Harem Master: Seduction System

Chapter 456: The Ambush at Dragon’s Spine Gorge

Warm amber light flickered from the bronze brazier, casting soft shadows across the thick woolen carpets and fur-draped cushions of the consultation chamber.

Rich, sweet ribbons of aged spirit-sandalwood smoke curled lazily toward the silk ceiling of the pavilion, shut off from the cold autumn drizzle outside by the invisible “Sound-Severed Void Ward” woven into the canvas walls.

Beside the brazier, Noble Consort Cui Yulan sat on the pile of thick white snow-fox furs, leaning her tall, curvy frame against Alaric Steele’s chest.

Her dark hair had come loose from its silver clasp, tumbling in glossy waves over her shoulders. The tears that had soaked her cheeks moments ago were drying in the heat of the fire, though her breathing still hitched every few seconds with the lingering weight of exhaustion and dread over her brother General Cui Hao and the Cui Clan’s future.

Physically, Noble Consort Cui Yulan was in peak condition—her Peak Martial King body brimming with vitality, her skin smooth as warm ivory, and her foundation whole and unblemished. Yet the relentless pressure of the siege outside Azure Fall City and the sight of her family’s soldiers suffering in the mud had worn her proud spirit down until the only place she felt safe breathing was right here against the chest of the gentle healer in gray linen robes.

“Breathe slowly, Yulan,” Alaric Steele murmured, his voice a low, soothing baritone against her ear as his Resonant Heart skill harmonized with the sandalwood fragrance filling her lungs. “Out in the trenches, you carry the weight of twelve thousand lives on your shoulders. In here, let me carry you.”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan let out a long, shaky exhale, her fingers still clutching the front of his gray robe. “Whenever I step outside this tent, Alaric, I feel as if the sky is pressing down on my neck. Only when I smell the sandalwood by your brazier does the noise in my head stop.”

“Because you hold so much tension in your chest and shoulders that you barely let yourself draw a full breath,” Alaric Steele said softly.

Resting his chin lightly against the crown of her dark hair, Alaric Steele let his hands move with deliberate, unhurried boldness.

Instead of keeping his palms respectfully on her upper back as he had in the early days of their acquaintance, his right hand slid slowly around her ribs, slipping beneath the overlap of her dark indigo silk robe to tug the silk sash at her thin waist loose.

The smooth silk parted several inches across her chest.

Noble Consort Cui Yulan stiffened slightly, a sharp breath catching in her throat as the warm air of the brazier brushed against her bare collarbone and the deep, lush valley between her breasts.

“Alaric…?” she whispered, a bright crimson flush creeping rapidly up her neck to the tips of her ears.

“Do not stiffen, Yulan,” Alaric Steele whispered against the sensitive skin just below her ear, his warm breath making her shiver from head to toe. “Your muscles are knotted right around your sternum from holding back your grief all day. Let me loosen the tightness for you. It is only the two of us here.”

Before her mind could muster a single objection, Alaric Steele slipped both of his large, warm hands straight inside the parted front of her indigo silk robe and cupped the full, heavy globes of her bare breasts.

“Ah—!”

A soft, breathless gasp slipped from Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s parted lips.

For a woman who wore rigid purple battle armor in front of tens of thousands of soldiers every day, the contrast of her bare flesh beneath her robes was staggering. Her breasts were huge, lush, and heavy, filling Alaric Steele’s large palms to overflowing. The flesh was soft as warm cream yet remarkably firm, rising and falling rapidly with her quickened breathing.

Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s hands fluttered up to grasp Alaric Steele’s wrists, her silver eyes wide and misty in the firelight as her heart hammered against his palms like a trapped bird. Any other man in the Celestial Dragon Empire who dared slip his hands inside her robe would have been turned into charred ash before his fingers touched her skin.

Yet as she breathed in the thick sandalwood smoke and felt the steady, commanding warmth of Alaric Steele’s chest behind her back, her fingers only held onto his wrists without pulling them away.

“You are trembling again,” Alaric Steele murmured, his voice silky and possessive as he began kneading the heavy, voluptuous mounds of her large breasts in slow, circular motions. “Relax against me, Yulan. Feel how warm my hands are.”

He squeezed her soft globes firmly, letting the plush flesh swell between his fingers before brushing his thumbs slowly across the tips of her breasts.

Under the bold friction of his thumbs, her rosy nipples stiffened into hard, sensitive buds.

“Mmph…” Noble Consort Cui Yulan bit her lower lip, her head tipping back against Alaric Steele’s shoulder as a hot, unfamiliar wave of pure physical pleasure coursed from her hardening nipples straight down to her lower belly. Her thighs pressed together beneath her indigo robe, shifting restlessly on the soft snow-fox furs. “Alaric… this… is this truly to ease the tension in my chest…?”

“Does the tightness in your chest not feel lighter already?” Alaric Steele asked softly, his lips brushing against the warm curve of her neck while his fingers rolled and pinched her stiff nipples with gentle, rhythmic precision.

Every time he rolled her sensitive peaks between his thumb and forefinger or lifted the heavy weight of her large breasts in his palms, Noble Consort Cui Yulan let out a tiny, muffled whimper in her throat, her fingers tightening helplessly on his forearms.

Seeing that she made no move to stop him, Alaric Steele grew bolder still.

Keeping his left hand inside her robe to cup and fondle both of her heavy breasts—sliding his palm from one soft globe to the other and teasing her rigid nipples—he slid his right hand down over the flat, toned plane of her stomach to her remarkably thin waist.

From her narrow waist, his palm glided lower over the smooth indigo silk covering her wide, fertile hips and cupped the lush, round curve of her buttocks, pulling her soft backside tight against his lap and thighs.

