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Kou Zhong looked back; he focused his attention to look closely at the plains extending toward Hualin. Feeling strange, he asked, “Why didn’t the enemy make their move to deal with us at Hualin?”

Xu Ziling said, “My guess is that they have misgivings toward Tuli. According to Bielegunatai brothers’ analysis, out of the three parties of men and horses coming to deal with us, only Shen Mohuan has enough guts to kill us. The other men are afraid that tying a deep enmity with Tuli would cause them no end of trouble.”

Because Shen Mohuan had Xieli’s support behind his back, plus he had hiding place in the desert, he was not afraid of Tuli at all.

Ba Fenghan smiled and said, “After entering this hilly area, we can choose any point to break a siege and leave. Anybody who wants to pursue won’t be able to pursue, anyone who wants to intercept won’t be able to intercept. Therefore, if the enemy wants to rob the Five-Colored Stone or to kill us, they will be able to do it only by direct interception before entering the forest, right?”

Taking a deep breath, Kou Zhong said, “Are you saying that in one of the dense forests ahead ambushing troops are hiding, waiting respectfully for our honorable selves’ arrival?”

“Must be so,” Ba Fenghan replied, “This one hurdle, we must charge through forcefully relying on our strength, and then turn back to chase and kill Shen Mohuan.”

Frowning, Xu Ziling said, “The enemy is waiting in tight formation, and their strength is hard to fathom, if we charge through forcefully, won’t we suffer too much losses?”

The refined light in Ba Fenghan’s pair of eyes was burning; he scanned the area far and near, and said, “You see, in the distant woods, you can see birds circling in the air, playing happily. Only on these several dense forests ahead of us are devoid of the birds; from this, we could draw conclusion that these several mountain forests have ambushing troops hiding inside, scaring the birds away. The ambushing troops distribution is clear. The worst-case scenario is if the enemies from the three sides, Abaojia, Tiefuyou, and Shen Mohuan are forming an alliance, in which case their total military strength ought to be nearing one thousand.”

From Bielegunatai brothers, they received accurate intelligence pertaining to the enemy.

Abaojia’s Sparrow Hawk Army, under Kunzhihuang’s leadership, has had a predestined affinity to meet with them once. At that time they only had around twenty men, but all were outstanding martial art masters from various divisions of Qidan tribe. By relying only on these men, if life or death battle happened, it would be enough to deal with them. [Note: back in Book 39 Chapter 2, it was Huangzhikun, plus their number was ‘more than a hundred’; either a typo or a different person, these Chinese transliterations of ‘foreign names’ are difficult for me to fathom.]

Tiefuyou’s side had fifty elite fighters under his personal leadership coming to the east, naturally all of them were warriors, veterans of a hundred battles. And Tiefuyou was both intelligent and brave; he himself was a martial art master with illustrious fame for fighting prowess in the prairie, his strength was unquestionable.

Both these two sides’ men and horses valued exquisiteness but not numbers, because they did not want any publicity, doing everything they could to avoid provoking Tuli’s anger. If they were compelled by circumstances to kill the three, they would quickly go into hiding and push everything away from them, nice and clean, or perhaps they would push the blame to Shen Mohuan’s sand-bandits.

The fact was that Shen Mohuan exhausted all his elite troops in coming here; his men, the sand-bandits numbered nearly eight hundred. The sand-bandits’ cruelty and notoriety spread far and wide; crisscrossing the desert and the prairie, they had never lost any battle. Even if they retreated occasionally, while returning in a swirl of dust [idiom: to regroup and come back even stronger], they were able to ruthlessly injure the enemy. Naturally they were not men who were easy to deal with even more.

Any one group’s strength was enough to give the three men headache. If they joined forces in an ambush, once the three fell into the heavy siege, they would be forced into hard battle, perhaps they would not be able to leave alive.

Smiling bitterly, Kou Zhong said, “Deploying troops, dispatching plans, the best strategy this time seems to be to go back to Hualin, buy a wooden raft, and enjoy the beautiful scenery of Songhua River’s coastal area along the way.”

