Verse 51: Know yourself and know your opponent
"Maintain the formation, maintain the formation!!Archer, don't stop interfering!!" The voice was sharp and high, and his throat began to ache faintly because he had been shouting for nearly an hour.
The lips are chapped and white due to lack of moisture, and even the eyes are bloodshot after not resting for a long time. Visibility was so low under the dim and eerie red moon that they could only huddle in the area, lit by the only torches that remained.
"Maintain formation!!" Due to poor visibility, the flag could not be conveyed effectively. Passwords, which use sound as a medium of communication, have little effect on noisy battlefields. There was no detail of which direction the friendly forces were, and the junior samurai rode back and forth on horseback and shouted loudly, but only a small group of men in front of them would follow the instructions.
The number of samurai was seriously insufficient, and due to a series of mistakes in decision-making, the junior non-commissioned officer class in charge of commanding Ashigaru was seriously attritional.
There were still more than 1,900 Ashigaru remaining, but less than 130 samurai remained. In addition, the number of pro-guards who pressed the formation accounted for half of the number, and the rest could not form an effective command system at all.
"Wow——!!" "Bang!!" The multi-ton behemoth easily slapped the dense two-meter spear in Ashigaru's hand to the side. Only a few of the high-quality spears broke, and the other group on one side grabbed it and leveled their spears as they shouted and rushed forward as soon as the attack was complete.
"Knock ——!!" "Roar!!" Despite the toughness of the monster's skin, it still struggles to resist the stabbing of metal spikes. Plural spears pierced into its body, but the monster was still alive, and with the powerful impact of its massive body, it took a brutal step forward, causing the ashigaru who had managed to reorganize their formation to chaos again.
"Formation, formation!" the samurai still shouted, but as soon as he finished speaking, he heard a "boom" sound, followed by a dense stream of arrows falling from the sky.
"Tooth out!!" the sorcering samurai curled up desperately, his armor blocking most of the arrows, and even a few of them were only flesh wounds.
But the war horse was not so lucky, "neighing——!!" The horse, whose neck was pierced by the rain of friendly arrows, fell sideways with a weak leg, and the samurai, who had not time to get out of the saddle, screamed "Woo oh" and was crushed off one of his thighs.
"Stand back, back off!" The sound of horses' hooves sounded in front of him, and it was another colleague who was running and commanding Ashigaru. "Wait, Nonaka, I'm here—" The roaring samurai was stomped through the door by the heavy hooves, and his comrades were completely unaware of his death because of the bleak environment.
"Why can't you kill it!Archers, step forward a little more, fire oil, where is the fire oil, throw it at those things!!" The samurai, whose eyes were already bloodshot and began to go mad because they had not rested for a long time, almost roared and commanded their soldiers. However, even with a thousand people, they could barely hold on to this position.
"Ghost!!!" shouted another samurai who rode out on horseback and fled into the night sky.
"Lord Wu. The adjutant spoke to the samurai sitting on his horse, "The troops led by Lady Jing have not yet returned, and considering that anyone who leaves here will fall into madness, I think that it's—"
"Hold your ground. The young red-armored warrior said this, his tone was cold, and the people who were dying outside at this moment were just numbers in his eyes.
“....... Comply with orders. The adjutant obviously wanted to speak, even the one-sided massacre in the swamp village had already been damaged, which made him question his lord's decision, but in the country of the moon, where there is a strict class, even if what is done is right in itself, sometimes it will be wrong to choose to do it.
As a waiter, if the lord does not allow it, the midwinter is not cold, and June cannot be described as hot.
Loyalty, is a command that has been instilled in the samurai class of this country since childhood. They are proud of it, but not without doubts.
"Die!!" the firelight flickered, and under the strange bright red moonlight, the troops of more than a thousand people could not grasp it with their eyes. The young master has completely lost his mind, in order to take revenge on the villain, he not only requires the team to advance day and night, but also does not give time to cook food, and knows that he needs to pray to the gods and Buddhas of the heavens when he meets the devil and be cautious in his words and deeds, but he still has to move forward.
Ended up in this situation.
This is a place where there is no return, the misty Yin Yang Demon Realm, the safest choice at the moment is to carefully follow the footsteps of the time when you came.
But the young master insisted that the gangsters were among them, and because night fell, the samurai were most needed as grassroots commanders to maintain order, so he sent out two cavalry brigades of 200 men each and poked out towards the woods on the left and right, asking them not to return the gangsters until they were recovered.
His heart for revenge had made him forget his cause, and he was no longer a worthy commander.
The words hidden in the heart, as long as they are spoken, are a great rebellion.
For such disrespectful thoughts alone, he should apologize.
If you can go back alive, you will pay for your own life and go to the top. The adjutant thought in his heart that as a waiter, even if he had a good reason, it would still be an act of betrayal to report his commander to someone in the upper class.
"You're doing the right thing, so I'm going to give you a good time. ”
The people above must have said that, and he never felt that there was anything wrong with it.
Enlightenment has been done, for the sake of the great cause of the clan, the young master who has been carried away by personal emotions must be forcibly abdicated.
