Chapter 935: Predicting the Enemy (V)
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
“What’s going on! What happened?”
The sounds of fighting caused Dalun Ruozan in the commander tent to bolt to his feet, his face suddenly paling
The group he had sent to raid the Tang ballistae had been dispatched, but before they had even returned, their own camp had come under attack. What made Dalun Ruozan most uneasy was that he had already taken so many precautions, yet despite all the sounds of fighting and all the fire, he had still not received any reports from the messengers.
Given the arrangements Dalun Ruozan had made, such a thing was absolutely impossible!
“Great Minister! It’s an enemy attack! The Tang have attacked the camp!” A panicked Tibetan soldier rushed into the tent.
“The number? Direction? Cavalry or infantry? Why have there been no reports? What of the sentries? Why has there been no reaction from the sentries?” Dalun Ruozan sternly said, almost instinctively overcome by an ill foreboding.
“Great Minister! We have no estimate of their numbers, nor do we know which direction they are attacking from. The camp is currently in chaos. All we know is that the Tang have attacked, but we have no clue where they are!” the Tibetan soldier anxiously reported.
“What!”
Dalun Ruozan grimaced. He immediately strode past the iron table and charged out of the tent. Behind him, Dusong Mangpoje and Huoshu Huicang exchanged glances before pursuing him.
Whoosh!
A fierce gust of wind blew a trail of embers toward the emerging Dalun Ruozan and Huoshu Huicang, gleaming for a brief moment before extinguishing in the air. A howl in the air told Dalun Ruozan and Huoshu Huicang to look up, but all they saw was a large black silhouette flying over their heads before it smashed into the campgrounds behind them.
“Aaaah!” Screams filled the air as a blazing fire exploded from the impact of the boulder, sending embers everywhere.
Catapults!
As this thought flitted through Dalun Ruozan’s mind, his face contorted.
“What’s going on?” Dusong Mangpoje walked up on Dalun Ruozan’s right side, his expression extremely grim. “Didn’t we already push the camp back so that it was beyond the range of catapults? Why can the Tang catapults fire so far that they can even hit the rear of the camp?”
All of them had witnessed the power of the Great Tang’s steel catapults during the daytime. Almost all the catapults the Arabs and Tibetans had brought had been destroyed, so when setting up camp for the night, Dalun Ruozan had explicitly taken measures against this. Besides the sentries, eighty percent of the army had been moved beyond the firing range of the catapults.
Yet hundreds of boulders were now raining down across the entire Tibetan camp. This was definitely not normal.
“Because they moved the catapults forward!” Dalun Ruozan said. The unease in his heart had finally been realized. Only now had Wang Chong revealed his true hand.
The steel catapults could not reach the camp from the walls of Talas. He could guarantee that Wang Chong had moved those catapults out of Talas and to an area extremely far from his base. This was the only way those steel catapults could attack the Tibetan camp.
These catapults were so far away from their base that they were assuredly easy to destroy, but the complete darkness served as the best cover. Not even Dalun Ruozan had expected Wang Chong to employ such a move.
He now understood why he had yet to receive any reports from his soldiers.
“Sentries! Where are the sentries? The Tang have attacked, so why has there been no news?” Dalun Ruozan harshly asked.
Although the catapult rain made a large commotion, it was mostly sound and fury, while the actual damage was fairly limited. Even though many Tibetans might have died in the chaos, Dalun Ruozan knew that these catapults were not the true assault. They were just a cover, while the true assault force was a group of Tang infiltrators.
However, Dalun Ruozan had already planned for this. If the sentries were attacked, he would have already received word. As of this moment, he was still confused as to what had gone wrong.
“Reporting to Great Minister: there are no signs of enemies from this side!”
“Reporting to Great Minister: there are no signs of enemies from this side!”
“Reporting to Great Minister: there are no signs of enemies from this side!”
The reports from the sentries arrived one after the other. Even in the chaos, the communication system Dalun Ruozan had established remained effective. However, he was dumbfounded by the fact that despite all the screams and chaos, the sentries on the perimeter were reporting that they did not see any sign of Tang cavalry.
“How is this possible?”