Displeased, Xu Ziling said, “Fancy that you, this kid, can still crack jokes in time like this. Last night, with heroism reaching to the clouds, you already promised Bielegunatai brothers to join hands to exterminate Shen Mohuan, yet now you shrink back as the time for battle approaches; are you going to disrupt the whole punishing-the-enemy grand plan?”

Kou Zhong’s pair of tiger-eyes lit up, he spoke heavily, “I was really cracking jokes. Old Ba, why don’t you be in charge? This kind of plains, forests, hills battle, you ought to be more of an expert compared to us.”

Ba Fenghan said, “I only know how to choose the most beneficial terrain for us to break through the enemy’s siege. However, the enemies are all martial art masters whose combat experience cannot be enriched more; what appears to be the weakest point might perhaps be the strongest place instead.”

Xu Ziling said, “If we get off the horse to rest now, what would the enemies do?”

Ba Fenghan replied, “They will be forced to attack before dark. But as far as I can see it, Ling Shao’s tactic may not necessarily work. They must already have their men hiding in Hualin to cut our retreat path. Without the cover of the forest, it would be more difficult for us to break the siege.”

Looking up at the sky, Kou Zhong laughed and said, “Since we can’t advance or retreat, we could execute another penetrating battle plan; I want to see who has enough qualifications to block my path.”

Laughing involuntarily, Xu Ziling said, “This is not any penetrating battle plan; rather, it is following the path to our own doom! If the enemies laid out several layers of siege inside the forest, it would be like we are walking right into the trap. I have a better proposal, which is to find where Shen Mohuan is first, and then release the rocket that Bielegunatai gave us, perhaps we can turn defeat into victory! From the prey, we will become the hunter.”

Ba Fenghan said, “Although it is not the plan we agreed with Bielegunatai brothers, to me, it can still be considered a method to meet a contingency. Question is: how are we going to find Shen Mohuan’s location?”

They had originally planned to use themselves as bait. As long as they could lure Shen Mohuan to pursue from behind, Bielegunatai brothers would be chasing their tails, and then from front and back, they would launch pincer attack to deal with the sand-bandits.

Xu Ziling spoke indifferently, “Come with me!” Taking the lead, he urged his horse downhill, charging toward the enemy ranks.

The two laughed aloud and rushed down the hill behind him.

The three launched the man-and-horse-as-one technique, the horses they were sitting on became the extension of their own flesh and blood, as they headed toward the closest jungle to their right.

Automatically they formed a triangular formation, with Xu Ziling in front, and Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan bringing up the rear. The latter two had their Extinguished Sun and Perished Moon Bows in their hands. The bows were stretched open.

‘Swish! Swish!’

Powerful arrows were sent out of the steel string, imbued by the two men’s concentrated true qi, turning into two streaks of lightning traversing the nearly one-thousand-pace distance, and disappeared into the forest.

Two miserable screams responded from the forest, followed by a rain of arrows shooting back at them. Too bad that even the farthest arrow was still three hundred paces away from becoming any real threat to them.

Xu Ziling laughed aloud. He suddenly pulled the rein and changed direction to gallop straight toward the open plains, across and away from the forest.

Battle cry rose up. From the place where the two arrows strike just now, random sound of hoof beats came, several dozens of riders were charging out of the woods, the warriors bent their bows and put on their arrows, coming diagonally to cut their tail.

Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong’s murderous temperament was aroused, they repeatedly turned around to release strings of arrows. From the front row of the enemy’s soldiers, constantly someone got hit and fell off the horse.

Suddenly from the left side of the forest ahead came the sound of battle drums, as hundreds of enemies rushed down like a tide from the top of the hill, to pursue the three men galloping across the open plains between the hills; clearly they intended to intercept them.

If it were someone with slightly lower ability and wisdom, seeing such enemies’ momentum and troops disposition, he would certainly go back to where he came from. But the three already saw the ambushing troops behind the enemy, of course they would not fall into the trap.

Xu Ziling decided on the direction; slightly swerving to the left, he rushed at an angle away from the cutting-across enemies, to avoid being cut off and fall into hard battle situation.

The three men’s horses were fast, they already left the enemy pursuing them from behind far away. Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan’s two divine bows were now dealing with the enemies on the right-hand side. Everywhere the arrows arrived, men fell face up, horses were overturned, in an extremely desperate situation.