“Stay just like this in my arms for a while,” Alaric Steele whispered into her hair, his left hand kneading the plump underside of her large breasts while his right hand stroked the firm, round swell of her ass through the thin silk. “No war tables, no poisoned rivers, and no arrogant princes. Just you and me by the fire.”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan closed her silver eyes, her face burning scarlet as her body melted backward into his embrace. The bold, intimate movement of his hands cupping her heavy breasts and holding her round buttocks against his thighs made her skin tingle with a dizzying heat, drowning out every fear of Azure Fall City and the Cui Clan’s plight.

For nearly an hour beside the glowing sandalwood brazier, she let him fondle and caress her voluptuous body without a single word of refusal, her breathing growing soft, heavy, and pliant under his touch until she drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep with her cheek resting against his shoulder and his hand still cupped warm and possessive over her bare breast.

When the gray light of dawn filtered through the rain clouds the next morning, bronze assembly horns echoed across the upper plateau of the siege camp.

Inside the grand imperial war pavilion, First Prince Huang Wei paced back and forth beside the long rosewood map table, slapping his polished jade baton impatiently against his palm.

The damp autumn air outside had turned noticeably colder overnight, carrying the first biting hint of early mountain frost from the northern peaks.

Standing around the map table were Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue, Noble Consort Cui Yulan—now dressed once more in her immaculate dark violet profound-steel armor, though a faint, lingering warmth still colored her cheeks whenever she glanced toward the rear of the camp—along with her brother General Cui Hao, who looked pale but steady on his feet thanks to Alaric Steele’s elixir, General Sun Ba of the Fierce Tiger Unit, and Quartermaster General Luo Feng.

“Fifteen days!” First Prince Huang Wei complained loudly, pointing his jade baton toward the southern walls of Azure Fall City visible through the parted tent flaps. “We have been sitting in this mud for fifteen days! Thanks to the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization’s clearing elixirs, the river fever in the lower trenches has finally been contained, yet we are no closer to cracking General Tokugawa’s ‘Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier’ than the day we arrived!”

Quartermaster General Luo Feng bowed low, holding open a thick bamboo ledger. “Your Royal Highness, the weather is turning against a prolonged siege as well. Our scouts in the western foothills report that the early winter snowstorms will hit the Crow-Tooth Ridges within three weeks. Once the mountain roads freeze over, hauling heavy grain wagons from the interior provinces will take twice as long.”

First Prince Huang Wei stopped pacing and slammed his palm onto the edge of the table. “I am not spending the winter shivering in a tent outside Azure Fall City! If my father Emperor Huang Long hears that I have been stuck outside a single border city for two months, my younger brothers in the Imperial Capital will laugh their teeth out! General Sun, did your Wind-Hound Unit scouts find a way around the main southern and western walls or not?”

General Sun Ba stepped forward, a fierce grin splitting his iron-wire beard as he unrolled a fresh lambskin parchment map across the center of the table.

“We found more than a footpath, Your Royal Highness!” General Sun Ba declared, slamming a heavy iron gauntlet down onto a narrow, jagged canyon snaking through the western mountain range behind Azure Fall City. “Behold—Dragon’s Spine Gorge!”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan and General Cui Hao both leaned forward to examine the drawn topography.

“Dragon’s Spine Gorge?” General Cui Hao frowned, tracing the winding three-mile defile with a calloused finger. “When I garrisoned Azure Fall City prior to the invasion, Dragon’s Spine Gorge was blocked by an ancient rockslide at the mid-pass. Only mountain goats and herb-gatherers could climb over the rubble.”

“That was two months ago, General Cui!” General Sun Ba chuckled. “Two of our Wind-Hound Unit scouting squads crept into the western entrance of Dragon’s Spine Gorge yesterday afternoon. During the heavy monsoon rains three weeks ago, flash floods washed the loose rubble of the old rockslide down into the lower ravine, opening a natural gravel road thirty paces wide all the way through the canyon! Better yet, the gorge exits less than a mile behind the northern iron-smelting gate of Azure Fall City—where the ‘Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier’ is anchored to an exposed surface aqueduct rather than deep subterranean iron veins!”

First Prince Huang Wei’s eyes lit up like twin lanterns. He leaned over the map, practically drooling onto the lambskin. “A natural road thirty paces wide leading straight to the weakest point of the northern gate?! And how many Rising Sun soldiers are guarding Dragon’s Spine Gorge?”

“Almost none, Your Royal Highness!” General Sun Ba reported eagerly. “Our scouts only spotted two small wooden watch-posts manned by twenty sleepy ashigaru spearmen near the canyon mouth. General Tokugawa has concentrated all his Blood-Moon Samurai and heavy ballistas on the southern and western walls to face our trebuchets!”

“Haha! Heaven itself favors this prince!” First Prince Huang Wei laughed triumphantly, striking his jade baton against the map marker for Dragon’s Spine Gorge. “General Tokugawa thinks I am a rigid commander who only knows how to throw rocks at his front door! While we leave ten thousand camp followers and empty tents by the southern trenches to keep his eyes glued to the front wall, we will march our main strike forces straight through Dragon’s Spine Gorge today and smash his northern gate before sunset!”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan studied the steep, saw-toothed contour lines of the canyon walls drawn on the lambskin map, her silver brows drawing together. “Your Royal Highness, Dragon’s Spine Gorge runs for three miles between sheer granite cliffs over four hundred feet high. Once a column of cavalry and supply wagons enters the middle two miles of that canyon, there is no room to wheel around and no side ravines to climb out. We should send three scouting battalions through the entire length of the gorge to secure the upper cliff ridges before committing our main strike forces.”

First Prince Huang Wei rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand at her. “Send three scouting battalions to march around on the cliffs waving flags so General Tokugawa’s lookouts in the Iron-Cloud Citadel spot them and close the northern gate?! Noble Consort Cui, ever since Dead Crow Basin, you see traps behind every bush! Speed is the soul of war!”

He turned toward his mother and Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue for validation. “Mother, Imperial Consort Shu, am I not right? If we hesitate for two days scouting empty rocks, the chance to take the northern gate by surprise will vanish!”

Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue and Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue had already received their quiet instructions via their Phone Artifacts from Alaric Steele half an hour before the council began.

