Chapter 331. The Great Battle of Hubodagang 2 — Yi Youngwoo's Great Exploits
They attacked the Liao center from every direction.
There was no true left or right anymore.
The Jin had never divided their strength.
Youngwoo charged straight into the enemy formation where resistance was fiercest.
"Follow me!"
"Concentrate your arrows on the front!"
"Charge!"
Go Youngchang shouted the order, and the archers in the rear poured a rain of arrows over the line of advance.
At the moment the Liao soldiers raised their shields and tried to avoid the volley, the spearhead of Balhae cavalry led by Yi Youngwoo smashed into their flank.
Until then, the Jin had repeated a pattern of striking and withdrawing.
The right wing engaged and fell back to draw out the Liao response.
The left wing then drove in again and shook the front of the central army.
Youngwoo's charge was different.
He did not go in while preserving an easy route of withdrawal.
From the beginning, he aimed directly at Tianzuo's banner and advanced without turning aside.
Youngwoo broke the front.
Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon guarded either side of him.
Behind them, the Balhae heavy cavalry drove in with grim persistence.
They hardly looked like troops who had only just submitted.
They clung to the narrow opening Youngwoo created and refused to let it close.
Once a gap appeared, they lowered their horses' heads and forced their way deeper.
Youngwoo's banner unfurled.
The long cloth snapped through the air with a sharp flutter.
Fabric, wind, and internal power twisted together and produced a cutting sound.
The soldiers in the front rank flinched.
In that instant, Youngwoo's halberd swept across throats and knocked helmets flying.
Even blocking it was barely enough.
A long weapon wielded by a martial artist who had reached the highest level was not something ordinary strength could stop.
Every sweep brought down two or three men.
A wider stroke sent five or six stumbling away at once.
A line opened through the defenses of the Liao imperial guard.
It was the road through which the Balhae and Goryeo troops drove forward.
At the very front, Youngwoo saw only Tianzuo's banner.
A straight line.
He advanced directly toward it.
Countless soldiers surrounded him from every side, but he kept breaking whatever stood before him and continued forward.
Samyoari and Dolhapsok were also attacking from the two wings.
Their assaults shook the outer layers of the Liao center.
But Youngwoo's Balhae-Goryeo force was driving straight into the interior.
That difference began to change the flow of the battle.
An emperor was not a man expected to fight personally with a spear in his hands.
His duty on the battlefield was to remain in place.
As long as he stood at the center, the commands of his generals carried weight, and soldiers endured by looking toward the imperial banner.
But when an enemy charge pierced straight toward that banner, everything changed.
Even if layers of imperial guards surrounded him, once that barrier began breaking before his eyes, fear reached the emperor directly.
Yelü Yanxi saw the pressure closing in.
At first, he moved back only slightly.
He wanted to put one more step between himself and the spearpoint coming toward him.
But when the emperor moved, the guards surrounding him moved too.
When the guards moved, the defensive line lost its shape.
And when the line lost its shape, Youngwoo's path became even clearer.
"Stop him! Stop that man!"
Yelü Yanxi shouted.
Fear came through his voice before anger did.
He loved hunting.
When beaters drove animals toward him, he stood in a prepared position and loosed his arrows.
Others decided the direction from which the animals would come, the place from which he would shoot, and even the route by which he could withdraw.
That was his pleasure.
His pastime.
Something he considered one of his talents.
But a battlefield was not a hunting ground.
The enemy did not stand before him like an animal driven into range.
Instead, the enemy came charging straight at him.
The moment the emperor retreated, the defenses of the central army wavered.
The imperial guards who had formed around Tianzuo moved with him and lost their spacing.
The emperor himself may have believed he had taken only a single step back.
But that one step thinned the wall of soldiers protecting him.
Youngwoo saw it.
He drove straight ahead.
The halberd with its absurdly long banner swept through the air again.
Youngwoo swung low, stabbed an enemy soldier, caught him on the blade, and hurled the whole body aside.
Hook.
Lift.
Throw.
The Balhae heavy cavalry drove in directly behind him.
Go Youngchang guarded the right.
Go Hoewon guarded the left.
The Goryeo troops held the road opened behind them.
The breakthrough was not the work of one man's martial skill alone.
One man opened the way.
Two men secured the sides.
The cavalry behind widened the passage.
That was how the penetration was made.
The distance shrank rapidly.
A charge that had begun several hundred jang away was suddenly within a hundred.
Then fifty.
The emperor's face changed.
Now Youngwoo's banner was clearly visible to him.
So were the imperial guards falling every time the halberd swung.
This was no longer something happening on a distant battlefield.
It was happening before the emperor's own eyes.
"Your Majesty, you must hold your position!"
"That is the safest place!"
