A special thank you to my patrons:
—Jacob Mooe, kevin Williams, ZaberZ, Archer, Acedia, kurtis newman, Fredrik Dahlman, Nithin Samuel, Little Sand, Dradin Hebrhal, Luca August, Kyle.S406, Alin Kadas, Sarah Ann Thomas, sediaz, Xanex44.
You can read 50 chapters ahead of everyone on p@treon.
P@TREON - [email protected]/lessaservantofcosmos
(just replace the "@" with "a")
ps: Please support me on P@treon. I can really use your help!
————————————————————
"Kill!"
"Kill!"
Men shouting the same language hacked and stabbed at one another. The two sides differed only slightly in their clothing and adornments; in everything else, they were the same.
The same yellow skin, the same dark eyes, the same crimson blood. All of them had wives, children, and aging parents back home. All of them were complete strangers who had never laid eyes on one another before this moment. All of them could laugh, all of them could feel pain, all of them could weep…
Yet in this moment, they fought like mortal enemies, each man thinking only of driving his spear into the body of the man across from him, of using his war blade to hack off an opponent's limbs or cleave away his head.
In this moment, humanity had shriveled into a mote of dust so tiny it was barely visible, while bestial blood surged and rampaged through every vessel in their bodies…
"Kill him!"
Ye Xiong heaved with all his might and kicked aside the shield blocking his path, then brought his blade down to cut open a personal guard of Sun Jian who had left a gap in his defense. But he himself failed to guard against the war swords that came sweeping at him from both sides, and in an instant two brilliant blossoms of blood burst open upon his body.
There was no helping it. Sun Jian's personal guards and soldiers clustered thickly around him in a protective ring, and Ye Xiong, try as he might, could not fight his way in. Meanwhile, the soldiers he had brought with him were melting away rapidly, like the last lingering patches of snow upon a summer mountaintop.
A searing, bone-gnawing agony tore through Ye Xiong's entire body. Roaring with fury, he trapped a thrusting spear under his armpit and then twisted his body violently, sending the spear-wielding soldier and the man beside him tumbling into a heap. He swung his war blade left and right, cutting down two more men in succession, but in the process his own arm was slashed by another soldier. Immediately after, three more spears came stabbing toward him, and Ye Xiong had no way to evade. The spears punched through his body.
Ye Xiong let out a wet, spraying cough of blood-flecked froth. Suddenly he reached out and seized the spearman who had impaled him from the front, dragging the man right up to his face.
The spear had passed clean through his body. The young soldier who had just been wild with ecstasy at having slain an enemy commander was now so terrified that he nearly lost control of his bladder. His arm was clamped tight in Ye Xiong's grip; he tried to wrench himself free but found it was like being held fast in a pair of iron pincers. All he could do was stare wide-eyed as that war blade rose high into the air. He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a shriek of pure terror…
With a sharp whistle of air, a head went soaring upward, spinning in midair, before landing with a heavy thud upon the ground. It bounced twice, rolled a half turn in a small circle, and gradually came to a stop.
As Sun Jian passed by Ye Xiong's body, he paused for half a beat, tilting his head the slightest bit, as though offering a silent nod of respect for the man's fierce valor. Then he continued onward.
The spearman was still standing there with his eyes shut, howling at the top of his lungs, until someone smacked him on the back of the head. "You're not dead yet! What in the hell are you screeching about?"
The spearman opened his eyes. Ye Xiong's headless body, propped up by several spears, leaned at an angle and had not yet fallen to the ground. Sun Jian, meanwhile, had already moved on with his personal guards, cutting a swath through the enemy like a farmer reaping crops in the field…
××××××××××××××××
In the rear, Hu Zhen, who had been straining with all his might to rally the scattered troops, suddenly felt his cheek twitch. He stared out over the chaotic flicker of firelight within the encampment and abruptly felt as though some unseen hand had clenched tight around his heart. A cold sweat drenched him.
It was not that Hu Zhen shared some psychic connection with Ye Xiong. Rather, the level of shouting and the clangor of battle within the camp had abruptly dropped off, and for a battle-hardened veteran like Hu Zhen, that was an unmistakable signal.
