Chapter 977: Slaying a Prince

The Chu battle formation was under enormous pressure from every direction. Yan forces on every front had found their own openings and were trying to punch straight through.

But when that heavy-armored cavalry appeared on the battlefield, everyone in the Chu army—from Xiong Tingshan at the top to the lowest common soldier—had their attention ripped toward it in an instant.

There was no helping it. A spectacle that terrifying was impossible to ignore.

Three thousand heavy-armored cavalrymen were not many compared with a battlefield where several hundred thousand soldiers were fighting. But sometimes a single heart-piercing blow delivered at one crucial point was enough to decide the direction of the entire battle.

“Cavalry interception! Move!”

Standing atop his field command platform, Xiong Tingshan issued the order immediately.

Cavalry had always been Great Chu’s most precious military arm. Over these years—no, more accurately, throughout its entire history—Chu had never stopped pursuing stronger cavalry.

People liked saying Great Chu’s infantry stood first beneath Heaven. That was simply the most practical solution for Chu’s terrain and its wars against the Shanyue. In external war, everyone understood the importance of cavalry.

Otherwise, the Situ Clan could never have held Chu south of Zhennan Pass for so long with only a single strategic pass.

At Xiong Tingshan’s command, two gaps opened in the Chu formation. Two cavalry forces burst out at speed, riding to intercept the oncoming heavy cavalry.

It was a painful decision.

Once those two Chu cavalry forces left the formation, they would no longer receive cover from the main body. Whether they succeeded in slowing the terrifying Yan iron cavalry or not, neither unit would return.

Even if they completed their mission successfully, the endless Yan cavalry roaming the battlefield like starving wolves would entangle and butcher them afterward.

No commander used cavalry this way unless he had absolutely no other choice.

And Xiong Tingshan had reached exactly that point.

It took almost no thought to imagine what would happen if that heavy cavalry struck his formation squarely. Here on this vast open plain, once the formation broke and the Chu infantry lost its protection, they would become nothing more than flesh for Yan dogs to tear apart.

The heavy cavalry charge continued.

Every rider’s gaze was iron-hard.

Because their Prince was at the very front.

The Pi Beasts and powerful horses strong enough to carry heavy armor breathed like bellows as well. Not from exhaustion. The savage, violent aura pouring from the Pixiu at the front had ignited every instinct within them, as though the blood in their veins were burning.

Chu cavalry struck from both wings.

Relatively speaking, Zheng Fan, charging at the very front, did not bear the greatest pressure. The Chu cavalry came like two hands reaching out to block them, grabbing first for the shoulders rather than the head. Only the trailing edge of each cavalry force swept across Zheng Fan’s path.

The Pixiu, finally given a chance to fight inside a true battle formation, displayed astonishing skill.

It shifted sideways without losing speed, creating an opening for its master to thrust through.

Pfft!

The tip of the Black Dragon Banner’s staff slammed directly into the Chu rider ahead and hurled him from his saddle. The staff did not pierce the man’s armor, but the force alone was enough to rupture his organs.

In the next instant, the Pixiu shifted again.

Zheng Fan swept the great banner sideways and knocked three more Chu riders from their horses in succession.

Then Zheng Fan lowered his body and ducked beneath a cavalry lance.

The Pixiu simply smashed its body into the attacker, sending man and horse tumbling together.

Neither the Prince above nor the Pixiu beneath him had possessed many opportunities to charge personally into battle over these past years.

Yet at this moment, man and beast fought and coordinated beautifully.

The Prince was, after all, a peak Fourth Grade expert.

Compared with Tian Wujing or Yu Huaping, his talent could only be called ordinary.

Compared with ordinary people, however, he was still a genius among mortals.

As for the Pixiu... how many true Pixiu even existed in all Great Yan?

And Zheng Fan’s particular beast had been used by the Demon Kings for small experiments whenever they were bored.

If they had not managed to experiment it to death, then naturally they had experimented it stronger.

After Zheng Fan knocked down another Chu rider, he completed the first pass through the enemy cavalry and instinctively glanced back.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The heavy cavalry was crushing the battlefield with overwhelming ferocity.

Before them, Chu cavalry looked as flimsy as paper.

They charged.

They were trampled underfoot.

It was like a group of children trying to stop a band of full-grown men.

Completely helpless.

And that was only natural.

In an ordinary cavalry clash, life and death were usually decided in a single instant. If you could not kill the enemy in front of you, then in the next instant he might kill you.

The method for dealing with heavy cavalry was simple.

Stay outside.

Kite them.

Wear down their strength.

Once the heavy riders were exhausted, all that armor would become a burden and the entire situation would reverse.

