The Emperor Reigns Them All

Chapter 178 Destruction

When Su Emei and Wei Xiaozhuang lifted their heads and watched Li Ye in midair, they were both in disbelief. This kind and gentle young child they were seeing was not some cultivator from the Black Office, but Your Highness Prince An in the flesh. Was he the new Pinglu commissioner?

Wei Xiaozhuang was lost in thought when he muttered, “We have been with Your Highness An all the time. I even cracked dirty jokes with calling him my brother. But he didn’t seem annoyed at all. My God...”

Su Emei did not say anything, but merely blushed and lowered her head, lost in thought.

Li Ye stagnated in the air, watching the two armies as they broke through the barrier. Hanging in the air was nothing when wearing Cloud-walking Boots.

This was the first time he witnessed Prince An Manor’s guards in battle. Li Ye only knew that the eight hundred soldiers of the Manor were an elite force of the world that followed Li Xian and fought in the battle between the north and south back in the day.

The Silver-Armoured General was Shangguan Qingcheng.

Li Ye suddenly remembered that Shangguan’s father Qingcheng was also a great commander of militarism. Could it be that the Shangguan family had come from a military pedigree?

When he appeared at Prince An’s Manor, Chen Beiwang ordered the Pinglu cavalry to head the battle. When he and Wang Hanshan got off their horses the two armies were already at a close distance. Both sides wanted to charge.

It seemed that the mountains and plains were shaking and the grass had lain down under the charge of almost two thousand cavalry soldiers on horseback. Even the night sky was about to come tumbling down.

Li Ye was wearing a heavy expression.

The distance between the two armies was decreasing, a hundred steps, fifty steps, twenty steps, five steps.

Heading the charge, Shangguan Qingcheng went low on horseback holding the Cloud Splitter Spear steady. He deflected the oncoming spear attack of a Ping Lu soldier and countered by accurately piercing the guard’s chest. Her Cloud Splitter Spear threw the soldier off his horse and the head of the spear popped out the soldier’s back as it penetrated through his body. The soldier screeched in pain with blood over his body. As blood gushed out of his mouth, his eyeballs seemed to be popping out of their sockets. He tried grabbing the spear out of natural reflexes but he was too weak. In the end, his body gave in and bowed in the wind.

A sense of calm emanated from Shangguan Qingcheng’s eyes as the soldier’s body on her Cloud Splitter Spear had blocked other guards’ spears. As she was not threatened by other guards’ attacks, she made no other moves but clenched the reins and lowered her body. She pierced through the guard’s body with more force and the sharp edge that popped out of the corpse’s back pierced another guard’s chest. As more shrieks were heard, she exerted more force and her long spear penetrated the body further. Their battle horses charged towards each other, when there was only space for a piece of hair left between the charging horses, her spear penetrated the body of a third guard!

Aside from soldiers’ shrieks, sounds of war horses smashing into each other could be heard. This was quite rare as war horses hardly ever crashed into each other. The fact that happened was out of their control. Other sounds of war like weapons slamming, armor grinding against weapons, metal penetrating through bodies and horse trotters were deafening the eardrums. Everything was like a bad dream, as though mountains and earth were exploding, making people lose conscience.

Shangguan Qingcheng kept a cool head and clear vision with the three guards’ bodies on the Cloud Splitter Spear like a kebab. Anyone else would have abandoned the spear and use the back up kept under the saddle, not Shangguan Qingcheng though. She just yelled and shook her wrist as her Spiritual Qi detonated the bodies on her spear. The split body parts, blood and guts sprayed everywhere and flew towards her face like a blood bath and everything turned red before Shangguan’s eyes.

Her vision was partly blocked as quite a few body parts smashed up against her. Even her armor had been painted red. Intentionally, she directed more sputtered body parts towards the Pinglu solders. One of the sputtered arms hit the chest of an oncoming guard, which threw him off balance making him lose control of his spear. Without asserting much effort, she pierced through the guard’s throat. Under immense force, blood and flesh sputtered all over the sharp of her spear. The sound it made would have made anyone’s tooth sour. After her Cloud Splitter Spear penetrated the guard’s head, all that was left was the skin of his face hanging on his neck. He looked scarier than a ghost.

Shangguan Qingcheng didn’t look back. She couldn’t turn around and didn’t have to as the only thing she was focused on was the oncoming soldiers. Speaking of which, it seemed there was an endless supply of them. The torch reflected and an endless amount of sharp blades like a forest of thorns along with long spears emanating pallid light. And she was headed directly towards it as though it was her last battle.

The fierce and murderous faces of the soldiers kept flashing before her eyes. Their teeth were clenched and faces twisted to the extreme, albeit some were frightened as their lips were shaking. Shangguan Qingcheng on the other hand, merely twitched her lips, which had made some of the soldiers in the Military Formation frightened as apparent from their expressions. The frightened expressions of the soldiers were to her, more beautiful than the landscape and better than any panacea. Her adrenalin to battle was boiling. She wanted to pick every guard off their horses. Their fright had also reduced their threat to the minimum.

