Origin Paradise!

“I believe you. I will request the reward from my father on behalf of the prince for the head of a second-rank military officer.”

"Request credit from the imperial court."

"Your Highness, there is truly no difference."

"I am the Prince Zong."

Pei Yuye: "..."

Yes, after all, it's the Liang imperial family's domain.

Chapter 558 Skeleton Dragon Rider

On the seventh day of the ninth month of the twentieth year of Yongqing.

Dark clouds gathered.

As night fell, the Dengfeng commander-in-chief ordered thousands of refugees to be driven forward to the city to weep. These refugees, who had lost their homes, were ragged and cried incessantly, moving all the soldiers guarding the city walls.

"Your Highness, Lord Qingtian, please let me in!"

"Let me in, my son is inside!"

"Sir, please have mercy! My nephew is also from the Dongyang Guard!"

Wuyang County is less than 40 li away from Dongyang City, which is almost the only place for people to go out to make a living.

Two thousand Northern Wei soldiers followed closely behind, slashing at the refugees who couldn't keep up with the ranks. The refugees desperately converged on the north gate, their cries of agony filling the air.

North of the city wall in Dongyang, in front of the city gate.

Not long after Jiang He sat down, the provincial inspector and other officials, along with officers from the northern wall, arrived.

"Your Highness, this gate must not be opened. There are over a thousand able-bodied men inside, and there are definitely fierce soldiers from the Northern Wei hiding there. If the gate is opened, the city will fall!" Commander Sheng Gui spoke with absolute certainty. Having risen from a lowly soldier to the rank of a third-grade officer, his experience as a general told him that there was definitely a trap inside.

"Please, Your Highness, have mercy!"

The garrison commander of the north wall rushed out of the ranks, kowtowing repeatedly without hesitation, and said in a trembling voice, "My father is just outside the city. He raised me for thirty years, and filial piety is paramount. I beg Your Highness to grant me permission to enter the city. I will take full responsibility for everything, and I will not hesitate to be executed afterward!"

"You son of a bitch, how are you going to take responsibility?"

"It would be better to open only a small portion and preserve the rest."

"Impossible."

“This is a psychological warfare tactic,” Pei Yuye sighed. “Even if we don’t open the gates, keeping the refugees out will greatly damage morale.”

On the north wall, two thousand soldiers were looking down, especially the more than three hundred disciples of the Dongyang Sect. If it weren't for the sect leader of the fourth realm stopping them, some of the juniors would have rushed down and opened the city gates on their own.

Pei Yu hesitated for a moment, then clasped his hands and said, "One cannot have both fish and bear's paw. It is a matter of choosing the bear's paw over the fish. With the three counties of Wuyang ahead, whether the 300,000 people of the entire city will die under the sword of the Northern Wei is all up to Your Highness. I hope Your Highness will make the decision."

Jiang He remained silent, only gazing out of the city.

Several thousand refugees were in front, followed by two thousand Northern Wei soldiers, and then came the vanguard of over ten thousand soldiers, including the Dengfeng general and half of the surrendered troops. Clearly, General Hou intended to let some of the surrendered soldiers see for themselves that the Southern Liang and the Northern Wei were not actually any different.

"If we surrender but do not win, what is the point of fighting?"

Pei Yu frowned. There was no such sentence in military books. The prince meant something like this: the fighting power of a surrendered army is not worth expecting before a victory is achieved.

"Open the city gates," Jiang He said calmly.

Pei Yuye, the Provincial Surveillance Commissioner, and Sheng Gui were all startled at the same time.

"I regard both fish and bear's paw as worthless."

Just then, Pei Weidu, a member of the Pei clan, came running up and shouted, "Uncle, three thousand elite cavalry have gathered at the city gate!"

"what!"

……

Plains outside the city.

The war drums thundered, and smoke and dust obscured the sun.

Countless banners rose up like a dense forest, and hundreds of scouts patrolled around the battlefield.

On the right side of the army formation, tens of thousands of Tiange cavalry were arrayed, with the first thousand of them being iron cavalrymen, each carrying a spear and a sword, wearing heavy armor of grade B Yang steel, and riding tall warhorses with hooves as strong as pillars.

The cavalry commander, wearing a phoenix-winged helmet and even more exquisite chainmail, was imposing and awe-inspiring. Behind him, a crimson battle flag fluttered in the wind, clearly indicating that he was a master of the third realm of profound cultivation.

The central army formation consisted of neatly arranged infantry squares. The shields of the swordsmen were engraved with the family crest of the Northern Wei Hou clan, while the spearmen wielded eighteen-foot-long steel spears with sharp tips. The elite infantry formation resembled a steel forest, interspersed with a large number of archers and crossbowmen.

