Xu Xiao's arrival made Zhao Hu breathe a sigh of relief. Although he resented Xu Xiao for killing many of his brothers in the Palace Front Army, he could not deny that the man was immensely powerful.
His power was something anyone who had not experienced it firsthand could never imagine.
Although Zhao Hu had not taken part in the unrest that evening, he knew how formidable the soldiers under his command were.
In less than a quarter of an hour, three thousand Palace Front Army soldiers had been routed. No one but an immortal could have done it.
"Military Command Commissioner, I was ordered to guard Xuande Gate and await your arrival."
Hatred aside, Zhao Hu had not forgotten his duty. Xu Xiao was the Military Command Commissioner appointed by the emperor, and Zhao Hu naturally acknowledged him as such.
"All right, fall back. Leave this to me."
Xu Xiao spoke with complete confidence. Facing ten thousand men alone, he felt not the slightest panic.
Looking down from a corner of the sky, he saw people packed densely across the ground. Many soldiers had already begun filling in the moat beside the imperial city.
Meanwhile, the archers opposite them were drawing their bows and nocking arrows again, preparing to loose another volley.
In the two seconds Xu Xiao and Zhao Hu spent talking, another rain of arrows came flying from the other side.
The vast black mass formed a curtain directly above Xu Xiao, blotting out even the bright moonlight.
"Military Command Commissioner, watch out!"
"No need to panic. It's only a rain of arrows."
Xu Xiao looked up. Rather than use Telekinesis to hold the arrows in place, he made the fireballs he had stopped earlier spin upward around him.
Flames danced, spiraling upward like a winding fire dragon before colliding with the rain of arrows falling from the sky.
"Bang!"
First came a tremendous crash, followed by an explosive burst of flame!
The first few fireballs exploded, kindling an orange-red ball of fire in midair.
The intense heat and blast wave scattered and ignited the incoming arrows, sending them falling like burning kindling.
An invisible Telekinesis barrier two meters in front of Xu Xiao protected him, leaving him unharmed. Neither the flames nor the blast wave could threaten him.
The soldiers below were less fortunate. Flaming arrows scattered in every direction, many falling into the crowd.
Fortunately, a good number of the Imperial Army soldiers wore armor, and most suffered only minor injuries.
He truly is an immortal!
Quite a few soldiers found themselves marveling, Zhao Hu among them.
He was confident that he could withstand a few volleys of arrows through the external martial arts he had cultivated by training his body, but he could never have neutralized the attack as effortlessly and naturally as Xu Xiao.
"All right, it would be rude not to return the favor. I'll go pay them a visit."
Xu Xiao's figure shot forward with a swish, the fireballs that had not fully exploded still circling him.
"What the hell is that?" Qin Jingzhong and several senior generals watched Xu Xiao appear from afar.
They had never seen anyone fly before. The way the fireballs launched by the cannons had been controlled and the rain of arrows stopped was even further beyond their imagination.
Could this be the sorcerer who controls the emperor, the one the empress dowager spoke of?
At that moment, an inexplicable sense of panic rose in Qin Jingzhong's heart.
He felt as though he had been utterly duped. This man did not seem to be an ordinary sorcerer from the martial world!
But before he could think any further, Xu Xiao appeared above the army's formation, and the fireballs spinning around him plunged down at great speed.
"Boom!" "Boom!"
Unlike attacks from catapults, which were terribly inaccurate and relied entirely on luck,
the fireballs circling Xu Xiao were genuine bombs.
He had no idea how these Northern Song fireballs were made. They could both burn and explode, and after falling from high in the air, they were no less powerful than grenades.
Almost as soon as they hit the ground, soldiers within five meters were either killed or injured by the blasts or engulfed in flames. All fled in panic.
Humans feared the unknown, especially something that could fly in the dead of night and hurt people.
No one knew who shouted, "A ghost!" but troops soon began to panic.
"Hold your ground! Hold your ground! On my command, all archers, aim at the man in the sky and shoot! A thousand gold pieces to whoever brings him down!"
As Qin Jingzhong shouted, he and his personal guards drew their bows and nocked arrows from horseback, preparing to set an example.
But he overlooked the cardinal rule that the first priority on a battlefield was not to expose himself.
The army numbered over twenty thousand. Though Xu Xiao was very confident in himself, he had never intended to kill them all.
He had come mainly to carry out a decapitation strike.
