Chapter 601: When the hostage appeared (1/2)

Chapter 601: When the hostage appeared

How did Han Yunxi take the Duke of Qin’s place as the primary attacker?

Things went down like this: after Han Yunxi treated Long Feiye’s wounds, she glanced towards the battlefields. A single look was enough to tell Long Feiye that she wanted to fight. He had promised her before to take her fighting, so what did that count for if they were just watching from the sidelines? Thus, he grabbed her around the waist and flew into the fray.

“Long Feiye, your hand can’t—”

“The hand that holds you will never get injured. Don’t worry,” Long Feiye cut her off. Han Yunxi couldn’t see his expression from here, but his tone of voice was already enough to make her face feel hot. She carefully looked down and saw that he was holding her with his right hand while his left one had been injured. Currently it wasn’t wielding any weapon, but simply resting idly behind his back.

“Can you use your needles to take the place of your lordship’s sword?” Long Feiye asked seriously.

Immediately understanding his meaning, Han Yunxi declared, “I can!”

Thus, Long Feiye stopped fighting and let Han Yunxi do all the work as he darted between the clouds of raining arrows. He didn’t need to deflect them if he could dodge them. Of course, those weren’t the limits of his skills. He could even find the best locations for Han Yunxi to deploy her needles as he weaved amongst the crowds. Although they were facing expert archers with only Han Yunxi and her shoddy shooting skills, Long Feiye’s help allowed her to shoot at will. Instead of waiting for a chance, she only needed to let Long Feiye get into position before she released her weapons.

Long Feiye’s tracking, combined with Han Yunxi’s Pear Blossom Teardrop Rain bracelet, ensured that each needle hit its mark—all of them on the archers’ hands. Moreover, her needles were so fine that they didn’t kill anyone, but rendered their victims’ hands numb and thus useless for arrows. Could a Driving Arrow Arts practitioner who couldn’t even grip an arrow be considered an archer anymore? They were just useless good-for-nothings with zero combat ability now. There were plenty of archers on the city walls, but Long Feiye and Han Yunxi purposely picked out the ones who were only launching arrows without wielding a bow. Soon enough, they’d handicapped quite a few of those men. One Driving Arrow Arts archer could stand in for multiple regular archers, so eliminating one was like eliminating ten at once. This helped reduce the pressure on the troops below.

This was probably the most brilliant battle of Han Yunxi’s career, and perhaps the most joyful, straightforward one as well. She and Long Feiye made for a perfect pair. Finally, she stopped lamenting the fact that she didn’t know martial arts. With him here, even her trifling fighting prowess could be supplemented with something else. While Han Yunxi was shooting away to her heart’s content, General Chu was ready to cry.

Endless reports came from his soldiers, who cried along the lines of, “General, we lost three more Driving Arrow archers!”

“General, Han Yunxi’s using poison needles. There’s over ten Driving Arrow archers who’ve lost use of their hands. They can’t even lift them anymore.”

“General, three more were lost! What do we do?”

Less than an hour later, the deputy general came down with a personal report. “General, half of the archers on the western wall have been incapacitated!”

General Chu couldn’t take it anymore. “What? They’re not even sparing the regular archers now?”

“In the beginning they only targeted the Driving Arrow archers, but after this subordinate gave orders to them to kill that pair, it… It set off the Duke of Qin’s temper,” the deputy general said somewhat helplessly.

“And then?” General Chu demanded.

“I don’t know how, but the Duke of Qin deployed a team of archers out of the blue to attack our archery teams on the city walls. They seem to be using special crossbows, because their speed and strength are far superior to our own archers. The crucial point is that all the crossbow arrows are coated in poison! So anyone who gets hit, even if it wasn’t a fatal shot, gets…disabled. That’s how we lost half our archers there in no time at all.” the deputy general was feeling quite helpless. After all these battles, this was the first time he’d seen someone deploy poison in actual combat. He really wanted to know where Han Yunxi had found so much poison to smear on all those arrows!

“Han Yunxi deserves to die!” General Chu was ready to murder her.

By his side, Chu Yunyi muttered to himself, “The Tang Clan! Those crossbows must have come from the Tang Clan!” He remembered that Chu Tianyin had once mentioned how the Tang Clan’s young master was on close terms with Long Feiye. If it was the Tang Clan supplying the weapons, then they would be far more superior to their own bows and arrows. It had to be said that the Tang Clan’s weaponry gave wings to the tiger that was Long Feiye!

“General, right now the Duke of Qin and Qin Wangfei are just targeting our Driving Arrow archers, while their crossbow team is aiming for our regular archery division. We can’t gain any advantages in that field! If this keeps on, we’ll suffer heavy losses. In this soldier’s humble opinion, we should withdraw the archers instead.”

Without archer support, the soldiers fighting below the city would lose a source of strength, making it even harder for them to push the battle to an end. General Chu couldn’t accept that, so he simply shot back, “We’re not withdrawing them! Can’t a few thousand archers deal with that crossbow team? I refuse to believe otherwise! Spread my orders, both Driving Arrow and normal archers are to concentrate efforts on Han Yunxi. Kill her without mercy!”