Chapter 686: Full Blood of the Earth

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Taoist masters fly through the sky and burrow into the earth, taking heads from a thousand miles away. Buddhist Bodhisattvas, with downcast brows and wrathful eyes, can shake Mount Kunlun with a raised hand. Who dares say a scholar lacks spirit, when in anger he can make the Emperor blanch?Trampling rivers, traversing lakes, and singing songs, I wield a sword that makes immortals kneel. Raising blades, lifting swords, and drinking wine, three hundred thousand iron cavalry conquer the heavens.Welcome to the readers' forum for Fenghuo Xizhuhou — *Sword Snow Stride*.

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[Username: Gong Zhulu]

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[Username: Gong Zhulu]

Author: Fenghuo Xizhuhou [Full Read]Updated: 2014-10-06 21:38:39Word Count: 6,045

The two cavalry forces began their unadorned, head-on charge.

The terrain was flat and wide, ideal for cavalry to deploy their lines. While an excellent location for a cavalry battle, it also meant it would be a place where many would die, and quickly.

The Qiang cavalry were light cavalry among light cavalry; on one hand, they were dirt poor and couldn't afford "heavy" equipment. On the other, they were all long-armed like apes with extraordinary strength, making virtually every rider a master archer on horseback. Ke E, the young Qiang thousand-man commander who bore a blood feud against the Northern Liang Xu family, finally stopped suppressing the charge speed of his horsemen. With a grand wave of his hand, a black cloth was tied over his mount's eyes, and its pace abruptly quickened. Had an observer been positioned along the horizontal line, they would have been astounded by the muscular power displayed by these high-headed warhorses in their run. The Central Plains custom of blindfolding horses during a charge never caught on widely, but it was a centuries-old tradition on the steppes. Initially, it served to make warhorses fearless when facing Central Plains infantry formations using chevaux de frise. Simultaneously, it could deliberately "spook" the warhorses, allowing cavalrymen to fiercely whip their mounts right before a fierce, fleeting cavalry-on-cavalry clash, thereby encouraging the horses to unleash greater speed and using their momentum to enhance the cavalry's charge penetration. However, among all the elite cavalry forces across the land, perhaps only the Northern Liang Iron Cavalry disdained such "petty tricks." This was due to the meticulous training of every Northern Liang warhorse, from birth to battle-readiness, with countless efforts poured in by major horse farms—and, of course, countless silver. Behind every Northern Liang horse that eventually stepped onto a major battlefield, one or even several warhorses would have perished beforehand.

On the battlefield, only the earth-shattering roars of the sixteen hundred-plus Qiang cavalry could be heard.

In stark contrast, the three thousand Dragon Elephant Army, also light cavalry, seemed particularly peculiar at this moment. Their collective silence before the slaughter was one reason, but more importantly, they were desperate men who treated light cavalry as if they were heavy cavalry.

After raising their spears and accelerating their charge, the Dragon Elephant light cavalry bore straight down on their opponents, even foregoing an initial volley of light crossbows to inflict damage on the enemy cavalry formation!

The Northern Liang Iron Cavalry were skilled fighters and dared to fight to the death!

Central Plains warfare historically excelled at combining cavalry and infantry, with infantry in the center and cavalry on the flanks. The latter were not typically used for direct frontal assaults, partly due to the inherent inferiority of cavalry bows compared to infantry bows, especially large crossbows. More importantly, cavalry's greatest advantage was their powerful mobility. In the long string of classic battles during the Spring and Autumn period, this undisputed principle of warfare was exploited to its fullest. Any general worthy of the title, even an infantry commander, given a few thousand cavalry, could still command them with precision and discipline. This was perhaps the so-called "becoming a doctor after prolonged illness." At that time, the large number of Liyang high-ranking military commanders steeped in the fires of war wouldn't dare greet their colleagues if they couldn't employ or counter cavalry. However, this combined cavalry-infantry tactic inevitably suffered in areas with difficult logistics. When the current Emperor ascended the throne and launched several wars against Beimang, he suffered greatly. Many initially promising situations were ruined by battles occurring outside the main battlefield. Taking Beimang's two famous generals, Tuoba Pusa and Dong Zhuo, as examples, their defining achievements were accomplished by light cavalry embarking on long-range raids, sometimes thousands of miles, circling behind the main Liyang army to directly cripple one or even several main supply lines. The Liyang court's famous generals, especially cavalry commanders, were greatly frustrated by this, yet for some reason, no genius general emerged who could directly confront Beimang cavalry without infantry support. Nevertheless, the notion of cavalry needing to operate independently, along with a series of derived military treatises, did appear. Lu Shengxiang, recruited by Zhao Yi to the banks of the Guangling River, and Xu Gong, who never had the chance to fight beyond the frontier, each produced military texts. Unfortunately, these were secretly kept and not passed down, but they were universally praised within the military. Xu Xiao, for instance, greatly admired Xu Gong, the Dragon Gallop General from the Gumu Xu clan, believing he should have overshadowed Lu Shengxiang, who "dominated the southeast." However, those high-ranking Liyang figures of the time knew in their hearts that if Chen Zhibao and Chu Lushan had been given the opportunity, they would undoubtedly have become figures of merit on the new Beimang battlefield, no less than the four great generals of the Spring and Autumn period. But even if the new Emperor, for personal reasons, had been willing to give Chen Zhibao a chance to display his talents, the large group of "founding" elders would not have agreed to the Xu family having such a powerful successor.

