Chapter 29: The Clean Sweep—Even the Cows Have Started Eating Meat

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Dawn on the grassland came softly and swiftly.

A thin mist clung to the meadow. Far along the horizon, the sky began to pale, casting the endless pasture in a hazy blue-gray wash.

All was silent save for the whisper of wind through the grass.

Then, suddenly, a deep vibration with an uncanny rhythm rose from far beneath the earth.

It was not the disorderly thunder of cattle or sheep on the run, but something heavy and measured, a cadence like the heartbeat of a giant.

Fan Tong rode atop his personal mount, the Bull Demon King. The ox had a broad, sturdy body and moved with steady composure. Fan Tong had even added a soft cushion to its back, and he was dozing as they went.

“Chief!” Bao Nianfeng rode over on a tall Mongolian horse. His nose, several times more sensitive than an ordinary man’s, flared as he took a deep sniff. “There’s a scent up ahead.”

Fan Tong’s eyes snapped open. Every trace of drowsiness vanished.

“What kind of scent?”

“The stink of sheep—strong sheep stink. Horse dung, too, and the sour reek of curds.” Bao Nianfeng licked his cracked lips, a wolfish green glint burning in his eyes. “And the smell of people. Four or five hundred, I’d say. Their defenses are practically nonexistent. It’s like an open sheep pen.”

Fan Tong pulled the monocular telescope Xu Da had given him from inside his robes and peered in the direction Bao Nianfeng had indicated.

Through the morning mist, the outline of a medium-sized tribe emerged and vanished. Dozens of tents of various sizes lay scattered across the plain. A crude wooden palisade formed the only perimeter, while several shepherds assigned to the night watch leaned against it, fast asleep.

Well, this wasn’t a tribe. It was plainly a steaming dish that had just been set on the table.

He lowered the telescope. He issued no complicated tactical orders. Instead, he turned and looked at the thousands of eyes behind him, each gleaming with the same green light.

The soldiers who had drunk the diluted potions were not tired after a night’s march. On the contrary, every one of them was bursting with energy—and with an instinctive hunger for flesh and blood.

Fan Tong cleared his throat. Pointing toward the tribe, he spoke in a low voice that nevertheless carried clearly to every ear.

“My brothers, do you smell it?”

“Fresh-roasted whole lamb. Newly milked mare’s milk wine. Gold and silver enough to fill your purses!”

“Do you want it?”

“We do!”

The low roar of thousands pressed down their excitement like a volcano on the verge of eruption.

“Then remember this!” Fan Tong’s grin turned savage. “Anyone too slow to grab his share won’t get meat—not even a mouthful of hot soup!”

“Mount up. Time to eat!”

“Roar!”

At his command, the suppressed volcano erupted.

Several thousand Ming soldiers surged toward the sleeping tribe like a black tide, silent and unstoppable.

There were no war drums, no horns—only the heavy thunder of hooves and the harsh sound of breathing.

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“Enemy attack!”

At last, a Yuan sentry spotted the torrent of death and let out a desperate cry.

But it was already too late.

Fan Tong’s Bull Demon King charged at the very front. Its massive body, strengthened by the potion, was the most terrifying battering ram imaginable.

Crash!

The crude wooden palisade shattered beneath the impact, splinters flying in every direction.

Fan Tong leaped down from the ox’s back. His two-hundred-and-fifty-pound body struck the ground with a heavy thud. Without even looking, he swung the enormous cleaver in his hand.

A tribal warrior who had just rushed forward was split in two from crown to crotch, body and weapon alike. Scalding entrails and blood sprayed across Fan Tong from head to toe.

“Kill!”

Fan Tong’s roar was the signal for the general assault.

Bao Nianfeng and his eighteen ogre bodyguards plunged into the confused crowd like nineteen humanoid meat grinders.

Bao Nianfeng swung his great axe in wide arcs. With a shriek that tore through the air, it sent flesh flying and severed limbs spinning wherever it passed.

The Yuan herdsmen’s resistance crumbled before these monsters, as fragile as paper.

