Chapter Forty-Six: Who Shall Lose Their Head?

Gu Liubai had long agreed with Yin Shiniang not to use her Frost Sword.

This short spear was something she had casually picked up from the armory.

After killing the Tibetan general, Yin Shiniang leapt onto a nearby rooftop and began searching for her next target.

Outside Heishawa City, nearly half of the Tibetans were busily sorting and transporting goods, distributing them according to the load capacity of their warhorses.

The spoils were substantial.

Heishawa was indeed a large piece of ripe meat.

With the books and craftsmen promised by the Xie family, along with some medicinal herbs they lacked, Tibet should rise at an astonishing speed after this battle!

But Zanzhuo could not celebrate.

Since last night, what had once gone smoothly was gradually becoming strange.

Although the four thousand cavalry he sent out passed through without obstruction—except for the East Gate and the deliberately avoided West Gate—and reports indicated almost no battles occurred, the generals he was familiar with appeared less and less in his sight.

Soon, successive reports confirmed his ominous premonition.

Though the cavalry encountered no ambushes, many leading generals were dead.

And the ways they died differed.

Some were pinned to the ground by a long spear.

Some suffered skulls crushed by a heavy club.

Others had spears driven through their mouths.

Still others bore dozens of identical sword wounds.

When news came that Wangdui, whose sword techniques Zanzhuo had personally taught, had died with a pair of chopsticks piercing his eyes and brain, Zanzhuo could no longer control his emotions. He slammed his helmet, now stripped of its plume, violently onto the ground. “How many experts are hiding in this city!”

At that moment, someone added insult to injury: a Demon Slayer soldier galloped back with news. “Last night, two unarmed officials from Chang’an appeared at the East Gate. They ambushed from houses by the roadside but have yet to strike.”

Zanzhuo slowly lifted his head.

The sunlight was unbearably blinding.

How many more?

Names flashed through Zanzhuo’s mind—Mangbuzhi, Qiubu, Chiji, Qiangba, Saichi…all terrifyingly familiar, all dead!

This small city of Heishawa was like the demonic ancestral mountain of Tibetan legend, continuously devouring the generals under his command.

Even if they crushed the entire city and took everything they could carry, this transaction was already bleeding him dry.

Large quantities of supplies were still being transported out, but the words “retreat” were already choking him.

He no longer wished to continue.

Yet at that moment, a Demon Slayer soldier rushed back, shouting, “General Gesang demands five hundred archers. If he gets them, he will decapitate the Green-Eyed one! Otherwise, he will die inside and never come out!”

Zanzhuo’s body trembled violently.

He vividly recalled the deep conversation with Gesang before the expedition.

Tibetans never lacked warriors!

They were naturally stronger than the Tang people. So long as they had enough grain and meat, Tibetan women’s milk flowed like snowmelt from the Tianshan Mountains—never ceasing.

Children nourished by that milk could run wildly across the plateau like antelopes and endure a whole day’s ride on horseback!

What Tibet lacked was Tang wisdom and Tang craftsmanship!

Tibetans could be as cunning as Tang people, but managing subordinates, governing territories, coordinating production with war, strategic thinking, and farsighted vision—all these fell short of the Tang. Not to mention the Tang knowledge of agriculture, metallurgy, and armor-making. Without the Tang, they couldn’t even cast a proper cooking pot for marching, only fragile black pottery jars!

And there was no mention of the Tang’s orderly transmission of cultivation methods—swordsmanship and spear techniques, breathing exercises, standing meditation, and walking methods that could effortlessly raise physical strength far beyond normal limits.

Those weak-born Tang, through systematic study and diligent practice of these cultivation arts, easily compensated for their natural deficiencies and could defeat Tibetan warriors with ease!

Compared to them, Tibetans were truly barbarians relying only on natural talent.

Gesang was an anomaly among Tibetans.

He had studied in Chang’an, gaining strength and bringing back cultivation methods.

But Gesang said that was far from enough.

If he could obtain truly advanced cultivation methods, his Demon Slayer unit could become like the Turkic Black Riders.

The Turkic Black Riders were powerful because their royal family had engaged in exchanges with the Sui and now Tang empires for centuries, and maintained close ties with India, enabling them to possess the complete and mighty Cang Lang secret arts.

Zanzhuo’s mind was in turmoil.

He thought of this now because he realized he might have unwittingly made a grave mistake!

He had allowed Gesang into Heishawa!

Gesang was his most precious asset!

The only Tibetan general with Tang thinking and wisdom.

Several Mangbuzhis combined could not match one Gesang.

