The Hound Is Cooked Once the Hare Is Caught
Meanwhile, Yun Paxing, who had escaped death and clawed his way out of the fire pit, heard a roar erupting from the valley before he had even had a chance to steady his rattled soul.
His hair stood on end. In the next breath, he shoved aside the deputy general supporting him, fixed a dark, furious glare on the valley mouth ahead, drew his curved blade from his belt, and bellowed in a gravel-choked voice.
“Warriors of Xiliang who survived the sea of fire! We killed Bai Weiting, the invincible legend of Jin! We cut off his son's head, and his grandson's too! And now that young granddaughter dares to spout off about slaying the bravest warriors of Xiliang! Can the warriors of Xiliang die beneath the blade of a mere woman?!”
“Never!”
“Never!”
“Never!”
The Xiliang troops who had survived the inferno roared back with all their might.
“Absolutely not!”
Bloodshot with fury, Yun Paxing thundered on.
“Heaven's god of Xiliang protects only the bravest warriors on the battlefield! I command you — summon the spirit of the wolf! Summon your courage! Take on the soul of the hawk! Let us slaughter the last of the Bai Family Army! Let us make Bai Weiting's granddaughter our plaything beneath us! Let us avenge the soldiers of Xiliang who died beneath the Bai Family Army's blades!”
Hot blood surging, the fleeing Xiliang troops drew their blades and raised their voices in a shout.
“Revenge!”
“Revenge!”
“Revenge!”
“Unbreakable warriors of Xiliang — CHARGE!”
With a voice that threatened to tear his throat apart, Yun Paxing pointed his curved blade toward the valley mouth.
At the valley mouth, Bai Jingyan listened to the Xiliang army's war cries reverberating through the deep gorge and issued her orders in rapid succession.
“Bai Jinchi — carry word to Shen Liangyu of the Haoying Battalion. Have him lead sixty Haoying soldiers on horseback, skirt around Tianmenguan, and strike the rear of the Xiliang camp. Tell him to follow the markings on the map and burn their three grain depots and their armory. Not a single mistake will be tolerated!”
“Bai Jinchi obeys!”
Bai Jinchi, perched on the hillside, wheeled her horse around and galloped off at speed.
“Xiao Ruohai!”
Bai Jingyan tossed the military tally she had tucked into her robes to Xiao Ruohai, then spoke with a face of perfect calm.
“Take the tally, command the scouts, and send word to Wanping. Five hundred of Wanping's garrison troops are to move under cover of darkness, escorting grain and supply weapons toward Fengxian. And relay my command: after the great Jin army annihilates the Xiliang forces on the eastern side of the gorge, Shi Panshan and Wang Xiping are each to lead ten thousand men along the road to Fengxian, rest and resupply, then switch out their weapons and rejoin the assault on Fengxian! As for you — take one hundred Haoying soldiers, infiltrate Fengxian under cover of night, and burn Nanyan's grain stores to the ground. Then, working in concert with the great Jin army from within and without, recover Fengxian by tomorrow morning!”
With flames piercing the night sky over Wengshan Canyon tonight, Nanyan's spies would already have reported the situation at Wengshan. When word reached Nanyan that an enemy force several times smaller than their own had annihilated their entire army inside Wengshan Canyon, terror would split their very guts open.
Striking Fengxian at this moment would allow it to be retaken with ease.
“Xiao Ruohai obeys!”
Xiao Ruohai mounted his horse and sped away.
A wild gale swept through the gorge, howling like the wail of ghosts.
The Bai Family Army formed up in strict battle lines and, with Bai Jingyan at the fore gripping the Sun-Shooting Bow, sealed off the exit of Wengshan Canyon. With sharpened eyes, they stared unblinking into the depths of the gorge.
Bai Jingyan's hands tightened around the Sun-Shooting Bow until her grip trembled.
Listening to the howling wind and the shouts echoing from deep within the valley, she closed her eyes. Her grandfather's voice drifted to her ears.
When she was small, her grandfather would hold her in his lap as they played chess, and he had said this to her once:
"When a general leads boldly from the front, he stirs the fighting spirit of his soldiers and can launch the winning assault. Do that, and victory is certain!"
