But no matter how much the Arabs charged, they were not able to break these two armies.
As the Arabs charged again and again, Wang Chong, Wang Zhongsi, Gao Xianzhi, and Abusi calmly watched on.
It was one thing if they were at a disadvantage, but when the Protector-Generals of the Great Tang had the upper hand, they excelled at maintaining this advantage more than the Great Generals of any other empire. In addition, Wang Chong had bolstered their forces so that they each had one hundred thousand soldiers, so the Arabs did not have an advantage in numbers.
“While the Arabs are strong, they lack in tactics, at least compared to the Great Tang. If this continues and they still have nothing else, these two hundred thousand Arab cavalry will crumble. Trying to use this small force to break our defense line is simply delusional!” Gao Xianzhi said, his voice transmitted through a mental wave. To his left was Feng Changqing, and to his right were Cheng Qianli and Xi Yuanqing. All of them were paying close attention to this battle.
As the Wall of the Empire, Gao Xianzhi possessed an extraordinary intuition. Zhangchou Jianqiong and An Sishun had merely pierced through the enemy flanks, Apolis still had his main central force standing strong, there were even enemy cavalry infiltrating the front line, and the Behemoth Army was still advancing.
But in the eyes of Gao Xianzhi, the Arabs had already lost.
Atop the White-hoofed Shadow, Wang Chong was pondering something. Nearby, Crown Prince’s Junior Guardian Wang Zhongsi was also apparently inspecting the battlefield in search of something.
“Something’s not right!”
As Wang Zhongsi looked toward the unperturbed figure of Khatabah and the vast and motionless army of Arab soldiers around him, he frowned.
At almost the same moment, Wang Chong suddenly sensed something, and together with Gao Xianzhi, Abusi, and King Song, he raised his head and looked up.
Chapter 1840 - Battle in the Air! (I)
Chapter 1840: Battle in the Air! (I)
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Creee!
A shrill screech came from the rear of the Arab army, so sharp that it could almost pierce through eardrums.
A moment later, in a fierce gust of wind, the sky dimmed as a moving shadow like a dark cloud began to move toward the Great Tang camp.
“What’s that?”
“How could there be such a massive bird?”
“Wait! There’s someone on the bird!”
“Everyone, be careful!”
Emerging from the rear of the Arab camp were countless massive birds, all of them moving as quickly as lightning toward the Tang defense line.
Giant birds… true giant birds!
Whether it was the Great Tang, Arabia, the Eastern and Western Turks, or even a small country like Goguryeo, all countries raised large numbers of birds to gather information. On Wang Chong’s side, he had extremely talented bird trainers in Old Eagle and Zhang Que, and a special eagle team.
When it came to birds used, they ranged from as small as sparrows, which were only about the size of a fist, to as large as rock eagles and golden falcons, which had shocking wingspans of more than a meter.
But no matter how great the wingspan of a bird, their bodies would not be very large. At most, they would be about the size of a cat.
Yet the giant birds flying out of the Arab camp had bodies larger than human adults, and their wingspans were four to five meters in length. They were like fierce beasts flying through the skies.
They had savage and fierce visages, seeming like miniaturized Behemoths that had grown wings.
Even more strange was that these giant birds even had black armor that protected their weak points.
Just what are these things?
Everyone stared in shock at these giant birds, even Gao Xianzhi.
Amongst the commanders, he and Wang Chong had the most experience fighting with the Arabs, but not even he had ever seen this sort of monster before.
The strangest of all was that each flying monster had an Arab on its back.
“Watch out! They have something in their hands!” At this moment, Chen Burang urgently called out, his voice ringing across the army.
As the commander of the army’s master archers, Chen Burang possessed extraordinary sight and had immediately sensed something odd about the giant birds.
“For Arabia!”
“Divine Emissary Army, move out! Slay all the infidels!”
“Attack!”
The Arabs brashly called out, and the flock of giant birds swiftly covered more than half the battlefield and arrived above the Tang camp.
Boomboomboom!
The moment they arrived, large ‘steel balls’ began to drop down from the skies.
