Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 153. Blossoming Hatred.
The implosion of the Grand Spell had caused the entire battlefield to come to a brief halt, but soon enough the clashes between the two sides started once again. Having experienced another failure and having had just faced the pressure of a peak darkness-element marital master of the sixth rank, the central army’s morale was at its absolute worst. The deaths on their side started accelerating once again, the whole units threatening to break and flee at any moment.
Objectively speaking, this situation had gotten out of hand so much that it came to be way past what someone with a limited battle experience like Yimar Maar could handle. Luckily for Yimar Maar, a group of one hundred ruby-golden experts from the back of the battlefield made their way towards him at this very time.
“Yimar, Master Abdain sent us to aid you in battle,” the black-haired man at the forefront said calmly as he approached Yimar Maar. “I’m to request the command of the central battlefield to be handed over to me. Does Yimar find this acceptable?” he asked amiably, making sure to keep Yimar Maar’s tendencies in mind. Abdain had even reminded him not to show any signs of contempt or disrespect as he was asking Yimar Maar to hand over the reins, so he wasn’t about to slip up and screw it all up.
Still, as friendly as the man’s approach was, the look on Yimar Maar’s face still turned for the worse. How could he not recognize that Abdain was looking down on him for failing to manage the central battlefield? He was to be replaced by a mere subordinate in the role of a leader? In any other situation, he would have let his anger overcome him and would have refused the man flat-out. However, he could see how disastrous it would be if the center fell so easily while their opponents were the famed White Guard, so he had no choice but to grit his teeth and nod at the black-haired man.
“Thank you, Yimar,” the black-haired man bowed courteously, then without wasting any time, started shouting out the orders to the respective unit-leaders. He controlled the sound with his Qi as to not needlessly alarm the entire battlefield as he gave out new orders to the army. Within less than a minute, the massive number of people started shifting positions as it assumed the new formation.
Originally, the core of one thousand Yimar Maar’s men was placed in the center, while the regular experts and the conscripts were in two more layers. Now, however, those one thousand, or rather nine hundred, remaining elites were pushed up to the front in three equal-numbered groups. Yimar Maar himself had been made to lead the centermost of them, too, and although this command displeased Yimar, the morale of his army instantly surged now that their commander moved to the forefront. Just like that, the danger of the people routing had been pretty much buried.
“What is he planning?” Yimar Maar asked himself with a sour look on his face. “It will be beneficial if I can stop the harassment from the White Guard with my elites, but what if they throw themselves in with the goal of killing me? I will still be able to run, but my people would be slaughtered for nothing,” he grumbled, but to his surprise, he saw the White Guard hesitating about what to do next. What were they so nervous about? Unable to understand, he ordered the reports from the flanks to be brought to him. Perhaps something that happened there was the issue?
Subsequently, as he listened to the reports, he was surprised to learn that the western part of the battlefield directed by Arakar was at a stalemate. True, there were four hundred White Guards there along with two Lieutenants, but it was Arakar they were speaking about! Was that damned man really so scared of the crippled Mustafa that he wouldn’t even take part in any fighting? Only that could be an explanation for the stunning lack of progress on the western battlefield.
On the other hand, the kind of a surprise that the report from the eastern battlefield brought to him was a relatively positive one. Apparently, Abdain had disguised and exchanged one thousand of his men with the regular martial masters and used them to surprise the attacking White Guards. How did he manage to do it in secret was a mystery to Yimar Maar, but the results were acceptable. In exchange for over eight hundred of Abdain’s men and thousands of the regular experts of the eastern army, around fifty or sixty of the White Guards were killed. This, in turn, would undoubtedly stall whatever progress the eastern battlefield could make by dozens of hours, if not by days.
But… if the situation was developing like that, then why were the White Guards in front of his hesitating? Wasn’t this a perfect opportunity for them to try and finish this battle early by attacking him and routing the central army? No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out why they weren’t making use of the obvious opportunity and attacking.
What Yimar Maar didn’t know, though, was that at a spot a few kilometers behind him, Abdain was cursing quietly with a furious look on his face. The thousand men he had been painstakingly swapping one by one in utter secrecy for the regular corps throughout the days were the cream of the crop of his subordinates! He understood that there was no way the enemy spies would miss him disappearing or changing spots with a double, so he had settled for the second best option. A mere few moments ago, he had seen that his people had lured the two hundred White Guards deep into their army and successfully and encircled them… but the final results were a total disaster!
He didn’t expect his subordinates to actually wipe out those two hundred White Guards and the Lieutenant leading them, but he had assumed that at least sixty to seventy percent of them would be killed! Yet, merely fifty of the White Guards had lost their lives while over eight hundred of his best men had been killed. It couldn’t have happened had their enemies been oblivious to the ambush… so could it be that the information had leaked? Was the god-forsaken Guild of Shadows meddling in their war again, but this time on the other side? If so, then it was almost catastrophic!
