The enemy spewed vile curses, but He Lingchuan merely raised a middle finger at him. He knew his successful strike was partly thanks to Maotao's arrow distracting his opponent. But in a group brawl, who cared about sneaking up versus fighting one-on-one? Everyone who could fight had to pitch in, and no opening could be wasted.
He did not feel in the least that his victory was dishonorable.
Coming up behind, Shan Youjun had his view blocked by He Lingchuan and had not clearly seen how his employer had severed the enemy's arm, so he attributed it to the sheer sharpness of the Fusheng saber.
Of course, he was about sixty percent right.
Only He Lingchuan himself knew that Fusheng's "Army Breaker" property had actually triggered!
It could ignore an opponent's origin power and defensive divine abilities, dealing raw, unmitigated damage directly, but the odds of it activating were pitifully low.
Pitifully low meant that even after swinging the blade hundreds of times, He Lingchuan might not trigger the Army Breaker effect more than a handful of times.
This time, he had struck sheer dumb luck, drawing out the property in a single strike.
Lord Baili was simply doomed to misfortune. The dense surges of origin power shielding his body had been rendered completely useless. Just from the faint glow clinging to the man, He Lingchuan could tell his military rank was anything but low.
In the reforged Fusheng saber's battlefield debut, it had consecrated its blade with the blood of an enemy general!
He Lingchuan also strongly suspected that this was an introductory trial of the property.
By now, He Chunhua's military orders were finally rippling through the ranks in wave after wave. Shouts echoed everywhere: "The Xunzhou troops are only a hundred riders!"
The grain convoy far outnumbered them—why fear them for a damn thing?
The Xiazhou officers finally rallied their subordinates and began to mount a counterattack.
After all, the grain convoy held the advantage in numbers. The Xunzhou troops, on the other hand, had penetrated deep into the enemy camp and lacked the depth to sustain their charge. Having failed to achieve their expected outcome with their fierce initial assault, they would soon suffer the inevitable exhaustion of a spent charge—where momentum wanes after the first rush and collapses entirely on the third.
Now, the color of origin power on the Xiazhou troops could be seen steadily deepening, shifting from pale green to dark green.
This was a clear sign of morale coalescing and surging.
He Lingchuan's own guard had assembled long ago. Led by Shan Youjun and Jiao Tai, they fought behind their master in an unbroken charge. Having accompanied He Lingchuan on demon-slaying missions from dawn to dusk, they excelled in ambushes and concerted attacks far beyond the ordinary Xiazhou troops, and their skills proved invaluable now.
Once the offensive and defensive dynamic flipped, this Xunzhou surprise force was at risk of being enveloped and crushed like dumplings.
Both sides were well aware of this. Thus, even though blood streamed from his severed shoulder and his face was deathly pale, the general who had lost his right arm continued to direct his men to launch an all-out assault against He Chunhua.
He had been helped down from his horse, but he forced himself to stay conscious while his personal guards scrambled to stem the bleeding.
To catch bandits, first capture the ringleader. Lord Baili understood with absolute clarity: their surprise raid had hit a brick wall today precisely because the grain convoy's supreme commander was still alive!
The Xunzhou forces had never imagined that the convoy's commanding officer would skip the banquet. In attempting to behead the snake, they had missed the head and only hacked off the tip of its tail.
He Chunhua himself had never anticipated that his impulse to conduct an incognito inspection of local conditions would save his life.
Otherwise, the one who died in that restaurant would have been him.
Both sides were locked in fierce combat.
The enemy wanted him dead, but He Chunhua wanted their lives just as badly. With a broad wave of his arm, he tossed out a bounty on the spot: "A hundred taels of gold to whoever slays the enemy general!"
To meet the demands of the northern front, Xiazhou had reissued recruitment edicts, vastly raising the soldiers' pay. Yet an ordinary grunt, carrying his head tied to his waistband, earned at most twenty taels of silver a year, which was already an indisputably lucrative occupation locally. A hundred taels of gold was equivalent to fifty years of income for these soldiers!
Generous rewards always find brave takers, not to mention that their own side had already reversed the losing tide. In the eyes of the Xiazhou troops, the severely wounded enemy general suddenly transformed into gleaming bars of gold.
He Lingchuan gave a soft hiss. The dark green glow on the Xiazhou soldiers abruptly shifted to deep blue, even tinged with faint amber-gold.
By comparison, the less affluent Lord Baili was at a severe disadvantage.
Fortunately for him, at that very moment, a monkey chewing an apple appeared atop a carriage at the rear of the Xiazhou army.
This brown-furred monkey wore a briar collar around its neck and was stockier than its peers. It seemed unremarkable enough, but the rock wolf beside He Lingchuan caught its scent, whipping its head around and barking furiously at it.
Lu Xin's strange behavior immediately put He Lingchuan on high alert, and he looked over in turn. To his eyes, all the monkeys under the sun looked more or less the same; this one was certainly nowhere near as plump and naive as his medicine ape, Lingguang. Yet the briar collar around its neck looked strikingly familiar.
Where had he seen it before?
The distance was a bit far. If it were blown up a couple sizes...
Wait, enlarged?
He Lingchuan's pupils contracted. Rolling his voice like spring thunder, he roared at He Chunhua, "Watch out for the ghost ape! It's behind you!"
Before his voice died away, the monkey ballooned with terrifying speed. From a macaquelike creature not even half a man's height, it swelled into a towering giant ape over ten feet tall, bulging with knotty muscle!
With a piteous whinny from the draft horse, more than two thousand jin of mass instantly crushed the carriage beneath it to splinters.
