Heaven Has Not Forsaken Us

He looked down, the exact same thought flashing through his mind as He Chunhua's: How did this kid get up here? Yet the monstrous bird's strength was limited after all, and flying through a torrential downpour with soaked wings pushed it to its limits. Carrying two grown men, it could just barely manage by gritting its teeth; but now that another robust, vigorous young man had dropped out of thin air onto it, how could it possibly bear the weight? Though it flapped its wings frantically, it still began listing sideways, plummeting toward the floodwaters. Dong Rui was scared half to death. Worse, both men had tucked themselves beneath the bird's belly where he couldn't reach to strike them, leaving him no choice but to scream helplessly, "Let go! Let go of it!" Why was it that every time he crossed paths with this father and son, terrible luck found him? Cursed karma! He Lingchuan's voice came from beneath the bird's belly, ringing clear in his ears: "Fly back to land, or we all die together!" He had even resorted to a life-saving secret art like Sacrifice the Plum to Preserve the Peach—what he had slipped into his father's belt earlier was none other than the ghost shadow cicada slough. If he fell back into the flood now, death would be his only outcome. Dong Rui didn't dare be stubborn any longer. Forcing the monstrous bird's head toward the shore, he commanded it to turn back. Yet it truly could not endure the heavy weight of three men. Though it drew closer to land, it flew lower and lower. A chill crept over the tops of He Lingchuan's feet as the water swallowed his ankles. Looking around, all before his eyes was a boundless expanse of water. Where was any high ground? Where was any riverbank? Where were the armies? Nothing remained but the churning, roaring deluge. He Chunhua panicked and instinctively struggled upward. "Don't thrash around!" He Lingchuan shouted. Too late. The monstrous bird was already on the verge of total exhaustion; how could it withstand his swaying? With a helpless squawk, it plunged into the water. The violent waves showed no mercy, crashing over them and dragging them down. Even knowing how to swim was useless here. He Chunhua swallowed several mouthfuls of water, unable to see anything. In his panic, his hand brushed against something. Like any drowning man, he instinctively gripped this lifeline. It turned out to be a stunted tree growing at the edge of the rocky ground. Half its branches were lashed by the churning flood, whipping violently back and forth. Fortunately, its roots were fairly sturdy; supporting He Chunhua alone seemed within its limits. With his other hand, he still gripped his son's trouser leg. Looking further up, Dong Rui was clutching the monstrous bird, one of whose talons remained hooked into He Lingchuan, entangling all three in a desperate knot. "Chuan'er, grab... grab me..." He Chunhua tried to say "grab my hand," but under the battering torrent, He Lingchuan couldn't even bend at the waist. The combined weight of three men and a bird, compounded by the immense momentum of the surging current, came crashing down entirely upon He Chunhua. Even with his cultivation, in less than two seconds his arms felt as though they would tear apart. He could barely hold on. Worse yet, the stunted tree began to loosen. He Lingchuan raised his arm, aiming his sleeve arrow at the tree trunk, intending to haul himself back along the cord. As ill luck would have it, a massive swell surged in, its ferocious force knocking the sleeve arrow off course. *...* Could luck truly be this rotten? The problem was that the grappling cord and sleeve arrow were combined into one mechanism—he couldn't fire a second shot! The Yuan soldiers on the bank finally noticed the commotion. Wu Shaoyi sprinted over, shouting, "Ropes! Bring ropes!" Too late. Another crest swept toward them, carrying along a wild bull. The beast's massive carcass slammed directly into Dong Rui. The impact hit him so hard his eyes went wide and blank. These wild bulls had failed to escape the deluge's clutches as well; no matter how well they could swim under normal circumstances, they could only wait for death in such waters. With a sharp tear, He Lingchuan's pant leg ripped apart. In an instant, the flood swept the two men, the bird, and the bull forty to fifty feet away. All that remained in He Chunhua's hand was a torn scrap of cloth. "Chuan'er..." He Chunhua whispered in disbelief. The Yuan men on the bank tossed down ropes and hauled on the tree branches, finally pulling He Chunhua to safety. Just then, a dense drift of countless branches, boulders, and silt came churning down from upriver, sweeping right through where He Chunhua had been clinging moments before. The sheer, sweeping grandeur of it could only be captured by the ancient line: *Endless fallen timber roars down without end.