Ye Xiong had always served as a subordinate commander under him, his trusted colonel. They had been together since their days in Xiliang, fighting shoulder to shoulder on the battlefield, and yet today…
Hu Zhen's rage suddenly erupted. Bellowing at the top of his lungs, he demanded to know where Lü Bu had gone. He flailed his arms in fury, spraying spittle, as though he could vent all of his anguish and fury in one explosive outburst.
All at once, the sound of hoofbeats came thundering from behind Hu Zhen's position. Several firebrands bobbed and floated in the air, so startling the soldiers around Hu Zhen that they were thrown into a fresh panic…
When they steadied their nerves and looked more closely, they realized the firebrands were merely being carried in the hands of several cavalrymen and were not some demonic apparitions.
The cavalry parted to open a path, and Lü Bu and his men slowly rode forward.
From atop Red Hare, Lü Bu tilted his chin upward and said, "I pay my respects to Commander Hu." His tone was level enough, but the mockery layered within his words was utterly impossible to conceal.
Hu Zhen ground his teeth and snarled, "Cavalry Commander Lü! Where were you just now?"
Lü Bu gave a soft laugh and replied, "I was naturally occupied with gathering up the horses that had stampeded in the chaos. Why, Commander Hu, do you have some instruction for me?" The contempt in Lü Bu's speech was laid completely bare, not even the slightest effort made to disguise it.
Hu Zhen, of course, could hear it plainly. His fury was so intense it felt as if his very blood was about to ignite and burn him alive from the inside. "Lü Fengxian! I am ordering you to advance immediately and retake the camp!"
Lü Bu looked momentarily startled by the demand, and then he threw his head back and let out a great roaring laugh. It was a long moment before his face turned cold once more. "Commander Hu, are you certain you have thought this through clearly?"
That ice-cold, ominous tone finally jolted Hu Zhen like a splash of freezing water, pulling him back somewhat from his uncontrollable rage.
Right now, the soldiers Hu Zhen had managed to rally numbered only a little over a thousand. Nearly two thousand other troops had either already died inside the camp or had fled to who-knew-where…
Compared to Hu Zhen's position, Lü Bu's cavalry forces were still relatively intact and in good order.
If one were to follow the most tactically sound approach right now, the correct move would be to form ranks and stand ready, not to send cavalry charging headlong into a camp that had already descended into total chaos. Doing so would be tantamount to throwing the cavalry away to die—essentially, a completely meaningless act.
If this were the enemy's camp, such a charge might at least have the effect of disrupting their formations further. But this was their own camp, already shattered into a hopeless rout. Committing cavalry into that mess would only restrict their speed and strip away the greatest advantage of mounted troops. In terms of altering the present situation, the effort expended would yield only a meager fraction of the desired result.
A more aggressive course of action would be to dispatch cavalry around both flanks of the camp to cut off Sun Jian's line of retreat, while Hu Zhen held the front and absorbed the pressure. Of course, such a strategy would only have any hope of success if one could rely on the assumption that Yangren City would not send any further reinforcements to Sun Jian…
Thus, in the current situation, the viable options were truly very few.
Lü Bu stared at Hu Zhen and said coldly, "At Guangcheng, you refused to heed my good counsel, and in your greed for glory you rashly advanced, leading to this crushing defeat. Yet you still do not reflect on your mistakes and remain determined to persist in your obstinate course! Commander Hu, I am very curious to see how you will possibly explain all of this before the Chancellor!"
Hu Zhen glared back at Lü Bu with eyes ablaze in fury, grinding his teeth together with a harsh grating sound. But when he looked at Lü Bu's assembled troops, he ultimately swallowed the vicious anger in his heart by sheer force. It felt like forcing a jagged, sharp-edged stone straight down into his chest and gut, lacerating him raw all the way from his throat to his stomach until he could taste the metallic tang of blood…
The sky gradually brightened with the coming dawn. After breaking through the encampment and burning the enemy's supplies and baggage, Sun Jian was shrewd enough not to let greed lead him into overreaching. Under the cover provided by Han Dang's cavalry, he withdrew his forces back into Yangren City.
His camp overrun and his provisions torched, Hu Zhen had no choice in the end but to swallow his bitter hatred and lead his troops in retreat. Left behind was only Ye Xiong's lonely head, dangling forlornly from the walls of Yangren.