Border Soldier: My fiancée snatched credit and broke off the engagement, so I promptly became a marq

By the time Tamu caught up with them at Eagle's Beak Ridge, it was already dark.

Four hundred riders were squeezed between two stone walls, and they could always see the black wolf flag with missing ears in front of them, but they could never catch up.

Wu Lie led only sixty of his former men to continue deeper into the territory.

Every mile, they would drop a bag of real grain.

The White Fox Riders stopped when they found the first bag of grain. Upon finding the third bag, Tamu ordered that anyone who dismounted be killed. He was convinced that Anado had hidden the stolen grain in the mountains, and that if they pursued her to the end, they could retrieve both the grain and Anado.

He didn't know that Anato was no longer ahead.

At the first fork in the mountain pass, He Shi lifted a piece of snow-covered sheepskin. Below was a narrow path, just wide enough for two riders to pass side by side, for transporting sheep.

Anato, Lu Shuangyi, seventy-five heavy cavalrymen, and more than two hundred light cavalrymen all went inside.

The horseshoes were wrapped in cloth, and there were no torches.

The team turned southwest along the mountainside and saw the firelight of the North Mountain Pasture in the middle of the night.

Before leaving the pass, Chen Mu gave Anado something.

Half a black iron tooth plaque.

When Wugudu died under Chen Mu's blade, the other half of the ivory token was taken by the Zhao family along with his head. This half remained with Chen Mu. From Black Stone Fortress and Iron Horse Fortress to White Wolf Pass, it was stained with blood and weighed down with silver.

When Chen Mu placed the ivory token into Anado's palm, he only said one sentence.

"If anyone in the ranch still recognizes Wugudu, let them see him."

Beishan Ranch has two layers of wooden walls.

The outer enclosure housed sheep and cattle, while the inner enclosure housed warhorses. Nearly three hundred soldiers were stationed at the inner gate, while the outer wall consisted of only four arrow towers. Even after Tamu led four hundred cavalrymen away, they still felt no one would dare to come.

He Shi was the first to ride down the wall.

"Open the door!"

The guards in the watchtower peered out and saw him wearing white fox fur armor, assuming the grain convoy was returning.

The outer door was only slightly ajar.

He Shi charged in, horse and all, and slit the gatekeeper's throat with his knife. Anato followed closely behind, hooking her lasso onto the winch, and dragged twenty horses along.

The wooden door was completely open.

Heavy cavalry pressed in through the doorway.

The ranch guards hastily mounted their horses, their saddles not even properly fastened. The first platoon had barely reached the sheepfold when Lu Shuangyi's heavy spear came hurtling towards them.

The seventy-five heavy cavalrymen did not form a long formation.

The space between the sheepfold and the horse pen was too narrow, so they divided into fifteen teams of five riders each, cutting along the wooden fence section by section. When the guards tried to form a battle formation, the sheep blocked their way; when they tried to climb the arrow tower, they were shot down from both sides by light cavalry.

The first horse pen was quickly replaced with a new flag.

The inner walls, however, were completely sealed off.

The two hundred or so soldiers left behind by Tamu herded all the family members onto the wall. Heshi's wife and two daughters were among them, with the same rope around their necks.

The guard held his youngest daughter down with his sword.

"Take it one step further, kill them all!"

Heshi stopped at the foot of the wall.

Anato didn't stop.

She rode her white horse to the torchlight and held up half of a ivory tablet.

"Do you still recognize this?"

There was a moment of silence on the wall.

An old servant who had raised horses for Wugudu knelt down.

"Wolf Head Tooth Piece..."

More people recognized it.

Half of the women, stable boys, and conscripted riders on the wall were originally from the old Ugu tribe. After Ugudu's death, they were assigned to the northern mountains by Batu, their faces branded with white foxes, and their children became slaves.

Anato tied the ivory tag to the black wolf flag.

"Wugu is dead."

"I'm alive."

"I want to continue standing up for Batu's horse-breeding."

"Open the door if you want your child and tent back!"

The guard slashed at He Shi's daughter with his sword.

The knife didn't fall.

Heshi's wife pulled a bone needle from her sleeve—the one she used for sewing saddles—and stabbed it into the guard's eye. His two daughters grabbed his arms, and the other women rushed toward the guards around them.

