Where Immortals Once Walked

He Lingchuan set his sights on a half-slope along the side of the high ground. It rose in rough terraces, with broken carriages and all kinds of junk piled there.

Most importantly, this was where the Yuan army’s siege weapons were stored.

And siege weapons were always among the first things an enemy would want to destroy.

He had barely finished arranging his defenses when the enemy arrived in force.

Zhao Pan’s command tent stood atop the high ground, and there were several routes leading up from the riverbank. The Xun Province main force had naturally chosen the shortest, most direct path to charge, while the rest of their troops fanned out to assault from other directions, aiming to encircle the high ground from all sides.

The half-slope He Lingchuan had picked was off to the flank. Fewer enemies would come that way, giving them room to fight solidly and steadily.

As for the main force of the Xun Province?

Well, Zhao Pan’s command tent would be defended by the Yuan army’s best. Those elites were not there for show. Let them clash head-on with the heavy hitters.

You only ate as big a bowl of rice as your strength allowed. In a moment like this, the last thing He Lingchuan was going to do was greedily chase after glory.

No matter how chaotic a clash between armies looked, in the end it always broke down into small units—squads and teams—each fighting their own battle.

So long as he led his squad well, he would be making his own contribution to their side’s survival. Not to mention, he was blocking a route straight toward the siege weapons.

As for his father...

He Lingchuan glanced toward the main encampment. He Chunhua was right there beside Zhao Pan, in the protected core of the formation, practically cocooned by the army.

If anyone could call their position “safe,” it was them.

A messenger burst out from the main camp and sprinted over, shouting at the top of his lungs, “New order from the General! He Lingchuan is to hold the siege weapons area at all costs!”

A little late, but He Chunhua had clearly realized how crucial this position was.

He Lingchuan jerked his chin toward the treeline. He said to the medicine ape, “You, up the tree. The battlefield’s no place for a noncombatant.”

Ling Guang did not argue. With two light bounds, it was in the branches and gone from view.

They had just finished setting up when the enemy arrived with howls and war cries.

Two warhorses thundered ahead of the pack, charging like a gust of wind. The riders grinned fiercely, spears whirling, their tips aimed straight at the spot between He Lingchuan’s eyebrows.

This kid was clearly the leader, and he looked far easier to kill than the armored veterans behind him. That made him the perfect target for first blood and first credit.

For enemies this blind, He Lingchuan’s instinctive response was to raise his middle finger.

His men saw it and yanked hard on the trip lines.

Duang!

Both horses had their forelegs swept out from under them. Man and beast went tumbling forward, flying several meters before they crashed to the ground.

The two riders were thrown so hard they saw stars. Before they could even try to get up, Shan Youjun and the others were already upon them, blades flashing. With that, there were now two more corpses on the slope.

The infantry behind them cried out in shock, and then they charged forward in rage.

Meanwhile, the archers hidden in the trees began picking targets. Even in this darkness, they could drop two or three men with every handful of arrows. The bodies piled up fast.

The remaining infantry pressed forward a few more steps, and then they screamed, clutching their feet and stumbling to the ground.

The slope had been sprinkled with poison caltrops—tiny, three-pronged spikes notorious for ruining soles. They were not just a human foot’s nemesis, as even a bear monster stepping on one would end up howling in tears as their paw swelled to the size of a barrel.

He Lingchuan had used these little things many times when hunting rogue monsters. Their service record was outstanding. Today, against human enemies, they were proving just as effective.

He Lingchuan was not about to be polite with his enemies. He seized the opportunity while they were down and writhing to take their lives.

During this time, those who had been lucky enough not to step on the caltrops finally made it close enough for an honest fight.

The Xun Province troops had used the night and rain to sneak across the river, but their boats were limited. To move as many men as possible in the shortest time, they had brought fewer horses and more soldiers. The result was that their cavalry numbers were pathetically low. Most of the attackers here were infantry.

Thankfully for them, in this sort of rough, sloped terrain, infantry still had a role to play.

