With central-force commander Zhang Yi killed, the Cao family’s private soldiers instantly fell apart.

People had always claimed, in words, that the Cao family’s private troops matched the Dachu standing army in combat strength — perhaps even exceeded ordinary standing forces, given that they had been trained by Left Martial Guard veterans.

But what the training ground produced and what the battlefield actually demands — how could those two ever be exactly the same?

On one side: private soldiers who thought themselves superior to the Dachu standing army, every man carrying himself with contempt, and in truth not one of them had ever seen an actual battlefield.

On the other: Ning Army veterans who had fought their way from Jizhou all the way to Yuzhou without stopping. Which of them had not been forged by rolling and crawling through the filth of war?

So when theoretical advantage was put into practice, practice had a way of beating theory until nothing was left of its face.

Quite literally — leaving the face with nothing intact.

Yes, the Cao family’s private soldiers had met Dachu standing army standards in weapons, equipment, personnel composition, and trained coordination.

But those standards were the standards of new recruits.

How many people, when boasting in peacetime, had puffed out their chests and declared — *I could take on ten men…*

But when an actual battle came — blood drawn, bodies mangled, comrades going down — how many of them could remain cold-headed?

When you see the comrade beside you get his head cleaved off, when you see the man next to him disemboweled, and still hold steady — most people simply collapse.

Those who command troops have always emphasized the importance of morale, and a soldier without killing spirit will never have morale to speak of.

Morale — that is not some invisible, intangible thing.

Killing spirit — that is not invisible either.

More than a hundred years ago, the Dachu dynasty experienced a significant unrest.

Scholars who had come to the capital to sit the imperial examinations were deep in anxious preparation when they discovered that someone was openly selling the examination questions.

At first they assumed it was a fraud — after all, the penalty for such a thing was extermination of the entire family.

But when the examination day came, the questions proved genuine…

The scholars erupted. After the examination, they surrounded the offices of the authorities and demanded that the court provide an answer.

At first it was only the scholars’ grievance, demanding a full investigation of the case.

But as time passed, countless city ruffians and petty criminals seized the opportunity to run riot, looting goods and torching shops.

The capital descended into chaos. The Dachu emperor at the time immediately ordered the city sealed off and mobilized the Imperial Guard to maintain order.

But those Imperial Guard soldiers — who had been living in luxury and idleness — turned out to be frightened by the sight of blood.

And on top of that, most of the guard’s soldiers were sons of noble and aristocratic families.

These men — never mind fighting a battle, they had never even seen blood. They were inferior even to the constables at the local magistracy.

At least constables dealt with the petty disorder of daily life — they had been in their share of scuffles.

At first, the rioters still assumed that the appearance of the Imperial Guard would be intimidating. They soon discovered the guardsmen were stuffed with rice and good wine and nothing else.

The riot grew even larger. Groups of masked men beat the patrolling guardsmen, stripped them of their armor, and seized their weapons.

The guardsmen were completely helpless.

The situation kept deteriorating.

With no other option, the Minister of War at the time — a minister named Yan — requested permission to call in the capital’s Jingzhou Army, Right Martial Guard, to enter the city.

At that time, the Jingzhou Army’s Right Martial Guard had returned from the battlefields of Yanzhou less than a month before.

Prior to this, the Bohai Kingdom, backed by the Black Warrior Empire, had launched an assault of six hundred thousand soldiers against Yanzhou.

The court urgently mobilized standing armies from across the empire to reinforce Yanzhou — the Right Martial Guard was one of them.

It was this same Right Martial Guard that had pushed through the enemy’s gates and carved a path seven hundred li deep into the Bohai Kingdom.

Everywhere they passed, nothing was left — man or beast.

Every single soldier of the Right Martial Guard had drenched his hands in blood so many times over that no one could count.

The Dachu standing army had fought its way into one hundred years during which the Bohai Kingdom never dared come again.

The Dachu emperor heeded his Minister of War and issued an edict calling the Right Martial Guard into the capital.

