But Helian Wu ignored Xu Zhan's actions. He just froze for two seconds and then burst out laughing.
"Hahahahaha!"
He laughed so hard he bent over, using his scimitar as a crutch against the ground. By the end, he even squeezed out two tears from the corners of his eyes.
Soon after, the thirty-plus Helian elites behind him also joined in the laughter.
"Is this all Zhenbei City has to offer?"
Helian Wu stopped laughing, straightened his back, and pointed his scimitar at Xu Zhan, enunciating every word.
"I thought that Imperial Envoy of Great Qian had some real skill. Turns out he just dug up a bunch of half-dead trash from a mass grave to serve themselves up to me on a silver platter?"
He took a step forward.
"Missing an arm, yet you still dare to drag out a broken iron rod to play the hero?"
"I am Helian Wu, the vanguard under the banner of the Helian Right Luli King! Remember that, so you don't report the wrong name when you reach the underworld!"
Xu Zhan did not reply.
He simply lowered his head, glanced at the meteoric iron mace he carried in his left hand, and then raised his foot, taking a step forward.
The tip of the mace dragged across the ground.
The meteoric iron crushed the gravel, plowing a deep trench across the riverbank, sparks flying where the mace met the stones.
Helian Wu's smile vanished.
It wasn't out of fear.
As the fiercest warrior under the Right Luli King, the word fear had never existed in his dictionary.
It was just that the opponent's attitude of near-total indifference provoked a sense of offended fury in him.
I brought over thirty Royal Court elites and slaughtered your twelve personal guards. You're just a one-armed cripple, so who are you trying to bluff?
"You're courting death!"
Helian Wu roared, kicking off the ground as he lunged forward.
His movements were incredibly fast; his iron-plated leather boots hammered out a dense barrage of crunches against the gravel beach while his gray sheepskin cloak snapped fiercely behind him.
The black-lacquered scimitar slashed down diagonally, its blade slicing through the thick fog straight for Xu Zhan's throat.
The strike was fast and venomous, executing the signature Throat-Slitting Slash favored by Helian cavalry.
Its secret lay in avoiding direct clashes of strength, instead targeting the unprotected vitals on a heavily armored infantryman's neck.
Zhang Tiezhu lay in the mud, his heart tightening as he saw that black flash of a blade chopping toward Xu Zhan's neck.
Xu Zhan moved.
Instead of retreating, he advanced, not even showing the slightest intention of raising his mace to block.
Stomping the ground and bursting through the mud and gravel beneath his feet, he threw his entire body forward in a brutal collision.
It wasn't a counterattack; it was a pure, physical ram!
His body, weighing over two hundred pounds in his garments, brought its full weight and momentum crashing directly into Helian Wu's front.
Helian Wu's eyelids twitched violently.
The scimitar was only three inches from Xu Zhan's neck, but this madman didn't care at all! He was completely oblivious to whether or not he would take the blade!
The blade grazed past Xu Zhan's left shoulder, leaving a shallow streak of blood.
But Xu Zhan's body had already savagely smashed into Helian Wu's inner guard.
A scimitar's advantage lay in mid-range combat; once an opponent closed the distance, it was just a piece of scrap iron.
Helian Wu instinctively tried to retreat, but no matter how fast he backed up, he couldn't outpace Xu Zhan's suicidal, charging momentum.
In that instant, Xu Zhan's left arm abruptly exploded with power.
The meteoric iron mace swung up from below, rising in the simplest, most primal, and most violent arc imaginable.
There were no flashy techniques, nor did it bother with any tricky angles.
There was only power.
And an all-crushing brutality!
The body of the mace tore through the air, emitting a shrill, mournful shriek.
In that life-or-death moment, Helian Wu could only grit his teeth and hold his blade horizontally, desperately raising the refined steel scimitar above his head to block.
This was the standard-issue scimitar of a Royal Court officer, capable of cleaving even the iron armor of Great Qian infantry!
The mace fell; the blade met it.
The scimitar unexpectedly shattered right down the middle!
The refined steel blade could not withstand the terrifying weight and speed of the meteoric iron mace. It splintered outward from the point of impact, spraying shrapnel as dozens of iron fragments of varying sizes shot out in all directions.
One fragment sliced across Helian Wu's cheek, tearing open the flesh over an old scar.
But he didn't have time to feel the pain.
After shattering the scimitar, the meteoric iron mace lost none of its momentum; it didn't even pause.
In the final moment as Helian Wu looked up, all he saw was a pitch-black iron mace, carrying the remnants of his broken blade, crashing down to blot out the sky.
It struck dead center on his helmet.
The iron helm caved in, and the skull beneath it fractured in turn. His cervical vertebrae snapped under the immense force, and his entire body, from the top of his head down to his shoulders, was compressed halfway down by the blow.
His body stiffened in place and swayed.
The next second, his legs gave out, and he collapsed forward into the gravel like a puddle of mud, splashing muddy water mixed with red and white matter across the ground.
Then, he moved no more.
The thirty-plus Helian elites widened their eyes, staring at the corpse on the ground that no longer resembled a human shape.
Their leader, a centurion under the Right Luli King of the Helian Royal Court, a battle-hardened fierce general, in a single clash—
Killed by one strike of a mace.
Xu Zhan stood his ground, the meteoric iron mace in his left hand hanging at his side, its head stained with a mixture of red and white.
He raised the mace and tapped it twice against the nearby gravel to flick off the gore.
He lifted his head, his gaze sweeping over the thirty-plus Helian elites.
Wherever his eyes landed, the hands of the Helian soldiers involuntarily tightened around their hilts, yet not a single one dared to take a step forward.
It wasn't that they didn't want to move; they didn't dare.
The image of that mace strike was still seared into their minds—shattering the blade, shattering the helmet, and shattering the bones, all in one smooth, unstoppable motion!
The thirty-odd maimed and battered veterans standing behind Xu Zhan slowly raised their weapons.
Xu Zhan then rested his meteoric iron mace against his left shoulder and took a step toward the Helian men.
The line of Helian elites actually shrank back an inch.
Zhang Tiezhu lay in the muddy water, desperately turning his head to watch Xu Zhan's back with his only remaining good eye.
The one-armed Xu Zhan.
Yet he was a hundred times more terrifying than any able-bodied, two-handed fierce general he had ever seen in his life.
Xu Zhan took another step.
The Helian elite line shrank back another inch.
A few of the leading Helian soldiers began to exchange glances, their eyes all asking the same question: fight, or run?
This one-armed man of Great Qian, with that black iron rod in his hand, was simply more demonic than the living King of Hell!
At that moment, Xu Zhan halted his steps.
His gaze fell upon the waist of the foremost Helian soldier... Dangling from that man's scabbard was a string of ears sliced from Great Qian soldiers, threaded together with a hemp rope, swaying back and forth like a candied hawthorn stick.
He opened his mouth and spat out his first words since arriving at Wild Fox Beach.
"Today, all of you will remain on this Wild Fox Beach to become wandering, lonely ghosts!"
