In his middle age, Augat’s military career was just beginning. Having just experienced the surging might of the battlefield, and starting to understand the exhilaration of charging through the wilderness, how could Augat retreat?
Augat gripped his tiger-headed spear tightly and roared, charging directly at the opponent’s blade. Behind him, countless shouts carrying a chill followed, “General!”
The guards had never expected Augat to be so brave, to advance against such odds. A brief exchange of glances ignited a unified shout.
“Kill!”
When the lord is in distress, the minister is disgraced; when the lord is disgraced, the minister dies. Augat on the battlefield was their king, their sole belief.
Augat, with over a dozen men, lunged towards the bloodthirsty Karul. Karul, however, showed no fear. His eyes shot out sharp glints. In the eyes of Karul, who had possessed such abilities for centuries, these men were like walking dead.
Augat spurred his horse, holding his long spear straight towards Karul. The two guards behind him, fearing their commander was in danger, rushed forward first. The tip of their spears clashed into the opponent’s blade shadows the moment they shattered into ashes. The two guards were split in half within the vast expanse of blade shadows, their blood splashing onto Karul’s face, steaming with rising heat.
Seeing this, Augat gasped. He had never imagined the opponent to be so formidable. He paused for a moment, and Karul’s figure had already appeared in his sight. The heavy saber, carrying a whistling gust of wind, swept towards him.
Augat dared not block with his spear. In desperation, he flicked his spear, poking into the opponent’s blade shadow.
With a crisp *ding*, immense power, like a collapsing mountain, surged through the spear shaft into his body. Augat felt as if he had been struck by a hammer, almost falling from his horse.
His mount retreated a few steps, nearly toppling, but he managed to stabilize it just in time.
Before Augat could recover his strength, his opponent, instead of retreating, advanced and fiercely swung his saber down again.
The whistling gale smashed towards him, covering his face. Having just blocked Karul’s previous saber strike, Augat had exhausted his strength. Now, under the opponent’s heavy saber, he felt as powerless as if a mountain were crushing him.
But the strong instinct for survival compelled Augat to hastily muster his strength and thrust his spear towards the opponent’s blade shadow. With a dull *clang*, countless sparks of light erupted in the void. The spear shaft was bent by the opponent’s heavy saber.
Augat clearly felt that the spear shaft could not withstand such immense force, as if it were about to snap. His arms went numb, as if broken, but he instinctively turned his head to the side.
As the long saber was inches from his shoulder, the pressure suddenly lessened. All the pressure fell onto Augat’s mount, which staggered a few steps and lost its balance.
It turned out that Augat’s guards had rushed up in time to resolve his immediate crisis. However, dealing with these guards did not take Karul much longer. Karul’s saber swung down fiercely at Augat again.
Augat had just regained his balance when he felt the opponent’s powerful impact. In his haste, he raised his spear to block.
A crisp crack split Augat’s spear in half. The blade, accompanied by the long wind, rolled towards him, its chilling killing intent piercing his very soul.
In this moment of life and death, Augat was filled with regret. He regretted not staying in the capital of San Di Luoman to be a scholar, but instead coming here to fight on the battlefield.
Death did not arrive as expected. As the opponent’s oppressive killing intent swept over him, Augat’s body sank. His mount staggered a few steps and finally lost its balance, falling to the ground.
Karul’s powerful strike had only hit Augat’s mount, splashing blood and hot blood onto Augat’s face.
But on the battlefield, once a mistake was made, it became difficult for Karul to press his advantage further. Augat’s guards swarmed forward, two guards’ weapons striking Karul like lightning. Karul had to divert his attention to deal with these guards.
Although Augat narrowly escaped this ordeal, one of his legs was pinned under the heavy body of his horse, as if broken. Every movement caused Augat pain. Augat remained still, but his horse was not cooperating. Karul’s saber had ripped open its belly, spilling its intestines. Yet, the horse did not die immediately. The instinct for survival made it struggle to rise, but half its body was pinned under Augat, preventing it from standing.
But with its movement, both man and horse suffered. One was pinned under the saddle, wishing he could stab himself to death, while the other struggled in vain to stand, its pained whinnies echoing mournfully.
