough distance to swing properly, then at close range, unless he got extremely lucky and drove the point straight into a gap in your armor, the most likely result was that his saber would simply clang helplessly against your plates a few times.

“Kill!”

Guo Dong continued charging.

Xu An remained half a step behind at his side.

Once men became red-eyed from killing, deciding who to cut was almost instinct.

Fortunately, the Yan were basically all charging north.

They did not need to distinguish friend from foe nearly as carefully as the Chu.

And the Chu resistance was visibly weakening.

Soon an even more absurd scene appeared.

While Guo Dong and Xu An were sprinting, they overtook people running north in the same direction.

At first, the two assumed these were fellow Yan soldiers charging with them.

Only Xu An’s sharp eyes caught the truth.

He immediately sent a saber over.

After the cut landed, Guo Dong finally realized the man had been Chu.

“Motherfucker! This Chu slave was charging with us!”

Enemy or ally?

Facing the savage Yan behind them, routed Chu troops discovered that instead of turning around to face those terrifying men, it seemed easier to face the comrades blocking them from the north.

So everyone charged together.

Everyone ran together.

All of them rushed north.

The Yan ran.

The Chu ran.

In darkness, aside from the shattered formations on both wings still wandering in confusion, the central battlefield had developed one dominant movement.

North.

A’Ming followed closely beside Master and guarded against stray arrows.

But this battle truly was so comfortable it felt excessive.

Still, A’Ming knew it was not because the Qu young lord whose wife Master had stolen was some useless fool.

In truth, Qu Peiluo’s deployments today could absolutely be called those of a “Zhao Kuo.”

But just like Zhao Kuo, the man had made his debut and immediately encountered a king.

Given the Savage King’s cunning and his command of battlefield momentum, using Gou Moli against Qu Peiluo was genuinely a little unfair.

A’Ming understood once again why Master had refused to kill the Savage King all those years ago and instead slowly worked on subduing him.

When it came to manipulating hearts, the Savage King could not compare with the Blind Man.

When it came to commanding battle, he could not compare with Liang Cheng.

But the man happened to possess both talents.

That made him extraordinarily useful.

A’Ming could not help committing a small taboo inside his own thoughts.

If Master himself had commanded the battle today, perhaps things would not have gone nearly so smoothly.

Master genuinely knew how to fight now.

He was genuinely excellent.

A great teacher produced a fine pupil.

But there was still no chance he could turn warfare into art the way the Savage King had tonight.

Just then, an arrow flew toward them.

A’Ming shifted sideways, took the arrow in his shoulder, and continued thinking as though nothing had happened.

Count Pingye, meanwhile, asked the Sword Saint:

“Don’t you want to go up front and play a little?”

The Sword Saint remained silent.

His task was to protect Zheng Fan.

On the battlefield, that meant preventing some accident from killing him.

Inside a military camp, it meant preventing an enemy expert from attempting a decapitation strike against the commander.

Personally dropping down into a nest of ordinary soldiers and slaughtering them?

He genuinely had little interest.

No other reason.

It cheapened him.

And Count Pingye happened to be better than almost anyone at smoothing the fur of men like the Sword Saint.

Not only could he smooth it flat.

He could smooth it in the right direction.

Then oil it until it shone.

Count Pingye raised one finger.

“If you draw your sword tonight, after the battle, the people under my rule will be exempt from the poll tax for one year.”

The poll tax was exactly what the name implied: a tax levied by headcount.

The Sword Saint looked at Zheng Fan in surprise.

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

Count Pingye folded that finger back down.

“And if you can help me catch that good Brother Qu of mine inside this routed army, then from this day forward, the poll tax will never again be collected anywhere under my rule.”

The Sword Saint’s gaze sharpened.

“Then what do you intend to replace it with?”

Yu Huaping was still Yu Huaping.

When he allowed himself to be coaxed, it was because he was willing to be coaxed.

He had never truly been fooled.

