He had just turned to leave, which left him bearing the brunt of the assault.
Fortunately, He Lingchuan had shouted a warning just in time. Maotao's heart leaped, and the sneak attack failed as he raised his saber and deflected the incoming arrow.
Immediately afterward, a barrage of whistling pierced the air as more than ten arrows were loosed in unison.
He Lingchuan knocked aside the shafts flying toward himself and smashed a medicine vial against the ground without hesitation. The bottle shattered on impact, unleashing a dense billow of white smoke that instantly engulfed their surroundings.
This was a smoke vial recipe he had picked up from Willow, the female patrol guard in the Panlong dreamscape. He had asked the medicine ape, Lingguang, to concoct several varieties, and the one he had just hurled functioned much like a smoke bomb.
Both sides in this clash were bolstered by origin power. Against such combatants, smoke summoned by magic spells had limited effect in obscuring vision, making a physical smoke vial far more practical.
The woodland was already dim, and with the thick white fog rolling through, the enemy's line of sight was blinded even further.
Shan Youjun also drew his saber to defend himself, though He Lingchuan thought he heard him let out a muffled grunt, suggesting he had taken a hit.
A faint glimmer even flashed across the blue bo beast beneath He Lingchuan as two arrows struck its hindquarters and bounced away.
To fell the rider, one first targets the mount.
Thankfully, the horse bell hanging from its chest was also a magic artifact. It made no sound when shaken, but its protective ward was superb.
Even so, against origin power, its defense deteriorated rapidly.
More than half the volley, however, had been aimed at Maotao. Raising his blade in time to bat away two arrows had already been an impressive feat, and another two were turned aside by his personal protective artifact without finding purchase. But the rest…
From the corner of his eye, He Lingchuan saw a flash of blue light ripple across Maotao's body before suddenly guttering out. The fingertip-sized jade talisman at his waist shattered with a sharp snap.
There were simply too many enemy arrows, all infused with origin power, exhausting the artifact's ward in an instant.
The remaining three arrows struck home with three dull thuds.
He Lingchuan saw with painful clarity as Maotao's body jerked violently, a broad arrowhead bursting clean through his back from his chest—a horrific, shocking sight.
"Maotao!"
He Lingchuan was furious and horrified, but he kept his cry to a low hiss. Through the haze, he could already make out shadowy figures crouching behind the surrounding rocks and trees; several archers were drawing their bows to shoot another volley.
He dug his heels into the mount's flanks, and the blue bo beast shot forward like an arrow.
In thick fog, one had to move swiftly to avoid remaining a sitting target.
Reaching behind him, He Lingchuan drew a heavy crossbow from his storage ring. These were pre-loaded and could be operated with a single hand. He was no longer the novice he had once been; even at a gallop, his aim was deadly precise. Two bolts whistled out, striking two archers dead-on.
One had his right wrist impaled; the other took a bolt through the throat.
The bo beast moved with blistering speed. Through the shifting fog, the enemy only caught a blur before a massive war mount burst out upon them. Caught flat-footed with no time to raise their bows, they were forced to draw their melee weapons.
He Lingchuan slashed downward, freezing two enemy soldiers in their tracks.
By the time he ran down the third, the upper torsos of the first two finally slid off their legs, spilling blood across the earth.
That slash had been delivered in white-hot fury, swift as thunder, bisecting both men and their weapons. The second man's body had not even been touched by the steel edge itself; the pulsing cold gleam extending more than a foot beyond the blade had sheared through leather armor and bone as smoothly as slicing through butter.
He Lingchuan cut down four men in rapid succession just as an enemy cavalryman arrived, his long spear thrusting straight toward He Lingchuan's throat.
As their mounts crossed paths, He Lingchuan's first strike sheared off the spearhead. His second swept back like a swallow wheeling in midair, lopping off half the rider's skull.
To onlookers, only two flashes of chilled steel had flickered before the horseman was reduced to a headless corpse.
