荔枝影院

Edited by: Michyrr

“Chong-er, you command things on the military side. We’ll take care of the experts.”

The Demonic Emperor Old Man looked ahead, his eyes sparkling with sharp light. Just by raising his finger, he shot thousands of bolts of energy like sharp arrows into the fleeing Arab cavalry. Bangbangbang! In a series of explosions, a large group of Arab cavalry was blown several hundred feet away.

“Kiiiill!”

On the Great Tang side, the soldiers were rapidly building momentum. The sixty thousand elite reinforcements were sweeping forward with the original Tang army and mercenaries. In an instant, the Arabs were in total retreat, fleeing even faster from the Tang. Only after pursuing for a very long distance did the Great Tang side finally call off the chase.

......

“Bastard! Abu Muslim, who let you signal for the soldiers to retreat!?”

Both armies had withdrawn, but things were far from settled on the Arab side. Beneath the four black banners, the golden-armored Qutaybah was fiercely glaring at Abu Muslim, radiating anger.

Qutaybah had always been the most bellicose and pugnacious person in Arabia. But just when he had been prepared to fight the Demonic Emperor Old Man, Abu Muslim had sounded the horn for retreat. This was absolutely unacceptable to Qutaybah.

Buzz!

As Qutaybah spoke, a cold energy flowed through the air and locked onto Abu Muslim. In a flash, Aybak and Osman became extremely apprehensive.

“Qutaybah, listen to us. We had no ill intentions!” Governor Osman hurriedly said.

“I didn’t ask you to open your mouth!”

Qutaybah suddenly shot Osman a glance, those icy eyes instantly causing Osman’s heart to chill and his words to die in his mouth.

Although they were all governors, Qutaybah was unquestionably the strongest, and after seeing his terrifying strength that allowed him to fight alone against many, no one dared to fight with this madman.

“Qutaybah, I had no desire to stop you from fighting.”

The only person who remained calm at this time was Abu Muslim. His expression was relaxed and fearless, even before the War God of Arabia.

“Ice three feet thick does not melt in a single day. We will still have opportunities to fight with the Tang. Moreover, if we were just testing their strength, then we’ve reached our goal. They received many reinforcements, have four Great Generals, and now they have that old man. You had already fought with them for some time, and if they grouped up against you, things might have ended poorly.”

“So, you feel that I couldn’t beat him?”

Qutaybah narrowed his eyes as his expression turned colder.

As the War God of Arabia, Qutaybah had never lost in his entire career. Abu Muslim’s words were on the verge of breaking one of his taboos.

Buzz!

Qutaybah’s words triggered a shift in the air. Qutaybah truly did have an astonishing aura, but Abu Muslim was showing no signs of backing down. One was the Governor of War and the other was the Governor of Iron and Blood. Both were supreme existences of the Arabian Empire.

These two powerful governors in a stand-off beneath the four black war banners made Osman and Aybak extremely uneasy.

“Qutaybah, calm yourself!

“Abu Muslim, don’t be rash!”

Aybak was beginning to panic.

The army had come to the east to deal with the Tang at Talas, but if the situation continued to develop in this fashion, the four hundred thousand Arab soldiers might fall into internal strife.

“That was not my meaning. But, Qutaybah, do not forget our objective in this eastern conquest. His Majesty the Caliph has decreed for us to pacify and unite the entire eastern world!” Abu Muslim sternly said.

He was not like Qutaybah, who was almost intoxicated in the ecstasy of constantly defeating powerful opponents and crushing Great Generals beneath his feet.

Abu Muslim was more concerned with the strategic objective. This was why he had not withdrawn to Khorasan at the end of the battle, instead remaining in the Black Forest to wait for another opportunity to attack.

All was quiet and still as the temperature beneath the war banners plunged to freezing temperatures.

Qutaybah stared at Abu Muslim, his eyes surging with killing intent. The massive and dreadful God’s Might trembled and droned.

Everyone in the area seemed nervous, and Ziyad, standing behind Abu Muslim, even silently moved his right hand to grip the Ocean Ring at his waist.

Gulp!

Ziyad subconsciously swallowed. As one of the finest Arab generals, Ziyad had faced many dangers, but Qutaybah represented a completely different kind. From a certain perspective, he had ascended to a higher level. Even if all of them worked together, Ziyad was not certain that they could truly deal with Qutaybah.

Abu Muslim still remained the calmest and most relaxed, though his eyes were slightly narrowed. His resolve was like a stone standing tall in the middle of a pounding river.

“Fine!”

