Chapter 541: Transformation! Martial General Halo!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
The people of the Central Plains normally had a very distinct height difference when compared to the Tibetans, making it difficult to confuse the two. But Wang Chong had long ago ordered all of his soldiers to press their bodies to the backs of their horses. This way, Tibetans would not be able to distinguish at first glance the Tibetans from the people of the Central Plains.
“Damn it! Damn it! Where is the enemy… Ah!”
Before he could finish speaking, the Tibetan was run through. His body twitched twice before dropping from his horse.
The four-thousand-some cavalry had killed two-thousand-some Tibetans by this point and had successfully mixed into the army of twenty-thousand-some soldiers! And if not for the fact that Wang Chong’s goal wasn’t pure slaughter, this number could have been even higher.
“Go!”
Wang Chong didn’t continue the fight. The four thousand cavalry ran through the southeast Tibetan lines and then reined in their horses and took off.
“Don’t fight! Everyone, follow me!”
Mud splashed into the air as the warhorses galloped off. Before the Tibetans even had time to react, the Tang soldiers had left.
“After them!”
The Tibetans were furious at this sight.
Four thousand Tang soldiers had run through an army of more than a hundred thousand Tibetans like it was nothing! When had it been possible to humiliate the fierce and courageous Tibetans like this!
“Follow me! Kill them all!”
In the pouring rain, a Tibetan officer’s eyes went red from bloodlust. With a fierce wave of his scimitar, he pulled on the reins of his horse and charged through the rain like a lightning bolt. Rumble! Behind him, a wave of enraged Tibetans howled and followed behind.
Two large forces, one in front and one behind, quickly vanished into the rain.
……
“Hurry!”
In the curtain of rain, Wang Chong urged his horse forward as he urged his army to hasten their speed. The curses behind him traveled far, and Wang Chong could sense that several thousand Tibetans were charging up from behind him.
“Milord, they’ve taken the bait!”
Old Eagle’s familiar voice came from behind him. He was riding a highland steed, urging it forward in a gallop.
Old Eagle’s body was clearly not suited for Tibetan armor, and Wang Chong had to kill a tall Tibetan officer to get one that barely fit him.
“Can you determine how many people?” Wang Chong asked.
Old Eagle said nothing, only looked up in the sky. As the bean-sized raindrops slapped on his face, Old Eagle’s gaze continued to flit about the skies, watching as the massive eagle made circles.
“Six to seven thousand!” Old Eagle replied after muttering to himself.
Birds weren’t so intelligent that they could count people one by one, but Old Eagle had used various methods to train his eagles to determine the number of people by levels and to express them by drawing images in the sky.
“Hmph, it looks like the Tibetans aren’t looking down on us too much!” Wang Chong said with a grim smile.
Although their charge had killed around half their number in Tibetans, the Tibetans clearly thought that this was not a problem with their own strength, but because it had been a surprise attack.
“Ah, Milord!”
Old Eagle’s eyes were still fixed on the sky, though he was no longer watching the eagle he had raised. He had noticed that a gyrfalcon had appeared in the thunderclouds. Gyrfalcons were a bird of prey originating from Ü-Tsang that were used to control the skies. The ones Old Eagle had captured and tamed, however, were for another purpose.
In terms of training birds, the Tibetans were still beginners, a far cry from Old Eagle’s mastery.
Although time had been short and Old Eagle had not been able to train the Tibetan birds to the level of his giant eagles, it had been no problem to teach them some simple lessons.
“Huoshu Huicang has begun to move! Although I can’t tell if it’s Huoshu Huicang himself that’s begun to move, there’s definitely activity in that region.” Old Eagle’s voice was extremely stern.
The advantage to using these hastily trained gyrfalcons was the ability to deceive the Tibetans and make them let down their guard. They could not tell which were their birds and which belonged to the enemy—though these birds had originally all been theirs.
“It would be stranger if Huoshu Huicang didn’t react to such a ruckus. However, the army is currently in battle with Xianyu Zhongtong and his Annan Protectorate army. He won’t be able to free up the time to deal with us, so there’s an eighty to ninety percent chance that he’s sending one of his Five Tiger Generals. We won’t need to go over to that area for the time being!”
Wang Chong’s eyes glowed. Although he couldn’t see it, he was mostly confident in his judgment of the Tibetan army in that area.
“Ignore them. Let’s go and bring those fellows behind us to the target area!”
With these words, Wang Chong urged his horse onward.
Rumble!
“Don’t let them escape!”
……
Warhorses thundered forward, the thousands of furious Tibetans charging forward in a black flood of steel, all of them charging at maximum speed.
One thousand zhang!
