Chapter 864: Clear a Path for the Prince!

"Father, your tea."

Liu Dahu handed the freshly refilled waterskin to his father.

"Mm."

The Sword Saint nodded.

Father and son had already grown accustomed to this manner of living together inside an army camp.

The Sword Saint pulled the stopper and took a drink. Warm.

Chilled tea did not necessarily have to be cold. What mattered was the clean aftertaste and refreshing quality once it entered the mouth. With chunks of sugar added, it carried a pleasant sweetness and made an excellent drink. After all, plenty of people in this world drank tea, but very few truly understood it. Most used tea simply to receive guests.

The Sword Saint had just prepared to wipe Longyuan's scabbard again when he saw his son kneel before him with extraordinary seriousness.

Liu Dahu placed both hands together before himself and solemnly kowtowed three times.

"What are you doing?"

"Father, your son has one request."

"Speak."

"In tomorrow's breakout battle, please protect His Highness. Escort His Highness out safely."

"I know what I should do."

"Father, please don't think of your son. Please put His Highness first!"

The Sword Saint's gaze sharpened.

He would never believe Zheng Fan had sent Liu Dahu here to say this. Whatever else that bastard Zheng might be, he had not fallen so low as to pull something that tasteless. And precisely because the Sword Saint knew these words came completely from his son's own heart, his mood became even darker.

Liu Dahu raised his head, looked at his father, and smiled.

"Father, your son's identity tag went into the pit too."

The Sword Saint looked at his son. For a moment, he had many things he wanted to say, yet no idea how to say any of them.

Should he ask whether the boy was stupid, throwing away his life for that man surnamed Zheng?

But you could call one person a fool.

Could he really say that nearly ten thousand armored soldiers who had just knelt together, hammered their chests, and roared that they were willing to die for the Prince were all fools?

"I understand."

"Thank you, Father."

Liu Dahu smiled, completely satisfied, and walked out of the tent.

The Sword Saint sighed and lowered his head to look at Longyuan in his hand. From the very first moment he began carrying a sword in his heart, he had thought about the same questions: what exactly was he living for, and what exactly would he be willing to die for?

In truth, he had found his answer long ago.

That answer was not universal. It applied only to himself:

Live freely. Die willingly.

That was the rule he was following now.

So what right did he have to stop his own son from following something almost identical?

Was the man surnamed Zheng deceiving these soldiers into dying for him?

No.

He was not.

He had stood openly before them and told them with perfect clarity: This Prince wants to live, so I need all of you to die for me.

And those soldiers, those grunts, were willingly choosing to do exactly that. Even his own son.

The Sword Saint had drunk tea with Gou Moli many times. In the past, he had also spent no small amount of time chatting with Mr. Bei. Those two men actually carried a similar quality.

Gou Moli had once stood beneath the stars on the snowfields and used the promise of those stars and the future to gather an army of Savage warriors utterly loyal to him. The Blind Man, meanwhile, ever since Shengle City, had spent years creating momentum, laying groundwork, and sculpting the image of a "living god" in the mortal world.

And yet the man surnamed Zheng, despite seeming to pursue something similar, used a completely different method.

So many people tried desperately to disguise themselves, wrapping themselves in layer after layer merely to conceal a shameful fear of death.

This Prince simply stood upright and shouted: I, this Prince, am afraid of death!

It was difficult to explain exactly what sort of feeling that created. Strange? Yes. And somehow, damned natural.

The Sword Saint stopped wiping the scabbard. He casually tossed Longyuan onto the ground, then leaned back, bracing both hands behind himself.

He could already imagine it. If, when the final moment came, he chose to save his own son instead of that Zheng bastard, his son might very well kill himself afterward for the man. He could stop the boy once. Could he stop him forever?

Regret. He truly regretted it.

If he had known things would turn out this way, he should have taken his family away much earlier and found some beautiful, peaceful place to live quietly. With Yu Huaping's three-foot sword in hand, would protecting his wife and children through one peaceful lifetime really have been so difficult?

He turned his head toward the tent beside his own—the command tent. The Sword Saint shook his head, laughed, and muttered to himself:

"Maybe I should just stab you right now."

...

