Pain, pain, excruciating pain. Yun Ye felt that every single cell in his body was wailing and crying. With his feet soaked in a basin of hot water, he could clearly see his muscles twitching. Even though Rimu’s bosom was half-open, with her beautiful peaks faintly visible beneath her breast wrap, it couldn’t alleviate half a fraction of Yun Ye’s pain.

The culprit causing Yun Ye’s pain was walking, and the people who prompted Yun Ye to walk were Du Ruhui and Liu Fang!

Thirty li of road—walked there and back. Starting from early morning, he had walked for a full four two-hour periods. Wang Cai had horseshoes on his feet and couldn’t walk on the ice surface, so Yun Ye had to labor with his own feet.

They say yellow sand rises far up to white clouds, but in fact, what rises far up to white clouds is more than just yellow sand. This frozen river before them rose far into the ends of the sky, looking like a heaven-breaking river, sparkling brightly, like a divine miracle. The riverbanks couldn’t be walked on—they were covered with gunpowder. Yun Ye didn’t plan to die before his mission was accomplished.

Fifty thousand regular troops, thirty thousand auxiliary troops, spread out fully for thirty li. To confuse the Arabs, the banners everywhere were equal in number—tiger flags, flying leopard flags, flying horse flags fluttering noisily in the cold wind. Everything they did was to completely crush the Arabs here.

On the other side of the great river were the Arabs. While Yun Ye observed them, the Arabs were also observing Yun Ye. A few fellows eager for merit even drove their horses onto the ice surface, planning to capture Yun Ye alive.

But they hadn’t even crossed the heart of the river before they were shot and killed by strong crossbows on the ice surface, adding small stains to the great river that flashed with strong light.

“This battle should be fought with one vigorous effort. We’ll consume the enemy’s strength and courage in defensive warfare, and then we’ll launch a pursuit, completely scattering and frightening the enemy! Fight one battle and make it play its proper deterrent role.”

Liu Fang stood in the very center of the platform, pounding on the map and roaring at all the officers. The old man had devoted countless efforts to this battle, so he was full of enthusiasm.

This was fundamentally an old man who lived more youthfully with each passing day. He always said he was about to die, but looking at his spirit now, Yun Ye felt that after he himself died, this old fellow could still live on vigorously like a dragon and tiger.

It wasn’t because of the white light. Apart from making a few old men’s skin tone change a bit, the white light had no other effects. However, they didn’t care—more sun exposure was good for old men.

Yun Ye lay in his chair, unwilling to move at all. Stimulating morale and encouraging warriors was originally a thankless job. As commander, you at least needed to let your soldiers know what their chief commander looked like. At this time, there were no posters or such things, so he could only labor his own two legs to go see everyone.

It would have been better not to see them. Yun Ye definitely believed his subordinates should be very sad at this time. The legendary Commander Yun was the bravest of the three armies, had the ability to swallow clouds and spit mist, the skill to scatter beans and create soldiers, above could cut clouds and divide the moon, below could control ghosts and command spirits. He definitely wouldn’t be this man with a somewhat delicate face, only a thin layer of short beard on his lips, with a bit of dignity.

Well, Yun Ye himself also admitted that the last few sentences of self-evaluation had a slight discrepancy with reality. Dignity couldn’t be spoken of. Perhaps there was a bit at the beginning, but as the road was walked more, dignity slowly disappeared. Even if a person whose two legs trembled like playing a lute had such a thing, it would naturally be understood by the warriors as fear.

Liu Fang thought exactly this. He attacked Yun Ye with the world’s most vicious language, saying he was the world’s most unlikely commander. A commander who became soft after walking a few dozen li perversely commanded the most powerful legion in this world—this was a serious blasphemy of human warfare history.

This was clearly jealousy. He had unluckily encountered a fool emperor like Emperor Yang of Sui. Not only did he not receive trust, he also didn’t receive respect. Fighting a battle, he still had to constantly guard against whether the emperor would kill his whole family. So the old man was very jealous of the trust Yun Ye now possessed. If he had dared to do what Yun Ye was doing now back then, his whole family would have been killed without leaving even a single hair.

Enjoying family happiness during intervals in warfare was an excellent leisure method. As for those commanders who, when having nothing to do, used their wives and children to establish authority, Yun Ye looked down on them. To establish authority, one should use enemies to establish authority.

“Husband’s appearance inspecting the army is truly majestic. This concubine secretly watched twice. When you stood there, the people below didn’t even dare breathe loudly, their ears perked up high listening to Husband speak. Especially that last sentence of yours—’Wipe out the Arabs and go home for New Year’—was most inspiring. Many warriors shed tears.”

Rimu’s words were always so agreeable. Tonight they needed to make love properly. As for Liu Fang’s venomous tongue, naturally it was blown away without a trace by this gentle breeze.

Holding his daughter in his arms, with his second wife helping wash his feet and his junior wife diligently kneading his shoulders from behind—even immortals would be jealous of such enjoyment. So he jumped out to cause trouble.

