Chapter 1906: Winding Up the Battle! Slaughter! (I)
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Swoos.h.!.+
w.a.n.g Chong suddenly shook his palm, upon which a shattered gla.s.s ball and a severed arm flew through the air and into his hand, drawing everyone’s attention.
“It’s Khatabah’s arm!”
As everyone looked over, they immediately recognized what it was.
The severed arm in w.a.n.g Chong’s hand was smooth and slender, like it was made of refined jade. On the index finger was an imprint left by a ring. This was the hand of Khatabah, a legend of a generation who had died on this day.
“It was probably that Ifrit Core that protected this arm!”
Everyone glanced at the remnants of the gla.s.s ball and seemed to understand what had happened, but their attention was quickly drawn away by something else.
Right in front of everyone’s eyes, Khatabah’s smooth and healthy arm began to rapidly shrivel as if all its strength was being drained away, and countless black dots appeared across the surface. By the end, it had turned into a shriveled claw akin to a tree branch.
w.a.n.g Zhongsi walked over and examined the shriveled claw.
“No one is immortal. It seems that even though he lived for more than one hundred years, it came with a price. He wasn’t as strong as he appeared, and when you broke his fusion with the Ifrit, you injured his origin. If he had not self-detonated, he probably wouldn’t have lasted for very long anyway!”
“Mm.”
w.a.n.g Chong nodded. He agreed on one point with w.a.n.g Zhongsi, but there was another part that he disagreed on.
Is there really no one immortal in this world?
w.a.n.g Chong suddenly thought back to those mysterious men in black. He knew that these people had existed for an extremely long time, with the oldest of them probably exceeding one thousand years in lifespan. But the Crown Prince’s Junior Guardian knew nothing of these things.
w.a.n.g Chong quickly broke out of his stupor.
“Khatabah is dead. Our first priority now is to take care of the remaining Arab soldiers!”
w.a.n.g Chong tossed Khatabah’s arm to the ground and quickly turned his attention to the Arab cavalry within the sandstorm.
While the leader was dead, his minions remained. Everyone had worked together to kill Khatabah, but the more than one million Arab cavalry still presented a major threat to the Central Plains.
Upon hearing w.a.n.g Chong’s words, w.a.n.g Zhongsi, Zhangchou Jianqiong, An Sishun… all the Tang commanders, including the martial arts experts, turned to the north, which was still engulfed by the sandstorm.
The battle was still ongoing. Khatabah’s death had thrown the Arab cavalry into disorder, and Abu Muslim and Adnan had recognized that the situation was bad and fled north under the cover of the sandstorm. The current question facing the group was how to eliminate as many of the Arab soldiers as possible so as to prevent a war of annihilation from taking place in the future.
“Don’t worry. We still have a chance. I can use the sandstorm to hold them down for about another hour!”
w.a.n.g Chong’s first words immediately left everyone startled. Though they had their guesses, none of them had really imagined that this vast storm was really w.a.n.g Chong’s doing.
Meanwhile, w.a.n.g Chong continued to speak.
“Lord Junior Guardian, Zhangchou Jianqiong, Gao Xianzhi, An Sishun, take command of your troops and advance north from the southwest and southeast. Work with Bahram and the Aswaran Cataphracts of the Sa.s.sanid Dynasty to scatter the Arabs. Kill as many as you can and stop them from gathering together!
“Abusi, have your Tongluo Cavalry attack from the east. Work with the Wushang Cavalry to scatter them as much as you can. If you notice any large numbers of Arab cavalry gathering, charge in there and disperse them.”
w.a.n.g Chong issued a string of orders. Fifteen minutes had pa.s.sed some time ago, and the Stone of Destiny’s ‘Power’ ability was extremely taxing on Destiny Energy. w.a.n.g Chong could no longer keep the Arabs for very long. Moreover, the sandstorm was weakening with every pa.s.sing moment.
They didn’t have much time left.
“Yes!”
The other commanders quickly came to their senses and left with their orders, charging at the remaining one-million-some Arab cavalry from various directions.
Only now had they reached the most important phase of the battle.
This was a war between the Great Tang and Arabia with existence on the line. The Arabs had mobilized all their forces, an army of 2.6 million soldiers, and after two days of bitter fighting, they had lost more than one million soldiers. But still, the Arabian Empire had around 1.3 million soldiers on the battlefield.
