Chapter 782

Five thousand people's knees slammed onto the frozen earth, and the sound wave, wrapped in the crisp metal collision of armor, was like a heavy hammer knocking on the spine of the mountain ridge, and the aftershock bounced back and forth on the four walls of the basin three times before gradually dissipating.

Chen Yan stood in the center of the drill ground, the torch flames jumping on the shoulders of his dark gold tiger-patterned martial garment, making his cold, knife-like face light and dark.

He didn't rush to let these people stand up.

The wind poured down from the gap in the mountain ridge, hitting the exposed necks of the kneeling people with gravel and ice, and the breathing of five thousand people was infinitely magnified in this silence, sounding like a tamed giant beast struggling to suppress the panting in its chest.

Chen Yan's gaze swept from the left wing to the right wing, lingering for two breaths on the back of the burly centurion's head, and then his hands gently supported forward.

"All stand up."

He didn't use Qi to amplify his voice, but these two words were like two stones thrown into dead water, and the ripples instantly swayed open.

Five thousand people stood up in unison, the sound of armor plates colliding with each other connected into a short metal rainstorm, and then returned to solemnity.

Chen Yan threw the Wujin point-steel spear back to Ye Zhuxi, who had dismounted, and tapped his fingers lightly on the copper mouth of the sword hilt at his waist, emitting a crisp hum.

He took long strides and walked straight into the belly of the iron-armored formation.

The torchlight chased from behind him, pulling his shadow into a long black blade, stabbing into the depth of the cavalry formation.

Chen Yan walked to the front of the first row of cavalry and stopped.

His gaze fell on the long spear held horizontally in front of the saddle bridge by a cavalryman nearby, his eyes narrowed, and his right fingers tapped silently on the copper mouth of the scabbard.

"Raise the spear."

The cavalryman was startled, and exerted force with both arms to raise the twelve-zhang long spear horizontally to his chest, the spear tip trembling slightly in the firelight.

Chen Yan reached out his left hand, pinched the middle of the spear shaft with two fingers, and pressed down three inches.

"The spear tail sticks to the ribs, and the angle between the spear body and the ground cannot exceed the width of your fist."

He released his fingers, the spear shaft bounced back to its original position, and the cavalryman hurriedly adjusted the spear-holding angle, a layer of fine cold sweat seeping from his forehead.

Chen Yan didn't look at him again and continued to walk into the depth.

He stopped in the third row, grabbed the bit of a warhorse, and lowered his head to look at the distance between the horse hoof and the tail of the warhorse in front.

He turned his head, his hawk-like eyes nailed directly to Gu Yuci's face, who was walking up quickly.

"What is the distance between these two horses?"

Gu Yuci lowered his head and measured it visually, cupping his hands to answer.

"Reporting to the Pillar of State, about four paces."

Chen Yan released the bit, patted the horse's neck with the back of his hand, his voice as cold as if it had been transmitted from under the ice layer.

"Four paces. Once the front row stops urgently, the back row's horse head hitting the front row's horse buttocks only takes half a breath."

He took two steps forward, his boot soles crushing a piece of broken ice, the crunching sound being jarringly loud in the surrounding silence.

"What happens after the collision? The back row's cavalryman and horse fall under the front row's horse legs; your elite iron cavalry hasn't even touched the enemy, and you've already trampled a piece of yourselves to death."

Gu Yuci's face changed, his lips moved twice, but he didn't dare to argue in the end.

Chen Yan turned around and strode toward the direction where Lu Ming stood at the edge of the drill ground, the hem of his cloak rolled up by the wind, carrying an oppressive force that made people unable to breathe.

"Lu Ming, show me the formation you've been practicing these days."

Lu Ming straightened his iron-tower-like waist and hammered his chest armor with a fist.

"Don't worry, brother-in-law. This arrowhead formation was practiced under my personal supervision, and I guarantee it can pierce the Qi State's defense line in one breath."

Chen Yan didn't answer, walked to the stone steps of the point-taking platform with his hands behind his back, sat down, elbows resting on his knees, chin raised slightly, the posture looking very much like a lone wolf crouching on the cliff top examining the hunting ground.