The moment Qin Jingzhong spoke up, his voice and the tall steed beneath him made Xu Xiao recognize him as the head. Xu Xiao immediately made his move.
Before Qin Jingzhong could shoot, Xu Xiao raised his right hand, and invisible Telekinesis covered an area a hundred meters around him.
To display his invincible bearing, Xu Xiao did not use his usual method of harvesting lives with iron strips. Instead, he prepared to do something flashier.
"Come to me!"
Xu Xiao swept his Telekinesis across the battlefield, using whatever lay at hand.
Ammunition beside the nearby catapults, arrows as thick as a child's arm beside the eight-ox crossbows, weapons carried by the soldiers.
Sabers, spears, swords, halberds, hammers, clubs, and arrows-Xu Xiao locked onto every one of them and sent them all flying into the sky.
The weapons then spun through the air, forming a massive circle behind Xu Xiao.
Imitation: Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Origin
Xu Xiao had wanted to do this for a long time. Whatever its killing power, an attack like this was bound to look cool enough and strike fear into people's hearts.
"That's!!!"
"An immortal?"
Qin Jingzhong froze with his bow drawn and arrow nocked, and the soldiers on the ground were equally dumbfounded!
None of them had ever seen such a sight. Even those so-called martial arts experts surely could not have done this, could they?
"I am Xu Xiao, Military Command Commissioner of the Great Song! I have come today to wipe out you who intend to rebel!"
Internal Energy carried his voice in every direction.
Before beating people, he naturally had to let them know who was doing the beating. It would also establish his own authority.
The next second, the weapons circling behind Xu Xiao streamed down one after another like a torrent from the heavens.
Empowered by Telekinesis, the weapons fell faster than the speed of sound. Neither the soldiers' armor nor their martial arts could stop them.
"Go!"
Xu Xiao pointed at the general on the tall steed in the distance, and the metal storm swept down.
In an instant, nothing remained in its path but blood and mangled flesh. Hardly even a scream was heard.
"How dare you, villain!!"
His eyes blood-red, Qin Jingzhong flipped off his horse, then surged his Internal Energy and struck his Ferghana horse with all his might.
The steed, weighing several hundred kilograms, was sent flying sideways into the oncoming metal storm and instantly reduced to bloody pulp.
Seizing the opportunity, Qin Jingzhong pushed off with both feet and shot backward like an arrow loosed from a bow, ready to flee!
He couldn't fight this. There was simply no fighting it. How could any human stand against this?
Qin Jingzhong now bitterly resented Empress Dowager Gao. If he had known beforehand that this was the sort of person he would face, he would never have come, even on pain of death.
"Trying to run? Can you get away?"
How could Xu Xiao let someone he wanted dead escape?
As usual, a crushing force of Telekinesis descended.
Qin Jingzhong had only just fled a dozen meters or so when he felt as though he had been punched by a supreme expert. He spat out a mouthful of blood, and before he could understand what was happening,
the sabers, spears, swords, and halberds raining from the sky had already pierced him into mangled flesh.
Before Pseudo: Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Origin, empowered by Telekinesis, the army's external martial arts and protective Internal Qi were nothing but illusions.
"The chief villain has been executed! Will you rebels still resist to the bitter end?"
Xu Xiao flew in midair, his voice amplified by Internal Energy until it boomed like thunder.
Since Xu Xiao's last attack had been aimed at the area around Qin Jingzhong, nearly all the personal guards and generals beside him had been swept up in one net.
Now, faced with Xu Xiao's rebuke, not a single general stepped forward to retort. The rank-and-file soldiers were all bewildered.
They had been told they were entering the palace to kill the villain and purge the emperor's court. How had they become rebels instead?
"You rebels! If you persist in rebellion, I'll slaughter every last one of you here today!"
Xu Xiao shouted at them again and pointed. The weapons on the ground began to rise once more, buzzing as they went.
He was getting ready to sweep them away with another Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Origin!
"Clink."
The first weapon fell to the ground. A soldier who had been nearby but had luckily escaped the attack had seen his companions smashed into meat paste by several weapons, and he no longer had any thought of resisting.
"I surrender!"
"My lord! We surrender! We aren't rebels."
"My lord, we were deceived! We're willing to surrender!"
The soldiers' fragile psychological defenses crumbled the moment they saw Xu Xiao raise his hand.
As cries of surrender rose one after another, soldiers everywhere laid down their weapons and knelt.