As Augat struggled, the chilling saber edge and fierce killing intent once again enveloped him. Though in immense pain, at the moment of impending death, he realized that this pain was nothing compared to death itself.
However, Karul seemed no longer willing to give him a chance to live. The whistling gust of wind and killing intent made Augat’s hair stand on end. If anyone were to tell him then, “What is there to fear about death?”, he would unhesitatingly slap them twice: “What is there to fear about death?”
That was from someone who fundamentally didn’t understand the bone-deep despair that gripped you when death approached. With an unending yearning for this fleeting mortal world, Augat finally gave up struggling and closed his eyes.
A crisp sound of an attack reached his ears, piercing through Augat’s eardrums and making his head buzz. His ears seemed to go deaf, and all sounds became distant.
Ignoring the stinging pain in his ears, Augat eagerly opened his eyes. The dazzling tip of a spear struck his eyes, preventing him from seeing clearly. He steadied himself and followed the spear tip, seeing the face of Hekast. The somewhat childish face was filled with surging killing intent as he stared intently at Karul.
Augat had never observed this famous general’s son so seriously. Youthful fame – that was the dream of many!
Precisely because his own past was not glorious, Augat, deep down, had always believed this young man was merely an empty boast, a decorated pillow. Thus, he had not given him much opportunity to fully display his talents.
Only now did Augat realize that, perhaps, it was his own jealousy that was at play.
These thoughts flashed by in an instant, but in that blink of an eye, the horse beneath him took another blow, struggling even more violently.
The pain made Augat lose his train of thought. He was desperate to break free but could not. Just as he was in despair, two guards who had arrived from behind forcibly pulled him out from under the horse.
Supported by his guards, Augat retreated to the outskirts of the battlefield. Only then did he have the leisure to survey the scene. Hekast was already engaged in battle with Karul. What shocked Augat most was the thick layer of corpses beneath their feet. He truly didn’t know how many of his men Karul had killed.
One must remember that these were Augat’s elite guards, far superior in combat effectiveness to the ordinary soldiers of the San Di Luoman army.
Soon, Augat’s gaze fell upon Karul and Hekast. From his position outside the battlefield, Augat looked back and found it increasingly strange how he had been defeated by him.
Although the opponent’s strength was great, his techniques were not particularly sharp. For example, with that saber strike, he could have, like Hekast, first guided its momentum, deflecting most of its force before counterattacking. He could have also thrust his spear at the opponent, forcing him to defend. Yet, he truly couldn’t understand why, at that moment, he had been completely unable to react.
He did not realize that this was the essence of a person’s ability, the courage that could be ignited in the very instant of a life-or-death struggle, the fighting spirit that erupted when facing a torrential downpour of overwhelming force.
It was precisely for this reason that Hekast, standing at the heart of the storm, remained composed. The opponent possessed the might to shake mountains, but it had not yet reached a level that Hekast, with his abilities, could not control. Moreover, Hekast’s spear was a divine weapon, imbued with magical energy, unlike the common weapon in Augat’s hand.
But Hekast, of course, would not engage in a direct clash of strengths, giving the opponent the opportunity to exert his power. After all, the opponent’s strength was astonishing, and despite Hekast’s own formidable strength, the gap between him and Karul was still significant. He could only compensate with his techniques.
Fortunately, Hekast’s techniques were extremely skillful, cunning, and fierce, leaping nimbly with no discernible pattern.
While Hekast’s spear techniques were superb, to Karul, Hekast had not yet broken through the void. With his own abilities, Karul could handle him completely. Yet, Karul had been intimidated by Aaron’s spear a few days prior and harbored an inexplicable fear of spears.
Previously, Augat’s abilities were too far removed from his own for him to feel anything. Now, Hekast’s spear techniques were refined, and Karul, unable to repel him in his haste, began to panic. Karul’s formation fell into disarray, putting him at a disadvantage, and the fight became even more strenuous.
At this very moment, chaos erupted from the north of the main stronghold, clearly under attack by the San Di Luoman army. It turned out that Augat had launched a surprise attack on Karul’s camp, and upon receiving the news, Xiao Xun immediately dispatched Aaron to attack the north gate.