The Empress’s Gigolo

“Boom!” Waves of explosions resonated from within the Great Xia camp.

“Kill!” When the winged cavalry got closer, over ten people at the front drew out their blades. With a kick, the fence made from tree trunks ten centimeter thick that surrounded the Great Xia camp immediately collapsed.

One by one, the winged cavalry emerged from the darkness. Their murderous aura, coupled with body builds that were much stronger than many peoples’, made their enemies tremble in fear.

Following yells of “kill!,” the winged cavalry formed up into the wedge formation and charged toward their enemies’ battle formation, which was still a little chaotic after being bombarded by the mortar shells previously.

“Crossbow battalion, fire! Archers, fire toward the rear! Infantry go obstruct them. Spearmen teams 6, 7, and 8, thrust forward!” Several orders were passed down from within the battle formation as volleys of crossbow bolts and arrows were fired toward the incoming winged cavalry.

The Great Xia battle formation was crescent shaped. Regardless of which direction the winged cavalry approached from, they would still be in the firing range of a substantial amount of projectiles

However, the Great Xia troops hadn’t recovered from the chaos created by the earlier bombardment and the bolts from the crossbow battalion didn’t pose much of a threat to the winged cavalry. They charged into the crowd and began killing their enemies, bringing forth a rain of blood.

After using the mortar to pave a path and disrupt the enemy’s battle formation, the winged cavalry charged directly into the enemy battle formation to engage in close combat. With the exceptional strength of the winged cavalry warriors, they managed to wreak havoc to their enemies using this time tested method.

Li Qianqiu carried Ren Baqian and continued jumping up and down. As the night wind brushed across his face, Ren Baqian felt like singing, “The cold night wind casually beat upon my face!”

[Ren Baqian’s rendition of a song by Andy Lau, a Hong Kong singer/actor]

However, very soon after, his attention was fixed upon something.

At this moment, he could see that the enemy’s battle formation had already been torn apart. The corpses as well as the willfully flowing fresh blood on the ground seemed like a dark red flower from afar.

The remaining survivors had began to flee in disarray, and a big portion of them ran toward the center of the camp. The troops there formed their battle formation and began moving toward that direction.

When the routed soldier had almost reached the battle formation, the reinforcements halted about 200 steps away and fired their arrows toward the front, covering the sky with a blanket of arrows.

The sound of stretching bow strings and loosed arrows overlapped with each other in unison, creating a thunderous swoosh sound.

Both the winged cavalry and the Great Xia troops were within their firing range.

“How brutal!” Ren Baqian mumbled to himself.

One had to know that almost half of the 20,000 soldiers still remained. These were actually Great Xia soldiers who were still alive and kicking—their own people. There were still almost 10,000 of their own soldiers, which wasn’t a small number at all.

The Great Xia chief commander was unexpectedly so brutal. How would he justify this to the other soldiers? How would he explain this to the imperial court when he returned to Great Xia?

When the winged cavalry on the ground noticed the impending arrow shower, they successively picked up the corpses on the ground and raised them above their heads as shields. Some who still had excess energy brandished their sabers such that even water couldn’t splash through.

“Retreat!” Ren Baqian ordered. Their objective had been met and such an outcome was acceptable.

Still those same few words: There were still seven days left, which was a long way to go.

Following Li Qianqiu’s command, Ren Baqian and his men began to retreat and returned to their rally point.

Even after taking a detour, the winged cavalry arrived at the rally point earlier than Ren Baqian and his men. When Ren Baqian arrived, he could already see them sitting down and attending to their wounds in silence.

Ren Baqian did a thorough headcount. 976 men, again a little fewer than before.

The strength of an Earth Wheel expert was definitely crushing compared to that of an ordinary soldier. The winged cavalry greatly exceeded the ordinary soldiers, regardless of whether it was physical strength, speed, reaction time, or toughness. However, there were still casualties every time they step onto the battlefield.

The majority of casualties were caused by the crossbow bolts.

Even after they had charged into the enemy battle formation, there were still crossbow bolts fired from the darkness. After all, the crossbow battalions weren’t fools that were easily trampled over when facing their enemies at close range.

In particular, the winged cavalry commonly had a bad habit of leaping forward to slash more enemies after wiping out everyone nearby.

By leaping up so high when there were so many people, who else would they shoot at but you?

Ren Baqian was thinking that when the war was over, he had to request for the empress to pass down an order. It would be a necessity for him to correct the winged cavalry’s problem of always jumping around like rabbits.

It hurt him a lot to see the winged cavalry suffer casualties!

After walking a circuit around the camp, Ren Baqian and Li Qianqiu greeted each other. He then brought his bodyguards to search for a remote place and ordered them to keep watch over the surrounding areas. Ren Baqian then disappeared into the darkness.