But the Chu did not have that kind of time.

Even if the Chu cavalry rode around the outside firing arrows, the heavy cavalry could simply ignore them and continue toward its true mission: smashing the Chu infantry formation.

From his command platform, Xiong Tingshan stared at the scene in disbelief.

He had known the chance of stopping them was small.

But he truly had not expected his own cavalry to be this utterly incapable of resistance.

Every person possessed limitations.

If Zheng Fan were ordered to lead infantry through mountain ravines to exterminate Shanyue, or sent into Qian’s southwest to suppress native tribes, he too would become disoriented and uncomfortable once removed from the strategic habits of deep cavalry maneuver and long-distance transfer.

Xiong Tingshan was the same.

A man who had never truly commanded large cavalry corps and learned through repeated real battles could hardly grasp the deepest truths of cavalry warfare.

In this respect, Xiong Tingshan was actually already excellent.

As one of the few surviving first-rate Chu commanders, he understood cavalry better than most.

The problem was that the heavy cavalry Liang Cheng had spent years cultivating and training had already moved beyond the category of traditional cavalry warfare.

Nearly a thousand Pi Beasts alone were enough to make the unit absurd.

In years past, a single Pi Beast would usually have been assigned only to an official of significant rank, someone like Xu Wenzu when he once served as a Military Commissioner.

From mounts, to armor, to weapons, to training, to maintenance, to the methods used to preserve the ability to mount and charge at any moment after entering a battlefield—every detail contained enormous accumulated military wisdom.

In short... this was not merely three thousand cavalrymen wearing heavy armor.

It was a legion of three thousand beasts.

The failure of the Chu cavalry did slow the Yan charge slightly.

But after watching their own cavalry be chopped apart as easily as melons and vegetables, the psychological shock suffered by the Chu infantry at the very front—and the collapse in morale caused by that shock—more than erased the few moments of lost speed.

There were things in this world more terrifying than death.

Quite a few of them, in fact.

These Chu soldiers were imperial-clan Imperial Guards.

They were elite.

They were willing to fight to the death.

But faced with such a sight, the instinctive revulsion of flesh and blood was enough to destroy a man’s will in moments.

Facing an ordinary cavalry charge head-on was already terrifying enough.

Facing heavy cavalry...

“LOOSE!”

Chu officers shouted for the archers to fire.

The scattered, uneven rhythm of the volley revealed exactly how unstable their minds had become.

The moment the arrows came, Zheng Fan flattened himself against the Pixiu’s back.

The Pixiu thoughtfully raised its neck.

Its entire body was armored.

It was not afraid.

Even if an arrow penetrated the armor, its hide and flesh were thick enough to take it.

Besides, its master had finally brought it along for a proper charge after all these years.

Heaven knew how long it would be until the next one.

And several thousand younger brothers were watching from behind.

How could it possibly embarrass itself now?

Arrows clattered against armor.

Several still struck Zheng Fan, but most landed on the outer parts of his body and none touched a vital point.

Earlier, when Zheng Fan had stood in his princely robes and the wind had stirred ten thousand troops while leaving the hem of his robe unmoved, had that really been because his kingly aura suppressed the wind?

Of course not.

It was simply because the princely robe hid secrets.

It was heavy.

The outer layer was decorative embroidery.

Inside, however, ran a weave of secret-silver thread.

Wearing it was equivalent to wearing a suit of extremely durable soft armor beneath formal princely dress.

Its protection was several times better than leather armor.

And this had not even been Siniang’s work.

Years ago, when Ji Old Sixth ordered the palace to make this Regent Prince’s robe, he had already considered Zheng Fan’s “cowardly fear of death” and arranged the protection with extraordinary thoughtfulness.

Fortunately, Great Yan’s Regent Prince was a Fourth Grade Martial Artist.

Put this robe on an ordinary man and he would barely be able to walk.

The distance closed.

Closer.

Closer.

Now!

Zheng Fan clamped the flagstaff tightly beneath his arm.

The Pixiu roared.

Facing the long spears thrust out between the Chu shields ahead, it did not dodge.

It crashed straight into them.

BANG!

The impact smashed open a gap.

Shields shattered.

Shield-bearers were thrown backward.

Even the spearmen behind them were hurled aside.

But the Pixiu’s legs took a heavy blow as well.

The Chu had laid obstacles on the ground.

For a moment, the beast lost all balance.

Zheng Fan sensed it immediately.

He threw the Black Dragon Banner forward, struck the Pixiu’s back with one palm, and separated himself from the mount.

Whoom!

The Pixiu hit the ground and skidded, smashing aside more Chu soldiers as it went.