After leaving his father's tent, Liu Dahu returned to his two companions. There were no more reports to review today and no need to inspect the camp. Chen Xianba sat there wrapping strips of cloth around the handle of his hammer.

Not everyone could be like the Sword Saint and merely point a finger before Longyuan flew instantly from its sheath. Even jianghu heroes often wrapped cloth around their weapons and bound them to their hands before a serious fight so the weapon would not slip loose in the coming slaughter.

Soldiers on a battlefield relied on the same method even more, especially Yan cavalry. When killing from horseback at full charge, the impact could easily tear a weapon from the rider's hand. And in the middle of a chaotic battle, whether you could calmly bend down and pick up another weapon that suited you really depended on whether the enemy possessed that much conscience.

Zheng Man sat nearby sharpening his saber. When Liu Dahu approached, Zheng Man looked up. "Give me yours. I'll sharpen it for you."

Sharpening the blade before battle was much like a scholar picking up his books for one final look before entering an examination hall. Nobody expected to improve by much. It simply helped settle the heart.

"Oh. All right."

Liu Dahu handed over his saber.

Chen Xianba kicked Zheng Man in the leg.

"Sharpen your own blade."

Zheng Man curled his lip but did not dare rebel.

Before Chen Xianba arrived, this wolf cub had been king among the children his entire life, obeying only the Sword Maid, that elder sister of theirs. After Chen Xianba appeared, the wolf cub had been ruthlessly suppressed.

Liu Dahu sat down, took the whetstone back from Zheng Man, and began sharpening his own saber.

"Afraid?" Chen Xianba asked.

He knew these two companions had both accompanied the Prince on campaigns before, but neither had truly gone down into a proper battle.

Zheng Man gave a heh-heh laugh.

"Small scene."

Liu Dahu shook his head too.

"Not afraid."

"Keep telling yourself that. Never stop. On a battlefield, the first man to die is the one who loses his nerve. The fiercer you are, the less the enemy wants to come near you. The more you shrink backward, the more they choose you."

Before Chen Xianba finished speaking, a Dispatch Officer came over.

Because Chen Xianba had gradually taken over the Prince's routine military business, people below had begun bringing certain matters to him for approval.

"Start cooking," Chen Xianba said. "Whatever grain is left, cook all of it."

"Yes!"

Inside the Yan camp, stoves were lit and food prepared. By the time dawn approached, meals had been delivered to every soldier, and everyone ate in silence.

Inside the command tent, the Prince's breakfast was more refined: vegetables, meat, and even a pot of wine.

The wine was against ordinary military rules. It had still been placed there. Zheng Fan said nothing about it and did not touch it either.

The Sword Saint and Xu Chuang ate beside the Prince. Xu Chuang badly wanted to ask something: why not go outside and eat this last meal with the soldiers? Why not pour that wine into the soup and drink together with the men?

But after hesitating, Xu Chuang said nothing.

Once the hearty breakfast was finished, Chen Xianba and the others helped Zheng Fan put on his armor. He stepped outside the command tent as dawn was just appearing.

Prince Pingxi mounted his Pixiu early and waited near the gate of the military camp.

Over these past days, the Qian armies had begun tightening the encirclement little by little. At this point, both sides were already playing with every card face up.

By ordinary reasoning, more than two hundred thousand men surrounding ten thousand should have been simple. But this was not the same thing as twenty men beating one man. The various Qian forces differed enormously in quality, and after committing their pieces to the board this early, synchronizing all of them into a single coordinated battle rhythm was extremely difficult.

Moreover, the Qian did not merely want to win. They wanted to leave as few fish escaping the net as possible, so they had deliberately controlled the pace, tightening the ring in tiny increments, almost like a column taking mincing steps to align every row perfectly.

There was another reason. The original encirclement had been designed for fifty thousand Yan troops. The net had been cast wide, and even if they caught only most of the enemy, that would already count as a great victory. Who could have imagined the Yan would leave only ten thousand men here? The size of the holes in the fishing net had suddenly become a problem.

Still, the supreme commander on the Qian side was probably not their Emperor. The Emperor was capable in strategic affairs.

Although the man always carried one thorn in his heart—Your Majesty, you do not understand warfare!—the man who had said those words back then, the current Prince Pingxi himself, had mostly been running his mouth at the time.