The enemy’s battle cry shook the heavens, they charged from the rear and the right side. If it were people with smaller guts, they would have pissed in their pants in terror and scurried off like a frightened rat into the wilderness. However, what kind of people these three were? Even the prairie’s most formidable elite squad, the Golden Wolf Army was detained all night at the top of Helian Fort; what kind of situation they had not seen? They felt their heroic spirit soaring to the sky instead, their fighting spirit rose up, they exploited the undulating terrains of the hills to the fullest, to avoid the disaster of being trapped inside heavy siege. Also, taking advantage of their fast horse and divine bows, they hoped to lure out the ambushing troops behind the enemy, so that they could either fight or escape without any apprehensions.

Xu Ziling ran to the top of the hill first. Quickly sweeping his gaze around, he indeed saw the dust was rising to the sky in the direction of Hualin, more than two hundred riders in fan-shaped formation was rushing toward them, completely sealing off their retreat path.

If they did not know the true strength of the enemy, it would not be surprising if they did not panic. But from the Mongolians they obtained accurate intelligence, they knew that the enemy’s coalition force numbered in around nine hundreds; naturally it was another matter altogether. This was precisely the ‘knowing yourself and knowing your enemy, and you will not be defeated in a hundred battles’ from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

The enemy coming from Hualin consisted of more than twenty percent of the enemy forces. The strength on this side must be no more than six hundred men. The appearing enemies were about three hundred men, in which case the ambushing troops inside the forest still remained three hundred men. The situation for them became extremely favorable.

Xu Ziling’s mind went back to the moon in the well realm like the one he experienced last night, under threat of the tip of the Qidan warriors’ arrows, he stood still and became a Buddha, as if he suddenly withdrew from the flesh-and-blood-flying battlefield, yet his innermost being generated reaction to all external surroundings that not even a sliver could leak through; he fully grasped any subtle changes of the entire situation. Just like in the game of chess, the current situation and any possible changes on the chessboard was like a pearl of wisdom being held in his grasp. If he chose the next step properly, then he would be able to lead the enemy by the nose.

Letting out a long whistle, unexpectedly Xu Ziling turned his horse around to charge toward the enemy riders coming from Hualin, rapidly going down the hill.

Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan fully trusted Xu Ziling’s decision; they followed closely on his left- and right-rear. The enemies charging out of the forest now converged to become one group, pursuing them from behind.

The sound of hoof beats shook the hills, the grassy plains swayed, the dust rolled up to the air, covering the sky and concealing the sun.

They were still about fifteen hundred paces from the incoming enemy. Xu Ziling again let out a shrill whistle to tell the other two to change direction, they reined their horses to the right, traversing another hill, moving toward the top.

On this side of the dense forest area, no enemy trace was in sight, five hundred enemy riders were coming from behind, on the left and right, covering the mountains and the plains.

The three galloped at full speed, constantly pulling farther and farther away from the enemy. Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan no longer released any arrows to attack the enemy, with heart and soul they urged their horses to run faster, so that now they were in horse race against the enemy.

“Ready to penetrate!” Xu Ziling shouted loudly.

Kou Zhong responded in great joy, “Delighted! Delighted! This group of idiots can only eat dust and suffer the arrows, they are nothing like his mother’s elite troops.”

Xu Ziling took the lead to go round a curve, now they came from the left side of the dense forest area to penetrate the enemy at an angle. This was certainly a grand gamble; if the Mongolians’ intelligence was wrong, and there were enemies inside the forest, then they would – no doubt – die.

The dense forest was constantly growing. According to Ba Fenghan’s bird watching technique just now, the spot they were going to forcefully breaking through ought to be the northern extremity of the enemy’s ambushing troops location. If they did not enter the forest but ran away to the left, they could escape by entering the hills area, so that other than strenuously pursuing behind them, the enemy had no other way. Under this kind of situation, the enemy could only try to get out of the forest first to seal their escape route on the left, and then they could attempt to heavily surround them.

