Chapter 890: The Great Rout

Everyone froze. Li Guo let out a grief-stricken roar: "Uncle…"

Old Hu sat his horse with his bow drawn — a five-strength small-tip bow, sixty-pound draw weight, perfectly suited for mounted archery. After his arrow struck Li Zicheng, his gaze sharpened; he pulled the bowstring, and with a hiss, another arrow hit a roaring Ridge Elite Guard who was charging at him.

The Elite Guard took the arrow in the face, blood spraying in a gory shower. With a miserable cry, he tumbled far off his horse.

Old Hu pulled his bowstring again, and another guard was struck in the throat by an arrow, desperately clutching his neck as he rolled on the ground.

"Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh…"

Old Hu loosed arrows left and right, his archery skill displayed to its fullest. Around him, the ground was littered with the fallen Central Guard personal troops of the Ridge Elite Guards.

Abruptly, he drew his bow toward Li Yan. Li Yan jolted, every hair on his body standing on end — then with a zing, an arrow shot past his ear. Behind him, an Elite Guard tumbled from his horse, an arrow piercing straight through his throat.

"Urgh…"

The Elite Guard clutched his throat, rolling on the ground in violent convulsions.

"Bang!" Thick white smoke billowed. A dozen paces away, another Elite Guard personal soldier came roaring as he charged, brandishing a long spear. Kong San suddenly drew his hand cannon and fired at him. The Elite Guard's head burst like a watermelon, brains and blood splattering everywhere.

Amid the shouting, not far from the two men, the elite riders of the Mountain Patrol Battalion also charged fiercely, hacking and slaughtering the Ridge Elite Guards' Central Guard personal troops and Li Guo's personal escort retinue. In this sudden upheaval and surprise attack, the hundred-plus riders of the personal troops on the ridge and its edges suffered grievous casualties.

Several Elite Guards even exchanged glances, let out a shout, and spurred their horses to flee down the ridge. The great army was on the verge of collapse, and now internal chaos had erupted at its very core — none of them wanted to sell their lives for the Great Shun any longer. Saving their own skins came first. They might even flee into the capital, grab as much wealth and silk as they could, and return to their hometowns to become great landlords.

Li Guo roared as he charged forward, then abruptly halted. Even the few men beside him swallowed nervously — for Old Hu had his bow drawn on him, and Kong San had drawn yet another hand cannon. A dozen Mountain Patrol Battalion elite riders had also galloped up behind the two men, every one of them drawing bows and nocking arrows.

Li Guo's face alternated between ashen and white. He said bitterly, "Earth-Dragon Trampler, my Li family has never treated you poorly. At this critical moment, you want to seize power?"

Old Hu spat. "Seize power? Is the power in this Great Shun worth anything?"

He raised a hand. Behind him, a rider hoisted a great banner and shook it. The bound banner unfurled, and at once the vivid flag billowed in the wind, intensely stirring — the golden sun-moon-waves emblem within it dazzlingly conspicuous.

Old Hu reined his horse beneath the golden-red Sun-Moon-Waves Banner and shouted sternly: "Hu Tiande, soldier of the Imperial Ming Xuanfu Garrison, stands here! You roving bandits, surrender at once!"

"No… this is impossible…"

"You… you…"

Amid a chorus of shocked cries, everyone stared in disbelief at that banner. They had thought Old Hu was merely seizing the moment to usurp power and profit — never imagining he was a spy for the Border Pacification Army.

Li Yan stared blankly. To think that a General-in-Chief of the Old Battalion, the Grand Peace Count of the Great Shun, was a spy. It suddenly struck him how, back then, this Hu Tiande had constantly agitated for the army to march out of the capital to do battle — and so had Martial Sun Count Jin Youniu, and even the many counts and viscounts from various battalions.

Cold sweat streamed down his entire body; he felt wave after wave of chill wash over him.

Li Zicheng groaned at Li Guo's feet. The arrow in his right eye caused him excruciating pain, but what tormented him more was his heart. How laughable — before leaving the capital, he had been brimming with confidence, looking down on all beneath heaven, never imagining that his camp had been infiltrated to this degree, that every step had been within others' schemes.