It was only later, after Prince Jingnan and Prince Zhenbei opened Jin, and then after Zheng Fan himself rose continuously, that the old mockery seemed to be hammered into reality again and again until the words became a permanent label stuck to the Emperor's forehead.

Whether someone understood warfare was always relative. Swap the Yan and Qian armies, and the Qian Emperor would hardly look this embarrassing.

Zheng Fan suspected the commander opposite him was Master Xundao.

A pity. This time he had only sent people to tear down Shangjing. Next time, he really needed to find an opportunity to flatten that Back Mountain devoted to promoting feudal superstition.

Prince Pingxi was narrow-minded. He remembered grudges. And how could he possibly forget a man who had nearly turned him into an idiot years ago?

The Qian army's cautious contraction was clearly effective. An excellent commander was not someone like Li Fusheng, who simply opened his stride, trusted in "strong soldiers and strong horses," and chewed through the enemy head-on. A truly excellent commander was someone capable of integrating a mass of uneven forces and still making them move together.

Under this nearly seamless pressure and rhythm, Zheng Fan had been forced to abandon every clever method of breaking out. In a situation like this, any attempt at trickery or reliance on luck would eventually produce fruit bitter enough to regret for the rest of his life.

At certain moments, strategy and military theory no longer mattered. The battlefield—war itself—returned to its simplest essence.

Real blades. Real spears.

So let them speak.

Zheng Man raised the double-headed eagle banner of Prince Pingxi Residence—the Prince's royal banner. Liu Dahu raised Great Yan's Black Dragon Banner. Chen Xianba held the banner of the Jingnan Army.

"Woooooo!"

The war horns sounded.

At this point, there was no reason to worry about alarming the Qian armies around them. Deceiving themselves would be meaningless. The moment their army left camp, the Qian would inevitably receive word.

Squad after squad of Yan cavalry rode through the gates. Beneath the three military banners stood their Prince.

Zheng Fan remained seated on the Pixiu.

He did not wave.

He did not shout.

He merely watched column after column of riders pass before him.

And every Yan cavalryman, when riding past his Prince, instinctively straightened his back.

They wanted their Prince to see them at their most heroic.

Everything that needed saying had already been said.

Everything that needed doing had already been done.

The commander had made his plan.

The soldiers understood the plan.

That... was enough.

Eating one last meal with the men.

Calling everyone brothers and clapping shoulders.

Pouring a pot of wine into a stream and drinking from the same water so everyone would burst with morale.

The men who wrote those stories... were usually scholars.

In a scholar's eyes, soldiers were simple-minded creatures with strong arms, not very different from the ignorant masses.

But in truth... these grunts who tied their own heads to their belts and fought through life and death saw people and events more clearly than almost anyone else in the world.

It was like a leader giving a speech.

The people below sat in perfect rows and supplied loud applause at exactly the correct moments.

The leader spoke until he could barely bear to stop.

What the people below were actually thinking was:

Why the hell isn't this idiot finished yet?

There was no group in the world harder to control than an army.

They could be brutal.

They could trample the bones of enemies beneath their boots.

They could turn blades against innocent women and children without blinking. Under the right atmosphere, they could shed every human sense of morality and become the purest beasts. And sometimes, they could be gentle.

They were greedy. They wanted war. They wanted military merit, rank, titles, rewards, and nights of pleasure in the Red Tents. They believed in drinking today's wine today. And sometimes, they could restrain themselves with terrifying discipline.

They could be unruly or obedient, savage or perfectly controlled. They could carry out orders like iron machinery.

Zheng Fan did not attempt any last-minute sentimental performance, because the performance he needed had already been completed long before today.

He already possessed, in name and reality, the highest seat in Great Yan's military establishment. Perfectly legitimate.

He was the true successor of Prince Jingnan and the man who had raised the Heir of Prince Jingnan. Although he had long since formed an independent power of his own, no one could deny that Zheng Fan had once been a man of the Jingnan Army.

And now he had just overturned Shangjing, that fabulously rich Qian city spoken of in every teahouse story. He had trampled Qian pride beneath his boots.

It was not only Zheng Fan inspecting these Yan cavalrymen. The Pixiu beneath him seemed infected by its master's mood and watched the warhorses passing rank after rank—little black ones, little red ones, little white ones...

