The mountain fire raged like a wild, untamed beast, its roar drowning out all other sound. Thick, black smoke billowed up in great columns to choke the sky, turning the sun into a dull orange coin. A cold, relentless autumn wind scattered hot ashes everywhere, staining Su Min's clothes and skin a uniform sooty gray as she charged toward the searing wall of heat. Her face was smudged black with grime, making her look like she had just crawled out of a coal mine, only her eyes showing white and clear.
"Just how many men did that bastard emperor deploy?" she cursed under her breath, the words tasting of ash and fury. "From the looks of it, there must be at least a hundred thousand soldiers waiting on the other side of this fire." The scale of the response was staggering.
In her mind, she damned the emperor's ancestors for eighteen generations. His army had not just surrounded the mountain, they had sealed it off completely, even constructing rough wooden fortresses on the key peaks that overlooked the valleys. Some of those forts were equipped with massive, truck-mounted crossbows, their bolts as long as a man was tall and thick as a wrist. From a distance, they reminded her of the sniper rifles from her old world, instruments of precise, long range death.
Su Min was still flesh and blood, her body only recently tempered. She did not dare to charge one of those heavily fortified positions head on. To prevent the fire from spreading back toward their own lines, the soldiers had clear cut entire swathes of the mountainside, creating a wide, barren no man's land of stumps and dirt. Countless troops lay in ambush there, waiting in disciplined silence. If she tried to break through that way, she would be swarmed and overwhelmed in an instant, her cultivation no match for a thousand blades.
But the fiery front itself was different. There might be a gap there, a moment of weakness in the chaos of the flames. To escape the encirclement, she had to go straight through the heart of the inferno. No ordinary person could possibly survive such an intense heat, their lungs would sear and their skin would blister and burn.
But Su Min was not ordinary anymore.
First, as a cultivator in the mid stage of Body Refining, she could channel her spiritual energy to form a thin, shimmering protective barrier around her skin, a second layer that defied the heat. Second, her alchemy manual described a basic pill specifically designed to resist high temperature spells, the Fire Warding Pill. It would not hold against a true cultivator's focused fire technique, but ordinary, natural fire, however fierce, was manageable for a short time.
"No one would ever expect me to charge straight into a firestorm," she thought, a grim, determined smile touching her soot stained lips. It was a move born of pure, desperate audacity.
Meanwhile, on the upwind side of the fire, a handful of soldiers stood watching the blaze advance, their postures slack with boredom and resignation. They had never bothered to search the deeper, more rugged parts of the mountain. Their mission was much simpler, they had spent the last few months digging a massive firebreak, a trench and cleared area around the entire range to contain the coming flames and prevent an ecological disaster for the farmlands.
Now, a squad of just over twenty men trudged lazily behind the advancing fireline, their eyes glazed over. None of them were enthusiastic about this operation. The rewards for capturing the witch were generous, sure, but with hundreds of thousands of men competing for that one prize, and knowing most of the reward would be claimed by their superiors, they saw no point in trying too hard. It was a lottery they were destined to lose.
"Hey, stay alert," the cavalry captain barked at his men, his own voice lacking any real conviction as he shifted in his saddle. "Who knows what will come running out of that fire once the mountain is fully burned. Wolves, boars, maybe even a bear." He did not truly believe the girl would come this way.
Their units were spaced about a kilometer apart so they could support each other quickly with signal flares if needed. But compared to the heavy forces stationed downwind, where the general expected his prey to run from the fire, this contingent was pitifully thin. Two hundred thousand men sounded like an impressive number on paper, yet for a mountain range this vast, it barely formed a loose and leaky cordon, full of gaps.
General Mu Hongkun's overall strategy was straightforward and logical. He intended to use the fire like a giant hunting drive, pushing Su Min toward the southern choke point where his main forces and best troops waited. If she appeared there, she would be slowed down by the terrain and the defenders just long enough for reinforcements to converge and surround her completely.
A thousand soldiers could reach any southern position within a single day, more than enough to overwhelm even a Body Refining cultivator through sheer numbers. He had learned that much from the brothel madam's reports. Body Refining granted superior strength and speed, but it was not enough to face an entire army alone, nor could it allow someone to withstand the direct, suffocating heat of a raging wildfire for long. Hence, this entire burning plan was conceived.
The troops scattered across the rest of the mountains were little more than a deterrent, there to deny her rest and safe haven, to force her to keep moving and never settle. Starvation and exhaustion would do the rest of the work, softening her up for the final capture. The main army's primary task had been to dig the firebreaks, making sure the blaze did not spiral out of control and burn the empire itself. Then, when autumn had dried everything out to a crisp, they would light the match and flush her out. Even the deepest caves would eventually turn into ovens, their air unbreathable.
As a seasoned general, Mu Hongkun preferred this steady, methodical, and near certain method over more convoluted traps that could fail. So this squad's job was simple, keep the fireline moving forward consistently. If the flames faltered or died down in a spot, they were to reignite them.
But this was not a real war against a foreign enemy. There were no glorious battle merits to be won here, only the dirty business of burning a mountain and hunting a girl. Morale was practically nonexistent. Just as the captain finished his half hearted warning, a gray blur shot past the line of flickering heat, moving faster than any animal they had ever seen.
Whoosh!
"ARGH!"
The captain screamed as a powerful, precise kick connected with his side, sending him flying from his saddle. He landed hard on the scorched, still warm earth, the wind knocked out of him in a painful gasp. A petite, soot covered figure vaulted smoothly onto his startled horse, grabbed the reins, slapped its flank hard, and galloped away northward before any of the stunned soldiers could even raise a weapon or process what had happened.
It was Su Min.
She had never ridden a horse in her old life, but the body she now inhabited had muscle memory for it. In this era, horses were essential for travel and status, and even noblewomen were trained to ride from a young age as a matter of course. She knew the south would be a death trap, tightly fortified with the general's best troops. But the northern perimeter, upwind of the fire and considered an unlikely escape route, was far more thinly guarded. That was the critical gap she had been waiting for.
Her target was the Jishui River, less than ten kilometers ahead. The Jishui was a massive, powerful waterway, several kilometers wide at this point, a natural moat that cut through the heart of the Great Wei Dynasty and flowed past the Min Mountains all the way to the sea.
If she could cross it, she would be free, lost in the vast, sparsely populated lands beyond. All of the empire's main defenses were concentrated on this side of the river, the side of civilization and control.
"SIGNAL THE ALARM!" the captain wheezed, struggling to push himself up onto his elbows. He was not dead, just badly bruised and humiliated. One of the soldiers finally fumbled for the signaling tube at his waist, yanked the cord, and
BOOM!
A single firework streaked into the smoke filled sky, exploding in a bright, urgent flash of red that was visible for miles. Su Min heard the sharp report behind her and did not need to look back. She knew what it meant. Within minutes, dozens of cavalrymen from adjacent units would converge on her position from all directions, cutting off her path. This was just the beginning. If she was slowed or trapped here, she would drown in endless waves of soldiers, her energy spent.
There was no time to hesitate, no room for error. She had ten kilometers to cover. Ten kilometers to the river. Ten kilometers to freedom or a bloody end.
From behind her, a new shout rose over the thunder of her own horse's hooves and the roar of the pursuing cavalry.
"LOOSE ARROWS! AIM FOR THE HORSE, NOT THE RIDER!"
Normally, soldiers avoided targeting valuable, well trained warhorses. Even in pitched battles, the horses often outlived their riders and could be captured and reused. But this time, there was no such restraint. The order was given to cripple her escape at any cost, to bring her down by any means necessary. The whistle of the first arrows cutting through the air began.