“Not good! Bombs!”
Upon sensing that faint, but familiar, energy in the air, Chen Burang paled.
At this moment, one of the ‘steel balls’ smashed into a steel wall and instantly exploded into a blazing flame.
This was the signal for hundreds more steel balls to howl down. Amidst fierce explosions, the Tang base was turned into a sea of fire.
The outer surface of these balls was made of steel, under that was a layer of fragile tiles, and farther inside was viscous black oil.
The King of Foreign Lands had by now spread the reputation of Arabian oil far and wide. Everyone knew that this sort of object was extremely flammable. Anything that it touched, whether armor or weapons, would fiercely burn with flames that were difficult to extinguish. Only using dirt to completely bury the flames could put them out.
“Careful!”
Everyone began to move away from the fire bombs dropping down from the sky.
“Shoot!”
The master archers instinctively began to shoot at the steel balls. Ping! Ping! Boom! The steel balls exploded and ignited in the air.
And as these steel balls erupted, the black oil within them was scattered over an even wider area, and it seemed like the heavens themselves had begun to burn.
At this moment, thick clouds of dust engulfed the steel defense line.
“Fools!”
Atop his elephant Behemoth, Khatabah faintly smiled, a cold light in his eyes.
Oil was a massive advantage that Arabia uniquely enjoyed, just like the ballistae for the Great Tang. If those eastern infidels thought that shooting down the steel balls would be enough, then they were truly simpletons. The burning oil could consume the air in the area and kill his opponents all the same.
Moreover, attacking the steel balls would spread the oil over a greater area and cause his opponents to die even faster.
“Master archers, listen here! Target the giant birds! Shoot!” Chen Burang suddenly called out. Creeeak! The bowstrings of more than six hundred master archers were pulled back, and they targeted the giant birds and began to continuously loose arrows.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
With piercing whistles, the arrows sliced through the air and engulfed the giant bird army. Plaintive shrieks came from above as several of the giant birds plunged to the ground. But at this time, the armor worn by these giant birds showed their use. As this armor protected their vital spots, simply striking the birds with arrows was not able to deal lethal damage to these tenacious birds. Seven or eight, or even more than ten arrows were needed to kill each one.
Chen Burang’s heart sank at this. If they couldn’t deal with these giant birds quickly, they would be able to turn the entire army into a sea of fire with those steel balls.
Before one wave could settle, another one stirred. As the giant birds were throwing down their steel balls, the earth suddenly began to shudder. The ground cracked open, and several steel walls were suddenly flung more than one hundred feet into the air by a force originating from under the ground.
Raaaah!
With a frightening roar, a giant sandworm with a diameter of seven or eight meters, hundreds of times larger than normal sandworms and with a mouth ringed
with sharp teeth, burst out of the ground.
“Ah!”
Four or five Tang soldiers were caught off guard and swallowed whole.
Boomboomboom!
This was merely the beginning. Not far away, the ground cracked open, walls toppled, and several more giant sandworms charged out of the ground.
These giant sandworms had come without warning, and their immense strength scattered aside all the steel walls around them. Wang Chong had established the City of Steel on a layer of hard bedrock that was impossible to dig through, but this hard stone was essentially slurry to the giant sandworms.
Boom! Boom! Boom! One giant sandworm after another appeared, working together with the Behemoths to throw the central Tang force into chaos.
“Shoot!”
Sharp arrows howled through the air, each one loosed by a Tang master archer whose every arrow could shoot through stone.
But when these arrows struck the giant sandworms, they all bounced off. These giant sandworms had a dense and tough outer skin that was also extremely flexible. Swords and sabers also seemed useless against them.
Rumble! The monsters did not stay for long. A few moments later, they had burrowed back into the earth, leaving behind pitch-black holes. A few moments after that, they reappeared at another location.
“Careful!”
Gao Xianzhi, Abusi, and the other Great Generals grimaced. The Arabs’ Behemoth Army was easy to deal with through the giant ballistae and Behemoth Slayers, but these giant sandworms could move around as they pleased. If they were allowed to continue charging in and out, the defense line would utterly collapse.
