Wei School's Three Good Students

Chapter 33 Blockade
Ang Ri rode the Taiyue Luan, circling in the air, watching the Dayao cavalry retreat rapidly in the distance. Ang Ri felt no joy at forcing the Dayao troops to retreat; they were deliberately avoiding him. For the past half month, the Dayao troops had been doing this: completing a blocking battle and then leaving, resolutely avoiding prolonged combat. As for himself, he couldn't stay too long either, because the enemy wasn't completely retreating, but observing him from a distance.

If the sun lingers for too long, a subordinate official riding a griffin and one or two squads of cavalry riding dragon horses will charge up! He already suffered a loss in the battle a few days ago.

The leader of the sect swooped down from high above, forcing him to low altitude, and then the dragon-horse cavalry swarmed forward. If it weren't for his (Angri's) fellow crow people desperately stopping him, he would have been stuck here.

As Angri circled, he looked down at the river below, where groups of corpses tumbled and swayed in the rapids. Among them were three enormous corpses, which were three war elephants.

Three days ago, the main force of the Southern Frontier Tribes' allied army prepared to swim across the river two miles upstream. The crossing point, though somewhat deep, was gentle. The Southern Frontier tribes planned to use war elephants to tow rafts across. However, during the crossing, the Da Yao's armored soldiers appeared. First, they charged and routed the Flying Head tribe members preparing to cut timber on the riverbank. After the charge, they deployed a heavy crossbow formation—or rather, a simplified version of the "Crescent Moon Formation"—on the riverbank. The four crossbows at the very center of the spear-shield infantry formation were beyond the reach of a single person. The longest of the three crossbow arms was already a person's length. With four men using pulleys, they pulled the three crossbow arms open, blinding the three giant elephants attempting to cross the river, and they were swallowed by the water. Then, within half an hour, the remaining heavy crossbows unleashed seven hundred arrows at the snake-men churning in the river. Even those that were completely dead, floating on the surface and being tossed about by the waves, were finished off with an arrow. They were incredibly brutal.

The thousands of troops from various tribes in the southern border region, separated by a river less than ten feet wide, watched in complete silence as the less than two hundred soldiers of the Da Yao Army arrogantly fired their weapons.

After that battle, the corpses drifted downstream and ended up hanging on the shallows, making this an easy place to swim across. However, the tribes of the southern border are now extremely reluctant to cross the river. The dead bodies emit a foul stench, while large fish are swimming in and out of the wounds, enjoying a feast.

Angri sighed, and the approaching black dot in the distance reminded him that he had to land back at his base.

"It's easy to find a thousand soldiers, but hard to find a good general." Ang Ri muttered to himself, and now he wholeheartedly agreed: "It's easy to recruit a thousand soldiers, but it's very difficult to find a general who can lead these soldiers to victory. Right now, the Li Huo Sect is mindlessly driving the southern tribes to march north in a mighty force, but the generals who know how to fight are on the other side, Yao Jun."

At this moment, Ang Ri highly recognized Wu Fei's military command ability, because even based on what he had seen in the Haotian Realm, the Da Yao troops' ability to mobilize and adapt on the battlefield was no different from the legendary generals he had seen in the Haotian Realm.

Ang Ri commented: The divination of the timing of the day, the use of the terrain, and the control of the military force were all flawless.

As Ang Ri piloted the Taiyue Luan to evade the attacking Zhao Tu, he muttered to himself, "Although the Xiren Realm has not yet been affected by any calamities and has long lacked malevolent intent, it is not without the seeds of great generals. Once the situation changes, these generals will surely rise up like flying serpents in the mist!"

Then he looked up at the bright moon in the sky: "After the moon, is it really the right thing for me to choose to return my people to this place?"

Angri descended back into the forest where his allied tribes were encamped. Taiyue Luan landed there, and the surrounding treetops rippled with green light as the wind blew. Zhao Tu, who had been pursuing them, stopped his pursuit and gestured to the dragon horse troops behind him, instructing them not to deactivate their stealth and to continue lying in ambush. Zhao Tu looked in the direction where Angri had descended, his gaze fixed on the forest. He held the telescope in front of his chest to his eyes and carefully examined the forest, frowning slightly.

Because of the intense malevolent aura emanating from that spot, Zhao Tu sensed something unusual! Heeding Wu Fei's warning to "never enter the forest," though Zhao Tu usually ignored this order—after acquiring the griffin, he frequently swooped down to harass the southern barbarian tribes on the ground—he felt that chasing after them would be foolish!

…below the dense canopy…

After Angri landed, many crow-men waited on the tree branches with daggers in hand. This was not entirely due to the crow-men's bravery, but rather because the monsters below made them quite uncomfortable compared to those on the treetops.

At this moment, various mountain demons and vine spirits were lurking under the trees, and among these monsters, there was also a group of "humanoid" creatures whose size was close to that of a giant human.

The team consisted of sixteen people, all dressed in black Taoist robes, with talismans pasted on their foreheads and a piece of blood jade in their mouths.