"If you retreat, the central army will collapse!"
The commanders shouted one after another.
But Yelü Yanxi could endure no longer.
He was afraid, so he retreated.
That man looked as though he would reach him at any moment, so he moved away.
And every time the emperor withdrew, the formation of the central army shook.
Armies fought through formation, not through the strength of one individual.
Yet Youngwoo was breaking one side of that formation apart.
Each time his halberd revolved, the Liao front rank was driven sideways.
Even elite soldiers with shields struggled to withstand the force carried through the shaft.
Helmets flew off.
Horses collapsed.
Banner bearers toppled backward.
Whenever the long banner cracked through the air, the eyes of the front rank wavered.
Into that brief hesitation, Youngwoo's halberd entered again.
Whenever Youngwoo opened the path, Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon guarded both sides.
The Balhae heavy cavalry drove through behind them with stubborn force.
The emperor withdrew in haste.
That movement became a signal in itself.
The imperial guards closed around him and moved backward.
The front ranks of the central army began to think they were being abandoned.
Provision wagons clogged the road behind.
The tribal troops on both wings slowed while watching one another's banners.
The narrow breach Youngwoo had opened became the beginning of the collapse of the entire Liao center.
Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon stayed close behind Youngwoo's shoulders.
They followed the narrow path he tore open without losing a step.
The two shoulders of the formation mattered even more than the spearpoint itself.
Go Youngchang shouted from the right.
"Follow me!"
Go Hoewon raised his voice from the left.
"Open the gap! Let the troops behind us through!"
Whenever Youngwoo broke the front, the two men immediately drove outward to either side.
One man made the opening.
Two men widened it.
Behind them, the Balhae soldiers lowered their horses' heads and entered.
Spearpoints and shields followed in order, and the narrow breach gradually widened.
Youngwoo opened the front.
Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon pushed the sides apart.
The Balhae heavy cavalry seized the opening and drove deeper.
The Liao defensive line broke at the front, was pushed inward from both sides, and then crushed again by the Balhae troops entering behind.
The Liao formation shook violently.
Whenever the emperor panicked and moved, the imperial guards rushed after him and hastily rebuilt another defensive line.
Spearmen formed layer after layer in front of the imperial carriage.
Shields rose again.
But the wall had been thrown together in haste.
Wherever Youngwoo's halberd reached, the battle line collapsed.
The shaft shoved shields aside.
The banner whipped through the air and stole men's attention.
Helmets came loose.
Horses were driven sideways.
The shoulders of spearmen folded one after another.
Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon widened those openings from either side, and the Balhae heavy cavalry drove farther through them.
When the emperor retreated again, the guards moved again.
The more they moved, the wider the gaps became.
Every hastily filled space was thinner than the one before it.
Youngwoo struck exactly where those defenses weakened.
The more the Liao center moved in order to protect the emperor, the more violently it shook.
It was almost like a dance.
But not a dance meant to preserve life.
It was the dance of a martial artist opening a road through the center of a battlefield.
The halberd thrust forward.
The shaft drove sideways.
Liao soldiers blocking the way collapsed together.
Those who raised shields tried to endure the force carried through the weapon, but the weight of the long halberd and the internal power poured down from horseback drove men backward with their shields still before them.
They were overwhelmed and pushed aside.
Youngwoo spun the weapon.
The wind split first.
The banner snapped and spread in the air, and the halberd blade suddenly appeared from behind the flashing cloth.
Shields shattered.
Iron plates flew from armor.
Two or three men in the front rank fell from their horses almost together.
If one somehow managed to remain upright, the blade came straight down from above.
The force passed through helmet, shoulder, and chest and smashed the man out of the formation.
Thrusting, hooking, cutting, and shoving joined into one continuous flow.
Before one motion had fully ended, the next had already begun.
When a shield rose on the left, the shaft pressed sideways against it.
When a horse drove in from the right, the halberd swept low before its neck.
The moment the front rank's attention was drawn to the banner, the blade was already striking somewhere else.
Among the Liao commanders was a man named Yi Jang.
He had trained in both sword and spear.
He was immensely strong and known for his courage.
He stood nearly seven cheok tall, and his body was so large that even the horse beneath him looked burdened.
He shoved through the front rank.
Gripping a long spear with both hands, he shouted,
"I will stop him!"
The surrounding Liao soldiers opened a path.
Yi Jang kicked his horse forward and charged directly at Youngwoo.
His spearpoint aimed at the center of Youngwoo's chest.
The weight of his body, the speed of his horse, and the strength of his arms converged into a single point.
The thrust came straight and savage.
"I'll take him!"
Before his shout had ended, the spearpoint was already before Youngwoo's eyes.
Youngwoo turned his upper body sideways in the saddle.
The spear aimed at his chest brushed past his collar.