The adjutant had his own calculations in his heart, but the current difficulties still had to be overcome.
Humans are not welcome in this land, and the area they hold on to is safe, but otherwise the land is full of malice.
The unapprehensive commander lost patience half an hour after the samurai on horseback had gone to investigate, and ordered his ashigaru to send a team to explore again. But when the Ashigaru who set out to investigate returned after a while, not only did they go crazy and start harming themselves, but they also brought strange monsters with them.
Massive, resembling an ancient "pepperfish" or "salamander", they lost a lot of men to kill the monster, and the monster's dying wails attracted more of its kind.
"It's impossible for that villain to survive outside, please take a good look at the facts!" The words spoken fiercely to the young master by another lieutenant who had been robbed of his reserve by exhaustion were absolutely taboo. questioned his lord in person, and no matter how others pleaded, he ended up being given death without surprise.
"The sacrifice is too great, please think twice!" the second loyal adjutant drew his sword and killed himself after saying these rebellious words, hoping to order the young master to awaken with his life.
"In order to comfort my brother's soul in heaven, the blood flows like a river, but what does it matter. But the cold words of the red armor warrior made the hearts of the lieutenants cold for the most part.
But they have no other way, they can't resist, they can only choose to endure.
"Woo-" A long horn sounded in the distance, and the young commander didn't care, even if the horn meant calling for help.
But then a red firework rose in the sky and exploded in mid-air.
It was a signal of an encounter with an enemy, and it was something that the traveling samurai carried.
"——!" He took a deep breath, then his eyes widened with rage.
"The whole army marched. The samurai shouted loudly, and the adjutants who were stunned in place could only order, "Go!"
A vast procession of more than a thousand people began to move forward, even though they knew that the deeper they went into this poisonous land, their minds would be eroded, and their sanity would be lost.
Just moving towards the fireworks signal, I don't know how many people disappeared into the darkness. The signal disappeared in a split second and disappeared into the woods.
So they had to go into it and search.
"Whew-" Torches that had been burning for a long time were extinguished one after another, and someone tried to chop a nearby tree with a knife to make a new torch, only to find that the branches would dodge.
When he finally slashed it, the green liquid burst out in an instant, and the whole forest seemed to start wailing.
"Go back, go back!" "Get out of this land of ghosts and ghosts!" "Don't panic, it's just the fear in your hearts. Where have you lost all the pride of the warriors!" The adjutant suppressed the fear in his heart, and used his already hoarse and aching voice to try to soothe the resistance of the ashigaru. And the young master was gloomy, silent and without saying a word, driving his horse forward.
So far, he can still use his prestige to control these subordinates, but how long can this last?
His own heart began to waver, and when he noticed it, the hand holding the whip was so trembling that he could not even pause to grasp it with his other hand.
"You can't shake my heart, O ghost, you can't shake my heart!" another samurai shouted these words, showing great courage and rushing out, but this exaggerated approach was precisely to dispel the confusion in his heart.
So they went without suspense and never returned.
The Red Armor Samurai remained aloof, and he didn't care how many of his men were reduced.
He had only one thought in his mind, to kill the enemy—no matter who his name was or what he looked like.
Perhaps it was this unwavering and pure obsession that made him completely unaffected by this toxic environment.
"Mother, mother's voice—" As he said this, a number of people walked toward the trees with teeth and claws, and then disappeared in the next second.
In the blink of an eye, hundreds of people have disappeared.
"Whew—" The last torch burned out, and all that was left was the eerie red moonlight.
"Don't you think this land is more distant than what we see?" said a slightly uneasy voice from a colleague next to the adjutant.
"yes, when did there ever be such a big forest near Swamp Village. There were indeed some small groves near the ridge, but most of them were long beaches and small slopes—" The voice of another echoed the voice, and the whole scene seemed to twist again, with the woods baring their teeth and claws, and the sky spinning incessantly, making people dizzy.
"See. The young master's cold voice sounded again, and in an instant, the adjutant's consciousness was pulled back from the illusion.
"That's—" In the blood-red glow, two dried horses lay on the ground, and a grass-covered hut beside them.
"The villain is really here!" The angry red-armored warrior drew his broadsword: "Come on, search the surroundings!"
"No, Lord Wu. The signal lured us in, but what about the Crystal who sent the signal?" Unlike the commander, who had lost his mind, the adjutant was keenly aware of the abnormality.
The silence of the "......." lasted for a moment.
"Is that so? ”
"I was tricked and led away. In an instant, the adjutant felt that the commander he knew and respected was back.
"Giggles—samurai, come with me. But in the next second, the sound of his teeth grinding violently and the words squeezed out between his teeth made him clearly aware of the fact that the commander was already abnormal.
"But the ashigaru can't keep up—" "Qiang—"
A sudden chill in his throat followed, and then the adjutant wanted to say something, but suddenly found that he could no longer make any sound.
"It's been arguing since the beginning. ”
"Turn your head, go back, the gangsters are ahead!" The moment the loyal lieutenant clutched his throat and fell from his horse, he led dozens of guards past the sluggish and tired ashigaru and killed them in the direction they came.