Aletan clamped his thighs against the horse’s flanks. The armored warhorse let out an angry snort and charged straight through the deadwood blocking the path.
This vanguard banner commander raised his broad-backed curved blade forged of fine steel. The blade carried a force of a thousand pounds as it whistled through the air, hacking straight down toward Xu Zhan’s face.
Xu Zhan planted his heels firmly in the soft sandy ground. His right side shifted slightly, showing no intention of dodging. Instead, he let his heavily armored shoulder meet the blade head-on.
A deafening clang of metal rang out. A shower of dazzling sparks exploded in the night air.
The finely forged curved blade left a deep white scratch on his shoulder armor. The immense force drove Xu Zhan’s knee a half inch deeper into the ground.
But he used that crushing downward pressure to ram his entire body violently into Aletan’s chest.
Aletan’s heart seized with terror. He tried to pull his blade back for a counterattack, only to find it stuck in the gap of Xu Zhan’s shoulder armor. He couldn’t yank it free, no matter how hard he strained.
Xu Zhan’s left hand wielded a meteor-iron single mace, swinging it upward from below with a dull, bloody gust of wind.
The hundred-pound iron mace slammed squarely against the face of the broad-backed curved blade. The blade, forged through a thousand hammer strikes, bent into a horrifying angle on the spot.
The mace’s momentum didn’t diminish. It smashed hard into Aletan’s right wrist guard, the one gripping the blade.
Crack.
Aletan, man and armor alike, flew backward and crashed heavily into a muddy stagnant pool.
His right forearm dangled across his chest in a completely twisted, folded position. White bone fragments pierced through the flesh of his forearm, and blood gushed out like a fountain.
This once unbearable Helian banner commander writhed in agony on the ground, his left hand trembling as he fumbled for the brass signaling whistle at his waist, trying to summon his surrounding soldiers to rush in for a desperate fight.
Xu Zhan strode over and pressed his heavy military boot directly onto the hand clutching the whistle. His ankle ground down mercilessly.
The brass whistle, along with several of Aletan’s finger bones, was crushed into pulp, mixed into the sand and soil. The agonized shrieks cut starkly through the silent, desolate beach.
These bloody, brutal tactics stunned all the surrounding Helian cavalry. Several soldiers, who had been ready to charge in with lances to plug the gap, hurriedly yanked back on their horses’ reins.
The warhorses, spooked, retreated several steps, and the tightly encircled assault formation completely broke apart.
Xu Zhan didn’t even glance at the hesitant foot soldiers. He turned and walked toward Ma Jin’an and He Minghu, who were hiding behind a pile of rubble.
The two of them had just witnessed the Helian banner commander get his right arm crippled in a single exchange. The thought that relying on the Helian thigh would let them escape had shattered completely. Their hands and feet trembled uncontrollably.
He Minghu knew there was no easy way out today. His chest heaved violently, but the bit of ferocity deep in his bones was fully forced to the surface.
He kicked the heavy bundle aside, gripped the bloodstained black iron heavy saber in both hands, and held it horizontally in front of his chest. His face flushed crimson as he burst into wild laughter at Xu Zhan.
“Xu Zhan! Don’t you dare play the war god in front of me, you useless piece of trash! Back then, I could set you up and throw you into prison. I could have your sword-wielding right hand chopped off. Today, I can still tear you limb from limb!”
He Minghu spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm and continued cursing, trying to build his courage in this desperate moment. “Back at Luoma Slope, I had my men tie you to a wooden stake and cut your flesh piece by piece. Even if you trained for another ten years, you’d only ever be a crippled leftover with a ruined hand!”
The expression on Xu Zhan’s face was eerily calm. There was no sign of anger.
He held the meteor-iron single mace in one hand, stepping over scattered armor fragments and broken limbs, advancing step by step toward He Minghu.
“Even if I die today, I’ll drag you, this useless waste, down with me!” He Minghu swung the heavy saber in a full arc, putting all his strength into the strike toward Xu Zhan.
The blade screamed through the air with a piercing wind. Its momentum was indeed more ferocious than that of an ordinary warrior, completely sealing off Xu Zhan’s path of retreat.
Xu Zhan’s left arm bulged with veins in an instant. The iron mace didn’t dodge or evade. It swung violently from right to left in a brutal horizontal arc.
The black iron heavy saber and the iron mace collided with a thunderous impact, sending a blinding spray of sparks exploding outward.
The massive recoil traveled up through the saber’s handle. He Minghu felt his hands go numb, as if struck by lightning.
The web between his thumb and index finger instantly split open, blood streaming. The heavy saber flew out of his grasp, spinning through the air before embedding itself in the dirt ten paces away.
He Minghu’s center was completely exposed. There was no time to dodge.
Xu Zhan closed in, his left hand raising the iron mace to smash precisely against He Minghu’s right shoulder joint.
A clear crack of bone echoed through the desolate ravine. He Minghu’s right arm instantly lost all support, hanging limp at his side. Half of his shoulder collapsed into powder.
This was exactly the spot where He Minghu had once ordered Xu Zhan’s right arm cut off. Now, the debt was repaid with full interest, exact and undiminished.
He Minghu clutched his ruined right arm and fell to his knees in the mud, his features twisted in agony. A heart-wrenching howl tore from his throat.
Ma Jin’an, already paralyzed with fear, collapsed into the sandy soil beside him.
This lofty imperial censor, who usually stood above all, was now crawling backward with all his limbs, his official robe covered in reeking manure and mud, stripped of any trace of the commanding scholar-official persona he once flaunted.