As for the Great Tang side, it had come with six-hundred-thousand-some soldiers, and with Bahram’s army hidden in the Tibetan Plateau, they had around eight hundred thousand. Over the course of the battle, the Great Tang had lost two-hundred-thousand-some elites, and with the Sa.s.sanid reinforcements, they had around five hundred thousand soldiers, enough to fight a battle with Arabia.
In order to completely crush the Arabian Empire and ensure that it could no longer compete with the Great Tang and cause any more trouble, w.a.n.g Chong would not permit that army of more than one million soldiers to return.
Buzz!
As w.a.n.g Chong sat atop the White-hoofed Shadow with the Crown of Confucius on his head, waves of Psychic Energy rolled off him, splitting into nearly one hundred streams of Psychic Energy that linked him together with the minds of Zhangchou Jianqiong, An Sishun, Gao Xianzhi, the various martial arts t.i.tans, and the other military officers.
Dividing one’s mind placed a very heavy burden on the soul. A normal martial artist would be considered superb if they could divide their Psychic Energy into five or six strands.
Those who could create more than ten were few and far between, and people like w.a.n.g Chong who could create nearly one hundred at the same time were simply unheard of. This was only possible because w.a.n.g Chong had absorbed the High Priest’s Psychic Energy and donned the Crown of Confucius.
There was probably no one except w.a.n.g Chong capable of this feat. Not only that, w.a.n.g Chong had been the one who had started this sandstorm in the first place, so with the Stone of Destiny, he could accurately see the movements of the Arab cavalry in the sandstorm.
“Kiiill!”
War cries could be heard through the blowing sands as all the Tang soldiers threw themselves into the battle.
This was a battle of extermination, solely for the purpose of killing any Arabs who could still fight.
Without Khatabah to oversee the battle and with the entry of the six Tang commanders, the Arabs verged on collapse. Thud! Thud! Thud! Countless Arabs dropped dead to the ground amidst the raging sandstorm and the flas.h.i.+ng of cold steel.
With each pa.s.sing moment, tens of thousands of Arab hors.e.m.e.n were dying.
One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand…
When the five-hundred-thousand-some soldiers of the Tang-Sa.s.sanid army took up the butcher’s knife, the Arab losses soared to their highest point. Morale was at its nadir and the army was lost and scattered… At this moment, the Arab hors.e.m.e.n were even worse than infantry.
The charge of the Tang soldiers had soon inflicted one million losses on the Arab army, and the number was continuing to climb.
“Ah!”
The screams of dying were constant, and those Arab hors.e.m.e.n still alive ran around in panic like headless flies, charging here and there. But no matter where they tried to break out, numerous Tang soldiers would be waiting for them.
The Arabs still had the advantage in numbers, outnumbering the Tang-Sa.s.sanid army by at least one hundred thousand soldiers. But in this sandstorm, they were incapable of making full use of this advantage.
The Arab hors.e.m.e.n felt as if the Arabs were the ones who were outnumbered.
Whenever they discovered another group of fellow soldiers, Tang soldiers would charge in before they could celebrate.
Each soldier felt as if they were facing several hundred, several thousand, or perhaps even the entire Tang army by themselves. It was a feeling of despair!
“Everyone, get together! Don’t get separated!
“The Tang don’t have as many as we do! We haven’t lost this battle yet!
“Try and join with the other soldiers! As long as we can combine all our strength, we can teach these infidels a sharp lesson!”
An isolated group of Arab soldiers had gathered, led by a sharp-eyed general who was bellowing orders.
This general seemed to be strong and extremely experienced. In the middle of this mayhem, he had still managed to gather scattered soldiers from different groups into a significant force.
But despite the generals’ attempts to soothe his soldiers, his men were still frantic and uneasy, the screams coming in from all sides setting their nerves on edge.
“The Hierophant is dead, the High Priest is dead, and the Behemoth Army is finished… The Arabian Empire is finished!”
An Arab horseman paled as he looked fearfully at the sandstorm around him, his morale at an all-time low.
“What did you say? Say it again! Who’s finished?”
The Arab general turned his cold eyes on that horseman. Whoos.h.!.+ Before the Arab horseman could react, a whip covered in sharp barbs wrapped around the Arab horseman and held him up in the air.
“I-I didn’t say anything! Nothing!”
The Arab horseman floated in the air, struggling in panic.