* No one could survive such an indiscriminate onslaught. No one. A few breaths later, and He Chunhua would have perished as well. He stood upon the bank, soaked to the bone like a drowned chicken, water dripping from every inch of him, but inside he felt hollow. His son was gone. Yet all around him, urgent whistles and shouting still rang out— This battle was not over yet! Seeing his face deathly pale and his gaze glazed, Wu Shaoyi could only offer comfort: "My lord, pray restrain your grief! We must retreat!" Having fallen into such a deluge, unless one were a Golden Immortal of the Great Veil, who could possibly survive? Just what kind of heaven-shaking art had Nian Zanli invoked to unleash this drowning of the Yuan army? Yet at this moment, Nian Zanli was tasting his own bitter misery: The water... wouldn't stop! Seeing that the Yuan forces had all been reduced to drenched rats, his objective was achieved, and he wanted to seal the flask to draw back the waters. Yet no matter how many times he formed the retrieval seals with his fingers, the outpouring from the flask showed not the slightest sign of abating, still surging forth in a savage torrent! Worse, it continuously and ravenously drained his true power and vital essence, as insatiable as a giant elephant that hadn't drunk for three days. "Damn it, stop! Close! Close!" The flask refused to obey. Only now did he recall Hong Chenglüe's earlier warning: *Though the Verdant Flask is merely an imitation of the ancient Cloud-Water Precious Flask, its temper is fierce, no less stubborn than the original.* Nian Zanli had assumed a "fierce temper" just meant it was finicky, but when it drained vital essence, it showed no courtesy at all. Had it not been for his decades of cultivation and rich, sturdy true power, he might well have been sucked dry into a paper-thin husk. Only now did he truly understand what Hong Chenglüe meant. For a mere mortal to wield this flask, controlling it at will was utterly impossible! In desperation, he could only aim the mouth of the Verdant Flask toward the main channel of the Han River. Yet after a period of low ebb, the Han River had already begun surging back. Now combined with the torrent from the Verdant Flask, the two floods merged, stacking the height of the subsequent flood crests. The first crest was towering—fully forty feet, or thirteen meters high! By then, the southern bank of the Han River was thoroughly inundated. Finding a clear passage here, the flood surged southward with reckless abandon, sweeping away anything and everything in its path without discrimination. Nian Zanli could only watch helplessly as the earthen bank was pulverized by the forty-foot wall of water. The soldiers who had just barely escaped with their lives and scrambled onto it—whether Xunzhou men or Yuan troops—were swept into the torrent together. In the turbid waters, countless black specks bobbed. Every black speck represented a living person struggling for survival. Every black speck also represented a fleeting life. For as the surging waves churned, those specks were shoved beneath the surface... What was more, the flood continued eroding the earthen bank; the living men running atop it could not outpace the collapse of the ground beneath their feet! Nian Zanli felt as if a knife were twisting in his heart. Those were his soldiers! The army he had painstakingly forged over so many years, the officers he had nurtured and promoted—more than half of them swept away by the deluge in an instant. Yet he still had to grip the flask tightly, not daring to let go. After reciting the incantations so many times his mouth went numb, the flask suddenly snapped shut. Water ceased to flow. Nian Zanli staggered two steps back, his hands frozen in midair, unable to lower them. He tried to issue an order, but the moment he opened his mouth, a mouthful of fresh blood sprayed forth. Fury and anguish had struck his heart. His personal guards rushed forward to support him. "General! General?!" One seemed to hear Nian Zanli muttering through clenched teeth: "Hong Chenglüe, you bastard... you played me!" After repeating this several times, Nian Zanli panted heavily and wheezed, "Pursue... pursue the Yuan army. We cannot let Zhao Pan escape." Even if this counted as a victory, it was a pyrrhic one, a catastrophic loss in truth. Since things had come to this, he had to at least accomplish the objective of crossing the river. Thinking of this, he suddenly remembered Hong Chenglüe's promise when offering the plan: *I guarantee the Xunzhou troops will cross the river and make landfall.