Who would not be terrified by such butchery? The Xunzhou men directly ahead scrambled frantically out of his path. An occasional stray arrow was either dodged or knocked out of the air by his blade, inflicting no harm.
These soldiers were agile and skilled, yet against the concussive charge of the blue bo beast and the lethal sharpness of the Fusheng Saber, they had virtually no way to resist.
Such was the stark gulf between a general and ordinary foot soldiers.
Without He Lingchuan even realizing it, as he walked this path, the bearing of a commander was quietly taking shape within him.
Suddenly, someone screamed, "He's the one who wounded General Baili!"
Someone had finally recognized him.
Among the men Hong Chenglüe had left behind for the ambush were several who had accompanied Baili Qing on the raid against Xinhuang Town. The memory of how their general had been struck down remained deeply etched in their minds. The poor visibility had obscured his identity, but after He Lingchuan butchered several men in plain sight, they recognized him.
Suddenly, Shan Youjun's warning shouted through the din: "Watch your back!"
Indeed, a faint disturbance stirred the air behind him.
He Lingchuan dropped flat against the blue bo beast's flank just as a red blur swept over the saddle. Had he reacted a heartbeat later, he might have been knocked from his mount.
In midair, the creature dipped its head, jaws snapping toward his neck. He Lingchuan tilted his head aside; the bite snapped on empty air, teeth clicking together with a sharp crack.
Only when the thing landed did He Lingchuan see that it was a massive crimson cat, possessing long, muscular limbs clearly built for extraordinary leaping.
Shan Youjun shouted urgently, "Blades can't hurt it!"
He was tangled in fierce combat with another giant cat, several bloody gashes already torn across his body. The monster gave off a faint greenish glow and made no effort to dodge Shan Youjun's strikes, as his blade and spear passed straight through its body as though striking empty air!
Did this thing lack physical form?
No, that wasn't right. It only lacked substance when evading, shifting into a phase of nothingness. Furthermore, because it was empowered by its master's origin power, Shan Youjun's own origin-infused weapons failed to pierce its defenses.
In essence, their forces canceled each other out.
The blood cat was astonishingly fast, blurring into a streak of red whenever it moved. Shan Youjun had courted disaster several times, nearly having his eyes and throat ripped open.
Looking closer, he realized with a shudder that the wrinkled texture across the blood cat's body was not fur at all, but countless human faces!
Faces of different features, expressions, and genders—some smiling, some enraged, some weeping, others screaming in soundless agony.
He did not know that such an entity was known as a chang spirit. With the sun already below the horizon, the hour was ripe for it to wreak havoc.
Just as Shan Youjun was locked in desperate combat with the beast, a shadow silently materialized behind him, thrusting a halberd straight toward the back of his heart.
It was none other than Tao Ze, the Xunzhou officer commanding the ambush.
The hairs on the back of Shan Youjun's neck stood on end, alerting him to the danger, but it was already too late to turn.
At that exact instant, a spear streaked through the air from ahead, whistling past his ear before striking the tip of Tao Ze's halberd with a sharp clang, knocking it off course.
He Lingchuan had intervened, hurling the Soaring Dragon Spear like a javelin to narrowly save Shan Youjun's life.
This technique was standard training for every member of the Gale Army, and as a member of their auxiliary reserve, He Lingchuan had drilled it relentlessly. His throw—or rather, the flight of the spear—lacked the earth-shattering majesty of Xiao Maoliang's, but its accuracy and force were rapidly approaching mastery.
Having deflected the halberd, the Soaring Dragon Spear flew wide and lodged firmly into a tree trunk with a heavy thunk.
The blood cat that had been stalking He Lingchuan had also disdained dodging his attack, overly confident in its phantom state. Consequently, when He Lingchuan swept the Fusheng Saber through it, the weapon cleaved it clean in two.
The beast did not bleed or howl; it simply collapsed into ash. Yet the human faces covering its body drifted upward, transforming into shrieking vengeful spirits that swarmed the clearing!
The halberd in Tao Ze's hands was named Red Tiger. Souls slain beneath it were drawn into the weapon's shaft and fed into the two chang spirits disguised as blood cats, providing them with a steady supply of energy.
