Chapter 1249: Brutal Battle

Chapter 1248: Brutal Battle

On the other side, Mo Hua returned to the Shugu Tribe’s main base after being ambushed. The army had suffered losses and gained nothing. His face was equally grim. This Elder You had suddenly become an opponent with no apparent weakness.

Elder You was a crucial chess piece of the Hua Clan.

From this failure alone, it was clear that if one attempted to track Elder You’s movements through causal arts, there was a high probability he would sense it through some countermeasure and, instead, turn the calculation back on its originator.

This ambush could only be considered a “greeting.”

If he fell into another of Elder You’s calculations next time, who knew what kind of peril awaited.

Mo Hua did not know whether Elder You himself wielded the Art of Causality, or if one of the Hua Clan’s ancestors had bestowed upon him a heavenly treasure of fate.

Either way, Elder You was under causal protection.

Such was the nature of causality: when you divine another, the other is also divining you.

Until now, it had always been others who miscalculated against Mo Hua.

This was the first time Mo Hua himself had tasted the bitterness of failure—of pushing derivations only to fall into another’s design.

His mood was poor. Yet when he considered the greater game at hand—his opponent being Elder You, and behind him the Hua Clan, and behind them their ancestral patriarch—he found some measure of acceptance.

After all, he was still only at the Foundation Establishment stage. To be unable to take advantage against a Hua Clan ancestor of the Profound-Hollow-Void realm was only natural.

And perhaps it was not even a single ancestor involved.

The Hua Clan’s careful schemes throughout the Great Wilderness, draining the blood of the tribes like leeches, had become an obstacle impossible to circumvent.

A countermeasure against the Hua Clan was inevitable.

“For now,” Mo Hua mused, “I cannot touch Elder You’s karmic threads, or I shall only trap myself in my own cleverness.”

“Yet if I avoid Elder You, where else can I begin?”

“What other clues does the Hua Clan have within the Great Wilderness that might be exploited?”

Mo Hua frowned, his mind turning. “Would Elder You really allow me to keep probing him unchecked?”

“Even if I find new leads and derive information from them, how can I be certain those clues weren’t intentionally planted by Elder You himself?”

Over the following days, whenever he had a moment to spare, Mo Hua continued to think and probe indirectly into the Hua Clan’s affairs. Yet each attempt either met a dead end or dissolved into uncertainty—like searching for a needle in a vast sea.

He sighed.

Before him stood Elder You. Behind Elder You was the Hua Clan. Behind the Hua Clan, the manipulations of their ancestral patriarchs.

And within the grand game of the Great Wilderness, it was unlikely that the Hua Clan was the only great family involved.

Aside from the Hua Clan, his Senior Martial Uncle was also watching from the shadows, cunning and predatory, spreading famine to further his own aims.

“This game of chess is far too difficult to play…” Mo Hua murmured.

When it came to grand strategy, he was still a novice.

Yet Heaven itself offered him no “beginner’s protection period.”

From the start, this so-called novice was forced to play against great clans, Profound-Hollow-Void ancestors, and his own sinister Senior Uncle on the same board.

The difficulty was, in truth, infernal.

Mo Hua had no choice but to temporarily concede this round.

That plump Elder You would be left alone for now. They would each mind their own waters, and the matter could be revisited later.

Before long, however, Mo Hua had no time left to think about Elder You.

He had encountered an even more formidable enemy.

The Great Wilderness had become a colossal battlefield where all powers intermingled.

Everything that occurred seemed inevitable, yet it was always interlaced with coincidences. Too many variables. Causality shifted with every moment.

An event derived in one hour could be utterly overturned in the next.

No matter how deep Mo Hua’s Divine-Sense, nor how strong his calculating ability, he could not possibly maintain perfect foresight in such chaos.

Through an unfortunate coincidence, he failed to account for a single scout.

That scout carried with him a great thread of killing intent.

An hour later, when Mo Hua finally sensed the hidden danger and ordered the scout quietly eliminated, it was already too late.

The Causality had been exposed.

Two hours later, dust clouds rolled across the horizon, the ground trembled, and deafening roars filled the air.

An overwhelmingly powerful barbarian army was charging toward them.

They were clad in pitch-black armor, weapons gleaming coldly. Shaman warriors danced to bloodthirsty chants to rouse their troops, while savage beast-mounted cavalry led the charge.

Behind them came many other units—each wearing strange, grim armor Mo Hua did not recognize—forming a torrent of death.

Above them, a banner of deepest black flapped in the wind, emblazoned with a crimson-eyed black vulture spreading its wings.