That day, the Right Martial Guard marched into Daxing City in full force.

Three days later, the streets were utterly empty — no one dared come out.

Those ruffians and criminals who had been causing trouble assumed at first that the Right Martial Guard would be no different from the Imperial Guard.

The Right Martial Guard dealt with them the way one deals with cutting melon and slicing vegetables.

The Right Martial Guard pushed forward street by street, and street by street the road was painted red behind them.

Three days later, the moment anyone spotted a Right Martial Guard banner appearing, they were seized with shaking and terror.

The ruffians fortunate enough to avoid being dealt with — when they saw Right Martial Guard soldiers coming from a distance — either turned and ran immediately or dropped to their knees on the spot to demonstrate they were law-abiding people.

Decades later, when old people recalled those events, the mere memory of the Right Martial Guard entering the city was still enough to make their hearts race.

They all said: do not make eye contact with Right Martial Guard soldiers. If you look into their eyes you will discover those are not human eyes.

They are the eyes of beasts.

Other people said they saw it with their own eyes — every single Right Martial Guard soldier was surrounded by a black aura rising from their body.

The same equipment — and if those proud Dachu Imperial Guardsmen had faced the Right Martial Guard of that time in a battle, they would have been slaughtered without a survivor.

At this moment and in this place, outside the Ring Peaks of Mount Qi — was it not exactly the same?

These proud Cao family private soldiers, before the Ning Army, were just like those Dachu Imperial Guardsmen of old.

The same weapons and equipment, the same battle formations.

And yet an entirely different result.

It must be said: among the so-called Sixteen Prodigies, the Four Absent and Four Present were all men of formidable skill in the jianghu world.

Put any of those eight into the jianghu, and they would be figures who commanded the wind and called the storms.

But the Four Deficient and Four Complete — only two of them had come from genuine standing army officer backgrounds. The rest were simply the outstanding products of subsequent training.

Sometimes arrogance blinds a person’s eyes.

Sometimes pride makes the heart go numb.

Cao Ziluo stared down from the walls. His twenty-four thousand elite troops had been butchered in a single engagement, and in that moment no one could know what he was thinking.

He gripped the wall with both hands and looked below. At his side were still a number of attendants and guards, every one of them — like him — staring out at the battlefield, struck dumb.

Twenty-four thousand elite soldiers.

Routed by ten thousand Ning Army troops who left bodies strewn across the field.

And what was frightening those on the walls right now was almost exactly what the Right Martial Guard had done in the Dachu capital more than a hundred years before.

The same in this respect: the Ning Army was taking no surrenders. Anyone present — regardless of who — was to be killed without exception.

This was how the Right Martial Guard had handled the unrest in those days — anyone seen on the street was to be struck down.

Different in this respect: the Ning Army was now collecting heads.

Those Ning Army soldiers in black armor were hunting down the utterly collapsed Cao family soldiers across the battlefield.

Whether they were kneeling or running — the end was the same either way.

No survivors were left. The heads would become combat merit, hung from every Ning Army soldier’s belt.

Every Ning Army soldier’s belt carried a red cord to record their merit. Kill one man, tie one knot.

When those knots were tied and how they were tied was not arbitrary.

As laid down in the military code: when reporting merit, the soldier found his squad captain, the squad captain counted the heads publicly, and then the merit knots were added in accordance with the head count.

Five knots earned one turn of rank elevation.

Five heads for one turn, and nine turns to rise a single grade.

Consider this: if you were to reckon from the day the Ning Army first marched, up to the day some soldier might accumulate enough merit to reach the rank of Grand Pillar of the Nation…

How many heads would have gone into that.

Out on the battlefield, the sight of Ning Army soldiers gripping their broadswords and taking heads left the great figures of the Mountain-River Seal — who had thought themselves masters of others’ fates — with their scalps going cold.

Masters of others’ fates?

That is the power of armies.

It always has been.

“Sect Master!”

Someone called urgently, and only after calling several times did Cao Ziluo pull himself out of that indescribable stupor.

