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The battle became a living thing, fluid, chaotic, roaring in the ears and pounding in the chest. Steel rang on steel, wood splintered, and men shouted and screamed. The thick, humid air smelled of sweat, blood, and crushed vegetation. And still, neither side broke.
The Funan soldiers were no barbarians. They fought with discipline, their strange, curved blades hooking around shields to gut their enemies. Arrows tipped with a paralyzing venom found gaps in armor, felling Han soldiers where they stood.
Zhou Yu, observing from horseback, spotted the Funan command post, a raised platform where an imposing armored general barked orders.
"My lord!" he called. "Their commander is there!"
Sun Ce followed his gaze, then grinned. "Ma Chao! With me!"
The two generals broke away, their elite guards following like the tip of a spear. They cut through the enemy lines, their momentum unstoppable.
The Funan general saw them coming. He drew his own blade, a massive, single edged sword, and leaped down to meet them.
The clash was titanic. Sun Ce's spear met the general's sword in a shower of sparks, while Ma Chao's lance stabbed toward his ribs. The general twisted, his blade deflecting both attacks with shocking skill.
For the first time, Sun Ce felt the thrill of a true challenge.
"Who are you?" he demanded between clashes.
The Funan general's eyes narrowed at Sun Ce's words, but the puzzlement in them was plain. He didn't answer, not because he lacked the will, but because he simply didn't understand the language.
The clangor of the jungle battle roared around them, and yet, in the space between three warriors, there was only the tense silence of intent. His curved blade darted up again, deflecting the downward thrust of Sun Ce's spear with a ringing clang that jolted up their arms.
He didn't have the luxury of distraction. Every ounce of his focus was needed to survive the assault of these two foreign champions.
Sun Ce's strikes came like waves, surging forward with raw aggression, wide sweeps meant to overwhelm, while Ma Chao's spear was a needle of precision, stabbing at joints and weak points. Against one, the Funan general could dominate. Against both, he was hanging on by inches.
Sun Ce took the lack of reply as insolence. "Too proud to even speak?! Such insolence!" he spat, his voice thick with battle fury. He snarled, bracing his legs, and launched a flurry of spear thrusts, each faster and harder than the last.
Ma Chao, watching the rhythm of both fighters, gave a small shake of his head. "Lord Sun Ce," he said in a clipped breath between parries, "he's not ignoring you, he doesn't understand you. Our language is not the same as his."
The words slid past the noise of battle and hit Sun Ce square. He froze mid strike, a half formed grin already tugging at his mouth as the thought sank in.
The Funan general's eyes flared, a gap! He lunged forward, blade flashing toward Sun Ce's unguarded chest.
Ma Chao cursed and moved without thinking, his lance whipping across to catch the blade and shove it away. The impact reverberated in his arms. "What in the hells are you doing stopping like that?!" he barked.
Sun Ce threw back his head and laughed, loud and sudden, as though they were in a tavern rather than knee deep in mud and blood. His laughter was so wild and unexpected that even the Funan general faltered, one step backward betraying the surprise on his face.
That heartbeat was all Ma Chao needed. He lunged, the steel tip of his lance biting into the general's side. Not deep enough to drop him, but enough to make him stagger back, blood darkening his tunic.
Sun Ce slapped Ma Chao's shoulder with a broad hand, still grinning. "You're right! How could I forget something so obvious, right Ma Chao?"
Ma Chao only sighed through his nose, shaking his head. Reckless, completely reckless. It was one thing to hear the tales, another to fight beside the man and see it in living color. Were Sun Ce not family to be, Ma Chao would have torn into him with the kind of scolding only an elder warrior could give.
The Funan general steadied himself, drawing in deep, deliberate breaths. His chest rose and fell heavily. The wound was not mortal, not yet, but it hampered him. His steps were slower, his parries just a fraction late. And against men like these, a fraction was everything.
Still, he would not run. He had weighed them in his mind and judged them dangerous beyond measure, but retreat was not in him. So instead of pulling back, he surged forward in a sudden, vicious flurry, determined to seize the initiative while he still drew breath.
What he hadn't counted on was the way Sun Ce and Ma Chao moved now, no longer two warriors fighting in parallel, but two blades in one hand. Their weapons crossed and flowed in a deadly dance, every attack the general launched was deflected or sidestepped before it could bite.
When he tried to step back, he found there was nowhere to go. They had him caged.
Sun Ce lunged, the steel tip of his spear flashing toward the general's heart. Ma Chao struck an instant later, driving his lance toward the gut.
The Funan general chose his death. With a roar, he hurled himself forward into both weapons. The points punched through leather and flesh, the impact jarring their arms.
For a frozen instant, all three stood locked together, breaths harsh, the heat of the jungle pressing close.
