Chapter 35 Unstoppable

If one listened closely, it was just a simple syllable, resembling "wind" or a low hum. At that moment, the air across the horizon seemed to ignite. Caught in this roaring current, no matter how calm the soldiers of the Yushedie tribe usually were, they instantly grew frantic.

"If the flying generals of Dragon City are still here, never shall the barbarian horses cross Mount Yin!"

As the four lines of poetry finished roaring, the entire Liang army scattered in all directions like a flock of sheep fleeing across the hills. There was no helping it; although Liang Shidu had suffered a hundred defeats, he was a master at escaping. Seeing his vanguard camp collapse and before the routed soldiers could surge backward, Liang Shidu threw all imperial dignity to the wind. With a few frantic tugs, he ripped off his dragon robe, vaulted onto his horse, and whipped the animal's flanks like falling rain. Feeling the pain, the warhorse bolted forward instantly, flying as if riding the mists and clouds.

Though the Turks had not directly participated, the shock Chen Ying delivered to them was immense. They had long heard that this Tang army from Chang'an was formidable, but even in their wildest dreams, they never imagined the Tang army could be this terrifying.

The Liang army's several thousand troops outnumbered the Tang's four thousand cavalry by nearly half. Yet, possessing nearly double the advantage, they collapsed into a rout within the span of half an incense stick.

No, they did not just retreat; they dissolved into a stampede.

Leading the Turkic forces to assist was the Turkic "She" Ashina Yizhen. Ashina Yizhen was the son of Dulan Khagan, the bitter rival of Qimin Khagan. Years ago, Princess Yichen had been given in marriage to Qimin Khagan. Refusing to submit to Qimin, Dulan Khagan led his forces to attack him. Under the intervention of the Sui Dynasty, Dulan was defeated. Dulan's son, Yizhen, subsequently surrendered to Princess Yichen, becoming one of the three direct "She" commanders under her command.

Yizhen felt a profound sense of helplessness.

Yet right at that moment, in the blink of an eye, an intuition honed by a decade on the battlefield surged into Yizhen's mind! Faint, elusive signals rapidly crystallized into stark alarm within his heart!

"Stop at once!" Ashina screamed in panic. "Protect the She banner!"

The She banner essentially represented himself. Ashina Yizhen's core troops were exceptionally elite, serving as Princess Yichen's leverage to secure her status as Turkic Khatun. Hearing Yizhen's command, thousands of Turkic cavalrymen immediately shifted formations, tightly encircling and guarding Ashina Yizhen's banner.

However, just as the Turkic soldiers were filled with shock and uncertainty, Chen Ying led the Tang lancer cavalry charging straight toward Ashina Yizhen like a fierce tiger descending from the mountain.

A dismissive smile hung on Ashina Yizhen's face. "How ridiculous! Do they really think they can compare our noble Ashina clan's brave khans to that good-for-nothing Bilge?"

Bilge referred to Liang Shidu, who had submitted to the Turks and been titled the Dadufu Bilge Khagan by Shibi Khagan. In truth, no one in the Turkic leadership respected Liang Shidu, even though he annually paid tribute to various Turkic factions with massive amounts of wealth and beauties. Yet in the Turkic realm, where strength was supreme, Liang Shidu suffered defeat in every battle and had zero impressive military achievements to show for it.

However, Ashina Yizhen soon realized he was celebrating a bit too early.

Almost identically to how Chen Ying had just charged through Liang Shidu's forces, the Turkic warriors in the front ranks suddenly seemed to forget how to fight upon the initial contact. They stood there like wooden puppets, completely motionless, letting the Tang lancers cut them down at will.

Ashina Yizhen saw it clearly: Chen Ying had charged to a distance where he could make out Chen Ying's facial features! The bloody stench in the wind assaulted his nostrils.

The thunderous sound of hooves made Yizhen feel as though his heart could barely handle it. Fortunately, his nerves remained resilient, but the blossoming flowers of blood erupting from his Turkic warriors finally broke his heart.

