Dragon Canon

Chapter 83: Meat Grinder

Wherever Wei Yuan looked, yellow clouds were churning. It felt like a Liao rider could emerge from anywhere at any moment. The whistling of heavy arrows kept ringing in his ears, interjected by the occasional shrieks of a whole new type of arrow. This arrow came from the sky and could alter its trajectory slightly while descending, homing in on a human warrior automatically. It was practically indefensible. He had seen many people killed like this right before his eyes.

The arrows were also loosed from very, very far away. At the very least, Wei Yuan could not see who the archer was and where they were shooting from.

Passing through a yellow cloud, Wei Yuan subconsciously took a breath and felt like he was inhaling a lump of sand and soil. It burned his mouth and nostrils in a most unpleasant manner. The yellow cloud did not actually contain anything; it was just harmful and irritating toward the human body. The yellow clouds came from the Liao realm alongside the Northern Liao barbarians, and numerous cavalrymen were scattered across the battlefield right now. Thus, it was everywhere like this was the Liao realm, not the human realm.

A battlefield appeared ahead and to the side of Wei Yuan. A dozen or so Liao cavalrymen were encircling several humans and attacking them ferociously. Corpses littered the whole battlefield, and the besieged survivors were clearly fighting their last desperate battle.

“No! I don’t want to die!” One of the survivors suddenly rose into the air and took off toward the distance.

“Fool!” Wei Yuan failed to stop him in time and could only curse under his breath.

The man had only flown tens of zhang or so when at least twenty arrows whistled through the air and turned him into a flesh sieve.

One of the rules the Palace of Absolute Beginning issued to all of their disciples prior their departure stated this: No one is to take flight in a Northern Liao battlefield unless they are in the late-stage Dao Foundation stage or higher.

Yellow clouds suddenly churned around Wei Yuan, and a Northern Liao centurion flew up to the sky. He seemed to be observing the battlefield.

Wei Yuan subconsciously waved his hand and cast a Flying Sand. Without warning, a cyclone appeared around the centurion and pelted him with fist-sized sand and stones from every direction[1]. It came as such a surprise that the centurion lost control of his aura and nearly fell to the ground.

The yellow clouds of the Liao realm weren’t completely detrimental. In this case, it had increased the potency of his Flying Sand by at least fifty percent. That was why it had become his most frequently used Dao spell.

The centurion had not yet recovered from the surprise attack when the golden silhouette of a sword pierced through his body. Right after that, a lightning bolt appeared out of nowhere and struck him squarely, finally dropping him to the ground. Before he even landed, Wei Yuan’s javelin pierced through his torso and killed him instantly.

The centurion had died in practically no time. The no flying rule applied to the Liao cavalry as well.

Before Wei Yuan knew it, he had been fighting for almost an hour. He had gone through five spear boxes and exhausted all of his arrows at this point. He was currently using the arrows scavenged from the corpses of Liao cavalrymen.

Despite fighting for such a long time, he hadn’t even advanced more than ten li. Most of the time, he was riding back and forth and focusing on damaging the enemy troops. Not long ago, Bao Yun had fired a third signal arrow bearing this message: City defense is solid, reinforcements had arrived. This was why the reinforcements stopped advancing toward Bao Yun’s city single-mindedly and focused on killing the intercepting Liao cavalry instead. This allowed them to deal massive damage to the enemy forces and reduce the city’s pressure.

Wei Yuan was of the same opinion.

After killing and advancing a couple more li, the area before Wei Yuan suddenly brightened, and a massive pillar of light shot into the sky! All around him, yellow clouds began dissolving and disappearing at a rapid pace.

The pillar of light had originated from Bao Yun’s city. After the Liao realm’s yellow clouds were dispelled, Wei Yuan’s vision rapidly expanded to a range of one hundred li or so. With a bit of effort, he pushed himself to a standing position and looked toward the horizon on his horse’s back.

Bao Yun’s city was situated below the pillar of clear qi. She could have guarded a county city, but chose a frontier outpost instead. Her defense zone consisted of a stronghold just like Wei Yuan’s, but with one key difference—it was easily ten times bigger than Flying Sand Village and practically half a county city.

Outside, thousands of Northern Liao iron cavalry were encircling the fort like a massive tornado and shooting arrows non-stop. At the same time, many detachments of Liao cavalrymen were attempting to charge the walls at every moment. There was also a force of one thousand Liao riders to the north that was repeatedly riding up and down a slope and using their momentum to shoot arrow volleys into the fort.

