Volume 1, Chapter 64 – Countercharge

Huangfu Yun swept his gaze over the herd of more than three thousand demonic beasts in the distance and, deciding instantly, gave the order to continue clearing the corpses.

The pile of bodies at the foot of the wall had already reached three zhang high. If they didn’t clear it now, it would become a huge hidden danger. If this herd was killed and then another came right after, Twin Moon City would be hanging by a thread.

Huangfu Yun had all the remaining jiao-horses in the city gathered together, barely managing to put together a hundred and fifty mounts. Then he picked the hundred and fifty strongest men from the Demon-Suppressing Army, mounted them on the jiao-horses, and formed them up in ranks before the city gate.

With the strength of Shi Lan and Jiang Li, they were of course included. Aside from the two of them, only two other newly promoted squad leaders and Yan Shan from the new recruits were chosen.

For some reason, Huangfu Yun placed the five newcomers at the very front of the formation. In front of the five of them was an empty jiao-horse; behind them were several centurions with Demon-Suppressing Army banners strapped to their backs.

It was Yan Shan’s first time riding a jiao-horse, and he looked a little excited.

Shi Lan tightened her grip on the reins and couldn’t help squeezing the war halberd in her hand, a hint of unease in her chest. Huangfu Yun had only allowed them to carry their weapons and not the Demon-Suppressing Crossbows. Was he planning to have them clash head-on with the beast herd?

“Thrum!”

The sound of a Cloud-Piercing Bolt leaving its string rang out from above their heads, and a figure dropped down from the city wall, landing on the empty jiao-horse in front of Shi Lan and the others.

“Don’t overthink it later. Just stick close to me.”

Huangfu Yun said this to the five of them, then raised the horse-chopping saber in his hand and gave the order to attack.

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Shi Lan’s expression shifted. Even though the distant herd had been cut down by more than half by the Cloud-Piercing Bolts, there were still over a thousand demonic beasts left—and among them, traces of Innate Realm beasts.

Taking just these one hundred and fifty riders to charge straight into the front of the herd, head-on, would definitely cause enormous casualties. It was a clearly unwise move.

But a military order was as heavy as a mountain. No matter how many doubts Shi Lan had in her heart, she could only spur the jiao-horse beneath her and follow closely behind Huangfu Yun.

When they were less than a li from the herd, Huangfu Yun suddenly barked, “Form the Demon-Slaughtering Formation!”

As soon as the words left his mouth, the centurions behind Shi Lan and the others, those carrying the Demon-Suppressing Army banners, all yanked their reins and turned aside. The hundred and fifty riders split into three groups and abruptly fanned out.

At the same time, Shi Lan suddenly felt a pulling force descend on the top of her head. The circulation of blood and qi in her body sped up sharply, almost as if it were about to burst out of her.

A flash of shock passed through Shi Lan’s eyes. She looked up toward the source of the pull and saw it was a Demon-Suppressing Army banner.

From the top of every person in the formation, a faint wisp of red smoke rose into the air, linking them to the banner above.

The golden characters on the banner faintly took on a layer of blood-red, giving it a somewhat eerie look.

The pale red smoke gathered thicker and thicker, gradually condensing into a light red cloud. Above the other two groups of soldiers, similar clouds appeared.

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The instant those red clouds formed, Huangfu Yun raised his hand and took out a palm-sized square platform, throwing it up into the sky.

The platform absorbed the cloud and swelled in the wind. In the blink of an eye, it grew from palm-sized to a square twenty zhang across!

An indescribably terrifying aura of blood and slaughter instantly blanketed the land for ten li around!

The demonic beasts that had been utterly crazed, to the point of not knowing pain or death, gradually slowed their charge, stopping where they were, agitated and uneasy. A few even broke away and turned tail, sprinting back the way they had come!

The few Innate Realm demonic beasts in the herd seemed largely unaffected, but they were powerless to change anything and could only roar in frustration within the herd.

Ten blood-red figures, each three zhang tall and wielding a massive blade, stepped down from the platform in the sky and charged straight into the stalled herd, raising a storm of blood.

As those blood-red figures appeared, the surging of Shi Lan’s blood and qi surged up yet another level. She could feel her strength linking together with Huangfu Yun’s and with everyone behind her.

It was as though their entire squad had fused into a single whole.

Feeling her strength nearly double, Shi Lan swept her halberd in a wide arc, cutting three demonic beasts in half at the waist in one strike.

Under the suppression of that platform in the sky, most of the demonic beasts lost the will to resist. They forgot their fangs and claws and became nothing more than lambs waiting for the slaughter.

The few Innate Realm demonic beasts roared nonstop, trying to rouse the herd, but there was no response at all. In the blink of an eye, they were cut down from their saddles by a few of the centurions.

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In the end, aside from a few scattered beasts that managed to flee, the thousand-odd demonic beasts were all slain, and not a single man of the Demon-Suppressing Army was lost.

Staring at this glorious result, Shi Lan felt a wave of confusion. With a method like this in hand, why hadn’t Huangfu Yun used it earlier?

Once the ten blood-red figures returned to the platform, Huangfu Yun raised his hand. The platform shrank back to palm-size and dropped into his grasp.

The three cavalry squads merged back into one, and the clouds overhead dissipated along with them.

The instant the clouds vanished, Shi Lan felt as though her body had been hollowed out in an instant, her strength completely gone. The war halberd slipped from her hand, its tip plunging into the ground. All around came the clatter of weapons falling.

Clearly, she wasn’t the only one whose body had been emptied out.

Right after, Shi Lan felt a tightness in her chest. She coughed lightly a few times and spat out a mouthful tinged with blood.

The violently surging blood and qi had injured her heart meridian. It had been fine just a moment ago, but once she dropped out of that state, her body had trouble bearing it.

Her reaction already counted as mild. Jiang Li vomited a mouthful of fresh blood, and Yan Shan retched repeatedly, spewing large splashes of blood and collapsing over his saddle, unable to straighten up for a while.

Aside from the centurions, the other Demon-Suppressing Army soldiers were all in roughly the same condition.

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Seeing this, Shi Lan finally understood why Huangfu Yun hadn’t used this method before. With aftereffects this severe, it simply wasn’t worth it for this level of result—and in the wilds, losing combat strength like this would lead to consequences too awful to imagine.

She took a couple of deep breaths and, once she’d regained a bit of strength, pulled her halberd from the ground and followed Huangfu Yun in turning her mount back toward Twin Moon City at a slow pace.

The others rested for half a quarter of an hour and gradually recovered some strength as well. They dismounted, retrieved their weapons, and turned their horses toward the city.

Once back inside, Huangfu Yun handed out healing pills to all soldiers below the eighth stage of the Body Tempering Realm, sending them off to rest for half a day and nurse their bodies to ease the side effects.

Luckily, after this wave of demonic beasts, no more herds of over three thousand appeared. The Demon-Suppressing Crossbows were enough to handle what came, and everyone finally had a bit of breathing room.

In the blink of an eye, dusk had arrived.

In the afternoon, the demonic beasts’ assaults had slackened considerably. Though the dust clouds in the distance crept closer still, their advance had undeniably slowed.

Huangfu Yun stood at the edge of the wall, his face dark as still water, cold light flickering in his eyes. The other centurions stood beside him, their expressions all equally grim.

With their years of fighting demonic beasts, they knew the habits of such creatures like the backs of their hands. A slowdown in attacks from demonic beasts was no good sign. It wasn’t that they were running out of strength, but that they were gathering it, preparing for a single blow to decide life and death!

Once night fell, it would likely