“No… It’s more likely that we were still underestimating the elites of the White Guard,” he told himself after a moment of thought. In the end, he hadn’t had nearly as much time to hone his men in comparison to Arakar. The quality of his foundation was also lower by almost two levels, so he hadn’t been able to provide them with the best possible Cultivation Manuals and martial techniques. In the end, his ruby-golden-robed experts were probably a whole class weaker than Arakar’s silver-golden-robed subordinates. Given the difference in strength, it wasn’t so strange for the White Guard to make a quick work of them before retreating in time.
“No matter how many wolves you send, it will be hard for them to kill a bunch of tigers,” he muttered, then breathed out as he calmed down. “Still, they had probably exhausted themselves quite badly. The correct choice to make in those circumstances would be to…” he mused, thinking that it would be good if he could confirm one thing first. And, as unreliable as the flying magical beasts had lately proved to be, he saw one flying towards him just the next moment.
He allowed the eagle to land on his forearm and took the interspatial ring that was attached to its leg. He quickly fed the eagle a piece of meat, then took a look at the report. Instantly, his expression turned into one expressing a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. “New orders,” he said calmly and was quickly approached by the three messengers he had sent a glance towards.
“Khulam will take five hundred of his men, join up with the two hundred who survived and direct the eastern battlefield. Tell him that he is to press his enemies and make sure they have no time to recover their energy. Threaten the flanks of the central battlefield to make them move, it should be simple. Tell him that he needs to keep the army in fighting shape for forty-eight hours from this moment onwards.”
“Tell Yimar Maar that I’m taking the rest of my men and going after Arslan. If Mustafa moves to pursue me, make him use his Qi to cause his Qi Origin to break down quicker.”
“Request Arakar to lend some of his elites in case Mustafa comes out to chase after me. It’s fine if he doesn’t agree though.”
“Also, two more things. First, relay the contents of the message to Khulam to Yimar Maar and Arakar. I should be able to wrap it all up in twenty-four hours, but I want to have forty-eight to avoid any complications. Second, deliver this report from the north-east to the two of them too.”
He instructed the three men one after another and handed them the interspatial ring from the eagle. Then, without wasting any time, he took the remaining one thousand of his subordinates and headed to the north-east. The sight of him moving out stirred the entire battlefield, be it on their side or on the side of Makarash. However, there was one man who almost yelled out in anger when he received the matter-of-fact news from Abdain.
“What is he thinking?! He didn’t even consult it with me!” Yimar Maar clenched his fists while fuming with anger. “He’s been getting more and more disobedient lately. What’s up with him? He swore to serve me for life… but is he having different thoughts now that his personal power has grown bigger than mine?” he asked himself, not too sure what he should do about Abdain. He would have likely agreed if Abdain asked, especially since after he skimmed through the report the messenger had given him he managed to calm down and think about the matter with a cool head, but he just couldn’t accept Abdain doing whatever he wanted in this manner! Once this war was over, he would need to have a serious talk with him.
Meanwhile, to the west, Arakar laughed in a very much amused manner. “He’s gone without asking Maar’s permission huh? I bet he wanted to save time arguing like it had happened yesterday. Good, it’s a good judgment. I doubt Mustafa will move personally if it’s only Abdain who moves out. That Arslan kid should be protected well enough to handle himself… but he sure is up for a nasty surprise,” he couldn’t help it and said all of it to himself, a wide smile present on his face. As far as he had judged Yimar Maar to be second-rate or even lower, his opinion of Abdain kept rising steadily.
“Maybe I should try and invite him to become one of my vice-captains. He’s got both brain and brawl, so he would be very useful,” he mused, almost tempted to plot a little in order to get Yimar Maar killed during the following day or two. However, he discarded the idea pretty soon. He understood that despite how Abdain acted on the surface, he was a very honorable person. The fact that he had dutifully served Yimar Maar even though he had been invited to become a Great General by the Great Prophet himself more than enough vouched for the quality of his character. If Abdain winded that he had had a hand in Yimar Maar’s death, he would be more likely to seek revenge than to agree to work under him. Thus, as enticing as the plan was, it wasn’t worth the hassle.
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As for the response from Mustafa’s side, seeing Abdain take one thousand of his men and head off, he revealed a slight smile without getting too agitated.
“Lay waste to them,” he said quietly, but his voice easily reached the ears of Kasim and the other White Guards in the central battlefield. Now that the variable in the back was gone, lured out by his son, it was time to make Yimar Maar pay the price in blood. It was the time to make the western world remember what the consequences of challenging Makarash were!