Li Guo shook his head desperately. "Impossible, impossible. Looking the way you do, how could you possibly be a government soldier?"

Old Hu roared: "Roving bandit, meet your death!"

Rage surged from his heart, malice rose from his gut. Eyes wide with fury, he was about to loose an arrow and shoot Li Guo dead.

Suddenly, an earth-shattering explosion rocked the ground. A dozen-plus large rockets struck the Central Guard personal troops' formation not far below the ridge. Not only did they blast that area into a pulp of blood and flesh once more, but the shock and blast waves surged over, making Old Hu's eardrums buzz with pain.

He was involuntarily thrown from his horse. Everyone on the ridge was sent staggering; horses neighed wildly in terror.

In the end, Old Hu was helped up by Kong San. For a long while, his ears kept buzzing and he could hear no other sound. By the time he came to his senses, he saw that Li Zicheng had already been helped onto a horse by Li Guo. A dozen or so of them were lashing their still-frenzied, terrified warhorses mercilessly, fleeing toward the south face of Dongsheng Ridge.

Old Hu bellowed in fury: "Where do you think you're going, Village Chief?"

Kong San roared: "Don't let the Chuang bandit escape!"

Their several dozen riders also struggled to calm their horses and gave chase in the direction Li Zicheng and the others had fled. Together with that Sun-Moon-Waves Banner, they vanished in the blink of an eye into the chaotic crowds atop and below the ridge.

Li Zicheng's great banner still stood on Dongsheng Ridge — that banner several zhang high, with snow-white tassels made of horse mane, a silver-white banner pole made of pure silver, and at its center, huge characters embroidered in black satin: formerly "Chuang," now "Shun" — the commander's standard.

As Kong San passed this great banner, he borrowed his horse's momentum and slashed the flagpole with his blade. The several-zhang-high great banner crashed to the ground with a boom.

…

Wen Fangliang let out an exclamation: "The Chuang bandits' great banner has fallen."

Li Guangheng put away his telescope. "I wonder which hidden hero did it."

He and Wen Fangliang exchanged a glance and said in unison: "The time has come."

Batiao withdrew his gaze from the ridge and looked at the even more chaotic scene around him. He said, "Raise the flag. From this moment on, we are the Border Pacification Army!"

Li Yan struggled to his feet from the ground, calmed the horse beside him, and saw that the ridge was covered everywhere with wounded and corpses. Even those who still remained on the ridge, after all these upheavals, were each scattering and fleeing for their lives. He could not help but sigh heavily.

He saw that the great banner on the ridge had fallen. The cavalry formation below the ridge seemed to have noticed the situation here and was even more panicked and chaotic. Many people were shouting and yelling — what seemed to be a chorus of terrified cries: "The King is dead! Defeated, defeated…"

Then Li Yan's gaze sharpened. A Sun-Moon-Waves Banner rose from the right wing of the army formation, causing collapse-like chaos there. Like a domino effect, one Sun-Moon-Waves Banner after another rose from various places, accelerating the rout and disorder of the formations everywhere.

A bitter smile appeared on his face. As expected.

Suddenly, Li Yan started. The shriek of rockets seemed to come from behind the ridge. He turned to look — several dozen rockets were screaming in from the distant south, their target unmistakably the sprawling encampments behind Dongsheng Ridge. Could it be that the Border Pacification Army had already moved to the flank and rear, and had even cut off the great army's retreat?

Even…

Li Yan dared not think anything further. Abruptly, from the front came a mountain-roaring, sea-roaring battle cry, as if tens of thousands of troops were shouting "Ten Thousand Victories!" in unison. Then the Border Pacification Army's vast cavalry began its charge, a sea of banners sweeping in. Then drums pounded the heavens, and their infantry formations advanced in orderly ranks.

Li Yan stood dumbly. He truly witnessed what was meant by "a defeated army crumbles like a landslide." Under the combined forces, the Old Battalion formation ahead below the ridge completely collapsed. They routed like a tidal wave, howling at the top of their lungs, fleeing for their lives without regard for the path.

