Chapter 188: Wolf or Dog?
We’re fucking doomed!
Such a thought popped up in the Holywolf Warrior’s mind when she saw Shu Yichao.
She had to admit that Shu Yichao was gorgeous, piquing licentious thoughts in her mind. If he had been her tribesman, she would have surely made him a permanent fixture of her tent.
But now, the only thing she wanted to do was to flee.
She saw not the slightest shred of mercy in the other party’s eyes. The way he looked at her sent shivers down her spine.
She had seen all types of gazes on the battlefield.
Some warriors looked at her with a mix of fear and curiosity. They could have been new soldiers who had never spilled blood before, or ordinary civilians conscripted to inflate the troop count.
Some of them had eyes filled with greed and savagery. Their conscience had been numbed from taking too many lives, and they wouldn’t hesitate to swing their weapons to reap the lives and plunder the wealth of others. To them, the others were just livestock to enrich themselves.
But she had never seen such terrifying eyes before.
Shu Yichao’s eyes sparkled with childlike innocence and delight… but he proceeded to devastate the surroundings with his lightning, reducing her valiant warriors into charred corpses. He was like a child playing a game, and her tribesmen were just toys to amuse him.There was no malice behind his actions. It was like a child pouring boiling water on ants; it was raw, intrinsic cruelty.
The Holywolf Warrior realized that there was no negotiating with someone like that. Whatever leverage she had, in the other party’s eyes, might just be no different from toys.
“Run!”
Despite being the valiant Holywolf Warrior who stoked fear in Transoxania, she didn’t hesitate when deciding to flee.
Those empty titles can’t be more important than my life!
As for slaying the enemy commander, the high shaman’s zombified body hinted at the fate of the last person who tried that. If even the high shaman has failed, there is no reason for me to become cannon fodder here too.
So, the Holywolf Warrior took off her extravagant ornaments, ordered her subordinates to toss away their conspicuous flags, and quietly abandoned her fervently fighting army to escape with her aides.
She had keenly noticed that the enemy’s attacks were focused on areas with more people.
I’ll have to leave the others behind as bait. I’m like a mud Buddha crossing the river; I am in a difficult position myself, so I can only wish the best for the rest of you.
So, the fighting Icewolf Cavalrymen, much to their shock, quickly realized…
“Where’s our Khan?!”
They were in the midst of cutting down the surrounding specters when they noticed the conspicuous absence of their fluttering flags and their Khan’s valiant stature. It was as if she had disappeared amidst the snow.
Some of the weak-willed ones tossed aside their weapons and tried to escape.
“This is terrible! Our Khan is dead!”
“You idiot!” Without any hesitation, the commander raised his blade and beheaded the soldier who caused a fuss. “Stop fearmongering when you haven’t seen a thing!”
But that beheading couldn’t stop the other Icewolf Cavalrymen from spiraling into a mental breakdown. With even the high shaman dead, it didn’t seem that surprising for the Holywolf Warrior to die to the enemy too.
“Run!”
After fighting for a while longer and discovering that there was no end to the specters, the Icewolf Cavalrymen started succumbing to despair.
They tried to escape, but the valley was already tightly surrounded by specters. Other than a few lucky ones who managed to break out of the encirclement, most of them were doomed to fall here.
While they were fighting, an Icewolf Cavalrymen let down his guard and was dragged down from his wolf mount. The specters dove into his body and slit open his stomach from within…
The Icewolf Cavalrymen also knew that it was wiser for them to gather in a formation to cover one another, but each time they tried to do so, they were quickly dispersed by the charge of the ghost horsemen.
Their groans and howls echoed in the foggy valley.
While the Icewolf Cavalrymen were being destroyed, the Holywolf Warrior managed to break out of the encirclement with her superior individual prowess.
“Khan!”
The faces of the aides following the Holywolf Warrior were all pale.
“What should we do now?”
This battle had ended in catastrophic losses for them. Not only had they lost more than half of their Icewolf Tribe’s adult men, but many of their wolves had also died.
These wolves had few offspring and took a long time to mature. On top of that, they would only allow those who had bonded with them over a long time to mount them. It took a lot of effort to nurture even a single Icewolf Cavalryman, let alone a thousand.
That being said, a thousand Icewolf Cavalrymen could crush tens of thousands of normal cavalrymen.
The wolves were the Icewolf Tribe’s foundation to surviving in Transoxania, which was why they worshiped the wolves and even named their tribe so.
The loss they had suffered today was dreadful.
They had only come out to make some additional bucks, so how did they end up getting devastated? Some of them were still in a daze, wondering if they were dreaming.
“We’ll go to Chach first!” The Holywolf Warrior clenched her jaws.
She hadn’t brought her entire army out; she had left some Icewolf Cavalrymen in Chach to supervise the collection of military resources. From the looks of it now, that was unnecessary.
“Relay my orders—it’s time to feast on the sheep! Take everything we can, be it humans, jewelries, or livestock! We only have half a day. Take everything useful with us!” The Holywolf Warrior pursed her lips before adding, “We’ll be spending this winter on the northern ice field.”
…
In the valley…
“These wolves refuse to submit,” Miazova said.
The destruction of the Icewolf Tribe had reaped them another huge bunch of specters and over a thousand massive wolves. It only took a glance at the wolves’ stats for Shu Yichao to decide to change the ghost horsemen’s mounts.
“A movement speed bonus when fighting on snowy and mountainous terrains? 550 speed? What are we waiting for? Switch mounts!”
These massive, snowy-white wolves were firmly pressed down to the ground by the specters, but they still refused to submit. They clenched their jaws in anger as they growled at anyone who approached them with ferocious glints in their eyes.
Their behaviors divulged their attitudes.
You want me to be your mount? Who do you think you are?
“This will be tough to deal with,” Miazova remarked.
The best way to make these wolves submit was to first tame their king. Once the king had submitted, the others would naturally fall in line.
Miazova had searched the pack, but there was no king among them. The wolf king could have been dead, or that the one riding the wolf king had escaped. Either way, it wasn’t good news to them.
“What’s tough about that? We just have to make them listen, no?” Shu Yichao stabbed his modao into the snow.
Cling!
With a flash of silver light, the lightning-clad modao rushed at a wolf’s neck at incredible speed, lopping off its head.
“Wuuuu?!?!”
The nearby wolves widened their eyes in disbelief.
The next one.
Gritting your teeth? Hack it.
Next.
Glaring at me? Dice it.
Much to the wolves’ horror, Shu Yichao was not unlike the humans they had dealt with!
He didn’t care how precious they were. He wouldn’t bother with threats or whips if they were disobedient; he resorted straight to the blade!
The dexterous modao fell on another wolf’s neck.
The lightning emanated from the modao made the wolf’s snowy-white fur prick up. The wolf and the human exchanged gazes.
“Yiii—” The wolf’s ferocious glare became incomparably clear, and it whimpered subserviently. Its attitude had changed so quickly that it could win an Oscar in the animal kingdom.
Shu Yichao gestured for the specters to release it.
The wolf stayed crouched on the ground, wagging its stiff tail. It wasn’t used to doing this, but it was exceptionally earnest in its job.
“Sit.”
The wolf sat.
“Shake.”
The wolf stretched its paw out. It even stuck out its tongue, breathing out hot air. It was trying its best to role-play a dog.
“…Hah.” Miazova shook his head in disdain.