Chapter 30: The Fall of the Elephant King

Page (1/3)

As the vengeful spirits of countless elephant soldiers vanished into ashes, the elephant formation, towering like a range of mountains, suddenly revealed countless fatal gaps.

And this was precisely the opportunity Yun Zheng had been waiting for.

At that moment, he had formed a “beheading squad” with Ye Xi and the two tribal chieftains, Wumeng and Wusa. Together, they cut through the chaos of the elephant herd, which had been thrown into disarray by musket fire, advancing straight toward the godlike figure at the rear.

To guard against the elephants’ sonic attacks, all four had put on crude cotton earplugs. Though the plugs could not completely block out the noise, they reduced its destructive force to a level their wills could endure.

Yet the crisis facing them was far from over.

Although most of the elephant soldiers had vanished into thin air, and the ingenious volleys of the enchanted rifles had plunged the herd into confusion, the Yun Family Army was simply too small in number. Moreover, it had no pikemen. To collide head-on with the elephants was nothing short of suicide.

A pure enchanted-rifle unit could briefly halt the elephant soldiers’ advance, but it could hardly inflict any substantial damage. Once the elephant soldiers restored their formation—or even if they needed no formation at all, merely unleashing their bestial nature and charging the crowd without restraint—they would be more than capable of annihilating every enchanted rifleman present.

One had only to remember the Battle of Dingbian, when Mu Ying used fifteen thousand elite troops to crush the Luchuan army and kill more than forty thousand of its soldiers. Yet the Luchuan forces had possessed only a little over a hundred war elephants. Mu Ying’s army, meanwhile, had been fully equipped with pikemen, shields, and heavy crossbows, as well as trenches capable of temporarily holding back the herd.

The Yun Family Army had none of these things. Thus, defeating these thirty elephant soldiers was, in truth, an impossible mission.

There was only one option left: capture the bandits by first capturing their king. If they killed Xilayi, the Luchuan commander who had transformed into the core of the Elephant King, this aggregation of resentment would collapse on its own.

In life, the Luchuan commander Xilayi had shaken the entire southwest. He had once taken part in suppressing the Kingdom of Assam in India and the Burmese Kingdom of Ava, only to be beheaded by Ming imperial troops during the Battle of Dingbian.

He was an opponent Yun Zheng could not afford to underestimate.

But he was also an opponent Yun Zheng had to face.

From the moment he entered the great hall, every arrangement Yun Zheng had made had been intended to create an opportunity to decapitate this rare and formidable enemy.

There was no room for trickery in such an operation. When two enemies meet on a narrow road, the braver one prevails!

The Elephant King—or rather, Xilayi—looked arrogantly at Yun Zheng and the others as they charged toward him.

Yet deep within his spirit, he was far from as calm as he appeared.

He hated the look in Yun Zheng’s eyes. He could not understand why Yun Zheng, despite possessing such mediocre strength, had the same loathsome gaze as that man.

Under the scrutiny of those eyes, everything he had pursued throughout his life seemed, before a true powerhouse, no more than an empty and elusive dream.

“Even such a weak junior dares look down upon this general?”

Endless fury surged within Xilayi. He raised the long spear in his hand high overhead, as though lifting the scepter of a god.

Page (1/3)

Page (2/3)

In the next instant, he would obliterate this arrogant whelp completely.

The long spear shot forward with the speed of a dragon bursting from the sea, carrying an awe-inspiring and terrifying force.

Yet Yun Zheng merely shifted his body slightly and slipped past the frightening attack like a fish gliding through water.

Seeing this, the corner of Xilayi’s mouth curled into a contemptuous smile.

These juniors were still too immature. Did they really think that such trivial tricks would allow them to evade his lethal strike? With the slightest adjustment, he could turn the thrust into a sweeping blow and send the whelp flying like a torn scrap of cloth, smashing him against the hall until flesh and bone were scattered and his body reduced to fragments.

However, just as Xilayi was preparing to unleash that killing move, Yun Zheng shifted aside and cleverly exposed Ye Xi, who had been following close behind him.

Quick-eyed and quicker-handed, Ye Xi’s pale hands darted out like twin serpents and seized the rushing spear with precise, decisive force, like a cat pouncing on its prey.

Archers were generally poor at close combat, but repeatedly drawing heavy bows weighing dozens—or even more than a hundred—pounds required astonishing arm strength. They were not, as certain tales described them, all slender and frail creatures.

Ye Xi’s arms appeared as delicate as willow branches because of the half-elven blood running through her veins. Yet the strength contained within them was still as terrifying as that of a giant python.

