Chapter 593 - The Decisive Battle! Besieged by Elephants!
Chapter 593: The Decisive Battle! Besieged by Elephants!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
“The White Elephant Corps?”
Wang Chong turned his head around. Although he had the memories from his past life, his experiences could never compare to these old veterans who had interacted with Mengshe Zhao for most of their lives and who had also experienced the battle of Erhai.
“Mm!”
Chen Shusun nodded, his expression extremely grave.
“The lands of Erhai are different from the Central Plains. The trees there are lush and the climate hot. There are many large beasts living there, and one of them is a beast with a long nose and incredible strength that Mengshe Zhao calls the elephant. Geluofeng began to train these massive beasts a long time, in the end training them into an army called the White Elephant Corps.
“The White Elephant Corps doesn’t have many soldiers, but they are extremely powerful. In the battle of Erhai, they dealt us a heavy blow, with many of our soldiers dying to them,” Chen Shusun said.
The earth rumbled and quaked as that army of massive beasts approached. Finally, Wang Chong was able to see the White Elephant Corps that Chen Shusun spoke of. These were massive elephants, and though Wang Chong had seen elephants before, these were completely different from the ones in Wang Chong’s mind.
Wang Chong had never before seen elephants this large. Each of these elephants was six to seven meters tall, some of them even as tall as eight or nine. Their massive bodies alone were enough to shake one’s resolve.
How could such a large elephant exist?
Wang Chong felt an incredible shock.
Wang Chong had never seen this White Elephant Corps, and he had no recollection of them in his memories. They had probably been annihilated in the foreign invasion. But now that he saw these elephants, Wang Chong felt an impact that was difficult to imagine.
At their largest, African bush elephants would only reach heights of around four meters, but the elephants of the White Elephant Corps almost doubled that height, and each of them was sixteen to seventeen meters long.
The tusks protruding from their mouths were three to four meters long.
In all of Wang Chong’s experiences, he had never seen such a massive creature.
“Those elephants are even wearing armor!” Old Eagle muttered to himself. While Wang Chong had some experiences with which to mentally prepare himself, Old Eagle was completely lacking. It was hard to describe the astonishment Old Eagle had felt upon seeing these behemoths.
“It’s inscribed armor!” Wang Chong muttered.
Old Eagle was correct. These elephants were wearing thick white armor, and it was plate armor akin to that used by the Tibetans. Each plate was a foot thick and covered in inscriptions.
Wang Chong needed only a glance to recognize that these were the toughening and defensive inscriptions that he was so familiar with. These inscriptions and the thickness of the plate armor meant that even ballistae would find it very difficult to harm these elephants.
But the most shocking thing of all was still the size of the elephants.
With the armor and inscriptions, these elephants probably each weigh more than ten thousand jin, even heavier than the steel walls! Wang Chong quietly said to himself.
Each one of the metal walls that Wang Chong had had forged weighed several thousand jin, but this was insignificant to the Mengshe Zhao elephants. In an instant, Wang Chong understood Mengshe Zhao’s plan.
“Mobilize the ballistae; prepare to intercept!” Wang Chong ordered.
“Yes, Young Master!”
The messengers quickly went to pass down the order. At the same time, a change also occurred in the Mengshe Zhao army.
“Hey!”
“Ha!”
Shouting, the Mengshe Zhao army surged forward, forming a human wall in front of the massive white elephants and advancing together with them.
What the Tang had worried the most about had finally occurred.
Roar!
“Ha!”
The soldiers roared as they raised their massive shields over their heads and advanced toward the mountain. At this sight, it wasn’t just Wang Chong, but Chen Shusun, Wang Yan, Xianyu Zhongtong, Old Eagle, Luo Ji, Lin Wushou, and the other generals who paled as well.
Even the slowest of them could understand that these shield soldiers were protecting the white-armored elephants.
The ground continued to quake as the White Elephant Corps advanced. From the vantage of the summit, one had a clear view of their relentless advance.
One, two, three, four…
Upon careful examination, more than one thousand of these elephants were approaching the mountain. Although this wasn’t a lot, these massive behemoths scattered across the plain seemed to be exuding a mighty wave of pressure.
“Hey!”
“Ha!”
……
Finally, with a set of deafening blares, the first wave of the White Elephant Corps reached the base of the mountain.
“Ready, fire!”
With this order, a volley of arrow descended like locusts. Dingdingding! The arrows landed on the massive bodies of the elephants and were deflected away.
The white armor served as thick city walls that warded off every arrow.
“Get ready!”
At the same time, the soldiers of the White Elephant Corps responded, raising large shields over their heads. Seven or eight soldiers ran forward, with some of them sliding down the nose so that they could raise their shields over the eyes of the elephants.
