Chapter 357: Come, fight!

Qi Wu braced the door panel that could shatter at any moment, blocking the entrance.

The others could no longer hold the line and all fell back toward the depths of the village.

The Northern Rong split their forces into two. One group still surrounded this spot.

The other went after the villagers who had fled.

Hu Er stretched his legs, taking three or four steps of the stairs in a single stride, head down as he charged up the tower.

Everyone was waiting for him to get in position, so he did not dare pause for even a moment.

“Hurry, tell them I’m here.” He forced his breathing to steady and had a few boys on the tower pass the word along for him.

“Second Uncle Hu is up!”

He swung the Bamboo Crossbow off his back and into his hands, setting the strong bow aside for now.

The Wang Family’s two boys, Da Long and Da Hu^[1], stood one on his left and one on his right. Piles of Bamboo Arrows and wooden arrows were stacked beside them, and each of them held a Bamboo Crossbow in his hands.

They were ready at any time to be Hu Er’s little arrow-loading soldiers.

Yan Yu had almost fallen back to the Arrow Tower at the center of the village.

More and more uncles in the village were getting injured, and the Northern Rong’s stormlike attacks were all crashing down on Fourth Uncle Qi alone.

Yan Yu grew ever calmer.

Sheltered behind Fourth Uncle Qi, she darted left and right, her wooden staff like a snake’s head, poised to strike. The moment she saw an opening, she would crack someone straight in the face, splitting it open.

The Northern Rong… had not loosed arrows for a very long time now.

She heard the shout carried over from the west Arrow Tower.

At last her back pressed against the solid wall of the central Arrow Tower.

Yan Yu’s eyes were as cold as starlight, the corner of her mouth lifting in the faintest curve.

Come on, fight!

“All units, ready!”

This was the Young Scouts’ command before an attack.

Every child in the village understood it. In an instant their bodies tensed, and they reflexively checked their weapons, taking up a stance ready to spring.

“Loose!”

At Yan Yu’s shout.

Arrows fell like rain.

The Northern Rong tumbled from their horses in chaos.

Never having imagined that this village actually had arrows, they took a heavy loss.

Under such a dense barrage, neither men nor horses could withstand it, and everything devolved into a mess.

Hu Da and Hu Er were the soul of the two Arrow Towers. Each man had three crossbows. The moment he fired one shot, he would pass the crossbow straight to the child beside him, not caring whether the kid took it from his left or right. The child whose Bamboo Crossbow was taken would immediately load arrows onto the one that had just been switched out.

This was what Yan Yu called “unlimited supply”!

All the Arrow Towers were the same square shape and large enough that people could stand on all four sides.

If adults stood up there, there would definitely not be as many of them as there were children now.

The Young Scouts’ unrelenting training was receiving its highest reward in this moment.

Boys and girls, older and younger, their sweat had not been wasted. Their small bodies were no longer a burden to the adults when danger came.

Not only could they protect themselves, they could protect their families and their village.

The older a person gets, the more tangled their thoughts. Kids, on the contrary, are more focused, more single-minded, more absorbed in doing one thing well.

They were children who had walked the road of flight from famine, who had seen life and death with their own eyes.

When the children no longer felt fear, when they had forged their courage and strengthened their bodies, then in their eyes the Northern Rong were nothing but moving targets on horseback…

They had only one firm belief in their hearts:

Shoot them dead!

“Xiao Er, the Iron Sheeting club you wanted!”

From inside the Arrow Tower, two wooden clubs wrapped in Iron Sheeting were passed out.

They were wrapped with the last of the Iron Sheeting she had brought back. Ordinary wooden staffs really were too easy to break.

Yan Yu kept one for herself and handed the other to Fourth Uncle Qi.

The door panel was completely scrapped now.

They stood beneath the Arrow Tower, facing the Northern Rong head-on with nothing at all in between.

At last a Northern Rong realized that the strip of ground tight against the Arrow Tower was safe. He swung his blade above his head, chopping down Bamboo Arrows, and charged forward in a desperate rush.

Yan Yu swept her staff across, and it smashed into the knife in that Northern Rong’s hand.