At the same time, the two tribal chieftains reacted swiftly. They rushed forward and helped Ye Xi seize the shaft near the spearhead. Having trained bitterly in the mountains and forests since childhood, the two men possessed formidable physical strength. Working together, the three employed the technique of “wresting away the spear.” As their strength converged, they firmly suppressed the astonishing weapon, as though it had been bound by invisible shackles.

Under the principles of leverage, even though Xilayi possessed the strength of dragons and elephants, how could he reclaim the spear in so short a time?

And Yun Zheng intended to use precisely this interval to launch a fatal attack against him.

Yes, the bronze armor covering Xilayi was no ordinary armor. Even the heavy weapons wielded by the battle-hardened rebels of Shuixi could not pierce it.

But that did not mean he was truly impervious to blades and spears.

Yun Zheng sprang upward like a startled hare, soaring high until he was almost level with Xilayi. Then he kicked off and landed atop the elephant’s back.

He could clearly see that Xilayi’s entire face was concealed beneath a visor, with only two openings exposed at the eyes. Behind those openings was nothing but emptiness.

Yun Zheng reached for the musket on his back, raised it with practiced ease, and aimed at Xilayi’s head.

Before the dawn that would herald the breaking of day, the world was destined to sink into a long, cold darkness.

Someone, therefore, was destined to rise and stand against it—to become a bloodthirsty demon of slaughter and dance with those harboring treacherous designs and boundless ambition in the depths of hell, setting out upon a thorn-choked, bewildering road amid a banquet of blood and fire.

Fortunately, Yun Zheng had long since learned to keep his emotions steady when doing such work. He neither tormented himself with hysteria nor usually inflicted more suffering upon his enemies than necessary.

Once he had set foot upon this road of slaughter, he killed like a merciless assassin devoid of emotion.

Page (2/3)

Page (3/3)

Yun Zheng pulled the trigger.

As the muzzle belched flame, he felt something crack within his heart. But a moment later, he sealed that feeling away once more in the deepest recesses of his mind.

This shot used an extraordinarily expensive force bullet. The radiant force contained within it had been personally infused by a renowned Western missionary, who had held a cross and prayed as he imbued it. Against a resentful spirit like the Elephant King, it was devastatingly effective.

A blood-red star blossomed in an instant into a vast flower. As the enchanted bullet tore through the air, it burst within the void, shining brilliantly against the flowing river of blood.

The lead projectile was enveloped in a dazzling frost-white radiance, as though sunlight had been focused into a single point. At close range, it struck Xilayi’s visor.

At that instant, Xilayi’s head, visor and all, rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees to look toward Yun Zheng, who had landed on the elephant’s back. The bullet pierced straight through the visor and entered his brow.

For the living, the space between the eyebrows was the seat of the spirit. For a resentful spirit, it was likewise the crucial point where thoughts revolved.

The bullet, howling with the force that subdued demons and exorcised evil, tore toward him. Clad in heavy armor, Xilayi had nowhere to evade. Under the shot of the flintlock masterwork, his thick bronze armor possessed virtually no defensive power at all.

With a thunderous boom, frost-white radiance erupted inside Xilayi’s visor. Yun Zheng saw white light shoot from the two eyeholes.

Amid an unwilling roar, the first things to disappear were the bronze armor and helmet. Yun Zheng saw Xilayi’s body. Like the elephant riders, he had become nothing but a skeleton, and the force bullet had blown his skull into a shattered, mutilated ruin.

A foul wind swept over from the river of blood. The skeleton, which had been suppressed for more than two centuries, immediately weathered away and vanished into ashes.

The enormous elephant beneath him let out a long, shrill cry. Its flesh melted away, leaving only white bones. Then the skeleton weathered and collapsed, sending Yun Zheng plunging through the air.

Ye Xi instinctively rushed forward and caught his hand, using the strength of her raised arm to disperse the force of his fall.

It was entirely unnecessary, but the gesture nevertheless warmed his heart.

“It’s over.” Ye Xi let out a soft sigh. From the war of words in the tribal chieftain’s residence to the successive battles in the underground palace beneath Great Wilderness City, the ordeal had exhausted both body and mind.

“Only this battle is over.” Yun Zheng’s expression remained solemn. “The mastermind behind all this must have made other arrangements.”

Out of caution, even after entering the chieftain’s residence, the soldiers of the Yun Family Army had carried enough dried provisions to last five days. There was also a source of water in Great Wilderness City. Yun Zheng did not believe this underground city could hold them for long.

But instinct continued to warn him of an intense sense of danger.

A greater challenge still lay ahead.

Page (3/3)