Chapter 36: Vanishing Into Ashes And Bi Fang Fire
In the 27th year of the Shu Tian Calendar, this defensive battle in the Southern Border led both the defending and attacking sides, after experiencing and surviving it, to reach a consensus: the defenses on Yongji Pass were exceptionally sufficient. However, the defenders were quite proud of this conclusion, while the attackers cursed Yongji Pass with fear, calling it an extremely cunning slaughterhouse.
From the first wave of “head-lowered deathsworn” leading the charge, it took one shichen before the black tide truly managed to set up enough ladders on the city wall.
Notably, the ladders were not placed directly on the battlements, because Yongji Pass’s city walls were fully equipped with specialized lever devices that could pry up the top ends of ladders placed directly on the battlements, then flip them over along with the people clinging to them.
After several rounds of unfortunates from the Southern Border falling to their deaths, they finally found a method: position the ladders half a meter below the battlements, where there was no leverage point for the devices, and then these Southern Border soldiers climbed up, using hammers to hammer scavenged Da Yao arrowheads into the city bricks as the final handholds to reach the battlements.
But on the battlements, the command flags turned, and the Wu Family Army defending the pass employed a brand-new tactic.
Yellow liquid flowed out from the drainage mouths on the topmost parapets of the city walls—oh, that was yellow mud slurry. Its effect was to make the city walls sticky and slippery, difficult to climb.
Oil had this effect too, and golden juice as well, but Yongji Pass’s city walls were on a large scale; to ensure effective coverage over a hundred meters of wall, stirred mud slurry was the most economical.
Soon, from the tile-quality round tubes on the city walls, the mud slurry seeped out like diarrhea, drenching the entire city wall in patches of yellow mud bands. On these yellow mud bands, even the Snake Tribe, most adept at climbing, could not slither; though these Snake Tribe tried to zigzag from the sides, the larger the zigzags, the greater the top-down strikes they endured.
Snake People taking shortcuts to climb had not yet praised their own cleverness when they suddenly felt a foul wind from above; they were easily smashed down by “high-altitude falling objects.” They fell below.
In just five minutes, the yellow mud slurry divided the climbing area into eight small sections; the “ants” of the ant climb attack could only move their ladders to those wall segments not covered by yellow mud slurry to climb.
However, the places without yellow mud slurry drainage mouths were all “indented” areas on the city walls, meaning climbers would face attacks from both left and right sides. Thus, these fools from the Southern Border, after switching walls and finally selecting another spot to climb, encountered garrison on both side battlements wielding long weapons—poles with axe heads or hammer heads—smashing and hacking down one by one.
…Perspective pulls to a certain small battlefield on the city wall…
In a battlement responsibility area, Wen Si directed his squad to take turns dealing with these emerging Southern Border unfortunates; axe spears hit true every time, each person smashing seven or eight times before resting—it had almost become assembly line homework.
Every smash was followed two seconds later by a thud from below; the axe head could actually split the ladder directly, but there was no need—this excellent “heavenly spirit cover hard-receiving axe” position had to be preserved.
At the position, Wen Si, pulling the crossbow string, watched the soldiers complain that hammering took too long, their arms sore.
Wen Si cursed: “Taking heads this easily and you still complain of tiredness! Four days ago when I went out of the city, thrusting people with a pole was risking my life! You lot—”
At this point, Wen Si’s words cut off; he raised his crossbow, aiming at a Snake Person on the battlement side trying to kick off the wall bricks directly—this zigzagging Snake Person, midway up the wall three or four meters from the battlement, was nailed through the neck by a crossbow bolt, lost balance, and fell.
At first, a soldier whose arms still had strength thought Wen Si was stealing kills, thinking: “I could handle it myself; when the Snake Person climbs up, my weapon can reach, just need a few more strikes.” But now, with stamina constantly depleting, he realized Wen Si was filling gaps.
In this fixed position, killing one periodically kept the perfect rhythm. If suddenly two came up together, striking one with the pole might let the other grab it, leading to losing the weapon and position.—Just like a city defense mini-game; sometimes just one extra wave in that moment lets the enemy break through. Wen Si with his crossbow had wide control range, preemptively resolving such threats to ensure the assembly line of smashing skulls with axes on the wall didn’t get “product jumping the queue.”
The soldier glanced at the city wall corner and shouted to Wen Si: “Brother Wen, the corpses below are piled sky-high already; why don’t they give up?”
Wen Si once again laboriously foot-stepped the bowstring; as for his little brother’s question, he pointed at the city gate to answer: “Hear that ‘thud thud thud’ battering the gate? They’re holding their breath, hoping to smash the gate open and charge in, so they want to pin us on the walls.”