Whoosh!
In the distance, Khatabah and the High Priest watched and subtly nodded.
The giant bird army and the giant sandworms were the first instance of cooperation between Khatabah and High Priest. These actions, coupled with the assault of the Behemoth Army and the two hundred thousand Arab cavalry, had succeeded in causing chaos in the Tang base.
Now they needed to see how the Great Tang dealt with this.
……
Rumble!
In showers of rock and clanging steel, the giant sandworms burrowed in and out. Meanwhile, the giant bird army continued to hurl down their steel bombs. As the chaos spread, a cold and collected voice rang out.
“Li Siye, Young Master Qingyang, I leave those giant sandworms to you!
“Old Eagle, mobilize the eagle army and kill those giant birds!”
Wang Chong’s voice was calm and cold, like an ancient pool of still water.
Buzz!
This voice at this moment rapidly calmed the Tang army down. For these soldiers, Wang Chong’s voice was the pillar that propped up the world, taking all their worries off their shoulders.
Chapter 1841 - Battle in the Air! (II)
Chapter 1841: Battle in the Air! (II)
“This subordinate will comply!”Li Siye’s voice resounded from the army.Clang! Li Siye pulled down his visor, completing the encasement of his body in armor. With his sword held in both hands, Li Siye strode over to the edge of the black pits into which the giant worms had vanished.Nearby, Young Master Qingyang, Sword Dragon, Zhao Fengchen, and Saint Martial realm experts from the army also walked out, also equipped with heavy armor and two-handed swords. Their weapons were all made of Wootz Steel and their suits of armor were all made of formidable Meteoric Metal.Raaaah!The earth began to tremble again, the shattered stones on the ground shaking. With a terrifying roar, a massive sandworm, its stony skin covered in wrinkles, shot from the ground with lightning-fast speed.The many years this creature spent beneath the earth meant that it had long ago ceased to have any eyes, ears, or nose. All it had was its massive, many-layered maw lined with teeth.These teeth were extremely sharp and powerful. Several hundred soldiers had already been devoured by these giant sandworm monsters! Even their armor had been eviscerated and crushed into scrap by those sharp teeth.Many of those soldiers had died almost immediately after being devoured.Bang!As that giant sandworm shot out of the ground, Li Siye suddenly roared, “Die!” Gripping his Wootz Steel sword, he shot forward like a cannonball and leaped into the sandworm’s open mouth.Raaaa! After devouring Li Siye, the sandworm shot through the air, its long body turning in the air, and then burrowed back into the earth.Not long after Li Siye and that sandworm vanished, Young Master Qingyang, Sword Dragon, Zhao Fengchen, and other experts also threw themselves into the mouths of the other sandworms, vanishing into the ground with them.Upon seeing this, Abu Muslim and the other Arab commanders frowned.But things were far from over…In the back of Wang Chong’s army was a force of armored infantry guarding nearly one thousand abnormally huge wooden crates. They had not taken part in the battle and seemed to show no signs of participating.But at this moment, as if receiving an order, these infantry came to life and walked over to those massive crates.Clang!A large hammer covered in inscriptions was held aloft and then slammed down on the lock of one of the wooden crates, creating a shower of sparks. With a crack, the lock was shattered. Once the locks were undone, the soldiers swiftly pushed open the crates.Whoosh!As the crates opened, there was a great din of cawing and screeching. Countless birds flew out of the crates, covering the sky. Five thousand, six thousand… A dense flock of ten thousand birds instantly blotted out the sky.Let alone the Arabs, even the Tang soldiers were stunned by this sight, not having expected those crates to be holding so many birds.In the Rebellion of the Three Princes, Goguryeon Eagle King Kim U-Seok had bought and trained a large number of birds. With this vast flock of birds, he had taken control of the capital, even controlling the skies above Wang Chong’s residence so that he couldn’t send information by bird.Kim U-Seok was dead, but his birds had all been taken by Old Eagle and brought to the front line.Creee!With sharp screeches, the numerous birds swiftly began to fly toward the giant bird army.The distance of tens of thousands of feet went by in the blink of an eye, and those tens of thousands of birds soon engulfed the giant bird army.Under Old Eagle’s command, those fierce birds began to lunge, peck, scratch, and beat at the giant birds.