Chapter 866: Crushed Underfoot!

When you truly want to cry... you may discover that no tears come.

Because the force of that emotion, the way it floods through you, has already exceeded the range of ordinary reactions your body knows how to make.

Anything extra... would feel like burden.

Or blasphemy.

Right there before you... you watch them charge the enemy formation for your sake.

You see arrows rise from the Qian ranks.

These sons of Yan were originally agile riders and veterans of countless battles. They could estimate the effective range of enemy arrows before the bowstrings even finished thrumming.

Normally, they could circle away.

They could support one another from the flanks.

They could draw their own bows and use the mounted archery they took such pride in to kite the enemy to death.

They could laugh as they watched fear spread across Qian faces, wheeling their horses around them with contempt and disdain from above.

Tian Wujing had once told the Sword Saint to his face:

He looked down on the so-called jianghu.

Perhaps... in Prince Jingnan's eyes, the soldiers he had personally trained were tigers inside the military camp.

And if those camps disappeared and the men scattered into the jianghu... they would still become heroes and great men.

Yet now... they chose not to evade.

They charged directly into the Qian arrows.

Their horsemanship, refined enough to lose nothing beside Barbarians or Savages, now revealed itself only in how they bent low over their saddles or hung off one side of their galloping horses, reducing as much as possible the area the enemy could hit.

Even so...

Qian arrows were no toys.

Again and again, Jingnan cavalrymen were struck and thrown from their saddles.

There was no way to avoid what followed.

The comrades behind them could not possibly rein in their horses.

They could only thunder onward over the fallen man's body.

Everyone knew this fate perfectly well.

There was no pity.

No melodrama.

No ridiculous cries of "Brother!"

Some warhorses, after taking too many arrows, finally collapsed.

Their riders crashed down with them.

They were racing time itself.

Before the Qian armies completed the encirclement, every obstacle in front of them had to be smashed apart.

That left only the most direct method.

At last... after paying a price in lives... the Yan closed the distance to the Qian formation.

At once... unavoidable unrest spread through the Qian ranks.

The terror of tall warhorses charging directly at you... the knowledge that, an instant later, flesh and bone would collide with overwhelming force... even the most experienced veteran could hardly treat that lightly.

And nearly at the same moment... the Jingnan riders in the first rank slashed their sabers across the hindquarters of their own horses.

To a cavalryman, his horse was a companion day and night.

Plenty of riders were closer to their mounts than to their own wives.

Yet the cuts now came without hesitation.

There was no guilt either.

Because these men had already decided... they would travel the final road together with their good brothers.

The maddened horses squeezed out the last shred of potential from their bodies.

Their riders made one final adjustment.

Legs clamped hard around the horses' bellies.

Reins jerked upward.

The warhorses leaped.

Their bodies twisted sideways in midair.

At that speed, horse and rider became giant stones hurled by siege engines.

They smashed Qian shields flat.

They smashed the Qian formation open.

They smashed spears aside.

With a method that risked life...

No.

A method that simply discarded life altogether... they tore the strongest outer shell of the Qian formation into a field of holes!

Then... the comrades behind them drove their horses into leaps and crashed toward the second line.

Plenty of Yan riders and horses were skewered outright by long Qian weapons and left hanging there.

But the combined weight of horse and man immediately dragged those weapons and the Qian soldiers holding them to the ground.

The fearless collision created gaps both in the outer wall and deeper inside the formation.

Yan cavalry behind them poured into those gaps and began killing amid the wreckage.

Cavalry was the natural enemy of infantry.

Any infantry formation, no matter how loudly people boasted that it "countered cavalry," merely reduced the outrageous exchange ratio by some degree.

If cost were ignored... smashing directly into infantry like this had always been the simplest and most effective method.

And right now... cost no longer mattered.

"Kill!"

"Kill!"

The killing progressed quickly.

Human life had become unbearably cheap.

Your eyes could no longer settle on any single place.

Fighting was everywhere.

Death was everywhere.

In the end... all that could be said was that this Imperial Guard force had not existed for very long.

Yes, it had fought through the campaign suppressing the southwestern native rebellion.

But how could those native rebels possibly compare with Yan iron cavalry who had already thrown away all fear of death?

It could also be said that the Qian force was simply not large enough.

Its original purpose had been half to provide a backstop for the Northern Qiang cavalry and half to supervise them.

Even Li Xundao had never imagined the Yan would choose to break westward.

Still less had he imagined... that the Yan breakout would look like this.

And the most important turning point of all... came from simple bad luck.

The general commanding this Qian force had been standing too far forward while directing the center.

One Yan rider drove his horse into a leap.

The Qian commander's guards managed to impale the cavalryman in midair before he could reach their general.

But the falling rider and horse still crashed toward him with enormous force.

The unlucky Qian general dodged the main impact by twisting aside.

Unfortunately... a cavalry saber spinning loose under the momentum flew into his neck.

Exactly where his armor could not protect him.

Perhaps that old thief Heaven had truly decided to show Prince Pingxi mercy this time.

