Modern soldiers had to complete a five-kilometer armed cross-country run in under twenty-six minutes to pass. The Xin Tribe naturally could not compare, since they had never received any training in this area, and their rations were nothing special either. They had no problem eating their fill, but eating well was out of the question.
Not to mention that the Xin Tribe had spent the entire previous night on tenterhooks. Before dawn had even fully broken, they had already begun enduring the Han Tribe's assault, and until their entire army fled, they had not even had time to eat a bite of breakfast. With both their physical strength and their nerves taxed, they were completely incomparable to the elite Huben Guard, who had eaten their fill before taking the field.
Regardless, with a group of enemies behind them who were ready to kill them at any moment, the two divisions led by Qi Yun, no matter how tired or hungry they were, still exceeded expectations in their flight for survival. They had covered a mere five kilometers in roughly thirty-five minutes.
The two sides stayed tightly locked together, one ahead and one behind. The fresh troops of the Huben Guard hung two or three hundred meters behind them, occasionally loosing a few arrows at the Xin Tribe divisions' rear. When luck was on their side, they could even pick up some unlucky stragglers along the way.
At the Huben Guard's normal speed, they could have caught up and entangled the enemy at such a short distance. But Blood Butcher wanted to avoid a direct clash between the two sides and the unnecessary casualties it would cause—or rather, he wanted to reduce the enemy's casualties—so he kept suppressing the army's speed. The Xin Tribe divisions had never trained for this, but