Every so often, white vapor snorted from its nostrils. That was roughly the noble Lord Pixiu's way of acknowledging this army of lesser mounts.

Once the army had left camp and completed its formation, Prince Pingxi urged his Pixiu forward. Behind him came Chen Xianba and the other two boys, together with the Sword Saint, A’Ming, and Xu Chuang, all guarding the Prince tightly.

The royal banner turned west.

"Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!"

In an instant, more than ten thousand Jingnan Army cavalry surged into motion, following the royal banner west.

The Northern Qiang cavalry were about to witness the real thing: Great Yan's iron cavalry.

...

"Beacon smoke! Beacon smoke! Commissioner! Commissioner! The Yan are moving! The Yan are moving!"

"Hahahaha! Good."

Commissioner Mingya walked out of his command tent and called to the Northern Qiang warriors under him.

"Warriors of Northern Qiang! The Yan have finally moved! In a little while, follow this King—"

He corrected himself.

"Follow this Commissioner and cut off Yan heads! We'll carry them to the court, carry them to the Emperor, and exchange them for silver! Hahahahaha!"

"Ooooooh!"

"Ooooooh!"

The Northern Qiang cavalry began preparing rapidly and spreading into formation. It was not a defensive formation, but an attacking one.

"I'd like to see where these Yan think they can break out. Heh. The moment we receive confirmation, this Commissioner will drive straight into their rear."

"Commissioner, what if the Yan come directly toward us?"

The Qian Assistant Minister of War assigned to his side asked carefully. He was essentially a liaison officer.

"Hahahaha! Then the Yan must have gone mad! This Commissioner has twenty thousand warriors here, every one a fine son of Northern Qiang and a first-rate horseman! The Yan play with cavalry too. They should understand perfectly well what cavalry against cavalry means. If they try to break through here, then they'll be giving this Commissioner exactly what I want! I won't stupidly stand in front of them and trade lives with—"

Mingya caught himself.

"This Commissioner will avoid their edge, let them pass, then stick to their backs! Twenty thousand men sticking to ten thousand—how could the Yan ever shake us loose? Then, once your Emperor and the other three Qian armies arrive, the Yan will drown right here! If they break out in another direction, maybe they still have one thread of life. If they dare come here... they're choosing death!"

"That is true. But Commissioner, please still send word to the Imperial Guard force behind us so they can prepare early. They were, after all, dispatched by Chancellor Li specifically to support you."

"Support me? More like watch me. Hmph. You Qian people's little thoughts—did you really think this Commissioner couldn't see through them?"

Before the words had finished, beacon smoke of another color rose in the distance.

"Commissioner! Commissioner! The Yan really are coming this way! They're coming straight at us!"

Commissioner Mingya clenched his jaw, then suddenly burst into laughter.

"Hahahaha! Excellent! The Yan ignore the broad road and insist on walking through my Gate of Ghosts instead! Let them come! After this battle, this Commissioner will demand even greater rewards from the Emperor. Rank! Titles! I'll make your Emperor follow the Emperor of Yan and grant me a princely title!"

Before long, dust began surging across the ground ahead and black-armored riders appeared within it. Commissioner Mingya drew a deep breath, then immediately gave the order:

"Open a road for them! Let the Yan pass first, then stick to them from behind! Sons of Northern Qiang grew up herding horses. Don't tell me you've forgotten the skill that puts food on our tables! Rope this Yan horse for this Commissioner!"

"Boom-boom-boom!"

"Boom-boom-boom!"

The Northern Qiang cavalry began shifting toward both wings. At a glance, it appeared as though they were deliberately opening a path for the Yan. In truth, enormous danger hid inside that opening.

Then what happened next left Commissioner Mingya completely stupefied.

The Yan army, which by all logic should have seized the open road and desperately rushed through ahead of them, did not.

The moment the Northern Qiang cavalry began wheeling aside, the Yan cavalry wheeled with them.

No kiting. No probing. No compression. No maneuvering.

They simply turned and, with absolute, fearless determination, smashed straight into the Northern Qiang formation!

The Yan riders at the very front, together with the horses beneath them, became heavy hammers. They crashed inward, and men and mounts were instantly torn apart.