“In the future, when I govern my lands, I intend to fold the poll tax into the land tax. However the population multiplies, the tax will never increase.”

“You planned that already?”

“Yes.”

Count Pingye admitted it openly.

Then added:

“Whether you draw your sword or not, I was going to arrange it that way.”

“Then why should I draw my sword?”

“What do you think?” Count Pingye asked in return.

The Sword Saint nodded.

“For a policy like that, one sword is worth raising in toast.”

Longyuan flew from its sheath.

The Sword Saint dropped from his horse.

Count Pingye shouted:

“San’er! Lead the way for Lord Sword Saint!”

“Yes, Master!”

Xue San gathered his men around the Sword Saint and rushed north.

Count Pingye immediately beckoned A’Ming closer.

“Quick. Stay nearer.”

Fourth Lady urged her horse forward, but Count Pingye stopped her with one hand.

“No matter what, I cannot have you blocking attacks for me. We have A’Ming for that.”

“...” A’Ming.

“Master seems to have forgotten that if something happens to you, all of us may simply drop dead.”

“That may be true, but a man still needs a little dignity.”

Count Pingye was in an excellent mood today.

More precisely, he had become slightly swollen with success.

Then, very quickly, a chill ran down his back.

In the direction where Xue San had led the Sword Saint forward, barely fifty zhang from Count Pingye, a violent boom suddenly sounded together with the shriek of sword qi.

A’Ming immediately urged his horse sideways and blocked in front of Count Pingye.

Fourth Lady slapped one palm against her saddle, flew through the air, and landed directly in front of Zheng Fan, sitting on his horse.

Count Pingye said helplessly:

“Disobedient.”

Fourth Lady replied:

“Master, that is a Chu force sent to take your head.”

“I know.” Count Pingye smiled. “See? Sincerely thinking of all the common people beneath Heaven really does bring karmic reward.”

In a chaotic battle, seizing the banner and killing the commander was often the fastest way to decide the whole field.

During the battle at East Mountain Fort, that Great Chu Pillar of State had similarly thrown everything toward Count Pingye’s commander’s carriage, hoping to seize a chance to overturn defeat into victory.

It had not been an unreasonable gamble.

Now, with the defeat of this Chu army already decided, sending a small elite force against the current to attempt a decapitation strike was equally understandable.

Count Pingye did not know how they had concealed themselves or how they had approached so silently and accurately.

But that hardly mattered.

In this world, one man had Zhang Liang’s stratagem while another had a ladder tall enough to cross the wall.

The Qu Clan was one of Great Chu’s greatest noble houses.

Naturally, it possessed some foundation.

The men carrying out this suicidal decapitation strike would certainly be the truest elites around Qu Peiluo.

Fortunately, the Sword Saint had just moved out.

And fortunately, by sheer coincidence, the two groups had run straight into each other.

If that force had managed to close another twenty or thirty zhang, then even with A’Ming beside Zheng Fan and the Demon Pill in the Sword Saint’s chest, an accident still could have happened.

“Master, should we avoid this?” A’Ming asked.

Count Pingye wrapped one arm around Fourth Lady’s waist.

His heart was still feeling the aftershock of fear, yet he laughed.

“Avoid what? It is nothing but a cornered dog jumping over a wall. Crush this force and this entire Chu army will never raise another wave.”

As he spoke, his hand even gave Fourth Lady’s waist a light squeeze.

Unfortunately, she wore armor.

The touch was cool and hard.

That did not stop Count Pingye from imagining the familiar delicacy and softness underneath.

Then

Count Pingye raised his head toward the sky.

“Finish everything here before dawn. I refuse to let this delay my breakfast with that good Brother Qu of mine.”

...

On the other side, Xue San had barely led his men into the tide of soldiers before he immediately sensed something wrong.

Who was he?

An assassin.

And once, an assassin who stood at the summit.

In an instant, a smell of assassins so thick it nearly suffocated him washed over his senses.

