Underneath the plated horse armor, the horse's body was hot and hard.

Cosme did not underestimate the Thousand River Valley People. From the start, he had all the knights drink the Khan Potion, and all the warhorses drink the Blood of Stag Potion.

The monks following the Border Knights in their charge wasted no time in showering Divine Art upon the Border Knights.

With these powers granted and the unwavering morale of the Border Knights, their performance against the Imperial Guard's assault was unprecedented.

They truly broke through to the front of the Imperial Guard!

Seven horses, over six feet tall at the shoulder, armored with scale-like plating, exhaled a pale red mist as they crashed into the spiked stakes before them.

The stakes, as thick as a bowl's rim, shattered backward in a rain-like spray of splinters, while simultaneously piercing the horses with arm-thick spikes.

Blood and innards spilled out, but the Border Knights showed no compassion for their horses, vaulting off to use them as shields.

Lead bullets whizzed overhead, puncturing the throats of once-beloved warhorses.

These knights, eyes red with fury, swung their war hammers or axes wildly at the stakes before them.

The spikes exploded instantaneously, fragments flying, even slicing the faces of the Guard Long Spear Cultivators behind the breastworks.

"No chance!" a Long Spear Cultivator shouted angrily, switching grip on his weapon, thrusting the long halberd forward to hook a knight's breastplate.

"Come!"

The knight, pulled down by three men, was yanked to the front of the breastworks, looking up just in time to see three long spears stabbing down.

Forged from fine iron, the long spears pierced the weak points at the armor's edges.

From the shattered twisted armor, a fountain of blood spurted nearly two meters high under immense pressure.

It wasn't that the armorers deliberately thinned the armor's edges, but if not thinned, it would hinder joint movement.

Even surpassing the limit of endurance, the armor still couldn't be thickened infinitely.

Long spears, halberds, longswords, and axes, their wooden shafts struck and scraped grooves into the ground and wooden breastworks.

A Border Knight stepped onto the crossbeam, raising his axe high.

The next second, he became a target for the concentrated fire of the Holy Gunmen and was shot to pieces.

The heavy corpse fell, raising a cloud of dust, behind which more Border Knights surged forward.

Encircling the barriers and breastworks, in this narrow space barely three meters wide, the dismounted knights repeatedly sawed back and forth.

Disregarding their injuries, facing spears and lead bullets, the knights gritted their teeth as they destroyed the chest-high stakes.

Five attacking banner teams now had fewer than fifty standing members, aside from the wounded moaning across the field.

Realizing the fifty remaining knights were each helping one or two wounded comrades mount and leave, many rookies began to cheer.

But beside the rookies, the veterans' expressions grew even graver than before.

The original spiked stakes had been cleared, the wooden breastworks pushed down and smashed, leaving only half-buried earth mounds.

Although knee-high crossbeams remained as obstacles, for heavily armored warhorses, this height posed no more than a leap.

As the subsequent five banner teams charged forward, what lay exposed before the knights was an almost defenseless array of Guard Long Spear Cultivators.

There's still more to come!

"May the Holy Father grant me courage and peace in death!"

Hundreds of warhorses crashed into the breastworks, wood and earth sprayed onto the faces of Long Spear Cultivators.

"Imperial Guard, advance!"

The sound of long spears clashing and the noise of warhorse armor twisting blended together.

The formerly dense long spear array, like a sheet of black satin, suddenly buckled inward.

In the space where both sides clashed, weapons clashed against weapons, armor collided with armor, screams dragged blood to the ground.

In the moment of meeting, the ground was already drenched with blood, tears, and mud.

"Your Grace." Bether looked down the hillside several times within a minute and finally couldn't contain himself, "Should we go down the mountain to support them?"

"No need." Horn didn't even look at the battle at the foot, he was gazing at the distant movements of the Border Knights.

"Really no need?"

"There's no need." Horn lowered the telescope, "The Guard Cultivators aren't that fragile, and besides, we have our own troubles."

