Chapter 175: Feast On!

“It worked?”U//ppTodated fr/o/m

Tsenpo Ling’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The reporting envoy was a bundle of smiles. “Under Your Majesty’s wise leadership, we have evacuated all humans and livestock within a radius of several hundred kilometers.

“The Tang bandits, who can only sacrifice living bodies into terracotta soldiers, have failed to convert our stone combat puppets into one of them. Upon realizing there was no one they could use as tribute, they fled in a fluster. It was all within Your Majesty’s calculations!

“...” Tsenpo Ling nodded.

Indeed. It was the right decision to clear the area of any living beings.

“Since that’s the case, we shall not make war slaves anymore. All resources will be focused on creating combat puppets!”

Tsenpo Ling had been wanting to transit toward combat puppets, just that she had struggled to find a good time to do so. This was an opportunity to push for that.

“Huh?”

All of the officials were taken aback. Some even tried to speak up against it.

“Your Majesty, this...”

“Hmph!” However, Tsenpo Ling’s harrumph silenced them. “How is the envoy party we have dispatched to the Anxi Protectorate faring?”

Being at war didn’t mean cutting off all communications. There were many cases of nations fighting while negotiating terms.

Tsenpo Ling wanted to know how deep Shu Yichao’s tenacity as a ‘vengeful spirit’ went, and whether it had affected his rationality. If it was possible to negotiate with him...

“They were hacked down by the terracotta soldiers as soon as they came close, and the gifts we had prepared were all stolen,” the envoy replied sheepishly. “The barbaric Tang bandits are like jackals who only know of violence. They aren’t interested in negotiating with us.”

“As I expected.” Tsenpo Ling pressed her hand against her forehead.

Destroying all enemies at sight, unable to communicate with at all—that sounds exactly like how a vengeful spirit operates.

“Continue the evacuation of all living beings in the area. We have to stop the vengeful spirits from expanding their army. Send the remaining combat puppets to the Iron Gate Pass.”

It was a huge loss to have lost Great and Little Patola, but there was no way to turn back time. They could only accept defeat for now.

However, the Iron Gate Pass must not fall, or else the Tibetan Empire would be put in a vulnerable position. They would be forced to take a defensive position in the Western Regions, unable to go on the offense.

Little did she know that a certain witch was happily delivering free kills in the Western Regions.

...

“How did things turn out like that?!” the mole king howled miserably.

Things had gone down differently from what he had expected.

He thought that he had already made thorough preparations for war, gathering a massive army of 100,000 and equipping their elites with the Tibetans’ superior armor and weapons.

His heart was bursting with pride when he did the military inspection parade. He could imagine himself first raising the Mole Tribe’s flag in Shule before going on to sweep through the Western Regions, eventually establishing the Mole Empire.

His name would go down in history!

Shortly after he dispatched his army, they bumped into the patrolling Tang army’s light cavalrymen. These light cavalrymen weren’t terracotta soldiers but new living recruits trained by the ghost horsemen.

A single charge was enough to destroy most of the moles. It was like a heavy grinder running over rows of neatly placed eggs; the towering horses easily stomped the moles into the ground.

With ‘kacha, kacha’ sounds, bones and juices flew everywhere.

“Jip jip!”

“Jip jip jip?!”

Witnessing the deaths of hundreds of moles sent shivers up the spines of the remaining moles. They instinctively leaned closer to their comrades.

“Your Majesty, what do we do?!” The mole king’s aides were panicking.

The mole king’s beard was trembling.

The battle had gone in a different direction from what he had expected. The gap between them and the Tangs was larger than he had thought. Even the Tang scouts looked to be too much for them to handle, let alone sieging the city!

While he was racking his brain for a solution, rumbles suddenly could be heard from afar.

“Your Majesty!” the moles howled. “The Tangs’ main army is here!”

The mole king anxiously turned his head over and saw a massive Tang flag fluttering in the air.

“How can a few hundred people be considered the main army... Ah?!”

What the mole king saw were not the traditional Tang cavalrymen; they were platoons of ghost horsemen mounted on sand monitors.

“That damned Tibetan mage!!!” the mole king howled. “She didn’t tell me that the Tang army has these monsters!!!”

...

“Ah, so those red dots are moles!” Shu Yichao assessed the humongous mole army before him out of curiosity. “I didn’t expect there to be a vermin problem in the dead of winter.”

Sss, sss!

The sand monitors fidgeted restlessly and salivated at the sight of the mole army.

Damn... We didn’t expect there to be such a huge buffet waiting for us. These moles will keep us full for many days.

“All right.” Shu Yichao made up his mind. “Brothers, it’s time to exterminate pests! Go ahead and feast all you want!”

Sss!

The excited sand monitors pounced on the monitors like ravenous lions.

“There’s no need to be afraid!” the mole king placated his troops. “Remain in formation and slowly retreat!”

“RUNN!!!”

However, the terrified moles ignored their king’s order and scattered right away. Some of them had encountered sand monitors before and knew how terrifying these monsters were.

If they were up against steeds, they could still employ the human wave tactic to drown their enemies—the fragile steeds would swiftly fall in a lynch. However, the same couldn’t be said about the sand monitors.

Sand monitors had hardened skin that even arrows couldn’t penetrate. They wondered if they could even bring down a single sand monitor here.