A silver moon hung overhead. Across the boundless icefield, tens of thousands of soldiers faced one another from afar. Cold winds stirred their banners, and armor and blades gleamed with a sinister chill. Seen from the clouds, they resembled two impregnable walls of steel.
Prince Liang and Yao Cishan, leader of the Wuma Tribe, sat mounted before the Western Sea soldiers with spears held crosswise, watching Northern Liang's elite army in the distance. Their expressions were grave, without the slightest hint of contempt, and the soldiers behind them likewise braced for a formidable enemy.
Meanwhile, Li Guangxian, who had accompanied the westward expedition, stood among the Northern Liang troops with his good friend Lu Xingjun. Hearts in their throats, they surveyed the densely packed army in the distance, searching for that familiar figure.
After the Vanguard Army won its opening victory, Northern Liang's main force had left the city under its commander-in-chief and marched west toward the Western Sea Protectorate.
Commanding thousands upon thousands of troops, Prince Liang certainly could not hole up in the city and wait for the Imperial Court to rescue him. He had swiftly gathered forces from all quarters and brought them onto Winter Tianlang Lake, deploying for a confrontation between armies.
Now less than ten li separated the two armies. Simple defenses had been erected on the icefield to resist charges by heavy cavalry, yet both sides had tacitly held their positions, merely facing each other across the ice.
Prince Liang and Yao Cishan had not ordered the allied forces to attack first because, whatever its shortcomings, Northern Liang remained a mighty nation with accumulated national strength. Now it had staked its fortunes on deploying all its elites. Unless their morale faltered, a head-on clash would inflict heavy losses on the allied force composed of