This fellow was an old acquaintance—no, an old acquain-ape—whom the He father and son had not seen in two months: an enemy even General of Chariots and Cavalry Ke Jihai, blessed by dynastic fortune, had struggled to defeat, and the premier bruiser under demon puppet master Dong Rui—the ghost ape.
Last time, He Lingchuan and Ke Jihai had only managed to wound it by joining forces—of course, that so-called joint effort had entailed He Lingchuan deploying the walnut boat to suppress the monstrosity. Afterward, the demon puppet master had fled with it, sinking without a trace; no matter how thoroughly the authorities searched, they had found no sign of them.
The moment the ghost ape transformed, it grabbed whatever heavy objects were at hand—carriages, horses, baggage, or even ripped up wooden fences—and hurled them right toward He Chunhua!
This was its innate divine talent: every projectile was thrown with immense force and tore through the air with a savage gale, yet every single toss was damned accurate without needing any practice.
He Chunhua was sheltered in the center like a moon surrounded by stars, shimmering light rippling around him—most likely someone had activated a defensive array to shield him from stray arrows and hidden missiles. The ghost ape was about seven zhang—twenty meters—away from him. Most of the hurled objects traveled in parabolic arcs, gaining momentum as they plummeted from above. They smashed down in an incessant series of deafening thuds that sent tremors through the ground dozens of feet away.
It even hurled several fully laden grain wagons into the crowd. Grain sacks burst midair, filling the sky with drifting flour like a sudden snowfall.
The dozens of people huddled around He Chunhua were not spared; in an instant, they were buried under a colossal heap of debris. A glance showed He Lingchuan that someone had been crushed by a hurled horse, with only legs still twitching outside the heap.
The scene descended into chaos. Pale with terror, the Xiazhou soldiers instinctively scrambled away, none wishing to provoke this malevolent demonic ape that loved hurling heavy objects. As a result, their formation collapsed. The Xunzhou troops across from them were overjoyed; Lord Baili rallied his forces and commanded his men to charge the grain convoy once more.
Opportunity was fleeting—everyone knew that!
He Lingchuan felt his scalp tingle, but now was no time to panic. He barked an instruction to the rock wolf, "Find Dong Rui and tear him apart!" Then, spurring his horse, he galloped toward He Chunhua's position.
Just then, a volley of arrows from the Xiazhou troops rained furiously upon the ghost ape. None dared draw close, but launching ranged attacks from a distance was manageable enough.
The ghost ape paid them no heed. It possessed natural bone armor across its entire body, against which ordinary arrows snapped on impact; it only needed to guard its eyes.
To the dismay and bewilderment of the Xiazhou soldiers, the arrows they loosed were imbued with origin power, which granted an extra armor-piercing bonus against demons' defenses. How could it fail against this giant ape?
Taking advantage of the crowd's terror, the ghost ape did not even bother with its signature chest-thumping. With two bounding leaps, it landed squarely in the center of the grounds. It raised its iron fists high, preparing to deliver a brutal pounding to the pile of rubble.
Whether He Chunhua was dead or alive, it would deliver the finishing blow first.
Judging by the corded sinew packing its frame, no one doubted the force behind those fists.
Even if the people beneath the rubble were not dead yet, a few strikes from those fists would pound them into meat patties.
Right at that moment, a carriage among the ruins shifted and suddenly flew into the air, smashing violently into the giant ape's face and shattering into flying splinters.
Clearly, something beneath had sent the carriage flying, catching the giant ape completely off guard.
Once the carriage was hurled aside, He Lingchuan peered closely and saw a thin curtain of light covering several people in the very center.
There was He Chunhua, two of his closest personal guards, and several disciples of Chuanyun Pavilion.
And of course, Chuanyun Pavilion's Elder Liang!
Seizing the moment while the giant ape shut its eyes, he leaped high into the air and struck a palm directly between the ghost ape's brows!
Despite the slight friction between them, He Lingchuan could not help cheering inside. Elder Liang's strike was truly an inspired stroke—the key to turning defeat into victory!
Yet an instant later, his expression fell. The ghost ape shook its head as if recovering its senses, roared at Elder Liang and He Chunhua, and brought a palm slamming down in return!
Did Elder Liang just dust off its face for it?
Why didn't he use a weapon?
Elder Liang looked somewhat taken aback as well, as if underestimating just how thick-skinned the ghost ape was. However, He Lingchuan also noticed that where the elder had struck—right in the center of the ape's forehead—a crimson character had lit up.
Compared to the giant ape's massive frame, the character was minuscule.
Fortunately, with He Lingchuan's razor-sharp eyesight, honed by archery and throwing knives, he could clearly make out that it was the character "Stagnate"!
Moreover, it was written in the ancient immortal language, its crimson radiance flowing like liquid mercury.
Once the character lit up, the ghost ape's movements slowed by two beats. The fierce palm crashing down suddenly looked like slow motion.
It roared again and again, its muscles bulging even tighter, but it still could not speed up.
The crimson character on its forehead flared with even brighter light, clearly straining to bind it.
He Lingchuan was instantly reminded of the word-spirit incantation wielded by the "heavenly god" that had possessed Nian Songyu in the Panlong illusion.
The two shared remarkable similarities; both utilized word arts to exert influence upon an enemy.
Elder Liang's word-spirit incantation, however, did not seem to place an unbearable burden on himself—at least, he moved nimbly enough as he hurried He Chunhua out of the giant ape's reach.
He Chunhua appeared unharmed. Evidently, He Lingchuan's timely warning had allowed Elder Liang to raise the protective barrier for him. Straightening his knocked-askew hat, He Chunhua roared with a darkened expression, "What are you panicking for! The rest of you, claim the bounty! Elder Liang, hold the ghost ape in place and kill it!"
Chapter 258