Boom, boom, boom!
The dull war drums echoed through the mountains and thundered in every soldier’s heart.
“Charge!”
The Iron Tiger deputy drew his sword and rushed to the front.
Chen Fengzhi stayed at the rear with his personal guard, pressing the formation forward.
From the heights, the Tubo troops surged down like a tidal wave.
Chen Rui was a squad leader in the Iron Tiger Battalion and one of the foremost Great Kang soldiers charging ahead.
His father had been an old Iron Tiger veteran, so Chen Rui had trained in martial arts since childhood and was far stronger than ordinary troops.
He raised his sword with his right hand and clashed blades with an enemy, then drew a dagger with his left and plunged it into the man’s throat.
Before he could pull the dagger free, another foe rushed from behind the corpse and kicked him hard in the shoulder.
Chen Rui tumbled. If a comrade behind had not grabbed him, he would have rolled down the slope.
Scrambling back to his feet, the main body of troops had already reached him. There was no time to check his wounds. The crowd swept him forward in a frantic dash.
These were enemies fighting for survival. From the very first moment, the battle turned white-hot.
The two armies crashed together like opposing floods, spray flying everywhere.
Every splash was condensed from blood.
In that single instant of collision, casualties on both sides exceeded a hundred.
Blood flowed down the slope. Many Great Kang soldiers slipped and fell.
Yet more men stepped over them and continued charging upward.
…
Several hundred zhang away, Big Zhuang and Monkey lay side by side behind a huge boulder, watching the fight below.
Behind them waited several hundred male and female escorts.
The men all wore black scale armour.
The women wore soft armour woven from iron wire.
Wei Datong had noticed one day that Jin Feng and the Ninth Princess went out and returned with five fewer boats. Those boats had carried this group downstream.
Guided by local scouts, they had trekked through the mountains for days, suffering greatly, before finally reaching a small ravine behind Mount Mao’er.
Fearing discovery by Tubo patrols, Big Zhuang sent word to Jin Feng well before they arrived.
Only after Sangji’s men departed did they dare approach the mountain.
Everything went smoothly. The Tubo forces were completely focused on the Jinma River and Meng Tianhai. No one noticed them.
“Big Zhuang, they’ve started fighting. Shouldn’t we move?” Monkey rubbed his hands eagerly.
“No rush. Our job is decapitation, not helping Meng Tianhai retake Duckbill Ridge.”
Big Zhuang said, “Her Highness ordered that if the Tubo troops here do not exceed three thousand, we don’t need to assist the breakout.
Right now only two thousand Tubo remain, and Meng Tianhai has over six thousand men. If he still can’t win, Her Highness says let him die on Mount Mao’er.”
“Oh. Then when do we strike the head?” Monkey asked again.
“We wait a bit longer, until sunset,” Big Zhuang replied.
…
Halfway up Duckbill Ridge, the battle raged on.
The boundary between the two sides had vanished. They were tangled together, each mixed within the other.
Corpses and wounded kept rolling down the slope.
There were Great Kang soldiers and Tubo soldiers alike.
Overall, far more Great Kang bodies lay on the ground than Tubo ones.
Chen Rui pulled his sword free, wiped blood from his face, clutched his left arm, and gasped for air.
He no longer remembered how many enemies he had killed. Sometimes he only exchanged one or two blows before separating.
He had taken two cuts himself. If not for the inner armour his father left him, he might already be dead.
His dagger was lost somewhere. His sword edge was rolled.
The ground beneath his feet had turned into ankle-deep bloody mud.
His best friend lay not far away in the mire, half his right arm gone. No one knew when he had breathed his last.
There was no time to look further. Another Tubo soldier lunged at him.
Chen Rui had no chance to grieve. He snatched his friend’s sword and met the enemy.
Gradually, fewer and fewer Great Kang soldiers surrounded Chen Rui, while more Tubo warriors closed in.
He was forced to retreat.
After more than thirty minutes of fighting, the initial fury in many Iron Tiger soldiers had slowly ebbed away.
The battle-hardened Tubo troops only grew fiercer, and they held the downhill advantage. The tide of battle shifted bit by bit.
Seen from above, the entire frontline was being pushed downward.
Eventually, one Iron Tiger soldier saw three Tubo warriors charging him at once. Unable to hold, he turned and fled down the hill.
Halfway down, he ran straight into Chen Fengzhi.
“Coward!”
Chen Fengzhi snarled, drew his long sword, and thrust it into the man’s heart.
He ripped the soldier’s identity tag free and tossed it to his guard. “Keep this tag. When we return, his whole family will be punished!”
“Yes, sir!” The guard placed the tag into a pouch.
The surrounding soldiers shrank their necks and charged forward again.
The Iron Tiger Battalion was Qing Xinyao’s fiercest elite. Sangji’s men were also elite troops under Danzhu.
The biggest difference was that nearly all Tubo fighters were veterans, while most Iron Tiger soldiers were green recruits.
Veterans could endure every horror of the battlefield. Even with their guts spilling out, they would stuff them back in and keep fighting.
Recruits could not.
Their combat experience and will to fight were not on the same level.
At the start, fuelled by days of pent-up rage, the Iron Tiger Battalion could hold its own for a while. But now that rage was almost spent.
Looking at severed limbs, entrails, and ankle-deep blood, more and more Iron Tiger soldiers began to fear.
Once fear took hold, their movements slowed without them realising.
More men fought half-heartedly. The situation grew ever worse for the Iron Tiger Battalion.
Few men can stare death in the face. Even knowing Chen Fengzhi’s supervision team waited behind, even knowing desertion would doom their families, fear of death still gripped many.
Deserters multiplied.
Chen Fengzhi could kill one or two, but he could not kill them all.
The balance of victory tipped swiftly toward the Tubo side.
Watching from the summit, Sangji’s smile grew wider and wider.
Just when the Iron Tiger Battalion seemed on the verge of total collapse, two formations shaped like arrowheads burst from the forest on the southern side of Duckbill Ridge.
At the very front, male soldiers in black armour brandished black longswords.
Behind the men, female soldiers levelled crossbows.
In the centre, two small trebuchets were carried forward.
“Big Zhuang, let’s see who kills Sangji first and cuts down his banner!”
Monkey laughed loudly and led his team up the left slope.
“You’re on!”
Big Zhuang laughed just as heartily and charged up the right slope with his men!
The two units shot toward Sangji on the summit like a pair of arrows!
Sangji glanced downhill and asked, “Where did these two groups come from?”
“I don’t know,” his deputy shook his head. “Only a few hundred men. I’ll send someone to finish them.”
The deputy beckoned a hundred-man commander and said casually, “Ada, take three hundred from the reserve and wipe them out!”