Her abilities were far diminished from those days. But if she meant to carry the banner of the Bai Family Army, she would have to throw herself into the fray. She had to lead from the front, ahead of her own soldiers, and drive the enemy back in valor!
Only if she stood there — only if she stood at the very front — could she raise the Bai Family Army's morale and dispel the fear buried in their hearts.
The Xiliang war cries drew nearer and nearer from the deep gorge. Bai Jingyan opened her eyes, drew the bowstring to its fullest, and aimed into the black gorge churning with wind.
Her father had once told her: when war breaks out and the people are plunged into hardship, the descendants of the Bai family must shoulder the burden and lead by example, giving even their lives to protect them. Such was the Bai family's creed.
From this day forward, Bai Jingyan would carry on the spirit and creed of her grandfather and her father!
Until the day I fall in battle, I will never take off this armor!
The war cries closed in. With eyes like twin torches, Bai Jingyan fixed her gaze on the first wave of Xiliang soldiers charging around the bend of the deep gorge. Gritting her teeth, she drew the string to its utmost — then released.
The arrow fought its way through the fierce gale and buried itself in a Xiliang soldier's throat. In that instant, the hearts of the Bai Family Army surged.
Her blood boiling, electrified with fury, the warriors of the Bai Family Army heard Bai Jingyan's voice ring out.
“Take Yun Paxing alive! Leave none of them standing!”
“Leave none standing!”
Swords and spears in hand, the Bai Family Army charged into the deep gorge behind Bai Jingyan and met the enemy head-on with unstoppable momentum — a fury nothing could have held back.
Even as she ran, she kept loosing arrows, targeting the Xiliang generals wreathed in blood among the routed troops. Not a single shot from the Sun-Shooting Bow flew wasted.
Every time Bai Jingyan drew the string, a Xiliang general fell. The routed soldiers felt their chests turn to ice. Watching the Bai Family Army tear through them like wolves or tigers gone mad with bloodlust, they were seized, for one breath, by a terror that made them want to turn and flee.
Cheng Yuanzhi shielded Bai Jingyan's side, and still she took a blade to her shoulder.
Having spent every arrow she carried, she had no choice but to wrench fresh ones from the corpses littering the ground and use them again.
In the distance, she spotted Yun Paxing, his body shielded behind three overlapping ranks of shields. Bai Jingyan trampled the corpse of a Xiliang general beside her and wrenched the arrow buried in the dead man's body free with all her strength.
The arrow, red blood dripping from its shaft, shrieked through the air toward Yun Paxing. It flew so fast that no one could intercept it.
It punched straight through Yun Paxing's thick armor. The force was so great that it knocked him flat on his back.
“The Marshal!”
“The Marshal!”
The Xiliang troops cried out in shock and alarm.
At that cry, the already-helpless routed soldiers of Xiliang collapsed entirely. In the span of moments they seemed drained of all strength, and the Bai Family Army — their fighting spirit blazing — cut every last one of them down. Yun Paxing found himself surrounded.
Fewer than ten men remained at his side.
Yun Paxing clamped his hand around the arrow embedded near his heart. Crimson blood welled out around the shaft.
Gritting his teeth, he rose with the support of a Xiliang soldier and looked around at the Bai Family Army, radiating murderous intent. His stomach turned. Was heaven truly determined that he should die here, today?
Yun Paxing was no coward who feared death. But he did not want to lose his life beneath the blades of the Bai Family Army. He could not die at the hands of Bai Weiting's granddaughter.
To make his name thunder through the ages — that had been the sole reason he lived. He would rather return to Xiliang and die there.
He had finally killed Bai Weiting's descendants. He had finally escaped the rumor that he feared the Bai Family Army the way a child fears its father — so why would heaven deal him such a fate?!
“Make way!”
Cheng Yuanzhi's thunderous voice came from behind, and the Bai Family Army — steeped in killing intent, ready to rend Yun Paxing limb from limb — parted for her.
Yun Paxing raised bloodshot eyes and looked upon the woman in silver armor walking out from among the Bai soldiers.
