Chapter 1283: Leaving the Pass. Two days later.
Beneath the walls towering 120 zhang high.
Before them, the magnificent gate, thirty zhang wide and sixty zhang high, slowly lowered amid the thunderous rumble of its hinges.
Behind the gate stood six hundred scouts in light armor, mounted on fine horses.
Behind those scouts were 2,500 elite soldiers of the Hundred Battles Battalion.
The elites wore black armor, and their warhorses were clad in heavy armor as well.
Not only that, but each elite also had two riderless horses beside him.
Each elite of the Hundred Battles Battalion had to manage three warhorses at once.
Besides serving as fresh mounts, the horses could also provide support for the scouts.
Both the elites of the Hundred Battles Battalion and the scouts of the Scout Battalion wore gray cloaks over their armor.
The weather was simply too cold.
Light snow had been falling nonstop since the previous night.
And judging by the current conditions, it would most likely grow heavier and heavier.
Zhang Yuanyu rode a brown, armored warhorse, holding the reins of three horses in his hands as he waited in the middle of the Hundred Battles Battalion's elite ranks for the gate to slowly open.
Horses snorted among the ranks from time to time, and white mist continually billowed from the breaths of mounts and soldiers alike.
As the foremost bridgehead on the northern front, Mountain Pass had never fallen in more than three thousand years.
Precisely for that reason, the scorched earth and bloodstains beyond its walls looked all the more gruesome.
As the gate slowly lowered, the open wilderness unfolded before the Scout Battalion and the Hundred Battles Battalion.
Snowflakes drifted down onto gray cloaks and into the soldiers' hair, turning into ice crystals.
Breathing among the ranks gradually