“Secrecy and speed are indeed critical in a flanking march, Wei’er,” Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue said smoothly, offering her son an approving nod. “However, make sure the heavy shield carriages and the Jade Serpent medical wagons travel near the rear of the column where the canyon floor is widest, while the shock cavalry and General Cui Hao’s Thunder-Spear Relief Force lead the spearhead to seize the northern exit quickly.”

“Spoken like a true strategist, Mother!” First Prince Huang Wei beamed. He spun back toward the generals and pointed his jade baton toward the camp gates. “You heard the order! Mobilize the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry, the Fierce Tiger Unit, the Black Tortoise Shield Corps, and General Cui Hao’s Thunder-Spear Relief Force at once! Even the medical wagons and forward supply trains move with us so we can set up camp inside the northern district of Azure Fall City tonight! We march into Dragon’s Spine Gorge within the hour!”

Within the hour, the western roads leading away from the siege plains turned into a churning river of mud, iron, and steaming horseflesh.

Leaving smoky campfires and dummy banners flapping in the southern trenches to mimic a continued siege, over fifty thousand elite troops of the Celestial Dragon Empire swung westward into the jagged foothills of the Crow-Tooth Range.

Rain and sleet fell from the low gray clouds, soaking the plumed helmets of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry as eight thousand armored horsemen led the column up the steep, muddy incline toward the mouth of Dragon’s Spine Gorge.

Behind the cavalry marched the infantry blocks of the Fierce Tiger Unit and the Cui Clan’s Thunder-Spear Relief Force, followed by heavy wooden siege wagons carrying disassembled Flame-Iron Siege Crossbows, black-iron battering rams, and barrels of alchemical fire-oil.

Rolling smoothly near the rear of the column—kept a careful half-mile behind the main cavalry spearhead by Guildmaster Lin Ruoli’s “slow-footed” draft beasts—came the wide-wheeled wagons of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and Alaric Steele’s gray-canopied medical pavilion cart.

Walking beside the forward scouting screen of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit, two hundred yards ahead of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry, Corbin trudged through knee-deep brown slush.

The cold mountain wind whistling out of the jaws of Dragon’s Spine Gorge smelled of wet slate and pine needles.

Above them, the mountain range split open like the broken backbone of a petrified dragon. Two towering walls of dark gray granite and red iron-shale rose four hundred feet on either side, leaning inward at the top so that only a narrow strip of pale gray sky was visible overhead.

“Look at the walls of this canyon, Lieutenant Mo,” Sergeant Zhao muttered beside Corbin, his hand resting nervously on his notched broadsword as his one good eye scanned the mossy ledges towering above their helmets. “If a bird drops a pebble from up there, it’ll crack three helmets before it hits the mud. And the scouts yesterday said the Rising Sun dwarfs left this whole pass unguarded?”

Corbin’s boots crunched over the washed-out gravel bed of the old rockslide. His left shoulder still ached dully where he had bled out the remnants of the river miasma the night before, and his Dantian was only at seventy percent capacity, but his eyes were sharp as hawks’ talons as he studied the canyon walls.

Two wooden watch-towers near the entrance stood burned and abandoned, with half a dozen dead Rising Sun ashigaru lying face-down in the mud where the Wind-Hound Unit scouts had shot them the day before.

Corbin knelt briefly beside one of the dead ashigaru spearmen and turned the corpse’s wrist over with the tip of his black-iron greatsword.

The dead soldier’s fingers were calloused, not from holding a spear, but stained yellow-gray around the fingernails with sulfur, crushed bone-phosphorus, and volcanic pitch.

Before Corbin could open his mouth to shout a warning, he looked up at the damp, mossy cracks running horizontally across the granite cliff walls twenty feet above the canyon floor.

What looked like natural veins of dark gray moss and red iron-rust packing the rock crevices was not moss at all.

Wait—

Two miles above the northern exit of Dragon’s Spine Gorge, standing on a jutting stone watch-platform carved into the lower spur of the Iron-Cloud Citadel, General Tokugawa Ieyasu lowered his brass spyglass.

The icy mountain wind whipped the white horsehair crest of his helmet as he looked down into the long, winding fissure of Dragon’s Spine Gorge.

Through the gray sleet, the dark column of First Prince Huang Wei’s army looked like an iron centipede crawling deeper and deeper into the narrowest two-mile belly of the canyon. The Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry, the Thunder-Spear Relief Force, the Fierce Tiger Unit, and four hundred heavy supply and artillery wagons were now packed hub-to-hub along the canyon floor.

Beside General Tokugawa stood Commander Honda Tadakatsu of the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit and Commander Hattori Hanzo of the Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps.

“They cleared the entrance watch-posts and marched fifty thousand men straight into the gorge without even sweeping the upper crags,” Commander Honda Tadakatsu remarked, shaking his head beneath his horned war mask. “Did First Prince Huang Wei truly believe that flash floods washed away our rockslide barrier at the mid-pass by coincidence?”

“To a man desperate for a fast victory, any open door looks like a gift from the Heavens,” General Tokugawa said calmly, sliding his brass spyglass back into its leather case. “Ten days ago, when my engineers used controlled powder charges to clear that rockslide and expose the northern aqueduct, I knew that as soon as the southern siege stalled in the mud, their commanders would look for a flanking road to bypass our main barrier.”

Commander Hattori Hanzo bowed slightly. “Our array masters did not place a single active spirit stone or jade talisman in Dragon’s Spine Gorge, Lord General. Even if they have that hidden array grandmaster traveling with their column, there were no spiritual fluctuations for him to detect before entering.”

“Because an array that hums before the prey steps inside is an invitation to turn back,” General Tokugawa replied, his dark eyes steady and cold as he raised his right hand in the air. “For ten nights, our miners packed the natural fissures of Dragon’s Spine Gorge with dormant Nether-Bone Phosphorus, powdered sulfur-iron, and three thousand corpse-candle tallow seals—the ‘Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation’. It requires no spirit stones to awaken. It sleeps like dead rock until the body heat, horse-steam, and flaring Battle Aura of ten thousand marching warriors warm the canyon air to the ignition point.”