But the truth was that their overall impact was weaker.

He Lingchuan cut one man down with a single strike, while slamming another aside with his shoulder and sending him flying. He blinked, momentarily taken aback.

Xun Province soldiers are this weak?

The Xun Province soldiers were tall enough and looked sturdy enough. Over on the other side, Shan Youjun and the rest were also fighting like they had grown wings. If not for the stray arrows sometimes whistling in from the distance, each of them could have taken on three or four enemies on their own.

And the rock wolf could only be said to be on a rampage. Four or five bites, and another enemy went limp and still. Under its jaws, these Xun soldiers were like dumplings with thin skins and plenty of filling—easy to pierce and very satisfying to tear apart.

Their attacks, by contrast, might as well have been cotton swats. Two axes had smashed into the rock wolf’s hide, leaving only pale marks on its fur, not even drawing blood.

Yes, its defenses were always high, but in past battles, it had never been this effective.

At this rate, not only could they hold this half-slope, but it looked like they might even be able to launch a counterpush.

What’s going on?

Jiao Tai, who had been hacking away in a steady rhythm, cut down his third opponent in a row and suddenly called over, “Master! The Xun soldiers are weak! Look at their bodies!”

Still confused, He Lingchuan focused.

And then he realized.

The Xun soldiers fighting in front of him had no faint glow about them at all, and neither did the ones a little farther off.

When they had been sneaking along the bank below, it was normal that they had no energy light around them at all—stealth and all that. But now, in close combat, there was still nothing. There was only one explanation for this.

He Lingchuan drew in a breath, gathered his true energy, and shouted loudly, “The Xun Province troops have no origin energy!”

His shout rolled like thunder, drowning out wind and rain and echoing across the battlefield.

And he did not shout it just once. He bellowed it three full times, making sure nearly the entire camp heard.

The same army, with origin energy and without it, was like night and day.

It was not just about physical strength and agility. Origin energy also improved damage reduction, resistance, accuracy, and all the other invisible edges that turned an armed mob into a real army.

That was why regular soldiers often found it easier to crush mere bandits. And it was why, in theory, the Yuan troops should not have to fear the Xun troops at all.

Right now, though, the battlefield was in chaos. The Yuan army had been caught asleep and unprepared, confronted with wave after wave of roaring enemy troops while some of them barely had their armor on. Some of them were not even fully dressed, getting bowled over by comrades or spooked horses before they could form up properly.

Their morale was in the mud.

If the Xun troops had been at full power, they would have shredded this wobbling line in a handful of exchanges.

In the end, battles were contests of strength and faith. A successful night raid often laid the foundation of final victory.

This was why He Lingchuan’s shout hit like a timely downpour in a drought, snapping men out of their panic.

Zhao Pan had already barreled into the fray, personally cutting down two or three enemies. He had felt something was off as well. His enemies felt soft, their attacks lacking bite. Hearing He Lingchuan’s roar, he realized at once.

The Xun Province army could not just sprout wings and fly across the river. For the Han to suddenly fall this quiet, some trick had to be involved, and the old fox Nian Zanli was the likeliest culprit.

One man could not stand against the Han by himself. That meant that he had almost certainly drained the origin energy of his entire army.

With that being the case, it was no wonder they had made it across, and it was no wonder they were this feeble. It was all because they had no origin energy at all.

“The Xun troops have no origin energy! Cut them down like vegetables!” Zhao Pan thundered. “Kill! Drive them back into the river!”

Fear the strong, bully the weak; this was an instinct that was carved into the bones of every living creature.

The Yuan troops who had been quietly edging backward hesitated, tested a stroke or two, and then realized: Oh. It’s true!

Their opponents moved sluggishly, tired and sloppy.

Courage surged back into their veins. They started to swing back in earnest.

Down among the Xun troops, grumbling would have been an understatement.

The Verdancy Treasured Vase was sucking origin energy out of them without pause, swallowing every wave of floodwater that thundered down from upstream in order to hold back the river and buy more time for crossing.

