A head-on clash was definitely unwise at this point. Our side was already badly outnumbered, and our weapons were pitifully few. The enemy even had two dinophants charging. If we let them approach within fifty meters, a single covering volley of spear throws would wipe out at least half our side.
Luo Chong's only advantage was his longbow. Its range of one hundred meters was certainly no problem. With feathered arrows fitted with steel armor-piercing arrowheads, it could easily pierce one layer of plate armor and one layer of lamellar armor within a hundred meters. If it was a one-point-eight-meter longbow, its maximum range with a lobbed shot could reach three hundred and fifty meters. Although Luo Chong's longbow was substandard, and his feathered arrows had no armor-piercing arrowheads, he could still shoot unprotected targets within a hundred meters.
The enemy had only throwing weapons such as spears and stone axes. An ordinary person could throw one about thirty meters. Even with superb skill and natural strength, fifty or sixty meters was the absolute limit. As long as he opened up the distance, Luo Chong could kill them completely from outside their range.
The honest Wooden Porpoise had no weapon, so he led Ximen and Wuda, taking everyone on a detour to escape. Dashu, Mutong, and Tree Stump followed Luo Chong and brought up the rear.
Dashu looked somewhat nervous as he watched the enemy charge over on their elephants. Even the hand gripping his spear trembled faintly. Yet when he glanced at Luo Chong beside him, he seemed to calm down. Dashu gritted his teeth and forced himself to settle his nerves.
Meanwhile, Luo Chong was estimating the enemy's distance by eye.
250 meters
200 meters
At 150 meters, Luo Chong began raising his bow.
At 100 meters, he nocked an arrow.
At 80 meters, he drew the bow and took aim.
At 70 meters, he released.
With a whoosh, the white shaft spun through the air, driven by its fletching. One of the enemies charging at the front was holding a stone axe, preparing to throw it, when the arrow pierced straight through his chest. The blood in his heart found an outlet and spurted out in a jet. His entire body pitched forward and crashed to the ground.
The enemies around him froze for a moment. They stared at their companion, who had a sharp-headed wooden stick protruding from his back and was twitching on the ground, a pool of blood rapidly spreading beneath him. In the blink of an eye, he was dead as dead could be.
In that brief moment of distraction, two more arrows shot out with twin whooshes. The two men near the corpse were struck and fell to the ground. One had been hit in the throat. He lay there struggling weakly, and no matter how desperately he tried to breathe, he always felt as though he could not draw enough air. After a few spasms, he stopped moving.
At that moment, the elephant-riding captain spotted Luo Chong in the distance. So that long-haired boy was using some strange weapon to throw those little wooden sticks! He roared and ordered his men to continue the pursuit. Charge forward—throw a volley of stone axes first!
"Run! Hurry up! They're going to throw stone axes!" Seeing the enemy continue their charge, Luo Chong grabbed the still-dazed Dashu and dragged him toward the main group.
The enemy continued the pursuit. Luo Chong pulled Dashu along at the front while Tree Stump brought up the rear with a one-and-a-half-meter-long shield. Suddenly, the elephant-riding leader shouted, and dozens of stone axes came spinning and whistling through the air from behind.
Luo Chong had been watching the rear out of the corner of his eye. His pupils shrank, and he immediately grabbed Dashu and ducked behind a tree. Seeing this, Mutong followed suit and hid as well.
Tree Stump instead stepped sideways into a bow stance, bending his knees slightly and raising the rattan shield behind him.
Then came a muffled series of thuds and clangs. Two stone axes slammed directly into the shield. Fortunately, it was woven from thick rattan, but at this rate, it probably would not hold for more than a few blows.
When Mutong saw the stone axes scattered across the ground from behind the tree, he swiftly snatched up two of them and actually threw them back. The enemies clearly had not expected the four men ahead to dare counterattack under such an assault. In their tightly packed charging formation, two men were instantly struck and knocked down. Whether they were dead or not, no one knew.
Seeing that it worked, Mutong picked up two more stone axes and prepared to throw them, but Luo Chong pulled him back.
"Run! Don't get tangled up with them. Open the distance and fight them from there."
Thus, the four men sprinted wildly ahead while the enemy pursued relentlessly from behind. Once they had opened a hundred-meter gap, Luo Chong stopped and fired four arrows in succession, knocking down four more men. The enemy charged up again, sending another wave of stone axes and thrown spears at them.
Tree Stump once again braced himself behind the large shield and withstood three stone axes and one thrown spear. The stone spearhead instantly pierced through the shield, but only the spearhead came through, leaving Tree Stump unharmed.
Mutong took advantage of a lull in the enemy's attack and threw two stone axes, striking two more men. This time, one was hit squarely in the head. The blow split his skull open, spraying blood and flesh as his brains burst out.
As a former Tree Chieftain, Dashu naturally refused to sit idle. He pulled the stone spear from the shield and hurled it back. Dashu was tall and powerfully built to begin with, and this time he threw it with all his might. The stone spear flew nearly sixty meters, landing right in the middle of the enemy group. It skewered one enemy on the spot, pinning him crookedly to the ground so that he could not even fall over.
"Run! The shield can't take any more!"
Luo Chong grabbed the three men who had gone blood-mad and kept running. He himself was fine; in his previous life, he had been a soldier and killed plenty of people, so he had long since grown calm about it. But this was the first time Dashu and the others had killed their own kind. Whether it was nervousness, stimulation, or excitement, any of it could make them lose their reason.
It was just like many new recruits. The first time they killed someone, they were nervous. The second time, they found it thrilling. By the third, they began to feel excited. Then they went blood-mad, falling straight into a desperate, frenzied state of bloodlust.
As for the discomfort of killing, the nausea, the fear, and all that—heh, sorry, those were matters for after the battle. When the nerves on a battlefield were stretched so tight they were about to snap, who had the time to think about such things?
After going back and forth like this four times, Luo Chong finally stopped with the three men panting like oxen. Dashu and the other two held the stone spears they had picked up and leaned on them as they rested.
The rattan shield had long since been discarded somewhere. Tree Stump only remembered that when he raised it for the final time, two stone spears had been stuck in it. Fortunately, he had suffered only a few scrapes.
And the lifesaving rattan shield Luo Chong had used to reduce pressure in the swamp had gloriously perished in less than three days.
The pursuers behind them were not doing much better. They were exhausted, tongues lolling like dead dogs. One man had even run until he vomited and was now braced against an elephant's leg, retching violently. Then he simply collapsed onto the ground, his chest heaving like a bellows.
The group had originally numbered forty, but now only seven remained. The rest were either dead or wounded, and those who had caught up no longer had much fighting strength. If they were told to throw their spears now, they probably could not manage twenty meters. Only the two elephant riders still had the strength to fight.
The two sides were about eighty meters apart. The elephant-riding leader was puzzled when he saw that Luo Chong and the others had stopped running. Then he looked around and saw that only a few people remained beside him, all exhausted to the point of collapse. He immediately flew into a rage.
Luo Chong's side had only four people, and they were also badly tired. The elephant-riding leader wondered whether they could charge one more time. After all, this was no longer merely about food; it had risen to the level of hatred.
He still wanted to launch another charge. Although only seven people remained on his side, that was still more than the enemy had. Besides, their shields were gone. What could they use to block this attack?
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