Chapter 162: Victory Mound, and Yet Another Victory Mound (Big Chapter, Nearly 4,000 Characters)

Geng Zhongming arrived at Zhang Xianzhong's position with three hundred crack troops from three Centurion offices. After dismounting, he ordered his men to straighten their ranks while sizing Zhang Xianzhong up from head to toe.

Zhang Xianzhong stood nearly eight chi tall, his hands hanging almost to his knees, and his features were bizarre — and that is no compliment; "bizarre" mostly just means the man was not much to look at.

Geng Zhongming clicked his tongue inwardly in wonder, but his question came out: "This one is Geng Zhongming, called Geng the Second, currently serving as Assistant Regional Commander under Grand General Mao. That fellow there — where are you from?

How did you end up here? And what's the story with the Jianzhou barbarians behind you?"

The string of questions gave Zhang Xianzhong a headache, but he held his patience, cupped his hands, and answered: "In reply to the General, this one's surname is Zhang, given name Xianzhong, courtesy name Bingzhong. I am from Dingbian County in Shaanxi Province.

I once served as a constable, and also soldiered at Yansui Garrison, until I was struck from the rolls over some matter. Now I have brought a band of brothers from my home district to Dongjiang to join Grand General Mao."

Glancing at Šoto, who was still rolling on the ground in agony, Zhang Xianzhong went on: "Zhang here figured that since I was coming to join Grand General Mao, I ought not to arrive empty-handed.

So I kept watch on the Jianzhou barbarians' side for quite a long spell — must have been about a month — before I finally got the chance to seize Daishan's whelp, the little Jianzhou barbarian Šoto, as a calling-gift."

Geng Zhongming walked over beside Šoto, crouched down, grabbed Šoto's pigtail in one fist, and examined him carefully. Only then did he stand up and laugh: "A fine fellow!

With this dog of a Jianzhou barbarian, you needn't worry that Grand General Mao won't put you to good use, Brother Zhang. When the time comes, we'll slaughter Tartars together."

Seeing that Zhang Xianzhong was also laughing heartily, Geng Zhongming added: "Brother Zhang, go on back behind the battle line for now. Once your brother here has dealt with those dog Jianzhou barbarians across the way, we'll head back together and claim credit before Grand General Mao."

Zhang Xianzhong's face darkened with displeasure. "These Jianzhou barbarians were drawn here by Zhang himself. Zhang should naturally take the field and kill the enemy."

Geng Zhongming blinked, then burst out laughing again: "Brother Zhang, don't misunderstand. Geng the Second is not looking down on you.

It's simply that on the battlefield, individual prowess is no match for formation fighting. These brothers you've brought — one look tells you they aren't regular troops.

Throwing them into a pitched battle would truly be a waste. If Brother Zhang is truly set on it, then stand off to one side and cover Geng the Second's flank for now.

Once the two armies are locked in melee, you and your men can come forward and lend a hand. How does that sound?"

Zhang Xianzhong had, after all, served in the army. Thinking it over carefully, he saw that matters were indeed just as Geng Zhongming said.

The thirty-odd men he had brought were all good fighters one-on-one — taking on two at once was no problem — but when two armies clashed, thirty men were of little real use, and would only tie the hands of their own side. He nodded at once: "As General Geng says."

Zhang Xianzhong's party, fleeing all the way, and the Plain Red Banner Jianzhou barbarians pursuing them had originally been less than two li apart. In this short span, the distance between the two sides had closed to under five hundred paces.

How far is five hundred paces? With one Ming pace being roughly a meter and a half, five hundred paces was at most a bit under a thousand meters. In the parlance of later ages, it was the distance you could cover in the time it takes to let out a fart.

Yet for Ajengioro Yunjin, this distance you could cover in a fart was the distance to the Eternal Blue Sky — the Ming troops charging down from the hill were far closer to those thirty-odd Nikan than he was, and those men had already begun to dress their ranks.

Having spent the whole chase pursuing those thirty-odd Nikan as they threaded through the hills, Ajengioro Yunjin had considered horses a cumbersome burden — and now he could have slapped himself.

Aside from the one horse he himself rode, in this entire niru of Great Jin warriors, you could not find a second man with a mount.

If every man had brought his horse along, they could at the very worst have settled those three hundred Ming troops opposite with a single charge. Now, splendid — no one had horses, the Ming troops had already formed ranks, and they were just waiting for him to charge in and get himself killed!

Cursing inwardly with bitter hatred, Ajengioro Yunjin promptly reined in his horse and barked orders for the soldiers of his niru to dress their formation.

Geng Zhongming, having knocked about with Mao Wenlong for so long, had learned to be just as sly and vicious. Seeing the Jianzhou barbarians opposite begin to reorder their ranks, he swung up into the saddle, drew the saber at his side, and pointed it at the enemy: "One volley!

Advance one hundred paces!"

The Centurions of the three Centurion offices saw the signal and passed the order down at once.

The three hundred Ming troops knelt on one knee as one, drew their bows and nocked arrows, checked their bearings, and loosed — utterly unconcerned that at nearly five hundred paces the shafts would land soft and spent.

The volley done, the troops put away their bows in unison and took up their advance.