Ang Ri piloted the Taiyue Luan, searching for an open space while carefully avoiding the sixteen strange Taoists. In reality, these weren't human, but rather fiendish corpses cultivated by the Li Huo Sect, created by selecting individuals born at inauspicious times and continuously feeding them with fiery energy. The divination array within the Blood Jade rhythmically regulated the fiendish and spiritual energies.

Compared to the various tall, inhuman monsters around them, this silent zombie squad was the one that made all the living beings here feel the most uneasy.

Behind the monstrous corpse was a carriage, but it wasn't a sedan chair; it was a bronze coffin. The patina on the bronze coffin gave it an ancient and sinister appearance.

A young cultivator sat on the coffin cart. This cultivator showed no signs of anything unusual; his lips were blood-red, and his pupils shone with spiritual light. He was more normal than most soldiers on the battlefield and was fiddling with a small cauldron. He was Jiamu De, a direct disciple of the Li Huo Sect.

Jiamude saw the Angri on the Taiyue Luan and asked him about what he had just seen in the sky.

After confirming that the forces on the opposite bank numbered only a few hundred, not over a thousand, Jamud nodded and summoned the snake-man leader. He then reached out and pulled a gourd from the bronze coffin.

In Angri's eyes, the snake-man chieftain clearly resisted when he saw what was taken out of the bronze coffin. But then Jamud reprimanded the snake-man chieftain in a language Angri couldn't understand. After the snake-man chieftain hissed in protest, Jamud said something that was clearly a threat. In the end, the snake-man chieftain reluctantly accepted the gourd that was emitting a purple aura.

Angri stared at the direction the snake-man leader had gone, clearly curious about what kind of medicine was in the purple gourd. He thought to himself that if his usefulness to the Li Huo Sect ever diminished, his Crow-man clan might suffer the same fate.

The snake-man leader entered his own ranks at the vanguard of the army, opened the gourd and tilted it downwards. As purple pills rolled out of the gourd, they mixed with the clouds and turned into fine rain, dripping onto the snake-men. Immediately afterward, the snake-men began to grow thicker and stronger, their skin began to shed, and their scales changed from fine scales to sharp, angular scales. Furthermore, bulges grew on their backs and wings appeared.

Jamud: "This gourd contains 'Dragon's Feast Pills,' which can stimulate the thin bloodline in scaled creatures."

The words came into Angri's ears.

Angri pressed on, asking, "So what is the price to pay for taking it?"

Jamud adjusted his posture on the coffin, turned to look at Angri, and revealed a strange smile: "The price is eternal life! And never to tire, never to be defeated!"

Angri's pupils contracted sharply as he stared at the mutated snake-man in front of him. Its crazed mouth had split open to an unbelievable degree. The snake-man's mouth was already large, but now the gaping hole had extended to its cheeks.

Jamud: "This—is no longer normal enhancement, but a primordial mutation. Doing this is against the natural order."

“Tianhe?” Angri murmured to himself. But Jamud’s next reply was not as arrogant as he had expected; instead, it was somewhat helpless.

Jamud murmured, "If we don't offend the heavens, we will be buried."

…The bronze coffin was struck with a loud clang by Jamud…

The mutated snake-men in the distance cleaved through the waves on the shallows, swiftly crossing the river. On the other side, the Yao army seemed to sense the danger of these creatures and cleared the crossing. Once the Southern Frontier army confirmed that their mutated snake-men had captured the other side, they too swarmed across the river.

The tribes of the southern border thus crossed the last hurdle before reaching Yongji Pass. However, after crossing the river, the mutated snake-man troops had already swum far away to begin their pursuit.

In fact, even if they obeyed orders and stayed, the troops in the southern border region dared not coexist with these mutated monsters. They all felt that the farther away those monsters were, the better.

…The faction has switched, and the perspective has shifted to Yongji Pass…

Wu Fei was unaware that he had been hailed as a potential general by the exiles of the Haotian Realm. Even if he did know, he believed Ang Ri had been fooled by him, and that his own abilities were far from worthy.

Wu Fei thought to himself: A renowned general must at least be capable of commanding an army of tens of thousands, and this army needs to be able to advance on multiple fronts, perhaps even in several parallel columns. And how should provisions be distributed during this simultaneous advance? The military genius Han Xin transported provisions to various points along the marching route for strategic deployment. This provisional arrangement is crucial to troop deployment; you can't just randomly point and send a thousand heavy cavalrymen to a small village to huddle in! If that were the case, those heavy cavalrymen would be slaughtered in a few days! Of course, before all that happens, it's more likely that the heavy cavalry will mutini and seize provisions from other units, refusing to obey any commands for ten or twenty days. And then, they'd have to request higher-level orders from the rear to obey commands.

Of course, even more crucial is the system of rewards and punishments for meritorious service! For one thing, the merit of transporting grain ten kilometers versus one hundred kilometers is not linear; the longer the transport route, the higher the risk of enemy ambush. This requires exponential attention, dispatching prudent generals, and imposing heavy rewards and punishments to stabilize the rear.