Yet he had only thought to send his elite troops in—how did he not consider that Gesang was among them?

Regret and frustration nearly drowned his reason.

But he knew Gesang’s decision would not change.

“Give him eight hundred archers!”

Zanzhuo’s face twisted hideously as he yelled at the Demon Slayer soldier, “But tell him my order: after killing the Green-Eyed demon, no lingering—Demon Slayer forces all withdraw!”

At that moment, he had made up his mind. The retreat would not be limited to the East Gate’s Demon Slayer troops but the entire army.

The pillaging of Heishawa would end here.

Yet the expression on the Demon Slayer soldier’s face turned strange.

“General, I can’t deploy the archers.”

Zanzhuo was stunned. “Why?”

The soldier’s face paled. “Daur and Andagun both failed.”

Zanzhuo cried out in disbelief, “They’re dead too?”

The soldier anxiously said, “No, they’re alive, but out of arrows.”

“??”

“They planned a surprise shot at that fat man and the Green-Eyed youth, but all the arrows in their quivers were taken—replaced with a single plume from Mangbuzhi’s hat. Now both are mentally unstable, claiming there’s a blue-clothed female ghost in the city. Their troops dare not advance…”

“Enough!” Zanzhuo roared, hearing the tearing sound at the corner of his mouth. “Take your men and deliver my order—cut your way through with blades!”

…

Morale is a curious thing.

Even though Xu Tuibei’s every strike was slower than last night’s, often feeling his unfamiliar blade unbearably heavy, nearly crushing him,

Ever since his appearance, the situation on the eastern main road suddenly shifted.

Terrified Tibetan warriors shoved and squeezed into clusters, groups of twenty or thirty pressed together, yet ten or so Tang soldiers surrounded and hacked at them, including many Demon Slayers pinned down and unable to move.

Yet amid this chaos, one Demon Slayer commander remained calm.

He could tell that at least in this eastern sector, the Tang army was at its last breath.

He was clearer-headed than any Tibetan general.

Including Zanzhuo outside the city.

Actually, according to the original strategy, this fighting was meaningless.

The plunder was complete.

Next came collecting the Xie family’s traded goods.

But what Zanzhuo and the other Tibetan generals outside the city failed to realize, this commander had already seen.

For Tibet’s rise, the Xie family’s goods were now meaningless.

The key was to kill the Green-Eyed youth.

If they failed to kill him,

Then everything—Zanzhuo, Heishawa, Pei Yunqiu, and whatever ghost haunted the city—would become a shadow forever lingering over Tibetans, more terrifying than the legendary ancestral mountain demons.

This was an indelible long-term impact!

No matter how well-equipped Tibet became, no matter how much grain they had, whenever facing Tang cities or powerful Tang cultivators, all Tibetan warriors would recall Mangbuzhi’s death, Qiubu’s beheading,

And this Green-Eyed youth—they would even lose the courage to charge the city.

Only by killing this Green-Eyed youth and bringing his head out on a horse’s tail would Tibetan timidity vanish, and the ambitions of the Samdrub Tsangpo to seize the world remain undiminished.

He understood Zanzhuo better than Gu Liubai.

He was certain Zanzhuo was already preparing to order a full retreat.

Thus, he had to use his own life to threaten Zanzhuo, to buy time to kill the Green-Eyed youth.

…

When Xu Tuibei’s blade severed a Demon Slayer soldier’s head along with half a shoulder, he felt his inner qi completely depleted. The wounds beneath his armor likely burst open, sticky with fresh blood.

Dizziness forced him to lean his unfamiliar blade against the ground again.

In his sight, no more than four hundred Tang soldiers remained able to fight.

Just then, he saw large groups of Tibetan cavalry pouring in from the East Gate.

“Damn it, nothing’s going like Gu Fifteen imagined.”

He smiled bitterly, muttering this just as a piercing whistle sounded through the air.

In the next instant, countless arrows rained down like a storm.

Finally, archers driven by the Demon Slayers had forced their way in.

Even though he immediately took cover behind two old oxen and shielded his head with both hands, he was riddled like a porcupine.

He wore two layers of armor on his back.

Yet the sharp arrowheads still pierced flesh and blood.

Though he might not die immediately, the porcupine-like Xu Tuibei lost all strength to continue, collapsing into a pool of blood.

No Tibetan soldier seized the opportunity to charge forward and harvest heads.

They too were stunned by the volley.

According to Gesang’s initial order, these arrows were indiscriminate; they only cleared a path for him.

Gesang’s gaze fell on Xu Tuibei, slumped and broken on the ground.

He would start with this man’s head.