Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

[The Wilderness]

A naked man, gripping a curved blade, lay sprawled across the back of a red-and-white mottled horse with no saddle, fleeing desperately into the depths of the mountains.

The man lashed the warhorse with his blade as he frantically glanced behind him, as though being pursued by some terrifying beast.

This man was none other than Chi Lian—a noble of the Jin clan, an arrow officer of the Terdon Tribe, and a close attendant of the Fire Keeper.

Because he had long been assigned to guard the sacred territory, Chi Lian rarely participated in raids, thereby avoiding the carnage of the Bloody Mire battle by sheer luck.

Yet it was precisely because he had not witnessed firsthand that disastrous battle, which turned frozen earth into a quagmire, that he failed to grasp the need to fear the Blood Wolf.

Without a saddle, he had no leverage, and every jolt of the horse's back was an agony for Chi Lian. But he dared not stop. He clamped the horse's flanks tightly with his legs, flogging his mount relentlessly.

"[Herde Language] Faster! Faster!" Chi Lian screamed internally, "Haledun Mountain! Save me! Shelter my insignificant life, and my descendants will offer you prayers each dawn! I'll gather my scattered kin, livestock, and yurts. I will rise again like the sun! Faster! Faster!"

Yet the pursuer still came.

At first, muffled, intermittent thuds faintly reached Chi Lian's ears, then the sound of hooves grew sharper and closer, overwhelming even the hoofbeats of his red-and-white steed.

Chi Lian had moved as covertly as he could—traveling along streams, crossing mountain valleys, going alone without guards.

But the pursuer's instincts were keener. Tracing hoofprints, hairs, bent blades of grass, and broken branches, he doggedly followed Chi Lian's trail.

Chi Lian glanced back and saw only one rider on the horizon. Dismissing him, Chi Lian pressed on, confident his red-and-white steed—a top-tier warhorse—could easily leave the pursuer behind.

But things did not go as planned. Though the pursuer's mount was inferior, he was a calm, calculated rider. Instead of recklessly galloping like Chi Lian, he chose routes that conserved his horse's strength.

Thus, while the pursuer's silhouette vanished from time to time behind Chi Lian, it reappeared again and again on the horizon.

Eventually, the red-and-white steed's stamina began to wane, its galloping rhythm slowing involuntarily.

The pursuer, who had been trailing unhurriedly, suddenly spurred his mount forward, closing the distance to Chi Lian like a bolt of lightning.

Standing in his stirrups, the pursuer drew his bow and nocked an arrow. Chi Lian couldn't react in time and found himself within range of the shot.

Hearing a metallic "twang" behind him, Chi Lian let out a terrified scream. Yet his back felt no sharp pain of an arrowhead piercing flesh. Instead, his red-and-white steed cried out in anguish, and its pace unexpectedly quickened.

The pursuer hadn't aimed at Chi Lian. His arrow struck squarely into the haunch of the red-and-white horse.

Chi Lian turned to look at the spot where the arrow had struck his mount, and his heart sank completely into despair—for the pursuer clearly wasn't using an ordinary arrowhead, but a specialized bloodletting arrow.

These arrows were designed for hunting large beasts. Once embedded in flesh, they were impossible to pull out. Even if removed forcefully, the wound could not close on its own. But if left in, the arrow's sharp edges would continue to carve fresh cuts into the prey's body. Thus, once a bloodletting arrow pierced the torso of a large beast, the hunter only needed to wait patiently for the prey to bleed out.

Chi Lian gritted his teeth, yanked his reins, and turned the warhorse to face the enemy head-on.

The pursuer halted his horse as well, mirroring Chi Lian.

Under the now fully risen sun, Chi Lian finally got a clear look at his pursuer's face: about sixteen or seventeen years old, with a faint fuzz just beginning to sprout above his lip—a youth straddling the line between man and boy.

What was most bewildering was that the pursuer was dressed in the style of the various clans: a long robe, a braid typical of tribal sons, a saddle of steppe craftsmanship, wielding a horn bow, and incongruously, a firearm slung across his back.

The relentless hound chasing him down turned out to be a child of the clans?!

"[Herde Language] You bastard!" Chi Lian roared furiously, "[Herde Language] Why would you help the two-legged ones?!"

The pursuer ignored Chi Lian. After confirming that Chi Lian held neither bow nor arrows, the youth gently tugged his reins, drawing back to create more distance between them.

"[Herde Language] Come on!" Chi Lian waved his curved blade, roaring as he charged at the pursuer. "[Herde Language] Face me in a fight to the death!"

The pursuer tapped his horse's flanks and turned away. Masterfully maneuvering his gray steed, he maintained a one-arrow distance from Chi Lian. When Chi Lian stopped, so did he, keeping his silent, watchful gaze locked on Chi Lian.

Chi Lian, burning with rage but with nowhere to vent it, pounded his own chest in frustration. "[A string of vicious Herde curses]! Come on! Come on! Aren't you going to take my life for a reward? Then come and take it! Come and take it!"

Yet the pursuer was like an emotionless stone, immovable against the crashing waves of Chi Lian's fury. No matter what Chi Lian did, the youth bearing the firearm offered no response, merely studying him in silence.

A fresh series of hoofbeats came from behind. On the ridgeline of the slope, the silhouette of another rider appeared. Spotting Chi Lian and the youth below, the new rider immediately urged his mount toward them.

"[Herde Language] Brother!" The approaching rider called out excitedly, even from a distance: "[Herde Language] Did you capture Headman Chi Lian?!"

Chi Lian stared, dead inside, at the pair of brothers before him. The new rider resembled the youth by about seventy percent but was clearly younger. A horn bow and quiver hung off his saddle, and like his elder brother, he too carried an incongruous firearm on his back.