Nightfall

Translator: TransN Editor: TransN

Some emperors didn’t attend imperial court levees because they were reluctant to leave beautiful and pretty whores. Ning Que refused to have meals because he didn’t want to leave his valuable calligraphy. Naturally, the ‘refusal to have meals’ meant that Ning Que wouldn’t attend other banquets in the future. This was not due to his objection to Tang Empire. He wouldn’t go through something as lame as a hunger strike.

That terrible famine in his childhood left a serious psychological shadow in his heart, so he insisted that eating should be the most important thing in the world. There wasn’t any celestial being who could survive without eating food. Even for the first mightiest man Sage of Sword Liu Bai would feel pale and tired if he didn’t have food for several days. Anyone, no matter who he was, would die if he didn’t eat.

Male and female in love? During the days without food, even a rose representing love, or a naked peerless beauty, were similar to meat in many men’s eyes.

Buddhism Sect always propagandized the harm caused by women. Ning Que couldn’t help thinking that it might be relative to Buddhism Sect’s lifestyle. The sadhus had to climb mountains everyday while just having vegetables, tofu and thin porridge in meals. Therefore, the semistarvation caused them to put forward this seemingly-right but actually-idiotic view. Yuelun Kingdom suffered famine most, but its development of Buddhism ranked first. Perhaps there were some relations between famine and development of Buddhism. Their common people might not be interested in those male-female affairs when they were very hungry. In this circumstance, maybe Buddhism was their relatively-ideal place to stay?

Of course, Ning Que’s views weren’t totally right, but at least it conformed to some rules of human history. Usually, the most fundamental reason for internal and external wars was food.

To make their stomach full, refugees dare fight with regular army. To make sure common people wouldn’t fight with government, every country would do anything to capture more land, regardless of dignity and face. For the same reason, the northern wild tribe, who had been away from the Central Plains for nearly one thousand years, was forced to move southward and attacked the valiant Tribe of Savages. In order to get food, they had no more redundant time and energy to worry about the anger of countries in Central Plains and the aftermath.

War was for food. Of course, it was necessary and crucial to provide food for those who fought for you. On the slightly-cold grassland, cooking smoke rose from dozens of rough stoves as mutton was cooked in dozens of large pots. This was a necessity for fighting.

Thousands of men in animal-fur clothes sat around the stoves and had mutton without any words. No matter wrinkled old men or young lads, they all showed a peaceful and steady expression. It seemed that they had lived here for many years, and not just having arrived here after a long journey.

They were part of the north wild tribe army. That was, they were one part of the north wild men who still had fighting capacities. This time, the tribe had gathered all men who could fight, so it even didn’t deserve the name ‘army’. Along the grassland border battlefield spreading hundreds of kilometers, the tribe had summoned all their ‘soldiers’ who still had the ability to fight.

The old, the young, the weak and women of the tribe were all left behind. It would take about a month for them to arrive at the border of the grassland. If these men failed to capture the grassland by this war, their families behind them would definitely be engulfed by coldness, darkness, hunger and enemies’ blade.

For many years, the north wild tribe, depended on the Hot Sea for a living and had lived with extreme difficulty in the far-north cold region. It was impossible for them maintain too many people. In addition, the duration of dark night strangely lengthened and the temperature gradually decreased in the past years, so their lives became more and more difficult. At the end of last winter, their tribe leader finally decided that the whole tribe had to go southward.

There would be no food if they didn’t go southward. In the south, there were plenty of grasslands, flocks of sheep and enough food. However, it was a pity that God wasn’t generous when he bestowed lands to human being. Most of the lands had belonged to certain owners, including this large-sized fertile grassland. If these Desolate Men from the north wanted to get some grassland, sheep and food, the owners of the belongings of course wouldn’t agree.

So, a war was inevitable.

…

…

After about one thousand years, the Desolate Men reappeared on the grassland. This should have shocked the whole world, however, they had been away from the world for such a long time that many people had forgotten their presence, though they had once conquered the grassland and severely threatened the countries in Central Plains. Besides, both the tough natural environment and hard times caused their population to decrease to such a low level that nobody would regard them as a threat. Thus, this incident was temporarily limited within the north of the grassland.

In fact, such circumstance was also highly related to the wise decision made by the senior leaders of the Desolate Man tribe. Before going southward, they had set a steady and clear target. The grassland they targeted at belonged to the barbarians of Left-Tent, which was unrelated with those countries in Central Plains, especially that powerful and terrible empire. Though the wild soldiers were very brave in the war, they limited the range of war within the area of northern grassland.

The southward army of Desolate Man had been to the border of northern grassland for nearly one month. The fighting between the Desolate Man army and the barbarian cavalries of Left-Tent had also lasted one month. Along the several-hundred-kilometer battle line, both armies had conducted at least one hundred different battles of different sizes, and most of these battles ended up with the victory going to the Desolate Men.

The cruelty of war could be greatly embodied by the cost of death, even for the victor. The Desolate Man soldiers were taciturn, determined, brave and disciplined, so their individual fighting capacity was much stronger than an average barbarian on the grassland. However, the number of the Desolate Man soldier was too small. While they succeeded in consecutively defeating the violent and crazy attack of one hundred thousand cavalries of Left-Tent, the number of death of their companies also grew increasingly.

