Zhang Fei's Remarkable Patience (2)
The Yellow Turbans' flag fell far more anticlimactically than anyone could have imagined.
“HRRRAAGH—!”
A beastly roar of a battle cry ripped through the battlefield.
Kang Minju—no, in this moment, the man who was Zhang Fei Yide—swept his massive forearm through the air in a gigantic arc.
The Zhangba Snake Spear. Its sinuous, snake-like blade caught the blood-red sunlight and flashed menacingly before slicing past someone's nape in a deadly trajectory.
Squish—!
Blood erupted like a fountain.
Clang.
With a dull metallic thud, the rusted spear clutched by the enemy slipped from its owner's grasp and tumbled limply through the air.
Dust billowed up, and hot droplets of blood splattered onto Minju's cheek.
“A-Arghhh! M-Monster!”
The Yellow Turban remnants seemed to have already internalized the primal terror evoked by the name “Zhang Fei” in their very flesh. One man with a yellow headscarf tied tightly around his head screamed as he hurled away his weapon, and that spark of fear spread like a plague, toppling the huddled masses behind him like dominoes.
In the midst of that overwhelming scene of slaughter, Minju paused for the briefest instant.
I... just killed a man...
His vision swam. The college student Kang Minju's mind screamed in protest. Just yesterday, he had been a ordinary modern guy flipping through major textbooks and fretting over job prospects. The sensation of severing a living being's life was far too vivid, far too horrific.
Yet in that moment, Zhang Fei's body responded before Minju's reason could catch up. Muscles bulging as if ready to burst flowed seamlessly into the next motion, and a savage, animalistic breath exploded from his lungs. There was no room for hesitation or guilt—weak emotions like those.
This colossal physique was a “human weapon” forged through thousands, tens of thousands of repetitions of slaughter.
Thanks to that, even in what felt like a dream, Kang Minju felt less resistance to accepting the weight of death. The body dominates the mind, and the mind reflects the body—it wasn't just an empty saying, he realized.
“R-R-R-R-Retreat! Retreat!”
Someone shouted desperately from the heart of the enemy lines. Before the words even finished echoing, Minju instinctively yanked the reins, wheeling his horse around. The acrid dust of the battlefield, the metallic tang of blood, and the sticky sweat of his mount assaulted his nostrils.
A volunteer soldier galloping beside him through the spray of blood pointed with his spear tip, eyes wide.
“General! Over there! That bastard holding the Yellow Turban flag! Take him down, and the enemy will scatter completely!”
A flag on the battlefield bound hundreds, thousands of men into a single mass. It was their rallying point, the booster of morale. Which made the standard-bearer an utterly crucial figure.
Or, put another way...
Just take down that flag!
Minju understood instinctively. Whether from his modern knowledge of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Zhang Fei's feral instincts, the conclusion was the same. Shatter that, and this grueling slaughter would end.
“Got it.”
The volunteer soldier blinked in stunned surprise at Minju's reply. The Zhang Fei who would charge ahead blindly once his fury ignited, sweeping away everything in sight without regard for front or back—this Zhang Fei was now rationally assessing the information, calmly selecting the next target. It felt utterly alien.
Biting his lip, Minju spurred his horse's flanks without hesitation.
“Let's go!”
Neigh—!
Sensing its master's resolve, the black steed whinnied madly and surged forward. With the earth-shaking thunder of hooves, the Yellow Turban vanguard's main formation loomed before him in an instant.
“Block him! Stop that guy now!”
Someone thrust a spear. The sharp tip hurtled toward Minju's chest, but Zhang Fei's thick forearm casually twisted the shaft of the Zhangba Snake Spear.
Clang—!
With a bursting crack, the enemy's spear tip ricocheted harmlessly and stabbed into the ground. The attacker's grip tore open, blood spraying.
“Wh-What the hell... this monstrous strength...!”
The man clutching the massive yellow flag recoiled in horror, stumbling backward. Any fighting spirit had long evaporated from his face, replaced by thick dread of death.