General Tokugawa looked down at the narrowest choke point of the gorge, where the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry had just reached the final bend before the northern exit.

“And along the four-hundred-foot rim above the mist,” General Tokugawa continued softly, “eighty Sun-Piercing Magma Ballistas of the Demon-Eye Sniper Corps are already winched back and locked onto the canyon floor. Drop the signal flag.”

Commander Hattori Hanzo stepped to the edge of the platform and sliced his short blade through a taut hemp cord, dropping a massive crimson-and-gold banner down the cliffside.

Half a mile away along the high, cloud-shrouded rim of Dragon’s Spine Gorge, eighty hidden camouflage tarps of gray pine-bark were ripped back in unison.

Eighty massive siege ballistas forged from black volcanic iron gleamed in the sleet. Seated in the iron firing-cages of the ballistas were eighty elite marksmen of the Rising Sun Empire’s Demon-Eye Sniper Corps—each man a Master or Grandmaster Martialist wearing copper-lensed wind goggles and channeling condensed Fire-and-Metal Battle Aura into six-foot-long iron spears tipped with hollow cores of molten earth-magma.

At the same time, four array masters stationed at the two ends of the upper gorge drove four glowing red-iron rods straight into the sulfur-veined cliff rim.

Down on the muddy floor of Dragon’s Spine Gorge, riding near the rear of the column beside the royal carriages and the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization wagons, Alaric Steele suddenly halted his mount.

His ruby eyes snapped upward toward the four-hundred-foot granite walls towering on either side of the column.

For a split second, even Alaric Steele’s eyebrows twitched in genuine surprise.

Because he had kept his Peak Archmage divine sense reined in close to the wagons to avoid tripping any high-tier martialist intuition, and because the canyon walls contained zero active spirit stones or mana circuits, the four miles of cliff face had registered to passive observation as ordinary iron-shale and damp mountain moss.

Only now, as the rising steam of eight thousand warhorses and the ambient heat of fifty thousand marching soldiers hit the four red-iron ignition rods at the top of the gorge, did the chemical-alchemical circuit hidden inside the rock crevices snap together into a living formation!

“A dormant heat-triggered phosphorus matrix,” Alaric Steele murmured under his breath, genuinely impressed by the sheer cunning of the mortal general commanding the citadel above. “Tokugawa built an array that uses the enemy army’s own body heat and Battle Aura as the battery.”

Fwooooosh!

Across three miles of sheer granite cliff walls, ten thousand horizontal fissures of Nether-Bone Phosphorus and sulfur-iron ignited at the exact same instant!

Curtains of eerie, freezing blue-green ghost-flame roared out of the rock walls, shooting fifty feet into the air and meeting overhead to turn Dragon’s Spine Gorge into a sealed tunnel of flickering emerald-blue fire!

“Ambush! The walls are on fire!”

“It’s an array! The ‘Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation’!”

Panic erupted down the length of the packed canyon as the eight thousand warhorses of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry shrieked in terror at the sudden curtains of blue ghost-flame.

Worse still, as the dense green-blue smoke of the burning Nether-Bone Phosphorus rolled across the muddy canyon floor, the “Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation” twisted the light, sound, and spiritual perception inside the gorge. Out of every swirling cloud of blue smoke leaped dozens of life-sized, screaming phantom illusions of Blood-Moon Samurai brandishing flaming katanas—indistinguishable from real warriors until a blade passed through them!

And then, from four hundred feet above the roaring blue fire-curtains, came the deep, bone-shaking twang of eighty iron bowstrings releasing at once.

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

Eighty six-foot-long Sun-Piercing Magma Ballista bolts—each one trailing a tail of white-hot volcanic fire and spinning like a giant iron drill—plunged vertically down through the roof of blue ghost-flame into the packed ranks of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry and the heavy supply train!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The canyon floor erupted into a hellscape of flying mud, shattered wagon timbers, and screaming men.

Where a single Sun-Piercing Magma Ballista bolt struck the center of a Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry squadron, the hollow volcanic-iron warhead split open on impact, spraying boiling, liquid earth-magma across a thirty-foot radius that melted through profound-steel horse barding and rider armor like hot tallow!

Three heavy artillery wagons packed with fire-oil barrels took direct hits in the middle of the column and detonated in towering fireballs of orange and blue flame, instantly cutting the three-mile marching column into four isolated, burning segments trapped between the sheer granite walls!

“My horses! The canyon is a furnace!” General Sun Ba bellowed from the middle of the column, swinging his heavy broadsword to bat a spinning ballista bolt into the cliff wall, where it exploded in a shower of molten slag that burned the faces of six Fierce Tiger Unit guards behind him.

Near the rear third of the gorge, First Prince Huang Wei’s gilded war carriage lurched violently sideways as a magma bolt struck twenty paces ahead, blowing two of his six armored scale-beasts into bloody chunks and tipping the left wheel of his carriage into a mud crater.

“Save me! Commander Jin! Royal Guards! Raise the shields over my carriage!” First Prince Huang Wei shrieked like a scalded cat, diving under the lacquered tea table inside his tilted carriage while four Peak Martial King royal guards locked their heavy tower shields over the roof to deflect the falling magma splashes.

Two hundred yards further forward in the choke point, where the Cui Clan’s Thunder-Spear Relief Force and Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s Violet Thunder Pavilion guards were wedged between burning supply carts and the rear of the panicked cavalry, the barrage was twice as dense.

The Demon-Eye Sniper Corps high on the cliff rim had spotted the tall dark-violet banners of Noble Consort Cui Yulan and the silver-spear banners of General Cui Hao, and forty of the eighty Sun-Piercing Magma Ballistas were concentrating their second volley straight at the Cui Clan’s command cluster!

