Chapter 348: Capture of Khan, Yuwen’s Defeat and Escape

“My Lord is dead!”

“Master Wu Zun is dead!”

The Turks collapsed directly, shouting desperately, like devout believers seeing their gods perish. They cried bitterly and gave up resistance.

The sweat on Jie Li Khan’s head flowed down. Even if Bi Xuan was really dead, it was not true. “Impossible, absolutely impossible! How could Bi Xuan be dead? The cunning Han people must be lying to us!”

He roared at the top of his lungs and waved his weapons in an attempt to inspire the morale of his men and fight their way out. Except for a few hundred trusted riders beside him, the rest of the Turkic soldiers had lost their will to fight and could hardly follow him.

Suddenly, a group of remnants of cavalry rushed into the battlefield, and Li Jing pointed his spear directly at him, “Jie Li Khan, I have been waiting for a long time!”

“What? Retreat!”

Jie Li Khan turned around and saw a man leading hundreds of cavalrymen to attack him. He was terrified and dared not fight anymore.

“Khan, I’ll cover you, you go!”

Dozens of cavalrymen broke away from the camp and charged towards Li Jing and his men.

“court death!”

Li Jing urged the warhorse under his crotch and swept the spear in his hand, blowing up the air and sweeping across an area. The Turkic cavalry was cut in half, and bright red blood flowed down the horse’s back. The broken spear was still held in his hanging hand.

The warhorse ran out dozens of steps and could no longer be held. It slipped out of his hands and fell off. His body swayed a few times and he fell off the horse, dying silently. He was unable to stop Li Jing at all. Dozens of cavalrymen were quickly overwhelmed. Before Jie Li Khan could escape from the encirclement, he was caught up by Li Jing.

“Jie Li Khan, surrender. You can’t escape.”

Infantrymen gathered around them, with spears and shields forming dense formations, like a hedgehog. The space for the Turkic cavalry was gradually compressed, and they lost the room for resistance. The cavalry had no mobility, and they were doomed to die.

Jie Li Khan gritted his teeth, looked at his confidant, and said coldly, “I would rather die standing than live on my knees!”

As he was about to swing his sword to commit suicide, he heard the sound of a bowstring loosening, and an arrow flew through the air and hit his arm. Jie Li Khan screamed and fell off his horse. Li Jing took advantage of the situation and captured him.

……

“Song Que, die!” Yu Wenshang’s long white hair moved without wind, icy cold air poured out, and his whole body exuded a murderous aura.

Song Que’s expression remained unchanged as he gently swung his sword, “Let me see the profound icy power of your Yuwen clan.”

The cold sword light instantly expanded in the air, just enough to swallow up the momentum in the area and cover the sky and the earth. At this moment, a silent palm print attacked from behind.

“Oh!”

The seemingly light palm seemed to contain a thousand pounds of strength. It slapped towards Song Que’s back, but was blocked by a thin wall of air and could not move forward an inch.

Song Que slashed with his sword, not looking at Yuwen Shang, and his protective Qi burst out, repelling the sneak attack from the old monk. “Your profound skill of withering and flourishing is much more powerful than Jiaxiang’s. As the years pass, how much vitality do you have left? Do you want to take advantage of the opportunity of Yin giving birth to Yang and withering and flourishing to break through to become a Grandmaster and prolong your life?”

As he spoke, the old monk, who had just looked old and seemed about to die, quickly regained his dry flesh and blood, his skin became smooth, his heart began to beat, hot blood flowed through his body, and the wrinkles and age spots on his face disappeared, turning him into a resolute, masculine and kind young monk.

“Amitabha, Donor Song has good eyesight.”

Yu Wenshang stretched out both palms, and icy power gathered in his palms, as if to freeze the air. He slapped out with a loud bang, and the sword energy stopped instantly, frozen in the air, and then shattered and dissipated into nothingness.

At this moment, the three of them suddenly looked up into the distance. Song Que’s eyes were calm, but the old monk and Yuwen Shang’s expressions changed drastically. Bi Xuan’s aura disappeared!

A great grandmaster, whose aura disappeared, must have either escaped or died. Either way, it was not good news for them. Even Bi Xuan had escaped, so the Turks must be demoralized and could hardly be a help.

Taking down Song Que is their only chance to turn the tables.

The two looked at each other, and without further ado, they attacked at the same time.

“Ice the Nine Provinces!”

“Life and Death, Withering and Prospering!”

Yu Wenshang mobilized all his strength, and the wrinkles on his face increased. His skin and flesh were frozen by the bone-chilling cold. Even his consciousness gradually became blurred. The huge icy energy condensed into a huge palm print that hit Song Que directly.

The old monk on the other side made a seal with his hands, and half of the flesh on his face dried up instantly. His old skin drooped on his bones, resembling a skeleton, eerie and scary, but the other half of his face was full of flesh and blood, and the Buddha’s light was vast.

