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Chapter 181: Talas
Chapter 181: Talas
Chapter 181: Talas
“Oh? We have reached Talas,” Shu Yichao murmured, seeing the city’s name on the minimap.
Talas was an important fortress belonging to Chach of Central Asia’s Nine Kingdoms.
Decades ago, the Tang general, Gao Xianzhi, fought the Abbasid Caliphate in Talas.
Chach had betrayed Great Tang and sided with the Abbasid Caliphate, so Gao Xianzhi dispatched troops to conquer Chach and capture their king. Chach’s prince escaped to the Abbasid Caliphate and requested help, and the Tangs and the Arabs ended up fighting in Talas.
The Karluks’ backstabbing resulted in the Tangs suffering a defeat in Talas. Thousands were killed, and thousands were taken as prisoners.
This battle wasn’t that important. It was just a border skirmish, and neither side thought too highly of it. Even so, it was still a clash between the two powerful empires of the East and the West, so it was thoroughly analyzed later in the future.
There were all kinds of analyses and research.
“The Battle of Talas? Brothers, some of you might have even been involved in this battle,” Shu Yichao remarked to the ghost horsemen.
“Grar!” Some of the ghost horsemen nodded in agreement.
“Really? What are we waiting for?!” Shu Yichao exclaimed in excitement. “It’s time to exact vengeance! We have just dealt with the Karluks who backstabbed Great Tang; it’s high time to deal with the Chach traitors now!“Brothers, come with me! We shall avenge our brethren who have died in the Battle of Talas! Let’s show them how sharp our Great Tang’s modaos are!”
“GRARRR!” the ghost horsemen exclaimed hoarsely.
A cold, sinister wind blew toward Talas like a brewing snowstorm.
“They are here! The Tangs’ vengeful ghosts are here!”
Horrified screams ensued.
The Chachs’ garrison troops in Talas stared at the specters blowing toward them with faces distorted with fear.
There had been rumors for months now that the Anxi army had returned to the mortal world, bringing with them an undead army. Even the Tibetan Empire had suffered a series of setbacks to them.
However, the people of Chach didn’t think much about it as all these had happened a far distance away, and they hadn’t witnessed it in person.
But days ago, with the sudden appearance of the White Calamity and the Black Calamity, Suyan’s collapse, the demise of the Karluks’ Governor Ye and chieftains…
The ones who called the shots in Central Asia’s Transoxania had been the Karluks. It was shocking to learn that the regional powerhouse had been destroyed in the blink of an eye.
Chach, who was accustomed to depending on stronger powers, was baffled, but there was not much time for them to dwell on it.
According to their most recent intelligence, the Tangs would soon be knocking at their gates!
“General, what do we do?!”
The flustered soldiers turned to a Chach general for their next move.
“Reinforcement! We need to look for reinforcements!”
The Chach general didn’t even hesitate before asking for his soldiers to request reinforcements. He knew that the soldiers stationed in Talas wouldn’t be a match for the Tang army.
“You have to tell His Majesty that we’ll be dead meat if he doesn’t come! The Tangs won’t stop at Talas; they will continue to advance deeper. Even the capital will not be spared from harm… Don’t forget how the Tangs attacked our capital decades ago!”
In other words, they were in the same boat. If I die, you’re next!
“Why don’t we surrender?” a soldier proposed. “I heard from a Shule merchant that the Tangs don’t kill those who surrendered. It’s only those who resist to the bitter end who are killed.”
The Chach general viciously slapped the soldier who said those words. “Those are dead people! I’ve never heard of anyone surrendering to dead people! Besides, we should only surrender if we can get something good out of it!”
While the Chach general was berating his subordinate, he suddenly heard exclamations from the other soldiers.
“Look! What’s that?!”
“Is it a snowstorm?”
“No, it’s an army of specters!”
“They are coming! The Tangs are here!”
The Chach general quickly scaled the city wall, and his heart nearly stalled to a halt.
Before him, countless specters flooded over like an avalanche that would bury everything. Everyone in Talas could only watch in horror as the snow rushed at them, seeking to crush them underneath.
“Kikiki!”
The sneer of a single specter shook a person’s heart, but the sneers of millions of specters induced a deep-rooted fear that seeped inside one’s bones.
“Glug glug!” A weird sound could be heard coming from the Chach general. It took a while before he finally relayed his first order, “Put up the defenses! We have to stop them!”
Unfortunately, the defenses of the cities in Transoxania were lacking compared to the key fortresses in the Western Regions, such as Shule and Khotan. There were fewer mages to guard the city, and their artifacts were weaker too.
Shu Yichao might have struggled with the barriers of the Western Regions’ fortresses, but that problem didn’t apply here.
Bzt bzzt!
Lightning crackled in Shu Yichao’s hands.
“I bring the spark of death!”
Lightning Arrows burst forth like silver serpents, decimating all the defensive mechanisms on the city walls. In the blink of an eye, countless garrison troops were either reduced to cinders or were blasted off amidst the artifacts’ explosions.
“You bastards! Hold on! Make sure to hold on!”
The Chach general angrily reprimanded the soldiers who were balled up next to a ballista, having lost their will to fight.
“Why are these people so much easier to deal with than the Tibetans?” Shu Yichao was baffled to see the bawling soldiers on the city walls.
He hadn’t lost to the Tibetans yet, but the battles he had fought against them hadn’t been easy either. He thought that the Karluks and Chachs would have been difficult foes comparable to the Tibetans, but each of them turned out to be weaker than the previous.
“Attack!”
Shu Yichao suspected that it was a trap, so he sent the specters forth first to test the waters out. The snickering specters raised a tsunami against Talas’ city walls, looking reminiscent of a tiger biting down on a pitiful rabbit.
“GAHHH!”
“UWAAAA!”
“We’re goners! We’re goners!”
“NOOOOOOOO!”
The Chach garrison troops had learned about the specters from the refugees. Seeing the unstoppable wave of specters gushing toward them scared the soldiers out of their wits, and they screamed their heads off.
Not a single one of them could muster the willpower to fight back.
At this rate, Talas would be completely flooded by the specters.
It was then that it happened.
A fiery inferno suddenly rose from the underground, forming a blazing wall that protected Talas from danger. Any specter that dared to approach this wall of flames was burned to cinders. Even a brief touch with a spark would cause the specters to disintegrate like a speck of cloth.
Just like that, the humongous snowstorm of specters was stopped in its tracks.
“Kikiki!”
Unwilling to concede defeat, the specters tried to breach the wall of flames, but they were incinerated like moths leaping into fire. They failed to achieve anything other than to make the flames blaze with greater fervor.
“It’s the high shaman!”
Chach’s garrison troops were so relieved that tears and snot flowed freely down their faces. They cheered in delight at having survived the ordeal.
“Our savior is here!!!”
“Hm?” Shu Yichao looked at the sky.
A figure was slowly rising in the sky. It was a figure dressed in a black cloak, his face obscured by a mysterious mask that only revealed his pitch-black eyes.
A resounding voice echoed across the battlefield, “Tang bandits, I’ll give you a chance to live. Scram with your specters right now and never appear on this land again. Otherwise, die!!!”