In nearly twenty years of constant warfare against Beimang, the Northern Liang Iron Cavalry also developed a comprehensive set of highly targeted and mature tactics. For instance, Beimang cavalry typically had fewer crossbows and more bows. Unless a warrior possessed extraordinary strength, ordinary cavalry bows could barely penetrate armor beyond eighty paces. In head-on charges, the Northern Liang Iron Cavalry, influenced by Chen Zhibao, became so extreme that they completely abandoned the process of bow-and-arrow exchanges. Relying on their superior armor, they allowed the Beimang cavalry to unleash volleys of arrows while they themselves simply charged forward with their heads down. Chen Zhibao once made an outrageous claim that outsiders found unbelievable: given roughly equal forces, or even a slight disadvantage, Beimang cavalry could only survive for forty paces!

Outsiders, after all, could not witness this firsthand and remained strongly skeptical.

But it cannot be denied that the entire Liyang Dynasty, regarding valuable experience in pure cavalry-on-cavalry engagements involving ten thousand or more troops, likely only had the uniquely positioned Northern Liang frontier army. Although the Zhao imperial court seemed to turn a blind eye to affairs on the northwestern frontier, whenever there was a slight disturbance, Li Xifeng, the former head of the Golden Brocade Bureau, would tirelessly and secretly send confidential reports to the capital. And as for the contents of these reports, Prince Zhao Yi of Guangling and Prince Zhao Bing of Yan Chi spent untold favors and pulled countless strings to acquire them, for their many strategists and advisors to ponder repeatedly.

At the same time, the Liyang court itself did not sit idle. It simply considered Beimang, along with Northern Liang, as hypothetical enemies, contemplating how to truly resist the iron hooves of those warhorses. The Central Plains' leading generals, having emerged from the smoke of the Spring and Autumn wars, were certainly not incompetent. They achieved considerable success; their infantry formations designed to repel cavalry and their weapon combinations reached a peak of perfection. During the imperial examination of the Spring of Yonghui, there were even thought-provoking questions on similar topics. This led to many wildly imaginative ideas in the answer papers. While most were dismissed as academic nonsense, one argument, after years of obscurity, suddenly shone brightly: to counter an extreme with an extreme. The candidate who failed that examination proposed allocating financial and material resources to fully develop what he called "deformed" heavy cavalry, striving to exceed the threshold of ten thousand troops. He argued that even if it meant selling everything, they must cultivate one or several heavy cavalry units, stationed in strategic towns not far from the border. His answer sheet, at the time, vanished without a trace in the Liyang court. Yet, almost simultaneously, the Beimang royal court began frantically investing silver into heavy cavalry, until years later, the Liyang court belatedly realized what had happened: these were the two royal tent iron cavalry units named after Beimang's imperial surname—the Yelü Heavy Cavalry and the Murong Heavy Cavalry! Their numbers barely touched the ten-thousand threshold, but even the most uninformed civil official knew that maintaining these two heavy cavalry units meant bleeding the nation dry to feed these two great gluttons. The true immense cost of heavy cavalry was not in their establishment, but in their maintenance. The belated Liyang court, pressured by public opinion, especially from Minister Gu Lu of the Ministry of War and the Eastern Front frontier army, reluctantly followed Beimang's lead and created the Duoyan Iron Cavalry and Yanmen Heavy Cavalry. The former numbered less than eight thousand, and the latter even fewer than five thousand.