“Shield wall! Raise the profound-steel shields!” General Cui Hao roared, planting his silver spear in the mud and flaring his Early-Stage Martial King Battle Aura to form a dome over his nearest battalion captains.

Beside him, Noble Consort Cui Yulan leaped thirty feet into the air off the roof of her supply carriage, her dark violet armor blazing with the dazzling, blinding radiance of her Peak Martial King cultivation!

“Nine-Heavens Violet-Gold Thunder Curtain!”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan swept her long thunder-lance in a wide overhead crescent.

A roaring, sixty-foot-wide net of violet-gold lightning erupted from her lance tip, crashing upward into the twenty Sun-Piercing Magma Ballista bolts whistling down toward her brother’s battalion.

CRACK-BOOM!

Twelve of the spinning volcanic-iron bolts were blown apart in mid-air by the sheer force of her Peak Martial King lightning!

Yet the moment the stray arcs of her high-density violet-gold lightning struck the blue-green curtains of the “Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation” lining the granite walls on either side of her, the Nether-Bone Phosphorus runes carved into the rock drank the electrical heat like dry sponges!

WHOOOOSH!

Instead of shattering the canyon array, the absorbed energy of Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s lightning caused the blue ghost-flames along that four-hundred-yard stretch of cliff to swell tenfold in size!

Thirty monstrous pillars of blue-green ghost-fire lashed backward off the cliff walls like giant whips, slamming straight down into the crowded ranks of the Thunder-Spear Relief Force and spawning over two hundred shrieking phantom samurai that charged into the blinded, coughing soldiers!

At the same time, under the cover of the blinding phantom fire, the remaining eight Sun-Piercing Magma Ballista bolts from the upper cliff rim—fired at a steeper, staggered angle by the Demon-Eye snipers—streaked past Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s outstretched lance, aimed straight at the back of General Cui Hao’s neck and the hearts of her four senior Violet Thunder battalion commanders below!

Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s silver eyes widened in horror as she hung in mid-air, her lance swing spent and the eight five-foot magma spears less than twenty feet from impaling her brother and her core officers!

“Cui Hao—!” she screamed, her voice torn raw over the thunder of the exploding gorge.

Down in the smoke beside the grey-canopied medical wagon, Alaric Steele stood calm and unmoving amidst the falling ash.

Under the thick veil of the blue ghost-smoke and the blinding flashes of lightning and magma, nobody was looking at the humble physician in gray robes.

With a flick of his left wrist inside his wide linen sleeve, Alaric Steele wove a silent, invisible “Void-Deflection Micro-Matrix” across the three hundred yards surrounding the Cui Clan’s command group, while his right hand maintained a pristine, unbreakable spatial cushion over the carriages carrying Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue, Grand Elder Yun Lan, Saintess Ceanna Paxton, and Guildmaster Lin Ruoli’s merchant train.

To shatter all eighty ballistas on the four-hundred-foot cliff rim and erase the three-mile “Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation” in one blow would have required Alaric Steele to unleash a Peak Archmage spatial storm that would expose his disguise to the entire continent.

Instead, he did something far more surgical.

Six inches before the first Sun-Piercing Magma Ballista bolt could pierce the back of General Cui Hao’s neck, the air in front of the iron warhead bent by three degrees through an invisible spatial fold.

CLANG-BOOM!

Instead of taking General Cui Hao’s head off, the magma bolt glanced off his heavy left shoulder pauldron and exploded against the mud four feet beside him—shattering his pauldron, scorching his cloak, and hurling him face-first into the slush with bruised ribs, alive but battered!

Across the same fifty-yard radius, the other seven magma bolts shifted three inches off their fatal trajectories at the last millisecond—smashing through the wooden shields and leg armor of the four senior Violet Thunder battalion commanders, breaking bones and knocking them bleeding into the mud, yet sparing every single one of their hearts and throats!

Even so, for the common soldiers of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry and the outer companies of the Thunder-Spear Relief Force caught further up the gorge, the slaughter was relentless.

Noble Consort Cui Yulan landed hard in the mud beside her brother, catching General Cui Hao by the arm as another volley of magma bolts and real iron arrows from the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit rained down from the smoky ledges above.

She raised her thunder-lance to unleash another full-power Peak Martial King strike at the cliff rim—and froze, her arm trembling violently as she saw the blue-green “Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation” pulsing hungrily along the rock walls right beside her wounded soldiers.

“Noble Consort Cui! Do not unleash wide-area lightning techniques inside the gorge!” Master Array Formulator Tian Yi shouted, stumbling through the mud with blood streaming down his forehead from a flying rock splinter. “General Tokugawa’s ‘Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation’ is linked to subterranean sulfur-phosphorus veins in the granite! Every time a Martial King unleashes high-heat or lightning Battle Aura against the walls, the formation feeds on the energy and multiplies the ghost-fire lashes against our own infantry! We can only block the projectiles with close-body weapon techniques and retreat backward out of the western mouth!”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan stood in the knee-deep, blood-stained mud of the canyon, her chest heaving beneath her dark violet breastplate as burning wagon debris rained down around her helmet.

She possessed the strength of a Peak Martial King—power enough to level a fortress gate or split a river in two on an open plain. Yet here in this narrow stone death-trap engineered by General Tokugawa Ieyasu, her overwhelming cultivation was turned into a poison that burned her own men whenever she swung her lance at full strength!

All she could do was spin her thunder-lance in tight, constrained physical circles within a ten-foot radius around her wounded brother and their bleeding soldiers, swatting down individual arrows and magma splinters one by one like a trapped beast in a cage while three thousand cavalrymen and infantrymen died screaming in the smoke ahead of her.

Four hundred yards further up the gorge, near the burning wreckage of the lead artillery wagons where the canyon narrowed to twenty paces wide, the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit was pinned behind a pile of fallen granite boulders.

Blue ghost-flames licked over the rocks, filling the air with choking sulfur fumes and dancing phantom samurai illusions that made half the scouts swing their swords wildly at empty smoke.