He looked ahead and immediately spotted a group of men moving against the flow of routed troops.

Quite a few Yan soldiers who encountered them were being silently killed with daggers and similar short weapons.

The reason they had gotten so close was simple.

The Yan main force was already driving forward in the slaughter.

Because the Chu had collapsed so badly, a gap had opened between the Yan vanguard and Count Pingye’s position behind it.

In other words, this assassin group had probably circled in from the flank and chosen precisely this gap as the point of infiltration.

Every hair on Xue San’s body stood upright.

Who could have imagined that when everything seemed perfect, danger had already crept this close to Master?

In the end, this was still a battlefield.

Countless possibilities could appear.

Even so-called true experts could die casually on a battlefield.

No one was absolutely safe.

“Chu attack! Kill them!”

Xue San shouted immediately.

He himself lunged forward.

A dagger flew from his hand.

In the same instant, the hidden crossbow beneath his sleeve snapped out and struck one Chu assassin.

But just as Xue San prepared to advance again, a silver-armored man suddenly flashed from among the assassin group.

One glance was enough.

Xue San immediately knew this silver-armored man was the key.

The assassins around him existed mainly to conceal his identity and carry him close enough to Master!

Bang!

The man slashed with his saber.

Xue San immediately admitted defeat and dodged.

One of Xue San’s men charged in behind him and raised his own saber to block.

His weapon snapped apart.

A line of blood appeared from the center of his forehead downward.

He died on the spot.

Qu Mingxuan gave a low roar.

He had already seen the disturbance ahead.

Barring an accident, that should be the location of the Yan commander.

Count Pingye of Great Yan was there!

“Kill!”

The Chu assassins around Qu Mingxuan drew their weapons and charged as well.

Xue San, who had fallen while avoiding the saber, immediately shouted at the white-robed figure nearby:

“You have to kill him fast! Otherwise this can ruin the whole situation!”

Qu Mingxuan ignored Xue San on the ground and charged forward like a tiger.

Then a sword rang.

Warning exploded inside Qu Mingxuan’s heart.

He raised his saber to block.

Sword and saber collided.

Qu Mingxuan’s body shook violently.

He staggered back several steps.

The Sword Saint stood proudly in place.

Longyuan circled before him.

“The Sword Saint of Jin?”

Qu Mingxuan wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand.

One sword.

One exchange.

That was enough for him to understand he was absolutely not the opponent of the man before him.

He stood at the peak of the Fourth Grade as a Martial Artist and had not yet entered the Third.

Even if he were already a Third Grade Martial Artist, in single combat he probably still would not be this swordsman’s match.

The world broadly accepted one principle: among equal grades, swordsmen were strongest.

A Martial Artist’s body was indeed powerful, but it truly was not designed for this sort of one-on-one killing.

Perhaps only that Southern Marquis of Great Yan had ever used Martial Artist cultivation to genuinely defeat the Sword Saint.

But there was only one such Southern Marquis.

“To think the mighty Sword Saint of Jin would actually...”

Qu Mingxuan never finished his opening speech.

The Sword Saint frowned.

He bit the tip of his tongue and spat a mouthful of essence-blood directly onto Longyuan.

Blood-red light instantly flared across the blade.

Then the Sword Saint pointed forward.

Longyuan became a bolt of crimson lightning and screamed through the air.

Too fast.

Too fierce.

Qu Mingxuan was stunned.

He had not even finished his opening line.

He had wanted another breath or two to regulate his blood and qi.

Win or lose, surely he should have been allowed a few more words.

Surely they should have exchanged several more moves.

Whether he lost to the Sword Saint of Jin or died in the chaos of battle, he could have accepted either.

But this Sword Saint had opened by directly burning part of his own foundation.

Not one wasted word!

Qu Mingxuan grabbed one of the assassins beside him and shoved the man forward.

Longyuan pierced straight through the assassin’s body.

Qu Mingxuan raised his saber again.

All the blood and qi in his body gathered into the edge.

Bang!

