Everything had been prepared meticulously—even bringing in a seasoned veteran general for battle preparation couldn’t have done better than this.
Yet the young commander himself was nowhere to be found. Not even Meng Duo’er knew where he was.
For the moment, Ziqing and the others had no time to worry about that.
Now that war had begun, a purely defensive stance was absolutely not their approach. The beast horde was attacking the barrier like something possessed.
Ziqing and the others couldn’t afford to simply sit and wait—they had to strike first.
“Archers, stand ready!” Jun Beiyue gave the cold command, while Ziqing signaled to the mercenaries waiting nearby to prepare the gunpowder.
Gunpowder was precious, but if not used here, where else would it be used?
Everything was in place. The decision to open fire wasn’t Nanzhao’s to make—it was theirs.
But just as Jun Beiyue’s archers and Ziqing’s gunpowder soldiers readied themselves, a sudden rustling sound suddenly echoed from far away!
“What is that sound!” Ziqing tensed with unease.
“Flying beasts!” Jun Beiyue pointed ahead, and there, sure enough, was a dense black mass filling the sky.
They hadn’t failed to anticipate flying beasts—but they never imagined there would be so many of them. After all, within the Beast Clan, flying beast forces made up only a small proportion.
They hadn’t expected such an overwhelming number all at once!
“Meng Duo’er, come up here!” Jun Beiyue decided at once, ordering more archers deployed and calling for a fire attack.
Fire was the flying beasts’ weakness!
Ziqing, brow furrowed tight, kept her fingers on the gunpowder, ready at any moment to light the fuse and hurl it.
With so many flying beasts, even if they could hold them off, there was no guarantee of complete success.
If even a single beast slipped through and invaded the territory, that would spell serious trouble.
Fighting flying beasts required aerial combat, and they simply didn’t have enough hands for it.
“Where’s Xiong Xiaobao?” Ziqing asked seriously.
“I saw him earlier, but now… I have no idea where he is,” Meng Duo’er said helplessly.
At a moment like this, Xiong Xiaobao alone—or his Qiankun pouch alone, or even just one of the poison beasts in his possession—was worth an entire company of archers.
For him to disappear at such a critical moment was completely out of character for him.
Ziqing grew anxious and uneasy, but with the flying beasts closing in, she had no time to think further. As Jun Beiyue shot up into the air, she followed right behind him.
Never mind letting flying beasts cross the border—they wouldn’t even be allowed to approach the southern gate.
The couple led their forces forward, meeting the enemy head-on rather than dodging.
Jun Beiyue’s sword and wind blades, Ziqing’s gunpowder, Meng Duo’er’s barrier techniques, the archers’ fire attacks, the shadow guards’ bare-handed combat—soon, humans and flying beasts were locked in chaotic battle.
After throwing several charges of gunpowder, Ziqing handed off the gunpowder attacks to the mercenaries and, hands full of poison, left Jun Beiyue’s side to head deeper into the swarm of flying beasts.
Using poison might well be the better strategy. But Ziqing wasn’t using poison merely for the sake of using poison—she intended to push through the flying beasts and capture Elder Sheng.
The Meng Clan was already safe now; she could afford to go all in. If she captured Elder Sheng this time, she absolutely would not let him go.
Jun Beiyue understood Ziqing’s intentions at a glance—she was using her poison techniques, charging forward, and any flying creature that came near would be poisoned, unable to harm her at all.
So Jun Beiyue felt at ease letting her go.
He fought alongside Meng Duo’er and the others with everything he had, determined to wipe out every last flying beast.
But to both Ziqing’s and Jun Beiyue’s surprise, the flying beasts only kept growing in number, pouring in endlessly from every direction of the sky in wave after wave!
It seemed as though they could never finish killing them all!
At this rate, not only would they exhaust their gunpowder and arrows, but they’d also wear themselves down completely.
Unless this battle could thoroughly subdue Prince Nanzhao, the longer this dragged on, the worse off they’d be.