Then, astonishingly, it scrambled rapidly back to its feet.

Several arrows stuck from its body along with two spears, but it still held its head high and displayed the majesty of Great Yan’s totem beast.

The instant Zheng Fan landed, Wuya came out of its sheath.

Unfortunately, the Chu soldiers around him had not yet managed to close in.

Nor did Zheng Fan get the chance to properly display the saber techniques he had faithfully practiced every afternoon through all these years.

Because from behind him came a continuous eruption of horrific impacts.

The Chu front line collapsed as though someone were shoving over blocks.

Every soldier who dared stand directly in the path of the heavy cavalry was turned into meat paste.

After smashing open the outermost line, that terrifying momentum did not stop.

It kept pushing forward.

This was a battlefield.

And the heavy cavalry was forcefully shoving the entire battlefield ahead of itself.

Zheng Fan stood there holding Wuya.

As the heavy cavalry reached him, the riders instinctively split around their Prince and continued forward.

There was practically no enemy left near Zheng Fan.

A moment earlier, he had been standing on the front line.

Now the front line was ahead of him.

Seen from the eyes of the hawks circling overhead, the Chu formation that had originally stood as solid as bedrock looked as though a huge finger had simply pressed down and dragged through it, crushing open an enormous channel.

The heavy cavalry paid dearly for the charge.

Their heavy armor was their greatest protection.

And also their greatest danger.

Once a rider fell, fractures were almost inevitable.

The comrades behind had no time to pull him clear or avoid him.

He could only be trampled.

And once the charge had begun, the riders could not simply turn around.

Neither men nor mounts had the strength to punch through again immediately.

Even making the turn itself would be difficult.

So many heavy cavalrymen had already fallen into groups of Chu soldiers ahead.

Unable even to maneuver properly, they could only be overwhelmed and killed.

One charge.

Nearly half dead or wounded.

A horrifying casualty rate.

And yet, from the perspective of the commander overseeing the war... utterly worth it.

Because Yan forces all around were already pouring through the breach the heavy cavalry had opened.

If the Chu formation had been a turtle shell, then that shell was now cracked.

The soft flesh inside had become the richest feast imaginable.

The collapse of the Chu army could no longer be avoided.

In fact... it had already begun.

Zheng Fan did not retreat.

He kept moving forward with Wuya in hand.

Very quickly, however, he discovered that his advance was meaningless.

Not only were the heavy cavalrymen already ahead of him, the ordinary Yan cavalry following behind had rushed past too.

The Prince gritted his teeth.

He had barely killed enough to satisfy himself.

But there was nothing else to do.

He turned back toward his Pixiu.

The beast had managed to remain standing until the heavy cavalry passed, but finally its strength failed and it dropped to its knees, lying there.

Zheng Fan inspected it.

The creature still had enough strength to meet his eyes and communicate irritably with him.

Good.

It was not going to die.

Zheng Fan began pulling the arrows from its body.

They had broken skin, but not penetrated deeply.

The Pixiu also knew enough to clamp its muscles around the wounds to stop the bleeding.

But just as Zheng Fan reached for a broken spear embedded in the beast, one of the Chu corpses lying nearby suddenly sprang upright.

The man shot toward Zheng Fan.

A curved blade slashed directly at the Prince’s neck.

Zheng Fan twisted aside quickly.

The blade failed to open his throat, but struck across his chest instead.

Zheng Fan covered the wound with his left hand.

His blood qi had been broken.

The princely robe was cut open.

A bloody gash appeared beneath it.

This was absolutely not an ordinary soldier.

If every Chu common soldier possessed this level of skill, Great Chu would have flown into the heavens long ago.

The assassin gave Zheng Fan no time to recover.

He closed in again.

The Pixiu roared and forced itself upright, preparing to help.

But Zheng Fan’s Wuya moved first.

He blocked.

Three hard exchanges followed.

Zheng Fan felt his blood qi roiling through his entire body and a metallic sweetness rising in his throat.

Still... the assassin failed to get any closer.

By then, nearby Yan soldiers had already noticed the disturbance and were rapidly surrounding them.

The assassin knew he had almost no time left.

After Zheng Fan blocked another saber strike, three short arrows suddenly shot from the man’s sleeve.

But the move produced no surprise at all.

From Zheng Fan’s perspective... if you could disguise yourself as a common soldier and play dead, why would I not expect hidden weapons too?

Wuya swept out in advance.

A curtain of saber qi knocked all three projectiles aside.

The assassin’s eyes tightened.

He prepared to attack again.

Then two Yan riders charged in and hacked at him with cavalry sabers, forcing him backward.