At least five thousand riders were besieging the fort, and countless more guerrilla squads were roaming the vast territory around it, ambushing and annihilating any relief force that dared to approach them.

Bao Yun’s stronghold looked nothing like what it was before. Pitfall traps that were one chi wide and three chi deep surrounded the whole area. Unlike the ones Fang Hetong had dug up, the inner walls of the pits were reinforced with iron plates. As tough as the Liao horses were, even they must break a leg if they stepped on one of these pitfall traps.

Besides that, the pits were filled with countless chi-long iron spikes. Again, stepping on these spikes would surely damage their hooves. The layers of obstacles prevented the Liao cavalrymen from riding to their heart’s content. Even if the rider wasn’t afraid, the mount would instinctively try to dodge them.

The fort’s walls were three zhang tall, which was way taller than your average fort and even taller than a county city’s walls. They were also covered in a shimmer of cyan light—a clear indication that it had been empowered with some sort of Dao spell. Even a heavy arrow could barely penetrate the stone before coming to a dead halt. Iron plates also surrounded the battlements, preventing armor-piercing arrows or heavy arrows from penetrating them fully. They made for perfect cover for the defenders hiding behind them.

Wei Yuan reckoned that the stronghold had gotten a full renovation just like Bao Yun’s residence in the Palace of Absolute Beginning.

The defenders guarding the walls were all wearing cyan armor adorned with golden patterns. They were all wielding powerful crossbows and shooting deadly bolts at the Liao cavalrymen. When one group had taken their shots, another group would take over while they reloaded, so on and so forth. They looked well-organized and completely unflustered.

The waves of crossbow bolts flying toward the besieging Liao cavalry looked endless. Anyone who came too close to the fort would be shot off their mounts, and every single force that had mounted a charge so far had been shot into pincushions without exception.

The gigantic pillar of clear qi was several zhang thick. At the center of the pillar was the blurry silhouette of a treasure tree. Every time it shook, a ripple of clear light would spread out to the surroundings, empowering the garrison and dispelling the yellow clouds of the Liao realm. The Liao cavalrymen were naturally weaker without their yellow clouds, whereas the defenders were fully energetic and immune to fatigue.

It was only a glance, yet Wei Yuan felt like he was looking at a gigantic steel porcupine—Several thousand elite defenders, an infinite number of arrows and crossbow bolts, and a large-scale array that empowered the defenders and depowered the enemy. Who in the world could conquer such a stronghold?

Suddenly, Wei Yuan sensed danger and lay prone on his horse’s back. As if on cue, several arrows whistled past his skull. Two of them even dipped in tandem with his movements, a clear indication that they possessed some homing abilities. The good news was that the two arrows were low-tier and barely qualified as mystic artifacts, so their turn rate was nowhere good enough to hit Wei Yuan. Otherwise, he would have taken a hit. The injury would’ve been minor, but his mobility would have been affected to an extent.

Wei Yuan hadn’t flown into the air. He was just standing on his horse. Even so, that slight elevation was enough to garner him a couple arrows.

Wei Yuan cast a Flying Sand at a nearby Liao rider, but to his surprise, the spell was so weak that it failed to dismount the rider or stagger its mount. It was then he recalled that the Liao realm’s yellow clouds had been dispelled, replaced by the human realm’s clear qi. The Five Phases of the battlefield had also changed from Fire, Metal and Earth to Wood, Metal and Water.

Wei Yuan waved his hand again and cast a Water Blade. As expected, it was much stronger than usual and instantly riddled both the rider and his horse with bone deep wounds, dropping them to the ground. One javelin throw later, he was dead.

By now, Wei Yuan had worked out a combo that worked for practically every situation. First, he would cast a Dao spell to injure or disrupt a Liao rider’s movements. Then, he would kill them with a javelin throw. The combo was exceptionally effective, but it only worked because he possessed an unbelievably strong body and an immense amount of Dao energy. If he was just an ordinary Dao Foundation stage cultivator, he would be out of Dao energy and physically exhausted after dishing out just one box of javelins.

A gigantic battlefield had taken form with Bao Yun’s stronghold at the center. Over ten thousand Liao cavalrymen had gathered on this battlefield while human reinforcements were flooding in from multiple directions and engaging the Liao cavalry at the periphery. The human realm was dominating nearly the entire battlefield, whereas the Liao realm’s yellow clouds were almost nowhere to be found. As a result, this territory had become a giant trap that pinned the ten thousand Liao cavalrymen within the Pure Realm of Humanity, weakening them and turning the tides of battle against them little by little.

1. Pocket sand EX! ☜