Perhaps, for once, instead of deliberately targeting him, Heaven had chosen to grant him a little favor in luck.

But that luck had been built atop the self-sacrifice of an enormous number of Jingnan cavalrymen.

It was accident.

And yet... it looked almost inevitable.

In any case... the Qian army collapsed.

They had already performed better than ordinary Qian troops.

Even elite Chu infantry, faced with a charge like this, probably could not have done much better.

The formation broke.

The army collapsed.

The Qian began fleeing.

This time, the Yan did not pursue.

First, there was no need.

Second... they no longer had enough strength left to do it.

The ground was covered with Yan corpses, Qian corpses, and warhorses.

Many were not dead.

But most had suffered such catastrophic damage to bone and organs that although they still breathed... all they could do was wait to die.

Prince Pingxi had not led the charge this time.

He had not even joined the fighting.

Now... he came forward carrying the Black Dragon Banner.

"Send our brothers on their way!"

"Yes!"

There was no time to mourn.

No time to say farewell.

No time even for a trace of sorrow.

Any brother who could no longer ride... had to be personally sent away by his own comrades.

There was nothing to feel guilty about.

They had overturned the Qian capital.

If they fell alive into Qian hands...

Heaven alone knew what torture and humiliation awaited them.

Chen Yuan lay in a pool of blood.

During the earlier clash with the Northern Qiang cavalry, he had lost one arm.

A fast-moving horse gave a rider tremendous offensive force.

Sometimes you did not even need to swing your saber.

Simply gripping it firmly while the horse thundered past could inflict horrific damage.

But the same force applied in both directions.

Now... two long spears had pierced straight through Chen Yuan's chest.

He was lying on the ground... but not fully.

The rear shafts of the spears propped his back some distance above the earth.

He looked like meat skewered on giant toothpicks.

Zheng Fan came to Chen Yuan's side.

In truth... he and Chen Yuan had never shared much personal affection.

This was even the man who had once urged Chen Yang to put the yellow imperial robe on Zheng Fan and push him toward rebellion.

Did that make Chen Yuan a loyal minister and good general?

By the strictest moral standard... no.

It truly did not.

But Li Fusheng and Xu Wenzu had once urged Marquis Zhenbei to rebel and become Emperor too.

That did not prevent anyone from later recognizing both men as wholeheartedly loyal to Great Yan.

There was an enormous difference between wanting to do something... and actually doing it.

Besides... what did any of that have to do with Prince Pingxi now?

"Your Highness..."

Chen Yuan grinned.

Blood foam kept spilling from his mouth.

Zheng Fan took Wuya.

Then drove it directly into Chen Yuan's chest.

Wuya was a treasured saber, sharp enough to shave iron like mud.

And Chen Yuan's armor had already been ruined almost beyond recognition.

The blade... entered his body.

At a moment like this... there was no need for extra words.

Nothing meaningful remained to say.

Should Chen Yuan tell him:

I never got to see Your Highness put on the dragon robe?

Should he say:

I truly never imagined I'd die here?

Should he say:

If I'd known this would happen, I should have...

Pointless.

No strength remained for that sort of thing.

Chen Yuan's body suddenly went rigid.

With his remaining hand, he seized Wuya's blade and twisted it slightly inside himself.

"Your Highness... safe journey..."

Then... the rigidity left him.

His body softened.

He was dead.

Zheng Fan pulled Wuya free.

He looked at Chen Yuan once.

Then said:

"Safe journey."

Immediately afterward...

Zheng Fan swept his gaze across the battlefield.

When they left camp... there had been ten thousand iron cavalry.

Now... fewer than two thousand men could still remain in the saddle.

Every one of them was wounded.

Every one drenched in blood.

And among them were many who would clearly not last much longer.

They had broken the Northern Qiang cavalry.

They had broken a Qian Imperial Guard force.

No... not broken.

Crushed underfoot!

And even of these two thousand... nobody knew how many would remain after the next stage of the escape.

Zheng Fan pressed his lips together.

Then called out:

"This Prince will remember.

"I will always remember that eight thousand brothers died here... for me."

He raised his voice.

He lifted his saber.

"This Prince will not let them remain buried forever in foreign soil!

"One day...

"I will turn this place... into territory of Great Yan!

"They are tired.

"Let them rest here for a while.

"In the future... we will come back and visit them again!"

All Zheng Fan had ever wanted from this second life... was to live freely and according to his own heart.

Be cautious when caution was needed.

Avoid entangling himself in cause and consequence whenever he could.

Enjoy his own life.

Why care if floodwaters swallowed the world outside?

Even when facing the Queen Mothers of Jin and Zhao, all he had done was touch a hand, steal a little tofu, and leave it at that.

Nothing more.

Why?

Because he feared trouble.

Unfortunately...

Great Yan's Prince Pingxi had always wanted to live according to his own wishes.

And before today, the debts of favor he truly carried in his heart numbered so few he could probably count them on one hand.

In this respect... he had always been stingy beyond measure.

