Night raid

"Whoosh..." A bleak, cold wind swept past. The already darkened earth seemed to shudder beneath a vast glacier, chilled to its core. Breathing stopped altogether in that instant. Some unlucky insects lurking below died, while the slightly larger creatures, such as scorpions and desert snakes, struggled to hold on.

The cold did not last long before dispersing. As the crawling creatures hovered in a daze, the glacier seemed to melt, and the surrounding temperature began to rise. Only then could they breathe and move again. Once they recovered, they immediately fled for their lives. Within a thousand meters, nothing remained but three dazzling masses of light, with no human figures visible inside them.

With a rushing sound, the three masses of mingled light descended together like clouds. Light and shadow swirled beneath their feet, as though they stood upon colorful clouds.

Amid rolling booms and even fiercer tremors, cracks opened in the ground. Branches as thick as arms, spikes as large as funnels, and round rocks like stone blocks emerged from within. Incredibly, these mismatched structures intertwined, orderly amid chaos yet without any discernible pattern. The longer one looked, the more dizzying they became.

The light continued to flow, and these materials took on colors as well, spreading outward from the three figures at their center. As the radiance kept sprouting like shoots after rain, the expressions of all three men began to change.

Yetos and Soxia drew their brows together slightly, the corners of their mouths pulling downward and their cheeks tightening. Clearly, they had to grit their teeth to set such large-scale, intricate elemental traps.

Combining elements was no easy task. It was like a master of throwing knives suddenly gaining an extra blade beyond the number he could control. That additional knife would become dangerous; one careless move could cause him to miss, or even injure himself.

Each additional element was another throwing knife. That was precisely what combining three elements entailed. Even Yetos and Soxia, both in the willful realm, had to give it their all, not daring to relax for an instant.

Although Zeng Mu was intimately familiar with elemental power, he had only recently become an Elementalist. Under pressure of this magnitude, his face became utterly contorted. His brows knotted, his nose wrinkled, his lips darkened, and veins bulged along his neck. His teeth chattered faintly, yet even so, his feet remained planted as firmly as bedrock.

Several dozen seconds passed, at once long and fleeting. The booming and trembling ceased, and the radiance across the ground stopped flowing. Like the flame of a candle burning out, it shrank inward, and the cracks closed with it. Within a few blinks, the earth returned to normal, scarcely different from before, save for the scattered lifeless creatures lying belly-up in the darkness.

The weakness in his head vanished, darkness returned behind his closed eyes, and cool air streamed into his nostrils. These were the sensations Zeng Mu felt at that moment.

He opened his eyes. Yetos and Soxia opened theirs as well, both looking at him.

After several seconds of exchanged glances, Yetos broke the silence. "Nameless, not bad. You actually managed not to faint." His voice was noticeably weaker than before; clearly, he had expended considerable energy.

His chest heaving, Zeng Mu raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead and asked, "Huh? Faint?"

Still unsure what he meant, he was about to ask more when Soxia explained, "The beginning is always the hardest. Any Elementalist combining elements for the first time experiences unprecedented pressure. Most cannot withstand it, so when the fusion ends, they fail to catch their breath and pass out. Simply put, it is much like getting sick the first time you ride a horse." His voice remained as calm as ever, betraying little strain.

"I see..." Once Zeng Mu understood, his eyelid twitched. He immediately nodded respectfully to both men and added, "Then I owe that to your care, my lords."

He understood that both had, without discussing it, taken on more of the burden, sparing a greenhorn like him an embarrassing collapse.

The two exchanged a smile. Stroking his beard, Soxia chuckled. "You give us too much credit, Nameless. Asking you to help was already a little beyond what we should have expected of you. I would hardly call it taking care of you."

After exchanging these words of concern, the three turned their attention back to the earth beneath their feet.

Although the ground looked no different from before, the observant Zeng Mu still noticed the tiny cracks scattered across it, some long and some short. They were no wider than pine needles, truly difficult to spot on this pitch-black night.

"Are all those elemental materials we just combined hidden inside these cracks?" he asked quietly.

Yetos replied, "Yes. They are all lying dormant inside. Once prey arrives, these houndlike materials will react immediately."

"This is a perfect trap. There is no avoiding it, and they will only notice after stepping inside." Soxia lowered his hands and leisurely clasped them behind his waist.

"Come, let us head back. All that remains is to wait patiently." He stepped forward and lightly sprang onto his horse, and Yetos followed.

Once mounted, Zeng Mu glanced at the cracked ground, then turned toward the hazy silhouette of Black Iron Slope in the distance. His heart tightened slightly, like a fledgling still gliding through the air before a storm.

The night deepened. The wind shifted from southwesterly to a west-to-east current, blowing much faster than before. It whistled through the air like whispered exchanges between heaven and earth.

The moon remained hidden, and the stars stayed out of sight. The dark clouds overhead had thickened, piling layer upon layer without leaving a single gap. Together with the howling wind, they made it seem as though rain was coming.

In lamplit Sand City, the visiting merchants had packed up their stalls and closed their doors an hour earlier. Now they lay comfortably in bed, snoring away with dreams of growing richer by the day, drifting through seas of clouds.

