Otherwise, the horse bandits—riding camels that ran no slower than horses—would eventually catch up to them, as they only had their qinggong and two legs to rely on.
Both sides pursued each other on camelback for nearly two hours, until the camels showed a visible decrease in speed.
Yun Huizhou finally spoke: “Having run this far, those bandits without camels won’t be able to catch up for several hours. Even if they do pursue us, the footprints won’t last that long.”
Because the camels had slowed down, the wind whistling past their ears had quieted. Yun Huizhou’s voice wasn’t loud, but Lian Li heard him clearly.
He glanced back at Yun Huizhou and said, “Mhm. You mean you’re ready to take action against the bandits behind us?”
Yun Huizhou nodded. “Although there are many of these horse bandits, they certainly don’t have that many camels. They also have to leave some behind for those not joining the pursuit. I observed earlier that there should be three groups of bandits in the oasis; they couldn’t all have come after us together. Even if they did, I estimate the number of pursuers won’t exceed three hundred. Regardless, it won’t be more difficult than that time with the Chongling Sect.”
Lian Li: “Yeah, let’s get them!”
As soon as he finished speaking, the two of them pulled on their camels’ reins, slowing them down.
Once the figures of the horse bandits came into clear view, the two of them leaped into the air from the backs of their camels simultaneously.
In mid-air, Yun Huizhou delivered three slashes toward the sandy ground. The phantom of a massive blade appeared, kicking up the yellow sand seven or eight meters high. His internal energy then pushed the billowing sand toward the horse bandits.
The bandits’ camels were startled by this sudden turn of events, falling into a brief state of chaos.
The horse bandits were also pelted in the face by the yellow sand. As they breathed, fine grains of sand forced their way into their nostrils, and the sound of coughing rose and fell.
Even more bandits instinctively squeezed their eyes shut, fearing the sand would get in.
Lian Li and Yun Huizhou held their breath at the same time. With one hand on their weapons and the other partially shielding their eyes to prevent the sand from blinding them, they charged forward.
They had essentially memorized the bandits’ positions before acting, so even though visibility was poor, it did not hinder them from striking.
By the time they landed back on the ground and their surroundings returned to normal, more than twenty horse bandits had already been killed.
The number of horse bandits who had caught up was fewer than they had imagined—only about a hundred. It seemed that only one of the groups had discovered their trail and pursued them.
This was the best-case scenario; otherwise, if the three groups of bandits had cooperated to hunt them down, it truly would have been quite troublesome.
As for the other two groups of bandits, although they hadn’t caught up yet, they would soon notice the commotion and send men to join the pursuit.
However, the two had no intention of charging directly into the encirclement. After killing over twenty of the foremost bandits, they immediately pulled back and retreated a dozen meters.
Once a bit of distance was established, the horse bandits reacted, driving their camels forward to close in on them.
Yun Huizhou raised his blade, feigning another attempt to kick up the sand. Sure enough, the bandits at the very front hesitated for a moment.
Lian Li took this opportunity to hurl several non-toxic hidden weapons, striking the camels whose riders had already been killed.
Stung by the pain, the camels’ feral instincts were triggered. They immediately began to run amok, even snapping their jaws at the camels beside them, believing they were the ones attacking.
Those riderless camels had originally been at the very front; their chaotic thrashing caused no small amount of trouble for the bandits currently in the lead.
A bandit leader made a hand gesture, and other bandits began to swing their blades at the rampaging camels.
Right then, Yun Huizhou once again kicked up an even greater amount of yellow sand, higher than before.
This time, the horse bandits were prepared, and only fewer than ten men were killed by them.
Seeing this, the experts among the horse bandits made their move. As soon as they clashed, it became apparent that the martial arts of these experts were roughly on par with Lian Li’s current level. There were about a dozen of them, and with dozens of other bandit lackeys, the two of them couldn’t finish them all off quickly.
However, they couldn’t pose much of a threat to the duo either.
It was naturally impossible to keep all hundred or so bandits there. When half of them had been killed while the duo remained without any visible wounds, many of the bandits began to feel the urge to retreat.
Yet, several minor bandit leaders had no intention of retreating just like that; otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to answer to their chief. Even if every one of them died here, they intended to stall until the reinforcements from behind arrived.
However, judging by the speed at which Yun Huizhou and Lian Li were killing them, even if they all died, the people behind wouldn’t make it in time.
Yun Huizhou and Lian Li also saw that most of the bandits wanted to flee, but were held back for the moment by the pressure from those minor leaders.
The two exchanged a glance and then simultaneously charged toward those minor leaders.
Although the other bandits immediately rushed to support them, the minor leaders still couldn’t withstand the combined assault of the two.
Soon, half of the dozen or so minor leaders were dead.
Yun Huizhou and Lian Li intentionally held back, allowing the remaining bandits to escape.
The two had no intention of pursuing them. Once the bandits were driven away, the battlefield was left with nothing but the corpses of bandits and camels, along with a dozen or so live camels that no longer had riders.
There should have been more, but unfortunately, some camels had been spooked and bolted during the fight, leaving only these dozen or so behind.
Of course, the most important thing was that many of the hundred-plus bandits who had pursued them were carrying dry rations and water skins.
The two scavenged the ground, and the dry rations and water they collected were essentially enough to sustain them until they left the desert.
Conveniently, there were also these dozen or so camels to carry the supplies.
Although the slaughter had been exhausting, Lian Li was now beaming with joy.
He said, “I thought this would be a bitter struggle, but not only was it easier than expected, I didn’t think the bandits would deliver so many supplies to us. Now, we should be—”
He cut himself off and covered his mouth, muttering under his breath, “Can’t go setting flags.”
Yun Huizhou gave him a somewhat helpless look before walking over to the camels left behind by the bandits. After testing the reins and finding that most of the camels were neither resistant nor afraid, he cut many long strips of cloth from the bandits’ clothing. He then selected a few bandits whose clothes hadn’t been heavily damaged in the fight and stripped off their outer robes.
He used the long cloth strips to string the water skins together and hang them on the camels, while the dry rations were wrapped in the relatively intact robes and loaded onto the camels’ backs.
After finishing all this, they lined up the camels and chose the two at the very front to ride.
They hadn’t traveled far when they saw their original five camels actually stopped beneath a sand dune, grazing on grass.
“Including our five camels, our caravan now has twenty camels!” Lian Li said excitedly to Yun Huizhou.