"Then pierce it for me to see."

Gu Yuci turned over and mounted a gray-maned warhorse, the command flag in his hand slashed forward, his voice tearing in the night wind.

"Arrowhead formation, form the formation!"

The sound of horse hooves rose suddenly, and five thousand iron cavalry completed the formation change in a very short time.

The sharpest hundred-man vanguard gathered at the head of the formation into a sharp arrowhead, the two wings unfolded in sequence, and the entire formation was like a black giant iron wedge, flickering with cold murderous intent in the firelight.

At the end of the drill ground, two hundred supply soldiers had erected three rows of thickened heavy wooden shields, each shield wrapped with iron edges, simulating the most commonly used rejection-horse tortoise-shell formation of the Qi State infantry.

Gu Yuci's command flag slashed downward.

"Charge!"

The earth began to tremble at this moment.

Five thousand Hequ warhorses exerted force at the same time, the gravel and ice slag splashed by the hooves hitting the frozen earth were like a mini-hailstorm, and the visual impact of that overwhelming force made Ye Zhuxi, who was standing on the side wing of the point-taking platform, take half a step back involuntarily.

The brave general at the head of the arrowhead formation clamped the horse's belly tightly with his legs, holding the long spear horizontally to his chest, the spear tip drawing a dazzling silver arc in the wind.

Boom!

The vanguard smashed into the wooden shield formation like an iron hammer, the cracking sound deafening.

The first row of wooden shields shattered into wood chips flying all over the sky on the spot, the iron-wrapped edges were twisted into hemp-flower shapes by the giant force and flew away, smashing into the mud ten paces away.

The second row of shield formation also appeared with visible cracks under the impact of inertia, and the supply soldiers playing the infantry used their shoulders to hold the shield surface tightly, pushing the charging speed out of the formation line.

"Good!"

Lu Ming smashed a fist into his palm excitedly on the side, turned his head to look at Chen Yan, his face full of expectation waiting to be praised.

There was no ripple on Chen Yan's face.

His gaze crossed Lu Ming's shoulder and stared fixedly at everything happening.

The vanguard tore open the first layer of defense, but the second row of wooden shields quickly closed and filled the gap, and those supply soldiers playing heavy-armored infantry used their shoulders to hold the shield surface tightly, eating up the charging speed alive.

The speed of the arrowhead was visibly decaying.

The long spears of the front-row cavalry were stuck in the shield gaps and couldn't be pulled out, and the warhorses were blocked by the dense shield wall, starting to turn around in place anxiously.

The horse heads of the second row of cavalry behind had already bumped into the horse buttocks of the front row.

The third row was even more miserable, the warhorses squeezed together, and the cavalrymen were forced to pull the reins and stop urgently, the hooves of more than a dozen horses stirred together, almost throwing three cavalrymen off their horses.

The originally sharp and peerless iron wedge turned into a lump of iron stuck at the breach and unable to advance or retreat within just five breaths.

"Stop!"

Chen Yan stood up from the stone steps, his right hand slashing downward violently.

The shockwave brought by that palm, wrapped in gravel, smashed into the cowhide war drum on the side of the drill ground, the drum surface exploded on the spot, and the drum frame rolled backward, rolling twice on the ground before stopping.

Everyone was shocked until their eardrums were numb by this loud noise, the warhorses neighed and stepped in place, and the cavalrymen retreated to the formation in embarrassment, each sweating profusely.

Gu Yuci turned over and dismounted, ran to Chen Yan and knelt on one knee, his usually steady face flushed red, and his Adam's apple rolled twice before squeezing out a sound.

"Your subordinate... practiced the formation poorly, please punish me, Pillar of State."

Lu Ming also put away his smile, his iron-tower-like body standing in place without daring to move.

Chen Yan walked down the stone steps, stepped over the broken drum skin, and walked step by step to Gu Yuci.

"Do you know that if those were Qi State heavy-armored spearmen standing behind the wooden shields just now, your vanguard would have been stabbed into a sieve."

He raised his hand and pointed to the pile of broken wooden shield debris that was still smoking, and the direction of his finger turned to those cavalrymen who were crowded together.

