stjorthotic Chapter 174 First Battle on the Border: The Bloodstained Grain Route
Chapter 174 First Battle on the Border: The Bloodstained Grain Route
Before dawn, a layer of mist still clung to the gate walls, casting a hazy, half-light white glow. Lin Chen had already led two thousand patrolmen out of the pass. The sound of horses' hooves pounding on the gravel road was muffled by the morning breeze across the wasteland, carrying only a faint, suppressed current, flowing slowly along the ground. After leaving the gate, the column formed a single file and headed northwest along the dirt road worn smooth by countless wheels.
The grain route stretched back and forth between Tianlang Pass and the rear towns for countless years. Two deep ruts had been carved into the road surface by the weight of the supply wagons, their bottoms filled with fine pebbles and dry soil. On either side were barren slopes, dotted with a few clumps of withered grass clinging to the ground. When the wind blew, the grass stalks collided, producing a dry, resonant sound that echoed across the vast wilderness. The closer one got to Wolf Tongue Valley, the more pronounced the marks on the road became. Every so often, one could see a broken wagon shaft lying across the roadside, its edges already gray and blackened. Occasionally, the wreckage of overturned grain wagons lay askew in the ruts, the planks roughened by wind and sand, the grain sacks long since hollowed out by the insects of the wasteland. Further on, broken armor plates and scattered spears appeared on the ground, some half-buried in the sand, their rusted blades exposed by the passing wind. Traces of the soldiers' remains gradually emerged. Their clothes had faded, their outlines collapsed into the ground, half-covered by dry soil, leaving only the outlines of bones and a few bent arrow shafts stuck in the nearby soil.
The entrance to Wolf Tongue Valley resembled a narrow crevice. The rock walls on either side rose sharply from the flat ground, their jagged shapes covered with a layer of dry, grayish-green moss that felt hard and brittle to the touch, easily peeling off with a fingernail. The valley was narrow, allowing only four grain carts to pass side-by-side, the sky above squeezed into a grayish-white line by the cliffs on either side. Su Muyue reined in her horse at the valley entrance, dismounted, and stepped over the boulders, walking about fifty paces into the valley. She stopped at a relatively flat spot, knelt on one knee, and pressed her fingertips against the seam between the earth and rock. Activating her Martial Emperor bloodline, she closed her eyes and concentrated, letting her own aura mingle with the faint spiritual energy fluctuations of the earth's veins, scanning back and forth across every crack and protruding boulder on the cliff face. After a moment, she stood up and returned to the front of the group.
"There are ambushes on both sides of the valley. They're hidden in the naturally formed crevices in the middle of the rock walls, concealed by rubble and withered grass. There are about three hundred of them, all evil soldiers at the Qi Condensation to Transformation Realm. The leader, a late-stage Transformation Realm cultivator, is positioned at the corner on the left cliff, slightly to the north." She pointed to a protruding rock ledge to the left front. "They'll wait until we enter the valley and then use rolling stones to block our retreat, followed by poisoned arrows from both sides. The connection points of the formation are set under the rubble on the ground, not triggered by spiritual power, but by simple ropes, so they're difficult to detect with conventional spiritual power detection."
Lin Chen nodded, his gaze sweeping from the valley entrance to the distant corner. He quickly assigned tasks, issuing four orders in quick succession without pause. Leng Feng led the First Battalion to scale the cliffs from the left, circling behind enemy lines; the Second and Third Battalions were responsible for the feint attack from the front, advancing into the valley at a normal marching pace, unhurriedly approaching the ambush range; Chu Fan, along with several array masters, set up a soundproof array at the valley entrance, using spiritual power to press the array patterns into the ground, spreading outwards to completely isolate the entire canyon from sound, ensuring that the noise from the evil soldiers' attack would not alert the rear stronghold; Su Ling'er, along with several pill-wielding team members, dispersed behind the shield formation, distributing antidote pills to the front-line soldiers, two pills per person, to be held under their tongues.
After the feigned attack team set off, they reached the middle of the valley in about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn. Several small boulders tumbled down the cliff faces as the two groups passed, rolling a few times before stopping in the middle of the path. The officer at the head of the column raised his hand, causing the column to slow slightly. Looking up, they saw shadowy figures moving above the cliff faces, followed by the sound of clappers. The clappers clanged back and forth between the cliffs, sharp and rapid, like countless pebbles hitting sheet metal simultaneously. Immediately afterward, poisoned arrows shot out from the gaps in the cliff faces, the green liquid on the arrowheads drawing dense, dark streaks in the narrow valley, like a net being drawn in. Rolling boulders followed closely behind; large stones were pushed down the cliff face, bouncing and tumbling down the slope, hitting the ground with dull thuds.
The youth army's shield formation closed the moment the gong sounded. Front-rank soldiers crouched, shields raised, while rear-rank soldiers stepped forward, placing their shields on top of the front's edges, the shields overlapping to form a sloping defensive line. Poisoned arrows struck the shields, their arrowheads wedged into the gaps between the iron and wooden planks, their tails still trembling slightly; rolling stones pounded down, causing the shield formation to slide back half an inch, the bases of the shields carving shallow furrows into the ground, but not a single shield was breached. Several soldiers grazed by stray arrows had already taken antidotes. Su Ling'er circled around the edge of the shield formation, crouched beside the wounded, and began unwrapping bandages. As she knelt to treat their wounds, arrows and blades still flew overhead; she merely tilted her head slightly to avoid an arrow shaft embedded in a shield, her hands never stopping.