Starting Today, I’ll Work as a City Lord - CH 55

The four beastkins that wore Heavy Infantry Armors and held 2.5 meters long Mo Blades¹ in their hands looked like slaughter machines.

There were a few dozen wooden figures in front of them. Behind the wooden figures were seven archers that were using bows and arrows of this era. After all, it was only a demonstration, so there was no need to use recurve bows.

“Get ready!” Niu Ben yelled.

Clack!

The four beastkins immediately lowered the face armor and held the Mo Blade with both of their hands. The Mo Blade was one of the best weapons from the Tang Dynasty in China. It was a powerful weapon that dealt with cavalrymen and was able to kill both the horse and the soldier with one swing.

“Attack!”

“Ha!”² The beastkins shouted as they charged forward with the swords in their hands.

“Fire!” Niu Ben commanded.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh…

Clang clang clang…

The arrows were all blocked by the armor and only left either white dots or shallow dents in the armor.

“Kill!”

The four beastkins got in front of the wooden figures and swung their blades ferociously, splitting apart the wooden figures. They then slammed into the wooden figures, breaking them into pieces.

After a while, all the wooden figures were on the ground, broken, leaving four panting beastkins.

Mina and Anri were stunned at how much their companions had changed. They had turned from dull and weak-looking to cool and majestic in just a few days.

“Tch!” Fuji pouted with an indifferent expression. His eyes, however, showed the envy he was feeling.

“Very Good! They will be known as the Heavy Armor Tank Squad from now on,” Liu Feng said, satisfied. He chose this name because it was pretty much saying that the soldiers in the squad were human tanks.

“Understood!” Niu Da said. He had no idea what was special about the name, but since Liu Feng was the one who had made the name, he just went along with it.

Liu Feng then looked at the four bearskins and turned to Niu Ben. “Give them extra food for their meals and then train them even harder than before. I don’t want three second fighters; I want high endurance fighters.

“Understood,” Niu Ben said, nodding his head.

In the military camp, the soldiers with the best meals were the ones in special forces, like the War Wolves Squad. The soldiers in the Heavy Infantry Squad had the second best meals, and the soldiers in the Recurve Bow Squad had the third best meals. The soldiers in training had the worst meals. Of course, even these soldiers had meals that were a dozen times better than the meals of the average commoner. No one had any objections as it was based on how strong they were.

Soldiers that wanted to have better meals have to practice hard and obtain outstanding grades in the seasonal exam to get into a group that had good benefits.

“How are the cavalrymen?” Liu Feng asked. He was most concerned about this since cavalrymen were the strongest soldiers in this era. Cavalrymen had such high agility, mobility, and charging force that they were the strongest soldiers for a few millennia. The people that commanded the most cavalrymen would be the ones in positions of power.

Ancient people on Earth relied on cavalries to take over land and become rulers. That was the reason Liu Feng created the Heavy Armor Tank Squad- to deal with cavalrymen.

“There’s only 30 warhorses. There are 20 other horses, but they aren’t suitable for war. The most they can do is pull cargo,” Niu Da said.

Liu Feng wasn’t satisfied with the amount. 30 warhorses was way too little since- he could only create 20 cavalrymen as he was going to give 10 of the horses to the special force squads.³

War horses were rare, especially the good ones. The horses were the ones that gave the knights a third of their fame. After all, a knight without a horse wasn’t a knight but a warrior. A good war horse could be as expensive as a pair of knight armor. Liu Feng had gotten some of the war horses from the food merchants and some from Bei Feng City.

“How many soldiers can become cavalrymen?” Liu Feng asked. This was a serious matter to him as the answer would affect his plans.

“Young master, we can get 20 cavalry with no problems. They have already been riding horses and practicing,” Niu Da said. He hadn’t slacked off on the matter.

“Okay! Make them have proper battle prowess as soon as possible. Don’t be afraid to waste crossbow arrows, I want knights that can actually kill,” Liu Feng said. He was afraid that the new soldiers would mess up when they got on a real battlefield.

“Understood!” Niu Ben said. He decided to give the soldiers extra training and real blades and arrows to use and not worry about the small wounds that could happen.

“Take me to the War Wolves’ training spot,” Liu Feng said. He was the one who had given the training method and requirements, but he was curious as to how they would achieve his requirements.

