A wave of his hand
Fang Yuan finishes his wine at leisure, asks Hei Lou Lan whether he should answer Tang Miao Ming’s challenge, and gets an eager yes. Standing, he throws his voice across the field: her courage deserves praise, he tells her, but she is no match for him, and it is getting late. Tang Miao Ming means to talk him down to an even duel, a hundred beast group against her own similar-sized fox group. She is executing a scheme Dong Fang Yu Liang built around her. Her small-scale fox group control matches an enslavement path master’s, and by presenting herself as a lesser, junior challenger, he means for her to bait the proud Wolf King into a fight he cannot gracefully refuse. Both she and Dong Fang Yu Liang are left puzzled by Fang Yuan’s last remark. ch. 509
His next words answer it. Battle should start now, he says, because he still has lunch to eat afterward, and he calls out anyone who wants to challenge him. He waves his hand, and five hundred thousand wolves howl as one and charge straight into Dong Fang tribe’s whole army. Northern plains custom normally opens a battle with a contest between individual experts, which raises the winning side’s morale, lets both sides gauge each other’s strength, and gives the losing Gu Masters a way to surrender afterward with some honor kept. Fang Yuan’s charge skips that custom entirely, and Dong Fang alliance’s ranks fall into chaos as countless defensive Gu flare to life. Tang Miao Ming, standing alone between the armies with her fox group, a thousand beast group strong, is shocked and furious: she came out to challenge him with only that, and the Wolf King is not abiding by the rules. ch. 509
Hei Lou Lan, stunned that his own earlier order to act produced this, cannot argue with Fang Yuan at the critical moment. Fang Yuan credits Dong Fang Yu Liang’s expert challenge to deep calculation and turns the blame back onto Hei Lou Lan’s own order. Hei Lou Lan swallows it and gives the general order to charge. The whole army follows the wolves forward. ch. 509
Tang Miao Ming holds the wolf tide off for a while with a rotating fox formation. Her nerve breaks when she sees Hei tribe’s main army closing behind the wolves, and the formation collapses. Pan Ping runs her down and captures her alive at Hei Lou Lan’s request. ch. 509
On the ground, Tang Fang burns down a night wolf with fire pellet Gu, but a Tang tribe elder blocks him from charging after his captured sister. The elder orders him to retreat, as the tribe leader commanded. At twenty-two, already rank three, Tang Fang finds his own strength counts for little in a battle stacked with rank four and rank five experts above him, and he withdraws only after swearing to come back for her. As he pulls away, Wang Jiang, a rank three Wang tribe Gu Master nursing an old grudge over a stolen fiancee, closes in on him seeking revenge. ch. 509