"The back row couldn't see what happened in front at all, the charging inertia couldn't be stopped, own people hit own people, horses stepping on horses, people pressing on people."

Chen Yan's voice was not high, but every word carried the coldness of a steel knife quenched in ice, pouring into everyone's ears, cold to the deepest part of the spine.

"You are not charging, you are using the elite iron cavalry that I spent tens of thousands of taels of gold to smash out, to be target practice for the enemy's sword technique!"

Gu Yuci's forehead knocked on the frozen earth, not saying a word.

Lu Ming gritted his teeth and finally opened his mouth.

"Brother-in-law, the problem of losing speed halfway through the arrowhead formation charge, I also discovered, but the cavalry densely charging to the distance of close-quarters combat, the front row must slow down, the back row can't stop their feet, this is a dead knot that has been passed down by ancestors for thousands of years and has not been solved."

He rubbed his rough hands, his tone revealing a bit of helplessness.

"Unless the back row is allowed to slow down in advance, but that way the impact is mostly wasted, and it's the same as not charging."

Several old centurions with white hair and beards on the drill ground looked at each other, each writing the same resignation in their eyes.

Millennium dead knot, unsolvable situation.

Chen Yan finished listening to these words and lowered his head to look at Lu Ming for two seconds.

The corners of his mouth suddenly twitched upward, and that smile was as cold as if it had been dug out of a graveyard.

He turned and walked to the muddy ground in front of the drill ground that had been turned into a mess by horse hooves, and his left hand pulled out the horizontal blade that could cut iron like mud from his waist with a "clang."

The blade tip poked into the frozen earth, and under the attention of everyone, began to slowly and accurately outline a strange pattern that had never appeared in this world on the ground.

Three arrowheads, head to tail, layer upon layer, like the cross-section of a sea wave.

Each arrowhead was composed of only three points, three points forming horns for each other, forming an extremely small triangle.

Behind the triangle was a triangle, with precise spacing between the triangles, like the gear teeth of a gear, tight and seamless but never interfering.

Chen Yan pulled the blade tip out of the muddy ground, the blade was stained with wet cold mud, he shook it twice, turned around and faced the generals who were surrounding him.

"Your brains are only filled with one arrowhead formation, squeezing forward in a swarm, the front row stops and the back row is dead."

He pointed the blade tip at the first group of triangles of the pattern on the ground.

"But what if the front row doesn't stop at all?"

Gu Yuci raised his head, his eyes full of confusion.

"Doesn't stop? The front row stabs and doesn't pull the spear to slow down, where are they going?"

Chen Yan slid the blade tip toward the two arcs drawn on both sides of the first group of triangles.

"Go to both sides."

His voice sank, every word like it was clamped out of a mold with red-hot iron pliers.

"Three people in a group, the front row of three cavalry stabs and doesn't pull the spear, doesn't slow down, pulls open an arc to the left and right wings like a swallow skimming water, and lets out the road in the middle."

He moved the blade edge to the second group of triangles.

"The back row of three cavalry steps on the gap opened by the predecessors, rushes into the same breach at the highest speed, stabs again, divides the water again, and lets out the road again."

The blade tip slid to the third group.

"The third row follows, the fourth row follows, like sea waves slapping up one after another, always someone charging, always someone stabbing, always no one staying in place waiting to be beaten."

Chen Yan slammed the horizontal blade into the ground, the blade buried half a foot into the mud, the hilt trembling slightly in the wind.

The entire drill ground was quiet, leaving only the crackling sound of the torches occasionally exploding.

Gu Yuci stared at the pattern on the ground, his pupils dilated a circle in the firelight, and a sound of extremely difficult swallowing emitted from his throat.

Lu Ming squatted down, his rough fingers slowly tracing the trajectory of the arc on the muddy ground, a kind of near-religious fanaticism appearing on his rough face.

"This... if this is practiced..."

Chen Yan looked down at him, the firelight reflecting in those dark, bottomless eyes.

"If practiced, there is no infantry defense line in the world that can stop you."

He bent down and pulled out the horizontal blade, the mud on the blade quickly freezing into a thin layer of ice in the cold wind.

"Because you are not a knife, you are a sea that will never retreat."