The moment dawn broke, the vast encampment, large enough to accommodate an army of 100,000 iron cavalry, vanished without a trace. All that remained on the boundless snowy plain were the reassembling, endless black-armored iron cavalry.
In the battle against the main army of the Northern Nomads, the Seventh Expeditionary Force lost over 2,700 warriors. Their bodies were personally encased in ice coffins by Rin and stored within the Wind God Winged Dragon. When the Seventh Expeditionary Force returned triumphantly, their bodies would be fully returned to their families.
Fortunately, under Rin's relentless efforts day and night, no one was unable to fight due to injury. Even if limbs were severed, Rin could reattach them. Therefore, all warriors who survived the battlefield could still fight.
Moreover, there would be no more major battles after this.
"Formal order to the entire Seventh Expeditionary Force: Immediately, from the First to the Tenth Myriarch, begin departing at this moment to eradicate all Native in the Northern Region's snowy plains. During this process, looting is forbidden! Defiling women and children is forbidden! Showing mercy is forbidden! Every place passed through must be thoroughly turned into barren scorched earth!"
Standing atop the massive head of the Wind God Winged Dragon, Rin officially issued the order for the massacre of the entire Northern Region with a clear voice!
"Do not soften your hearts towards any elderly, weak, women, children, sick, or disabled Native. It was they who exchanged a large number of weapons with the Western Kingdom, sewed countless warm fur clothes for the Native men, and sent their relatives and children to the empire's front lines to slaughter the empire's innocent people!"
"If any of you, out of momentary softheartedness, leave a survivor or let them go, first think about how to account for it to the imperial people who died at the hands of the Native, and to the soldiers who died in battle yesterday. When they were rejoicing in invading the empire, killing, plundering, did they ever consider how many innocent people of the empire their relatives and children were wantonly slaughtering in our homeland? No!"
"The elders will teach their history and traditions to the children. The children of the Native will grow up to be jackals invading the empire. Women will bear the offspring of jackals. The reason why the men of the Northern Nomads have been able to invade the empire for thousands of years without end is precisely because of their existence. Remember what I told you, there are no innocents on the battlefield. As long as there is still one person crying, the war is not over!"
Rin's deafening voice reached the mind of every soldier of the Seventh Expeditionary Force, completely erasing their last bit of resistance to slaughtering the elderly and weak civilians. With soaring killing intent and obedience to orders, all members of the Seventh Expeditionary Force roared, shaking their swords, in response to their commander!
"Kill!!!"
"Very good! I will patrol and monitor all movements in the entire Northern Region from the air. Even if divided into ten parts, the Seventh Expeditionary Force is still a complete legion. Ten days later, everyone will gather in front of Ice Mountain City deep in the Northern Region, and then it will be our time for triumph."
"Seventh Expeditionary Force, full deployment!"
The wide dragon wings vibrated, and the sky-obscuring figure of the Wind God Winged Dragon instantly soared into the clouds. Suzaku raised her hand and pulled down the faceplate from the upper forehead of her helmet, revealing a cold, murderous light through the night-vision crystals embedded in the eye slots.
"Go?"
The ten Myriarch teams, like ten bloodthirsty black dragons plunging into the Northern Region's snowy plains, tore through the thousand years of peace within the Northern Region. On the vast, endless snowy plains, amidst the snow-covered mountains where flying snow obscured vision, the wind and snow seemed to fear them, parting on their own, as if they could scent their prey, rushing directly towards the Native settlements.
Rin, riding the Wind God Winged Dragon, used the mighty power of manipulating ice and airflow to calm the endless wind and snow of the Northern Region for a thousand years, bringing an unimaginable disaster to the Native settlements… As arrows carrying oil plunged into the tops of the tents, flames shot up, and the once bustling and prosperous settlement was now engulfed in a sea of blood and fire.
The black-armored cavalry, clad in armor shaped like abyssal demons, their crystal-covered eyes flashing with cold, ruthless light, galloped through the settlement's roads. Seeing any living person in Native attire on the streets—shouting, running, wailing—they indiscriminately swung their battle swords, regardless of gender, age, or youth. The sharp blades cut through the air, blood splattered everywhere, and countless Native civilians died tragically under the empire's butcher knives. Blood flowed in the streets, rapidly covering the entire ground of the settlement.
The men left behind in the various settlements could not be called an army at all. Having not experienced the baptism of war for a thousand years, the Northern Nomads had long become complacent about guarding against the empire and were no match for a single charge of the Myriarch.
The ten armies, with clear divisions of labor and no disorder, simultaneously ignited the fires of slaughter at ten locations on the Northern Region's snowy plains, like a prairie fire on dry grass, annihilating one Native settlement after another with unstoppable momentum and speed.
The First Myriarch team led by Suzaku had the largest target area and the most large settlements. Suzaku's position in the Seventh Expeditionary Force was Legion Commander's Deputy and concurrently the First Myriarch. The First Myriarch team was the only one with a Deputy Myriarch, managed by the Deputy Myriarch in peacetime, but during wartime, it had to obey Suzaku's command.
The initial moment of slaughter was terrifying. There was nothing more pitiable than a group of terrified Native civilians.
They scrambled for weapons… They shouted, ran, and many fell. These Native people being slaughtered by the Seventh Expeditionary Force didn't know what they were doing; they fled in panic. Some Northern Nomads, frightened senseless, ran out of tents, then back into tents, then out again, scurrying aimlessly in the battle.
Families called out to each other. This was a brutal massacre, and women and children were also caught up in it, with no exceptions.
The battle swords and javelins in the hands of the Seventh Expeditionary Force warriors whistled through the darkness. Firelight illuminated the darkness; there was smoke and chaos everywhere. Galloping warhorses' iron hooves trampled over injured and fallen Native. Groans filled the ground.
Not all of the Native left in the settlements were without fighting ability. There were some old hunters who were no longer interested in invading the empire, and some Northern Region folk masters who were indifferent to killing. Faced with the empire's aggression and slaughter, they no longer remained silent, picking up their long-sealed bone knives and hunting bows to defend the peace of their Northern Region tribesmen and the continuation of their lineage, charging towards the unstoppable black-armored iron cavalry.
But reality is not a story, not a myth, and certainly not a casually written novel; no hero can save the world alone. Masters without imperial artifacts cannot withstand the collective charge of a large army, and Rin had already made arrangements for such a situation. At least ten Military Attaché (at the rank of colonel) in each team were specifically prepared for these hidden masters.
Suzaku's Five Weapons of the War God, heavenly halberd, had already reached mastery in martial arts through Rin's training and her own diligent efforts. Its five mode changes were unpredictable, and she single-handedly suppressed a powerful Native expert from a large tribe, overwhelming her opponent.
The Native expert fighting Suzaku at this moment was the former chieftain of one of the largest settlements in the entire Northern Region. Not long ago, feeling his physical strength declining, he voluntarily ceded the chieftain position to the strongest among the younger generation of the settlement, staying within the tribe to hunt for food for his people. However, this year's invasion force had only just departed a few days ago, and what arrived was not their sons returning laden with supplies, but the empire's sweeping iron cavalry!
While Suzaku was fighting the former old chieftain, the elite cavalry of the First Myriarch team galloped through the settlement, pursuing and slaughtering the panic-stricken Northern Region Native. Wherever iron hooves trod, heads were instantly separated from bodies. In an instant, corpses lay everywhere, blood flowed across the ground, dyeing the pure white snow the color of blood.
The mournful cries of the old, the wails of the women, and the frightened screams of the young children, reflected against the burning settlement and the flying blood, painted a vivid picture of a living hell…
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