Shangguan Qingcheng yelled as she grabbed the Cloud Splitter Spear with both hands. She jolted the spear’s slanted thorns and fired off a round of moon-shaped Spiritual Qi towards a couple of the guards’ chest. Blood sputtered again. As she swooped diagonally with the Cloud Splitter Spear, white flashes of light thrust out, slicing off numerous guards’ heads. As blood sprayed out of their necks like a spring. As she charged on horseback with her spear steadily in hand, she pierced through a couple of guards’ chests.

Having watched all the details of Shangguan Qingcheng’s battles, Li Ye seemed serene wearing a smile on his face.

That was his warrior.

The battle formation of a thousand horses was not exactly long. Soon, the two armies rushed past each other and left a trail of dead bodies on the open space behind them. The scattered torches showed that there were around two hundred corpses, most of which were from Pinglu’s side with very few from Prince An Manor’s side.

This was the result of great leadership and formation of a great commander of militarism.

Two hundred dead bodies was still a frightening number considering that it was not easy to kill someone with the protection of strong armor.

The horses that lost their riders, continued to run. Some were injured, some were running around frightened and some fell to the ground as if they were mourning their riders.

As the cavalry charged past, they then either stopped and turned immediately to get ready to charge again, or rode around to attack again. It seemed that making a round was the better option. However, there was no room to trot around as Prince An’s Manor was at the foot of a mountain, so they had to grab the reins and make a sudden stop.

This was also the Pinglu cavalry’s strategy as choosing a battlefield was very important. They made Prince An Manor’s soldiers stop but they themselves could quickly make a round and attack. They had the advantage as it pertained to speed because they were already at the peak before Prince An Manor’s soldiers could pick up speed.

Chen Beiwang and Wang Hanshan both looked back at each other threateningly with their teeth clenched. He was enraged at the fact that Pinglu had lost so many soldiers in the battle. There was nothing he could do. Now he had to face an even bigger challenge than just losing the battlefield advantage to Prince An’s soldiers.

Chen Beiwang and Wang Hanshan suddenly felt extremely cold through their bodies, after turning back, they nearly screamed with widened eyes in panic.

Four people jumped out of the ground right before their eyes. They were now hanging in mid air.

Li Ye wielded his Luke Sword high with a hint of a sneer. Song Jiao, Liu Dazheng, Su Emei and Wei Xiaozhuang all raised their magic treasures as they were airborne.

Three of them were reached Qi-refining Level 9, one comparable to the Qi-refining Level 9, and the other had reached Qi-refining Level 8. How powerful would they be if they had attacked at the same time?

If the Pinglu soldiers were in neat thousand-horse-formation, the force of their attack would be compromised. But as Pinglu cavalry were trying to steady their chaotic formation from the battle moments ago, it was the perfect opportunity for everyone to attack.

As Li Ye sliced downwards with his sword, numerous blue rays of energy thrust out towards the soldiers. Suddenly, as mud and dust flared up in waves, blood and flesh sputtered and loud shrieks from the horses pierced the ears.

The Qi-refining ninth level cultivators Song Jiao, Su Emei, Wei Xiaozhuang and the eighth level Liu Dazheng had concentrated their strength and made the most powerful attack. The Spiritual Qi that emanated had lit up the night sky and thrust downwards towards the soldiers. Again. As the explosion happened, flesh, blood and countless body parts were flying everywhere like it was raining blood, and muddy water dropped like a waterfall.

When their Spiritual Qi had dissipated, countless bloody bodies had covered the muddy ground in different positions. In fact the blood from the bodies had formed a creak on the muddy ground. The holes and dips left by the Sword and Knife Qi had shaped the ground into a hill. It also resembled dried tree barks. With the shrieks and struggling men on their last breath, this place had looked like hell.

Pinglu Army had more than 800 soldiers, now only a few dozen were alive!

On the other side, the Manor’s side, commanded by Shangguan Qingcheng, suffered the same treatment. They got the strongest blow by the Senior Priestess, Zhang Yunhe and Taoist Yu.

As the Spiritual Qi landed on them, Shangguan Qingcheng looked up. You couldn’t make out her facial features but you could easily see that she was particularly determined. As she raised her Cloud Splitter Spear, she yelled “Yu!”

All eight hundred soldiers from Prince An’s Manor followed suit, holding their long spears, they yelled in unison, “Yu!”

Suddenly, all ears were deafened by a boom and out of the middle of the formation, appeared a wave of Spiritual Qi. The Qi had formed a seamless white light shield around them.

The Military formation could not only attack but also defend.

The formation charged like wind, steady like a forest, attacked like fire and defended like a mountain!

That was the Military Formation!

The forceful attack by the Senior Priestess and others had collapsed on the white light curtain, suddenly illuminating the sky, covering all things.