"Master, I’m starving. My legs are shaking too."
"You little rascal! How dare you..."
"No, Master! I’m not hungry—it’s the ground! It’s trembling!"
Old Xiao paused. He focused, and it did seem the ground was truly shaking.
Then, Old Xiao looked up. Ahead, in his line of sight, a vast, dark mass appeared!
THUD THUD THUD! THUD THUD THUD! THUD THUD THUD!
"Apprentice, get out of the way!"
Old Xiao reacted incredibly swiftly. He grabbed his apprentice and rolled to the side. Behind them, the sound of heavy cavalry was like thunder. The stirred-up dust nearly buried the master and apprentice.
Then, screams and cries for help echoed around them. Old Xiao couldn’t make out the other sounds clearly, but he distinctly heard one phrase:
"The Yan bastards are here!"
Little Ma seed to want to get up, but Old Xiao firmly pressed his head down.
My God, the Yan people are here? How could it be the Yan people? Have our border troops fallen? Did the West Army Division fall too? Even the Imperial Guards have fallen? What about the Zu family’s army?
Old Xiao was deeply puzzled. He’d heard people say that our Qian had a million soldiers on the border! Direct Thief! Even if it were a million pigs, it would take the Yan people ages to catch them all. How could they have suddenly stord Chuzhou City?
Old Xiao had countless questions, but he could only continue to hold his apprentice down on the ground. He dared neither to lift his head to look around nor to get up. He felt as if the thundering hooves on the road behind him were endless. Large contingents of cavalry continuously stread past.
Old Xiao felt a wave of despair. He didn’t know where this despair ca from; perhaps it was just an instinct. He even found it sowhat amusing. This despair was... My God, Prince Fu’s coffin is still blocking the city gate! Even at a ti like this, I’m actually still worried about that? Is that sothing I should be concerned about?!
He didn’t know how long they had lain there eating dirt, so long that Old Xiao felt completely dazed and light-headed. He hadn’t even noticed that the sound of hooves behind him had grown sparse and distant so ti ago.
Until, a pair of boots appeared before him, and one of those boots tapped his shoulder.
Old Xiao desperately wanted to continue playing dead, but he didn’t dare.
He lifted his head and saw a young general in black armor standing before him. Behind the general stood a giant who seed forged from iron, and another armored man with his eyes closed.
"Hey, get up," Zheng Fan urged.
Old Xiao imdiately scrambled to his feet, and Little Ma did too. The master and apprentice had barely gotten up when their legs gave way simultaneously, and they flopped back to the ground with a thud.
The scene was quite comical, even laughable.
Zheng Fan smiled. However, he wasn’t laughing at the two before him. He was laughing because Chuzhou City—many tis larger than Mianzhou, the capital of Qian State’s Shu Prefecture—had fallen to them just as easily as when he had first stord Mianzhou’s gates! They had charged straight in!
The only difference was that last ti in Mianzhou, because he had too few troops, he only had ti to take so heads before having to leave imdiately.
But this ti, although half of Li Fusheng’s division had been left in Beifeng Prefecture, when combined with his Green Willow Fortress cavalry, they numbered nearly thirty thousand horsen!
With thirty thousand heavy cavalry pressing forward and having already entered the city, this city could no longer cause any trouble.
Yes, Zheng Fan had appeared before Chuzhou City.
Yan’s heavy cavalry had ignored Qian State’s three major border garrisons. They had ignored the terrifying defensive line of military fortresses built by the West Army Division and Qian State’s third line of defense. South, south, and further south they rode. Now, they had bypassed the three defensive lines established by Qian State’s seven hundred thousand troops. They had crossed Qian State’s Northern Three Prefectures and reached the heartland of Shu Prefecture, which neighbored those three.
The journey had actually taken quite a while, even though they had barely fought along the way and were purely marching.
Perhaps people of later generations cannot truly comprehend the speed and range of cavalry, always imagining they can gallop incredibly fast. In reality, for cavalry to march one hundred kiloters in a day and night was already a high-intensity endeavor. If not for the fact that most Yan State cavalry were equipped with two horses, even achieving this speed would have been difficult. The kind of speed achieved by express courier stations relied on changing horses at every stop. If a cavalry unit were to dash madly like that in a forced march, a large portion of their warhorses would likely be useless before any battle began, and Yan’s heavy cavalry would transform into Yan’s infantry.
As for tales often found in novels and operas of certain generals leading their armies eight hundred li in a day, it wasn’t entirely impossible. Of course, the prerequisite was that the cavalryn weren’t riding horses, but rather the high-bloodline Pi Beasts like those ridden by the Earl of North Border and Lord Jingnan.
As they neared the borders of Shu Prefecture, the Yan Army began to divide its forces. Spreading out like a fan, like a hungry tiger pouncing on its prey, they lunged towards various locations throughout Shu Prefecture.
Li Fusheng’s division marched directly towards the heartland of Shu Prefecture, seizing this great prize.
"Blind Man, do you think Qian State’s border troops will co to their aid?" Zheng Fan asked.
The first Earl of North Border had once broken through five hundred thousand with thirty thousand heavy cavalry, but that was an exceptional case. Whether comparing Fatty Hui to the first Earl of North Border, or their tens of thousands from the rat army to the true elite of the thirty thousand Yan Army soldiers from a century ago—there was no comparison.
So, if the Qian people beca determined, they wouldn’t even need the troops from all three defensive lines to mobilize. Just deploying the border forces from Wei Town, Liang Town, and Chen Town, or having the West Army Division take action, could easily sweep aside Fatty Hui and their rat army, march directly into Yan State, and even pointing their spearhead at Yanjing wouldn’t be difficult.
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