Chapter 84

The warhorse collapsed, its rider surely flung into a bloody mess, and it also blocked others from attacking Bai Lang—they had to dodge the fallen horse, putting them beyond their weapons' reach. As for bows and arrows? They're basically useless against Bai Lang. The armored soldiers on the ground now face Bai Lang directly; the problem is they're so badly fallen that some are even pinned under the horse, and fighting Bai Lang is practically just handing over their heads.

Bai Lang wasn't in a hurry to kill these people either—they were still useful. He focused on using ground techniques to break the horses' legs, first bringing down some armored soldiers. Actually trying to surround Bai Lang, the cavalry really had no advantage—this person moves on the ground, reacts quickly; even if they're not afraid of colliding with horses, at most only three can attack Bai Lang at the same time. That's utterly useless. Cavalry must charge to be cavalry; just standing around turning isn't a match for infantry.

Moreover, Bai Lang is no ordinary infantryman—he's basically a tiger that walks upright and uses martial arts. Amid the rising dust kicked up by the cavalry, his figure appears and disappears, sometimes suddenly exploding upward to pull a horseman off his mount, and while lunging he also has the time and space to trample each armored soldier who's fallen to the ground. It's that simple—just a stomp will do; even scale armor can't withstand Bai Lang's foot crushing the chest.

As for fighting Bai Lang with weapons in this situation? That's just suicide. This guy's reflexes are a notch faster—basically off the charts. Those armored soldiers wielding heavy swords and battle blades, trying to clash with Bai Lang, might hit him if they gang up, but alone they're just getting beaten down. Bai Lang jumps left, right, forward, backward, his fists and palms striking in succession; each blow ensures someone loses combat ability.

Bai Lang's punch is the vicious kind with a protruding middle‑joint, a fist that surely shatters bone on impact—though these people wear mail and scale‑cotton armor, making claw techniques awkward for him, his fists and palms are better at getting through the armor to hurt the body inside. Right now Bai Lang isn't just fists and feet; his knees and elbows are equally terrifying weapons, and in this situation a style akin to "opening the gate" Ba Ji Quan still gives him an edge.

Techniques like "Fierce Tiger Climbs the Mountain," "Yama's Three‑Point Hand," and "Iron Mountain Lean" are all handy in a melee. Bai Lang can also seize weapons to fight—especially here weapons are plentiful, so grabbing and discarding them is no problem. Thus some were run through by heavy swords, some beheaded by sabers, and others had their skulls smashed by their own bone‑spike armor. These cavalrymen realized they could do nothing on horseback; they had to dismount and fight on foot, but fighting Bai Lang on foot while wearing heavy armor is utterly disadvantageous.

They also retreated, and quickly so, realizing that without keeping distance they had no chance against Bai Lang. The fallen comrades were probably beyond saving; pulling back to shoot arrows at Bai Lang might work. But it's still a loss—if the range is great, Bai Lang can dodge or block the arrows, and even if they hit him they're hardly effective; if the range is short—well, this guy has a pile of their weapons on the ground, and just tossing them can kill a person, not to mention he can explode upward like a tiger leaping from a horse to strike.

After Bai Lang had killed a certain number, these armored troops began to retreat—this time they'd suffered a great loss; not all of the over‑thousand were Baya La, and the truly brave and skilled Baya La had already died in batches, leaving these men's courage nearly spent. At Bai Lang's tiger roar, they turned their horses and fled. They'd been frightened by the killing; this man seemed unkillable—whether they shot arrows or charged in to slash, he suffered no harm, and instead they were easily slain by him.

After those cavalry fled, Bai Lang found he had gotten another thirty‑odd heads, plus a similar number of warhorses. "Great luck! I didn't expect this lot not to have destroyed the cart!" Bai Lang cheerfully chopped off all the heads, "Too bad I ruined six, so now I have twenty‑seven heads. Right, I also need to strip the armor and gather the weapons…… All this is money, and the bounty for the Baya La troops among them should be even higher! Striking it rich starts today!

It took half an hour for Bai Lang to strip the valuables from these corpses; the headless bodies were tossed haphazardly to one side. He saddled the horses, hitched them to the cart, and set off on the road back.

Then he met over a thousand soldiers who had come out of Ningyuan City to fetch him...... Earlier they had already received word from those few night‑watch units, learning of Bai Lang's violent and ferocious combat process. Now seeing Bai Lang leading more than thirty horses and a cart piled high with heads and armor‑clad weapons, they basically regarded Junior Protector Bai as a god. Even at the great victory of Ningyuan, the entire Liaodong army had never cut down so many genuine Tartar heads—although they claimed to have slain tens of thousands, the actual heads numbered only a dozen or so.

Bai Lang here already has nearly a hundred heads, and every single one is a genuine Tartar. Those veteran soldiers can tell at a glance that many of these Tartars are Batala infantry, even wearing Gabuxian Chao Ha and Niu Lu E'e armor. Such Tartars have all been beheaded single‑handedly by Junior Protector Bai—what kind of fierce general could pull that off? It's like a dream. Even Wu Sangui would be as speechless as a chicken with its neck squeezed.

Finally, the look in Bai Lang's eyes was also filled with dread—this is already beyond what an ordinary person could achieve. Fighting alone on horseback amidst the enemy ranks, slaying over a hundred men and still withdrawing unscathed is something even ancient fierce generals could scarcely manage—and Bai Lang's invulnerability to blades and spears has already been proven, making him all the more terrifying. With such a fierce general leading a charge, not to mention the Guan Ning Iron Cavalry, even the Tartar battle formations would likely collapse.

Then, while Wu Sangui invited Bai Lang for drinks, the accompanying generals also took the opportunity to probe, asking Bai Lang how he achieved invulnerability to blades and spears—whether he had gone somewhere or used some method to pray for a talisman that would grant him such immunity. Bai Lang merely laughed heartily, not hiding anything: "Thirteen Tai Bao Golden Bell Shield! Once you cultivate the three stages, you become immune to blades and spears!" This is a "family‑inherited" martial art; those generals certainly didn't expect that merely mentioning it to Bai Lang would get him to teach them.

This sort of thing is normally the core inheritance of a military family—passed to daughters‑in‑law, not to daughters—and it is the capital by which every military clan establishes itself. Originally it consisted of various drill and formation methods, but Bai Lang's combat technique surely deserves to become such a secret transmission as well. This kind of skill is something even a family's servant could never learn in a lifetime; it would likely take three generations of servants before they might receive a fragment of it, so the most reliable option is to marry off a daughter—one must find a way to bring Bai Lang into the family, and judging by his demeanor he probably wouldn't mind teaching his brother‑in‑law......