Shouts like collapsing mountains and tsunamis suddenly rang out. On this evening with a golden sunset, Yusuf, the Eastern Governor of the Arab Kingdom, leading the gradually gathering two hundred thousand Arab troops plus fifty thousand allied forces from Tokharistan and Great Bolu—claiming five hundred thousand—launched an unprecedented frenzied attack on the eighty thousand expeditionary army led by Yun Ye, Grand Protector of the Beiting Protectorate of the Great Tang Empire.

Sitting on the high platform, Yun Ye asked Liu Fang strangely: “The timing isn’t right. Shouldn’t Yusuf launch the attack in the morning?”

“Testing. This is testing. Yusuf’s idea is to launch a comprehensive attack to see the effect before making a decision. There’s still one two-hour period until the sky completely darkens. In such a short time, we have no way to inflict heavy damage on them.”

“Your scoundrel tactics worked. The side with fewer people appears even more arrogant than their five hundred thousand army, so Yusuf wants to see what you’re relying on.”

“Look, the first to charge over are all camels. The camels carry sandbags on their backs with openings in the bags. The sand spills onto the ground, providing anti-slip effects. This way, the ice defense line you painstakingly managed won’t have the effect of making the enemy fall head over heels. Remember, petty cleverness can only succeed temporarily. There are intelligent people everywhere in this world. You absolutely cannot underestimate the enemy.”

Liu Fang was like this—he never let pass any opportunity to educate Yun Ye.

Using gunpowder crossbows and fire oil crossbows at this time was truly inappropriate, so the strong crossbows in the warriors’ hands became the main force. Some eight-ox crossbows, fitted with ordinary siege chisels, also began showing their might. Dense arrow rain scattered down toward the camel formations. Clearly some camels had already been shot dead by siege chisels, yet they could still stubbornly run forward. Looking carefully, one realized the Arabs had strung the camels into long chains. Even if several died, they would be dragged forward by other camels to continue walking.

Looking smugly at Liu Fang, Yun Ye crossed his legs.

“A blind cat catching a dead mouse doesn’t count as ability. The stakes you buried on the ice plus the barbed wire nets can indeed make these camels unable to advance an inch. Don’t be happy too early—such losses were originally within the Arabs’ expectations.”

The camels that crashed into these sharp spikes deeply buried in the ice met miserable ends. Many camels had the spikes penetrate their bellies and were firmly fixed on the stakes. Their innards spilled all over the ground. Their suffering hadn’t ended, because all the camels were bound into chains. They stopped advancing, but other camels continued forward. Dismemberment was the only fate for these unlucky camels.

More than ten barbed wire nets easily blocked these camels outside. The camels could only vent their suffering through miserable cries. Liu Fang lowered his head to look at their own somewhat uneasy camel troops and said to Yun Ye: “I told you long ago to pierce these camels’ eardrums. What have you done? How can one accomplish great things with such soft-heartedness?”

“I’ve never thought about doing any great things. That I can do things to my current position—I myself feel strange about it. I believe things cannot be done to the extreme. Previously I didn’t care at all about karmic retribution in the unseen realm. The more things I’ve experienced these years, the more I believe in this thing, and my courage has become smaller. Master Liu, don’t you have this feeling?”

“Yes! Hehe, I’m your strategist, so no matter how vicious the strategies I think up, the person executing them is you. So retribution will fall on your head. All the orders are given by you—what does it have to do with this old man?”

Just as the two were bickering, the Arabs finally made their move. Like a tide, crowds surged over from the opposite side. The Arabs pushed something similar to shield carts walking at the very front. Giant shields more than one zhang tall pushed across like city walls. It seemed the camel city had given Yusuf new inspiration, creating these unprecedented things.

After the sparks of wisdom collided, they would produce brilliant light. When shields appeared, sooner or later spears to pierce through these large shields would appear. Yun Ye had to admit that this kind of mobile shield cart was indeed the best weapon against camel cities. At least in suppressing the camel city’s ranged forces, it had very good effects.

The crossbow spears from eight-ox crossbows hitting them would only make these shield carts sway twice but couldn’t penetrate them. The materials used to make these shield carts must be very sturdy.

Arrows densely studded the shield carts like giant sails coming to borrow arrows. Liu Zhengwu naturally wasn’t Cao Cao and refused to let people borrow his crossbow bolts, so he ordered the fire oil crossbows to begin preparations.

Yun Ye descended from the high platform and came to the fire oil crossbow position. He saw countless eight-ox crossbows with angles raised to maximum. As the pennant in the captain’s hand waved, fire oil crossbows carrying sparks roared and shot into mid-air. When their power dissipated, they began falling. Under the action of gravitational acceleration, these crossbow bolts fell from mid-air with piercing shrieks.

When the gunpowder fuses on the fire oil crossbows completely burned out, they exploded into large clusters of crimson flames in mid-air. Countless fire oil crossbows exploded in the sky, forming an enormously huge fire net that shrouded down over the earth from above…