“Okay!” Niu Ben said, leading the way. “Young Master, the War Wolves are currently training on their own.”

Liu Feng understood that it meant that Niu Da and the others had nothing else to teach the War Wolves and so they were training in whatever way they saw fit.

They were now in a forest that was at the back of the castle. There were so many leaves on the ground that a single breeze could move a large pile.

“Young Master, be careful, someone’s here,” Mina said, stopping Liu Feng and standing in front of him. She scanned the surroundings intently with a military knife in each hand.

“Don’t worry. I know them,” Liu Feng, lightly patting Mina’s shoulder.

“But…” Mina was anxious because she couldn’t figure out where they were.

Liu Feng shook his head and pointed to one of the trees. “The guy over there, your feet are exposed.⁴ The guy under the grass, your gray head is shining. The guy that smeared mud on the body…”

Crack… The bark fell off of one of the trees, revealing Xin Ke’s stunned face.⁵ He hadn’t expected that he would be found so easily.

All eight members of the War Wolves had been found by Liu Feng, and they all looked at him in amazement.

“You are still too young. You need to work with the environment. An example of a good disguise would be this pile of leaves. Just dig a hole underneath the pile and cover it with the leaves,” Liu Feng said. He wasn’t going to say that he had gotten this good at spotting unusual things in the environment by playing games like the one where you find the difference between two pictures.⁶

This was the Assassination: Wilderness Camouflage Course.⁷ If the soldiers were equipped with crossbows, then they would pretty much be the other world version of a sniper.

Translator’s Notes:

¹ So I did quite a bit of digging and I realized that I’ve done something wrong in the previous chapters. Whatever I put as Tang Dao, that’s wrong. Those were Heng Dao. I’ll go back and fix it. Ok, so there were a total of four types of blades in the Tang Dynasty: Yi Dao, Zhang Dao, Heng Dao, and Mo Dao. Mo Dao was the most famous one and were specifically made to counter cavalrymen. More information at the end.⁸

² Battle/War cry.

³ Author wrote that “he could only arm 20 cavalrymen, and he had to give 10 of them to the special forces squads.” I assumed that it was a typo.

⁴ As if the guy hiding with his feet exposed can see you pointing at him.

⁵ Xin Ke has x-ray vision…

⁶ Spot the Difference game.

⁷ 野外暗杀伪装训练. Literal translation is “Wilderness Assassination Camouflage Training.” The author gotta chill with these long af names.

Blades are technically swords, but they’re separated into two categories in Chinese so…

Generally, blades are the fat ones while swords are the thin and skinny ones.

⁸仪刀. Yi Dao. Literal translation is Ritual Blade. It was 84.7 cm long and was unsuitable for combat, and only used for etiquette and rituals.

障刀. Zhang Dao. Literal translation is Barrier Blade. There was no actual physical blade found, and the written record could be interpreted in two ways, so people split into two groups about what they think the blade was for. One group of people think it was used to cut obstacles (障碍物, 障 is the same from the one 障刀) and so would be about 80 to 100 cm long. Another group of people think it was used for close ranged protection (like a “barrier” around the body) and so would be a short sword about 15 to 40 cm long.

横刀 Heng Dao. Literal translation is Horizontal Blade. Also the reason why I didn’t want to use literal translation. It was about 60 to 80 cm and about 6 to 8 mm thick. The actual blade used in combat. According to Baidu Baike (CN site similar to Wikipedia), it had the elegance of a sword and the domineering aura of a blade, although I don’t know what that means.

陌刀 Mo Dao. Literal translation is Road(?) Blade. It was the most famous blade in the Tang Dynasty and made specifically to counter cavalrymen because the tribes and families around them specialized in cavalries. The blade part was 90 cm meters long and the hilt part was 120 cm long, so in total, it was 210 cm long. Due to how hard it was to make the blade (the whole thing), there were only 20k soldiers equipped with the blade (according to baike) compared to the total 500k soldiers the Tang Dynasty had (according to wiki, 600k to 800k according to Zhihu, a CN site similar to Quora). People were also forbidden to be buried with the blade because it was hard to make and the actual blade could be leaked to the commoners and people from other groups, families, tribes, etc.