"Lu Changhe?" Attila blinked, his sanity almost lost. "Where is General Tian? Where is Marquis An? Where is your Emperor? Let him come see me!"
"Your Majesty, we have already lost. We should retreat to the empire immediately..."
The soldiers' reminders quickly calmed Attila.
He absolutely could not die here, or the Xiongnu Empire would surely collapse!
He also had to go back to find his Deda!
Mars and his subordinates were almost completely slaughtered by the Great Qian cavalry. Only Mars and a few cavalry generals were captured alive.
"Your Majesty, your humble servants request to continue pursuing the Xiongnu Empire to eliminate future troubles!"
Liang Xiao looked at the impassioned soldiers and then at the bodies of the Great Qian soldiers being carried back. After a moment's thought, he waved his hand.
"Continue the pursuit!"
The soldiers rejoiced. More than half of the cavalry were ordered to pursue and kill the fleeing Xiongnu soldiers.
Mars and others were brought before Liang Xiao, bound and gagged.
The firelight illuminated their faces. Mars looked at the young Emperor before him and finally felt fear.
"This, this face, is it truly the Martial Saint of Great Zhou... are you the Heavenly General of Great Qian?!"
Qin Feng and the others looked at him, now terrified, and scoffed.
They even hoped Liang Xiao wouldn't tell Mars that he was a descendant of the Martial Saint of Great Zhou, letting him descend into hell with such fear!
As the generals had predicted, Liang Xiao simply stared coldly at Mars and said, "Was it the steadfast defense of the Western regions that gave your Tianri clan the illusion that the Great Qian was timid? Or do you think your Tianri clan, by cobbling together technology and systems from the Western world, can conquer the Great Qian?"
Mars saw Liang Xiao's piercing gaze and swallowed with difficulty, trembling, "So you had a sure chance of victory long ago, and you coveted the supply lines that my clan spent all their efforts to build!"
Liang Xiao signaled for the soldiers escorting Mars to step aside.
A spark of hope ignited in Mars's eyes: "You want to accept my surrender?"
"Do you have any last words?" Liang Xiao asked.
Mars was immediately filled with despair and laughed up at the sky. After a moment, his lips moved, and a look of longing appeared on his face.
"When you attacked our camp just now, did you see the human flesh being roasted on those racks? Let me have one more bite..."
Hearing this, Liang Xiao's eyes sharpened. Before Mars could finish speaking, his Sky Dragon Breaking City Halberd swept across, severing one of his arms.
After Mars's scream, Liang Xiao turned to the enraged Cyrillic beside him and said, "Eldest cousin, I'll leave him to you for execution."
Cyrillic was so moved that tears of gratitude streamed down his face. He then took out a serrated knife that had been prepared for a long time.
The agonizing screams of Mars echoed through the camp, only subsiding a full fifteen minutes later.
The once arrogant Grand Marshal of the Tianri clan was thus beheaded.
The generals roared in anger, "To still be thinking of human flesh at death's door, what a beast!"
Only Liang Xiao pondered, "I heard that the Tianri clan practices a scorched-earth strategy. Wherever they cannot defend, they kill all the living beings they cannot take with them."
"Your Majesty! If our army hesitates, the consequences will be endless! After all, there may still be survivors of the Ayyub dynasty! I request to lead an army to pursue the Tianri, and I am willing to bear all responsibility!" Qin Feng reminded him.
Liang Xiao shook his head. Just as the generals were worried, he added, "I will lead the troops myself and set out immediately!"
The Great Qian army, along with five thousand cavalry from Yumenguan, marched westward.
The defeated Xiongnu army fled, with Great Qian cavalry pursuing them from behind, leaving countless dead.
One side only wanted to escape back to the Xiongnu Empire, while the other refused to allow them to destroy the supply lines of the Kushan Dynasty.
Attila, who was leading the retreat, had a sudden realization and immediately ordered: "Attack the supply routes!"
The Xiongnu cavalry, who had been fleeing directly west, immediately turned northwest.
Lu Changhe, leading his troops in pursuit, noticed the situation and was furious: "Full pursuit!"
However, the Great Qian cavalry horses were slightly behind in stamina after a long pursuit. Only the excellent horses of the white-robed soldiers could pursue unceasingly.
The two sides chased each other. Attila immediately ordered his troops to set fire to the supply lines in the area.
Flames soared into the sky, and vast quantities of grain and fodder were ignited. The Great Qian cavalry behind them had to stop to extinguish the fires, while the white-robed soldiers bravely pursued, preventing further destruction of the subsequent supply lines.
On this night, the Western Allied forces suffered an unprecedented defeat. Of the more than four hundred thousand troops, only forty to fifty thousand Xiongnu cavalry and a few thousand Tianri cavalry guarding the supply lines escaped.
Liang Xiao, leading the cavalry, arrived at the supply lines along the route and felt a tightening in his chest.
Because they could see at night, before the soldiers lit torches for illumination, he had already seen the tragic scene in the distance.
It was filled with the shattered bones of slaves, and blood flowed like a river.
It was obvious that most of the slaves here had become food for the Tianri people, and the rest had been killed by them as they retreated.
"We must uncover the secrets of this race!"
Liang Xiao gritted his teeth and finally ordered the collection of these shattered bones, as well as an inventory of the grain. He then led one hundred thousand cavalry to continue the pursuit.
In the early morning, while his soldiers were resting, Liang Xiao climbed a high mountain and gazed to the west, realizing with a sigh, "This is the reason the Western region has been constantly harassed? Only by being here can one see clearly!"
To his homeland, the west was a region of extremely high altitude, even a plateau. For armies from the east to cross mountains and kill their way to the Western Regions, even to the vicinity of Iran, the high altitude alone would form an insurmountable chasm.
But here, it was a vast plain, with an altitude not much higher than that of the Western regions and the capital!
Comparable to a plain, or even a basin?
"Your Majesty, what are you sighing about?" Qin Feng and the others beside him asked curiously.
"I sigh that there are no high mountains to obstruct this place, allowing the Tianri tribe to ravage our land for thousands of years," Liang Xiao sighed.
Qin Feng blinked and explained, "According to records, since the Qin Dynasty, this area has experienced a century of earthquakes, and countless high mountains were almost leveled."
"I know, it's just that I never truly understood why history changed at that time until I personally came here," Liang Xiao said vaguely.
Matters of his "homeland" were too earth-shattering, so he could only use the guise of dreaming of the divine realm.
"With the Great Qian's history under His Majesty and Your Majesty, it will be a new era!" the generals praised sincerely.
Liang Xiao smiled knowingly, flicked his whip westward, and said, "Continue the pursuit and seize the Kushan Dynasty!"
He was now not even in the mood to count how much grain had been captured. It was definitely enough to supply four hundred thousand troops for a year; otherwise, Mars would not have been so confident in confronting them.
That was enough!
According to the surrendered Babaris, Breida, and Liang Jing, the Kushan Dynasty's territory had a large amount of "oil."
The blood of the future Great Qian's industry could not rely solely on the Zhongzhou oil field.
"Where have General Lu and the others pursued to?"
Everyone was full of curiosity.
Seven thousand white-robed soldiers, plus three thousand reserves, and twenty thousand divine archers behind them, pursued tens of thousands of Xiongnu cavalry, crossing mountains and rivers, relentlessly.
They finally drove the Xiongnu iron cavalry out of the supply line range, successfully preserving the nearly destroyed supply lines.