Not a single one of the arrows was able to hit their mark.
But this was only the beginning.
“Go!”
A Mengshe Zhao general wearing white armor waved his longsword and swung it down. Woosh! Countless chains flew out, trembling in the air as if imbued with intelligence, and quickly latched onto a steel wall.
And the other ends of these chains quickly attached themselves to the body of an elephant.
“Pull!”
Dust began to stir from the mountain as a massive steel wall crashed to the ground. Pulled along by the chains, it was quickly dragged off the mountain.
In the face of the enormous strength of this elephant, even the steel walls that Wang Chong had invested a great deal of his fortune into, and that weighed seven to eight thousand jin, were barely worth mentioning. It took mere moments for that massive steel wall to be dragged away.
Without the protection of the steel wall, the Tang soldiers behind it quickly grimaced.
“Go, quickly!”
“Report to Milord and have them decide!”
……
In the face of the charging soldiers of the White Elephant Corps, the entire square formation paled and began to retreat farther up the mountain.
“Hahaha, they’ve lost, the Great Tang have lost!”
A burst of cheers rose from the Mengshe Zhao army.
Past examples served as lessons for those that followed, and the previous crushing defeat had made all of them extremely wary of the Annan Protectorate army. But the situation was completely different this time.
Without the protection of the steel walls, the Annan Protectorate army had lost its advantage and could no longer hold back the army.
Boom!
With yet another thunderous explosion, yet another steel wall crashed to the ground, dragged away by seven or eight chains. Boom! Boom! Boom! One wall after another toppled.
In just a few short moments, thirty to forty of these steel walls were dragged away.
“Stop! Don’t let them drag them away!”
Twenty-some Annan Protectorate army soldiers ran up and grabbed onto the wall, engaging in a tug of war with the elephant. But right after, there was another boom and plume of dust. The twenty-some Tang soldiers had been dragged down the mountain along with the heavy wall.
“Ah!”
The summit resounded with cries of alarm. Although they knew that these elephants were enormously powerful, no one had expected them to be this powerful. Twenty-some elites at the peak of the True Martial realm working together were still no match for the elephant.
“Not even someone at Tier 3 or 4 of the Profound Martial realm might be its match!”
As Old Eagle watched on, his eyes widened in surprise.
His current cultivation level was at Profound Martial Tier 3, nearly at Tier 4. In other words, in terms of pure strength, if he did not use the Six-Armed Ksitigarbha Vajra Guardian, even he was no match for this elephant.
And such elephants could be seen wherever one looked.
Chen Shusun exclaimed, “The situation is extremely unfavorable! Geluofeng has put great thought into dealing with the Great Tang, and the White Elephant Corps is actually the fruit of his labors, meant for dealing with the Great Tang in a defensive battle.
“These one thousand elephants are all between Profound Martial Tier 3 and Tier 9 in terms of strength, with some of the elephants even nearing the peak of Profound Martial.” He gazed at a twelve-meter elephant in the distance.
That was probably the oldest, tallest, and strongest elephant of the White Elephant Corps. The hairs on its body were already a grayish white. But its feet still moved lightly and dexterously.
This was probably the Elephant King of the Whitestone Corps.
Not even Chen Shusun felt confident in dealing with the Elephant King. The Elephant King and the thousand more elephants below it were enough to pose a massive threat to the Great Tang.
“If we let the Mengshe Zhao army pull all the steel walls away, then even with our ninety thousand soldiers, the only fate awaiting us will be death,” Chen Shusun sternly said.
The Annan Protectorate army had fought with the White Elephant Corps once, so Chen Shusun was well aware of its power. If one ranked the four elite corps of Mengshe Zhao in terms of strength, the White Elephant Corps was far above the Whitestone Corps.
The only reason they were not ranked first was because they were too few in number, numbering only around one thousand.
A voice suddenly spoke. “Hmph, elephants are just unthinking beasts. Can they be more flexible and intelligent than an actual warrior? If they didn’t have the protection of the Mengshe Zhao army, those elephants would be nothing more than giant targets.”
At some point, Lin Wushou and his fellow generals had arrived on the summit. The moment they arrived, they immediately turned to Wang Chong.
“Young Master, let me lead a group to hunt down those elephants! This general is confident in his ability to stop the Mengshe Zhao soldiers at the base of the mountain.”
“No need!”
Wang Chong waved his hand, his gaze still focused below.
“It hasn’t reached that stage yet!”
Boom! Boom! Boom! While they had all been speaking, another wave of steel walls had been pulled down, leaving long trails in the ground as they were dragged away by the elephants.
At the base of the mountain, plumes of dust rose more than ten zhang into the sky, further obscuring the movements of the Mengshe Zhao army.