Zhu Di wielded his heavy spiked club. There was no longer the slightest trace of flourish or finesse in his movements—only the purest, most direct smashing, sweeping, and swinging.

With one blow, a Yuan soldier’s leather armor and breastbone collapsed inward together, sending him sailing through the air like a broken rag doll.

Zhu Di had completely adapted to this savage manner of fighting.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he caught a sight that made his scalp prickle.

An old kitchen soldier he knew, a veteran named Wang Pockmarked, had been slashed across the arm by a curved saber. Blood streamed freely from the wound. Without so much as a furrow in his brow, the veteran punched the enemy’s jaw to pieces, then pulled a blackened strip of dried meat from inside his robe and stuffed it straight into his mouth.

As he chewed, the deep gash—bone visible beneath it—stopped bleeding before Zhu Di’s eyes. The old soldier continued chewing as he hacked away at the enemy.

Zhu Di’s heart gave a violent twitch.

What in the world was that? Sorcery? It had to be sorcery.

But he liked it!

This fat fellow had some tricks after all.

This army could no longer be called human.

The battle was nothing more than a one-sided slaughter.

In less than the time it took to burn a stick of incense, every man in the tribe who had taken up a weapon had been butchered. All that remained were the old, the weak, the women, and the children, kneeling on the ground and trembling in terror.

The entire camp had become a blood-soaked inferno.

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The thick stench of blood mingled with the rank odor of cattle and sheep, filling the air.

“Wang Pockmarked! Watch where you’re swinging, damn you! Leave that leg of lamb for me!”

“Get lost! Whoever grabs it gets it!”

Fan Tong’s soldiers behaved as though nothing unusual had happened. They efficiently set about clearing the battlefield. They rounded up the terrified cattle and sheep, stripped the tents of their furs and valuables, and then, with Fan Tong’s tacit approval, slaughtered dozens of the fattest sheep on the spot and built a campfire.

Before long, the aroma of roasting meat mingled with the stench of blood and drifted across the camp.

The soldiers cheered around the flames, cutting off dripping pieces of roasted mutton with their knives and eating to their hearts’ content.

Zhu Di stood amid the wreckage, watching the absurd scene, his stomach churning.

One moment they were warriors drenched in blood; the next, they had become voracious diners. Life and death, war and feast, had been grotesquely fused together here.

Fan Tong was gnawing on a roasted leg of lamb, grease running down his chin, his face filled with satisfaction.

Then he noticed that his Bull Demon King had ignored the tender grass nearby. Instead, it lowered its enormous head over a Yuan corpse and began tearing into it.

Crack.

That was the sound of bones being crushed between its teeth.

Fan Tong saw blood and minced flesh smeared around the black ox’s mouth. A bloodthirsty red glimmer shone in its enormous, bell-like eyes.

Plop.

The leg of lamb slipped from Fan Tong’s hand and fell to the ground.

His entire body went rigid. In his mind, he summoned every ounce of his strength and wailed at the system.

“Oh, for crying out loud! You useless system! The enhancement potion can spread across species too? The damn instructions never mentioned that! If this ox starts eating meat from now on, what am I supposed to feed it?”

Far away, hidden among the grass behind a hillside, several Yuan scouts who had managed to escape watched the hellish scene in terror.

They had seen the Ming soldiers slaughter their people like devils. Then, like devils again, the soldiers had lit a fire beside the corpses and laughed aloud as they feasted.

One of the scouts fixed the image of the fat man riding atop an ox—an incarnation of a demon god—deep in his memory.

He wheeled his horse around and drove his heels into its flanks, whipping its hindquarters with all his strength as he galloped toward the depths of the grassland, toward the true imperial encampment.

A far greater storm was beginning to stir.

As for Fan Tong, the instigator of it all, he stood before his newly carnivorous ox with an expression of utter despair.

“This is a disaster. I’m losing out badly. I’ll save on fodder from now on, at least—but this brute is probably going to need meat for every meal…”

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