All around them, the tide of battle shifted. Funan's early advantage, the chaos of their surprise attack, was bleeding away. Under the banners of the Sun Clan and the Ma family, the Han troops were rallying.
Sun Quan's voice rang out above the clash, commanding the central line. Zhou Yu's archers unleashed a deadly rain, cutting down Funan warriors before they could regroup.
Zhou Tai carved a path through the melee like a storm, his blade leaving a trail of broken shields. Lu Meng led disciplined infantry formations that smashed enemy clusters before they could reform.
On the other wing, Ma Dai's cavalry struck again and again, harrying the Funan flanks. Ma Tie and Ma Xiu drove wedges into their formation, each charge breaking more of the enemy's cohesion.
And now, the moment word spread that their commander had been struck down, panic began to ripple through the Funan ranks.
Some turned to see it for themselves, their general skewered by two foreign spears, blood blooming across his chest and stomach. Shouts of alarm tore through their lines. Discipline wavered.
Sun Ce and Ma Chao pulled their weapons free, the motion bringing fresh jets of crimson from the man's body. He coughed once, a wet sound, and blood spilled from his lips.
Sun Ce stepped forward, lowering his spear in a gesture that was neither threat nor salute. He motioned toward the ground, the universal sign for yield.
The Funan general looked at him with eyes that burned like coals. He understood the gesture. He even understood the offer it carried, life in defeat. But the fire in his gaze did not dim. Slowly, deliberately, he shook his head.
Then, before either could stop him, he drove his own sword into his belly, wrenching it upward in a brutal arc. The blade fell from his hands as he collapsed to his knees, his breath leaving him in a final rattling sigh.
Sun Ce stood over him for a long moment, the din of battle momentarily muted in his ears. "Such loyalty," he murmured, though he knew the man could no longer hear.
Ma Chao's mouth was a grim line. "A warrior's choice."
They turned back to the field, where the fight had tipped decisively. Funan's soldiers, now leaderless, were breaking, some throwing down arms in surrender, others fleeing into the jungle only to be cut down or run to ground.
By the time the rout was complete, hundreds lay dead, and hundreds more knelt bound under guard. Zhou Yu rode up, his armor spattered but his eyes sharp.
"My lords," he said, "we should make camp here. Process the prisoners. We can't risk leaving them to regroup and strike at our backs. Nor can we leave this ground unsecured, not after what it cost to win it."
Sun Ce and Ma Chao exchanged a brief nod. The day was theirs, but the campaign was far from over.
The air was heavy with the smell of blood and trampled greenery, the sounds of groaning wounded mixing with the distant calls of birds returning to the trees.
As the Hengyuan Dynasty banners were planted in the churned earth, the Funan dead and captured marked the first major clash in a campaign that would test every ounce of will and steel they possessed against the Funan.
As dusk fell, the Sun Clan and Ma Chao's army made camp on the bloodied ground they'd just conquered. Fires were lit, tents erected, and the wounded carried to the surgeons' pavilion. The captured Funan soldiers, nearly two thousand of them, were bound and placed under heavy guard.
In the command tent, Sun Ce, Ma Chao, and the other generals gathered around a map unfurled on a makeshift table.
Zhou Yu tapped the parchment. "This battle confirms it, Funan knew we were coming. Their navy was ready. Their army was lying in wait. Someone warned them."
Lu Meng crossed his arms. "A spy in our ranks?"
"Or just sharp eyes," Zhou Yu countered. "We're not exactly subtle with a hundred thousand men marching through the jungle."
Ma Chao leaned forward. "Does it matter? We won. I think their strongest general that I and Lord Sun Ce face, is dead. Their army is broken."
"For now," Zhou Yu said quietly. "But Funan is a kingdom, not just an army. There will be more generals. More soldiers. And next time, they'll know exactly how we fight."
Sun Ce grinned. "Then we'll just have to surprise them again."
Before the debate could continue, a commotion erupted outside. Shouts. The clang of metal. Then—
A scout burst in, panting. "My lords! The prisoners! They're rioting!"
The chaos was worse than expected.
Somehow, a group of Funan officers had gotten their hands on knives, hidden in boots, perhaps, or slipped past careless guards. Now they were cutting their comrades' bonds, and the entire prisoner pen was erupting into violence.
The Sun Clan and Ma Chao's soldiers rushed to contain it, but the Funan captives fought like cornered animals, knowing surrender meant slavery or execution. Some grabbed fallen weapons. Others used bare hands and teeth. Sun Ce arrived at the scene, his spear already red. "Form a perimeter! Don't let them scatter into the jungle!"
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 35 (202 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 9)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 966 (+20)
VIT: 623 (+20)
AGI: 623 (+10)
INT: 667
CHR: 98
WIS: 549
WILL: 432
ATR Points: 0