Chapter 23

As Tang Yin was wearing Ning’s uniform, the guy did not immediately identify him as an enemy.

He was quick in responding too, he blurted out, “The enemy is too strong, so I am just hiding here!”
“Hiding?” The Ning soldier was extremely furious. He scolded, “You are trying to escape from the battle, it’ll be a death penalty according to the military law…”

Tang Yin wasn’t in a mood to listen to him. Without waiting for the guy to finish his words, he sneered, “Bullshit!” He waved his sword fiercely as he spoke.

Surprisingly, the soldier not only blocked his sword, but also countered with a heavy strike.

A harsh whistling sound could be heard as the blade slashing through the air.

The wind stroke before the blade, it brought a burning pain to the skin.
It was easy to judge whether someone was an expert by his first move. As soon as the guy unsheathed his blade, Tang Yin immediately realized that he was not an ordinary soldier but a spiritual practitioner.

If he were a person who knew the internal information of Ning State, he would be able to recognize the identity of this guy just by looking at the sign on his chest.

Ning State was the first vassal state in Haotian Empire to establish a spiritual martial arts school. They mitigated the conflicts between various spiritual martial art sects and provided spiritual practitioners with centralized and systematic training. This was also the first in the Empire. At the same time, the school had trained up a large batch of outstanding spiritual martial artists for Ning State, which had also greatly strengthened Ning State’s military strength.

The dark red mark on the chest of this Ning soldier was in fact the symbol of the Ning Spiritual Martial Art School.
It was just that Tang Yin didn’t know all of these, so he didn’t realize that the guy was actually a spiritual practitioner.

The counter strike from the Ning soldier was quick and heavy, Tang Yin couldn’t make it in time to block with his sword. With no other choices, he could only dodge to the side.

Sua!

The blade missed Tang Yin, but the tent was torn open with a big hole of two feet long.
The slashing sound of the tent clothes had attracted attention of Ning soldiers around the central tent. Before they could figure out anything, they heard another slashing sound. Then, Tang Yin jumped out from the tent. Before he could balance himself, the guy too jumped out after him and shouted, “There is a spy!”

Damn it! Tang Yin cussed in his heart, hating the Ning soldier who ruined his plan to the core. He held his sword in reverse grip [1], and halted his body movement that was dashing forward abruptly while he stabbed the sword backward at the guy’s chest.

The Ning soldier responded quickly by moving his body to the side, just nice for him to dodge the fatal blow from Tang Yin. However, he didn’t expect that this strike was just a fake move. Tang Yin landed a follow-up strike. As he was dodging, Tang Yin flipped his wrist and waved his steel sword horizontally.

Shit! The Ning soldier realized that it was bad, but it was too late for him to dodge again.

All they could hear was a muffled sound, and Tang Yin’s sword had sliced through the Ning soldier’s waist. The strike was powerful; it almost sliced the Ning soldier’s body into half. The Ning soldier was still standing, but his internal organs had slid out of his belly.
“Ah–” Seeing how the Ning soldier died miserably under Tang Yin’s sword, all other soldiers around them were shocked. Firstly, they were shocked by Tang Yin’s ruthless attack. Secondly, the Ning soldier was someone with the Spiritual Martial Art School’s symbol. He was obviously a spiritual practitioner who was sent to train himself in the army. He couldn’t even survive the first round and got killed by Tang Yin’s strange technique. It was too unbelievable.

They were stunned, but Tang Yin wasn’t. After he killed the Ning soldier who blew his cover, he immediately charged toward the rest of the Ning soldiers.

Tang Yin’s sword was quick and ruthless. The ordinary soldiers couldn’t handle his attacks at all. When the two parties first came into contact, several Ning soldiers had already gotten hit. However, there were too many of them. One dead soldier would be replaced by ten other soldiers. Tang Yin held his breath and charged for a few meters. He lost count of how many Ning soldiers he had killed, but the enemies were increased instead. In the end, all he could see were only enemies with silver armors, surrounding him completely. They kept attacking him with various weapons from all directions.

Being surrounded by such a close order formation, no matter how flexible he was, he couldn’t do much with it. Eventually, Tang Yin was defending more than attacking. He was getting increasingly fatigued, and sweat was dripping along his cheeks.

At this moment, someone among the Ning soldiers suddenly shouted, “Back off, you all!”

With the shouts, the Ning soldiers who besieged Tang Yin retreated as a tide, leaving a circular open space in the middle. Then, several Ning generals walked out from the crowd.

These Ning generals were suited from top to toe in heavy armor. Their silver-colored military boots let out crisp sounds as they walked. The leader among them was in his early forties; he was burly and handsome; he looked well-educated in his neatly tidied beard.
The burly big man assessed Tang Yin coldly, and looked down at the corpses on the ground. He asked in a cold tone, “Are you from the Feng?”

Grabbing the opportunity as the Ning soldiers had backed off, Tang Yin was panting and trying his best to recover his strength. As he heard the question from the big man, he straightened his back and shrugged his shoulder as he said, “Yes.”

The burly big man said, “Judging from your skills, you are definitely somebody. Say your name!”

“Tang Yin!”

“Tang Yin?” The burly man frowned and thought for a moment, shaking his head and sayinng, “I have never heard of it.”

Tang Yin laughed. It would be strange if he had actually heard of his name. He deliberately dragged the time and tried to recover his physical strength. So he asked, “Who are you?”
The burly big man said firmly, “Yuan Kui.”

Tang Yin mocked the big man where he bowed down and thought for a moment pretentiously. Finally, he shook his head and smiled, “I have never heard of it too.”

As soon as he said that, he was surrounded by angry murmur of the crowd. In particular, several generals behind Yuan Kui were filled with indignation; they widened their eyes as if they wanted to swallow Tang Yin alive.

