Chapter 886: Shattered Giant Stone Gear Displays Divine Might

On the cliff wall directly in front of the Xiaochang, a platform three zhang high was hewn, its edge bearing two black battle flags without totems, fluttering in the valley wind.

The Suicide Warriors' gazes followed the fire upward, finally fixing on the figure at the center of the platform.

It was a tall woman, draped in a dark‑silver soft armor; the armor plates glimmered cold metal under the firelight, and a long hair was casually tied at the back of her head with a rough leather rope.

In her hand she held a jet‑black refined steel long spear, the end of the shaft braced against the platform's stone slab, the spear tip angled toward the night sky, its sharp edge too fierce to stare at.

She stood there, looking down from her height at the three thousand Suicide Warriors on the Xiaochang, her eyes devoid of any human warmth, as if watching a herd of beasts about to be led to the altar.

When the Suicide Warriors saw the figure's face clearly, an uncontrollable gasp of cold air erupted from the crowd, and a few veterans who had once served in Yinzhou could not help but step back half a pace.

Their familiarity with that face was overwhelming; it was the woman who once brandished a long spear in the rebel camp, killing repeatedly, seven in and seven out, and paved the Yinzhou Governor's reputation with flesh and blood.

Ye Zhuxi.

The valley wind poured in through cracks in the cliff, stirring a layer of loose earth on the Xiaochang, striking the Suicide Warriors' faces with a rustling sound.

Three thousand broad‑shouldered, barrel‑waisted men lifted their heads, staring fixedly at the woman in dark‑silver soft armor on the platform; not a single one dared to speak, even their breathing was deliberately reduced to the lightest possible.

Ye Zhuxi's gaze swept over the sea of black human heads below; she slightly twisted her right wrist holding the spear, and the spear's tail struck the stone slab with a crisp clack.

"I don't care which camp you previously ate rations in, nor how many people you have killed; from the moment you stepped through the gate of South Valley, you are nothing but raw iron to be forged." Ye Zhuxi's voice rode the wind, echoing across the entire Xiaochang, each word bearing undeniable harshness.

A slight stir rose in the crowd; a burly man with a scarred face stepped forward half a pace, the blue veins on his neck tightening in displeasure.

"When we clawed our way out of the pile of corpses, you wench didn't even know where you were embroidering; what right do you have to make us listen to you?" the scarred brute shouted, his voice full of provocation.

Ye Zhuxi said nothing; she didn't even glance at the brute, merely pressed her left hand lightly against the railing at her side, and the whole figure, like a black night owl, leapt down from the three‑zhang‑high platform.

The wind in midair blew her long hair apart, and the dark‑silver soft armor traced a dazzling cold light as she fell.

Her feet touched the frozen ground of the Xiaochang, knees slightly bent to absorb the falling force; at the moment of landing she made no superfluous movement, and the long spear in her hand already swept along the ground like a venomous snake emerging from a hole.

The scarred brute couldn't react at all; he only felt a crushing pain of bone shattering at the side of his knee, let out a wail, and his massive body slammed onto the ground like a felled tree.

Ye Zhuxi's spear shaft turned half a circle in the air, the spear tip steadied on the scarred brute's throat; the sharp edge had already sliced through a layer of flesh on his neck, and blood droplets rolled down along the spear tip.

"Just because my spear is faster than your mouth." Ye Zhuxi looked at the bruised, convulsing brute lying on the ground, her tone showing no hint of fluctuation.

She retracted the long spear, twirled the spear handle once in her hand, and braced it against the ground again.

The entire Xiaochang was dead silent; the Suicide Warriors who had earlier harbored contempt now dared not even breathe, and that scarred brute, renowned as a fierce soldier in the Left Martial Guard, could not even withstand a single move from Ye Zhuxi.

"Sima Gu is in charge of providing you food and drink, of forging your weapons and armor, and I am responsible for teaching you how to survive, or how to die with greater worth." Ye Zhuxi drew her long spear, turned, and walked step by step back up the stone steps of the platform.

She reached the edge of the platform, looking down from above at the Suicide Warriors who had been completely cowed.

"Starting tomorrow, everyone will have thirty‑pound sandbags tied to their legs and run twenty laps around the valley rim; those who cannot finish will have no food, and if anyone still cannot finish after three days, I will personally break his legs and toss him out to feed the wolves." Ye Zhuxi issued the first training command.

For the next two months, the Secret Arena in South Valley became a living furnace for these three thousand Suicide Warriors.

Each day before dawn, the heavy cattle‑horn blasts echoed through the valley, the Suicide Warriors dragging their exhausted bodies up from the communal bunks, beginning the daily grind of extreme exertion.