“Hold your blades!” Corbin roared over the din, his scarred iron half-helm blackened with soot as he grabbed a panicking young scout by the collar and yanked him back behind a boulder just as a six-foot magma ballista bolt slammed into the mud where the boy had been standing. “The blue figures with no footsteps in the mud are array phantoms! Look at the mud before you swing!”

In front of Corbin’s eyes, his system interface flashed red against the blue smoke.

[System Alert: Hostile Spatial-Illusion & Thermal Formation Active: “Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation”.]

[Tactical Warning: High-Angle Artillery Fire from Cliff Rim. With 0 System Points, Automatic Trajectory Prediction is Offline. Rely on Manual Sensory Tracking.]

Corbin spat a mouthful of grit onto the stones. Before he could wipe the sweat from his eyelids, the thick blue smoke thirty feet above their boulder pile parted—not with weightless array phantoms, but with the heavy, metallic thud of twenty pairs of iron-shod boots landing on the overturned supply wagons!

It was an elite forward strike team of the Rising Sun Empire’s Shadow-Blade Samurai Squad, lowered down the cliff face on black iron-silk grapples to plant secondary magnetic targeting beacons on the floor of the choke point so the Sun-Piercing Magma Ballistas above could zero in on the retreating command carriages!

Leading the twenty samurai was Captain Watanabe, a scarred Peak Grandmaster Martialist wearing black scale-armor and carrying a pair of twin curved katanas, with a sealed brass scroll-cylinder strapped tightly across his chest plate.

“Plant the three iron beacons by the overturned oil carts!” Captain Watanabe barked in the language of the Rising Sun Empire, pointing his left katana toward the boulder pile where Corbin’s scouts were sheltering. “Kill every scout moving in this ditch!”

Ten Shadow-Blade samurai lunged off the wagon roofs, throwing dozens of three-pointed iron shuriken laced with numbing scorpion venom while the other ten drove three-foot iron targeting rods into the mud.

“Sergeant Zhao! Smash those iron rods they’re driving into the mud!” Corbin bellowed, surging out from behind the boulder with his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword gripped in both hands. “If they finish planting those beacons, the ballistas on the cliff will drop forty magma spears right on our heads!”

Three Shadow-Blade samurai intercepted Corbin in mid-stride, weaving their katanas through the swirling blue ghost-flame illusions so that real steel and phantom fire blended into a lethal, dazzling cage of blades.

Corbin did not bother trying to untangle the visual illusions with his eyes.

He closed his eyes for half a heartbeat, listening to the squelch of heavy iron boots in the wet clay and the sharp whistle of real folded steel cutting the air, and swung his massive black-iron greatsword in a low, sweeping arc powered by pure Level 62 Martial King muscle density and raw, unrefined “Desolate Heaven-Cleaving Sword Intent”!

BOOM-CRACK!

The pale silver ribbon of Sword Intent clinging to his blunt black-iron blade sheared straight through two phantom illusions and slammed into the waists of all three real Shadow-Blade samurai at once!

Black scale-armor, katana scabbards, and spines snapped like dry kindling. The three samurai were cleaved nearly in two and hurled backward into the burning wagon wheels.

Captain Watanabe’s eyes widened behind his iron half-mask. “A Martial King hiding in a mercenary scouting company?! Focus fire on the greatsword wielder!”

Captain Watanabe leaped off the wagon axle, crossing his twin katanas in a spinning X-slash wreathed in dark red Wind-Fire Battle Aura, while four veteran samurai thrust hooked yari spears at Corbin’s flanks.

Corbin did not dodge the four yari spears. He twisted his torso by two inches so two spear points scraped harmlessly across his scarred brigandine ribs, caught the other two spear shafts beneath his left armpit with a vice-like grip, and yanked the two spearmen off their feet straight into the path of Captain Watanabe’s descending twin katanas!

Slash!

Captain Watanabe’s own wind-fire blades cut deep into the backs of his two thrown subordinates. Before Captain Watanabe could wrench his twin katanas free from their armor, Corbin stepped over the falling bodies and brought his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword down in a savage, two-handed overhead smash!

CLANG—SHATTER!

Captain Watanabe raised his crossed katanas above his head to block, only for Corbin’s descending slab of black iron and condensed Sword Intent to snap both folded-steel katanas like glass icicles and crush straight down through Captain Watanabe’s helmet and breastplate!

Blood and broken iron sprayed across the mud as Captain Watanabe collapsed dead at Corbin’s boots.

“The captain is dead! Pull the grapple lines!” the surviving Shadow-Blade samurai shouted, kicking away the unplanted targeting beacons and grabbing the black iron-silk ropes dangling from the smoke above to haul themselves back up the cliff wall.

Corbin did not waste a breath chasing men up a four-hundred-foot cliff.

As the brass retreat gongs of the Celestial Dragon Empire clanged frantically from the rear of the gorge, signaling a full withdrawal back out the western entrance, Corbin dropped to one knee beside Captain Watanabe’s split breastplate and ripped the sealed brass scroll-cylinder off the dead commander’s chest harness.

Tucking the heavy brass cylinder inside his brigandine vest, Corbin grabbed two wounded scouts by their belts, slung them over his broad shoulders, and sprinted back through the smoke and falling embers as the battered, bleeding remnants of First Prince Huang Wei’s flanking force limped out of the jaws of Dragon’s Spine Gorge.

By the time the dark, sleet-soaked sky faded into twilight, the siege camp outside Azure Fall City looked as though a hurricane had torn through the tents.

The grand flanking maneuver through Dragon’s Spine Gorge had lasted less than four hours, yet it had ended in a humiliating, bloody stalemate. Over three thousand two hundred soldiers of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry, the Fierce Tiger Unit, and the Thunder-Spear Relief Force had been left dead in the smoking canyon, along with eighty burned supply wagons and twelve heavy siege crossbows, without a single soldier ever laying eyes on the northern gate of Azure Fall City.