Yuan Kui was a well-known general in Ning State. He was a high-ranking, well-known figure. However, Tang Yin was not from their world and Yan Lie was someone from five hundred years ago, of course they had never heard of his name.

This time, Ning State gathered its military forces and defended against Feng State. In the battle in Hedong, they had defeated Feng State’s army of two hundred thousand people. They were extremely excited by this victory. After winning, their army did not return to the capital, they instead took the opportunity to attack Tongmen directly.
Tongmen was a strategic spot of Feng State; it was the western gateway to Feng State and also the eastern window to Ning State. No matter if it was occupied by Feng or Ning State, the occupying state could do both attack and defense with Tongmen as the base. It was located at an invincible location.

Ning State also attached great importance to this battle at Tongmen. They gathered four armies which consisted of four hundred thousand soldiers outside Tongmen, and two princes even came to the battlefield to supervise the war.

The first prince was the second successor to the throne of Ning State, Yu Jia; the second prince who came was Yu Shang, the third successor to the throne. However, Yu Shang did not have the courage of his brother, as he was weak and timid. Although the situation now was of Ning State’s advantage, he dared not go on the battlefield in Tongmen. He chose to stay behind with a fine excuse as to prevent the Feng State’s army from retreating back to Tongmen. They had built this checkpoint especially for Yu Shang.

Yu Shang was a noble prince, of course the Ning army would do everything to protect him. Yuan Kui was one of the protectors. Otherwise, with Yuan Kui’s high status in the army, he would never be satisfied with just staying behind as a defending general.
In the past few days, they didn’t come across any large groups of Feng armies, they had instead blocked and killed several squadrons of Feng soldiers. Yuan Kui was very much ashamed of this, but Yu Shang was happy about it. He reported these contributions to Emperor Ning everyday diligently and had no intention of returning to the battlefield in Tongmen.

Listening to Tang Yin’s arrogant comment, a Ning general shouted angrily, “What an arrogant man, I’ll take your head!” As he spoke, he drew out his sword and wanted to fight Tang Yin.

Yuan Kui waved his hand and stopped his subordinate. He smiled at Tang Yin and said, “Tang Yin, you’re trapped here now and there’s nowhere for you to escape. If you surrender now, I can consider…”

Tang Yin smirked and interrupted him, “Just bring it on, I’ve heard too much nonsense.”

Yuan Kui was already not in a good mood, now he was furious as he was provoked by Tang Yin now. He extended his right palm facing up and said coldly, “I intended to let you survive. Since you can’t wait to die, don’t blame it on me later!”
At that time, a soldier ran up and handed a silver spear to him.

Yuan Kui held the spear with one hand and stretched his arm forward. The tip of the spear pointed at Tang Yin’s nose.

He wasn’t moving, and he didn’t use any skills. In the eyes of the people around them, Yuan Kui just stood still silently. As for Tang Yin who was directly opposite him, he felt it completely differently.

When Yuan Kui’s silver spear pointed at him, an invisible pressure overwhelmed him. The surrounding air seemed to have suddenly become heavier that Tang Yin couldn’t breathe properly under the pressure.

Such a strong spiritual pressure!

Tang Yin looked at Yuan Kui in disbelief. His Reiki [1] cultivation was far beyond his imagination. It was absolutely unexpected for him to encounter such a powerful spiritual martial art master in Ning State’s checkpoint.
A few seconds passed by, it felt like a few centuries long for Tang Yin.

Yuan Kui finally moved. He held the spear in one hand and walked toward Tang Yin slowly.

He’s definitely not an opponent whom I can handle now! Tang Yin knew very well that the gap between him and Yuan Kui was too big that he didn’t have even the slightest chance of winning.

I can only run away now if I wish to survive!

For the first time in his life, Tang Yin had the thought of ​​retreating without fighting. However, now as he wanted to retreat, his body would not listen to him. He felt as if he was tied up by some invisible stocks and chains; he couldn’t move at all.

I couldn’t even resist his spiritual pressure, let alone fighting him? Tang Yin’s hand holding the sword couldn’t help but tremble slightly, he could only watch helplessly as Yuan Kui approached him and stroke out his spear slowly with the spear tip aiming straight at his chest.

Dodge it! I must dodge it! Tang Yin perceived that although the speed of his spear attack was slow, but the hidden power was shocking. At least, it could actually pierce through his armor and his body.
Perhaps one could really acquire incredible strength when facing a desperate situation. As the spear tip was about to pierce his chestplate, he let out a sudden roar and twisted his waist forcefully. His stiffened body twisted to the side miraculously.

Ptch!

Unfortunately, his movements were still a tad slower.

Although Yuan Kui’s strike did not stab into Tang Yin’s chest, it pierced into his left ribs.

The cold, tearing pain that penetrated deep into his body made Tang Yin screamed in pain. He was unsure from where did he acquire the strength in his body, but he broke through Yuan Kui’s spiritual pressure and took several steps back.

Yuan Kui didn’t even need to use <Insight> to feel that Tang Yin’s Reiki [2] cultivation was not quite high. Technically, it should be impossible for him to break through the spiritual pressure he cast on him. But in fact, not only did he dodge the fatal blow at the critical moment, he also withdrew himself smoothly from the spiritual pressure. It was indeed surprising for Yuan Kui.

This young man in front of him was qualified as a man with incredible willpower, but even so, Yuan Kui still had a hundred percent confidence to take him down with his spear.

“You are very tough, but you have chosen the wrong opponent!” As Yuan Kui sneered, he lifted the silver spear again and pointed at Tang Yin.

[1] Defensive Knife Grip Techniques

[2] Reiki: Japanese, a universal life energy