Chapter 783

Gu Yuci bounced up from the ground, his eyes staring at the sand formation map already red, his arms trembling slightly due to extreme excitement.

He pulled out the sword hanging at his waist, the sword body emitting a clear metallic hiss in the night wind, the sword tip pointing directly at the night sky.

"All troops, listen to the order!"

His voice became hoarse due to the excitement that had been suppressed for too long, but every word smashed into the ears of every cavalryman on the drill ground like an iron nail.

"From now on, the original hundred-man team establishment is completely abolished, and the thousand-man team formation is immediately broken up!"

This military order exploded in the mountain valley in the middle of the night like a thunderbolt.

A suppressed commotion immediately surged in the crowd, several old-qualified centurions looked at each other, their lips moving, wanting to open their mouths.

Chen Yan leaned on the stone step railing of the point-taking platform, the horizontal blade placed horizontally on his knees, not even lifting his eyelids.

That invisible oppressive force emanating from him was more useful than any military order, and the commotion died out on its own in less than three breaths.

Gu Yuci's hand holding the sword did not shake at all, he turned and looked at Lu Ming.

"Marshal Governor, please immediately allocate manpower, reorganize with three people as the smallest combat unit, three groups as one small team, three small teams as one medium team, and three medium teams into one charging echelon."

Lu Ming hammered his chest armor with a fist, turned and ran toward the barracks with long strides, and turned his head to look at Chen Yan again after running two steps.

Chen Yan waved his hand at him.

"Go, don't dawdle."

Lu Ming grinned, and his figure disappeared into the darkness that the torches couldn't reach; his rough voice, like thunder, had already exploded between the tents.

"Everyone get up for me, not allowed to sleep!"

The drill ground immediately fell into a kind of near-crazy busyness.

The old soldiers of Xia Prefecture and the brave new recruits, who were originally distinct, were forcibly dismantled, broken up, crushed, and then kneaded together again.

Gu Yuci took the formation map Chen Yan drew on the ground, explained the essentials of the three-corner standing position to the team leaders of each small team over and over again, and his throat soon became hoarse from shouting.

Ye Zhuxi didn't stay idle, she mounted the jet-black horse king she had just tamed, and personally led the vanguard small team of the first echelon to practice the riding action of dividing water and pulling arcs in the corner of the drill ground repeatedly.

The sound of horse hooves and roars were mixed into a pot of boiling molten iron, reverberating in the valley.

An hour later, five thousand iron cavalry were cut into three large echelons.

Inside each echelon were nine medium teams, each medium team consisted of nine three-person groups, distinct but interlocking, like three sets of steel gears precise to the extreme.

Chen Yan stood up from the stone steps, stretched his neck, which was slightly stiff from sitting for a long time, and swept his gaze over those cavalrymen who had finished lining up but were full of confusion.

He turned his head to look at Gu Yuci.

"Drawing on the ground is useless, let them remember with their bodies."

Gu Yuci cupped his hands.

"The Pillar of State means... actual combat sparring?"

The corners of Chen Yan's mouth twitched.

"Go and transfer five thousand infantry from the camp outside the city, hold thick shields and carry long spears, and set up a heavy-armored rejection-horse formation that is the hardest in the Qi State for me."

His fingers tapped twice on the sword hilt at his waist.

"The cavalry all change to wooden blunt long spears, the spear heads wrapped in white ash, if they touch the infantry's body and leave a mark, it counts as damage."

He paused for a beat and added a sentence.

"The infantry side is the same, wooden sticks wrapped in ash, whoever is stabbed must honestly lie down and pretend to be dead for me, not allowed to play tricks."

Gu Yuci went to execute the order.

Another half an hour of scheduling, the scale of the drill ground was temporarily expanded by a factor of two.

Five thousand infantry transferred from the camp urgently held heavy wooden shields, lined up into three airtight defense lines at the end of the drill ground, long spears probing from the shield gaps, spear tips pointing obliquely to the sky, simulating the most elite tiger-brave heavy-armored formation of the Qi State.

At the other end of the drill ground, five thousand iron cavalry were divided into three echelons, the warhorses digging the ground with hooves anxiously, the wooden spears wrapped in white ash in the hands of the cavalrymen flickering with a layer of dry, powdery white in the firelight.

Chen Yan walked to the highest point of the point-taking platform, looking down at this drill ground that was about to turn into a Shura field.

He looked at Red Leaf standing on the side wing of the platform.

"Beat the drum."

Red Leaf turned and made a gesture to the drummer below the platform.

Boom.

The first drum sound was dull and long, like the first breath emitted by a giant beast when it woke up from hibernation.

Boom, boom.

The second and third sounds followed closely, the rhythm accelerated suddenly, the drum beats like dense iron hooves knocking on the frozen earth.

The first echelon moved.

Gu Yuci rode on a gray-maned warhorse, located in the center-rear position of the echelon, his command flag slashed forward, his voice tearing in the night wind.

"First wave, attack!"