* Son of a bitch. Controlling the Verdant Flask had already drained him to complete exhaustion; now, overcome by grief and rage, he blacked out entirely. Meanwhile, the survivors from both armies were rallying along the banks. Earlier, pressed for time, Nian Zanli had poured out the monstrous flood before all his own men had made landfall, only to lose control of the waters and drown his own forces as well. Both sides had suffered grievous casualties. Though Zhao Pan had escaped disaster by pursuing the Xunzhou troops away from the lower ground, a rough tally of his regrouped remnants revealed that barely thirty percent remained! A single flood had swallowed nearly thirty thousand of his elite soldiers. Horns were sounding from both sides to rally their men, but Zhao Pan's heart felt as though it had sunk to the bottom of the Han River. He had lost. The northern Xiazhou theater, locked in stalemate for two or three months, had ended in his defeat. He had failed the sovereign's trust! At that moment, He Chunhua came sprinting toward him, the Xiazhou army rallying at his back. Seeing Zhao Pan's broken, despondent look, He Chunhua grabbed him by the collar and roared, "Pull yourself together! You haven't lost! This battle isn't over yet!" Zhao Pan had meant to knock his hand away, but the words froze him. "What?" He Chunhua's face was twisted, caked in water and grit, a wet strand of hair plastered across his nose, devoid of any shred of his usual refined composure. Yet the light burning in his eyes was hard to define—uncanny, manic, or both. "General Zhao, you are blinded by appearances!" He Chunhua shouted at him. "Think about your mission—to hold off Nian Zanli from the north! Look! Look over where he is!" In the pitch dark and pouring rain, amid the chaotic retreat, Zhao Pan hadn't been able to grasp the whole picture. Following the direction He Chunhua pointed, there was nothing to see—only a vast, surging grey expanse. Of course. Nian Zanli's army had climbed onto the higher ground earlier, but the waves had risen even higher, swallowing that plateau whole. "His men were drowned too! His situation is no better than yours!" He Chunhua's face flushed crimson. "Besides, do you think he paid no price for unleashing a world-shaking power like that? The fool! That kind of supernatural art was never meant for a mortal to wield!" One can only wield power matching their capability. Reaching beyond one's station always exacts a price. "General Zhao, Heaven has not forsaken us!" Those words struck Zhao Pan like a lightning bolt, clearing away the fog in his mind. Indeed! His orders were to repel the enemy in the north; as long as he stopped the Xunzhou soldiers from advancing south, his mission was accomplished. His own army had suffered heavy losses, but had Nian Zanli fared any better? This muddled clash had turned into a trade of pieces—a bloody, brutal slaughter where both sides traded pawn for pawn—yet he had not lost! He asked He Chunhua, "What about your men?" "Two thousand left. They're all yours!" "Good!" Zhao Pan wiped the water from his face with one swipe and ordered his elites to assemble, rallying eight hundred men on the spot. Bolstered by the Xiazhou troops as their backbone, they rode out in a fierce counterattack against Nian Zanli's remnants. In times like this, whoever rallied first seized the advantage. Zhao Pan's battle standards and drums struck terror into the Xunzhou soldiers who had barely clawed their way out of the water, scattering them in panic. Meanwhile, scattered Yuan troops saw their side making a strong stand and rushed to join ranks. As they pursued the enemy, their numbers actually swelled along the way. Something had evidently gone wrong on Nian Zanli's side as well; his army fled westward along the river in utter disarray, even abandoning their command banner in their panic. By this time, Hong Chenglüe and his retinue had already retreated into the safety of the forested heights, looking down upon the battlefield below. Standing beside him, Wu Qing let out a long sigh. "Neither side came away with any advantage, did they?" The outcome of this battle was truly beyond anyone's expectations. Hong Chenglüe looked up toward the east, a faint smile finally gracing his lips. "It seems I can return to Beijia ahead of schedule." He held the comb tightly in his hand.