Lagging half a step behind Horn, scanning northward, Bether saw ranks of shield wagons slowly advancing along the hillside.

Behind the breastworks, the Holy Gunmen were systematically shooting.

Lead bullets hit the leather and oak boards, only creating small holes, then getting stuck among the grass mats and earth.

Are they planning to use shield cars to tie down the monks on the hillside with Horn? Bether suddenly smacked his forehead.

Damn it! There aren't many spring cannons on this mountain! Especially heavy artillery, it can't even be transported up here.

He suddenly turned to look at Horn, but this Lord Saint Son, though talking about trouble, showed no signs of worry on his face.

Bether, confused and fearful, saw Horn turn his head: "Mormon, where the hell is your grenade launcher?"

"Coming, coming!"

With a black iron grenade launcher on his shoulder, Mormon's squad of grenadiers hurriedly arrived.

In the small spring warehouse, the creaking sound of gears turning could be heard.

With a series of thuds, more than a dozen clock grenades shot into the air, rolling down beside the soldiers.

"Oh no!"

"Quick, hide!"

The soldiers and peasant soldiers immediately scattered and fled, with quite a few getting hit.

Only then did they find to their surprise that it wasn't as scary as a solid cannonball, just a bit painful.

"Ha, what is this? Trying to scare us with fakes!"

"The Falan dogs scared Leia's tiger; they've run out of tricks, let's charge!"

One soldier, even struck, angrily picked up a clock grenade, ignoring the veterans' hair-raising screams.

"Click, click, click..."

With three clicks of the countdown, an invisible mental impact swept out.

The clock grenades barely affected the Border Knights with high breathing levels and strong bloodlines.

But for these lower-rank soldiers and peasant troops, the impact was significant, especially as they were pushing shield cars uphill.

Almost instantly, seven or eight shield cars stopped, some even rolled backward.

Curses and shouts immediately came from the rear, and one dizzy soldier fell to the ground, crushed by the heavy shield car on his neck.

Bether, watching, couldn't help but take a sharp breath.

This looks quite painful.

"Vanguard Corps, charge!" Lauren called out first.

As the shield cars' advance stalled, together with the clock grenades over the chest walls, five hundred Guard Vanguard Cultivators launched a countercharge against the soldiers.

......

On the other side, at the Border Knight Order's position.

It's undeniable that the pace of this battle was faster than both Cosme and Horn had imagined.

In less than an hour, they skipped over phases of probing each other, attempting attacks, searching for weak points, and directly entered an intense and thrilling frontal confrontation.

Cosme, waving a whip like a shepherd dog herding sheep, drove squads of banner teams to designated positions.

"Quick, quick, quick! Get to your positions, no rest, drink your potion immediately, and then attack the left (east) side."

"It's just starting, is there any need to hurry?" A banner captain leisurely took up a water bottle, only to be lashed on the face.

"You?!"

"No stopping, immediately position yourselves!" Cosme, with his hair and beard standing, looked like a lion.

He raised his head, roaring wildly at the banner captains: "The Thousand River Valley People became chaotic due to our quick retreat, and that's our advantage.

Since that's the case, we must expand this advantage; there's no time for complete formation preparation, get ready and charge!"

If someone could overlook the battlefield, they would clearly see the Border Knight army spontaneously splitting into four groups.

In the rear were confused soldiers still shifting their combat formations and some even marching.

Quite a number at this point had lost contact with their banner captains, standing dazed, not knowing what to do.

On the left, over a thousand soldiers surged toward the stairway position on the hillside, while on the right, several hundred soldiers were charging on horseback toward the riverside's hydraulic winding machine.

Meanwhile, in the center of the battlefield, apart from the foremost ten banner teams still tussling with the Imperial Guard, another ten were charging.

However, they weren't aiming for the original gap but instead were heading towards the seventh chest wall.

Due to too many cavalry at the third and fourth chest walls causing congestion, charging there would hinder their comrades, so they chose another weak point.

"Break through the third chest wall (sixth chest wall), assault on both sides!"