“Careful!”“Exterminate them!”“There’s something weird on the claws of those birds! Watch out!”The Arabs on the backs of the giant birds initially did not take this sudden assault very seriously, but they quickly realized that these birds were far from just being a mere nuisance. Their claws and beaks gleamed with steel.Roooar!A giant bird roared and slashed at a large rock eagle, but a moment later, at least forty other birds converged on the giant bird from all sides.Swish! A gyrfalcon pecked and instantly pierced a bloody hole in the giant bird, whose thick black armor suddenly seemed as fragile as paper.“Wootz Steel!”The Arab on the back of the giant bird instantly turned pale.The giant birds were all equipped with heavy armor forged by the finest smiths of Arabia. These were meant to guard against the attacks of master archers, countering their greatest threat.But these birds could tear through the armor with their beaks and claws. There was only one kind of metal with this sort of effect: the Wootz Steel used by the King of Foreign Lands.The giant bird riders all paled in fear upon understanding what was so special about these birds.Creee!Screeching and crying resounded through the air as more and more birds engulfed the giant birds and their riders.The pieces of armor were torn away, and the attack soon began to have very obvious effects on the giant bird army’s offensive.Whoosh!Quantity had a quality all its own, and under the attack of countless birds, a large piece of armor dropped down from the chest of a giant bird, crashing into the ground in a shower of debris. Without this piece of armor, a large part of the giant bird was exposed.Creee!Several dozen birds immediately charged in and began to tear through the bird. Blood gushed out from the wounds, and even the intestines were pulled out.Keeee! Black feathers showered down as the bird shrieked. Finally, the giant bird could take no more and tumbled from the sky with its rider, slamming down in a cloud of dust.Then came a second, a third… Under the frenzied attacks of the birds, the giant bird army’s situation grew worse and worse. They n
o longer had any energy to attack the Tang army.“Everything has its counter, just like His Highness said. While we might not be able to raise these giant beasts, that doesn’t mean we don’t have ways of dealing with them!”On the ground, Old Eagle looked up to the sky.Whether it was during the Battle of Talas or the Rebellion of the Three Princes, the air, this region which had once been forbidden to humans, was turning into an increasingly contested battlefield, and it was now normal to see birds tearing at each other for supremacy.Although the Great Tang had not expected these giant birds, it had an eagle army prepared to deal with aerial assaults.Wootz Steel was extremely precious, and even Wang Chong had only equipped one force en masse with Wootz Steel weapons, his Wushang Cavalry. Thus, Old Eagle did not dare to ask for much. For each bird, whether gyrfalcon or rock eagle, only the very tips of their weapons were Wootz Steel.Fortunately, birds had a particular way of attacking, and the beaks and claws didn’t use up that much Wootz Steel. A single Wootz Steel sword could equip at least one thousand birds, allowing for the possibility of Old Eagle’s Wootz Steel eagle army.In Old Eagle’s view, an army of ten thousand birds equipped with Wootz Steel weapons could deal with any force of birds, regardless of kind or training. The only thing he hadn’t expected was that the Arabs would send these giant birds before their hunting falcons.The giant birds continued to plummet from the sky, but Old Eagle’s forces were also suffering losses. However, the giant bird army had begun to panic and was now focused completely on dealing with the vast flock of birds around it.On the elephant Behemoth, Khatabah’s pupils constricted as he suddenly ordered, “Pass on my order! Send out the hunting falcons!”It was Khatabah’s rule that he would never send additional soldiers for the first probing assault. It was both meaningless and unnecessary. But that aerial battle above the defense line had forced Khatabah to break his rule.Those tens of thousands of birds were enough to completely wipe out his giant bird army. While the giant birds could hold out for now and had not suffered large losses, their complete loss was only a matter of time. Moreover, if they were hindered like this, there was no point in sending them out in the first place.Creee!
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