“General Xu! Brother Xu Zhan, show mercy!” Ma Jin'an trembled as he grabbed at Xu Zhan's robe, his face a mess of fat contorted into a look of feigned anguish, “This was all forced on me by that stupid pig He Minghu! I have in my hands the ironclad evidence of the eldest prince in the capital smuggling military supplies!”
Ma Jin'an pulled the torn half of the city defense map from his chest, raising it above his head with both hands, “Spare my life, and this proof will be Lady Xu Qinghuan's shield. I swear I’ll return to the capital and testify against them before the Emperor, and I can even help you find the other half of this map!”
He tried to use the law of the court, barter with power, and the schemes brewing in his mind to buy his last chance at survival.
Xu Zhan took the half map, casually stuffed it into his robes, then lifted his left foot and kicked this clown over into the muddy water.
Just as he was about to raise his mace and strike down Ma Jin'an, the sentries from the Poxi Battalion on the perimeter blew a sharp, urgent bone whistle.
Xu Zhan’s second-in-command spurred his horse forward, jerking the reins tight, his voice burning with frantic urgency.
“General! Dust is blotting out the sky to the north! A large force of Helian cavalry is bearing down on us—less than three li away!”
That sly old fox Chen Changfeng had not only sent Aletan to scout ahead but had also stationed an entire vanguard battalion of elite troops three li away as a backup. The moment we made a move here, the Helian army would bite down on us immediately.
The loose stones in the dry gully began to tremble, and the rumble from the ground grew clearer by the second—the unmistakable sound of hundreds of cavalry charging at full speed.
Ma Jin'an, who had already had one foot in the grave, heard the scout’s report, and a twisted joy bloomed on his despairing face.
He crawled up from the mud, pointing at the swirling yellow sands to the north, and burst into laughter at Xu Zhan.
“The army is coming! Lord Chen’s army is here! Xu Zhan, with just these few men and the two of us as dead weight, you’ll never make it back to Zhenbei City!”
Ma Jin'an waved his arms wildly in excitement, not even caring about the stench clinging to his body.
“Let us go now, fall back obediently, and when Master Chen arrives, I’ll make sure you live a life of wine and meat in this desert, with endless riches and honor!”
He Minghu, kneeling nearby, forced himself upright despite the agony, the centipede-like scar on his face pulsing with a savage purple.
“You cripple, listen up! The Great Qian reinforcements can’t save you in time. Kneel and kowtow to me now, admit your wrongs, and maybe I’ll show you mercy and leave you a whole corpse!”
Xu Zhan looked down at the dark iron shackles around his waist—ones that seemed impossible to remove, the marks he’d carried from death row. Then he turned his gaze to the northern wasteland, startled night birds already fleeing the sky.
He rotated his head to look back at the two fools dreaming even with death upon them, and slowly raised his left hand, gripping his blood-and-flesh-caked meteoric iron mace.
He didn’t hesitate for even half a breath.
“Who said I was taking you with me?”
The words had barely left his lips.
Xu Zhan’s left arm muscles bulged, and the iron mace tore through the air with a screeching howl as it smashed downward.
The blow slammed directly into He Minghu’s chest.
He Minghu’s arrogant laugh instantly stuck in his throat—his entire chest caved in, crushing his heart and lungs with savage, pulverizing force.
He hit the ground flat on his back, spitting out a thick gush of black blood mixed with shreds of internal organs, convulsed twice, and was utterly still.
Ma Jin'an’s laughter died abruptly, and the fat on his face quivered wildly.
Wide-eyed with terror, he scrambled on all fours into a deeper pile of rubble, babbling slurred pleas for mercy.
Xu Zhan didn’t even spare him a glance.
He casually kicked up a broken spear shaft lying on the ground, caught it with his left hand, and hurled it like a javelin with savage force.
The broken spear whistled sharply, piercing straight through Ma Jin'an’s fat back and out through his chest.
The enormous force carried his body two steps forward before nailing the censor, who had schemed so relentlessly, to the stone wall of the dry gully.
Ma Jin'an’s limbs writhed in the air for a moment, blowing a few bloody bubbles from his lips, before his head slumped to one side, still forever.
These two cancers—who had treated Zhenbei City as their private coffer and even betrayed the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians—finally died at the hands of the “cripple” they themselves had created.
And so, those old scores were settled cleanly...
His second-in-command rode closer, eyeing Xu Zhan with worry, “General, the Helian army is closing in fast. This place has no defensible ground. We must retreat at once—fall back to the garrison commander’s defensive line!”
Beyond a distant mound, a Helian cavalryman, badly wounded in the right leg, lay clinging to his horse’s back, trembling as he pulled a bamboo tube from his chest.
It was a prairie hawk used by the Helian vanguard to transmit the highest-priority military intelligence.
The wounded rider bit off the cork from the bamboo tube with his teeth. The dusty steppe eagle flapped its wings and soared into the sky, letting out a long cry as it vanished into the darkness of the night.
Having done this, the wounded rider didn't even dare to glance back. He lashed his horse with all his might, whipping it into a frantic gallop northward in a desperate flight for survival.
He couldn't help but turn his head once.
Through the haze of blood that blanketed the wild beach, he saw a black-armored general, who had lost his left arm, standing alone on horseback amid the disemboweled limbs and shattered armor scattered across the ground.
The pitch-black iron mace in his hand dripped thick, sticky blood, and the chilling aura emanating from him was enough to make one's skin crawl.
The wounded rider’s teeth chattered as his courage shattered completely. He let out a terrifying, screeching cry that tore through the wilderness, his voice twisted with sheer panic.
"The Iron Mace Demon! It's the Iron Mace Demon crawling out from the hell of the Shura Realm!"
