Chapter Eight: How To Win
“Who is he?”
After this cultivator left the camp, one of the officials of the Warden’s Office could not help but ask standing next to Sima Cuo.
From Tang Mei’s display, everyone had underestimated his abilities in the past. Since Sima Cuo set the place of the final battle at Tianqi City, then Tang Mei had likely expected this, and there were powerful cultivators going to the city to help. Determining the possession of the city would be a fight between these powerful cultivators.
Clearly, this ghostly cultivator who looked like a strategist cultivated the dark path of ghosts. Cultivators who did so usually had a hard time reaching realm seven than other cultivators, but once they did, their tactics were more strange and harder to deal with.
During the Deer Mountain Conference, Yan Ying who had posed such a threat to Yuanwu was the best example.
But from a certain point of view, the past of Yin energy and ghosts was unorthodox, and putting the key to victory on a person the Warden’s Office was not familiar with was not as reassuring as they were on a grand master that everyone knew.
“There are not many who abandoned Ba Mountain Sword Field, but he is the one among them who has killed the most.” Sima Cuo looked at this official from the Warden’s Office and said, “He has not come here because of me.”
“Ghost……”The expressions of many officials changed. The Warden’s Office official paled. He only said a word, but because he remembered who this was, he was unable to say the second word.
**
“What are these Chu people wanting to do?” Wei Wujiu walked out of the tent and looked darkly at the dust from the Chu border.
There was a great distance between the Yin Mountain and the Yangshan Commandery. This meant that it was not possible to pass news quickly between the two battlefields. When the Chu army in the Yin Mountain area rode madly in the night and started the final battle, the Yangshan Commandery side had not received the military news.
But if someone were to watch the entire situation, they would find before the Chu soldiers who were on the Yin Mountain border had not changed. The conflict between the Qin and Chu armies in the Yangshan Commandery area had started earlier than in the Yin Mountains.
Most of the Qin troops in Yangshan Commandery were not far from the seventy thousand Chu people. The cavalry from the Chu who had been killed that night were one of the vanguards from the Chu non-army’s left flank. After that, the main Chu army on the border started to move towards the lake where the Chu people were. They seemed to plan to retreat and lure the Qin army to cross the border, but two days ago, the Chu army officially crossed the border, entered Yangshan Commandery, and then moved at many times their usual speed.
Today, when the sun rose, Wei Wujiu sent the order for the entire army to advance at full speed to face the enemy. If the Chu army did not retreat, then at noon at the latest, the battle of Yangshan Commandery would absolutely start.
The Qin army had been waiting and on guard for many days. Even when moving forward to face the enemy, they were like an enormous mouth, and their advantage in numbers formed a state where they were going to swallow their enemy.
So no matter how much battle experience Wei Wujiu had, he could not understand why the Chu military was doing this. In his view, the only possibility was that there were major problems in the Chu court or the military.
“Why would it be like this?”
Wei Wujiu was not the only one who could not understand. Even Ji Xingbai could not understand. But unlike Wei Wujiu, he knew who to ask.
“There is no reason.” Consort Zhao Xiang looked at the growing plumes of dust and said in a voice only he could hear. “This is something that was agreed on.”
“Agreed on, so how to win?” Ji Xingbai could not understand.
Consort Zhao Xiang did not answer, it was like she had not heard him. She looked silently at the sky above the Chu lands she was facing. The clouds formed, as heavy as cities, and then were torn apart by the primal energies of the universe into streams.
The world started to tremble.
No matter if they understood or not, tens of thousands of Chu soldiers and Qin soldiers collided together under the eyes of her and these seventy thousand people. The Chu Dynasty army formed an arrow shape that stabbed into the Qin army, while the Qin army used a winged formation like they wanted to surround the Chu army.
Countless hooves stomped on the ground as smoke and dust danced madly. Swords and soldiers met. The air was filled with blood and limbs. The primal energies of the universe on the plains formed turbulent flows that swept up living horses and soldiers. even the heavy chariots, seal weapons, the arrows and the flying swords were caught up and swept into the sky.
This was a battle so great it was unimaginable. Ordinary cultivators could not gather together primal energies of the universe in such a chaotic situation. They could only rely on their own vital energy and primal energies stored in their bodies to fight, and their power had decreased greatly compared to usual. The armies which had tangled together formed a bloody millstone, a true hell.
When the two armies first made contact, they were thirty miles from the small lake where the seventy thousand were. But even so, gusts of wind brought along large metal pieces, bloody debris and even flying swords that fell into the lake.
As time passed, the main battlefield grew closer and closer to the small lake. Bloody lines started to appear in the clear lake water. The soil of the battlefield was soaked in blood and so sticky that when powerful forces fell to the ground, no more dust billowed up, but waves of blood. The sun in the sky was shrouded by bloody clouds, and seemed to turn red as well, becoming a bloody sun in the sky.
The cavalry on both sides seemed to be gone. Even the chariots had lost their original use, stuck in the blood and unable to form a perfect formation. There were zigzags of combat teams without any refined formations who just fought instinctively. Even as the light dimmed, the chaotic primal energies of the universe still swept the battlefield. Most of the dust had dissipated, so people could see the vast battle even more clearly.
Ji Xingbai’s body was trembling from the start, and how, even his soul seemed to have left his body. His body was almost completely numb. He was not a general, but even he could see the direction the battle was taking.
At the start of the battle, the Chu army had been able to advance and force the Qin army back. This meant that at the start, the Chu army had the advantage at the start. But now, he saw many of the enormous seal weapons of the Chu had fallen, but the Qin army flanks were still able to advance.
The Chu army’s advantage was disappearing, and they seemed powerless to stop the Qin army from surrounding them. If there were no miracles, the victory of the battle would not be one side losing greatly, but the Chu army being completely slaughtered!
Where was the miracle?
He saw there seemed to be reserves at the rear of the Qin army, not truly on the battlefield. Some of the light cavalry were clearly for the final chase and slaughter.
Ji Xingbai could not help but turn to Consort Zhao Xiang and hoped to see an answer from her eyes. The moment he turned, he saw that her eyes seemed to start burning. The feeling of flames came from the bright light in her eyes.
She had been watching all this time, but now, she started to walk.