As for why that scholar, who went to the capital for the imperial examination, mysteriously died in an unnamed alleyway that year—who cared?

However, if anyone knew this secret, they would surely sigh with emotion that a less than thousand-word essay by an unknown Jiangnan scholar could influence the lives and deaths of two million armored soldiers on the vast borderlands.

Eighty paces separated the enemy and us. The front line of the Qiang cavalry, spread out like a surging tide, expertly nocked arrows and fired.

The violent jolting on horseback during a rapid charge, the enemy cavalry's armored riders and mounts, and the insufficient time for arrow exchanges in quick-contact battles were all crucial reasons why horse archery could only be a supplementary advantage.

The regular Beimang frontier army's spear and lance configurations were quite good. Not to mention Dong Zhuo's Dong family army, even the direct forces of the great generals and banner holders completely met the standards of Liyang's elite frontier army. However, this Qiang cavalry was far more impoverished. It wasn't that Beimang was too stingy to provide more than ten thousand finely crafted spears and lances; rather, even if given to the Qiang cavalry, who had their own well-honed tactics, it would only be superfluous, certainly not timely help. Training warhorses was already a headache, let alone cultivating the fighting ability of cavalry in mounted combat? How many battles and how many lives would it take to find the optimal balance between the weight and length of sabers and spears and a cavalryman's arm strength? The precise areas to pierce an enemy rider with a spear, the best angle for a saber slash, and the appropriate weight of armor—all varied by individual, all deep knowledge. So, if all Qiang cavalry suddenly switched their main weapons to overly luxurious and unfamiliar spears and lances, thus hindering their usual transfer speed, then once this Qiang cavalry reached Liuzhou, they would either be lucky and not encounter the Dragon Elephant Army, treating it as a pleasant journey, or unlucky, as they were now. Thousand-man commander Jin Cheng wouldn't even need to think; he would turn and run, trying to sell those spears and lances for money to escape.

Those Spring and Autumn refugees who had left their homes and fled north to Hongjia had brought many secret and superb forging techniques to Beimang. However, Beimang's severe iron shortage turned many Southern Dynasty craftsmen into clever wives without rice for cooking.

Chen Zhibao once said: "Northern barbarians lacking spears and lances are nothing more than foot soldiers on horseback, that's all!"

One could say that Ye Baikui, the military saint of Western Chu, skilled in troop type combinations, gradually pushed the brutality of large-scale warfare to a peak. Chen Zhibao, on the other hand, meticulously refined and compartmentalized vast warfare down to every junior commander.

The latter not only remembered the names of every commander under his command but also their personal characters, leadership styles, their overall combat effectiveness under normal circumstances, and their war potential in unforeseen situations—everything was clear in his mind.

"Ancient military strategists often used 'ever-changing' to describe the unpredictability of war. Chen Zhibao had long mastered those 'ten thousand changes.' He is truly the foremost military strategist since the Qin Dynasty, far surpassing his predecessors and peers."

Such seemingly cliché praises could be uttered by any young scholar from Jiangnan who had read a few military texts and admired the White-Clothed Military Saint.

But in fact, the one who said this was Cao Qingyi, Cao Changqing, widely acknowledged as an unrivaled master of endgame strategy in chess.

In Liuzhou, no mournful bugle calls were heard, nor deafening war drums.People simply died silently in a swift, close-quarters engagement.

The Qiang cavalry's two rounds of long-range archery achieved predictable success, yet the extent of their achievement surprisingly fell short of expectations for the Qiang.

When an arrow accurately struck a Dragon Elephant light cavalryman in the face, the force of the arrow jolted the rider's head back with great momentum, and he subsequently fell from his horse, dead.

The riderless warhorse continued its charge due to inertia.

Many Qiang cavalry cheered.

The arrowhead of a Qiang arrow struck a spark against a Dragon Elephant light cavalryman's breastplate but failed to penetrate. However, this Northern Liang frontier soldier was extremely unlucky; his warhorse was hit by another powerful arrow in the neck, in a gap in its armor. The horse neighed, its body slightly tilted, and it stumbled fatally into the ground.

The light cavalryman, having rolled to dissipate the impact, quickly stood up. The arm he had previously used to hold his spear was broken, but without the spear, he swiftly drew the Northern Liang saber from his waist and faced the Qiang cavalry, who were now only twenty-odd paces away and about to collide. He began running forward with long strides in a straight line!