At present, many of them had a rough guess in their heads. Ever since Ren Baqian set out on his journey toward Liao City, even though Ren Baqian always tried his best to find an isolated room to vanish in, he would always reappear after a few days carrying a bunch of things with him.

Hence, Ren Baqian had already prepared himself for people making such conjectures about him. In any case, he had previously spoken to Tong Zhenye about the “hearthstone,” but since nobody had asked him about it, he just allowed them to continue with their wild guesses.

However, concepts like time travelling were simply too far fetched for the aboriginals. In their minds, Ren Baqian still came from somewhere in their world.

Ren Baqian still had two short sabers with him when he returned back to Earth that were around 70 centimeters long. The blades of the sabers were about 40 centimeters long and three fingers wide. The handles and scabbards were made of gold and silver, respectively. Additionally, the words “Golden Time” were engraved on one saber and “Silver Time” on the other.

These sabers belonged to that person who Ren Baqian almost sent to the moon. His corpse had ended up torn apart, but his sabers still remained perfectly unscathed.

Back then, Ren Baqian tried out these sabers when he got ahold of them, and they indeed sliced through metal as if it was mud. The other precious sword brought back by a soldier, which could also slice through metal as if it was mud, broke after exchanging three blows.

To Ren Baqian, obtaining these sabers was as if he had gained the most precious treasure ever. It was a pity that he was too weak and basically had no use for them. He threw them aside after hugging them to sleep for a night.

He had specially brought these sabers back this time when he returned. The aboriginals had no use for such short sabers, and since he too couldn’t put them to use, he might as well bring them back and flaunt them.

Ren Baqian also had to bring back some good stuff to Earth occasionally to prevent people from belittling the other world.

He first threw the sabers aside when he returned to the villa, prepared a nice hot bath, and had a good shower. Wearing only his underwear, he strolled to the next room that was full of snacks and grabbed a few packets of dried fruits, some beef jerky, and a few soft drinks before going to the ground floor to watch television.

After over a month of war, it was already halfway through April in Dayao. On Earth, it was March 2019.

Even though he would watch the news every time he came back, the feeling that he was drifting further apart from Earth grew stronger.

This was mainly because every time Ren Baqian came back, his whole mind was filled with bombs, mortar shells, and grenades. Apart from Yang Sen and his own family, he rarely came into contact with people. Seemingly, the ordinary life on Earth didn’t concern him much anymore.

Furthermore, the time in the two worlds travelled at different speeds. The time on Earth passed too quickly, resulting in him feeling distinctly more distant.

After being slightly rueful for a brief moment, Ren Baqian felt that with the passing of time, such distant feelings could possibly create a rift between his family and himself, and it would only get worse as time went on.

However, there was nothing that he could do about it.

If he were to live to the ripe old age of 100 years in the other world, he would at least live for 2,170 years on Earth.

By that time, let alone Ren Wannian’s son, even his great grandson would already be dead.

After a day of lazing on the sofa, Ren Baqian picked up his cell phone and returned his missed calls. One of them was from his mother. His father would be celebrating his 52nd birthday, and she wanted him to bring his girlfriend home for a visit.

His mother had already been brooding when he didn’t bring his girlfriend back for her 50th birthday last year.

As for that person in the photograph, his mother had already been missing him for a very long time, and the result of this was his father’s 52nd birthday. By the looks of it, they would still be celebrating her 51st birthday this year.

Every year on their birthdays, nobody else would be present except for the two of them.

The other missed call was from Chen Qing.

The hangover cure “Blue Potion” had already hit the market. Sales immediately flourished just after a very short period of time. Its effects were so powerful that it immediately crushed all the other similar products on the market and even made a reputation overseas. Even though there were a couple of questions and remarks online about the Blue Potion, a perceptive person would be able to tell that those remarks were fabricated by their competitors.

Now that “Blue Potion” had gained a reputation and its sales volume wasn’t lacking, the only inadequacy was its production output.

Nowadays, Papa Chen was full of lofty ideals and was buying land in the south to plant the green vines.

Another piece of news was that the remedy for leukemia had already been developed and was about to begin clinical trials. The nation was currently taking a special interest in this drug.

After hearing this news, even though Ren Baqian smiled in response, he didn’t have strong feelings in his heart.

As previously mentioned, it had been a long while since he came into contact with everyday life on Earth. Money, which had been a very important thing to him in the past, no longer held its significance. It was just a number to him since he didn’t even have much time to spend money.

At the thought of this, Ren Baqian suddenly felt that he was pretty pathetic. At least, other people had a few friends or enemies and had someone that they could show off pompously to for no apparent reason.

As for himself? Apart from being able to negotiate with the nation, he didn’t even have anyone that he could show off to…

Forget it, I shall give Yang Sen a call. This way I can flaunt a little in front of him and in front the laboratory staff.