Only then did he realize — he was drenched in sweat.

And what he did not know was that he had also gone entirely white in the face.

Not just him — every single person standing on that wall watching the battlefield had gone white.

Tang Pidi’s army — what he had trained — every last one of them: wolves and tigers.

“Let us go. If we head into the rear mountain now, even without a road, it is still better than being penned in here by the Ning Army.”

Someone called out loudly.

The mountains behind had never once been entered. The forest was deep and the peaks were high — who knew how many predators lurked inside.

Not only were there no roads — once inside, direction itself would likely soon be lost.

But at this moment it seemed there was truly no other option. Either fall into the Ning Army’s hands and end up like those Cao family soldiers outside having their heads cut off, or gamble and plunge into the deep mountains in search of a way through.

“We…”

Cao Ziluo drew a long, deep breath, then turned: “Let us go.”

But in that very moment, from behind the Ning Army, another force appeared.

This force was different from the Ning Army already seen. They also wore black armor — but the cut and style of their armor was significantly different.

The greater difference lay in the banners. This force flew no flame-red flags with black characters. Instead their flags were black with red characters — exactly the opposite.

This was the Judicial Guard.

Li Chi arrived from the rear with twelve hundred Judicial Guard soldiers in black armor, the black banners surging.

Tang Pidi saw Li Chi arrive and went to meet him, asking: “Why have you come?”

Li Chi said: “Cao Lie disappeared. Ninth Sister was following the wrong person, so I came over to see how things were going here.”

Tang Pidi nodded: “The fort gate is tall — but not worth worrying about. My concern is that Cao Ziluo will slip into the deep mountains. That would make him very difficult to track down.”

Li Chi gave a nod: “You already have a plan?”

Tang Pidi said simply: “Only speed matters.”

He passed his long spear to a guard beside him, spread his arms, and let the guard remove his armor. Then he took a broadsword, had it lashed diagonally across his back.

“My personal guard — listen!”

Tang Pidi called out loudly: “Remove your armor!”

Every soldier of the personal guard moved at once — not a single one hesitated for even a moment.

They helped each other out of their armor, keeping only their military uniforms, and lashed their broadswords across their backs in the same manner as Tang Pidi.

Over three hundred men — all stripped light, all ready.

“Give me three iron javelins.”

Tang Pidi extended his hand. Three javelins were immediately passed to him.

“Give me a coil of rope.”

Someone passed over a coil of cord.

Tang Pidi finished his preparations, then let out a long, slow breath. He looked toward the high walls: “Personal guard — follow me up.”

“*Hu!*”

With a unified cry, more than three hundred soldiers followed Tang Pidi and charged forward at a sprint.

This was no column of men. This was more than three hundred striped and massive tigers.

Tang Pidi surged at the head, arrow shafts raining down from the walls — but those were not trained soldiers, and the arrows came without precision.

Tang Pidi moved like a tiger’s leap, weaving left and right. Not one shaft came close.

At the base of the walls, Tang Pidi in the midst of his charge hurled the javelins in his hand in rapid, uninterrupted succession — one continuous motion from start to finish.

Three iron javelins carrying the force of a thunderclap drove one after another into the face of the wall.

With three dull, heavy impacts, all three javelins buried themselves deep into the stonework. The force required to do this — the spectators were left staring in open disbelief.

The wall was built from cut mountain stone blocks. To pierce this deeply required not just strength, but precision.

The three javelins had to be driven into the gaps between the stone blocks. Hitting the face of a stone itself — there would be no way to penetrate.

Three strikes, three hits.

Tang Pidi surged upward in a great leap, feet landing on the first javelin. He pushed off, hands seizing the second javelin, using the swing of his body to catch the third.

Both hands gripping the spear shaft, both feet crouching against it — the posture like a great tiger hunkered there.

Then his legs drove him upward, launching him into the air — and in an instant he was over the wall.

All of this — one unbroken sequence, executed in the space between lightning and flint.

Speed like white horse through a crack in the door.