Ke E felt a deep sense of powerlessness, not just because these two rounds of intense arrow rain inflicted fewer than a hundred casualties on the Dragon Elephant light cavalry, but also because these enemy riders, despite clearly being able to deflect incoming arrows with their lances, not a single one made a move that would compromise their lance's impact force!

Not a single one!

Two armies' elite cavalry charged forth,Friend and foe indistinguishable in death.

The young thousand-man commander's recklessness brought utter disaster upon him and the sixteen hundred cavalry that his tribe had painstakingly accumulated over twenty years.

Even when the Qiang cavalry realized the situation was dire, their face-to-face line of surging force actively and quickly began stretching diagonally to the left, hoping to reduce frontal battlefield losses through their speed.

The Qiang cavalry's front line subtly shifted to the left to evade.

However, the Dragon Elephant light cavalry reacted almost instantly, tilting their entire formation to the right for the attack, their thundering hooves showing no reduction in intensity during the change!

The rapid changes on the grand battle line, when broken down to the position of every two opposing riders, were actually minimal.

The Dragon Elephant Army and the Qiang cavalry interlocked into a cavalry battle formation!

In just a brief blink of an eye, over three hundred Qiang cavalrymen were pierced through their armor by spears! These brave Qiang warriors died instantly, before they could even fully fall from their horses!

Dozens of Qiang cavalry corpses were even impaled on the Dragon Elephant iron spears and lifted into the air.

Along that line symbolizing life and death, there was nothing but spurts of blood from the Qiang cavalry's casualties.

Some lucky Qiang managed to evade the initial spear thrusts of the first line of Dragon Elephant light cavalry, but they were quickly pierced through by spears from behind.

A few even luckier Qiang riders survived the spears of the second line of Dragon Elephant light cavalry, only to be instantly cut down by the third line.

One Qiang cavalryman's shoulder was pierced by a spear from a second Dragon Elephant light cavalryman directly in front of him. He swayed, and before he could celebrate, a third iron spear entered his neck. His body fell backward, sliding a short distance on the horse's back before finally falling dead onto the sandy ground.

Wang Lingbao, the Dragon Elephant Army's deputy general, even impaled three men on his spear as if skewering candied haws.

This charge…The Dragon Elephant light cavalry pierced through them with the ease of a heavy hammer smashing through tissue paper.

Scar-faced Wang Lingbao gave a slight flick of his wrist, sliding the three Qiang cavalry bodies off his iron spear. He didn't turn to observe the battlefield, nor did he even glance at the corpses on the ground. He continued to spur his horse forward, charging.

They were not far from the second Qiang cavalry army.

Behind Wang Lingbao, the ground was covered in Qiang cavalry corpses, soaked in blood.

Many Qiang warhorses, after their masters died and fell, ran a short distance before slowly stopping.

Over three hundred wounded Dragon Elephant cavalrymen who had fallen from their horses repeatedly stabbed to death the Qiang cavalry who were not yet completely dead.

Some Qiang cavalry spoke in a language the Dragon Elephant light cavalry couldn't understand; they were likely begging for mercy, but no one spared a life.

Since the Great General first led a hundred cavalry out of Liaodong forty years ago, the Xu family's Iron Cavalry had never had the custom of taking prisoners.

Except for forty-plus riders at the very ends of the 1,600 Qiang cavalry front line, all other Qiang cavalry were wiped out in a single charge by the three thousand Dragon Elephant light cavalry.

The young thousand-man commander, who had ventured into Liuzhou to avenge his kin and achieve glory, died after shooting one person and stabbing two.

One side killed with decisive efficiency, while the other died without lingering.

Ke E's original intention was certainly not to pave the way for Jin Cheng's future ascendancy in the Beimang court with the 1,600 cavalry his tribe had painstakingly accumulated over twenty years.

This brave Qiang warrior, accustomed to victory on the Beimang frontier grasslands, remembered the blood feud of twenty years past but forgot the true nature of the enemy he sought to avenge. Before leaving what was ultimately only a foreign land he called home, he had heard that the Dragon Elephant cavalry had cut through half of Gusei Prefecture last year. But he had also heard from many Southern Dynasty people that it was merely due to the negligence of Gusei's major military garrison commanders. He also heard some say that as long as Dong Zhuo or any other great general's troops moved, those Dragon Elephant forces deep within enemy territory would absolutely not return, and the Beimang frontier army would cast their severed heads along the border between the two nations.