The assorted people recruited here also lay in bed, but their eyes remained open. Every few minutes, they sat up and went to the windows to look at the beacon fires on the distant walls. Only after seeing that the flames still burned normally did their tension ease a little.

In the camp, every knight slept differently from usual. They lay on their beds fully dressed, armor wrapped around them and boots fastened. Only their hard helmets were missing.

Wrapped in physical exhaustion, Kanni slept fairly soundly. Ma Linya had also managed to fall asleep, while Cobert was dead to the world. Zeng Mu stood on a lookout platform atop the city wall, gazing into the distant darkness.

An Elementalist's body differed from an ordinary person's; he could go three days and two nights without sleeping, eating, or drinking. A mere day and night of exertion had instead left him feeling excited.

Tonight, the walls held three times their usual number of soldiers. They stood side by side, watching the distance on all four walls, east, south, west, and north. More than a hundred pairs of vigilant eyes kept watch, sharper than those of owls. Under their influence, the atmosphere grew oppressive. No one dared breathe too loudly, afraid that the slightest sound would draw cold stares from those around them. Zeng Mu had no desire to face those blade-sharp gazes either.

Soxia's whereabouts were unknown. Apart from Yetos, no one knew where he was now.

Xibizete was responsible for guarding the western gate, William the northern gate, and Aikimu the southern gate. That left few people Zeng Mu knew, and standing on this lookout platform, he had no one to talk to.

Yet although Zeng Mu knew only a few people in the legion, many in the legion recognized him. Some had come to know him on the morning the Black-Feathered Sparrows arrived, some after the Yellow Sand Diamondback Snake King, and others had heard about him indirectly through Ma Linya.

Some were pleased, others troubled; some felt respect, others jealousy. People were like that, and so was everything else.

Even so, those who recognized him merely felt a flicker of surprise upon seeing his face. They did not dare approach him to chat. Tonight's atmosphere was already grim, and as elite soldiers, they naturally understood that this was no time for divided attention, lest they meet the miserable fate of being punished as an example to the rest.

After watching for an hour, Zeng Mu could no longer keep standing and found a step to sit on and rest.

He had rested for less than two minutes when footsteps sounded behind him. Seeing the shifting light and shadows at his feet, he turned and spotted Yetos, for whom everyone was making way.

"Knight Commander, what brings you here in person?" Zeng Mu immediately stood and addressed him respectfully.

Coming up before him, Yetos gave a quiet snort. "What are you talking about? The enemy army may arrive tonight. Why should I not come up to the lookout myself?"

"To see my legion's Wind of Blood, and to see the enemy's Flow of the Blood River. Besides, if those three were not bound by their orders, I imagine they would certainly come here to watch as well." He gazed into the distant night, the light in his eyes seeming almost brighter than the flames beside him.

Zeng Mu turned his head toward the water clock placed at the foot of the wall inside the city. It was already four in the morning. By his reckoning, dawn would arrive in less than two hours.

These two hours would undoubtedly be the most grueling and difficult to endure. Once they passed and daylight came, the enemy would find it much harder to launch an assault.

What sort of man was Yetos? He had enlisted at sixteen and been appointed commander at twenty. For nineteen years, he had fought his way forward, dancing step by step along the edges of blades. He would not claim absolute mastery of strategy, but his deductions and predictions were almost always right. In his own mind, he put it this way:

First sparrows, then snakes, twice their strength was shorn; a moonless, windswept night was made for killing. The enemy lacked water, with a spy within; one night assault would take the city.

If he does not come tonight, then Qin Zihui truly is an incompetent general, he added inwardly with contempt.

Far away...

Scattered lights covered the earth like a fishing net, slowly moving forward amid the rumble of wheels, the clatter of hooves, and the tread of marching feet. Beyond these, there was only the whistling wind beside their ears.

A man sat on horseback at the center of the "net's" leading edge. His bearing was steady, his eyes blazing like torches. No matter how the horse beneath him rocked, he remained motionless; not even his shoulders could be seen shaking.

Beside him, Han Ling immediately flashed an ingratiating smile and began flattering him right under the horse's eyes. "General, your foresight is truly divine, and your presence so imposing. My admiration for you is like-"

"Enough, enough. Now that we are out here, stop pestering my ears." Qin Zihui cut him off, then raised a hand to rub his slightly itchy nose.

He turned toward another man on horseback and asked, "We are nearly there, aren't we?"

Qin Sui, the chief scout, hurriedly took a hand-drawn map from inside his clothes and examined it carefully. Once he had confirmed their position, he immediately replied, "General, another five hundred meters will bring us to the top of the slope, where we will have a direct view of Sand City a thousand meters away."

Qin Zihui nodded in satisfaction, then turned toward those behind him and ordered, "Pass on my command. Pick up the pace and prepare for a night raid."

His order immediately spread through the army like ink flowing into a river. Apart from Qin Zihui himself, three thousand one hundred and fifty-six soldiers would also face the circumstances and fates each imagined awaited him.