Chapter 339 — A Vast Breadth of Mind
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 2 of 4
Corpses lay all around; here and there fires still burned, thick smoke rolling up, the traces left by fire-type divine abilities. Ahead of them, the routed army of the Mandi Kingdom, in its confusion, was battering Helan Pass, while the pass's defending generals held the gates to the death, unwilling to open them and let the fugitives in, lest the Jingping army seize the chance and break through.
These defeated troops were actually attacking Helan Pass in a frenzy.
The tall walls crumbled again and again under the bombardment of many powerful cultivators, shards of stone flying everywhere. Luckily the wall was thick enough; what they had broken was the outer wall, and the inner wall still held. The defending soldiers, making no distinction between friend and foe, drove their divine abilities and primal weapons outward and down the wall, blasting to death the very comrades who had once fought shoulder to shoulder with them. Below the walls the curses were coarse and foul beyond measure, and the scene grew more hideous still; the corpses at the foot of the wall piled into mountains. In a moment, countless fleeing soldiers poured into the city like a tide.
Inside the city, Ban Gongcuo's hands and feet went cold as ice. The gates were broken, the defeated army rushed into the city, and Helan Pass could no longer hope to resist the enemy's assault. The routed troops crashed into the garrison, and the garrison, unable to hold formation, fled in turn. The enemy seized the moment and poured in, slaughtering with methodical calm. The grasslands were certain to be utterly ruined! "Take me away at once! " Ban Gongcuo steeled his heart and ordered the Shaman King beside him, shouting, "Abandon the city!
Withdraw from Helan Pass!
" That Shaman King hurriedly carried him off, flying out of Helan Pass.
Ban Gongcuo said in a harsh voice, "Withdraw every disciple of my Golden Palace from the battlefield! " The Shaman King's heart quailed; he said, trembling, "Great Venerable, if the disciples of the Golden Palace withdraw, the armies of every tribe on the grasslands will have no way to live! " "But the Golden Palace still has a way to live. " Ban Gongcuo was utterly calm.
"To hold on by force will only leave my Golden Palace's disciples dead in this city.
The Golden Palace's strength must be preserved. It is on the grasslands that the true battlefield lies.
The Golden Palace's fearsome name was not offered up by the tribes, nor flattered into being. If the Jingping Imperial Preceptor wants to seize the grasslands, he must pay a sufficient price!
" The Shaman King hurriedly stirred his vital essence into an earth-shaking shout that carried across the battlefield, ordering the Golden Palace disciples to retreat. At his order the scene turned even more chaotic; the army's morale collapsed utterly.
Everyone wanted to save his own life, and they surged madly toward the gates behind the pass, crowding and trampling one another, while those who had cultivated flight divine abilities rose into the air, only to be shot down at once by primal-essence cannons.
Below the tower ships, the great army of Jingping poured in, scouring the battlefield of remnants. Ban Gongcuo glanced back. Helan Pass had begun to collapse; flames blazed in the city and thick smoke billowed up into the sky. The Mandi officers and soldiers who had escaped the city were fleeing in terror in all directions, and there were those who could not get out and so clambered up Mount Helan; countless of them fell from the mountain and were smashed to pulp. Many Great Shamans and Shaman Kings flew over and gathered around Ban Gongcuo.
Terror and despair were written on every face, yet Ban Gongcuo only grew calmer. He instructed them, "Scatter at once in all directions and put shamanic poison into every water source on the grasslands; let plague run rampant.