Zheng Fan stopped trying to prove anything.

He retreated quickly.

Not because he was afraid.

He simply needed a few breaths to settle his blood qi.

The earlier charge had already consumed a great deal of strength.

Trading several direct, full-power blows with an assassin only worsened the turmoil inside him.

“Master.”

A’Ming’s voice came from behind Zheng Fan.

“You’re late,” Zheng Fan said with a smile.

“No.”

Zheng Fan turned his head.

Only then did he see the long black arrow buried completely in A’Ming’s chest.

White smoke rose from the blood-soaked shaft.

Clearly, the arrow had been coated in a vicious poison.

A’Ming looked toward the west.

A Chu soldier there was glaring over in absolute fury.

His arrow had failed.

His regret did not last long.

A Yan cavalryman charging through removed half his head with one slash.

By now, a squad of Yan riders had deliberately formed a protective ring around Zheng Fan.

A’Ming calmly pulled the arrow from his own body.

“It really has been a long time since anyone shot me. I’m almost not used to the feeling.”

“How bad is the poison?”

A’Ming shook his head.

“Master may rest assured. For me, it is not a serious problem. Recovery may simply take a little longer.”

“I was willful,” Zheng Fan said.

A’Ming smiled.

“Even if this subordinate had not been here, I still do not believe Master would have died to that arrow. We always joke that Master has terrible luck on battlefields—that open attacks are easy to dodge while hidden arrows always seem to find you. But the point is, through all these years, haven’t we always blocked them for you? This was what we were supposed to do from the beginning. And Master... was never supposed to die.”

Zheng Fan reached out and patted A’Ming’s shoulder.

“A pity. I still haven’t reached Third Grade.”

“This is not flattery. Watching Master charge at the front just now... this subordinate felt something. Master, continue. I can still take a few more arrows for you. Enjoy yourself.”

“Good.”

Zheng Fan raised a hand.

One Yan rider dismounted and offered the Prince his horse.

Zheng Fan mounted, lifted Wuya, and called to the cavalry around him:

“Pass down my order! Every formation in the army is to pursue in one breath all the way across the Wei River! Wherever the Chu army runs, we follow!”

“Yes!”

In the distance, the Chu army was already collapsing.

Yan forces continued cutting forward, doing everything possible to smash every remaining organized Chu formation as quickly as they could.

The same scene was unfolding across battlefield after battlefield.

Everywhere were Yan soldiers hunting prey.

Everywhere were Chu soldiers fleeing south.

Only days ago, Great Chu’s elite army had advanced singing triumphantly.

Now it had become a mass of routed soldiers with shattered morale.

A century ago, the first Marquis Zhenbei had crushed Qian’s northern expedition of five hundred thousand men.

Today, Great Yan’s Regent Prince had crushed a Chu northern expedition of five hundred thousand.

The killing across the battlefield was still continuing.

The war had not completely ended.

But anyone looking at the scene could already say the words without hesitation:

Chu had been beaten flat in this battle.

...

Xiong Tingshan stood with a long saber in hand.

More than two hundred personal guards remained around him.

Beyond them... more than a thousand Yan riders had completed an encirclement.

Bodies from both sides littered the ground.

Xiong Tingshan panted heavily, tiger eyes glaring around him.

Then... a formation of Brocade-Clad cavalry appeared and joined the ring.

Their uniforms stood out sharply amid an army whose normal color was black.

A figure wearing princely robes rode among them.

The Prince raised one hand.

The Yan riders around the encirclement lowered the bows they had already drawn.

Xiong Tingshan shouted:

“Zheng Fan! Those princely robes of yours are barely different from your Yan Emperor’s dragon robes, aren’t they? What I cannot understand is this—why don’t you want to be Emperor yourself?”

Zheng Fan sat on horseback and looked at him from across the ring.

“You never rebelled and made yourself Emperor of Chu either.”

Xiong Tingshan burst into laughter.

“That is because I couldn’t beat my Fourth Brother at the game, so I admitted defeat and bowed my head. But you? That Yan Emperor of yours is a wise sovereign, I admit it. But you might not lose to him. No—you couldn’t possibly lose to him!”

One could hear it plainly.

This battle had defeated Xiong Tingshan completely.

In his eyes now, Great Yan’s Regent Prince was no different from what Prince Jingnan had once been in Nian Yao’s eyes.

Zheng Fan answered:

“Exactly because beating him would be too easy, I can’t even be bothered to play.”

“Hahahahahaha...”

“Why didn’t you run?” Zheng Fan asked.

After the Chu center collapsed, Xiong Tingshan could absolutely have taken the elites around him and fled south ahead of the rout.