As for what constitutes appropriate rewards and punishments, it's a matter of personal experience, much like the bargaining skills of elderly people at the market—something best left unsaid to outsiders!
Xuan Chong: As for me (Wu Fei), I'm still far from being ready. Right now, I only have a military force of about a thousand men at my disposal. And these thousand men aren't all deployed. Instead, they're deployed in rotation. One-third stays inside the pass to rest and recuperate, one-third is on the move outside the pass to "prune branches," and one-third is on standby twenty kilometers in front of the pass. If the "pruning branches" unit is in danger of overturning, we'll immediately go to their aid.

The reason they've won so far is simply because Wu Fei observes more closely and works harder, while constantly using his "superior horses" to target the opponent's "inferior horses." If the "inferior horses" like those in the fourth level of the checkpoint, who had just been promoted from slaves, were sent into battle, the losses would have already caused the checkpoint to run out of manpower.

Wu Fei is now handling things in a down-to-earth manner.

"Report: Enemy forces have been spotted crossing the river in the Qiongze area. They are chopping down trees, possibly building siege equipment such as wooden ladders. The blocking force requests permission to replenish their oil supply."

"Report: The enemy's mutated vanguard has reached Xiguan, numbering over three hundred. Among them, over fifty individuals have undergone the most severe mutation (around three meters in length). Our cavalry engaged them, expending half their arrows and killing three of them. Our army retreated in time without any casualties."

Wu Fei: "Let's investigate further."

A few minutes later, Wu Fei carefully examined the map, then measured the distances to determine the speed at which his own troops could gather and the likelihood of enemy reinforcements arriving.

"From the stockpiles in Area B4 and B5, transfer a base number of tung oil canisters to Wang Xi and his men. Also, have Zhao Tu go around to the back and make a show of force," Wu Fei ordered.

…Sixteen hours later…

The mutated snake-man monster, driven mad and charging recklessly, was lured to a rocky wasteland twenty kilometers ahead of Yongji Pass. This wasteland was extremely rugged, with only two main paths. So, at the "strong recommendation" of the Wu family army soldiers, the mutated snake-man monster horde surged into the wasteland, like sheep being herded – an unorganized flock follows its leader. After crossing the high ground, the monsters saw hunters fleeing towards the dense undergrowth on the side of the wasteland. Lacking any sense of reason, they charged straight towards it.

However, just as the mutated snake-man rushed into the bushes to the side, it suddenly caused the bushes to shake violently, revealing ropes—tripped ropes were tied to the bushes. Why weren't the hunters affected? Because they were all marked. Taking advantage of this opening, the gleeful hunters escaped.

Because under these circumstances, the merits of the Wu family army scouts who came from hunter backgrounds would not be discounted.

If these snake-man monsters hadn't mutated and retained some sense, they would have noticed beforehand that these bushes were extremely dry, completely contrary to the dampness expected during the rainy season. But they lacked intelligence. The bushes here were created by Wu Fei using the Earthly Fiend Divination System within the pass, causing a gust of burning wind to blow down from the mountain for a full six hours. Their dryness was similar to that of withered bushes in autumn.

Among those who participated in lighting the fire were Wen Si's slave troops. Wu Fei had found an opportunity to let these slave soldiers try their skills.

Because the tribes of the Southern Frontier were about to swarm to the walls of Yongji Pass, although theoretically the chances of these thousands of Southern Frontier tribesmen successfully breaking through the pass were almost nil, Wu Fei still considered that these slaves were facing thousands of people "swarming" the city for the first time, and their morale could not be guaranteed. Therefore, he sent them to participate in the battle twenty kilometers outside the city.

As the fireballs ignited in the bushes, crackling and popping, the two hundred snake-men tumbled and rolled like eels in a wok. A few mutated snake-men, burned beyond recognition, forced their way out and rammed into the spearmen's gun emplacements.

Wen Si, gun in hand, watched as these creatures charged forward. His steps faltered instinctively, but with a sharp whistle, he reacted quickly, having grown accustomed to the sounds of battle these past few days. He roared and charged forward, while the other spearmen followed suit. Five spears evenly distributed the impact of the half-crippled mutated snake-man, preventing any from being swept away. More men then joined the fray, and with each thrust of the spear, the mutated snake-man was finally dead.

Wen Si looked at the fallen snake-man, wiped the sweat from his forehead, grinned, and said, "It's nothing!"
After returning to the city, Wen Si decided to brag to everyone.

……

On the seventh day of the tenth month, the fifth major defensive battle ended in front of Yongji Pass. This was also the last defensive battle fought by the Wu family army outside the pass before the various alien alliances south of Lingjiang knocked on the pass.

Ang Ri rode the Taiyue Luan to the scene and caught a glimpse of the battle's end from afar, but then retreated under Zhao Tu's pursuit. The two had been locked in a tug-of-war in the air for no less than thirty rounds. Both mounts were intimately familiar with the frequency of their respective wing flapping.

(End of this chapter)