In the Turkic Khaganate, strength was the foundation of their status and power. Once they lost their troops, no matter how noble their bloodline, they were worth less than dirt.

"This won't do!" Taking advantage of the distance still separating him from Chen Ying, Yizhen whipped his horse around and fled northward toward Huaiyuan.

"The bright moon of Qin and the passes of Han!"
"The long march of ten thousand miles, yet no men return!"

Though they could not understand the meaning, the Turks noticed that every time the Tang soldiers roared these lines, they seemed transformed into entirely different people—their eyes bloodshot, thrusting their spears like the wind.

"Magic!"

The Turkic soldiers in the rear had no idea what was happening. In their eyes, the moment the Tang cavalry charged close to the Turkic warriors, those warriors would freeze in place, completely unable to move!

It was as if every single Tang soldier possessed magic, and those four lines of verse were their incantations.

"Run!"

At that moment, fleeing seemed to be the universal thought in every Turkic mind. Yet while the Turks despised cowards fleeing the battlefield, they were not fools. While they were running away in practice, they shouted at the top of their lungs, "Protect the She Khan!"

"Protect the She Khan!"

Luo Shixin was so excited at this moment he felt like jumping, chasing right behind the enemy's tails to hack and slash at will. This feeling was simply too wonderful.

At this point, the morale of the Tang soldiers had skyrocketed. Especially with the rumors surrounding the magical properties of the frontier-crossing battle song, let alone the Turks of the Yushedie tribe, even the soldiers of the Right Guard Elite Cavalry began to gradually believe it.

"If the flying generals of Dragon City are still here, never shall the barbarian horses cross Mount Yin." Behind this impassioned roar lay an ineffable sense of worship. Like a viral contagion, it soon affected even the civilians and soldiers inside the city of Lingzhou.

These people already held favorable views of Chen Ying, but that was just a baseline. Before today, they never knew they could suddenly plunge into such a state of fervent exaltation.

With Chen Ying charging at the very front on horseback, even without him uttering a single word, they felt their bodies brimming with strength. Especially when staying close to Chen Ying, enemy arrows could not reach them, and enemy sabers could not strike them down, as if Chen Ying radiated some inexplicable magical power.

On the battlefield now, the Tang soldiers had grown utterly frantic and wild. Whether they were the elite cavalry of the Right Guard or the soldiers of the Lingwu regiment, or even the soldiers of the Yushedie tribe, when encountering enemy blades, sabers, or arrows, they actually refused to dodge or parry. Yet strangely enough, when they did not dodge, the enemy arrows either missed entirely or struck their bodies with zero force.

Unable to explain this phenomenon, they subconsciously attributed it to Chen Ying's boundless mystical powers.

If Chen Ying had known what the Tang soldiers were thinking, he probably would have vomited blood. He was human, not a god. As for why such an absurd and bizarre thing occurred, it was actually very easy to explain from a psychological perspective.

The soft fears the hard, the hard fears the fierce, and the fierce fears the suicidal. When one person fights to the death, ten men cannot match them. At this moment, all four thousand-plus Tang cavalry soldiers were acting with the fury of madmen; probably no one dared to attack such a crazed army.

Ashina Yizhen was also going mad by this point. He scraped together a rearguard of several hundred men, but the moment these rear-guard troops met the main Tang army, they vanished instantly like a candle dropped into a bonfire. Gritting his teeth, he said to an overseeing commander beside him, "I swear to you by the name of the Heavenly Wolf God that your wife and children will be well provided for. Hold the Tang people back for me!"

Hearing this, the commander wore the tragic and heroic expression of wind whistling and waters freezing cold—yet it was entirely useless. The Tang army's offensive remained like a rising tide, invincible and unstoppable.

*(Apologies, the final few hundred words of this chapter are still being polished. Please refresh in half an hour.)*