In this chaos, it would have been difficult for the Yan to concentrate enough troops simply to hunt one man.

Unless his luck was extraordinarily bad, with this many routed soldiers serving as cover, Xiong Tingshan still had a very good chance of escaping.

“Zheng Fan. Regent Prince. Heh. You should understand why we chose to stake everything on this battle. Better to gamble for one possibility while we still had the strength to fight than let you and the Yan behind you keep slicing flesh from us with a soft knife. Maybe we could overturn the board. Maybe we could reverse the situation. Now the gamble is lost. What would I go back for? If I had been willing to keep dragging out a miserable existence, why would I have come here in the first place?”

“Zheng Fan. If, back then inside that carriage, you had revealed your true identity instead of hiding behind that ‘Young Master Su’ nonsense—if you had simply said you were Zheng Fan—my Fourth Brother might truly have married my sister to you. In Great Chu, you could have been made a prince too. Tell me. Was there really such a possibility? Could Great Chu’s national fortune have turned out differently?”

In truth, through all these recent years, the Chu Emperor had never stopped trying to draw Zheng Fan closer.

At first he had merely hoped to support Zheng Fan in establishing an independent state in eastern Jin.

Later, in letters, he had gone so far as to promise that if Zheng Fan and Xiong Liqing had another son, he would be willing to name that nephew Crown Prince of Great Chu.

Zheng Fan had never been tempted.

And now... his answer to Xiong Tingshan was equally simple.

“No.”

“Why? In what way is my Great Chu inferior to Yan?”

Zheng Fan smiled.

“Because I simply think... Great Yan deserves to unify All Xia.”

“No reasoning?”

“None worth talking about.”

Xiong Tingshan inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled.

Then he shouted again:

“Look at it. After this battle, can Great Chu still threaten Yan? So don’t repeat what happened beneath Yupan City. These are all good sons. Failing to lead them to victory was my incompetence. If you keep exterminating them to the last man now, all you will do is make Chu people hate Yan people even more. It is time for conciliation.”

Zheng Fan answered:

“Since when did you, Xiong Tingshan, become qualified to teach me how to do things?”

“No qualification. A defeated general has no damned qualification for anything. I just pity those sons of mine. Every one of them had a father and mother. Since the greater momentum is gone and resistance has become hopeless, I should at least beg once for their lives.”

“With what?”

“I did not run. I stayed here and waited for you. So I could hand you this head of mine, then let you use it to order them to put down their weapons and surrender. You are the mighty Regent Prince of Great Yan. Surely you no longer need a mountain of human blood to build your fame.”

Zheng Fan did not answer.

Xiong Tingshan held his saber with one hand and pressed the blade against his own neck.

He ordered:

“All of you. Put down your weapons. Surrender.”

None of the personal guards around him moved.

“This Prince is not dead yet!”

At last, the guards dropped their weapons and knelt toward Xiong Tingshan.

Xiong Tingshan looked toward Zheng Fan.

Then shouted:

“Catch this head of mine, Imperial Son-in-Law!”

Pfft!

Xiong Tingshan drove blood qi into his saber and cut his own head from his neck.

The head rolled across the ground.

His headless body toppled backward.

The leader of his personal guards, tears filling his eyes, picked up Xiong Tingshan’s head and slowly walked toward Zheng Fan.

The Brocade-Clad personal guards raised their bows.

The Chu officer stopped before coming too close.

Holding Xiong Tingshan’s head in both hands, he dropped to one knee.

“Imperial Son-in-Law, please accept the head!”

Liu Dahu glanced at Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan gave a slight nod.

Liu Dahu dismounted, walked forward, accepted the head, and brought it back.

Then the Chu guard captain stood.

He walked back to the others, picked up a saber from the ground, and shouted:

“Your Highness! Wait for me!”

The blade swept across his own throat.

Blood sprayed.

He collapsed.

The more than two hundred personal guards kneeling beside Xiong Tingshan’s headless body picked up the weapons they had just discarded.

“Your Highness! This subordinate is coming!”

“Your Highness! Wait for this subordinate!”

More than two hundred guards killed themselves.

Not one remained alive.

Every one followed Xiong Tingshan in death.

The sight wiped the earlier smug amusement from the faces of the Yan riders surrounding them.

Soldiers would always respect men with blood in their veins.

Enemy or friend made no difference.

Zheng Fan moved his gaze away from the bodies and looked at the head in Liu Dahu’s hands.

After a long moment, he ordered:

“Pass down this Prince’s command to the entire army. In this battle, one captured enemy counts for the merit of two severed heads.”

[End of Chapter 977]