Sure enough, bugle horn sounded. More than fifty riders from the end of the formation charged outside. The leader was a short and stout, tyrannical man, wearing a feather cap on his head, seven colors, rich and diverse, the bright colors dazzled the eyes. “Where do you think you are running away to?” he shouted loudly.

Ba Fenghan replied in Tujue language, “Turns out it’s the Heishui’s [Black River] Tiefuyou; who’s running away?”

Xu Ziling let out another long laugh, he abandoned the northern part on his left side, and changed direction to his right, speeding along parallel to the dense forest area, following the edge of the forest.

This move was greatly beyond Tiefuyou’s expectation, so that he pounced on empty space; without any better option he changed direction to run after the rising dust behind the three men and horses.

Kou Zhong roared in laughter and said, “This is not penetrating battle, but playing hide-and-seek in front of the troop disposition. Even Sun Tzu, the Senior has not written something like this in his book. Ha!”

Urging their horses to run at full speed, the three continued along the forest but did not enter, leaving the enemy entirely behind.

‘Whoosh!’

A powerful arrow was shot from the dense forest, traversing the more than a thousand-pace distance, straight toward Xu Ziling. Accurate and ruthless, really made people gasp in amazement.

Facing death, Xu Ziling did not panic. With lightning or spark-from-the-flint speed, he completely grasped the angle and the approaching momentum of the arrow, suddenly he reached out, unexpectedly he grabbed the incoming arrow head-on.

A burst of scorching and sharp jolt assaulted the hollow of his palm, a clear sign that the archer was definitely not an ordinary martial art master.

“Shen Mohuan!” Kou Zhong called out loudly.

The two men finally understood how Xu Ziling was able to identify Shen Mohuan’s position among the enemy crowd, which was by luring Shen Mohuan to shoot the arrow using the Flying Cloud Divine Bow that he stole from Jian Dashi. Only the arrow shot from the Flying Cloud Bow could reach more than a thousand paces away.

The hardest part of this battle was not in breaking the siege and escaping at all, but in helping Bielegunatai killing Shen Mohuan. If they could destroy this allied armies, they would be able to go leisurely toward Longquan via the scenic route, to enjoy the excitement.

Kou Zhong swung his arm to release a rocket. ‘Bang!’ It exploded in the sky into a burst of red cloud. “Let the spearhead battle begin!” he shouted sternly.

Even without his reminder, Xu Ziling already turned his horse around, without any fear he galloped in the direction of where the arrow from the Flying Cloud Bow was coming from.

Like flying locusts, powerful arrows swarmed out from inside the forest. Xu Ziling’s mulberry wood bow hacked to the left and chopped to the right, he completely blocked the incoming arrows, while his other hand sent out punches across empty air to hit the arrows so that they lost direction and were deflected elsewhere. And thus Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan were able to concentrate on shooting the enemy, firing string after string of powerful arrows.

This moment from the end of the enemy ranks on the right hand side more than twenty riders were charging out. Needless to say, this must be Qidan’s Great Tribal Chief Abaojia’s ready-to-die warriors.

Another group of more than a hundred riders came out of the forest right ahead, trying to intercept them in the plains outside the forest.

Long-range attack and defense evolved into a close-up, short-weaponed-soldiery-fighting-one-another combat.

The sand-bandits’ weapons were either saber or spear, some bent their bodies low by the horses’ belly to chop the horses’ legs with their saber, some leaned forward so that their head stuck close to the horse’s neck to pierce the enemy with their spear, trying to play the full advantage of long weapons.

When the distance between the two sides was roughly seven hundred paces, this originally disordered-and-in-a-mess sand-bandits suddenly organized themselves into a battle array as if they were performing a show, into more than a dozen rows of elite squad, and then charged in wave after wave toward the enemy, making people gasp in amazement.

Behind, the enemies covering the mountains and the plains were charging toward them; if from the front the sand-bandits could stop them even slightly, they would be trapped in deadly bloody battle. With their true qi, as well as their physical strength were rapidly consumed, plus with the loss of blood from their injuries, if they were able to withstand for the time needed to drink a cup of hot tea, it could be considered that they really had the skill.

Even if the three grandmasters were coming in person, it would not be possible to break the siege and escape under layer upon layer of magnificent army with thousands of men and horses.