The soldier poked his head out to look at the piled corpses below the wall and the continuing surge of southern barbarians: “Then they’re really stupid.”
Wen Si: “Do your job! Don’t nag.”
Though Wen Si and the soldier didn’t know what arrangements the commander had at the city gate side, by now in the war, the battlements seemed deliberately to bait the enemy into attacking in various ways, and each time it seemed to point out a method to try, but after the command flags on the walls signaled, the Da Yao garrison found the southern barbarians were just finding another way to deliver heads.
Wen Si knew his own general: “Tsk tsk, young age but truly wicked. Oh, I mean, wise and mighty.”
…Both sides’ stamina bars depleting…
At the city gate side, finally a city gate was breached, but soon they faced a barbican; when these big fellows charged in swinging massive stone hammers through the broken gate, they only saw the backs of Da Yao soldiers who had just been bracing the gate with wooden planks and pillars quickly retreating behind the barbican, and upon seeing them trying to close the second gate, they panicked and hurriedly chased after.
But these big fellows running fiercely didn’t see the road; with ropes suddenly pulled taut from the ground, they took a massive tumble. Upon getting up and looking closely, the ropes were straightened by the elastic force of nearby bamboo—the giant monsters, originally erupting in rage from the fall, realized no one was hiding nearby pulling lines, but it was just cunning Yao People-set timed mechanisms, and thus dispiritedly smashed around wildly.
However, in their moment of “learning from a setback,” the gate separating the barbican and inner city had already shut tight. So they chased to the next gate and began smashing again, blocking up at the new large gateway.
But suddenly they sensed something off above the city gate tunnel they entered—that is, there were several openings above the gate tunnel, and large vats of golden juice were prepared in them; Da Yao defenders dumped massive lime inside, stirred it, and soon the pre-made dish was ready.
This round of “golden juice” pouring had maxed kill power; the two clumps of big fellows blocking at the barbican entrance and exit were scalded with skin splitting and flesh bursting.
The golden juice attack instantly stripped over a hundred of these charging big fellows of combat ability, but then one by one pitch-black iron bombs fell, shrapnel inflicting secondary damage on these giant monsters’ scalded skin, the pain making them howl; under the continuous bomb thunder intimidation, the giant monsters then fled in panic.
And when these big fellows panickedly emergency-withdrew from the barbican, battlefield morale collapsed.
The little ones climbing the walls, hearing the big ones’ escape screams, how could they not know “our army is defeated.”
Thus these little ones jumped one by one onto the corpse piles, preparing to flee, but with broken legs, they were soon picked off one by one by crossbow bolts from the walls—this siege battle reimbursed over two thousand people. As for the remaining ant climb attackers, they scrambled away fleeing, leaving only this steaming, stinking corpse pile below the walls.
Note: If it were Age of Discovery colonial wars, persisting under locals’ absolute numerical advantage siege until locals suffered heavy casualties and had to withdraw would end the script, because the castle garrison lacked ability to chase out for field battles.
But Wu Fei had field armies on hand, and they had been resting and building strength. They did not participate in the battlement wars but waited in the barbican rear on standby.
…Pursuit begins…
With horns sounding on the walls, the victorious laborer army on the walls mustered their last strength, shooting arrows to kill remaining enemies on one side, while on the other peeking over the battlements to watch the pursuit battle.
Among them, some held shields and beat rhythms on the walls, especially upon seeing their own cavalry impacting behind the Horned People and Clawed People, black tide-like mowing down a huge swath like harvesting wheat, then trampled into ground corpses by hooves. This spectacle was exhilarating.
With Zhao Tu’s griffin guiding direction in the sky to lead ground cavalry splitting into two pincer prongs charging into the Southern Border camp—that barely counts as a camp, all made of one-to-two-meter twigs thatched huts, not even many proper sheds.
Zhao Tu directed cavalry to throw combustibles, then set the trash heap ablaze with fire; in this battle, the Southern Border black tide had no chance to regroup—the originally routed Southern Border foreign races were already terrified, chased and trampled to death, souls scattered.
The heavy slow big fellows had just escaped from below the walls when they confirmed this band of kill gods had entered their camp. Why bother—directly scattered like stars across the sky; the remaining over four thousand black tide were gone.
Cheers erupted from the walls; aside from necessary defense, the armored warriors orderly withdrew from the walls to eat. Collisions of wooden spoons and rice basins were few; in this battlefield mess hall on the inner side of the walls, besides “squelch” and “slurp,” there were no other sounds.
However, another round of alarms came from the battlements: a team of Crow People hiding in the jungle on the battlefield’s left flank charged the city tower. Wu Fei was unclear on their purpose charging after the siege battle ended. But sentries still prepared immediately.