Nanzhao had troops to spare!
What could they do?
Soon, Ziqing had to turn back—she couldn’t break through, and had to return to help Jun Beiyue and the others.
As the couple fought, they racked their brains for a solution, both silently hoping Xiong Xiaobao would show up soon.
The four great poison beasts, along with the other creatures Xiong Xiaobao had raised since, could surely take a significant burden off their shoulders.
Quite a few guards had already been sent out to search for Xiong Xiaobao. For now, all Ziqing and the others could do was hold the line, minimizing losses while waiting for that little troublemaker to appear.
While Ziqing and the others were anxious, Xiong Xiaobao was anxious too, in his own way.
At that very moment, he was not far off, having seemingly aged several decades in an instant, pleading tirelessly with Baili Weisheng.
Xiong Xiaobao sat perched on the back of the massive beast Zizhu, while beside him, Howling Rabbit, Henggong Fish, the Nine-Tailed White Fox, and that hulking, massive Dumb Bear stood lined up in a row, like guardian deities positioned behind Xiong Xiaobao, all staring intently at Baili Weisheng, who sat on the ground.
“Listen to that sound yourself—the enemy’s already attacking, and you still won’t run?” Xiong Xiaobao had failed to persuade him, and switched to furious scolding instead.
Of course, his real goal was to trick Baili Weisheng onto the battlefield—but he had to phrase it backward, tricking him into fleeing. As for which direction he’d flee to, once he was on a poison beast’s back, that was no longer Baili Weisheng’s call to make.
“When the nation faces peril, even a common man bears responsibility—how could I flee so easily?” Baili Weisheng countered, deadly serious.
“You—!” Xiong Xiaobao had always been endlessly patient with Baili Weisheng, but now, finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “If a common man bears responsibility, then come to the battlefield with me!”
At this, Baili Weisheng immediately looked at him with suspicion. “Huh… weren’t you telling me to flee?”
“I… I…” Xiong Xiaobao floundered for a moment before recovering and saying earnestly, “Well, didn’t you just say when the nation faces peril, even a common man bears responsibility?”
“Little one, strictly speaking, according to the classical definition of ‘common man,’ you don’t qualify as one,” Baili Weisheng said, once again perfectly serious.
“So are you leaving or not?” Xiong Xiaobao felt like he was about to breathe fire and burn this man to death if this kept up.
Only then did Baili Weisheng stand up, straighten his white scholar’s robes, glance toward the front lines, and sigh with feeling, “I am but a humble scholar, without the strength to even truss a chicken. With the nation in peril, unable to serve my country—this is truly a regret I shall carry for life. But I am willing to guard the border, to live or die alongside the nation!”
Xiong Xiaobao, perched precariously on Zizhu’s back, stared up at the sky in despair. “Baili Weisheng, who told you you’re a citizen of Da Zhou?”
Baili Weisheng blinked, momentarily stunned, then grew serious again. “What do you mean by that? Then tell me, what nation am I from?”
Xiong Xiaobao had run completely out of words. Just then, the guards finally arrived, and upon seeing the sight of several poison beasts standing in a row, they were so stunned they could barely speak. “Y-young… young… young—!”
He struggled to get the word “young master” out for a long while.
“What is it, spit it out!” Xiong Xiaobao, his temper already boiling over with nowhere to vent, spun around and roared.
But just as he turned, he caught sight of the dense black mass filling the distant sky behind him, and was instantly stunned.
“They’re here already!”
He’d been so focused on Baili Weisheng and the southern gate that he hadn’t expected the flying beasts to arrive so quickly.
“Young master, His Highness and Her Highness… they… they…”
“What happened to my parents!” Xiong Xiaobao, no longer caring about anything else, immediately turned to leave. But just as he turned, the Dumb Bear, who had apparently been holding back just as long as Xiong Xiaobao, suddenly swung a massive paw straight at Baili Weisheng!
What was it trying to do?