Frontier Hero: From Receiving a Convicted Woman to Becoming an Emperor for All Time

Berte scooped him up from the ground and, without a word, saddled him onto his own horse. Wochijin tried to struggle, but Berte firmly secured him to the saddle with a leather belt, leaving him no room to resist.

"General, please forgive me."

Although Berthe was apologizing, her hand gestures left no room for argument.

Wochijin cannot die.

Even if I'm going to die, I can't die here.

Wochijin understood this principle, of course. He gritted his teeth, pressed his tongue against his teeth, and snapped them shut. The sweet, metallic taste of blood exploded in his mouth. The excruciating pain was like a needle piercing from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, abruptly snapping him back to his senses.

A glimmer of light finally rekindled in those lifeless eyes.

Upon seeing this, the routed soldiers reined in their horses one by one. They turned around and looked at the vast white snowfield behind them, and at the entrance to the canyon that had been swallowed up by the wind and snow.

Then, someone started humming a hoarse barbarian folk song.

The melody was slow, like an old horse dragging a heavy load through the snow. There were no words, or rather, the words were no longer important. The indistinct syllables were uttered from chapped lips and scattered by the wind, but one voice after another joined in, dozens, hundreds, until they merged into a low sob.

These men, who had traversed the grasslands for generations and were veterans who had fought alongside Ochijin for half their lives, suddenly found themselves unable to continue singing. Their voices faltered in their throats, turning into suppressed sobs.

Tears streamed down his chapped face, freezing solid before they even hit the ground.

An old cavalryman dismounted and knelt in the snow, his forehead pressed against the ice, his voice strained as if forced from his chest: "General, we're not leaving! We'll fight these Da Jing dogs to the death!"

Wochijin lay on the saddle, coughed a few times, and blood foam kept gushing from the corners of his mouth, freezing into dark red shards on his stubble.

He suddenly remembered the night before the army set off, when torches lit up the commander's tent and the generals toasted him with mare's milk wine, saying that this southward march would surely crush Ling Shuang Pass and that the Golden Eagle Banner of the Eagle Tribe would one day be planted on the city walls of Da Jing. He had thought so too at that time.

How spirited and high-spirited they were!

They were absolutely determined to win.

But in just two days, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse.

He closed his eyes.

"You may leave."

"General—"

"I said, you leave, that's an order."

But these barbarian veterans just knelt in the snow, and not one of them moved.

"General..."

Wochijin's eyes were frighteningly red, with blood vessels running from the corners of his eyes all the way to the edge of his pupils. He stared intently at each of these faces, "The Eagle Tribe gave me glory, women, and status."

"My life, Ochijin's life, has long ceased to be my own."

"But you are different. You are still young, and your grandmother is waiting for you in the tent to make milk tea when you come back."

"I'm sorry, I can't take you home with me."

When Wochijin looked back, he saw that of the original 600-plus cavalry, more than 100 had scattered along the way, and now there were less than 500 left who could keep up.

Of the 100,000 archers of the Eagle Army, 3,000 were cavalry when they marched south, but now only 500 remain.

Just then, the wind and snow suddenly subsided for a moment, as if God had deliberately lifted the curtain, and then he saw the gray line stretching across the horizon.

Wochijin paused for a moment.

"Fenglang Mountain".

He had been here many times. In his youth, each time he led a large army south, full of vigor and high spirits. When his horses' hooves pounded across the canyon, the entire mountain echoed with the sound of iron hooves.

At that time, he always felt that this mountain was his home. He could open the door and find an inexhaustible granary and endless prey to the south. The Dajing border troops would only run away with their heads in their hands when they saw him, and they didn't even have the courage to look him in the eye.

But this time it's different.

This time, he was sent back.

Like a stray dog.

His eyes dimmed completely.

The last glimmer of light in his pupils was like a lamp wick extinguished by the wind; with a hiss, it was all gone.

Wochijin slowly turned his head and looked south.

Shen Chuxiao followed at a distance, neither too close nor too far, like a young wolf king.

The other party wasn't in a hurry to kill him; he wanted him to watch himself walk step by step toward his grave, to see the place where the Eagle Tribe had taken three generations to reach, only to be driven back to the ground in a single battle, and perhaps soon to be buried in the earth.

Upon seeing Shen Chuxiao, his expression momentarily dazed, as if he vaguely saw a young border army god of war slowly rising in the wind and snow behind him.

And he, the chief general of the Eagle Tribe, and the right-hand man of the tribal chief, was the first and largest stepping stone under the feet of that god of war.

Shen Chuxiao also reined in his horse.

The pursuing teams gradually stopped.

Shen Qiao spurred his horse to catch up, raised his hand and pointed to the gray mountain shadow at the end of the snowstorm: "That's Fenglang Mountain."

Qian Wanli squinted and looked around. He had spent more years at the border than anyone else and knew the terrain of the north like the back of his hand.

"Behind Fenglang Mountain lies the true grassland of the barbarians, not the peripheral area like the Black Stone Tribe. For hundreds of years, no one from our Great Jing army has ever crossed that mountain."

"Never anyone?"

Never.

Qian Wanli shook his head. "If the barbarians come to attack us after crossing the mountain, we can only chase them to the foot of the mountain before turning back. It's not that we don't want to chase them, it's that we don't dare, because no one knows what we'll encounter after we cross the mountain."

In the wind and snow,

The outline of Fenglang Mountain is faintly visible, like a silent threshold that has blocked generations of Dajing Border Army soldiers, becoming a line that no one dares to cross in everyone's heart.

But for Shen Chuxiao, this mountain has another name.

A name from a place very, very far away.

Langjuxu Mountain.

Then those words struck like lightning from the depths of my mind.

He certainly knew what this meant. In another time and space, there was a young man named Huo Qubing who, at the age of twenty-one, led the Han cavalry to conquer the entire grassland. He performed a sacrificial ceremony on Mount Langjuxu, and from then on, the title of "Sealing the Wolf Mountain" became the highest honor that no general dared to dream of.

And this mountain is actually called Fenglang Mountain.

Shen Chuxiao smiled gently, without pride or arrogance, only a sense of destiny that was hard to explain.

Immediately, a surge of excitement welled up within me.

At that moment, he suddenly felt that perhaps there really was some kind of arrangement in the universe. Otherwise, why would this mountain be called Fenglang Mountain? Otherwise, why would he be the one who chased them here?

"Commander Qian."

"Please speak, Captain."

Shen Chuxiao raised his riding whip and pointed it at the mountain.

"You only need to know one thing: the past is the past, and the present is the present. In the past, barbarians crossed this mountain to attack us; today, it is our turn to cross it."

He drew his sword from its sheath, his gaze fixed on the black dot that was slowly moving at the foot of the mountain.

"I will personally slay you here and now, as a sacrifice to the heavens."

Before he finished speaking, his warhorse raised its head and neighed, its front hooves off the ground. Before he could give any command, it shot through the wind and snow like an arrow released from a bow.