Dusong Mangpoje and Huoshu Huicang looked at the fire around them and exchanged glances. Even though there was no firm evidence, their Great General intuition had arrived at the same conclusion as Dalun Ruozan: a group of Tang soldiers was attempting to infiltrate the camp.
But the news from the sentries was in complete contradiction to this news.
“Ah!”
The screams continued to rise and fall, and in the darkness and chaos, it was impossible to distinguish the clashing of weapons from the falling of boulders. From a strategic perspective, even the best Great Generals were useless in this situation.
“Great Minister! I will go and investigate!” Huoshu Huicang suddenly announced, and before anyone could even react, he was gone.
“Great Minister, I will also go and investigate.” Mere moments later, Dusong Mangpoje took off as well, vanishing in another direction before Dalun Ruozan could voice even a word of refusal. Though they could not see through Wang Chong’s schemes, as Imperial Great Generals, they had their own ways of distinguishing the truth.
Peak Saint Martial Great Generals didn’t need very long to make a circuit of the camp, even a very large one.
“Great Minister! Do you need me to go as well?”
Duwu Sili walked out from the tent as he spoke. Few people noticed that one of the Turkic messengers at his side had silently taken his leave.
The Great Tang’s assault had been extremely abrupt and shrewd, causing Duwu Sili to worry about his own soldiers. Thus, when Dalun Ruozan had left the commander tent, Duwu Sili had remained to wait for news. However, based on what he had heard, the Great Tang had chosen the Tibetans as its target, which he had to admit was good news for the Western Turks.
“There’s no need!”
Dalun Ruozan immediately refused. Huoshu Huicang and Dusong Mangpoje were enough. If another incident cropped up when all three Great Generals were gone, there would be no force left to respond.
“Someone! Pass on my order! If any area comes under attack, report it to me immediately!”
Then, as Duwu Sili watched in surprise, Dalun Ruozan lowered his head, stretched out a finger, and began to draw a map on the ground. It took only a glance for Duwu Sili to recognize what it was.
A map of the Tibetan camp!
“Shit, an enemy attack!”
“The Great General has ordered all soldiers to go and help!”
Around the middle of the Tibetan perimeter, ten-some Tibetan soldiers were rushing in panic and alarm out of the chaos, toward the sentries.
“What! Where?”
A Tibetan guard standing beneath a sentry post had been vigilantly scanning the surroundings when he heard the cries of alarm and turned to look.
“Over there!”
The Tibetan horseman leading the panicked soldiers pointed at a direction where a boulder just happened to be crashing down. As it landed, fire shot into the air and screams filled the sky.
“Follow me!”
With no time to think, the Tibetan general in charge of the area pulled out his saber and gathered his troops, leading the way toward where the boulder had landed. But as his horse passed by the horses of the panicked soldiers, squelch! A sharp sword pierced through the general’s body and out his back.
The general’s plate armor was so thick that not even the best Arabian sabers could cut through it, but this sword had stabbed through it like it was made of paper.
Time seemed to stop for a moment. The surrounding Tibetan soldiers were all shocked and infuriated by this abrupt scene.
“Milord!”
“Bastard, you dared to attack Milord!”
“Kill them!”
No one had expected that their ‘comrades’ who had been seeking their help would turn and attack them. Clangclangclang! The Tibetan soldiers pulled out their weapons and charged at their so-called comrades.
But the most shocked of all was still the Tibetan general. The suddenness of the attack had caught him completely off guard.
“You… you aren’t our men at all!”
In the final moment, it was the Tibetan general who was the most clear-minded. He was shocked and dazed, but even more furious.
Boom!
With the sword thrust through him, the Tibetan general exploded with boundless Stellar Energy. Even though he was injured, this Tibetan general was still a formidable existence.
“Die for me!” The Tibetan general’s eyes shone with a cold and fierce light. Even if he had to die, he would make his foe suffer.
But this Tibetan general’s final blow was welcomed by an even more powerful and boundless Sword Qi. With a strength that could sunder mountains, the sword cut off the general’s head.
“Kill them!”
Huang Botian didn’t even pay the general a second glance. Given his strength and the advantage of his ambush, he could easily deal with this sort of Tibetan general.