"However, now this is already the third ti."
"With one beat the spirit soars, with the second it wanes, with the third it is exhausted."
"When the vigor within the army is spent and morale sinks, then even if all are of one mind from top to bottom, they are powerless. Today, I will seize their Commander, seize their Qi; with this one arrow, rout these three armies!"
General Xue gripped the Breaking Cloud Sky-shattering Bow, and the White Tiger Dharma Form appeared.
He slowly drew open this Divine Weapon; the ancient war bow let out a faint keen, exuding a ferocity like a hunting tiger. The battle robe on General Xue’s body billowed, his eyes blazing bright like fire as he fixed them upon the battlefield.
As though the myriad God Buddhas stood above, overlooking the grim slaughter of the mortal world.
Only at this very mont.
Only when his mouth was shut.
Did there erge upon him the faintest thread of a grandeur belonging solely to the Number One under Heaven.
When General Xue released his fingers, the bowstring quivered and cried, like countless birds sweeping over the earth. Then he raised his voice in a long howl, thunderous as war drums, and said, "Jiang Wanxiang has already died beneath the sword of Sword Madman Murong Longtu!"
This voice carried far upon the rending hiss of the arrow tearing through the air.
In an instant it swept across the battlefield.
Had these words been spoken in that first surge of montum, at that ti Military God Jiang Su was invincible wherever he went, not only blocking Prince Qin Li Guanyi at Zhenbei City, but also pinning down Yue Pengwu, one of the very foremost among the top ten Divine Generals under Heaven.
Those words would only have stirred up this Ying Country army’s united hatred of the enemy.
They would only have turned this host, bearing recognition for their forr sovereign, into a mourning army that knew no defeat.
But as things stand now, first that vanguard army of clansn that served as the bones of the force had been slain to the last outside the cities of Jiangnan, then Yue Pengwu’s relief charge ca—one push, then decline; and now, for these sa words to be spoken a second ti will produce an utterly different effect.
All the more so because these words are not being spoken before the lines to rouse morale.
But upon the battlefield itself, as the third heavy blow, to crush morale.
The battle montum of the Ying Country army stalled in an instant; all the confusions and doubts that had accompanied this long march, questions such as why Jiang Wanxiang had never appeared, surged up in their hearts, layer upon layer, shattering the will to fight within.
The Breaking Cloud Sky-shattering Bow loosed an arrow that pierced the clouds, cleaving through this bleak and bitter battlefield.
At last it shot through Jiang Wanxiang’s banner.
The radiant trail of General Xue’s arrow slowly faded in midair; accompanied by a resounding crash, that ink-dark, gray dragon pattern great flag which had stood for decades throughout the land, rooted in the hearts of the people of Ying Country, rolled and twisted, then fell heavily into the surging waves of the battlefield.
Just like the military heart of this Ying Country army.
General Xue tossed aside the Divine Weapon in his hand and strode in great bounds to the massive war drum set upon the city walls. He snatched up the drumsticks and struck with all his might; the drum thundered, spurring n onward. General Xue cried in a clear voice, "Advance!!!"
The foe here at this mont was, of course, a peerless enemy under Heaven.
But the Qilin Army standing here.
When have they ever been the sort to be taken lightly?!
They had fought their way out of the Western Regions, the southwest, Chen Country, the Turkic lands. Back in the days of their insignificance, they were but a migrant band of three thousand in the Wandering Army; now, after being tempered in a Hundred Battles, they were already, without question, one of the foremost elite armies of this age.
Their Commander, too, was unmatched in this generation.
On this day’s pitched battle, they fought for several hours; the beat of General Xue’s war drum never once ceased. The sound of the drum, driven by the murderous aura of the Military School and the valor of a war general, seed to resound within n’s hearts, urging them ever forward.
After the great battle, it could not be called a sweeping victory, yet in the end Yuwen Lie and the others led their forces in retreat, leaving upon the ground only corpses one after another, and weapons stained with blood thrust into the earth, where the wind swept over them with a grim, killing sound.
Even if the Divine General still had the will to fight on.
Once a thing like military heart begins to crack and collapse, it is like the earth-dragon turning in its sleep, like a snow mountain breaking—its montum rolls on without end. A single man can drag down a squad of Fierce Soldiers; ten n can drag down a hundred soldiers.
And the opponent they faced was precisely the Divine General who had once been most adept at scheming for such military hearts.
After the great battle ended, even the old Siming felt his heart pounding violently and a sense of unreality; he stared at this grim, slaughter-strewn battlefield, unable to return to himself for a very long ti.
Such a battle had actually ended.
Such a battle had actually been won.
Upon the battlefield there remained only the sound of breathing, and a thread of silence. He had thought that General Xue would once more open his mouth to crack so jest and liven the air, but at this mont this Divine General who had shattered the montum of three armies with a single arrow was stern in bearing.
He held the heavy drumsticks in both hands, lifting them high.
Then, with valor, he brought them crashing down.
Boom!
A single crash of the war drum rang through the four quarters, as though scattering the daze that followed the battle’s end, as though shaking apart all the battlefield’s grim aura, so that countless gazes instinctively drew back and turned toward the Divine General atop the city.
General Xue held the drumsticks high in both hands, then gazed down with solemn majesty and shouted loudly:
"Wind!"
After several breaths of silence.
Innurable weapons lifted, pointing at the vault of heaven.
Then ca the joy of victory, the grim resolve of having at last blocked the enemy’s onslaught, the determination and the relief at having survived, the grief at the deaths of comrades-in-arms—an angry roar ford of countless tangled emotions.
"Wind!"
"Great wind!!!"
Guan Shier and the old Siming watched as General Xue let the drumsticks fall from his hands, his expression solemn. They folded their hands in salute, bending deeply at the waist, and called out in ringing voices:
"To you all, what greatness!"
"Congratulations to you."
"A great victory, a great victory!"
The wind howled, harsh and grim; and yet the gallant spirit was as it had been in years past, and so five hundred years ago there was the First Divine General, the military god of that age.
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