Ke E came for revenge, but sadly, his young son, still waiting for his father to return home on the grasslands, would have to wait another twenty years to continue the vendetta.

For the Qiang people, nearly a century of exile history was a continuous journey from one foreign land to another.

He lay in a pool of blood, the sunlight above him blinding.

Then he noticed a shadow overhead—a Dragon Elephant light cavalryman whose shoulders were uneven due to an injury. Ke E struggled in his death throes, trying to lift the battle saber strapped to his arm.

The light cavalryman, dressed as a commander, seemed to notice Ke E's futile resistance, frowned, and sliced off the young Qiang cavalryman's head. After a moment of thought, he also chopped off the corpse's right hand.

Then the commander and many other battle-ready Dragon Elephant light cavalrymen, acting similarly, cleared the battlefield, found suitable warhorses, mounted them, and charged again.

In many prosperous areas of the Central Plains, no matter who killed whom, the conflicts were often filled with complex and convoluted schemes. Even death matches between gangs might involve the backing of officials and the subtle instigation of schemers.

Ultimately, there, killing was never straightforward, and dying was never quick or painless.

But on the future border between Liang and Mang, death would be very simple and as swift as crossbows and iron hooves.

After slaughtering the 1,600 suicidal Qiang cavalry, under the leadership of Wang Lingbao and two battalion commanders, the Dragon Elephant light cavalry's warhorses adopted a rhythm of slowing and accelerating.

This allowed the warhorses to unleash a second wave of momentum, ensuring effective pursuit and killing.

This was the intangible difference between a renowned general and a mediocre one on the battlefield.

War, especially a localized battle, certainly required heroes capable of facing a thousand or ten thousand enemies, but it needed even more generals like Wang Lingbao who were intimately familiar with the rules of the battlefield.

Without the former, battles would be harder. But without the latter, there would only be defeat.

About half a *li* away, Thousand-man Commander Jin Cheng, though utterly dumbfounded, showed no hesitation. This middle-aged Qiang cavalryman, more experienced than Ke E, turned without a word and led his Qiang cavalry in an arc-shaped retreat.

The reason they didn't stop their horses and then turn to flee was that the Dragon Elephant light cavalry, whose combat strength loss was negligible, simply wouldn't allow them even that slight waste of time.

Wang Lingbao mentally calculated the distance and the horses' speed. He nudged his horse's flank, intending to go to Xu Longxiang and share his thoughts. But the young commander of the Dragon Elephant Army had already raised his arm, making a simple gesture known to every Northern Liang frontier soldier.

Rapid cavalry interception!

Xu Longxiang, who hadn't displayed too much exaggerated combat power in the previous charge, had only killed three Qiang cavalrymen with his battle saber, all with a single decapitating strike.

When Wang Lingbao saw his commander leap high, abandoning his horse, and begin to run, dragging his saber,Wang Lingbao smiled, a little exasperated. "Our commander is truly something else!" he thought.

After Xu Longxiang made that gesture, the Dragon Elephant cavalry behind him, who had been deliberately maintaining a neat formation, finally changed.

Over four hundred cavalry, whose warhorses were more explosive, instantly burst out of the main formation.

These elite cavalry decisively followed the war god commander in their hearts to intercept the Qiang army, which still numbered over seven thousand.

For noble clans, the saying was that the nation might perish, but the family's legacy must not.But for an army, the backbone, upheld by countless martyrs, must never be broken!

The backbone of the Northern Liang Iron Cavalry.It would rather shatter than break.

As for whether Beimang had the ability to shatter this backbone, that would be a matter of mutual annihilation.

As Xu Longxiang ran faster and faster, a giant black tiger darted to his side.

Then, the four hundred fast cavalry behind the black-clad youth, and the more than two thousand Dragon Elephant light cavalry further behind, witnessed an extremely bizarre scene.

Without slowing down, Xu Longxiang bent down, grabbed the black tiger by its two legs with both hands, spun his body, and simply hurled the black tiger towards the center of the Qiang army!

The giant black tiger crashed to the ground and then continued to tumble, kicking up countless clouds of dust across the ground.

Countless bodies, like mud, and a great number of men and horses fell.

Scar-faced Wang Lingbao couldn't help but twitch his lips."Those guys who got hit must be in a lot of pain."

As the four hundred fast cavalry in front were about to catch up with the tail of the Qiang main army, Wang Lingbao glanced back at the large crater created by the black tiger. On the mangled, muddy corpses, large blood blossoms bloomed.

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