Yet today... right here... he had acquired eight thousand debts in a single breath.

Eight thousand favors.

Eight thousand lives owed.

I, Zheng Fan, have never claimed to be a good man.

Never claimed to be a hero.

If anything, I admit freely that I am treacherous, cunning, and greedy without limit.

But there is one stubborn principle I truly believe in.

A debt... must be repaid.

...

The Qian encirclement arrived.

It could be said that the Qian army had already done everything in its power to march quickly and tighten the ring.

But... they were still too late.

The Yan army... guarding its royal banner... had escaped the encirclement.

If this could still be called an escape.

Li Xundao stood upon the battlefield.

The blood had not yet congealed.

Wounded Northern Qiang and Qian soldiers were still groaning everywhere, being treated where possible.

As for the Yan... almost no living wounded remained behind.

What kind of decisiveness was this?

What kind of conviction?

Li Xundao stood there, his heart filled with shock.

He knew the soldiers Prince Pingxi had led into Qian this time were not his own direct eastern-Jin troops.

Yet even troops who were not his personal force... had still been willing to use a method this brutal, this absolute, to break him free.

As Chancellor of a state...

Li Xundao looked at matters differently from ordinary men.

What he saw here... was the terrifying authority Prince Pingxi held within the Yan military.

The Yan army had already come to love Prince Pingxi... the way it had once loved Prince Jingnan and Prince Zhenbei.

Add the feat of overturning Shangjing on this campaign... and his personal prestige would now climb to its absolute peak.

Prince Jingnan was gone.

But a new Prince Jingnan had not merely begun rising.

He was already here.

This was, in both name and reality, the supreme commander of all Great Yan's armies.

Li Xundao was not naive enough to believe the new Yan Emperor, so similar in temperament to his father, would now do something stupid enough to hurt his own people and delight his enemies.

Especially when that Emperor had sent his Crown Prince to Prince Pingxi's side long ago.

Li Xundao absently lifted a lock of his hair.

When His Majesty learned that Yan's late Emperor had died, Prince Zhenbei had died of illness, and Prince Jingnan had gone far away... the Emperor had once sighed:

"At last...

"I can breathe."

No.

Your Majesty.

I'm afraid... you still need to keep holding that breath.

A rare distortion appeared across Li Xundao's almost transcendent, immortal-like features.

"Pass down the order! The entire army pursues! Pursue them to the death!

"Send orders to every commandery, prefecture, city, and county along their route as well.

"They must capture and kill the Yan rebel Zheng Fan!

"Under no circumstances may he escape back to Yan!"

"We obey!"

"We obey!"

There was one more sentence... that Li Xundao did not say aloud.

Before his cultivation was destroyed, he had been among the greatest Qi Refiners in all Great Qian after Master Cang.

Otherwise, he could never have produced the astonishing feat of inviting Zheng Fan onto the mountain years ago.

His cultivation might now be gone.

But all he had once comprehended of Heaven's Dao had merely transformed into the things he now saw, heard, and felt in the mortal world.

And he carried a premonition.

If Prince Pingxi truly returned safely to Yan this time... then in the future...

Great Qian... would face something terrifying beyond measure.

...

"We pay respects to Your Majesty! Long live Your Majesty! Long, long live Your Majesty!"

"We pay respects to Your Majesty! Long live Your Majesty! Long, long live Your Majesty!"

"Heh. Have all of you come kneeling here to beg for my mercy?"

The Emperor sat above them.

His gaze rested on Prince Fu Zhao Yuannian, the Princess Consort of Prince Fu, and the other members of Prince Fu Residence prostrated below.

They had not followed Prince Pingxi in the breakout.

There were simply too many women in the group.

Trying to keep up would have been...

No.

There was no possibility of keeping up at all.

So when Qian troops entered the former Yan camp... the entire Prince Fu household had already changed into formal dress, prepared an incense table, and waited.

Under circumstances like these, no matter how lawless the soldiers or generals might be, nobody dared decide on his own to kill members of the imperial clan.

Thus... they were brought to the imperial field headquarters.

Brought directly before the Emperor.

His Majesty's face was iron-blue.

Zhao Yuannian trembled slightly.

But he still spoke.

"Reporting to Your Majesty: we know our crimes are grievous. Though Your Majesty is benevolent, we still would not dare beg for forgiveness."

"Zhao Yuannian. So even you know your crimes are grievous?"

"Yes. This guilty subject knows. But before Your Majesty passes judgment upon Prince Fu Residence, Yuannian asks permission to relay a message from one man."

"Zheng Fan?"

"Yes."

"What does he want to say to me? Does he want me to stop pursuing him? Does he want peace? Or has he become delusional enough to demand that I cede land and pay silver?"

Zhao Yuannian shook his head.

Then looked directly at the Emperor.

"Prince Pingxi said:

"'I ask His Majesty to treat the entire Prince Fu household well.

"'This Prince...

"'will exchange the Crown Prince, the Empress, and the imperial Princes for them.'"

[End of Chapter 866]