Ye Zhuxi's training methods were so harsh they made one's hair stand on end.

She not only demanded the Suicide Warriors complete long runs and hand‑to‑hand combat while bearing weight, but also required them to spend four hours each day with the warhorse assigned to them.

"A horse is your leg, your life; you must eat and sleep with it until it can understand even the slightest change in your breath." Ye Zhuxi, holding a Horse Whip, patrolled back and forth in the Stable area.

The Suicide Warriors were required to personally brush the warhorse's coat, feed it, clean its dung, and at night even wrap themselves in blankets to sleep beside the feed trough, enduring the horse's snorting and pungent odor.

To acclimate the warhorses to the future weight of heavy armor, Ye Zhuxi had them bind sand‑filled packs to the horses' backs, increasing the load from thirty to one hundred twenty pounds, and each day drove the horses to sprint short distances through the valley.

Every five days, Gu Yuci led a team to secretly transport a batch of supplies into South Valley; besides massive quantities of black beans, eggs and millet, there were wagons of iron ingots and armor plates shipped from the Great Zhou Armaments Bureau's Xiazhou branch.

Deep within the valley, in hidden rock caves, hundreds of shirt‑sleeve‑bare blacksmiths swung iron hammers day and night; the furnace fire bathed the caves in crimson, and the clanging of metal mingled with the warhorses' whinnies, becoming the sole melody of South Valley.

Two months passed quietly amid sweat, blood, and countless collapses from utter exhaustion.

Nearly five hundred of the three thousand Suicide Warriors were eliminated; those who could not endure the training intensity or broke bones while on horseback were secretly transferred by Gu Yuci to other locations, leaving two thousand five hundred who had been completely transformed.

The excess fat on their bodies was squeezed out, muscles clung to the bones like rock, and their eyes shed the former restlessness and ferocity, becoming a wolf‑like cold focus.

After a light snowfall in early winter, a thin white frost covered the Xiaochang in South Valley.

Accompanied by Gu Yuci and Zhang Wenqian, Chen Yan rode a horse through the narrow valley path and arrived at the edge of the Xiaochang in the Secret Arena.

He wore no official robes, only a dark‑blue Great Cloak, a Horse Whip in hand, his gaze piercing the falling snowflakes toward the black, oppressive formation at the center of the Xiaochang.

That was not an ordinary infantry formation, but the first batch of five hundred fully equipped heavy cavalry.

Five hundred men and five hundred warhorses stood silently in the snow, not a single person uttered a sound, and even the horses' snorting was kept to the lowest possible level.

Chen Yan urged his horse forward a bit, scrutinizing this war monster forged by the lucrative Trade Fair profits and Ye Zhuxi's devilish training.

The cavalry wore Great Zhou Armaments Bureau's specially forged cold‑drawn refined steel Bright Light armor; the two Guardian Heart Mirrors on their chests were polished to reflect a silhouette, and the shoulder guards and skirt armor plates were tightly braided together with coarse cattle‑skin rope, each exuding a heavy heft.

They wore fully‑encasing refined steel helmets; their faces were hidden behind a snarling demonic iron mask, leaving only two narrow slits for the eyes, behind which were pairs of blood‑thirsty, icy eyes.

The warhorse's equipment was exaggerated to the extreme; beyond the legs and belly, the horse's head, neck, chest, and back were all encased in specially made horse armor, its surface studded with protruding rivets to cushion blunt blows.

Five hundred riders with their horses resembled five hundred emotionless steel giants, exuding a pressure enough to crush anything.

"Minister of Works, the first batch of five hundred riders has finished equipping; the remaining two thousand are still awaiting armor plates from the Armaments Bureau, expected to be fully supplied by month's end." Gu Yuci, riding his horse, lagged half a body length behind Chen Yan, his tone betraying unmistakable pride.

Chen Yan nodded, his Horse Whip flicking lightly in the air.

"From now on, this cavalry shall be called Futu." Chen Yan's voice carried across the snow, bearing a decisive, solemn tone.

Futu, a Buddhist term for a pagoda, also a heavy weapon for suppressing evil spirits.

Ye Zhuxi rode a white horse without armor out from the side of the formation, her long spear angled toward the ground, and upon reaching Chen Yan she tightened the reins.

"Minister of Works, the arena is set, ready for drills at any moment." Ye Zhuxi's breath turned into a white mist in the cold air.

Following the direction of Ye Zhuxi's spear, Chen Yan saw at the opposite end of the Xiaochang rows of half‑person‑high granite monoliths, interspersed with sturdy wooden chevaux‑de‑frise, their spikes wrapped in iron plates, tips glinting coldly.

