The fifty cavalrymen marched in two columns, the dust kicked up by their hooves forming a long yellow dragon behind them.
Behind the cavalry followed several hundred attendants who, having no horses to ride, had to jog to keep up.
Their equipment was a mismatched hodgepodge; some wore leather armor, while others only wore thick cloth shirts. Sweating profusely from the run, dust caked half of their faces.
The troop of over four hundred people stretched into a long tail across the plain, presenting a somewhat intimidating presence.
The leading knight spotted the dozen or so people standing on the road ahead—a young woman in a black robe, two swordsmen in leather armor, and a dozen ragtag soldiers holding spears.
Beneath his helmet, his lips curled into a mocking sneer.
He tugged on his reins, preparing to speak.
Wu Yao didn't even give him the chance to open his mouth.
She raised her hand and gently clenched it.
In the wild fields beside the road, the low shrubs crawling along the ground suddenly seemed to awaken, their branches violently shooting outward.
The leading knight's smile froze on his face.
Before he could even yell the words “Enemy attack!” a vine crept up from beside his stirrup, bypassed the horse, and wrapped around his ankle, dragging him down and binding him until he couldn't move.
His horse snorted and nervously pawed at the ground with its front hooves, not understanding what had happened, only feeling its back suddenly grow much lighter.
The exact same scene played out across the entire column.
Fifty knights and over four hundred attendants were all bundled up tightly by the vines.
People lay sprawled in every direction across the dirt road, the vines slowly squirming and tightening around them with faint creaks.
No one was injured, and the horses were completely unharmed.
The people were simply bound so tightly they couldn't budge, thrashing and writhing in the dust like a school of fish caught in a net.
Wu Yao clapped her hands, satisfied with her precise control, and then stepped back to leave the stage to Suren.
Suren stood where she was, looking at the mess before her. Four hundred people meant four hundred headaches.
“Toby,” she called out.
The young man immediately jogged over to her, his back straight as a board. “Present!”
“Take two men and strip all the gear off those knights. Take down all the saddlebags as well, dump out whatever is inside, and sort them.”
Toby nodded vigorously, turning to wave over a few familiar companions.
Suren called another name. “Herta, take nine men and deal with the attendants in the back. They don't have much gear, mostly ration bags, water skins, and spare weapons. Strip them of everything.”
Herta was in her early forties with short hair and an old scar running from her brow down to the corner of her mouth. She looked fierce, and in truth, she did have a terrible temper.
She had come knocking on Suren's door herself after learning Suren had become the new captain of the guard, declaring that if Suren could be the captain, so could she.
Suren fought on instinct, but Herta had proper forms; she was clearly a trained martial artist.
Benita had made the decision on the spot to appoint her as the vice-captain.
As for the former vice-captain who had failed to keep his post, he had already been dismissed due to uncovered misconduct.
Herta grunted in response, picked nine men, and headed toward the attendants.
Suren didn't idle either, taking large strides toward the nearest knight.
The knight, bound by the vines, had a face flushed bright red. His lips twitched as if he wanted to swear, but upon seeing the expression on Suren's face, he swallowed the curses back down.
Suren's hands were already at the laces of his leather chest armor. With a few quick movements, she untied the knots and stripped the entire piece off him.
“You... this is robbery!” the knight finally squeezed out.
Suren flipped the leather armor over to inspect the lining. Satisfied, she casually tossed it to the guard behind her. “Robbery? When you were on standby outside our town preparing to lay siege, why didn't you call yourselves bandits?”
The knight was at a loss for words, but still tried to argue. “We were only acting on orders! We are—”
“Shut up,” Suren said, already starting to unbuckle his bracers. “Right now, you are a prisoner.”
The knight opened his mouth, but ultimately closed it.
Suren worked quickly. Having spent half her life doing farm work, stripping gear was no different from skinning beasts; a single glance was all she needed to know where to start untying.
The guards followed behind her, watching and learning, quickly getting the hang of it.
The dozen or so people bustled through the crowd of prisoners, their movements growing more and more efficient.
The burlap sacks each guard had brought to hold the loot bulged to the brim in less than fifteen minutes.
Toby dragged three bulging sacks back to Suren's side, the weight leaving deep grooves in the dirt behind him.
“Captain, we can't fit any more!” he panted, lowering his voice. “We've stripped less than half of them, and there's no way our small group can carry all of this back!”
“Should we... only take the valuable stuff?” another guard tentatively suggested.
Suren swept a glance over them.
She was also nursing a bit of a headache. Peiva Town's gear was indeed much better than Qinghe Town's. The fifty sets of armor alone were incredibly valuable, not to mention the longswords, quivers, bronze bracers, and other odds and ends.
Add to that the ration bags and spare weapons of over four hundred attendants, and the pile of loot weighed at least a thousand jin.
With only sixteen of them, even if each person carried a hundred jin, they wouldn't be able to move it all.
Suren placed the longsword she had just stripped into the pile of weapons, then turned to look at Wu Yao standing not far away. “My Lady, these—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Wu Yao had already walked over.
Wu Yao approached the pile of weapons and hovered her hand over it, pressing down slightly.
The pile vanished into thin air beneath her palm, leaving without even the slightest sound of clashing metal.
Toby's mouth fell open so wide it could fit an egg.
Herta happened to be walking over with a stack of leather armor. Seeing this, her footsteps paused, and a rare look of surprise appeared on her scarred face.
But having seen more of the world than the younger ones, she recovered her composure in less than half a second. Placing the leather armor onto the pile of gear, she nodded to Wu Yao and turned back to continue her work.
“What are you all dazing off for?” Suren smacked Toby. “With My Lady helping us, hurry up and get back to stripping their gear!”
The guards snapped out of it and bolted back into the crowd of prisoners.
The rest was simple.
The guards were responsible for stripping the gear off the prisoners and piling it by the roadside. Wu Yao acted like a mobile warehouse; wherever she walked, the pile of items vanished into her hands.
The burlap sacks were completely emptied. The squad of a dozen or so traveled light, leaving behind over four hundred prisoners shivering in the wind, clad only in their thin undergarments.
Suren stood by the roadside, looking at the prisoners clad only in their thin undergarments, pondering what to do next.
Killing all four hundred of them would be too wasteful. These people were merely following orders, not the masterminds.
But letting them all go wouldn't work either; the moment they were released, they would instantly become Peiva Town's soldiers again.
Rate on N.U.