The Wujiao Tribe.

And this was not a raiding force—it was a full division of their main army.

At a glance, Mo Hua knew they could not win.

Although he had unified the Shugu Tribe and commanded more than a hundred thousand barbarian soldiers of considerable strength, they were no match for the Wujiao Tribe’s elite troops.

Even though the enemy numbered only fifty thousand, their armaments were impeccable, their ranks diverse, their armor of the finest quality. Even a victory would come at an unbearable cost—a pyrrhic victory at best.

Mo Hua had painstakingly built the Shugu Tribe’s power from nothing. He could not throw away this hard-won “living force.”

Moreover, his forces included a large number of barbarian civilians and slaves.

If the frontlines were broken, those behind would be slaughtered like cattle.

Fortunately, he had considered this possibility long ago.

“Preparation ensures survival; negligence leads to ruin.” His father, Mo Shan, had repeated this maxim endlessly when he was a boy hunting beasts.

Now, burdened with the lives of over eight hundred thousand, Mo Hua could not afford the slightest carelessness.

He had already simulated countless contingencies and laid out numerous fallback plans. Even his current encampment had been chosen for strategic flexibility in the face of danger.

Thus, when he sensed the Wujiao Tribe approaching, he immediately ordered his forces to retreat in formation.

He commanded the warriors to cover the rear, while the rest withdrew toward the nearby mountain valley. The warriors could then use the natural terrain to block and defend against the enemy’s advance.

Because of these preparations and timely orders, by the time the Wujiao army arrived, most of Mo Hua’s troops and people had already reached the far side of the valley.

The two armies now faced each other across the narrow gorge.

Between them lay a mountain path scarcely ten zhang wide.

Thus the situation became one of “a single man guarding the pass, ten thousand unable to cross.”

If the Wujiao Tribe wished to annihilate Mo Hua’s forces, they would have to charge head-on through that narrow passage.

This formation also allowed the Shugu Tribe to negate their numerical and tactical disadvantages.

They needed only to hold the gorge.

The Wujiao army paused, their commanders debating. But after a short deliberation, they decided to attack. To crush the Shugu Tribe and devour Mo Hua’s power was deemed well worth the risk.

Even with terrain against them, the Wujiao warriors did not consider the Shugu Tribe’s strength significant.

Their black armor outclassed the Shugu Tribe’s in every way—material, craftsmanship, and refinement.

The Shugu Tribe’s Abyssal-Bone Heavy Armor was powerful, but far too few in number.

Moreover, in this Third-Grade Mountain Realm, where Golden Core-level combat was possible, even second-grade Abyssal-Bone Heavy Armor—constructed with twenty-one Absolute Formations—had limited effect.

In summary, the Wujiao Tribe had little to fear.

If one soldier blocked the pass, they would simply slaughter every soldier who did.

The Wujiao forces began their advance.

Shamans chanted eerie incantations, their bodies twisting in sinister dances as discordant drums and horns echoed through the valley.

The Wujiao heavy infantry took the lead, pressing forward step by step.

Behind them, the rest of the barbarian ranks followed with perfect discipline, a tidal wave of steel and flesh.

Even Mo Hua felt his scalp prickle.

He had not expected the Wujiao Tribe to possess such overwhelming might or such unity of force.

They already bore the aura of the Great Wilderness’ royal army.

Times forge heroes, and amid the chaos, the Wujiao Tribe had evidently grown into a formidable power.

Mo Hua had no choice but to brace himself and order the Shugu warriors forward.

The two armies clashed within the narrow gorge, neither giving an inch.

Steel met flesh. Blood drenched the earth.

The slaughter was horrific.

The Shugu Tribe clearly held the disadvantage, yet they forged a wall of corpses—a “Great Wall of blood and bone.”

As the battle dragged on and the situation grew dire, Mo Hua was forced to make choices he had long resisted.

He sent the barbarian slaves forward as cannon fodder.

If his trained soldiers were exhausted, all would die.

Whether those slaves survived would depend solely on their own fortune.

Mo Hua promised them that if they survived the charge, they would earn their freedom.

It was the only mercy he could offer.

Watching each barbarian slave, each living life, obey his command—this shaman’s command—and charge at the wedge-armored warriors of the Wujiao Tribe—only to fall one after another on the front line, torn to pieces by the Wujiao heavy infantry’s blades, Mo Hua’s heart bled.

Only now did he understand what it meant that “the compassionate cannot command troops.”

War was brutal and merciless. It was cold. It devoured life without hesitation.

Either you die, or I perish.