On the General's Platform.

General Hou patiently peeled an orange, ate half of it in one bite, paused for a moment, and then casually handed the orange to the middle-aged scholar beside him.

"What do you think, Mr. Jian?" General Hou laughed. "Prince Yong is only eighteen years old, just a greenhorn. Why don't we take a gamble and see if he can harden his heart?"

"Gambling has winners and losers; not gambling means you don't lose."

As soon as he finished speaking, Mr. Jian's face contorted in shock. He stared at the orange in his hand, its sourness making his scalp tingle.

"Hahaha, the seventh candidate in the world is also my defeated opponent. Oranges grow differently in the north and south. I ate until midnight to find such a rare fruit."

General Hou burst into laughter, more overjoyed than when he captured Dengfeng.

Mr. Jian couldn't help but clench his fists. The prestigious upbringing of the Jiangbei Moral Sect's Sword Immortal lineage made his chest ache slightly.

But before Mr. Jian could speak...

The north gate of Dongyang City suddenly opened with a roar.

On the general's platform, the pupils of both men shrank almost simultaneously.

Outside the city, the eyes of thousands of refugees gradually shifted from the joy of surviving a catastrophe to unease and despair.

A figure in a red robe leaped down from the city wall and mounted a terrifying warhorse with a dragon's head and a horse's body. Three thousand skeleton dragon riders stomped their feet at the same time, causing the ground to tremble and dust to rise.

Whether friend or foe, everyone was astonished by this unexpected elite cavalry force, because all three thousand of them were experts at the second level. In terms of both quantity and quality, they were comparable to the private soldiers of powerful families accumulated over generations.

"Whoever is in charge of intelligence, drag them out and behead them."

General Hou tossed down a command flag with a blank expression, and the soldiers on either side picked it up and immediately turned to leave.

In their line of sight, the skeletal dragon riders charged forward as if no one else was there, showing no mercy whatsoever. Among the refugees, hundreds of Northern Wei soldiers, disguised as refugees, were pale-faced and now dressed in rags, carrying only a personal knife or dagger. They were now no different from the refugees.

Da da da!

The three thousand skeletal dragon riders did not increase their speed to the limit, but instead dispersed to both sides in a very orderly manner.

The refugees had no fighting spirit whatsoever. Faced with the endless torrent of iron cavalry on both sides, they turned around and ran straight ahead, charging into the two thousand Northern Wei soldiers who had been driving them away.

The scene was extremely chaotic.

From the air, the skeletal dragon riders began to accelerate. A-Da and A-Er each led a thousand men, and together with Jiang He, they transformed into three long spears and charged straight into the chaotic crowd.

hum!

As a flurry of blade light appeared, thousands of heads exploded simultaneously, accompanied by screams and cries of agony. The skeletal dragon riders, carrying Northern Wei soldiers and refugees, continued their charge towards the Dengfeng army formation ahead, their momentum immense.

On the general's platform, Mr. Jian turned his head to the side.

General Hou calmly tossed down several command flags, and the army formation began to shift. He said with some regret:

"We originally planned to train He Dengfeng, but now it's all for nothing, what a pity."

Mr. Jian asked in confusion, "General, did you not expect that Dongyang has such a large-scale cavalry?"

General Hou shrugged and said frankly, "It's not that we didn't expect it, but we simply didn't think of it this way. To maintain a cavalry force of three thousand men, we need seventy thousand shi of grain and beans every year, and fifty thousand taels of silver in military pay, not to mention swords, lances, armor, and even things like saddles and reins. The accounts of Dongyang County don't match up."

"But it's just a minor matter. This enemy army is indeed elite, but their equipment is poor. They wear only low-grade armor and have no lances or bows. Their arrogance is just temporary. It's probably a trump card that the Pei family or the Prince of Yong have been carefully hiding."

A wooden box flew out from Mr. Jian's sleeve, inside which lay nine small and exquisite flying swords.

"Do you need my help?"

As the seventh of the ten candidates for the title of "Hero of the World," Mr. Sword has an astonishing record of killing more than one sub-hero.

General Hou narrowed his eyes. What surprised him most was not the iron cavalry, but the extremely dazzling sword strike of Prince Yong.

"Let the demonic sect test the waters first."

Chapter 559 Dragon Rider Charge

The north wind howled, and dark clouds pressed down on the city.

The sound of iron hooves was like muffled thunder rolling across the earth.

Faced with the overwhelming tide of cavalry sweeping in from the front, many officers and soldiers in the Dengfeng formation turned pale.