Saber and sword collided.

Longyuan rebounded and flew back through the air toward the Sword Saint.

Qu Mingxuan’s saber shattered into several pieces.

There was not a single wound on his body.

But terrifying sword qi had already entered him and begun tearing wildly through the blood and qi inside.

His entire body went numb.

He completely lost control over it.

He toppled backward.

A flying sword taking a life.

The target was still a powerful Martial Artist.

Even the Sword Saint could not guarantee killing such a man with a single strike.

At least, not with absolute certainty.

A Martial Artist’s body was simply too powerful.

Normally, the Sword Saint would have needed to follow the proper process and slowly strip away his defenses.

This time, however, the Sword Saint had chosen the fiercest possible single sword.

He did not use it to break defenses and cause wounds.

He used sword to command qi, smashing his own sword qi directly against the blood and qi within Qu Mingxuan’s body.

The man’s flesh might show almost no injury.

But for a period of time, he would no longer be able to summon even a trace of blood and qi.

Xue San’s eyes were fast and his hands faster.

More precisely, just as A’Ming had once said, Xue San possessed extraordinary talent when it came to stealing kills.

While the remaining assassins were pinned by Yan soldiers and unable to interfere, Xue San had already darted to Qu Mingxuan’s side.

A poisoned dagger stabbed straight into his neck.

“Whew!”

Kill secured!

Qu Mingxuan lay on the ground with his eyes wide open.

His death could only be described as suffocatingly unfair.

Looking back across the first half of his life, he had done little but cultivate.

For himself.

For his mother.

This time he had followed Qu Peiluo out because he wanted to prove his true value to the clan and secure the qualification to reenter the main branch despite his collateral birth.

Then his children, even if they could never match Qu Peiluo’s line in prestige, would no longer have to live as branch-line descendants.

They could live as part of the main house.

But... his life ended like this?

The Sword Saint himself had already sat cross-legged in meditation after spending part of his foundation.

He did not attack again.

He began regulating himself.

From appearance to conclusion, he had only used one sword.

First, because Xue San had shouted that the man had to die quickly.

So the Sword Saint gave that Chu general a quick one.

Second, because of that familiar opening line:

“To think the mighty Sword Saint of Jin would actually...”

The Sword Saint was genuinely sick of hearing it.

Every person who met him seemed compelled to begin with that sentence.

So he had not allowed this man to finish it.

At first, hearing that line had made the Sword Saint ashamed.

Later, it made him melancholy.

After that, depressed.

Hear it again, and he became irritated.

And now, when he heard it one more time?

Forget it.

Go die.

Once Qu Mingxuan died, the remaining assassins were quickly killed or wounded under the joint assault of Xue San’s men and Count Pingye’s personal guards.

Xue San did not dare delay.

He immediately assigned a group of guards to protect the Sword Saint while he meditated.

It really did feel a little like charging for ten hours to get ten minutes of talk time.

But whatever one said, damn, was he useful.

Count Pingye rode over slowly with one arm around Fourth Lady.

“Everything all right?”

Xue San answered:

“Master, it’s handled.”

“Protect the Sword Saint.”

“Yes, Master. Understood.”

Count Pingye kept his left arm around Fourth Lady and raised the Barbarian Saber in his right.

Ahead, the greater situation had already been decided.

The first corner of dawn had begun to show.

This slaughter had continued through the entire latter half of the night.

Now it was time for the curtain to fall.

“Personal Guard Battalion, hear my command! Follow this Count forward!”

...

Qingtan.

The riverbank.

Morning sunlight spilled down.

Corpses lay everywhere, the overwhelming majority Chu.

This had been a great defeat.

A complete defeat.

A red-armored general with his hair hanging loose knelt on the ground in despair.

Around him, soldiers held sabers and crossbows trained on his body.

Qu Peiluo had not been foolishly stubborn.

He had intended to break out, even if that meant abandoning the entire Central Army.

Because he still had Lin Rong’s Right Wing.

