Gone With The Bustling World - Chapter 21
Chapter 21: Chapter Eighteen (1)
Translator: Antonia
Wind carrying grains of sand filled in the air and brought the heaven and earth a touch of yellow. Here was a town of strategic importance on the border of Daqing, which was known as “a neck-place where one excellent soldier is enough to guard off a hundred”.
Since ancient times, Bafang city had gripped the throat of Tianbin and Xiongye to prevent them from marching in directly. As an historian commented, “Without Bafang city, Daqing would have long been conquered by neighboring countries, and there wouldn’t be a renowned prosperity as ‘the Great Qingqian Dynasty’.”
At this moment, in Bafang city, there were thirty corpses of Daqing soldiers lying on the ground in a row—which were lushly alive in the morning but now dead cold-limbed and eyes hanging open. All the guarding soldiers in Bafang city became dark-faced from indignation.
An officer gently covered the bodies with white cloth, his hands slightly trembling, eyes red and brimmed with tears.
The dense air of death and blood haunted the city with silence and oppression. At this moment, a trail was suddenly made in the middle of the densely-congested road occupied by soldiers. An imposing general marched over, escorted by a group of guardsmen.
This general was called Li Shenghu, one of the guarding generals stationed at Bafang city. He had a face with tough lines, eyes like torches, a hideous-looking scar falling to the corner of his lips from his eyebrow and covering almost half of his face. The scar was a testimony and merit of his whole life guarding on the border!
“General!” Seeing Li Shenghu, the soldiers saluted loudly. He was deeply-respected in the army.
Li Shenghu greeted back quickly and didn’t stop pacing towards the thirty corpses, his rugged brows knitting together.
Lifting up the white cloth, Li Shenghu squatted down to check the corpses one by one and compared the wounds on them. He seemed to have found something wrong suddenly and his expression became gloomier, “How many brothers have we lost in total?”
“General, altogether, we’ve lost a hundred!” The boy reporting was a young soldier, his coarse dark yet youthful face slightly twitched out of anger and angst, teeth gritting hard, and jaws plumping up and looking a little distorted. His words carried the kind of youthful righteous ardor as he stepped forward and cried, “General! We need to revenge! Revenge! Kill those sons of bitches of Tianbin. We can’t let our brothers die with their eyes open!!”
“Strange…” Li Shenghu turned a deaf ear to it and went on to examine the fatal wounds on the dead.
“General! Let’s do it! We think less of ourselves hiding in our shells like turtles! General! Please! Let’s fight with Tianbin!” The young soldier didn’t give up after being ignored by his superior, darted to Li Shenghu and almost roared at him unruly.
The one little stone provoked thousand ripples. The crowd of the same hot-blooded Bafang soldiers behind him shouted almost at the same time and indignantly requested for a battle.
“Let them pay with blood! General, please!”
“General, let’s do it! We aren’t afraid of death. There are loads of men in Bafang!”
As the crowd was aroused, Li Shenghu gave a cold glance around them. Instantly, a pouring of freezing chill on the yelling crowd gave the mental clarity back to them.
Momentarily, Li Shenghu raised his iron-fan-like palm and smacked mercilessly in the face of the young soldier who had made the suggestion first.
Being smacked all of a sudden, the young soldier had no time to react and only felt a ‘boom’ in his head. Then, the young strong body was knocked down onto the ground, blood spat out of the mouth and bitter liver liquid surging up. He felt his inner organs almost breaking into pieces and at once spat out a mixture of all kinds of fluid!
Everybody freaked out and turned clammed up.
“You stupid things?! Do you think Tianbin people did this? All these brothers died by fatal attacks in the face, before fighting back—eyes open!! Understand? Go and get the Tianbins!!”
“General, you mean—” The young soldier struggled to ask, “we have spies in Bafang and these brothers were killed by insiders?!”