Battle of Yangren (3)
Dong Zhuo's follow-up units had arrived. The forces trailing behind to support Commander Hua Xiong had merged into the battle line.
The Imperial Guard now numbered close to several tens of thousands.
They might outnumber us.
The troops led by Unit Commanders Li Meng and Hu Feng appeared, and the flow of battle lurched.
'Reinforcements from Luoyang? No, of course not... It'd take a solid three days to circle around Mount Song and get here from Luoyang.'
Crack.
I tightened my grip on the bow.
And I aimed for the Dong Zhuo officer directing the troops.
"Gurk!"
A sharp arrow punched through the Dong Zhuo officer's throat, and he collapsed, frothing blood. The instant their frontline commander went down, the soldiers under him wavered.
But only for a moment.
An officer, presumably the Deputy General, immediately took over.
The Imperial Guard, all right.
Shock and dismay didn't spiral into chaos.
Like the armed enforcers they were, tamed by the blade of power, they simply focused on fighting with blind intensity.
"Now the main army enters the line, too."
"My lord, it's too dangerous...! Leave it to the General Who Defeats the Barbarians and the General of a Separate Division."
I was going to take the main army in.
The officers from the south tried to stop me.
"If the rebels from Luoyang break our ranks here, it's annihilation! Li Jue and Guo Si, guarding Sishui Pass, will have figured out what's happening by now...! We have to kill Hua Xiong, their overall commander, as fast as possible, before they can link up and close an encirclement!!"
Li Jue and Guo Si at Sishui Pass.
Hua Xiong at Yangren.
If those two forces joined up, the anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition Army couldn't avoid annihilation.
Encirclement meant exactly that.
The Guandong provincial officials, who were little better than a rabble, would collapse without being able to lift a finger.
I whipped my head around, scanning the battlefield for the ironclad Monster of Superhuman Strength rampaging across it. I spotted the monster a moment later, swinging an impossibly brutal mace and overwhelming our soldiers.
"Attack!"
"Beat the drums! From this moment, the main army joins the melee!!"
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Just as Liu Bei's and Sun Jian's forces were locked in a back-and-forth,
the main army moved.
We committed every last man on the line.
I even threw in the reserves I'd kept back for contingencies. If the deadlock on this front dragged on, our comparatively weaker forces would be the first to crack, so I had no choice but to make a reckless, all-or-nothing gamble.
"The rebel leader has joined the fight!"
"Liu... Liu Seong-hwi...! Go for the King of Chen's Grand Command Banner! The overall commander's over there!"
If you bring down the commander directing the battle, you seize victory in a single stroke. So the moment I rode the main army into the line, Dong Zhuo's men swarmed toward me.
It was like watching a hive of bees in a frenzy.
Even Imperial Guard soldiers who'd been facing Liu Bei's and Sun Jian's troops turned their horses and came for the main army.
"Gah!"
I put down the Dong Zhuo soldier charging from the front.
Then I nocked another arrow in a snap and sank it into the next soldier's throat.
"Shit, out of arrows again! Bring the next quiver!"
"Yes!"
I reached out my hand, but nothing met it.
I must have burned through fifty arrows in no time.
No matter how many I put down, there's no end to them.
I clicked my tongue, watching Dong Zhuo's troops surge in like a tide.
* * *
The pitched battle that had erupted in broad daylight now found itself in the pitch-dark of deep night. But even the black curtain couldn't stop the ferocity of the fight.
Torches were lit on every side.
The blazing firelight stripped away the darkness and let both armies' officers and men see.
"They're coming! Re-engage!"
"M-my lord...! Our soldiers are completely exhausted! If we keep fighting like this, the casualties will come in droves!"
"The enemy's the same! The side that pulls back first in this fight breaks!"
"Yes, sir!"
The most important factor in melee was, naturally, the disparity in raw strength. But when a melee turns into a protracted fight stretching past half a day, morale becomes what decides victory or defeat.
There was no way Liu Seong-hwi didn't know that.