First Prince Huang Wei had locked himself inside his royal pavilion surrounded by three rings of Royal Guards, nursing a bruised forehead from when his carriage tipped into the mud crater and screaming at Quartermaster General Luo Feng to execute the Wind-Hound Unit scouts who had recommended the gorge route.

Down in the muddy rear rows of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit’s camp, inside a leaky four-man canvas tent lit by a single tallow stub, Corbin sat cross-legged on an overturned ration crate.

Sergeant Zhao and the other surviving scouts were asleep or passed out from exhaustion in the next tent over.

Corbin pulled the dented brass scroll-cylinder he had torn off Captain Watanabe’s corpse out of his vest and twisted the bottom cap counter-clockwise.

Click.

Inside the waterproof brass tube rested two rolled documents: a sheet of black oiled silk inscribed with Rising Sun artillery coordinates, and a thick, flat plaque of pale gray cipher-jade stamped with the dual seal of the eastern border relay network and a coiled serpent emblem.

Corbin’s heart leaped into his throat as he stared at the coiled serpent emblem etched into the corner of the cipher-jade.

“The Jade Serpent seal… on a cipher plaque carried by a Rising Sun shadow-captain?!” Corbin whispered, his fingers trembling with fierce excitement as he pressed his spiritual sense and a standard military decoding key against the gray jade plaque. “Wait… no, this isn’t a Rising Sun jade! Captain Watanabe looted or intercepted this encrypted logistics scroll from a courier inside Dragon’s Spine Gorge! It’s an internal high-command supply and intelligence ledger from our own camp!”

This was it. This was the thread he had bled in the mud for weeks to get his hands on—an encrypted high-level transmission scroll detailing who was directing the supply trains, the array diagrams, and the secret movements behind First Prince Huang Wei’s back!

Corbin poured a thread of his Martial King Qi into the standard imperial military decoding rune on the corner of the gray jade plaque to unlock the text.

For two seconds, lines of golden script began to shimmer on the surface of the jade—and then, with a sharp, silent flash of emerald runic light, the entire internal matrix of the jade plaque twisted into a complex, twelve-layered geometric lock shaped like a coiled serpent swallowing its own tail!

Fizzle!

The standard imperial decoding key in Corbin’s hand cracked into three pieces, and the golden script on the cipher-jade vanished into an unreadable wall of scrambled runic static.

In front of Corbin’s eyes, his system interface popped up a cold, Pitiless notice.

[System Notification: Decryption Failed. Standard Imperial Military Cipher Key Rejected.]

[Analysis: The Root Encryption Matrix of All Camp Logistics and Intelligence Jades Has Been Rewritten by an External Commercial-Arcane Protocol (“Jade Serpent Twelve-Fold Seal”).]

[System Recommendation: Force-Crack the Twelve-Fold Encryption Using System Cryptographic Engine. Cost: 1,200 System Points. Current Balance: 0 System Points. Access Denied.]

Corbin stared down at the dead, scrambled slab of gray jade in his scarred palm, the veins in his temples bulging until they looked ready to burst.

Even when he killed an enemy commander in the middle of a rain of magma bolts and pried a secret intelligence scroll out of the fire with his bare hands, Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization had already changed the locks on every cipher array in the entire army!

Without their private merchant key—or twelve hundred system points that he did not have—he was locked out of the camp’s high-level intelligence network as thoroughly as a blind beggar standing outside a palace wall.

“Lin Ruoli… and whoever stands behind that merchant guild…” Corbin breathed in the dark, his fist clenching so hard around the cipher-jade that its sharp edges cut into his palm, dripping blood onto the dirt floor. “You own the medicine, you own the supply wagons, and now you even own the military ciphers… I will get inside that inner plateau if I have to crawl through the mud in chains!”

Up on that very inner plateau, sheltered from the sleet and the groans of the wounded camp by towering wind-crags and the invisible “Sound-Severed Void Ward”, the interior of Alaric Steele’s silk pavilion was once again an oasis of heat, luxury, and tranquil sandalwood incense.

In the inner bedchamber behind the thick velvet partition curtains, Alaric Steele reclined naked against the furs of his wide bed, enjoying the lush, heated bodies of Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su after their reports on the afternoon’s logistics.

Both women were completely bare, their skin glowing with a sheen of sweat in the amber lamplight.

Guildmaster Lin Ruoli knelt over Alaric Steele’s lap, her magnificent, voluptuous body undulating in a slow, sensual rhythm as she rode his thick, rock-hard cock. Without her emerald merchant robes, her figure was a feast for the eyes: two huge, heavy breasts tipped with dark pink nipples bounced and swayed with every rise and fall of her hips, tapering down to a remarkably thin, supple waist and flaring out into wide hips and a pair of plump, round buttocks that slapped wetly against Alaric Steele’s thighs.

“Master… ah… deeper…” Lin Ruoli moaned softly, bracing her palms on his broad chest as her wet, tight pussy clenched greedily around his throbbing shaft, soaking his groin with her slick juices.

Beside them on the silk sheets, Chief Auctioneer Ya Su knelt on all fours with her slender back arched low and her own round, peachy buttocks raised high in the air, while she pressed her face against Lin Ruoli’s chest to kiss and suck on Lin Ruoli’s bouncing breasts. Ya Su’s own large, pillowy breasts hung heavy beneath her chest, brushing against Alaric Steele’s ribs as she rubbed her soaked thighs together in anticipation.

Alaric Steele gripped Lin Ruoli’s narrow waist with one hand and squeezed the firm, yielding flesh of her round buttocks with the other, driving his hips upward in a series of deep, powerful thrusts that made Lin Ruoli’s eyes roll back in sheer carnal bliss.

After bringing Lin Ruoli to a shuddering, breathless climax that left her tight pussy spasming around his length, Alaric Steele lifted her onto the furs beside him and positioned himself behind Ya Su’s raised, round buttocks.

With one smooth, commanding stroke, he buried his glistening, hard cock to the hilt inside Ya Su’s tight, scorching-hot pussy.