Li Yan saw the torrent of fleeing cavalry surging toward him. They raced past below the ridge, dust blotting out the sky. That frenzied scene could only be compared to the stampede of thousands upon thousands of wild mustangs in the Americas or wild buffalo in Africa. Many infantrymen still remaining in the great formation were even trampled to death directly by the thousands of horses and men.

The tide of the routed stampede was like thunder. Though they had suffered grievous casualties under the Border Pacification Army's rockets, the fifty-thousand-strong Old Battalion cavalry arrayed here still had at least thirty thousand left. Had they steadied themselves and fought to the death, they might not have been unable to deal the Border Pacification Army a blow.

Yet they simply collapsed completely, fleeing madly, even swarming and killing each other to seize an escape route. They jostled in the torrent of men and horses, ceaselessly swinging their weapons to cut down those beside them, just to widen the space for their own horses to flee.

Standing on the ridge, facing the torrent of fleeing cavalry, Li Yan felt as if he stood on a solitary reef surrounded by raging floodwaters on all sides. He watched blankly, watching those Old Battalion soldiers fleeing for their lives. They seemed to have no other thought — except to flee, to survive, to flee and survive.

Many of them had faces covered in blood, their bodies splattered with the blood of their comrades. They screamed shrilly, their expressions terrifyingly crazed. In this dreadful wave of flight, those who died from trampling and killing each other were beyond counting.

He looked again around Dongsheng Ridge. In every direction, all were now the surging tides of rout and flight. The collapse of the central army was rapidly affecting the right wing, then the left wing. The encampments to the rear, too, were a heaven-shaking, earth-moving clamor, everywhere crowds of people in panicked cries.

It was over. These hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had marched out of the capital — finished. The Great Shun — finished.

Li Yan sighed heavily. So-called assisting a sage sovereign and founding a new dynasty was, in the end, nothing but a dream.

He sighed long again, looked ahead, looked behind, seized a gap, and spurred his horse westward, quickly vanishing into the chaotic army.

…

"What's happening over at the central army?"

Left Battalion General-in-Chief and Ci Marquis Liu Fangliang looked worriedly to his right. Though it was far away, over there seemed to be…

He peered carefully, his expression growing more and more anxious. Martial Sun Count Jin Youniu at that moment took out a small cigarette, lit it, and smoked leisurely.

"Da Niu…"

Liu Fangliang whipped his head around. Just as he was about to speak, Jin Youniu drew a flintlock pistol from his waist in one motion, thumbed back the hammer with a click as he drew, aimed at Liu Fangliang's head, and pulled the trigger. A thunderous roar, smoke billowing — the top of Liu Fangliang's skull was blown clean off.

Brain matter and blood splattered everywhere. Liu Fangliang's face still bore an expression of disbelief as his corpse crashed heavily from the horse. The thick stench of blood mingled with the acrid gunsmoke.

Jin Youniu chewed on his cigarette. The flintlock pistol spun deftly through his fingers before he tucked it back into his waistband.

Jin Youniu plucked the cigarette from his lips and exhaled a single phrase: "Ten rings."

…

"It's over. Da Shun."

Marquis of Mian, Yuan Zongdi, lay on the bed groaning in agony. Earlier, the right side of his face had been struck hard by a chain mace — half his face was practically shattered. He had been given emergency treatment and bandaged, then helped into this residence at Qinghedian to rest and recuperate. The fighting on the right flank was being handled by General of Resolute Valor Tian Hu and others.

Yet anyone could see he was beyond saving; this was merely a gesture of solicitude.

Ever since being carried here, Yuan Zongdi had been racked with bitter reflection. In his heart, it was now crystal clear: Wang Dou had long possessed the strength to annihilate their Da Shun, but had held back, biding his time due to logistics. How laughable that they themselves had walked right into the trap. If only they had not marched north.

He groaned and struggled, listening as the commotion outside turned from chaos into earth-shattering rout, the thunder of hooves and footfalls shaking the heavens. In the end, even the few personal attendants in his room had vanished. He thought to himself: As expected. After fighting for so short a time, it was all too easy for the Jingbian Army to wipe them out.

He slowly closed his eyes. His final thought: We should never have entered the capital.