While ordering Liu Bei's and Sun Jian's forces to continue the fight, he himself kept holding the line.
'They really are numerous...! I didn't think the Imperial Guard defending Luoyang would be this huge. Exactly what you'd expect from the Central Army that the emperor and the eunuchs—stingy as they were with money—poured a king's ransom into building.'
When I reached toward the quiver,
searing pain traveled up my fingers.
There was no way my fingers were fine after the abuse of drawing a bowstring for over half a day. Liu Seong-hwi's bow, the Black Horn Bow, was especially famous for its prodigious draw weight, which made the strain even worse.
I drew the bowstring while enduring that pain.
Even as blood dripped steadily from my fingers where the skin had peeled away, I had to keep the bowstring drawn tight so the arrow wouldn't go wide.
"Fuck! No matter how many I kill, they just don't end! How many more of them are there?!"
"The flank looks dangerous...! Yide, cover our sister! I'll reinforce the flank!"
We had been fighting without rest for a full half day.
Even Liu Bei's force, made up of hardened veterans, was bound to tire.
They had fought on and on, attacking and defending in repeated waves, but they were at their limit now. As if to prove how fiercely they had struggled, the black-haired beauty and the girl with flowing lavender hair were both drenched in fresh blood, an absolute mess of gore.
How much longer do we have to fight?
I let out a rough breath, raising my sharp blade toward the enemy.
"Sis! What about the Crown Prince's side?!"
"Way worse off than we are! Looks like they're about to break any second...!"
"Then the Jiangdong lot must be the same. They've been fighting like demons out front!"
"We need to finish this as fast as possible!"
Shing.
The white-haired beauty swung her twin swords with both hands.
Her beautiful face was coated in rank blood.
Liu Bei wiped it away with a sleeve already sodden and heavy with gore.
"This is it, no more...! If we recklessly push again, our line will collapse! It kills me to watch someone else snatch the credit right in front of my eyes, but we have no choice but to leave the enemy commander to Sun Jian's troops!"
More than half our officers and men were dead or down.
On top of that, everyone still fighting was dead on their feet.
We had reached the breaking point.
Fighting on any longer was impossible.
They didn't even have the strength left to run, so even if they ordered a retreat, there was no way to disengage from the line. Zhang Fei gripped her Eighteen-Foot Serpent Spear and stared toward the center of the battlefield, at the ironclad Monster of Superhuman Strength swinging his mace.
"Graaah!"
"Stop the monster! We have to stop the monster, somehow!!"
Twang! Twang! Twang!
Enduring a hail of arrows with every step, the ironclad Monster of Superhuman Strength looked like a creature out of a nightmare. The unbreakable, solid iron plate he boasted was still intact, even after taking concentrated volleys for half a day.
He raised his mace.
And smashed it down mercilessly, bludgeoning Sun Jian's soldiers to the ground.
"Dammit! If it weren't for these goddamn chaff soldiers everywhere, I'd have lopped that monster's head off by now!"
The Unit Commanders leading Dong Zhuo's follow-up units had completely enveloped Liu Bei's force, blocking them from linking up with Sun Jian's troops. The intent was to pin down Liu Bei's force—which could fight as one against a hundred but was short on numbers—and bleed them dry where they stood.
Damn it all.
Just how many soldiers do they have!
Zhang Fei ground her teeth, glaring at the line, when she detected something amiss. As if unable to believe what her own eyes were seeing, her mouth fell open and she let out a yell that bordered on a death shriek.
"Xuande! Th-there...! Look over there!! The Crown Prince has suddenly lost his mind!!"
"Crown Prince?!"
The sector where the ironclad Monster of Superhuman Strength was rampaging was the most heavily defended and the deadliest. Because along with the brute swinging his massive mace without mercy, Hua Xiong's personal guards—armed with sharp Crescent Halberds—were holding a defensive perimeter and protecting their overall commander with rigid discipline.
And into that most dangerous stretch of the line,
Liu Seong-hwi had charged in, leading a hundred cavalry.