Clang!

Yan Yu’s hands went numb from the impact. The Northern Rong had it even worse, the flesh between his thumb and forefinger split open, his hand slick with blood.

He stared in shock at the tiny figure before him, his eyes almost popping out.

“Brat, you don’t get to live!” he shouted in mangled Central Plains speech, his blade lifting from low to high. If Yan Yu failed to bring her staff back in time, she would be chopped diagonally in half.

Qi Si took a step forward and moved in front of Yan Yu. His staff caught that knife solidly, and with a heave he shook it aside.

Expressionless, Yan Yu slipped out from behind him and brought her staff crashing down on the man’s head.

She held nothing back in that strike.

The wooden staff wrapped in Iron Sheeting was harder and stronger, and it smashed down with full force.

His skull burst.

With his new weapon in hand, Qi Si was like a tiger loosed from its cage.

Any Northern Rong who dared come close under the Arrow Tower died beneath the clubs of him and Yan Yu.

And the moment any Northern Rong tried to draw a bow to shoot, the little archers atop the Arrow Tower would focus on him.

But there were simply too many Northern Rong. Looking down from above, it was inevitable that some would slip through the net.

One Northern Rong found a chance to shoot and loosed an arrow at Qi Si, the greatest threat.

By the time Yan Yu noticed, it was already too late. The word “careful” had only half left her mouth, and there was no way for her staff to change direction to block that arrow.

Qi Si twisted his body sharply and barely dodged the shot.

As if enraged, he hurled the staff in his hand with all his strength.

Yan Yu could almost hear the whistle of the staff tearing through the air.

Thud!

That Northern Rong was run clean through by the staff.

He stared down in disbelief. Before he could even topple, Qi Si had already charged over in fury, grabbed one end of the staff, yanked it free, and then lashed out with a kick.

The man was booted far away, crashed to the ground, and never moved again…

Right then a single line kept scrolling through Yan Yu’s mind:

This is the instinct of a beast!!!

Qi Si seemed to forget that the Arrow Tower still needed people to shoot. With a few long strides he rushed out, whirling his staff in a roaring blur. There was no form, no technique, just savage blows lashing out front, back, left, and right.

He beat the Northern Rong until they were screaming for their fathers and their mothers.

Yan Yu was not exaggerating in the slightest. She was the closest to Fourth Uncle Qi and could clearly see wisps of steam rising off his body…

That was the heat of a body exerting itself at high intensity. Put more fantastically, this was battle Qi^[2].

The Northern Rong were not stupid enough to stand in place and wait to be shot. They spurred their horses and ran to either side.

Yan Yu called a halt at just the right time.

On the two Arrow Towers, everyone except Hu Da and Hu Er stopped firing.

Hu Da and Hu Er picked off the Northern Rong who were still within their effective shooting range.

The men who had been waiting inside and outside the Arrow Towers surged out like wolves and tigers. Their targets were the Northern Rong who had not yet managed to get away.

Yan Yu crouched down.

She looked at Fifth Uncle Qi, who had slaughtered his way over from the west Arrow Tower, brandishing a new door panel, killing with every step…

Then at Fourth Uncle Qi, who had gone mad with killing, his staff sweeping like a dragon, his big club teaching the Northern Rong a new way to be human…

She could not help thinking: The uncles of the Qi Family were true war gods.

“Maomao, how many are left?”

She was not very worried, because that bunch of Northern Rong had, in their bad luck, chosen to run north.

They were probably trying to escape through the mountains.

Too bad they had picked the wrong way…

After Maomao reported the numbers, Yan Yu straightened up and shouted, “Back to the Arrow Towers.”

Everyone immediately turned and ran back without looking over their shoulders.

Leaving the Northern Rong utterly dumbfounded.

An instant later, they felt the world’s final chill.

“Shoot!”

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…

They kept firing until not a single Northern Rong was left standing on the ground.

“Finish them.”

Yan Yu gave the cold order and herself brought her staff down first on a Northern Rong beside her whose life or death was still uncertain…

Faint sounds drifted over from the north. Yan Yu turned her head to look, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

(End of chapter)