Chapter 43 : The Sharp Edge of the Blue Wolf Cavalry
Chapter 43: The Sharp Edge of the Blue Wolf Cavalry
The cavalrymen were clad in heavy black iron armor, their helmets forged with ferocious wolf heads.
Even their warhorses were covered in scale armor, revealing only a pair of scarlet eyes.
They held long eight-foot spears in their hands, the tips gleaming with cold light.
From afar, the entire army looked like a moving wall of steel, the sheer pressure suffocating.
“It’s the Blue Wolf Army! Retreat! Fall back quickly!”
The Beiting general’s face changed drastically as he hurriedly gave the order to withdraw.
But it was already too late.
The Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry suddenly accelerated, the heavy hooves of their warhorses making the earth tremble.
They charged while maintaining a perfect wedge formation, long spears leveled — like a sharp blade thrusting straight into the formation of the Beiting light cavalry.
“Boom!”
The moment the two armies collided, the Beiting formation was torn apart like paper.
The spears of the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry easily pierced through the armor of the light cavalry, while the impact of their horses shattered the Beiting riders’ bones.
With just one charge, the Beiting army’s formation was completely broken.
The surviving Beiting cavalrymen scattered in all directions, hoping to avoid further losses.
But the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry’s momentum did not diminish.
After breaking through the Beiting line, they turned sharply and galloped straight toward the Queshe Army!
The collapse of the Beiting army caused the entire battlefield to reverse in an instant.
Aruba saw the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry crushing the front lines like a tidal wave.
He immediately blew the eagle-bone whistle, its sharp sound piercing through the battlefield.
“Withdraw from the valley! Move the battle to the desert!”
The twenty thousand Queshe soldiers responded instantly, retreating toward the valley entrance like a receding tide.
The remnants of the Beiting army quickly reorganized as well; their light cavalry, relying on superior speed, were the first to break free from the narrow terrain.
Though the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry’s assault was fierce, they struggled to maneuver in the complex terrain, allowing them to be shaken off temporarily.
Once they rushed out of the valley, the view suddenly opened up.
Before them stretched an endless desert plain.
The howling wind carried sand and grit — a perfect battlefield for cavalry duels.
Aruba pulled his reins, turning his horse around and raised his hand in signal.
The Queshe Army immediately changed formation, spreading out into fan-shaped wings in units of a thousand.
Each unit of a thousand was divided into ten smaller teams of a hundred, spaced a hundred paces apart, forming an enormous “fishing net.”
The twenty thousand Queshe warriors scattered across the desert like dandelions in the wind.
Each hundred-man team maintained just the right distance — far enough to avoid interfering with each other’s lines of fire, yet close enough for mutual support.
“Men! Fly the kites!”
At Aruba’s shout, the first wave of arrows was already released.
These grassland archers, shooting backward from horseback, were astonishingly accurate.
The specially crafted tri-edged armor-piercing arrows spun through the roaring wind, targeting the gaps between the helmets and armor of the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry.
“Pff!”
A black-feathered arrow pierced cleanly into the eye socket of a Blue Wolf centurion, bursting out from the back of his head in a spray of red and white.
A nearby Blue Wolf rider tried to rescue him, but another arrow nailed his horse’s front knee.
Yet it was at this moment that the true terror of the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry revealed itself.
Even while galloping, they suddenly shifted formation — the front ranks of heavy cavalry raised their massive iron-plated shields, while the rear ranks thrust their long spears through the gaps.
The torrent of iron cavalry instantly transformed into a steel hedgehog.
Most of the Queshe arrows clanged uselessly off the shields.
“Switch to fire arrows!” Aruba ordered decisively.
Thousands of oil-soaked arrows screamed through the air, bursting into blossoms of flame within the Blue Wolf formation.
These special incendiary arrows not only burned fiercely but splattered sticky flaming oil upon impact.
Several armored warhorses were instantly turned into blazing fireballs, rampaging wildly into their own formation.
Meanwhile, the remnants of the Beiting army were locked in desperate combat.
Only ten thousand light cavalry remained, surrounded by enemy riders several times their number.
Though these rebel horsemen lacked the Blue Wolf’s heavy armor and discipline, their horsemanship was superb, their curved blades flashing silver in the setting sun.
“Form a circle!”
A Beiting centurion had just shouted the order when a spinning axe cleaved through his chestplate.
In the distance, a Blue Wolf captain coldly retracted his throwing arm with a smirk.
That brief coordination revealed a terrifying fact — even while pursuing the Queshe Army, the Blue Wolf Cavalry could still direct the rebel riders simultaneously!
On the desert plain, a strange dance of death unfolded.
The Queshe warriors darted like fish, their arrows sometimes aimed at the joints of the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry, sometimes picking off rebels attacking the Beiting soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Blue Wolf Army moved like a trained pack of predators — their main force locked onto the Queshe Army, while smaller detachments veered off unexpectedly to deliver deadly strikes to the Beiting lines.
Suddenly, Aruba’s horse reared high as a steel short spear grazed his nose, pinning his bodyguard and horse to the ground behind him.
A hundred meters away, a Blue Wolf general slowly lowered his throwing stance.
Their eyes met across the distance — Aruba’s pupils contracted sharply.
The wolf-head insignia on the man’s armor was inlaid with human teeth!
