Chapter 472: Grievous News from the Southwest! (1/2)
Chapter 472: Grievous News from the Southwest!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Over vast tracts of land, over Erhai in the southwest and a vast and thick forest, not long after Xianyu Zhongtong led his 180,000 elites…
”Move out!”
A massive shout tore through the sky. A stalwart, middle-aged man with a black mustache, seemingly endowed with both strength and wisdom, stood on the lands of the southwest. He wore a flatheaded crown and an imperial robe, and his hand held a golden sword. Meanwhile, an aura as vigorous as the mountains or ocean surged from his body and into the sky.
Rumble!
The earth seemed to have awakened from a long sleep. It began to fiercely quake and shudder.
”Kill!”
”Kill!”
”Kill!”
……
A killing aura so majestic that it seemed to take on physical form soared into the sky, sweeping through the clouds like a wave. The great earth was covered by the elite warriors of Mengshe Zhao, all of them armed for battle, wrapped in war halos of white or black. This mighty flood of steel was advancing relentlessly toward the distant Great Tang Annan Protectorate.
The thunderous beating of drums resounded through the heavens. In the sky, the dark clouds were in turmoil. After ten-some years of peace, war was finally about to rise in the southwest.
……
Clang!
A massive hammer smashed down on a bright-red iron. As sparks exploded, the screech was so grating that it could almost tear apart eardrums.
Dang! Dang! Dang! The massive hammer continued to slam down, once, twice, thrice… thousands of times. And the hammerers went from one to thousands as well!
On the massive Tibetan Plateau, fires blazed and smoke roiled. Thousands upon thousands of short and powerful Ü-Tsang blacksmiths were swinging their hammers. On this plateau more than 4,000 kilometers above sea level, they worked night and day in the outdoors to forge armor, sabers, swords, U-shaped horseshoes, arrow tips, and all sorts of other weapons.
Sweat poured out in buckets as these Ü-Tsang blacksmiths produced a stream of countless weapons and armor.
Ü-Tsang did not have as developed a weapons industry as the Central Plains, nor was it as efficient. But no one would dare view with contempt the weapons produced on this plateau, because the blacksmiths here used that most primitive and most straightforward of methods: a thousand hammerings and one hundred temperings!
There was nothing aesthetically pleasing about the armor of Ü-Tsang, and there certainly wasn't much skill put into its creation, but this armor was truly the toughest in the world, and also the thickest and longest-lasting.
The armor of one Ü-Tsang horseman far outweighed the armors of the horsemen of the Great Tang, the Eastern and Western Turks, Goguryeo, or even the Abbasid Caliphate and Charax Spasinu.
This also made it so that ordinary weapons and attacks would find it very difficult to harm the Ü-Tsang cavalry!
Ü-Tsang armor took a great deal of time and energy to forge, but it also meant that among all ordinary armors, Ü-Tsang armor lasted the longest.
This long armor-forging process had been started a long time ago. By this point, mountains of weapons and armors had been piled up on this vast plateau, creating a most magnificent sight!
Flapflap!
Wings flapped through the sky as a pure white carrier pigeon flew through the smoke and sparks. A white-clothed and old-styled middle-aged Confucian scholar raised his head and allowed the carrier pigeon to land on his hand.
”Hahaha, Huoshu, it's finally time to start!”
Dalun Ruozan gave a faint smile and sent the letter flying with a flick of his finger. The thin page in his hands was like a knife, shooting forward like a bolt of lightning.