Chapter 57: The Commander's Banner as Coffin, Loyal Bones as Tombstones

At the very moment the great banner bearing the character "Wang" crashed to the ground, the entire battlefield seemed to be seized by an invisible hand, its clamor and shouting instantly choked into silence.

Köke Temür's pupils constricted to the size of pinpricks in that fraction of a second.

That banner was the spine of his Kokochü, the very soul of this army that galloped across the grasslands!

"Take it back!" he roared, his voice distorted by extreme fury. "At any cost, bring the commander's banner back to me!"

Like a tidal wave, the Yuan elite guards surged madly toward Wu Mang.

Lances still pierced through Wu Mang's body, and blood gushed from his mouth and wounds as if it were worthless, his life force rapidly draining away.

Yet, using the very last scrap of his strength, he held on desperately, clasping that shattered, blood-and-mud-stained banner tightly to his chest.

The jagged edges of the broken pole dug painfully into his sternum.

He parted his lips, caught the figures of Fan Tong, Bao Nianfeng, and Zhu Di in his blurring vision, and a content, foolish smile spread across his face.

Then, his head slowly drooped.

"Wu Mang!"

The heart-rending roar was swallowed by the thundering hooves of the charging Yuan cavalry.

"Hold the line!" With eyes burning red, Zhu Di was the first to react. He dragged Wu Mang's corpse behind him, his mace spinning into a blur of afterimages as he smashed the skulls of the foremost Yuan soldiers into pulp.

"Form a circle!" Bao Nianfeng roared, slamming his heavy axe viciously into the ground, kicking up a shower of dirt and stone.

The surviving vanguard soldiers instinctively sprang into action.

Without waiting for an order, as if they had drilled it a thousand times, they contracted rapidly with Wu Mang's body at the center, forming a small yet impregnable circular defensive formation.

Shields on the outside, lances on the inside, every man nailed himself to this blood-soaked earth like an iron spike.

With their own flesh and blood, they would guard the final dignity of the brother who had always trailed behind them with flattery, only to trade his life for glory in the final moment.

Up in the watchtower, Xu Da saw it all clearly.

When that great banner fell, the heart of the battle-hardened old commander skipped a beat as well.

He did not know whose subordinates that daring force were, but he knew the opportunity had arrived.

"Pass the order!" Xu Da's voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly across the entire central army. "Tell every soldier who knows Mongolian to shout at the top of their lungs!"

"What should we shout?" his deputy anxiously asked.

"Just shout that Köke Temür is dead, that Wang Baobao has lost his head!"

With the order given, thousands of voices raised in Mongolian dialects from north and south converged into a massive wave of sound, echoing across the entire battlefield.

"Wang Ba... oh no, Wang Baobao is dead!"

"Köke Temür has been beheaded!"

"The commander is done for! Run for your lives!"

The fiercely advancing Yuan army faltered in their attack.

The soldiers instinctively turned their heads, gazing toward the spot where the commander's banner had once proudly flown.

There, nothing remained.

Panic and doubt spread rapidly through the ranks like a plague.

Those tribes that had been coerced into joining the campaign were the first to waver. With the commander dead, what was the point of fighting? Without hesitation, they whipped their horses around and began to break away from the battlefield.

Once one tribe fled, a second and a third followed.

The dominoes had fallen.

Köke Temür watched this chaotic scene before him, trembling with rage. He knew the general situation was lost.

He blew his horn frantically, attempting to stabilize the formation, but army morale had shattered beyond all redemption.

He cast one last deep look at that small black formation, surrounded tightly by his elite guards yet standing unyielding as a reef, a flash of deep wariness and lingering resentment crossing his eyes.

In the end, he blew the horn signaling a full retreat.

The sound of the horn was desolate and lingering.

The main Yuan force retreated slowly, like a receding tide. Their withdrawal was not disorderly; they maintained their formations, displaying an exceptionally high level of military discipline.

Yet, retreat they did.

When the last Yuan soldier vanished over the horizon, only a deathly silence and the howling northern wind remained on the battlefield.

Xu Da, accompanied by his personal guards, slowly spurred his horse toward that tiny formation composed of both the dead and the living.

The scene before him caused even this veteran commander, accustomed to mountains of corpses and seas of blood, to draw a sharp breath.

Just over three hundred men.

Every single one of them looked as though they had been fished out of a pool of blood.

Their black armor was crusted thick with blood and gore, its original color indistinguishable. Men with blinded eyes, severed arms, and crippled legs were everywhere.

Fan Tong, Zhu Di, and Bao Nianfeng stood at the front, their wounds deep to the bone, their entire bodies resembling tattered bags of blood.

As for the new recruits and ordinary garrison soldiers who had temporarily joined their charge, not a single one remained standing.

Not a single soul survived.

"Wu Mang..." Bao Nianfeng sank to his knees, staring at Wu Mang lying in the pool of blood, and the tower-like man emitted a whimper like a wounded beast.

He reached out with a trembling hand, trying to pull the commander's banner from Wu Mang's embrace.

He could not pry it loose.

Wu Mang held on too tightly, as if he had poured the very last ounce of his life's strength into fusing this banner with his own flesh and bone.

"Don't move him," Fan Tong's voice rasped like a broken bellows. "Let him hold it. He bought this with his life, so let him... use it as his quilt."

Damn it, Wu Mang, you sycophant... was flattering people really worth going this far? Who's going to do my ledgers now?!

The surviving soldiers silently cut strips of still-warm raw meat from the carcasses of their fallen mounts, shoving them into their mouths and chewing with fierce determination.

They needed to restore their strength, even if it meant resorting to the most primitive and savage means.

Xu Da watched this scene in silence.

He finally understood that the source of this army's terrifying combat prowess went far beyond fine equipment and fearless courage.

It was a survival instinct, akin to that of wild beasts, already carved deep into their very bones.

At that moment, the urgent sound of hoofbeats echoed from afar.

Lan Yu's adopted son charged in with a dozen blood-soaked survivors.

Slumped across a horse's back was an unconscious figure.

It was Lan Yu.

He bore dozens of wounds large and small, his breathing perilously faint. Had there not been the slightest tremor left in his chest, he would have been indistinguishable from the dead.

The vanguard he led had been completely wiped out to buy time for Fan Tong and the others to break through.

Few indeed were those who survived.

Xu Da closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his gaze held only boundless exhaustion and icy cold.

"Pass the order."

"Collect the remains of our soldiers, and take every piece of transportable supplies."

"This place is not meant for a prolonged stay."

He paused, his voice carrying an unprecedented desolation.

"We... are going home."

The Battle of Lingbei was a disastrous defeat for the Ming army.

This northern expedition, initially invested with such high hopes of utterly shattering the spine of the Northern Yuan, was declared a failure in the most tragic manner possible.

The afterglow of the setting sun stained the entire battlefield a desolate, bloody crimson.

Fan Tong looked back, casting a final glance at Wu Mang—carefully lifted by the soldiers—and then at the battered and broken brothers standing behind him.

The journey home was long and arduous; walk a little slower, brothers, and take one last look at this mortal world.