The Glory After Rebirth

493 - 495

C493 The Wan Army's Crushing Defeat

Xue Chi was indeed anxious. He and his army had been trapped in this weird dense fog for two days and all their attempts to extricate themselves from it had failed.

This spooky thick mist was fraught with deadly traps of all descriptions. Also, enemies had been showing up on occasions. What with those traps and occasional encounters with enemies, Xue Chi had lost a lot of men. Worse still, they had no water or food. His army had been drained from panic for quite some time.

Xue Chi had been in the army for decades and fought numerous battles, but never once had he ever seen such eerie dense mist or such varied tactics, which was why his army suffered particularly heavy casualties on the first day. It had been on the second day that he had found something out about the current situation.

Not all those traps were real. In fact, most of them were hallucinations! Even those enemies were non-existent. Those so-called enemies were none other than his own men!

The fog was like some kind of demonic creature capable of manipulating people's minds, and they had all fallen victim to it.

Clenching his teeth, Xue Chi was so furious he was on the verge of vomiting blood. It was not until he gave his men strict orders not to attack when encountering enemies that the tragic fratricidal killings stopped reoccurring.

As time ticked away, Xue Chi, who was still observant, discovered that the thick fog was gradually lifting and commanded his men to be on full alert.

On the ramparts, Ling Zhang slightly frowned. He had thought that the large-scale formation would last three or four days, but it had now been merely two days, and the fog was beginning to disperse already. It would seem having the formation cover an unduly large area would compromise its stability and sustainability. This formation had been pushed to the limit. Still, it had served its purpose pretty well in the sense that Xue Chi and his men had been trapped in it for two days. Considering they hadn't drunk for two days, there was no doubt they were all spent, no matter how hard they tried to pretend otherwise.

"Get ready to make our move," said Ling Zhang, looking at Jiang Ke.

Jiang Ke inclined his head, descended the ramparts and opened the gates of Shengzhou Pass as planned, preparing to lead his army out there to engage Xue Chi's men frontally.

The army had just marched through the gates when the dense fog enveloping the whole battleground and Xue Chi's men finally cleared.

The moment the thick mist dispersed, Xue Chi caught sight of the North-Western Army of the Great Wen in battle formation, his heart sinking. His men were exhausted after being trapped for two days, while the enemy was at full strength! To make things worse, as the fog lifted, he looked around and found that the battlefield was strewn with dead bodies of his men, and the surviving ones were no longer in formation of any kind. At the sight of this, his heart sank even further.

Jiang Ke and Jiang Xi, naturally, wouldn't let this opportunity slip away. While the Wan army were still in the trance caused by the disappearance of the thick fog and were still hesitating about attacking the army of the Great Wen, the two of them decisively gave the order to attack. Because of the disorganization of the Wan army, the North-Western Army's fierce offensive crushed them as easily as smashing rotten wood. The fighting turned into a slaughter almost from the very beginning.

Xue Chi made an attempt to get his men into battle formation again but only managed to have one third of them do his bidding. The remainder were utterly unable to follow his orders, what with the attack of the enemy.

...

The intense fighting lasted almost four hours. Xue Chi, who had quick reactions, decided promptly and opportunely to retreat so that the rest of his men could survive instead of being massacred. However, the moment he and those men fell back, the Wan soldiers at the front were reduced to cannon fodder, serving as human shields to buy time for their fellow soldiers to escape, and they all ended up dead.