"Swordsmen and shieldmen, advance! Archers, prepare for rapid fire!"

"Crane Wing Formation!"

The Dengfeng commander waved his hand, and the soldiers raised their command flags. The daily training that had sustained this surrendered army had instilled in them a deep-rooted discipline that allowed the commanders and garrison officers to begin directing their troops.

The Crane Wing Formation, composed of tens of thousands of infantrymen, quickly took shape, with a weak center and strong forces on both flanks.

Two thousand-man archer battalions skillfully drew their bows and nocked their arrows, completing five rounds of rapid-fire shots in the blink of an eye. However, the price of tens of thousands of arrows flying through the air was that these archers with superhuman strength could hardly lift their arms for a short period of time.

Whoosh whoosh!

The rain of arrows, fired horizontally through the air, remained sharp even amidst the thunderous hooves of horses, as if a wall were being pushed across them.

The fierce guards atop the skeletal dragon riders remained expressionless, showing no fear of the arrows taking their lives.

At the forefront, Jiang He raised his jet-black battle blade high, slashing in a circle in front of him. The blade's shadow lingered, like a black sun rising.

In an instant, the black sun turned white.

An extreme repulsive force surged forth, like an invisible, enormous barrier blocking their path, and the skeletal dragon riders immediately regrouped.

Dangdang Dangdang!

Arrows rained down, those that struck the center shattered, those that hit the side veered off course, the arrows rained down like a river, but were diverted to both sides, and many Northern Wei soldiers and refugees from Wuyang were hit by arrows and fell to the ground dead.

Skeletal dragon riders charged into the enemy lines.

Jiang He unleashed a vertical slash, the Immortal Dragon Spear Technique: Shattering Dragon Spine, releasing its ultimate destructive power. The powerful blade aura, like a meteorite, crushed the two hundred heavy shield bearers at the forefront, along with their shields, into mud.

A skeletal dragon rider crashed into the edge of a heavy shield. The dragon rider's skull collided with the shield, causing it to explode and shatter. Two Dengfeng soldiers were thrown into the air, and the evil guards seized the opportunity to cut them in half at the waist with a single strike.

Three thousand dragon riders charged past in a single leap.

The thousand-strong shield battalion collapsed immediately, with 70% of its men killed or wounded.

The twelve fierce guards were unfortunately targeted by spearmen and grappling hook soldiers and were assassinated. Ah Da, who was in charge of the rear guard, immediately ordered his men to bend down and pick up the bodies of their comrades as valuable materials. These elite-level guards could be reforged and revived to some extent as long as ordinary fierce soldiers served as the new subjects.

The two battalions of arrow and shield soldiers failed to hold off the enemy for even a moment.

The commander-in-chief of Dengfeng's expression changed slightly, but he continued to issue orders.

"The wagon battalion advances, and the personal guard battalion takes over."

"Attack from both sides in a fish-scale formation."

The fish scale formation is a formation used to concentrate military forces.

The two flanks that had previously been separated by the Crane Wing Formation immediately concentrated their forces to attack the Skeleton Dragon Riders who had penetrated deep into the formation.

At the same time, a thousand chariot soldiers pushed chariots and sword walls to the front of the command platform, creating a barrier. The personal guard quickly filled the gaps, and everyone was heavily armored, with half of them being elites of the second realm.

Generally speaking, the personal guard is the most loyal and powerful unit of the general. It consists of several generations of family sons and relatives. They are best equipped, have the fewest daily affairs, and are always provided with wine and meat. Their monthly salary is several times that of ordinary soldiers, and even the worst soldiers receive three taels of silver.

The generous provisions are reserved for the crucial moment.

The Dengfeng garrison commander's face was solemn. If he could hold out for half a quarter of an hour, his two flanks could encircle and kill this elite force. As the garrison commander of the southern Liang border town, he was not lacking in the courage to use himself as bait and a defensive pillar.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned.

call!

Jiang He unleashed a single slash, unleashing a torrent of flames.

The chariots and walls of swords, considered the greatest enemies of cavalry, were completely melted.

Ah Er charged out of his own flank, leading the charge to disrupt the enemy's formation. As black torches rose one after another, the enemy's defensive line became increasingly complex, and the defensive forces showed varying degrees of strength.

Jiang He activated his All-Seeing Eye. The sunlight made the distance extremely blurry, but it was enough to see the enemy's weak points. He pulled the reins and slightly adjusted the direction of the charge. The Skeleton Dragon Riders easily tore through the enemy's battle line and charged past.

"how come……"

The Dengfeng garrison commander's face immediately turned ashen.