Chapter 709

Liaodong, seventy li east of Salihu, a Yuan military fort.

The fort's walls were earth and stone, not high, but enough to overlook the surrounding meadow. It was early morning, thin mist not yet cleared; the soldiers on watch, spears in hand, nodded off. From the stables inside came a few neighs, the kitchen began to smoke, everything was as usual.

Until the horizon, that thin mist was silently torn apart.

No bugle, no shout.

Only a rapidly expanding moving shadow, and a dull thudding of hooves as if striking the heart.

"Enemy!"

The lookout soldier only managed to shout half a word.

A heavy arrow, pitch-black overall but with its fletching emitting an eerie pale blue light, had pierced his throat, nailing the rest of his syllable in his windpipe. The corpse toppled from the watchtower.

The soldiers on the wall woke with a start.

They saw a sight they had never seen in their lives.

Cavalry.

Their number was not large, about three hundred plus horsemen.

The horses were the Mongolian steeds common in Liaodong, but their builds seemed somewhat stockier; the white vapor from their nostrils stretched long in the cold air. The riders wore mixed-color leather jerkins, some with crude iron plate over them, and iron face masks that left only their eyes exposed.

Those eyes, in the morning light and thin mist, occasionally flashed a faint gray-blue hardly noticeable.

Their charge formation was not especially neat, but their speed was extreme—beyond reason. As hooves struck the frozen-hard ground, what flew up was not dirt but puffs of fine, blue-glinting ice crystals?

Even more chilling was their silence.

Besides the hoofbeats, there was hardly any other noise—no battle cries, no howls, just a silent, high-speed approaching shadow of death.

"Fire arrows! Quickly fire arrows!"

The centurion inside the fort bellowed hoarsely, expending all his strength.

The sparse arrows on the wall flew out. Most fell wide; only a few struck the leading horsemen or their horses. Leather armor was pierced, the warhorses cried out and collapsed. Yet any rider who fell from his horse after being hit, if not killed outright, could climb to his feet without a sound, draw his waist saber, and continue forward at a speed not inferior to a galloping horse, charging with the main force!

Their running posture was somewhat stiff, but their speed was terrifying.

"Monsters! They're monsters!" a soldier screamed in despair.

In the blink of an eye, the cavalry had reached the base of the fort's wall.

Without pause, without trying to find the gate, the leading dozens of riders, at the moment they neared the wall, suddenly jerked hard on the reins!

The warhorses reared up, their forefeet slamming hard into the earthen wall.

Using that push, the rider on the horse's back, as if freed from gravity, leapt into the air, his heavy saber or bone blade wrapped in an evil wind, smashing down hard on the defenders atop the wall!

The strength was astonishing.

A Yuan soldier raised his shield to block.

"Crack!"

The shield shattered, his arm broke, and the whole man was flung backward, his breastbone caved in.

Where the blade passed, it brought not only blood but a chill that penetrated the marrow. Soldiers merely grazed by the blade, not cut outright, saw their wounds quickly turn purple-black, their movements stiff and sluggish.

The battle—if it could be called a battle—ended in less than the time it takes to finish a cup of tea.

Three hundred Jurchen cavalry, like a red-hot blade slicing into frozen oil, swept through this fort garrisoned by over a hundred Yuan frontier troops without resistance. Resistance was weak and brief. The gate was opened from within, the cavalry poured in, and began a ruthless cleanup and looting.

Food, ironware, cloth, all useful supplies were swiftly loaded onto the pack horses accompanying them. Prisoners? Almost none. Except for a few fleet-footed who slipped into the woods and escaped, every living soul in the fort, soldier or civilian alike, was slaughtered.

Corpses were piled haphazardly at the base of the wall.

Fresh blood seeped into the frozen earth, its hue seeming darker than usual.

The leader of the Jurchen cavalry, a burly man named Éyìdū, rode slowly past the mound of corpses. He lifted his heavy iron helmet, revealing a face lined with wind and frost, yet with eyes unusually sharp. He drew a deep breath of the thick blood-scent in the air, and the corner of his mouth split into a near-fiendish grin.

He lifted his hand and gazed at his palm. Beneath the skin, a faint, cobweb-like blue tracery flashed and vanished. Power had never filled him so fully. In his ears seemed to echo the whisper of the 'divine crow': southward, seize, destroy, pave the way for the great Khan.

"Clean it up." His voice was hoarse and grating, like gravel rubbing together, "Before sunset, I want to see the next stronghold raise our flag."

The cavalry carried out the order in silence, their movements terrifyingly efficient. In their eyes, fervor and an inhuman, icy eeriness coexisted.

After half an hour, the unit set out again, like thick ink dripping onto the meadow, winding southward to a smaller Yuan outpost. Behind them remained only black-smoke-ruined walls, gradually cooling corpses, and in the stillness a faint sweet-bloody odor.

The spread of news was slower than the Jurchen cavalry's pace, but the panic spread as fast as a plague.

The next day at noon, the county seat nearest the slaughtered fort received the bad news brought by fleeing troops.

"Not bandits! Not ordinary Tatars!"

"Their blades cannot pierce them! Their strength is boundless!"

"Their eyes glow blue! Wounds from their blades fester!"

"They're all dead… Captain Wang and his men are all dead…"

The fleeing soldiers spoke incoherently, their expressions mad.

The county magistrate at first disbelieved, rebuking them for shaking morale. But one after another, defeated soldiers and traders returning from the north brought nearly identical terrifying accounts. A hitherto unheard-of barbarian cavalry, whose combat power was horrifying to the point of uncanny, was rampaging across the heart of Liaodong, leaving not a blade of grass in its wake.

Panic rose like icy floodwaters, first submerging this border town, then flowing along the official roads and trade routes toward more southern Liaoyang, Shenyang, and even the capital, silently surging.

A pebble dropped into a pond called 'the Yuan's end'.

Beneath the ripples, a cold thunderclap had already exploded.

And those by the pond—whether dazed, caught in internal strife, or too preoccupied to care—finally began to faintly feel that the earth beneath them was transmitting an unusual tremor.

This tremor came from the north.

It came from that blade, freshly tempered and sheathed, stained with a dark blue cold light.