In this war, Wu Fei’s troop control ability leveled up again—that is, in most key position areas, during combat, he could time squad rotations perfectly, let alone at this battle-end phase.
Yes, mid-battle squad swaps were like changing parts on a running machine; because during peak combat intensity, handovers were most prone to chaos—if squads withdrew too early without backups topping up, or the incoming troops’ paths weren’t planned well, blocked by battlefield chaos and late, not to mention clogging other routes—that was it.
Crow People circled eighty paces away in the air; Da Yao crossbow arrays began preparing, waiting for orders to fire. Not that crossbow range couldn’t reach, but these birds had vast aerial dodge range; moreover, these aerial flying bird people lacked distant attack means—they’d only close to fifty paces to really attack.
Wu Fei watched these bird people; they didn’t launch an attack but the lead bird person flew over alone—Wu Fei had bows and crossbows alert farther out, letting this guy approach.
This bird person tossed a bamboo tube then quickly left; inside the bamboo tube was “snake skin book.”
Clearly this was intercepted intelligence work from Xiao Qing’s side, but tossing it to him now—what did it mean?
Wu Fei gazed at these still-circling bird people in the air, smiled, took a carving knife to write a letter on bamboo slips, tied it to a bow and arrow, and shot it toward the bird people; the bird people caught the arrow and flew away.
…Fine birds choose trees to rest…
This Southern Border black tide, Ang Ri and Jia Mude’s sides had already split—this was him deliberately letting the Crow People tribe split and run.
The Crow People played no major role throughout this black tide campaign.
Last night, after the first wave failure, the barbarian tribes were unhappy with the Crow People’s jungle circling without cooperating to dive the walls—cowardice. (Crow People side: You fools didn’t see another batch of reserve armored soldiers quietly sitting behind the walls; I signaled you, but you fools didn’t listen.)
Just as the black tide first failed, harassment voices from various races emerged on all sides, but no Crow People language (because Ang Ri had just brought his clansmen to settle back; Wu Fei here had no related turncoats defecting).
But amid the black tide, Southern Border barbarian noisy shouts began, roughly: “We’re all charging, why aren’t you!” “Freeloading trash!” “Grandpa wants to pluck your feathers!”
Heaven bear witness, Crow People in the Haotian Realm were no match for Dragon Descendants in direct melee; they were proficient only in scouting. Relying on agile aerial positions to dodge arrow rain, but if rushing to walls for melee with armored soldiers, they’d be beaten like drowned rats.
If after this battle fleeing with those Southern Border barbarians, they’d likely become punching bags. Moreover, Crow People could fly—flying away far faster than running.
Ang Ri’s side soon received Wu Fei’s letter; he rode Tai Yue Luan toward Yongji Pass.
These past days, Ang Ri saw Wu Fei-recruited Southern Border foreign races serving as scouts in this battle; judging from this, Wu Fei should be willing to accept useful foreign races’ allegiance.
But this pledge of allegiance, as he neared Yongji Pass side, withdrawing Jia Mude immediately sensed it, cold-hummed, twisted the alchemy furnace, and a wisp of flame floated out.
Here, Ang Ri suddenly felt the flame power on his body go out of control, devouring his “wood essence magic power”; he paused, because he hadn’t used Flowing Ash Pill such weird food, but then he remembered—though he hadn’t used it, he had used his own Bi Fang Fire to re-refine Flowing Ash Pill, and the Flowing Ash Pill’s flame part carried higher sacred bird residual message, so his Bi Fang Fire was affected.
After sensing the flame on him out of control, Ang Ri hurriedly spat out this wood-attribute flame clump; eerie blue appeared on the flame. Then this flame clump flew south.
…Mantis stalking cicada…
Southern Jia Mude sensed the item he hooked over under control, nodded. This was what his ancestral master instructed: timely acquire sacred object from Ang Ri; only obtaining such sacred object could alleviate his tribe’s curse. Yet just as Jia Mude silently chanted the spell, abruptly a blue flame appeared on his finger; scalded by the flame, he jumped up, pinched it out, but the hand gesture was already interrupted.
And the item he dropped, at this moment, flew north.
…Oriole behind…
Three incense sticks later, inside Yongji Pass, San Gu looked at the flame clump in her palm; her controlled blue flame pinched this green fire clump like fingers. Regarding that Li Huo Sect guy in the Southern Border, as fellow companions assisting its transformation, San Gu and Xian Daoren knew his Daoist arts inside out, so easily cracked the “Li Huo Sect wick” method.
San Gu rarely showed a sweet smile: “Next step, it’s my turn to cross into his body.”
With that, San Gu slightly parted her lips, swallowed this Bi Fang flame clump, then used her past power to tamper. Once tampering succeeded, she could dispel that stubborn and ignorant guy’s mountain-like prejudices in his heart.