Chaos erupted instantly inside the walls.

The old stable boy grabbed a pitchfork and forced the riders to fight back, attacking the White Fox's personal guards. Some opened the inner gate, while others cut the ropes around the necks of family members.

When He Shi rushed in, his wife's face was covered in blood.

He didn't ask whose blood it was, he just hugged his wife and two daughters. The youngest daughter was still clutching half a bone needle in her hand, and she only started crying when she saw her father.

Once the inner wall was breached, the defending troops lost their formation.

Of the more than two hundred men, over seventy died, one hundred and forty surrendered, and the rest escaped from Beilan. On the Black Pot side, forty-nine died, and of the seventy-five heavy cavalry, fifty-eight remained.

Beishan Ranch was acquired.

The ranch has 786 warhorses and stallions, more than 2,300 sheep, 460 cattle, eight granaries of soybeans, three granaries of wheat, and more than 100 complete winter tents.

There were more than 470 women, children and stable boys imprisoned here.

After the outer wall was opened, the black-boned woman who had lost her child did not try to steal Tamu's things.

She searched for the sheep pen by sheep pen.

When asked about the sixth sheep pen, an old servant who shoveled manure finally remembered that three days ago, the White Fox Rider had thrown a crying boy into the sick sheep pen. Everyone thought the child had frozen to death, but the old servant heard noises coming from the haystack at night and secretly fed the child milk twice.

The woman rushed into the sick sheep pen.

The boy huddled under the ewe's belly, his face blue with cold, clutching a tuft of wool in his hand. The ewe had sheltered him from the wind for three nights, and now she herself could no longer stand.

The woman hugged her child and cried until she couldn't make a sound.

She did not forget the ewe.

After putting the child in the warm tent, she led people to carry the ewe to the fire, fed her hot water, massaged her legs, and poured half a pot of wine from the Tamu wine pot to wipe her frostbite.

Some say a sick sheep isn't worth that pot of fine wine.

The woman looked up.

"It raised my son in my place."

"From now on, it will eat my food."

No one said it wasn't worth it anymore.

Not all the cattle and sheep in the pasture were driven back to White Wolf Pass.

Each rescued family was given two sheep. Children who had not been reunited with their relatives were taken away by the elders of the same household, along with an additional ewe. The rest were then driven to the interior to exchange for grain and salt.

More than a hundred winter tents were distributed on the spot.

Some moved into the large tent of Tamu's personal guards, while others tore open white fox fur rugs and sewed vests for each of the five children. The slaves who were crammed into the stables last night now had their own tents, sheep, and fires before dawn.

As soon as the wooden door opened, they rushed into Tamu's residence.

Fox fur rugs, silver wine jugs, dried meat, and women's jewelry were all brought out. The brazier Tam used to brand slaves was smashed, and the white fox flag was thrown into the manure pit.

He Shi's two daughters did not take the silver.

They each picked a pony. The older sister tied the bone needle her mother used to sew the saddle to the saddle head, while the younger sister led the horse to find her younger brother who had been missing for three days.

The younger brother was eventually found in the haystack in the sheepfold; he was unconscious from hunger but still alive.

The family of five squeezed into the same tent to eat their first bowl of meat soup.

Anato did not rest.

Tamu is still at Eagle's Beak Ridge.

She ordered the 140 riders who had surrendered to change their white fox banners and keep their original armor. All the gates of the North Mountain Ranch were also lit up, and from a distance, they looked no different from the previous night.

Before dawn, Tamu finally discovered that there were only sixty Ulie riders ahead of him.

He turned back to the ranch.

Four hundred riders chased all night, and only three hundred and fifty horses remained that could still run fast. Seeing the white fox flag and the open outer gate in the distance, everyone assumed the ranch was safe.

Tamu was the first to enter.

The door closed behind them.

Behind the horse enclosure, a black pot flag and a black wolf flag with a missing ear were erected simultaneously.

One hundred and forty newly surrendered riders fired arrows first. Their wives and children were behind the inner wall, and none of them held back. More than fifty members of the Tamu vanguard fell instantly.

Fifty-eight heavy cavalrymen burst out from the horse railings on both sides.