Vitality, deathly silence, demonic appearance, Buddha nature, the old monk’s Zen heart returned to peace, his hand seals changed, and finally turned into a finger force that pointed out. His moves seemed to be neither hot nor cold, and each movement was slow and methodical, allowing people to see clearly, but his slow movements were just an illusion of speed.

Facing a powerful move, Song Que held the sword in one hand and transformed the sword into another, replacing the heart of heaven with his own heart, as if he had transformed into the magnificent heavenly way. The sword intent burst out, and he slashed out a brilliant sword energy at each of the two men.

“boom!”

Three powerful forces collided, and smoke and dust filled the area within a hundred feet. Three inches of the land were scraped away, and the explosive energy turned into an air wave that exploded and formed circles of ripples.

After the smoke and dust cleared, the old monk’s strange appearance returned to normal, his face was as white as gold paper, and there were some blood spots on his monk’s robes, which was shocking. He coughed lightly, put his hands together, and chanted the Buddha’s name, “Amitabha.”

As soon as he finished speaking, his head drooped and he lost all life.

Yuwen Shang stood there quietly. Suddenly, a wound appeared on his chest. The blood spilled into the sky. His aura was extremely low. His bright eyes gradually became dim. He sighed softly, “Good knife, good move!”

He gave up his power and devoted himself to seclusion in order to achieve the status of a grandmaster, but for decades, he was unable to make any further progress. After gaining Ning Daoqi’s martial arts experience, he took half a step forward, but was still unable to reach the final destination.

So, at Yu Wenzhi’s request, he came out of seclusion, just to see the realm of the grandmaster. Now, he has seen it and has no regrets. However, where should the Yuwen family go?

The last thoughts gradually faded away, and Yu Wenshang’s dim eyes turned into dead silence, without a sound.

Two half-step grandmasters, dead! Silence, unspeakable silence!
Yu Wenzhi could never have imagined that Song Que was so powerful that he killed the two masters he had high hopes for with just one move. In an instant, his mind went blank and his thoughts stopped. Looking at the tragic battlefield around him, he made a prompt decision and urged his horse to flee.

The duel between the masters has already decided the winner. Song Que is not dead, and there is no one on his side who can stop the other side. Staying here means death. The army and the empire will all become a bubble. At this moment, he just wants to survive.

As soon as Yu Wenzhi ran away, his personal soldiers reacted and followed him, taking the emperor’s flag and the big banner with them. The entire coalition line was leaderless and shattered into pieces.

The coalition forces lost this war!
Without Yu Wenzhi’s support, the various troops had no command over each other and fled one after another. Song Que ordered all his cavalry to pursue and kill them, and the rest stayed here to gather the remaining troops, clean up the battlefield, and force the enemy to surrender.

The coalition forces were already divided, and the Wu army was so ferocious that they did not continue to fight. Some fled, some surrendered.

When a pale sky appeared in the distance, the faint light illuminated the surrounding area. The battlefield outside Luoyang was devastated and corpses were everywhere.

After the war, Li Jing handed Jie Li Khan over to Song Que, and took the remaining cavalry to sweep the battlefield. However, as they cleaned up the battlefield, they found that many high-ranking members of the coalition forces had fled. Yu Wenzhi left behind his royal flag and fled back to Guanzhong. Even his marshal Yu Wenchengdu disappeared.

Li Jiancheng, the eldest son of the Li family, was captured. According to the surrendered soldiers, Li Shimin, the second son of the Li family, brought troops to rescue the rear. However, according to the Wu navy, they did not encounter Li Shimin’s reinforcements, which means that this guy had already escaped with his troops.

Next, Li Jing, under Song Que’s order, led the cavalry to sweep away the defeated troops around Luoyang.

“General, look at this village!”

The scout led Li Jing to a village. Seeing the scene of corpses everywhere, the soldiers were filled with murderous intent and spread out the cavalry. There were such movements in the nearby land, foothills, and villages. The scattered cavalry fought in small teams to hunt down the fleeing troops and the chaotic soldiers formed by the defeat. In the Battle of Luoyang, there were hundreds of thousands of troops, and 80,000 surrendered, nearly 40,000 died, and tens of thousands escaped. It was not known whether they fled back to Guanzhong or went somewhere else.

In recent days, dozens of villages along the way have been massacred by them. After the war, these sensitive and broken soldiers turned into mobs more terrifying than bandits. They not only looted, killed and burned in the villages, but even searched out women and girls from civilians’ homes, humiliated and raped them in public to vent their fear and beastly desires.

These are all destabilizing factors in governance and need to be eliminated one by one.

……

A month later, the Song army completed its rest and launched an attack on Luoyang.

