On December 14, the 15th year of Yuanping in the Han Empire…
At this time, the Gulang grassland was covered with heavy snow and the north wind was blowing. A thick layer of ice had formed on the tranquil Baicao Lake.
Several wild antelopes were searching for food in the snow on Baicao Lake. They are alert by nature. While eating the dry grass stems and the unique snow moss under the snow, they raised their heads, opened their eyes wide, pricked up their ears, and kept an eye on the movements in the sky and around them.
Suddenly, a strange sound came from the Baicao Lake not far away. Several gazelles that were eating stopped eating all of a sudden, raised their heads, and stared alertly in the direction where the strange sound came from.
"Ka La..." The strange sound suddenly became louder. It came from the Baicao Lake not far away. Several gazelles turned around and ran without thinking.
With a sound of "boom...", a fist pierced out from under the thick ice, and the ice surface with a radius of more than ten meters suddenly cracked like a spider web. Then a figure, accompanied by a splash of water, suddenly jumped out from under the ice surface, flew ten feet into the air, and then stood steadily on the ice surface of Baicao Lake.
This person, of course, is Yan Liqiang!
He stayed in the underground cave for almost half a year, until this morning, when he discovered that the blade-like water flow in the underground river had indeed slowed down today. He quickly seized the opportunity, ran out of the underground river, swam to the Baicao Lake, blasted the ice, and jumped onto the shore.
“Hahaha…” Looking at the surroundings, Yan Liqiang laughed towards the sky, feeling a sense of relief as if he had seen the light of day again. After struggling with the giant leeches underground for so long, he was ragged, his shoes were torn, his clothes were torn, his hair was disheveled, and he looked like a beggar. Except for the black-scale sword in his hand which was still intact, almost nothing he had with him was intact.
The wet clothes that were still dripping with water froze in the wind and snow in the blink of an eye. Frost and snowflakes instantly covered Yan Liqiang's hair and eyebrows, just like Santa Claus. For ordinary people, such freezing cold would be unbearable, but for Yan Liqiang, who had advanced to the martial arts sect, he didn't care about the cold at all. As a cultivator, if you can't even resist the cold and heat, then what's the point of cultivation
After identifying the directions around him, Yan Liqiang felt cheerful. He shook off the snow on his body and ran towards the east with big strides. Like a tiger out of a cage, Yan Liqiang took a few feet at a time and walked on the snow as fast as lightning. However, every time his feet landed on the one-foot-thick snow, they only left a half-inch shallow footprint. As he ran, he left no trace on the snow. His lightness skills had reached the highest level.
Just after Yan Liqiang had run for dozens of miles, a noise and screams came into Yan Liqiang's ears along with the wind from behind a dirt slope at ten o'clock in front of him, and there was also a faint light of fire coming from that place. Yan Liqiang frowned slightly, changed direction at once, and ran towards the dirt slope at ten o'clock.
After a while, they arrived at the slope. Yan Liqiang looked around and saw more than twenty Shatu yurts a few hundred meters behind the slope. At this moment, a group of cavalrymen, numbering nearly two hundred people, surrounded the Mongols. They were waving their scimitars, galloping on their horses, and chopping down all the Shatu people who rushed out of the yurts, regardless of gender, age or status, and knocked to the ground.
There were already dozens of corpses scattered on the snow outside the yurts. The bright red blood was scattered on the white snow, which was extremely dazzling. The Shatu people living in those yurts were screaming and wailing. Every moment, there were Shatu people who were chopped down or shot to the ground by the cavalry on horseback.
These twenty-odd yurts, including the elderly, women, and children, could house at most seventy or eighty Shatu people, but the number of those cavalrymen was almost two hundred, and they were all strong and elite. The strength gap between the two sides was huge, so when Yan Liqiang rushed to the slope to speak, what he saw was basically a massacre.
Yan Liqiang had no sympathy for the people of the seven Shatu tribes. However, after seeing the faces of the cavalrymen who were killing the Shatu people, Yan Liqiang was shocked, because those cavalrymen were not Shatu people at all.
The cavalrymen all had dark faces, wore ferocious horn helmets, and wore black armor. They rode on mounts that looked like rhinos, with two horns, one long and one short, on their heads, but covered with long hair. They were fiercely hacking at the Shatu people who were surrounded by them.
In just a blink of an eye, the Shatu people who rushed out of the tents were chopped to the ground by the cavalry. Only a few Shatu women survived. The cavalry jumped off their mounts. Some of them laughed and pulled the surviving Shatu women who were struggling and crying into the yurts, while others cut open the bodies of the Shatu people on the ground, took off the horned helmets on their heads, and used the blood from the corpses to dye the horns of their own horned helmets red.
After quickly filtering the information in his head, Yan Liqiang immediately guessed who those people were—the Black Jie people. These cavalrymen were not the Shatu people, but the Black Jie cavalrymen from the Black Jie tribe. The mounts of these Black Jie cavalrymen were the woolly rhinoceroses unique to the Black Jie tribe.
The Black Jie people are a race that is more barbaric, bloody and cruel than the Shatu people, and they are very powerful.
I don't know why the Black Jie cavalry appeared on the Gulang grassland. Could it be that during the six months when I was in seclusion underground, the Black Jie people couldn't help but cross the Qiyun Mountain and reach out to the Gulang grassland again? Yan Liqiang secretly thought that if the Black Jie people were really involved in the fight for the Gulang grassland, it would be a major event that would change the situation and would inevitably have far-reaching consequences...
Just when Yan Liqiang was standing on the slope looking at the Black Jie cavalry, one of the Black Jie cavalry, who had just dug out the heart of a Shatu person on the ground and dyed his horned helmet red, turned around and saw Yan Liqiang standing on the hillside not far away. The Black Jie cavalry pointed at Yan Liqiang and started shouting. The Black Jie cavalry who were still outside the tent turned their heads to look at Yan Liqiang.
Seeing that there was only Yan Liqiang here, the Black Jie cavalrymen thought that Yan Liqiang was a fish that slipped through the net among the Shatu people, so they did not panic and did not all rush over. After a leader-like person among the Black Jie cavalrymen pointed at Yan Liqiang and shouted twice, five Black Jie cavalrymen immediately rushed towards the earth slope where Yan Liqiang was on his woolly rhinoceros...
(End of this chapter)