Wu Lie also led sixty riders to block the outer gate.

Tamu was confined to the area where he kept his horses.

He tried to rush the inner wall to capture people, but Heshi and his surrendered cavalry blocked his way. He tried to return to the outer gate, but Wugu's old troops shot arrows from under their horses. The three hundred-plus White Fox riders had been running all night, their horses exhausted and their men hungry, and they couldn't even muster a second charge.

Tamu's guards continued to protect him as he retreated towards the manger.

Lu Shuangyi's spear was broken, so she used the captured scimitar to slash. Anato rode a white horse in from the other side, with the black wolf flag always following behind her.

Tamu saw the broken ivory plaque and finally recognized her.

"Your uncle is dead!"

"You still dare to fly his flag?"

Anato shot and killed his personal guard with an arrow.

"So it's your turn."

Tamu, clad in silver armor, blocked the second arrow and charged straight at her on her blue-and-white horse. He was far stronger than Tuomu, severing Anaduo's bowstring with a single stroke and then using his shoulder armor to knock her off her horse.

Anato fell into the manger.

Tamu raised his knife to strike, but a hand reached out from the bottom of the trough.

The woman from Wugu who had lost her child hid under the hay. She used two curved knives to simultaneously sever the hind legs of the blue-and-white horse.

The warhorse knelt down.

Tamu was also planted in the manger.

Anato rolled over and pinned him down, shoving half a ivory tablet into his mouth. Tamu still felt like vomiting, but Ulie and a dozen of his old followers had already surrounded him.

Everyone is drawing their swords.

Anato didn't let anyone else make the first move.

She picked up Tamu's knife and slashed it into his neck.

The second cut sent the head rolling into the hay.

When the remaining White Fox Riders saw that Tamu was dead, their last bit of momentum dissipated.

In this battle, more than 160 men died and 120 surrendered, with only 60-odd riders escaping by climbing over the outer fence.

The 120 riders who surrendered were not imprisoned.

Heshi told them to go inside the wall and find their families. Some found their wives and children on the spot, threw down their swords and embraced each other; others only found an empty tent, knowing that their loved ones had been taken to the king's tent by Batu.

Those who were found stayed to guard the pasture.

Those who couldn't find it should stand outside the North Gate and be asked to continue north with the next group.

An old white fox rider poured all thirty taels of silver he had saved over ten years into the pot.

"I don't want silver."

"My daughter is in the royal tent."

The others also began to pluck things out. Silver rings, gold teeth, fox pelts, saddles—anything that could be exchanged for grain was piled up. They weren't handing them over for safekeeping; they were going to exchange them for arrows and meat for the next battle.

Anato only took the royal tent gold medal from Tamu's waist.

She nailed the gold medal to the very bottom of the Black Wolf flagpole so that everyone entering the ranch could step on it.

Tamu's silver armor was given to Heshi.

Heshi refused to wear it, believing he had only brought one path. Anato pointed to his two daughters.

"Only if you live can you fight for people for them again."

He Shi then donned his armor.

Tamu's silver armor, blue-and-white horse, and head were all left behind.

The blue-and-white horse's hind leg was crippled, and Ma Sanque was no longer around, but the two old stable boys still refused to kill it. They clamped the horse's leg with a wooden board, saying they would eat its meat if it couldn't be raised.

Tamu's skull was put into the red felt wagon and sent back to White Wolf Pass along with two white fox flags.

When Chen Mu received the heads, the first batch of cattle and sheep from Beishan also arrived.

Two hundred cattle and eight hundred sheep were driven into the north gate first, their hooves shaking the entire street awake. Children chased after the sheep, while merchants began asking prices.

Anato did not return.

She planted the black wolf flag with the missing ear on the tallest wooden building in the North Mountain Ranch, and then had a second pot set up.

More than 470 rescued family members and more than 200 surrendered cavalrymen and former Wugu followers gathered around a pot to eat meat.

Outside White Wolf Pass, Chen Mu acquired his first real pasture extending into the northern lands.

Further north, seven plumes of smoke rose simultaneously.

The White Fox Riders who escaped back to the royal tent took two pieces of news with them.

Tamu is dead.

The Beishan Ranch, which Batu had been raising livestock for ten years, now also belongs to the Chen family.