The comrades behind them did not slow. They spurred their horses to maximum speed and drove straight through the gaps their brothers had opened with flesh and blood. They did not care that fallen comrades might already be beneath their own hooves. They did not mourn or grieve, because they themselves had already accepted that a moment later, their own bodies might be trampled beneath the hooves of the comrades following behind.

The Northern Qiang were stunned by the Yan's absolute disregard for death. Their formation immediately began to buckle.

At that moment, Chen Yuan, commanding the center, looked back once. Behind him stood the royal banner. Beneath it, a figure in black armor.

For one instant, Chen Yuan could no longer tell whether the man standing there was Prince Pingxi or Prince Jingnan.

Then he smiled.

This nephew of Count Yishan, the Yan Lieutenant Commander who had once advised Chen Yang to place the yellow imperial robe on Prince Pingxi in order to atone for their crimes, raised his horse lance and roared:

"Jingnan Army!"

"Tiger!"

"Clear a path for the Prince!"

"Tiger!"

Chen Yuan urged his horse forward, and the central cavalry around him raised their speed at the same time.

The Northern Qiang wanted to rope horses.

Unfortunately, the Yan were not horses. The Yan were wolves.

A wolf facing an enemy did not choose to preserve its own skin and wait for someone to loop a rope around its neck.

It chose to bite the enemy to death.

As the central formation thundered forward, Chen Yuan lowered his horse lance. The Yan cavalry to either side leveled theirs as well. Like a vicious beast forged entirely from iron and steel, the formation unleashed all of its cruelty and ferocity.

At the instant before both sides collided, Chen Yuan roared:

"The resolve of those who plunge into the formation!"

Every Yan rider beside and behind him answered as one:

"There is death! There is no life!"

...

The sight before them was brutal and tragic.

These Yan were not breaking out.

They were annihilating the enemy.

Only by beating the sole cavalry corps among Qian's four encircling armies to death, crippling it, breaking it completely, could they ensure that later, when their Prince escaped, no cavalry force would be able to pursue and cling to him.

They hurled their own flesh and blood fearlessly against Northern Qiang blades and opened the road for the comrades behind them. With this willingness to die, they crushed Northern Qiang morale from the very beginning.

Every one of them was a veteran of a hundred battles. They knew exactly what kind of enemy was most terrifying: one that did not fear death.

And now they themselves were becoming that enemy.

To clear the road for their Prince.

To die for their Prince.

At that moment, Zheng Fan, standing beneath the royal banner, held out a hand toward Liu Dahu. Liu Dahu gave him the Black Dragon Banner.

Even men like the Sword Saint, who had seen almost everything the world could offer, were still shaken by the brutal grandeur unfolding before them. Chen Xianba, Zheng Man, and Liu Dahu were practically spitting fire from their eyes. If not for their duty, they would have thrown themselves directly into the battle below.

Zheng Fan took the Black Dragon Banner, drew a deep breath, and spoke.

"Years ago, Old Tian made me swear before this Black Dragon Banner that for the rest of my life, I would never put it down. I once thought it was a restriction Old Tian had placed on me. Perhaps even a chain. I thought he wanted to bind me to this banner forever. But only now... do I finally understand. That elder brother of mine... how could he ever bear to make me suffer beneath some restriction or chain? He wanted me to carry this Black Dragon Banner forever because he understood exactly what this banner means. When I carry it... how many people... will willingly die for me... because I speak a single sentence?"

Zheng Fan stroked the banner and continued:

"It was never a chain. It is protection."

The Sword Saint turned his head and looked at Zheng Fan standing beside him with the Black Dragon Banner. Zheng Fan tucked the shaft beneath his shoulder and angled the banner forward.

"All these years... the world has said Great Yan became this powerful because Emperor Yan possessed unmatched talent and strategy. They say Prince Zhenbei and Prince Jingnan were War Gods of their generation. They say a new Prince Pingxi rose afterward to inherit their place. But in truth... Great Yan's strength... never rested on sage rulers. Never rested on War Gods. It rested on only one thing. Year after year... generation after generation... sons of Yan... following this Black Dragon Banner... and going willingly to their deaths."

[End of Chapter 864]