Seen within the pitch-black gorge churned by wild wind, the woman's face was cut and wounded, her whole body caked in blood, the Sun-Shooting Bow gripped in her hand. Her eyes — calm and razor-sharp — were the very image of Bai Weiting... of Bai Qishan.
A bone-chilling aura of slaughter bled off her. Her stride, advancing against the wind, was firm and brimming with power. Her blood-soaked red cape whipped in the gale; the ribbon binding her hair and her long black tresses streamed out behind her. Her bearing was that of a god of war descended upon the world — one look at her was enough to send a shiver down the spine.
Yun Paxing had heard the tales — that Bai Weiting's eldest granddaughter had severed the head of Fang Pingguo, a marshal renowned even among the rival kingdoms, in the war that destroyed Shu. But back then he had dismissed it as a rumor Bai Weiting had deliberately spread for the sake of the Bai family's legend. He had assumed it was Bai Weiting's scheme to proclaim that every member of the Bai clan, man or woman, possessed extraordinary talent.
When word later came that that same granddaughter had been gravely wounded and her martial arts permanently crippled, he had taken it as confirmation of his suspicion. He had believed it nothing more than a lie, spun so the world would not learn that Bai Weiting's own granddaughter was a failure.
But he had guessed wrong. Just when every man of the Bai family lay dead, and Jin seemed to have no fierce general left to lead its wars, Bai Weiting's eldest granddaughter had emerged out of nowhere, without a whisper of warning.
As a man who had commanded armies for decades, one look at the savage aura that rolled off her and the ice-cold gleam of her eyes — one look at the power seething beneath her skin — told him she was a woman with a spirit even more ruthless than Bai Weiting's. She was like a pack of wolves raging across the steppe. A newly risen wolf king was always stronger and far more ferocious than the old one ever was.
Heaven truly means to kill me!
Hemmed in by the routed soldiers of Xiliang, Yun Paxing was drowning in despair. He shouldered his way through the Xiliang warriors guarding him, took a single step forward, and faced Bai Jingyan, who stood no more than a stone's throw away. Then, gritting his teeth, he forced out a cold sneer as if nothing troubled him at all.
“So Bai Weiting had such a lovely granddaughter. And yet they said you had lost your martial arts, did they not? Why, then, have you come out onto a battlefield where men burn with bloodlust? Or have you come to offer yourself up as a plaything for the warriors of Xiliang?”
This was the first time Bai Jingyan had ever stood face-to-face with Yun Paxing. Forty-nine years of age — a man with the rough voice peculiar to Xiliang folk and a tall, imposing frame. His eyes, brimming with killing intent, were steeped in the traces of long years: experienced, seasoned... and utterly vicious.
“Hey!”
Cheng Yuanzhi made to draw his blade, but Bai Jingyan held him back.
She pressed down hard on the hatred boiling in her chest. The stench of scorched powder and blood riding in on the wild wind seemed to grip her reason, keeping her judgment from clouding over with rage.
She hated him. She hated him so much she wanted to swallow his flesh and blood raw. How could she not hate this accursed wretch who had cut off her seventh younger brother's head and split open his belly to desecrate his corpse — this son of a bitch who had hung her father's head outside the Xiliang camp to goad the Bai Family Army?
A single arrow could take his life. She could kill him cleanly, right now. She could cut off his head, carve out his heart and organs, and hurl his head into the Xiliang camp.
But she had deliberately aimed her arrow at an angle.
Because she was holding fast to the thread of reason that told her Yun Paxing must not die. If Yun Paxing died, the Emperor and the petty schemers of the court would have nothing left to fear. The court — and this empire — would never tolerate the Bai family, would never shelter the Bai Family Army.
When the hare is caught, the hound is cooked. Once a thing has outlived its usefulness, it is discarded. Those who spent themselves on the struggles of power were cast aside or put to death after the victory was won.
The Southern Border needed an enemy general whom no one but Bai Jingyan — no one but the Bai Family Army — could defeat. That general had to threaten the treacherous Emperor of Great Jin, the man who would cross the river and then smash the bridge behind him. Only then would the Emperor tremble in fear.
Bai Jingyan stared hard into Yun Paxing's bloodshot eyes, straining to seize hold of her reason.