Both in terms of tactics and equestrian skill, the sand-bandits were formidable beyond their expectation; it was even clearer that their battle array would be able to restrain their spearhead battle tactic. It was precisely spearhead battle versus spearhead battle; therefore, naturally the side with pitiful number of men would suffer big loss.

The two sides were rapidly closing in.

Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong already shot their last arrows, so they immediately drew their weapons. The four quivers full of arrows that they carried had been consumed entirely.

The moment they were only about a hundred paces away from the enemy’s vanguard, Xu Ziling pulled the horse’s head to change direction, they were now heading toward the gap on the left side of the tip of the sand-bandits spearhead formation.

The sand-bandits also changed their direction slightly to intercept will all their strength, attempting to cut in front of the three.

The moment when the two sides were about to collide, Xu Ziling suddenly shouted loudly in Han language, “Stop!”

Under the man-and-horse-as-one technique, the impossible thing was happening. The three horses were galloping at full speed, yet suddenly they stopped. Their hind legs were like being nailed firmly on the ground, so that the enemy was like a long snake missing its target.

In this kind of riding the horse at full speed, the sand-bandits could only stare blankly at the enemy stopping about ten paces to their left; they simply could not stop their momentum and galloped past.

While laughing aloud, the three turned their horses around and ran in the other direction, still curving toward the forest where the Flying Cloud Bow was shooting from. The sand-bandits were now chasing them from behind.

Kou Zhong spoke in great delight, “Ling Shao is indeed formidable; you can play the enemy’s magnificent army with thousands of men and horses [orig. thousand troops ten thousand horses] in the palm of your hand.”

Ba Fenghan shouted against the wind, “Shaoshuai exaggerated too much! One thousand men barely make up the number, where did the ten thousand horses come from?”

Arrows were raining directly at them, including the ultra-powerful arrow that was shot by the Flying Cloud Bow. Yet the three effortlessly blocked them all, and they still have time to chat and laugh.

From the number of arrows and darts, they were able to judge that the number of enemy inside the forest could not be more than a hundred; hence the three were in a very good mood.

As long as they could break through the dense forest, the three would be able to display their mobility and flexibility to its full potential; they simply had to try to hold out until their reinforcement, the Mongolian people arrived. Worst-case scenario, they could break the siege and escape.

Amidst the sound of battle cry, more than eight riders were charging out of the forest. The two leaders riding at the front were one man, one woman. The man was wearing six layers of iron round-chain armor, the inner layer was made of refined leather, the outer layer was full of hanging iron disks. The armor disks were linked together like fish scales, ordinary arrows could forget about penetrating the armor.

The woman was dressed in plume base armor. The plume bases were stitched and strung together using hoof tendon to become armor sheet. She also appeared majestic and was not inferior to the man.

This couple, whose name ‘The Husband and Wife Team of Evil Thieves’ shook the area beyond the Great Wall, wore helmets on their heads, which hide most of their faces, exposing only their brows and eyes and mouth. The part protecting their nose was particularly humongous, making their appearance kind of odd.

Shen Mohuan held serpentine pike. The body of the spear was made entirely of forged refined steel. Just looking at it from a distance one would know that the tip of the spear was sharp and difficult to block.

Mu Ling held a shield in her left hand and a saber in her right. Her build was tall, big, and well developed. Although they could not see her countenance, her attractive figure was enough to stir up any male’s reverie.

Looking at the heroic and the beauty of the husband and wife on the horseback, there was no doubt that they were martial art masters who could compete against Xu, Kou, and Ba, three men. On top of that, with the elite sand-bandit troops under their command, it was not surprising that they were able to move unhindered across the prairie and the desert; moreover, they could make exceptional heroes like Bielegunatai brothers to have misgivings against them.

Kou Zhong thundered in Tujue language, “Shen Mohuan, your end has come!”

On the contrary, Shen Mohuan roared in laughter and responded in Han language, “Shameless boast! I want to see where are you going to.”

Xu Ziling used the back of his mulberry wood bow to heavily block the tip of Shen Mohuan’s serpentine steel pike, which was piercing at him from an angle.

Thereby the fierce battle began.