These were obstacles designed to simulate enemy heavy infantry defenses; a typical light cavalry charging into them would inevitably end up overturned, with broken bones and torn tendons.

"Begin, let this Duke see what you have cultivated over these two months." Chen Yan pulled his horse back a dozen steps, clearing the arena.

Ye Zhuxi turned her horse's head, faced the five hundred heavy riders, and raised her long spear high.

"Wedge formation, prepare!" Ye Zhuxi's clear shout pierced the wind and snow.

The five hundred heavy riders issued no extra commands; the foremost fifty riders swiftly converged toward the center, forming a sharp arrowhead, while the following cavalry spread out in sequence, and within a dozen breaths the entire formation became a massive steel inverted triangle.

The cavalry, in perfect unison, drew from the side of their saddles two‑zhang‑long refined steel horse spears; the spear tips angled forward, and the rear ends of the shafts were firmly pressed against iron rings at their waists.

"Charge!" Ye Zhuxi's Chang Qiang swung forward fiercely.

With that command, five hundred Iron Armor‑clad warhorses surged together, their heavy iron hooves pounding the frozen ground with a deep boom.

At first the speed was not fast; the heavy cavalry had to overcome great weight, but as the warhorses' gait quickened, the earth‑shaking momentum began to show.

The hoofbeats, initially chaotic, rapidly merged into a single rhythm, like a massive war drum being frenziedly beaten in the valley, shaking loose the stones on the surrounding cliffs.

Chen Yan's warhorse snorted anxiously, pawing the ground twice with its front hooves, held back by Chen Yan's tight rein.

The five hundred heavy cavalry pushed to their limit; the steel armor plates clanged against each other in the violent jolts, the relentless metallic screech pricking the eardrums.

They surged like a black steel torrent, bearing unstoppable kinetic force, and slammed into the defensive line of granite boulders and spiked wooden obstacles.

No screams, no pause, only a teeth‑gnawing sound of shattering.

The horse lance of the front‑most rider, propelled by the warhorse's charge, pierced the stout spiked wooden obstacle; the immense force uprooted it, and the wooden spikes shattered mid‑air into countless wood chips.

Immediately after, the Iron Armor on the warhorse's chest slammed hard against a granite boulder half a man's height tall.

Sparks flew everywhere, and the muffled impact made one's heart skip a beat.

The hard granite, faced with over a hundred jin of horse armor and the terrifying kinetic energy of the raging warhorse, proved as fragile as a mud‑molded toy, shattering into pieces; stone fragments flew outward like hidden weapons.

The wedge formation of the five hundred heavy cavalry cut into the line like a red‑hot knife through butter, easily tearing it apart; the hooves mercilessly trampled the stone fragments and wood chips, grinding them into grit powder.

The raised dust mingled with snow, forming a gray‑white haze that blanketed the sky over the Xiaochang, completely swallowing the heavy cavalry's silhouettes.

When the dust settled, the five hundred heavy cavalry had reformed a hundred paces away, their horse lances still angled forward; aside from a few warhorses snorting in place, the entire Formation remained oppressively silent.

The area they had just charged through was now only a ruined passage dozens of yards wide, the ground strewn with granite shards and broken wood, with not a single intact stone to be found.

Gu Yuci stared at the wreckage, inhaled a sharp breath of cold air, and his palm gripping the reins was slick with sweat.

He had fought countless battles, yet had never witnessed this purely brute‑force aesthetic that crushes everything; he could even imagine that if these five hundred riders collided with the Rouran light cavalry, both rider and horse would be smashed into pulp.

Zhang Wenqian's Adam's apple bobbed; he quickly tallied in his mind that the huge profits from the Trade Fair spent on these monsters were more than worth the cost.

Chen Yan rode his horse, watching the ruined passage the heavy cavalry had forced through, the hem of his Great Cloak flapping noisily in the wind.

He urged his horse forward; the hooves stepped on the granite grit powder, producing a faint rustle.

Chen Yan bent down, picked up a partially crushed piece of wood from the ground, squeezed it twice in his hand, and the wood emitted a strained cracking sound.

He casually tossed the wood onto the ground, his gaze cutting through the wind and snow toward the five hundred riders wearing demon masks in the distance; his face showed no change, yet something in his eyes shone terrifyingly.

"The blades are honed; we need a touchstone," Chen Yan's voice carried through the wind and snow, unforced yet clear to Gu Yuci and Zhang Wenqian's ears.

He turned his horse's head toward the northern Grassland, the collar of his Great Cloak billowing open to reveal the dark‑colored lining beneath.

"And the prey has already walked into the cage itself," Chen Yan's Horse Whip snapped crisply in midair.