Often, it meant choosing which of your own people must die.

No one wished to make such choices, yet sometimes there was no alternative.

Many decisions that appear cold-blooded and inhumane are, in fact, forced by cruel reality.

No one wishes to be heartless, but harsh circumstances compel people to abandon their humanity, lest far worse consequences follow and even more lives be lost.

In war, within the larger picture, every person in power who must decide carries this pain inwardly. Mo Hua’s heart was filled with that same anguish.

Yet the fighting continued.

Pressed by a formidable enemy, he had to set aside his pain, keep his mind sober, and perform the “cold, unfeeling” calculations with his mental force—treating lives like chess pieces, trading them off against the enemy, making harsh selections amid fierce slaughter to maximize his side’s interests. The Shugu Tribe’s casualties steadily increased; flesh and blood flew.

Fortune smiled only in that the Shugu Tribe, fighting with their backs to the river and sharing a common hatred, managed to barely hold their line.

No matter how the Wujiao launched their assaults, the Shugu held like reefs, standing firm.

Even when the Wujiao temporarily broke through, they were soon driven back.

The back-and-forth of attack and defense never ceased.

Soon the Wujiao realized their own losses had become severe.

People on both sides were dying in that life-and-death grind.

The Wujiao’s barbarians could not avoid deaths either.

In fact, because the Shugu were primarily on defense and the Wujiao pressed the attack relentlessly, the Wujiao probably suffered even more casualties.

After repeated futile assaults, the fever of battle cooled; calculations of gain and loss took hold, and hearts grew cold.

Their losses had exceeded expectations.

If the fighting continued, even if they wiped out the Shugu and swallowed Mo Hua’s force, the cost might outweigh the gain.

Furthermore, the Shugu’s stubborn defense made success uncertain.

A failed major assault would be ruinous—losing both men and prestige—and they could not report such losses to the young lord.

The Wujiao’s offensive had to slow.

Mo Hua’s side gained a moment to catch their breath.

The two sides continued symbolic skirmishes for a while; the Wujiao still could not break the Shugu line, yet they were unwilling to withdraw, since the sunk costs were already immense.

Retreat now would render all previous sacrifices pointless.

Those sacrifices were real—actual troops and lives.

But wading deeper into this quagmire would only be like slowly boiling a frog, with mounting losses.

Refusing to abandon sunk costs would only worsen the situation.

Mo Hua and the Shugu had no choice but to grit their teeth and fight to the end.

After more time and both sides paying a price in men, the Wujiao finally withdrew. One reason was lack of provisions.

This was a year of disaster; famine raged. Not only the Shugu but the Wujiao lacked food.

Because the Wujiao fielded so many barbarians, their consumption was even greater.

Previously they had relied on pillage during victories.

When they won battles, they would burn, kill, and loot the vanquished to vent hatred and replenish supplies.

Now they did not win.

They gained nothing from Mo Hua, failing to break the Shugu defense, so there was nothing to loot.

With nothing to plunder, they could not replenish supplies and could not continue to endure the campaign.

In addition, they suffered surprise attacks from other tribes.

The Wujiao had rampaged through the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm, destroying many tribes and killing countless people; inevitably they earned many enemies. Previously when this mighty army once marched under the Wujiao banner with great momentum and strength, few dared to oppose them.

Now, after being depleted by battle and deprived of supplies, they drew the attention of scattered tribes. Those tribes lacked the strength to destroy the Wujiao army, but they could harass them—kill some, plunder some.

With internal shortages and enemies all around, and seeing that they could not take the Shugu, the Wujiao could only issue a resentful order to withdraw by another route. The Shugu’s crisis was thus resolved.

Yet the enmity between the two sides was deep and lasting.

…

Many of the Wujiao had died, and they blamed the Shugu Tribe’s stubborn refusal to submit and its unwillingness to allow burning, killing, and looting. All of this, in their eyes, was the Shugu Tribe’s fault.

As for the Shugu people, their grievances were even greater.

Without cause they had been ambushed and besieged by the Wujiao, many had died, and that too was a bloody debt to be repaid.

Mo Hua harbored silent hatred as well.

It had not been easy to raise his forces, and numerous lives had been lost in that clash with the Wujiao.

One day, he vowed, the Wujiao would pay a heavy price.

At the same time Mo Hua suppressed his rage, endured the pain in his heart, and did his best to summarize the gains and losses of this engagement.

He had to devise a better, more thorough plan and amass far greater strength.

Future battles must never be fought this way again.

Absolutely no more shedding so much blood, absolutely no more letting so many people die.

(End of this Chapter