Chapter 392
Chapter 392
Arona leaped from the battlements, mounted her white ox, and raised her Green Dragon Crescent Blade, shouting with boisterous affection.
“Follow me! We ride to slay the enemy!”
Then, she spurred her white ox forward, leading three thousand warriors out of the mountain valley. What an impetuous woman. She charged without even confirming if they were friend or foe, without knowing the truth of the situation. When they reached the mouth of the valley, she was stunned. Wasn’t that—wasn’t that her man, Big Dummy?
Her eyes didn't even register Shen Lang's presence, nor did they see the two hundred-odd warriors by his side. She saw only Big Dummy, sprinting toward her at a rapid pace. It was because Big Dummy was simply too eye-catching. Standing on the ground, he was taller than a man on horseback, and when he ran, he was faster than a galloping steed. Big Dummy sprinted like a madman, yelling.
“Wife, wife, I'm here, don't be scared! Little Dummy said he'd help you wipe out Arutai's tens of thousands of troops and make you queen of the State of Qiang. But wife, what's a queen?”
Arona spurred her white ox into a frantic dash. Though they were still more than ten meters apart, Arona leaped from the ox's back and tackled Big Dummy to the ground. She kissed him wildly, tearing at his clothes as if to sleep with him right then and there.
Shen Lang was dumbfounded.
‘Damn, that intense? That rough? It might be night, but everyone's watching.’
“Muyeol, go quickly. Take a few dozen of the sisters and form a curtain with a tent flap so my sister-in-law's rear isn't exposed for all to see.”
Shen Lang expected to hear a sound like a pig being slaughtered. He still vividly remembered Arona’s ferocious, howling cries from last time. But unlike before, Arona didn't let out a sound that could shatter clouds and split rocks. The two were engaged in a battle that was passionate but not rough. Shen Lang listened for a moment, found it uninteresting, and left, heading into the mountain valley where the Snow Mountain Tribe was camped. That shameless couple would return on their own once they had their fill. Shen Lang would never admit to his own feelings of inadequacy.
‘It's fake, all fake. Anything over thirty minutes is fake.’
Not just Shen Lang, but the three thousand warriors of the Snow Mountain Tribe who had come out to fight, mistaking his army for Arutai’s, also turned away. It wasn't that they felt inadequate like Shen Lang; they instinctively didn't want to see their queen mounting another man. Such a scene felt as if it would slightly dim the brilliant halo around their idol.
* * *
Shen Lang strolled slowly through the mountain valley. Tents were pitched densely, and in front of each stood a wooden statue of a creature with the head of an eagle and the body of a wolf. It wasn't Shen Lang's first time seeing this beast; he had seen it several times before in the Qiang Royal Palace. A creature with an eagle's head and a lion's body was called a Griffin, so what was this one with an eagle's head, a wolf's body, and wings called? The people of Qiang called it the Heavenly Wolf Vulture. It was the crest of the Aru clan, the royal family of Qiang.
Even so, it had been hard to find statues of the Heavenly Wolf Vulture in the Qiang Royal Palace. It was said that Arujiang despised the Heavenly Wolf Vulture, considering it an ill omen, and had them all burned. According to Shen Lang's conspiracy theory, this was the work of the Su Clan. First, they would obscure the crest and totem of the Aru royal family, then dilute the Aru clan's authority, and finally, usurp their position.
The Heavenly Wolf Vulture totems, so rare in the Qiang Royal Palace, were erected everywhere in Arona’s tribe. Every one of the wooden totems bore the same inscription.
Shen Lang crouched down to study the characters. He hadn't known the State of Qiang even had its own writing system. Upon closer inspection, the Qiang script seemed to have been created based on Chinese characters. It also had a style reminiscent of cuneiform script. In any case, it was a script more symbolic than practical, so few people actually used it. Not only was the phrase written on every wooden totem in the tribe, but it was also inscribed on every tent.
That alone was enough to show how much Arona had won the hearts of this tribe. It seemed the medical and veterinary skills she had learned had been quite useful. Thanks to those skills, she had earned the support of countless people, saving the lives of both them and their livestock. In the State of Qiang, that was probably the best way to win people over.
A bald warrior, looking exceedingly sharp and formidable, followed behind Shen Lang. He was the mightiest champion under Arona's command. His appearance seemed to be a mix of Western, Eastern, and Qiang bloodlines.
“And you are?”
Shen Lang asked him.
“I am Yingyang, the Queen's foremost general.”
Shen Lang glanced at his bald head and the scars that covered his entire body. He had never seen a man with so many scars in his life. There were over a hundred of them, making them look like a suit of armor and a helmet, and giving him the appearance of a wild beast.
Yingyang said, “I was first a slave, then a gladiator slave. After winning for seven straight years, the Great Calamity Temple took me in as a disciple. But my path and theirs were completely different, so I left the temple and became a mercenary in the outside world. I killed my enemies for several years and eventually became a mercenary leader. But my group was infected with smallpox and came to the Queen's tribe. The Queen cured my smallpox and vaccinated everyone with cowpox, freeing us from the slaughter of smallpox for the rest of our lives.”