During this month, Wang Shichong, who fled back to Luoyang in a hurry, slaughtered all the former Sui royal family in the city, usurped the throne and proclaimed himself emperor, naming his country Zheng. He closed the door and acted as emperor. He also searched the city for beautiful women to enjoy, and all the officials in the city were in a state of panic.

Huge stones flew across the sky along with dense arrows and crossbow bolts, crossing over the heads of galloping horses and running soldiers below. Arrows were also thrown from the front, and the sharp arrowheads were nailed to the hard surface, or collided with the rain of arrows flying in from outside the city, and fell down weakly. After flying for a distance, a certain section of the city wall gradually enlarged, and then slammed heavily on the towering city wall.

“boom!”

The rocks were smashed and the broken pieces flew everywhere, hitting the faces of people nearby, leaving long bloody wounds, or directly denting the helmets, killing those who were still running.

In the eyes of the soldiers, more stones fell from the sky like a doomsday scene, some of them hit the wall accurately. Xu Kaishan, who was holding a knife and shouting for defense, saw with his own eyes that more than a dozen soldiers were still running for reinforcements, but were knocked to the ground by a huge rock. The man who was hit was left with only a pool of blood and limbs, and there was nowhere to hide.

“Fight back, destroy the enemy’s catapults!” As he shouted, there was another loud bang. A whistling boulder smashed down an arrow tower, rolling over and crushing the archers behind the parapet, leaving only their heads exposed, still spitting blood and twitching.

In the battle outside Luoyang, Wang Shichong suffered heavy casualties, but there were still tens of thousands of troops in the city.

But facing the experienced Wu army, they were still not enough and were soon attacked on the city wall.

The soldiers rushed and shouted, and climbed up the city wall in dense groups. The shocking fight had already spread to the surroundings of the general who had been silent for several years. When the soldiers who followed him to the top of the city formed a shield formation, overlapping sword lights chopped down from the opposite side and hit the shields. Kou Zhong took the lead, pushed away the soldiers who were holding shields in front of him and kicked out. The Luoyang soldiers who were shouting and fighting flew backwards like cannonballs and smashed into the crowd rushing from the back, and immediately people and horses fell to the ground.

But after the other side’s desperate counterattack, Kou Zhong and his men were still repelled.

At this time, the stone throwing had stopped, and the entire city wall entered into fierce hand-to-hand combat. On three sides of the wall, 30,000 Wu soldiers launched several attacks in turn, which lasted from morning until dusk.

After nightfall, the Wu army gradually retreated.

“Wang Shichong proclaimed himself emperor?”

In the camp, the king and his ministers of Wu State who heard the news sneered. If Wang Shichong surrendered and offered tribute, he might be able to gain credit and save his reputation, but if he did this, there would be no way to avoid killing him.

Therefore, Song Que ordered his soldiers to stop the attack and focus on siege and attack the city walls to minimize casualties.

The sky was getting bright. The horn sounded again outside the city, startling the soldiers guarding the city. They ran up to the city wall and looked out. The army that attacked the city yesterday was out again, forming battle arrays on the field. Countless flags were waving in the blue sky.

The siege continued on the second day, but with more stone cannons and arrows coming down. This time, the attacking army no longer attacked with a strong force, but used crossbows and catapults to smash the walls continuously.

On the third day, tiny cracks appeared on the middle wall, and the soldiers under their feet could clearly feel the vibrations on the section of the wall where they were located.

Day …

Day …

After half a month of continuous attacks, the walls of Luoyang were overwhelmed. Even though this was a city that Yang Guang had spent countless money and grain to build, it gradually could not hold on.

Inside the Luoyang Palace, Wang Shichong was wearing a dragon robe, with no trace of decadence in his eyes. “The people in the sect have already moved south, so they should be safe. Great Master, please accompany me on this last journey.”

Xu Kaishan, who led the troops in the battle during the day, smiled bitterly and said, “It’s not your fault. Who would have thought that the coalition forces, with such a strong force, would still lose? It’s difficult for us to hide it from the Grandmaster, so we can only resort to this last resort.”

“I just hope they have smooth sailing. After they go out to sea, the Wu Kingdom won’t be able to find them. When they come back in a few decades, my Great Ming Religion can still be preserved.”

“Don’t worry, it will happen.”

……

“boom!”

Stone cannonballs were hitting the same wall. Gradually, more and more cracks appeared on the bricks and spread. The soldiers standing on it were trembling in fear. At this moment, there was a sudden loud bang. The ground beneath their feet was empty and the wall collapsed.

The solid city wall was broken and the morale of the defenders plummeted. The Wu army took advantage of the situation to attack the city wall and held a section of it. Then more and more soldiers climbed up the city wall, captured the entire section of the wall and opened the city gate.

(End of this chapter)