Five hundred zhang!
Three hundred zhang!
One hundred zhang!
……
The Tibetans were getting closer and closer, and their eyes were fixed through the gloom on the Tang soldiers ahead of them. None of them noticed that the hills around them were growing more numerous or that they were getting farther and farther from the main army.
Boom!
When they were less than sixty zhang from their target, the situation suddenly changed. Roar! Nearby, in a pitch-black spot that they had taken to be mud, a bellowing axeman leaped out of the water. Clang! In a flash of cold light, an axehead had cut off a horse’s head at the neck.
Neigh!
Horses neighed in alarm, this sneak attack throwing the Tibetans into chaos. The slain warhorse continued to move forward through inertia, throwing its rider smashing into the mud. Splooshsplooshsploosh! One, two, three, four… in the gloomy hills, one soldier after another began to pop out, using their spears to stab, axes to hack, shields to beat. More and more soldiers were coming out to attack the horses.
At such close distances, not even the Tibetans could dodge.
One Tibetan after another was thrown from his horse. Cold glints could be seen in the gloom as thousands of Tang infantry closed in from both sides.
“Aaaaah!”
“Careful! It’s an ambush!”
“Tang soldiers, Tang soldiers!”
“We’ve been fooled! Retreat!”
……
Shrill Tibetan screams filled the air, the faces grimacing in fear within the gloom. They had been so focused on exterminating the four thousand Tang cavalry that they had never imagined so many Tang infantry to be waiting in ambush nearby.
“The Annan Protectorate army! It’s another part of the Annan Protectorate army!”
Panicked and fearful voices echoed through the skies as the Tibetans finally realized what was happening. It had been no secret that the Annan Protectorate army had split into two in the rain. And the messengers had sent word that Fengjiayi and Jiaosiluo had been sent to chase them some time ago.
Logically speaking, that part of the Annan Protectorate army should have been far away from this area, but they had inexplicably appeared here.
“Run!”
The morale of the Tibetan soldiers had crumbled. Many of them wanted to flee, but it was too late. The earth quaked and warhorses neighed. Wang Chong had turned around with his four thousand cavalry and returned for the counterattack.
Swish!
Wherever the spear passed, a rider would be unhorsed. In this battle, Wang Chong was no longer observing from the sidelines, but personally participating. With each fallen Tibetan, a stream of pure energy would flow into Wang Chong’s body. In this torrent of rain and blood, Wang Chong’s Stellar Energy not only did not decrease, it grew even more plentiful.
“Leaping Dragon Spear!”
A flood dragon seemed to soar into the dark skies, creating a splash in the rain. Then it crashed back down, as fast as a lightning bolt, a spear stabbing into a Tibetan officer twenty zhang away. With Wang Chong’s True Martial Tier 9 cultivation and the power of the Leaping Dragon Spear, warriors below the Profound Martial realm were no match for him.
This Tibetan officer’s body swayed, his eyes wide as he toppled from his horse. In a serious competition, he wouldn’t have been so easy to defeat. But on the packed and intense field of battle, one person’s strength was greatly reduced. With just a single spear, Wang Chong had managed to bring him down.
“Congratulations to user! For killing five foreign officers, user has unlocked the Martial General Halo, 【Bane of Generals】!
“Note: 【Bane of Generals】 makes you the enemy of all generals. Whether of the Central Plains or a foreign kingdom, as long as you regard them as your enemy, they are your enemy and will be weakened by the halo!
“Functional range: All generals! As the halo is an advanced version of the 【Bane of the Battlefield】 Halo, the Bane of the Battlefield’s limit to only soldiers below the general level has now been broken!
“Notice! User has only unlocked the Martial General Halo. If user wishes to officially activate the 【Bane of Generals】 Halo, user must complete an additional mission!”
……
A string of messages suddenly appeared in Wang Chong’s mind. Rumble! It was like a peal of thunder. Right when Wang Chong was preparing to take care of another Tibetan cavalryman, he was dumbfounded by this sudden transformation.
The Martial General Halo? What’s that about? Does the Bane of the Battlefield not count as a Martial General Halo?
Wang Chong was frozen in a stabbing motion, his hands still gripping his spear.
The might of the Bane of the Battlefield Halo on the battlefield could reverse the tides, so Wang Chong had always believed that this was a strength that only a general could possess. But this was clearly not the case.
“Stone of Destiny, what do you mean by the strength of a Martial General Halo?”
Wang Chong used the Single Character Consecutive Slash to immediately depart the noisy battlefield while his mind reached out to the Stone of Destiny. Although the Stone of Destiny couldn’t respond like a person, it would always reply as long as the answer didn’t involve anything too critical.