Aruba’s right hand pressed on the hilt of his curved blade, the ancient runes on its scabbard flaring with blue light.
The Blue Wolf general sensed the killing intent and grinned, drawing a pitch-black horse-slaying saber from his saddle, blood-red energy coiling along its edge.
“Where did this stray dog come from, daring to look the Wolf King in the eye?”
The Blue Wolf general’s voice was hoarse, like grinding iron.
He suddenly swung his arm — three blood blades burst from his saber, slashing through the air.
Aruba did not dodge.
His left hand formed a seal before his chest, and a cyan wind barrier materialized instantly.
The blood blades clashed against it, ringing with metallic chimes.
Seizing the moment, Aruba drew his curved blade, its edge swirling with spiraling winds as he slashed out a crescent-shaped air blade.
“Petty tricks!”
The Blue Wolf general laughed wildly and plunged his saber into the ground.
Three earthen walls rose before him.
The wind blade shattered two before dissipating.
Using that instant, he leaped high, his saber cleaving downward with mountain-splitting force.
Before the blade even fell, its violent pressure cracked the ground at Aruba’s feet.
Aruba’s form blurred and dispersed into a wisp of wind.
The next instant, he appeared behind the Blue Wolf general, his curved blade stabbing toward the man’s back.
But the general’s back armor split open, revealing three scorpion-tail-like bone spikes!
“Clang!”
Blade met bone spike in a shower of sparks.
Aruba flipped backward, firing three arrows midair.
The arrows accelerated through the wind, leaving only afterimages.
The Blue Wolf general roared, releasing a burst of blood mist.
The arrows sank into the mist as if into a swamp, their speed abruptly reduced.
He took the chance to block, but Aruba suddenly spread his fingers.
“Scatter!”
The three arrows exploded, transforming into hundreds of hair-thin needles.
The general shut his eyes, yet dozens still pierced his face.
As the needles dissolved into flesh, his veins turned a strange bluish-black.
“Poison?” The Blue Wolf general let out a furious laugh.
“Then behold true wolf venom!”
He tore open his chest armor, revealing a torso covered in sinister runes.
The symbols glowed with bloody light, forcing the poisoned needles out of his body.
Aruba’s pupils shrank — suddenly, a chill crawled up his spine.
He instinctively sidestepped — a blood shadow swept through where he had just stood.
It was the Blue Wolf general’s clone!
The two clashed in a blur, exchanging over ten blows in an instant.
Wind blades and blood energy collided in flashes of red and blue.
Within thirty meters, neither the Blue Wolf Cavalry nor the Queshe warriors dared approach.
The ground split with countless cracks, shattered weapons swirling into deadly vortices in the storm.
“Wind Burial!”
Aruba sheathed his blade and formed a complex hand seal.
The air within a hundred paces froze — then erupted into a towering tornado centered on the Blue Wolf general.
Within the eye of the storm, countless wind blades spun like living creatures, tearing the general’s armor into shreds.
“Blood Wolf Devours the Heavens!” the general’s roar thundered from within.
A massive blood-red wolf phantom burst out of the tornado, jaws wide as it lunged at Aruba.
At the final moment, Aruba bit his tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood essence onto his curved blade.
The blade flared with azure light, transforming into a ten-meter-long giant wind blade that cleaved straight into the blood wolf phantom.
“Boom!”
The air exploded.
Both men were thrown back.
Aruba’s leather armor was ripped open in several places, blood dripping from his arm — surface wounds only.
But the Blue Wolf general was far less fortunate.
His chest armor shattered completely, revealing mangled flesh beneath.
Just then, the anxious voice of the Queshe Vice-Commander rang out.
“General! The Beiting army can’t hold on!”
Aruba turned his head — the Beiting circular formation had been torn open in three places, the ground littered with corpses hacked to pieces.
Worse still, three Blue Wolf companies were flanking from the sides — the heads of Beiting soldiers hanging from their saddles!
“Third and Seventh units, turn and support them!” Aruba ordered through gritted teeth.
“The rest, continue to pin down their main force!”
Two Queshe battalions broke from formation, arrows raining down on the rebel cavalry besieging the Beiting troops.
But just as they turned, the Blue Wolf main force suddenly accelerated, their iron hooves shaking the desert stones into the air.
The heavy cavalry in the front ranks threw their lassos, dragging dozens of Queshe warriors from their horses.
A Blue Wolf soldier roared, “Finally caught you little bugs!”
The strange chase-battle raged until dusk.
When the setting sun dyed the desert crimson, the battlefield was strewn with tens of thousands of corpses.
The rebel cavalry lost over fifteen hundred men, while the Blue Wolf Army suffered six thousand casualties but still maintained perfect formation.
As for the coalition forces — the Beiting army lost eleven thousand, leaving only four thousand survivors.
Even the Queshe Army lost nearly twenty percent of its strength.
Aruba wiped the blood from his face, staring at the Blue Wolf Iron Cavalry reforming in the distance.
Even after an entire day of brutal combat, these monstrous riders showed no sign of slowing.
Even worse — they seemed to grow stronger the longer they fought, the dried blood on their armor making their wolf emblems appear even more ferocious.
“General, should we continue?” the Vice-Commander asked hoarsely.
Aruba was about to reply when he suddenly felt a strange vibration beneath his feet.
He jerked his head toward the northwest.
There, a torrent of black-armored soldiers was surging forth through the twilight.