Crude stoves, steel pots, water and mutton. At a not-far distance, many dead bodies of their companies laid on the grassland which had been covered with blood. A Desolate Man Necromancer, whose face was painted with myron, calmly walked among these bodies. At times, he squatted and, with his fingers, gently touched the dead on between the eyebrows. Some complicated syllables were uttered from his dry lips, which sounded like both expiating the sins of the dead and extolling the dead.

At a distance not far away from the dead bodies, a lad from Desolate Man of about thirteen or fourteen, blew his bone flute. The flute sound was sad and shrill, as if it was complaining about their homelessness and struggling pain that Desolate Man had experienced these one thousand years.

A hoary and old voice added to the flute sound. A respected and prestigious elder sang a song that all Desolate Man knew how to sing. The singing was desolate and sonorous, showing a kind of shocking unyieldingness in sadness.

“The sky turns cold; the earth becomes cold too. Goshawks daren’t look northward.”

“The Hot Sea ebbs; the Hot Sea rises. Snowwolves are being hunted by the Hot Sea.”

“Snowwolves are being chased; Snowwolves are dead. All day busy searching for deer.”

“Where to live; where to die. Where to bury white bones.”

“Min Mountain was grand; Min Mountain was majestic. Min Mountain was the real hometown.”

“Walk through the vast snow; Step on the thick frost. All day looking southward.”

“Walk through the vast snow; Step on the thick frost. No longer looking southward.”

“I go first, and you come after me.”

“I fight first, and you come after me.”

“I die first, and you come after me.”

“The homeward journey is near; the homeward journey is far. It’s on my way.”

“I have gone, and you ought to come soon.”

“I have fought, and you ought to come soon.”

“I have died, and you ought to come soon.”

“I have died, and you ought to come soon.”

…

…

“I have died, and you ought to come soon.” The last two sentences were sung repeatedly and desolately. Several young soldiers from Desolate Man looked at that direction in silence. Their eyes, accompanied with the elder’s singing, emitted a kind of grand yet not sad atmosphere on the grassland.

Most of the soldiers from Desolate Man kept silent. They just had mutton and drank smelly oil soup. They seized every second to replenish their strength during the short break, because no one knew when the next battle would begin.

The ancestors of the Desolate Man were once called ‘inborn soldiers’ by people in Central Plains. Now, the Desolate Man had experienced the suffering of severe living environment for one thousand years. The word ‘fighting’ had already been engraved in their vessels and bones, even the death of their partners wouldn’t touch them at all. Even if the song, which had been handed down for one thousand years, could slightly resonate within their deep heart, it still failed to interfere with their preparation for fighting.

Then at that moment, the horn calling for battle rang again.

The grassland trembled slightly as an unknown number of cavalries of Left-Tent rushed towards them.

The Desolate Man soldiers weren’t alarmed at all. After putting down the mutton and spoon and rubbing their oily faces with their sleeves, they picked up their heavy but seriously-damaged weapons beside them and slowly walked southward. They even remembered to put out the fire of stoves before they left.

…

…

They walked slowly, trotted, sped up, and sprinted.

The way the Desolate Man soldiers entered the battlefield was very similar to the way the grassland cavalries did, except that what they had was just two legs, rather than a horse. To everyone’s amazement, however, these Desolate Man soldiers in furred clothes and blades and hatchets, who didn’t look very tall or strong, could run at a incredibly fast speed if they sprinted.

A low humming started. The grassland cavalries, who were good at riding and shooting, pulled their bowstring of short bow at a long distance. Countless arrows flew over the sky and rushed at thousands of Desolate Man soldiers like raindrops.

With a whizzing sound, a Desolate Man soldier running at high speed was right hit by a sharp arrow. The arrow, after shooting through leather armor, stayed in his chest, as if taking root. The soldier’s blood quickly flowed out and reddened his leather armor. However, this soldier still rushed at the crowds of cavalries with his blades and hatchets, as if he didn’t notice his wound at all. Obviously, that arrow was blocked by his steel-like skin and flesh, so it didn’t hurt any organs.

There wasn’t any military order or flag signal. What the Desolate Man relied on during a war were instinct and their mutual trust that was developed from fighting together for nearly one thousand years. When crowds of grassland cavalries were just at about ten paces distance, all soldiers who hadn’t been defeated by the cavalries’ arrows drew out sharp hatchets at their waist with one accord, and then threw them out with all their strength!

Those sharp hatchets spun at high speed, cutting through the air on the battlefield. The bright light on the hatchets reflected sunlight as many lines of snow-white shadow on the green grassland, looking very beautiful yet extremely horrific.

By virtue of strong defense, the Desolate Man soldiers managed to survive from the first round of shooting by the grassland cavalries. They kept sprinting as they entered into the effective damage range of hatchets and managed to quickly throw out their hatchets before the cavalries conducted their second round of shooting!

While the arrow rain failed to kill many Desolate Man soldiers, the storm formed by nearly one thousand sharp hatchets brought the cruelest attack to the grassland cavalries. The heavy hatchets, with the force and spinning by the Desolate Man soldiers easily lacerated the light armor of the cavalries. The hatchet could make them fracture and spit blood should they just touch the calvery!