And so, he had pledged his loyalty to Arona, becoming the tribe's top general.
“I have a woman by my side who was also a gladiator slave. Her name is Muyeol, do you know her?”
“I sensed their auras, so I already know you have dozens of gladiator slaves with you. I do not know this Muyeol you speak of, but she would be no match for me.”
That was a very arrogant statement.
“Gladiator slaves originated in the distant West and are highly developed combat slaves in the various Western Regions. In contrast, the gladiator slaves of the Eastern world lack a certain bloody cruelty. The Eastern world is too civilized for truly formidable gladiator slaves to be born.”
There was some truth to his words.
“Are you warriors the only ones left in the entire tribe? What about the others?”
“They have all left.”
“Then the thousands of slaves from the State of Yue have left as well?”
“At its peak, the Queen's tribe had one hundred and thirty thousand people. In the end, twenty thousand remained. But Her Majesty the Queen chased them away as well. They wanted to pledge their loyalty to her, but Her Majesty felt they were weak slaves who would only be sacrificed in vain. To die fighting on the battlefield is the duty of a warrior, not a commoner. And a warrior never avoids a fight or flees.”
‘He has quite the sense of pride.’
Shen Lang could understand that sentiment to some extent. Yingyang was like a powerful fighting bull. Having lived as a brutal gladiator slave since childhood, the only things that must have kept him going were his will to survive and his pride.
“Which tribe has the most warriors under your command?”
“The Saman Tribe.”
“Why is that?”
“The men of the Saman Tribe are fierce and violent, making them the most adept at combat. That is why most gladiator slaves in the Western Regions are from the Saman Tribe. My mercenary group also had a majority of Saman people.”
“Do these Saman warriors also have their pride?”
“They do. Their pride is incredibly strong, but it's something the Eastern world wouldn't understand.”
“Do you know of Prince Gong of the State of Nangu?”
“I do. He is a remarkable man. The Saman warriors under my command also greatly admire him.”
That was rather bad news for the State of Yue. Neither Shen Lang nor Ning Yuanxian had imagined the war in Nangu would turn out this way. Prince Gong had spent his entire youth in the capital of Yue, treated as Ning Yuanxian's adopted son and holding a position of supreme honor. The people of Yue could criticize the Crown Prince, but not Prince Gong. The King of Yue had trapped and killed the previous Prince Gong and sent numerous officials to govern the State of Nangu. After more than a decade of such management, all power in Nangu was in the hands of Yue officials. Only then did Ning Yuanxian send Prince Gong back to Nangu, even marrying Princess Yingluo to him.
Everyone thought Prince Gong would be nothing more than a puppet in the State of Nangu, incapable of stirring up any trouble. Yet, Prince Gong attempted to poison Princess Yingluo, and as soon as his plot was discovered, he launched a rebellion. At the time, General Zhu Lin, Pacifier of the South, led an army of thirty thousand to quell the Nangu rebellion. Everyone thought it would take two or three months at most to crush the revolt. Zhu Lin had thirty thousand troops, and there were plenty of Yue's lackeys within Nangu. But when the war was at its most desperate, Prince Gong unexpectedly went alone to the Saman Tribe to request reinforcements. By all logic, it was a suicidal act. The Saman Tribe despised traitors, and the previous king of Nangu was the greatest traitor of all.
The State of Nangu was originally part of the Saman Tribe, but after being bought by the State of Yue, they betrayed their people and became a vassal state of Yue. With military support from Yue, Nangu's weapons and equipment became far superior to those of the Saman. Afterward, whenever the State of Yue expanded southward, the king of Nangu would always lead his army to the front lines, slaughtering his own kin without hesitation. One could say that the throne of the King of Nangu was built upon a mountain of Saman corpses. What a profound betrayal!
In the war more than a decade ago, how many Saman people had the combined forces of Nangu and Yue killed? The number of dead, including both warriors and civilians, exceeded a hundred thousand. Prince Gong, the son of the greatest traitor, had gone to the Saman Tribe to ask for aid. Was that not courting death? And not just any death, but one preceded by the most brutal torture imaginable.
The cruelest torture of the Saman Tribe involves burying a person from the waist down in a pit filled with hundreds of venomous snakes. Then, they smear honey on the upper body and pour tens of thousands of flesh-eating ants on them, which gnaw away everything but the bones. In a matter of minutes, the person's lower body would swell to several times its size, while their upper body would be reduced to a skeleton. Everyone awaited news of Prince Gong's violent death, but not only did he not die, he took three chieftain's daughters and two female chieftains as his wives. He returned with five wives and ten thousand troops from the Saman Tribe. After that, the war in Nangu fell into a deep quagmire, contrary to all expectations.
The State of Yue increased its forces, but the Saman armies continued to pour into Nangu, and Prince Gong's fame grew ever larger. In the end, Prince Gong had now become a great hero to the Saman Tribe.