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One hour after the sunrise, around three hours before the battle between Mustafa’s White Guard and the forces centered around Yimar Maar began, a certain series of events started unfolding on the highland terrain of the southern Guode Yimarate. As the Prophet claimed, his eight million people started pouring into the lands just around the sunrise and as it had been agreed upon, six million of them set out to the north-west while two million headed straight north.
With such a big group moving out, it would take hours upon hours for all of them to leave the Ruishi Federation. Paired up with the fact that those millions of people weren’t going about looting and pillaging at random, everyone on Arslan’s side thought that Yimar Maar’s forces would first allow everyone to enter and only then start attacking in order to find Arslan. And, they would have been right had it been Yimar Maar who was in charge of planning this battle out.
Instead, just an hour after entering the Guode Yimarate, some unsettling news reached the ears of Arslan and his protectors. As they were moving in the third line of the many medium-sized groups, they hadn’t seen it directly, but they were close enough to learn of what happened very quickly. By the looks of it… their enemies weren’t about to ‘try and find him’ in the sea of people, or at least not in the exact same way they had been expecting to encounter.
As the news went, a bunch of hundred-man-strong groups of martial and spiritual masters was attacking and slaughtering the groups of refugees without mercy. They didn’t care if they were children, women or elderly, everyone was killed without exception. It had been merely half an hour since they started the massacre, but the estimated number of casualties had already reached fifty thousand. The news from the groups led by the Prophet was yet to arrive, but it was probably safe to assume that they had lost no fewer people than their second party.
According to the original plan, they were supposed to hide their presence and only attack when their enemies got close… but the circumstance had changed. Not only was Reian boiling with a desire to battle, but those that had been ‘lured’ here were small fry. Having them stay here would make little difference to the battle of Mustafa’s, so there was little point in staying hidden as the innocent were being killed in the tens of thousands.
“And that’s why I want to send my men to get rid of those roaming parties,” Julien told Arslan. In the heart of the battle he wouldn’t look for the boy’s opinion, but since the things didn’t develop that far yet, he saw it fit to seek Arslan’s agreement beforehand. After all, they were allied with him and his Makarash… no, it wasn’t that. Simply, Arslan’s maturity and the strength of his character were so far above his young age that he saw it as sensible to seek the boy’s opinion first.
“Do it,” Arslan replied without even seeking an advice from Sirius or trying to sneak a glance at him. He had been thinking about their plans a lot, so he was mentally prepared for the situation he had managed to predict on his own or had talked about with Jasmine and Sirius. Julien had also explained his reasoning to him and he agreed; they needed to pull over more of Yimar Maar’s men than that, so revealing their presence would be good. Yes, it would be good… hm?
“Wait.” Just as Julien was about to send the few of his men off to deliver the orders, Arslan stopped him. With a slight frown on his face, Julien gestured his people to wait and look at Arslan. “Take me with you too. Since we want to get more of their people to come, don’t we need to show that I’m here, not just that your men are present? There’s no need to hide anymore, is there?”
Hearing Arslan say so, Julien and the other adults in close vicinity were a little stunned. The idea of having Arslan blatantly announce his presence didn’t even cross their minds as their ultimate goal was to protect this very boy. As simple as this proposal was, none of them had thought to suggest it. Moreover, the fact that the idea came from the five-year-old boy who appeared not to hesitate at all even though he was pretty much inviting people to attack him added to everyone’s amazement.
“If you’re sure about it, then let’s do it,” Julien said with a smile, having taken a few seconds to calm himself down. He chuckled a little when Arslan’s face brightened up, then glanced at Sirius who simply nodded in agreement. “So be it! Let’s change clothes, everyone,” he said enthusiastically and swapped his own break greyish cloak for a pure-white one, causing his Cherubim to do the same. After exchanging a meaningful look with their General, three out of the five messengers from the five remaining units followed suit, and although they naturally didn’t go for the clothing of their Ruishi Federation’s forces, they still picked something that would stand out a lot.
As for Arslan, Sirius, and Kasha, the three of them also clad themselves in white. However, contrary to the pure-white uniforms Julien and his people put on, their clothes also had the magnificent sigil of the roaring tiger on them. The sigil of Makarash that the White Guard only wore when they went to war… it made their identities clearer than clear. There was, after all, only one child in the whole world who had the qualifications to wear white clothing with the sigil of the roaring tiger.
A brief while later, Reian noticed the change in the greater half of Julien’s troops and in his three companions. No smile emerged on his face, but his eyes lit up with grim killing intent. He also swapped his originally inconspicuous clothes for his uniform of a White Guard, then after confirming that no imminent danger was upon Arslan, he ran off to the north, quickly overtaking the orderly-moving units under Julien’s command. At this moment, he was truly grateful to Julien for suggesting that he roam independently from the rest of their experts. Unless he spilled a lot of blood of his enemies, he doubted he would be able to preserve his sanity and prevent himself from going mad from rage.
