Foreign Tribes Attack, Decisive Battle Begins

The wind whipped sand grains against his face. Chen Wuya pressed his palm to the drumhead, his knuckles tightening slightly.

He did not look up, only stared at the outline of the distant ridge. That line had once cleaved heaven from earth, yet now it seemed to be slowly bent beneath some invisible weight. A deep tremor ran through the ground—first in scattered pulses, then joining into one, like countless iron hooves pounding across frozen soil, drawing ever closer.

Bai Zhi stood at the edge of the platform, her left hand resting on her sword hilt. With a light flick of her right wrist, her flexible sword rippled out in an arc of gleaming light like water. It had not yet left its sheath, but the blade already carried a faint chill.

"They're here," she said.

Chen Wuya nodded and suddenly drove force through his palm.

Boom—boom boom!

Three rapid drumbeats, sharp and brief as an axe splitting wood. This was the command for Staggered Formation: Activation. Sixty core soldiers lifted their feet almost at once. Their steps seemed disorderly, yet secretly matched a rhythm; Misaligned Force circulated from beneath their soles and seeped into the earth.

The forward camp sprang to life in an instant.

Behind the chevaux-de-frise, the archers and crossbowmen lowered their bodies, arrowheads aimed at the open ground ahead. The turf covering the mouths of the pit traps quivered faintly—the mechanisms below were loosening. Inside the tent with the bronze listening tubes, a soldier abruptly rose to his feet and shouted into the speaking tube, "Enemy cavalry, eight hundred paces from the forward trench! Main force in the center, flanking from both wings!"

Before his words had faded, the first row of black silhouettes had already crested the ridge.

They were not scattered rabble, but ranks