Nine three-person groups were like nine iron bullets scattered, charging toward the shield formation at an extremely fast speed, but they didn't squeeze together like the traditional arrowhead formation, but maintained the carefully calculated scattered spacing.

Forty paces.

Thirty paces.

Twenty paces.

The front row of three cavalry stabbed out the white ash wooden spears held horizontally in front of their chests in almost the same breath, the spear heads passing through the shield gaps, leaving clear white marks on the chest armor of three infantrymen.

Those three infantrymen honestly dropped their shields and lay down.

But this time no one stopped.

The legs of the three cavalrymen clamped the horse's belly tightly at the same time, the warhorses were like flying swallows with spirit, pulling open an arc to the left and right at an extremely smooth speed, leaving a gap in the middle that could accommodate three horses passing side by side.

The second wave of three cavalry had already stepped on this blood path torn open by their predecessors and rushed up.

No slowing down.

No hesitation at all.

The three white ash spears stabbed into the shield formation at the most vulnerable moment when the shield formation had just closed and filled the gap, and the white ash marks exploded on the infantrymen like blooming plum blossoms.

The second wave divided the water and gave way.

The third wave followed.

The fourth wave.

The fifth wave.

The sixth wave.

The continuous impact was like a steel wave that would never retreat.

The interval of each charge was compressed to a limit that made people's heartbeats stop, the front row had just divided the water and pulled open, and the horse hooves of the back row had already stepped into the starting end of the gap.

The infantry shield formation appeared with the first crack during the third impact.

The crack expanded into a hole during the fifth wave.

The entire defense line began to bend backward during the seventh wave.

Ninth wave.

That heavy wooden shield defense line held up by the flesh and blood of five thousand infantry, under this high-frequency continuous impact that violated all defense common sense, was like a paper city wall poured through by hot molten iron, shattering with a bang.

The cavalry echelon was like a sharp blade burned red cutting into frozen butter, piercing through the entire infantry formation with a smoothness that made people's scalps numb.

The smoke and dust gradually dissipated.

On the drill ground, five thousand infantry were covered with white ash marks, lying down and "killed" all over the ground, looking like a white wheat field pressed down by a blizzard.

And on the cavalry side, the three echelons still maintained a complete three-three formation after passing through the formation, not a single warhorse collided with each other due to congestion, and not a single cavalryman fell off the horse due to losing speed.

The entire penetration process was as clean as a scalpel sliding across a piece of tofu.

The edge of the drill ground was first dead silent.

Then that burly centurion didn't know where he popped out from, he stood in place, looking at the white ash marks on the "corpses" all over the ground, his hands started to tremble violently uncontrollably.

"This motherf..."

His lips trembled, his eye sockets turned red, and there was no half-point of rogue spirit in his voice, leaving only a kind of pure awe after being completely conquered by absolute power.

"If this were real stuff, the Qi State people wouldn't even have slag left."

After a brief suffocating silence in the cavalry camp, everyone seemed to be ignited by the same fuse.

A team leader of a three-person group held the wooden spear in his hand high above his head and roared out at the top of his lungs.

"Pillar of State, ten thousand victories!"

Following that was the second voice, the third, the tenth, the one hundredth.

Five thousand iron cavalry emitted this most crazy roar of their lives with their necks bulging with veins, and that sound wave, wrapped in the long neighs emitted by the warhorses after being stimulated, was like an invisible sound wave giant hammer, smashing a crack that could not be seen in the night sky above the valley.

Chen Yan stood on the point-taking platform with his hands behind his back, the wind blowing the corners of his martial garment backward.

He looked at this steel torrent that had been reborn below, and the emotions churning in his dark, bottomless eyes were like bubbles rolling under the surface of a pot of water that had just boiled, violent but firmly pressed under the lid.

He didn't laugh.

He turned around and said a sentence to Red Leaf, who had been waiting under the platform steps.

"Prepare the horses, go to the Weaponry Workshop."

Red Leaf turned and disappeared into the night, her movement as fast as a red leaf rolled away by the wind.

Chen Yan walked down the point-taking platform, and stopped for a step when passing by Gu Yuci.

"You have already seen the essence of the three-three system, but just being able to run through is not enough."

His fingers tapped lightly on Gu Yuci's shoulder armor.

"Practice until you can divide the water and give way with your eyes closed, practice until every three-person group doesn't need to look at the command flag to know when the front row will open to the side."

He withdrew his hand and walked straight toward the chestnut horse that had already been prepared with saddle gear outside the camp gate.

"I give you one month."

He turned over and mounted, the reins wrapped around his fingers, and the chestnut horse snorted.

"One month later, if this cavalry still can't run out that kind of suffocating smoothness in front of me, then you don't have to be this Sima anymore."

Gu Yuci knelt on the frozen earth with one knee, his voice slightly out of tune because he was both excited and terrified.

"Your subordinate will fill in this life, and will never let the Pillar of State down!"

Chen Yan didn't look back, pinched the horse's belly, and the chestnut horse carried him and disappeared into the continuous mountain shadows outside the camp gate.

Eight fast horses followed closely, and the sound of hooves was soon swallowed by the whistling mountain wind.