Just a few minutes later, Reian encountered one of the hundred-man-strong units that were in the middle of killing a frightened group of refugees. By that point, whatever guardians there had been to take care of the children had died, likely attempting to protect their kids. The same went for elderly, all of whom didn’t hesitate to shield their scion with their own old bodies as they clung onto the indistinct thread of hope that someone would appear and save them.
On most occasions, such hopeful wishes would remain unanswered. However, this particular group in distress was very lucky. The older and younger children were all expecting to die within next few dozen seconds, but all of the sudden, the whole area around them was overcome with an unnaturally powerful gust of wind. Before anyone could understand what was going on, including the one hundred martial masters that were carrying out the massacre, the white blur entered the battlefield and flashed from one place to another at a speed far beyond what those present could perceive.
With the aid of the Profound Mystery of Heavenly Wind, Reian killed his enemies one after another, without a shred of mercy and with horrifying ruthlessness. Even though there was no need for him to go that far, he used his wind to explode the bodies of those martial masters into a bloody paste or released hundreds of petite wind blades in order to turn them into mincemeat. He struck with his sword, but also with his bare hands and legs as he crushed the bodies of his enemies with powerful punches and kicks. In a mere moment, the one hundred men had all transformed into a pile of gore and joined their victims in the afterworld, leaving the originally loud and chaotic field deathly silent.
Amongst the scared, dumbfounded kids, the figure of a golden-haired and blue-eyed man stood still, his white clothing stained in crimson liquid, his sword and limbs dripping with the drops of blood. Somehow, even though they had been saved by this person, not one of the kids made any sound. Some of them even came to think that a Demon had descended upon earth as they looked at Reian’s terrifying visage and cold, heartless smile on his otherwise handsome face.
Alas, before any of the few hundred kids that survived could gather enough courage to speak, Reian ran off in search of more people to kill. He didn’t need to look for long before he stumbled upon another of the hundred-man teams, though this time it looked like he was too late to save anyone as the entire grassland by the roadside was littered with the corpses of young and old. Yet, he didn’t spare those deaths much thought at all as he jumped into the fray of battle once more. Giving vent to his anger and frustration, he killed and killed, every time making sure that none escaped with their lives. He sought out one group of enemy marital masters after another, each encounter leaving less and less white spots on his innately white clothing.
Blood, gore, the feeling of tearing someone’s body into pieces with his own hand, the feeling of cutting their flesh with his sword… it all brought a degree of relief to the great fury that was dwelling deep inside him. When they had received the news of Jasmine’s death, he had been suppressing those emotions, knowing how pointless it would be for him to explode with anger back there. However, now there was nothing to restrain him; he killed and killed, not even sure how many lives he had taken in his rampage. Finally, when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to find any more enemies, he clenched his fists and roared to the sky, his yell carrying all the fury, helplessness, and unfulfilled yearning that were rampaging about within his heart and soul.
The unspeakable wrath… for the first time in his life, Reian was overcome by it to his very core, the essence of the emotion taking a clear shape within his soul.
“…”
“… Scary.”
The five thirty-six-man-strong units of Julien’s men all watched Reian with a mixture of sympathy and fear in their eyes. Of the thirty hundred-man units that were doing the killing, Reian alone had slaughtered twenty-two, while three of their units which had revealed themselves only killed off the remaining eight. The rate at which Reian found and killed those people was staggering, but what truly shook those hardened elites was the image of the blood-covered Reian that emerged at the end of this carnage. The few of them who had helped Julien take his revenge a decade ago were reminded of how their General looked back then.
They had seen Reian simply as a foreign expert until now, but a sense of kinship arose within their hearts as they watched Reian’s suffering. Who amongst them didn’t have a grudge he wanted to repay? Be it a personal one or one coming from further down their family line, almost all of them had someone they wished to kill amongst Ikarians. As simple as it was to say to differentiate between those who belonged to Makarash and the rest of Arkaria, it wasn’t so easy for them to accept. Yet, because Reian wasn’t an Ikarian and because they could sympathize with him, their entire attitude took a shift for the better as they came to view Reian, and thus the entire Makarash, more favorably.
“The rats should deliver the news,” Julien said quietly as he stood at Arslan’s side. “We didn’t kill off the random spies that were roaming close to us and we even allowed some of them to sweep up with their aura and retreat, so they should have confirmed that you are indeed you,” he added, trying to lead the subject away from the one of Reian and Jasmine. However, Arslan only nodded at him and continued looking at the faraway figure of Reian, so his attempt proved to be unsuccessful.
“Let us regroup a dozen kilometers more to the west,” Julien said helplessly, aware that Arslan wasn’t truly listening to him. “Since there’s no need for us to keep hiding, we can move the battlefield away from those kids,” he added and once more, received a silent nod from Arslan. Suppressing a sigh, he relayed the orders to his five subordinate teams.