At the same instant, Youngwoo's halberd slid forward.
Evading and striking were not separate motions.
The force of the turn passed directly into the shaft.
The blade entered beneath Yi Jang's helmet.
A dull impact sounded.
Yi Jang's head snapped sideways.
His enormous body swayed once in the saddle and collapsed.
The long spear fell from his hands, spinning through the air.
His riderless horse ran several more steps before veering away.
The Liao front rank froze.
The huge commander who had rushed forward to stop Youngwoo had fallen without surviving even a single exchange.
A man had just been killed.
Yet Youngwoo's movement had been unnaturally smooth and natural.
Turning aside, letting the thrust pass, and driving the halberd forward had flowed together like a scene in a painting.
Blood sprayed across the battlefield.
Hooves tore at the earth.
Yet that movement alone seemed strangely clear.
It was as if a body tempered through years of martial training had answered the extreme moment by itself.
The elite Liao soldiers stepped forward believing they were facing one man.
But what stood before them was not merely one man.
It was the spearhead of a breakthrough in which weapon, banner, horse, and internal power moved as a single body.
When Youngwoo opened one step, Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon widened it from both sides.
Behind them, Balhae heavy cavalry drove in without mercy.
The halberd spun again.
A dull crash sounded as it struck shields.
Iron plates scattered.
The Liao front rank was pushed sideways, opening a gap.
Youngwoo did not miss it.
He thrust again.
Balhae hoofbeats followed through the road he had opened, tearing deeper into the defenses of the central army.
Directly behind Youngwoo, protected on three sides by Go Youngchang and Go Hoewon, rode Okjeong.
Several quivers hung on either side of her horse.
She fired without pause.
At such close range, using a bow should have exposed her to danger.
She showed no concern.
Two, sometimes three arrows were held between her fingers.
When she loosed them in rapid succession—
Tak! Tak! Tak!
—they flew almost without interval.
The men blocking Youngwoo's path dropped one after another.
When several appeared together, she sometimes loosed two or three arrows almost at once.
Every arrow struck.
She did not miss.
At such close range, she shot directly into the battlefield before her.
There was barely time for an enemy to evade or even raise a shield.
Her arrows passed through the spaces between Youngwoo, Go Hoewon, and Go Youngchang, supporting the advance of all three.
That role had originally belonged to the brothers So Cheolryong.
Now the three men followed behind while watching her in disbelief.
Okjeong stayed tight behind Youngwoo's back and shot at enemies he had not yet reached.
One might wonder how many men a single archer could possibly bring down.
Yet each time she fired, another man fell.
Her arrows went for faces.
Even under armor, the area around the eyes remained exposed.
She struck it precisely.
Perhaps anyone could hit a target at such a distance.
But could anyone hit a moving target in the middle of such violent combat merely because it was close?
Her archery bordered on divine skill.
Youngwoo, who almost never looked around during battle, glanced behind him and stared in disbelief.
No matter how strong she was, she was still a woman and looked slight.
Yet there she was in armor, drawing her bow again and again.
Most mounted archers carried two spare quivers, perhaps three at most.
Okjeong had eight loaded onto her horse—two to the left, two to the right, two before her, and two behind.
And she was emptying them one after another.
The bow she used at such close range could best be called a short bow.
As its name suggested, it was shorter than a longbow.
Its compact length made it easier to handle on horseback and in tight spaces.
A rider could not open his body fully to draw a long bow, so northern cavalry favored short, powerful bows with strong elasticity.
Khitan and Jurchen bows were generally close to this type of mounted short bow.
A short bow could still be extremely powerful.
Composite bows made from layered wood, horn, and sinew stored great force inside a compact frame.
They were easy to shoot while turning the body in the saddle and well suited to firing repeatedly in different directions.
At close range, the force of the arrow became even more brutal.
Okjeong's bow was smaller still.
Even when she twisted in the saddle and changed her angle, it almost never caught on the horse's mane, her armor, or the saddle.
It fit neatly in her hands, but the bow itself was frighteningly taut.
When she drew the string, the entire short bow curved like the back of a beast.
The instant she released, all that compressed force burst into the arrow.
Okjeong shot from nearly point-blank range.
This was not archery meant to measure long distance.
She watched for openings while horses were almost brushing against one another.
When an arrow struck, the target's body jerked backward.
Even arrows that hit armor struck hard enough to shake the breath from a man.
Those entering the throat, armpit, or beneath the helmet sent men straight from the saddle.
There was one more unusual thing.
She consumed arrows so quickly that riders came up beside her to exchange her spare quivers.
Even in the middle of the fighting, all eight quivers were replaced twice.
That was why the four-person diamond formation moved with a perfection that looked as though it had been practiced long in advance.