Chapter 338. The Battle of Liaoyang 7
The instant Oyeon Jik looked back, the sword began to dance.
The young commander's back blocked the way ahead, and beyond him the charging enemy soldiers fell like bundles of brushwood.
In the space of a few breaths, the blade slashed horizontally, dropped vertically, and cut along diagonal lines.
One charging soldier spun away to the side.
Another pitched forward and struck the ground headfirst.
Blood burst from chests, shoulders, heads, and throats, wetting the narrow passage inside the hidden gate.
More than a dozen soldiers collapsed in the blink of an eye.
Then Oyeon Jik's comrades surged through behind him.
Their armor was solid.
Their footsteps were heavy.
They passed through the hidden gate with fierce momentum.
Oyeon Jik stared at them blankly for a moment.
When had they changed this much?
Someone hurried over and supported him.
Another soldier knelt beside the woman and checked her condition.
"Are you all right?"
Blood was running steadily from Oyeon Jik's shoulder.
The wound was deep.
But he was still breathing, and his eyes had not gone dim.
"I am fine. Hurry. See to her first."
The woman was drenched in blood, but no wound could be seen on her body.
It was other people's blood covering her clothes, hands, and face.
Her fingertips trembled like those of someone who had never killed even an insect.
As though she had spent all the strength she would ever possess on that one stab, her exhausted body sagged like waterlogged cotton.
An officer moved the two of them farther back.
Not far away, the clash of spears and swords continued without pause.
Oyeon Jik listened to the sounds with clenched teeth.
What was happening inside the city was hidden from his sight, but the noise gradually moved farther away.
The Balhae army was pushing deeper into the city.
Oyeon Jik was soon carried back outside the walls.
His wound was bound immediately.
His blood-soaked clothing was cut away, and the sharp smell of medicine stung his nose.
Clenching his teeth, he kept looking toward the hidden gate.
Through the open doorway, shouts, running footsteps, and the clash of metal spread deeper into the night-shrouded city.
Meanwhile, the Balhae soldiers who had entered through the hidden gate headed directly toward the southern gate.
The streets inside the city were narrow and dark, and startled enemy soldiers rushed out from every direction with weapons in hand.
But before the blade of Yi Youngwoo at the front, their formations did not last long.
Youngwoo swept the enemy aside from the front, and the Balhae troops pressed close behind him and drove forward.
Bodies of enemy soldiers piled up along the road from the hidden gate to the southern gate.
A panicked Xiao Baoxian kept throwing more troops into the fighting as though trying to stamp out a fire directly before his eyes.
Crowded into narrow streets, the soldiers were cut down by Youngwoo's sword and the Balhae spears before they could properly form ranks.
Blood ran across the stone pavement.
Fallen bodies clogged the road.
Youngwoo had returned the spear bearing his long banner when he resigned, saying that it belonged to the sovereign.
In its place, he now held a long hwando.
His movement was completely different from when he fought with a spear.
The shorter, lighter blade turned swiftly with his wrist, while his feet claimed the road before the sword itself arrived.
His cultivation had matured.
Sword and man moved as though they were one body.
Youngwoo thrust, cut, struck, and drove forward with quick precision.
The tip of his blade went straight into openings in the enemy's guard.
The back of the sword smashed shoulders and wrists.
His footwork continued without pause between collapsing bodies.
The way he moved was battle, yet at the same time it resembled his usual sword practice.
The forms he had trained again and again were simply unfolding upon the street.
Among the men who had learned from him, several recognized those movements and began copying them.
At first, only a little more than ten followed.
Before long, that number grew to twenty, then thirty.
They shifted their small shields onto their backs, gripped their hwando with both hands, and wielded them almost like two-handed sabers.
Following the offensive sword forms Youngwoo had taught them, their blades sought enemy throats, shoulders, and arms without hesitation.
Dozens of hwando moved at once in the darkness.
Horizontal cuts.
Diagonal descents.
One step forward, then another thrust.
Whenever the blades flashed in the torchlight, enemy soldiers collapsed one after another along the street.
The Liaoyang defenders, overwhelmed by the force pressing upon them, retreated step by step.
Youngwoo shouted,
"Open the gate!"
As he cleared the road ahead, the Balhae troops rushed toward the southern gate.
Inside the gate, enemy soldiers were hurriedly forming a straight defensive line.
It was the final position of the men assigned to protect the entrance.
"Stop them! If the gate opens, it is over! Stop them!"
Youngwoo charged straight at the formation.
Each time the hwando flashed, part of the line shattered and gave ground.
The wrist of a swordsman was severed.
The shoulder of a spearman split open.
A man behind a shield was driven backward and fell with the shield itself.
But there were many enemies.
Every gap left by a fallen soldier was quickly filled by another.
The Balhae troops pushed hard, yet the pressure directly before the southern gate did not ease.
At that moment, Yi Youngwoo rose above the heads of the straight formation.
One foot stepped onto a shield.
The other struck against a spear shaft and carried him over.
As his body crossed through the air, every enemy soldier beneath him looked upward.
The instant Youngwoo touched the ground, he sprang again.
He crossed more than ten jang in a single burst and entered beneath the arch of the southern gate.
The locking bar was directly before him.
Youngwoo raised his hwando and struck down.
The thick timber split beneath the blade.
He struck again.
The wood cracked loudly and lost its strength.
Youngwoo kicked away the remaining piece and shoved the gate.
The massive southern doors trembled inward.
The Balhae soldiers waiting outside erupted in cheers.
Cold night air rushed through the widening gap.
Then the cavalry poured in like wind.
Two thousand Balhae soldiers surged through the open gate.
Hooves hammered the stone pavement.
Spearpoints and hwando flashed between the torches.
The Liaoyang defenders gathered behind the gate took the full force of the charge.
Youngwoo seized a riderless horse among them and climbed onto its back.
The owner of the horse turned in surprise, pulling on the reins.
"Give it to me."
Without hesitation, the man loosened the reins tied to the saddle and threw them over.
"Loyalty!"
Youngwoo caught them.
"Thank you."
He immediately vaulted into the saddle.
The moment he mounted, he was cavalry again.
His feet found the stirrups.
His waist settled over the saddle.
And at once his movements changed.
The power and speed of the horse joined with Youngwoo's sword forms.
Once they reached a broader courtyard, Youngwoo swung his hwando.
Whenever the horse tore past the enemy's flank, the blade flashed through the opening it created.
Soldiers fell beneath the sword before they could even stop the charge of the horse.
Spearmen were driven aside by the horse's head.
Shield-bearers collapsed beneath cuts coming in from the side.
Once the troops behind the southern gate broke, the drums rose louder.
Balhae soldiers climbed the gate tower, dragged down the Liao banner, and raised a new flag in its place.
The moment the banner above the gate changed, the momentum inside the city shifted with it.
Go Youngchang soon rode in and came up beside Youngwoo.
Excitement and urgency were both written across his face.
"We have to capture Xiao Baoxian."
Youngwoo flicked blood from his hwando and turned his head.
"Lead the way."