Now that one of the chang spirits had been destroyed by He Lingchuan, the trapped spirits broke free at once, driven by venomous malice to lash out indiscriminately at any living thing nearby!
Having spent so long inside the chang spirit, they had taken on its traits: usually formless and intangible, solidifying only at the moment of strike. The nearby Xunzhou soldiers were caught completely unprepared by this turn of events, and in the blink of an eye, four of them were brought down. Some had spirits force their way into their mouths and nostrils, churning their brains into mush, while others were torn apart and eaten alive amid bloodcurdling screams.
Witnessing this gruesome scene, Tao Ze, master of the Red Tiger halberd, was caught off guard and had no choice but to withdraw the origin power sustaining the chang spirits.
Once the faint glow around the vengeful spirits faded, the Xunzhou soldiers' own origin power became enough to ward them off, deflecting them at best or shattering them upon impact, rendering them no longer a threat.
Even so, Tao Ze could not fathom how He Lingchuan had dispatched the blood cat so effortlessly. Until they sank their fangs into a target, those chang spirits maintained an ethereal, incorporeal form.
He naturally had no way of knowing that He Lingchuan's treasured Fusheng Saber carried a property known as Void Breaker, specifically tailored to counter intangible and formless beings. The chang spirit fit the description perfectly; why would Fusheng show it any mercy?
With the origin power withdrawn, the threat posed by the remaining blood cat against Shan Youjun diminished considerably. As a mere aggregate of resentful ghosts, it could no longer inflict severe harm on a Xiazhou soldier protected by origin power.
Shan Youjun caught his breath, wheeled around, and engaged Tao Ze one-on-one.
By now, white smoke blanketed the clearing, and the Xunzhou men, wary of the blade in He Lingchuan's hand, dared not charge blindly into the mist. Seizing the opportunity, He Lingchuan leapt from his saddle, rushed to Maotao's side, and pried open his slack jaw to force a life-preserving pill inside.
He had taken this medicine himself before—after being knocked off the cliff by the leopard demon, half a pill had truly preserved his breath for four full hours. He knew full well how potent it was, and that it was an irreplaceable treasure worth a fortune.
The pill dissolved upon touching Maotao's tongue, but he was beyond its help. Staring up at He Lingchuan, he mustered all his remaining strength only to squeeze out a few faint words:
"Go… quick, go!"
The moment the words left his lips, the light faded from his eyes.
Medicine could heal wounds, but it could not mend death. His heart had been pierced through; that he had clung to life this long was already a miracle. No medicine on earth could save him now.
Shan Youjun bellowed, "We have to go!"
With the enemy right in front of them, he refrained from calling out "Boss."
By then, two Xunzhou soldiers had blown their whistles, their sharp, urgent shrieks echoing through the mountain forest.
Hong Chenglüe's main force was not far away. Hearing those whistles, they would undoubtedly rush to reinforce them.
Two men against several hundred—unless they were General Red herself, they would certainly perish.
He Lingchuan gritted his teeth and reached down to close Maotao's eyes. Only then did he vault back onto the blue bo beast and charge toward Tao Ze.
The bo beast was no larger than an ordinary warhorse, but its acceleration was vastly superior, capable of reaching full speed within ten paces.
Tao Ze was locked in combat with Shan Youjun, waiting for the smoke to thin so his men could swarm in and overwhelm him. Little did he expect a howling wind to tear toward him as He Lingchuan bore down on him, horse and rider as one!
Tao Ze had already heard his men's shouts and knew this youth was the very culprit who had grievously wounded Baili Qing—and with a single strike, no less. He had not taken part in that raid, nor did he know that He Lingchuan had only been so terrifyingly lethal because he had fortuitously triggered Fusheng's Army Breaker trait. All Tao Ze knew was that his own martial strength was far inferior to Baili Qing's. Now, pinned down by Shan Youjun, his courage faltered; how could he possibly dare to meet He Lingchuan's charge head-on?
Chapter 270