The crackling gunfire left the townsfolk with no chance to fight back.
The battle was over in less than half an hour.
After clearing the battlefield, Luo Ben came to report the results.
"Duke, we eliminated four hundred and thirteen enemies and captured over two hundred."
Fang Er nodded. "Did you find out who they were?"
"Duke, I couldn't understand what these guys were saying!"
"The Commander came down from the sky and is trying to figure out how to get something out of them."
Fang Er was puzzled. Did Zhang Tian, with his head always in the clouds, also understand foreign languages?
"Lead the way, I'll go take a look."
"Yes, Duke."
Luo Ben led the way, with Fang Er following behind, heading towards the center of the town.
Over two hundred people, hands bound, knelt on the ground.
Niu Fen, Wang Sheng, and Jing Qi, along with their three battalions, stood guard around them.
Zhang Tian was interrogating the captives with his Yun Er style.
"Is there anyone who understands human speech!"
The captives looked bewildered, completely unable to comprehend what this guy was saying.
Then, Zhang Tian randomly pointed the muzzle of his gun at one person and pulled the trigger.
With a bang, the man fell to the ground.
Fang Er scanned the scene. Besides this man, three others lay dead on the ground.
The captives became panicked.
They let out a series of unintelligible cries.
Zhang Tian grew impatient and asked again, "Is there anyone who understands human speech!"
The captives continued to shout in their own language.
Zhang Tian pulled back the bolt of his gun, chambering another round.
"Wait!"
Fang Er spoke, stopping his action.
"Duke, these guys are beasts! You don't need to show them any pity."
Zhang Tian's eyes, as he looked at the captives, were filled with killing intent. If it weren't for the need to extract intelligence, he would have wanted to shoot them all.
"What's going on?" Fang Er asked with a frown. In his memory, Zhang Tian was not such a violent person.
"Duke, do you know what that meaty aroma in the town was?"
Fang Er was confused.
"It was human flesh! That big vat..."
Zhang Tian pointed to a large vat not far from the captives, his voice trembling as he couldn't continue.
Fang Er was shocked.
"No wonder, no wonder I never smelled that meat scent before!"
He turned his head to look at the captives kneeling on the ground, a murderous glint flashing in his eyes, and squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth.
"Don't use guns, save the bullets. Killing them with one shot is too easy!"
"Yes, Duke!"
Zhang Tian responded, ejected the bullet from the chamber, and handed the gun to a nearby attendant.
He drew his saber and walked towards one of the captives.
"Is there anyone who understands human speech!"
Silence.
With a swift stroke of Zhang Tian's saber, the man in front of him was cut in half!
Waist-cutting was more brutal than shooting.
But still, no one from the captives stepped forward.
After three more consecutive waist-cuttings, someone finally stood up, trembling.
"Lu ba ga ga, mu zhi ca shou?"
Fang Er immediately stopped Zhang Tian again.
It seemed this person's words were clearly from a different language than their previous unintelligible cries.
"Who understands?"
Everyone shook their heads.
Fang Er, somewhat disappointed, gestured to Zhang Tian to continue.
Seeing Zhang Tian raise his saber again, the man quickly spoke again.
"A si de ge tai de ge tai de ge tai!"
Fang Er: "..."
Another language?
He looked to the others in the Tianhuo Army for confirmation, but received only blank shakes of their heads.
"Wait!"
Wu Gu Liang suddenly spoke.
After saying so, he walked towards the captive and tentatively said something.
"De ge tai de xi de ge tai de ge xi?"
The captive nodded excitedly and replied.
"Tai ge de tai ge de tai ge."
"Ask them where they are from, why they are here, and what their purpose is!"
Seeing that Wu Gu Liang could communicate with him, Fang Er quickly reminded him.
Wu Gu Liang nodded repeatedly, looked at the captive, and continued to ask.
"Tai ge de tai ge xi de tai ge ge xi?"
"Ai ya yo."
"A o?"
"A o ei!"
"A si de a si de?"
"A si de ge de ge de!"
The two exchanged words back and forth, chatting lively, leaving Fang Er completely bewildered.
After waiting for a while, Wu Gu Liang returned to report to Fang Er.
"Duke, that person said their country was invaded, and out of desperation, they fled here from the distant West.
They had been fleeing for almost half a year before arriving here.
Upon arrival, they had consumed all their food and were forced to rob the Shiwei.
While raiding, a group of Shiwei people fled to Fuyu. To prevent the news from leaking, they pursued them and attacked Fuyu as well!"
Wu Gu Liang's voice was filled with anger. From the meat soup in that vat, he had already seen the fate of his merchant caravan members, which was terrifying!
"Ask them how many troops they have, and where the over ten thousand people from Shiwei and the ten thousand from Fuyu City have been sent!
With just their few hundred men, they couldn't possibly have taken Shiwei!
Also, ask how their country was conquered!"
"The West, fleeing for half a year, that's at least tens of thousands of miles away," Fang Er had already confirmed.
"These guys are Slavs!"
"This is too bizarre!
It's important to know that historically, these people wouldn't appear here for almost another thousand years!"
After another round of obscure communication, Wu Gu Liang returned and said, "Duke, I couldn't understand everything he said.
What I understood is that they don't know what kind of people attacked them!
They only said that their capital fell, and their general, without participating in the battle, directly led them, around twenty thousand men, to flee this way.
Not only Shiwei, but even Mohe was captured by them.
The missing people from Fuyu City, as well as the Shiwei populace and royalty, have been taken to Mohe!"
"Twenty thousand?!
Fled without a fight? Ran without even knowing what the enemy looked like?
Suddenly, Fang Er looked at Wu Gu Liang with confusion. "How do you know the language of a place tens of thousands of miles away in the West?"
Wu Gu Liang quickly explained, "Duke, he wasn't speaking a language from tens of thousands of miles away, but a dialect from the Western Regions.
This man was in charge of provisions and had dealings with merchants from the Western Regions, so he learned some. Coincidentally, when I was in Chang'an, I also learned a few phrases from merchants of the Western Regions."
Fang Er nodded, his gaze turning to the captive.
"Zhang Tian, keep this one. The rest, kill them all!"
"Yes, Duke!"
To treat civilians as food was something that any man with a backbone could not accept!
Such people could no longer be considered human.
They were beasts!