He still had Zhang Huang’s vanguard.

He still had the Left Wing at Dahe Town, no matter how many worms had eaten into its insides. In name, at least, it remained his army.

If he broke through, he would still possess capital.

He would not need to wait ten years.

On the very next day, he could gather strength again and wrestle Count Pingye one more time.

But the moment he tried to mobilize his personal cavalry for the breakout, he became the natural pillar of the routed army.

Broken soldiers instinctively swarmed toward him.

In an instant, the same rout he hoped to escape clogged every path around him.

He lost the final opportunity to break out.

Jin Shuke then led the last cavalry remaining under Count Pingye and cut into the mass.

He shattered the clustered fugitives and forced Qu Peiluo back toward Qingtan.

By sunrise, every personal guard around Qu Peiluo had died.

The Yan soldiers regarded Qu Peiluo himself as a great fish and deliberately kept him alive until now.

Everyone understood that this one should be left for their Count.

Rustle!

The Yan soldiers surrounding Qu Peiluo opened a path.

Count Pingye rode slowly through with Fourth Lady seated before him.

Day had broken.

To prevent the rumor that Count Zheng had a taste for other men’s wives from gaining one more clause saying Count Zheng also enjoyed the Jin fashion, Fourth Lady removed her helmet and let her long hair fall free.

The soldiers around them became even more excited at the sight.

Many knew Mr. Feng of Snow Sea Pass.

Many others did not.

But even those who did not instinctively felt that their Count riding calmly through the battlefield with a woman before him, strolling in at leisure after making the Chu collapse with a wave of his hand, was the very image of a great man.

Count Pingye had said something long ago.

Whether what a person did looked absurd ultimately depended on the result.

If he lost the battle, hiding a woman inside the command tent would become a grave military crime.

If he won a crushing victory, it became proof of true temperament.

A true hero.

Something people worshiped.

“Master, look. Qu Peiluo’s face is very clean. The hair at his temples is wet. He probably washed his own face just now. A man who still cares about staying clean at a moment like this proves he does not want to die.”

Zheng Fan lowered his head.

“You mean he wants to become Hong Chengchou?”

“For nobles like these in Great Chu, which comes first: clan or state?” Fourth Lady asked.

“But he and I have hatred as deep as the sea. Forget stealing his wife. The Princess insisted on throwing herself at me. I was forced into that. But I also killed his father.”

“Master, are we really short of sons in mourning around us?”

“Mm. Now that you say it, we do seem to have quite a few.”

“So Master can try. If you wish, give him a step and see whether he comes down from it. There are still many Chu forces outside us. Of course, if Master has no interest, that is fine too. The greater situation is already like this. We can simply wait for the Prince of Jingnan’s iron cavalry to come south.”

“Fine. I’ll try my best.”

Count Pingye swung down from his horse and walked toward Qu Peiluo kneeling beside the riverbank.

All around them, Yan soldiers collectively began striking their sabers against their armor.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

“Tiger!”

“Tiger!”

“Tiger!”

Xu An saw Guo Dong beside him striking harder than anyone else.

After the final blow, Guo Dong gave a muffled grunt.

He had survived the night’s slaughter perfectly well.

But apparently he had just managed to give himself an internal injury.

Through that murderous atmosphere, Count Pingye walked one step at a time toward Qu Peiluo.

Qu Peiluo lifted his head and looked at Zheng Fan.

His lips parted.

Then he discovered he had nothing to say.

Fortunately, he did not need to say anything.

The person whose words mattered here was no longer him.

It was the man standing before him.

A warm smile appeared on Count Pingye’s face.

He clasped his hands behind his back and sighed softly.

He tried to make himself look, if not exactly like a lord showing respect for the worthy, then at least somewhat gentle.

A moment later, Zheng Fan turned his gaze toward the river.

Slowly, he said:

“This place looks a lot like where your father died.”

“...” Qu Peiluo.

[End of Chapter 569]