After a long while, Qutaybah relaxed the grip on his sword. Abu Muslim’s argument had been persuasive, the will of the Caliph emerging victorious over Qutaybah’s lust for battle.

“I leave this place to you. I will wait for your final decision!”

With these words, Qutaybah swept past the three other Arab commanders and rode into the rear.

Whoosh!

Ziyad, Aybak, and Osman all breathed sighs of relief. Only after Qutaybah had left did the three realize that their palms were caked in cold sweat.

Now that there were no outsiders, Osman walked up to his old friend.

“Abu Muslim, you were far too rash,” he reproached. “It’s not like you don’t know about Qutaybah’s personality. If you really managed to provoke him, it would have gone badly for all of us!

“I was really worried for you back there.”

“Relax. Qutaybah isn’t as impulsive as all of you imagine. Don’t forget, he’s still a governor, not some ordinary general!” Abu Muslim nonchalantly said.

Others might regard Qutaybah as a pure battle maniac, but Abu Muslim knew that no pure battle maniac could have become the Governor of War.

“Let’s go. I’ve already received a message from the Tibetans and Western Turks. They will arrive soon.”

As Abu Muslim spoke, he turned his horse around and quickly vanished from beneath the four black war banners.

......

With both armies giving the signal for retreat, both the Tang and Arabs had elected to enter a stalemate. The Tang did not leave their defenses to attack, and the Arabs did not have the courage to circle around the defense lines and continue the assault.

After the battle was over and the field cleaned up, everyone gathered in the reception hall of the Lord of Talas, where a grim and solemn atmosphere hung in the air.

“Have you counted the losses yet? How many men did we lose in this battle?”

Gao Xianzhi rested his hands against the table as he turned to a nearby deputy.

“Our casualties were not small, around ten thousand. But the Arabs lost even more, nearly eighty thousand, and all of them were elites!” the deputy sternly replied.

The deputy’s words caused the mood in the hall to depress. It appeared as if the Arabs had lost far more in this battle than the Tang, but ten thousand soldiers was no small number to the Tang forces.

More importantly, in this short clash, the Tang had sent the Wushang Cavalry, the Iron Wall Army, and the Mo Saber Unit, and even the reinforcements had entered the battle. But on the Arab side, the Mamelukes and other important elite armies had yet to enter the field.

This fact made the eighty thousand losses appear rather small.

An extremely gloomy mood reigned in the hall as everyone lowered their heads and silently began to think.

Cheng Qianli broke the silence. “This isn’t what I’m worried about the most. That golden-armored Arab governor is probably the person that Khorasani called the Governor of War, Qutaybah. This person is far too powerful. He was able to singlehandedly block all four of us and still held the advantage. If we don’t think of a way to deal with him, we’ll find it very difficult to win this war.”

The four of them understood more than anyone else that the tens of thousands of Tang soldiers, the many steel walls, and four Great Generals had all failed to block one man and his sword.

Cheng Qianli had never imagined before this that such a strong martial artist could exist in this world. That unstoppable aura had left an indelible mark in Cheng Qianli’s memory.

“Leave that Arab to me,” the Demonic Emperor Old Man suddenly said. “If it’s as I suspect, this person has already broken past the peak of the Saint Martial realm and reached the Subtle realm. This strength isn’t something you can handle.”

“‘Subtle’?”

This word made everyone, including Wang Chong, turn to the Demonic Emperor Old Man.

Wang Chong had reached a very high level of cultivation in his last life, no less than someone of Abu Muslim’s level, but not even Wang Chong had ever heard about the Subtle realm. The only thing he knew about the realm above the Saint Martial realm was the Divine Martial realm.

But Wang Chong did not doubt his master’s words. Even in the apocalyptic era, the Demonic Emperor Old Man was a legendary existence. His cultivation level had far exceeded what many martial artists could imagine.

“Master, do you mean that this Qutaybah has reached a level of cultivation where his senses are so subtle and profound that he can see the essence of Stellar Energy and observe many things that normally can’t be observed?” Wang Chong suddenly said.

The Demonic Emperor Old Man gave a shocked glance at Wang Chong and then nodded.

“Correct. A normal martial artist only knows about Stellar Energy, but has no idea that there are tens of thousands of different kinds of energy that can be ranked from high to low. These particles of energy are something that ordinary martial artists, even Great Generals, cannot observe. But at the Subtle realm, everything is different. The Subtle realm experts have a control over energy that ordinary martial artists can’t even begin to imagine. Moreover, at the Subtle realm, one can absorb a powerful energy from the world that ordinary martial artists, Great Generals included, might never interact with for their entire lives...”