A horrific suicide attack.
There was no chance it would succeed, and no way out once they were in.
Sun Jian's troops were probably screaming in disbelief at the same absurd sight. Liu Bei and Zhang Fei simply froze and stared at Liu Seong-hwi's back as he charged straight for the ironclad Monster of Superhuman Strength.
* * *
A Backward Shot.
Or, the Parthian Shot.
Astride a horse, you twist your upper body and fire on enemies both to the front and the rear.
Liu Seong-hwi quickly cut down Hua Xiong's personal guards blocking the way and opened a path of attack. The guards, seeing a rapid-fire hail of arrows find a mark with every draw of the bowstring, recoiled in terror and raised their weapons and shields.
"Gurk!"
"S-stop him! He's aiming for the Commander!!"
Every shot, one man dead.
Even if they relied on their armor,
even if they counted on the defense of their shields.
Each sharp arrow off the string drew a wicked curve, as if possessed, and punched through the gaps their armor and shields couldn't cover. In particular, the openings that naturally appeared every time they lifted their heads or moved a joint were targeted.
"The path is open! Push the rebels back!"
"So that he can succeed...! Spend your lives to punch through!!"
The hundred-strong Death-Defying Unit charged in. Their job was to push aside the personal guards protecting Hua Xiong in tight formation and open a gap an arrow could pass through.
Shing.
The cavalry under his command hurled themselves, with death-sworn resolve, into the heart of the enemy mass, which was like a hornet's nest.
I won't let their devotion and sacrifice be in vain.
As if answering that resolve, Liu Seong-hwi drew his bowstring, aimed at the giant sheathed in iron plate.
Thwaang!!
The sharp arrow struck the solid iron plate, and sparks flew.
It made a hole, but nothing more.
The arrow couldn't fully penetrate and ricocheted away.
"Greatest Archer Under Heaven...! At a distance well over five hundred paces, and in a chaotic melee where friend and foe are tangled together, no less, you hit the mark. And this spot the arrow struck... you were aiming exactly for the heart, weren't you!"
The hole in the breastplate was located exactly where the heart was.
The heart.
Of all the vital points, the most lethal.
Even the mightiest warrior under heaven would die instantly if it were hit.
Hua Xiong, who had been placing absolute faith in his armor's nearly impregnable defense, felt fear spread through his entire body. If the distance had been even slightly closer, the arrow would have driven straight through to his heart.
"Not a chance!!"
The Greatest Archer Under Heaven was closing in.
Even with personal guards rushing in from every direction, he simply kept charging at full gallop and drawing his bowstring.
Fine.
Come if you're coming.
I'll accept your headlong, utterly reckless challenge.
Hua Xiong's expression turned belligerent as he raised his mace. He intended to lift his mace and swat aside every arrow aimed at his heart.
Thwaang—!!
The second shot.
The third shot.
Arrows came in rapid succession.
Aimed and released in an instant, the swift hail of shots threatened Hua Xiong one after another.
The skill was astonishing and impressive.
But not enough to threaten the ironclad Monster of Superhuman Strength.
The arrows hammered into the solid plate and damaged it, but they couldn't fully pierce through. On top of that, Hua Xiong was swatting down the arrows that targeted his vitals, so shots from the front alone couldn't claim his life.
"Commander! He's right on top of us!"
"I'll finish him off!"
Guarded by the Death-Defying Unit, the Greatest Archer Under Heaven, who had ridden alone into the enemy ranks, arrived within arm's reach.
And at that moment,
Crrrrack—!!
An ominous sound of metal tearing rang out.
The hinge at the joint connecting one iron plate to another had broken off.
With the hinge gone, the plate sagged loose.
And at the same time, the nape of his neck, which the iron plate had protected, was laid bare.
"Hua Xiong, I'll kill you."
The horse carrying the Greatest Archer Under Heaven closed to fifty paces.
And the Greatest Archer Under Heaven drew every one of the five remaining arrows from his quiver, set them all against the bowstring, and aimed.