“Ohhh, Master!” Ya Su gasped into the velvet pillows, her fingers clutching the furs as Alaric Steele gripped her wide hips and fucked her with long, rhythmic strokes. Her large breasts swayed beneath her and her round buttocks rippled against his hips with every heavy plunge, while Lin Ruoli lay beside them kissing Alaric Steele’s neck and fondling her own heavy breasts until both women were thoroughly sated, breathless, and limp on the silk sheets.

Once Lin Ruoli and Ya Su had washed, dressed in their clean merchant robes, and departed through the rear exit to oversee the night’s supply distributions, Alaric Steele freshened the room with a wave of his hand, pulled on a clean set of gray linen healer’s robes, and walked into the front consultation chamber.

He placed two fresh blocks of spirit-sandalwood onto the coals of the bronze brazier just as the heavy boots of Half-Step Martial Emperor Commander Jin stopped outside the fifty-pace perimeter rope.

A moment later, the tent flap parted, and Noble Consort Cui Yulan stepped inside.

Alaric Steele tied the entrance flap shut, sealing the “Sound-Severed Void Ward” around them.

Tonight, Noble Consort Cui Yulan had already removed her soot-stained violet battle armor in her carriage before walking over. She wore only a soft, loose-fitting gown of pale violet silk beneath a dry fur-lined cloak, her dark hair hanging loose down to her waist.

There was not a single scratch or injury on her body, nor a single flaw in her Peak Martial King cultivation. Yet her silver eyes looked hollow and haunted as she stared across the room at Alaric Steele.

“Three thousand two hundred men died in that gorge today, Alaric,” Noble Consort Cui Yulan said softly, her voice flat with a quiet, crushing helplessness as he stepped up and lifted the fur-lined cloak from her shoulders. “My brother General Cui Hao had his shoulder armor shattered by a magma bolt six inches from his neck, and four of my best battalion commanders had their legs broken. And I…”

She looked down at her own fair, unblemished hands, which were trembling slightly in the warm light of the brazier.

“I have cultivated to the Peak of the Martial King realm. Everyone in the Violet Pearl Province calls me an invincible war goddess. Yet when I swung my lance inside General Tokugawa’s ‘Ghost-Flame Phantom Formation’ today, my own lightning fed the cliff array and roasted thirty of my own cavalrymen alive in front of my eyes. I stood in the mud like a useless statue while arrows and magma rained down on my family’s soldiers.”

Alaric Steele did not let her stand there staring at her hands.

He took both of her cold hands in his warm palms, led her over to the wide, fur-draped couch beside the sandalwood brazier, and sat down first—then pulled her down so that she was sitting sideways directly across his lap, with her back resting against his left arm and her head tucked beneath his chin.

Noble Consort Cui Yulan let out a soft gasp as she found herself sitting right on top of his muscular thighs, her plump, round buttocks settling against his lap with only the thin pale-violet silk of her gown and his gray linen robe between them.

Yet after the terror of watching her brother nearly decapitated in the gorge that afternoon and the memory of how warm and safe Alaric Steele’s hands had felt the night before, she did not try to stand up. Instead, she wrapped her left arm around his neck and buried her face against the side of his throat, inhaling the rich, intoxicating scent of sandalwood and his warm skin.

“Your brother and all four of your battalion commanders survived a direct sniper volley from eighty Sun-Piercing Magma Ballistas, Yulan,” Alaric Steele murmured, his deep voice vibrating against her cheek as his right hand slid immediately to the silk sash at her thin waist and pulled the knot undone. “I already tended to General Cui Hao’s bruised shoulder an hour ago. He will be back in the saddle in two days. You kept them alive when anyone else would have lost the entire column.”

As he spoke, Alaric Steele parted the front of her pale violet silk gown wide open from her collarbone to her navel, exposing her lush, breathtakingly voluptuous upper body to the warm glow of the bronze brazier.

Her large, heavy breasts—round, pale as snow, and tipped with soft pink nipples—spilled free of the parted silk.

Without hesitation, Alaric Steele slid both hands over her bare chest, cupping the heavy, soft globes of her large breasts in his palms and lifting their lush weight as he kneaded them far more boldly and possessively than the night before.

“Mmm… Alaric…” Noble Consort Cui Yulan breathed, a hot, scarlet blush spreading from her cheeks all the way down across her bare chest as his fingers sank into the plush flesh of her breasts.

She did not even lift her hands to hold his wrists tonight. Instead, her fingers curled into the gray linen over his shoulder as her back arched slightly, pressing her heavy breasts fuller and deeper into his massaging palms.

Alaric Steele’s thumbs brushed back and forth over her pink nipples until they hardened into tight, aching peaks, then gently pinched and rolled them between his fingers while he lowered his head and pressed a slow, lingering kiss against the sensitive curve where her neck met her bare shoulder.

“Ah…!” Noble Consort Cui Yulan shivered violently on his lap, a low, needy whimper escaping her throat as the sensation of his warm lips on her neck and his fingers rolling her stiff nipples sent liquid heat pooling straight between her thighs.

Sliding his right hand down from her large, heaving breasts, Alaric Steele stroked the smooth, bare skin of her narrow waist and hip before sliding his palm under the skirt of her loosened silk gown to grip the bare, warm, round flesh of her buttocks, squeezing her firm ass in his hand as he held her tight against his thighs.

“Whenever the war outside becomes too heavy to bear, Yulan,” Alaric Steele whispered against her warm neck, his left hand continuing to knead and fondle her large, bare breasts while his right hand stroked her round, naked buttocks beneath her silk skirt, “remember that you belong right here in my arms. Let go of your pride, let go of your armor, and let me take care of you.”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s eyelids fluttered shut, her breathing ragged and hot against his collarbone as her hips shifted helplessly against his lap. With his hands boldly claiming the soft curves of her large breasts and her bare buttocks in the fragrant sandalwood smoke, the proud Peak Martial King clung tighter to his neck, surrendering her body to the pleasure of his touch without a single shred of resistance left in her heart.