It was understandable. What barreled toward him now was no different from a raging black bear. At this range, with Zhang Fei's charge at full acceleration, few in this era could withstand it.
Minju locked eyes with the man's terrified gaze and hesitated for a split second once more.
If I stop here... he'll live.
Harming someone still turned his stomach. His fingertips trembled faintly.
But... if I let them go now, our soldiers behind me will die.
Avoiding slaughter at the cost of sending allies to their deaths—that was equally, no, even more horrific.
The hesitation in Minju's eyes sank into cold resolve. There was no more time for the college student Kang Minju to agonize.
“I'm... pretty patient by nature anyway.”
The screams and shouts erupting from all sides ensured his murmur never reached the enemy's ears.
“But when it comes to snap judgments like this, I'm lightning quick!”
Whoosh—!
The air whistled as the spear, infused with Zhang Fei's superhuman might, plunged down like a thunderbolt.
“Eek—!”
As the flag-bearer ducked in panic, the spear's icy blade struck dead center on the thick flagpole.
Crack—!
The pole, thick as a grown man's arm, snapped in half without resistance. The yellow cloth that symbolized the enemy's unity fluttered limply through the air before landing pathetically in the blood-and-mud-churned earth.
In that instant, the eyes of every Yellow Turban on the field flickered with tremor.
“Th-The flag...!”
“The flag's down! The general's done for!”
The formation crumbled like a sandcastle, disintegrating in seconds. The remnants who had gritted their teeth moments ago, thinking they might overwhelm with numbers, now burned with a single blind survival instinct: Run to live.
Watching the enemies discard weapons and flee with backs turned, Minju heaved ragged breaths.
That was when it came.
“Yide!”
Cutting through the chaotic din of battle from afar rang a familiar, urgent voice. It was Liu Bei. His usually endlessly kind and gentle eyes now gleamed sharply amid the battlefield's dust and bloodstains.
Gripping his bloodied twin swords, Liu Bei shoved through the soldiers as he shouted.
“Well done! Their momentum's broken—don't push deeper! Halt the pursuit and reform ranks!”
Guan Yu, shadowing Liu Bei like a ghost, planted his Green Dragon Crescent Blade in the ground and added in a quiet but weighty tone.
“Yide. I know your valor, but don't charge too far ahead. If you overextend, the soldiers who trust and follow you will rush into the jaws of death and die pointless deaths. Heed this.”
Hearing their calls, Minju's chest tightened. He drew a deep breath of the acrid air filling his lungs and scanned his surroundings.
Guan Yu was right. Yet Zhang Fei's instincts screamed to butcher the fleeing foes to the last.
But Minju's reason, his patience, wouldn't allow it.
“Yes, brother. Understood.”
“......”
Liu Bei and Guan Yu both found this Zhang Fei—who obeyed their words completely—profoundly unfamiliar.
It wasn't just them. A few veteran volunteer soldiers watching the scene whispered among themselves, eyes bulging.
“Hey... did you see that? The general told him not to pursue and to regroup.”
“Yeah. Lord Yide would've swung that spear till every last enemy was dead, chasing them to the ends of the earth...”
“He's so composed today. Like he has eyes in the back of his head, scanning everything...”
“Shh! Watch your mouth, you idiot. If it gets back to the general, your head's the first to roll!”
Zhang Fei's hearing, far beyond human limits, caught every whisper without fail.
Strange, though. The original Zhang Fei would've exploded in rage at soldiers gossiping about him, cracking the whip. But no such volcanic fury rose in Minju.
Of course, deep in his gut, Zhang Fei's innate “destructive urge” still writhed. A bizarre thirst to sever every last neck of those distant fleeing enemies.
But the modern man Kang Minju's reason forcibly suppressed that hot lump.
Hold it. Holding back is what I've been best at my whole life.
He had always smiled through unreasonable customer complaints, professors' abuses of power, seniors' injustices.
That exhausting mastery of “endurance” had, paradoxically, saved countless soldiers' lives today.
Whew, still not used to this.
He yearned to wake from this dream and return to reality.