Chapter 347: Lord of Cloud Province, Daoist Xuanyuan!
A streak of gray-white slowly spread across the edge of the sky, peeling the silhouettes of the cliff faces on both sides of the mountain pass away from the night.
The morning light was very thin, so thin it seemed filtered through blood and gunpowder smoke, falling upon the shattered stones and corpses and dyeing the entire narrow path in a hazy, dim red.
The hoofbeats of the Northern Frontier Cavalry had completely vanished.
Those routed cavalrymen sprinted all the way along the northern official road, discarding even more than half of their encampment supplies.
Only abandoned banners, overturned grain carts, and a few thin horses that could no longer run remained in the open ground outside the mountain pass, standing alone in the morning wind.
The Red-Robed Death Soldiers of Chiyan Valley walked out one after another from behind cover, from the crevices of the cliff faces, and from the piles of shattered stone on both sides of the narrow path.
Some of them still gripped blade-rolled swords, while others had blood-soaked cloth strips wrapped around their shoulders or thighs.
Some limped as they leaned against the wall to move.
Yet when they saw the open wilderness outside the mountain pass clearly, all of them stopped in their tracks.
A young death soldier still gripping the broken half of a spear stood in the middle of the narrow path in a daze for quite a while, then suddenly his knees grew soft and he knelt down, a hoarse cry bursting from his throat:
"They retreated... the imperial court's grand army retreated! We won!"
That cry was like a fuse, instantly igniting the entire narrow path.
The Red-Robed Death Soldiers knelt on the ground one after another.
Some wailed aloud, some laughed