So every soldier staggered up the bank feeling exhausted to the bone, spirits drained, minds fogged, hearts full of dread and fatigue. It was like they had just run fifteen kilometers on a dark, rainy night with a full pack on their backs. All they wanted was to fall over and sleep forever.

Their morale, frankly, had dropped into the negatives.

The Yuan troops might be rattled, but at least they still had origin energy protecting their bodies.

If the fight dragged on like this, it was only a matter of time before the balance tilted back their way.

Defying heaven always came with a price.

Fortunately for Nian Zanli, he had seen this coming. Before departure, he had held three rounds of mobilization speeches, making it perfectly clear to every soldier that as long as they held for an hour, they would win. Now the battle overseers were screaming, “Forward if you want to live! Backward and you die!” driving the troops to throw themselves at the enemy.

Both sides were rummaging through every trick they had to pump blood into their men, to whip up some shred of fighting spirit.

Whoever’s faith crumbled first would lose.

At Nian Zanli’s command, the twelve cannons along the riverbank finished reloading and began a new volley of high-arc fire.

If raw strength was not enough, they would make up the difference with firepower.

Most of the Yuan elite troops were clustered around Zhao Pan and He Chunhua, locked in a brutal clash with the Xun Province’s main force. This tight mass of bodies was the best target on the field, and at least nine of the twelve cannons adjusted their aim to hit that crowd of combatants.

Several thunderous booms shook the air as four or five shells landed within the bounds of the high ground, mother-child rounds bursting and dropping men like wheat to the scythe.

More than a few of Zhao Pan’s personal guards went down in that instant. He himself nearly took a hit and roared in fury, “Spread out! Spread the fuck out!”

One of the shells slammed into the area near He Lingchuan. A spike of danger shot up his spine, and he had already ordered everyone to clear out, but two guards had been standing too close and didn’t move in time. They died on the spot.

Even Jiao Tai caught a fragment of lead in his left arm. Luckily, it did not break the bone.

He Lingchuan swore under his breath and checked on He Chunhua, catching sight of him in the distance—face grim, issuing orders, but clearly uninjured.

He let out the breath that he had been holding.

Over the main Yuan camp, a thin, pale-green dome of light suddenly shimmered into existence. It was faint and almost invisible in the darkness, but it was there all the same.

The next volley of shells from the river smacked into that light instead of the ground, detonating in a chain of fiery bursts.

The barrier flickered, but it held.

The small lead balls rattled down afterward, harmlessly scattering. Without the shock of the blast behind them, they posed far less of a threat.

Wave after wave of arrows followed, but most of those were blunted as well, deflected off the barrier. Only a few found lucky gaps and slipped through.

The array had finally been activated, easing the pressure on the Yuan army dramatically.

The array was not perfect. It was far from a flawless, all-encompassing shield; it had weak points and blind spots. Gaps winked in and out along its surface. Some part due to the array masters struggling to coordinate, as this particular array needed more than twenty of them working in concert, and some part due to the limited profound crystal reserves.

Neither problem could be avoided under these rushed conditions. Zhao Pan did not demand miracles. So long as the array could blunt the worst of the bombardment and buy them time, it was good enough.

Just as the Yuan soldiers had been hoping, the siege weapons behind He Lingchuan’s squad finally roared to life. A dozen or so catapults hurled boulders no smaller than millstones, all aimed at the enemy’s cannons and the ships near the riverbank.

In the raging rain, it was difficult for many of the cannon crews to fire. Unlike their foes, the Yuan troops did not have water-warding talismans pasted on their engines. Their long-range power was limited.

Even so, the hail of stones smashed three cannons and two ferries to pieces. The rest crashed into the enemy ranks, turning men into a mess of broken limbs and red pulp wherever they landed.

The Yuan soldiers burst into cheers.

The longer the fight dragged on, the more the scales tipped their way. Once they weathered the first vicious waves of assault, the Xun Province forces began to show their weakness.

They had come storming in like a breaking dam, but now they were running out of surge.