One rank of a hundred men, three ranks of three hundred — the arrows loosed by three hundred men together could not compare to the sky-blotting arrow-storms of mighty Qin, but they still spread like a great net, chilling the heart.

Ajengioro Yunjin cursed the Ming troops opposite for their shamelessness even harder. Had they all been using firearms, he would not have been so worried — at nearly five hundred paces, it would be nothing but noise.

But who knew whether there were crack marksmen among those Ming troops who might just manage to send an arrow over?

With just that one volley of arrow-rain disrupting them, the formation the entire niru had been on the verge of completing broke apart, so infuriating Ajengioro Yunjin that he lashed at the soldiers scattering in disorder while shouting orders to re-form the ranks.

By the time the Jianzhou barbarians' formation was more or less reassembled, the distance between the two sides had shrunk from under five hundred paces to under four hundred. Ajengioro Yunjin at once drew his blade, raised it high, and shouted to advance.

The Jianzhou formation began to move slowly toward the Ming troops.

When the gap reached three hundred paces, Geng Zhongming repeated his old trick and again ordered the arrows loosed. Ajengioro Yunjin sneered inwardly.

That earlier shower of arrows had not so much as scratched a single Great Jin warrior. Since the Ming side had no marksmen, at this range of nearly three hundred paces, their arrow-rain was good for nothing but scaring raw recruits fresh to the battlefield.

Sure enough, this time the Jianzhou soldiers paid no heed at all to the arrow-rain that clearly could not reach them, merely watching the Ming troops' movements and closing the distance at a steady walk.

At under two hundred paces, Geng Zhongming again ordered the arrows loosed. This time, the Jianzhou soldiers were even more unruffled — the dirt-poor Dongjiang army could not even manage a blanket arrow-storm; a volley every hundred paces was utterly useless.

At two hundred paces, by the time the shafts landed they were already soft and spent, easily brushed aside with a wave of the hand.

Apart from a few truly unlucky souls who failed to notice the arrows falling from above and were skewered straight through the back of the neck into the chest, the rest of the Jianzhou soldiers simply ignored this bout of arrow-rain.

As for Ajengioro Yunjin, he was so pained he wanted to hack the Ming commander to death.

Were it not for the fact that the Ming troops were far too close to those thirty-odd Nikan, and he feared an arrow-storm might injure the young Beile Šoto, Ajengioro Yunjin would have been tempted to order several rounds of rapid volleys right back at the Ming troops, to teach these southern barbarians what real archery looked like!

Geng Zhongming saw that the distance between the two sides was now under a hundred paces, and that Ajengioro Yunjin was already leading his Jianzhou soldiers in a jog to prepare for the charge.

A sinister grin spread across Geng Zhongming's face as he said to the Centurion nearest him: "Give those dog Jianzhou barbarians a round of those fine little toys. Let them taste something new."

The Centurion, hearing this, grinned just as nastily, acknowledged the order, and went to pass it down. The troops of the foremost Centurion office all tossed their bows and arrows to the ground, and each man drew from his waist a small porcelain bottle.

The bottles were tightly stoppered — no telling what was inside — but each trailed a fuse over three cun long.

The men then took out their fire-lights, blew them to life, lit the fuses, and hastily hurled the porcelain bottles in their hands toward the Jianzhou side.

The Jianzhou soldiers did indeed see the Ming troops lighting something, but when they looked closely, all they saw were fist-sized bottles — some shoddy contraption they had never laid eyes on — and so they paid them no mind, charging on their own toward the Ming ranks.

Once the two sides closed, how could these three hundred Ming troops possibly be a match for the warriors of the Great Jin?

Yet it was precisely this carelessness that sent this whole band of Jianzhou barbarians straight down the road to the Eternal Blue Sky.

The hurled porcelain bottles themselves were nothing much — some bold Jianzhou soldiers even reached out to bat aside the little bottles flying at them. What they never expected was that these hundred little bottles would, one after another, explode.

Some bottles that landed early burst on the ground, sending porcelain shards flying everywhere and slashing open the calves of quite a few Jianzhou soldiers.

The rest — those that burst while still in the air — inflicted even greater carnage: nearly fifty Jianzhou soldiers had their throats opened up by the fragments that exploded overhead.

The Jianzhou soldiers whose legs were slashed toppled one after another, creating a huge problem for the men charging up from behind. Step on them, and you trampled your own brothers to death.

Dodge, and there was clearly no time. As for those whose throats had been cut, most also fell to the ground wailing.

Those who did not die at once tried to clamp their hands over the wounds on their necks.

Seeing the Jianzhou barbarians meet with such sudden disaster, Geng Zhongming muttered: "These bookish types — rotten to the core, damn them!" That said, he roared the order: "Cut them down! Leave not one alive!"

The troops of the three Centurion offices, hearing the command, were all roused at once — damn it all, these were silver taels! With a single battle cry, they drew their waist-sabers and surged forward together to slaughter.

The Jianzhou barbarians, just now reeling and dazed from the blasts, could hardly rally their spirits to meet the enemy. The Ming troops, their eyes practically glowing green, crashed into the Jianzhou ranks and set to a fine bout of hacking.

As for Ajengioro Yunjin, who just moments ago had been mounted and ready to face the Ming commander head-on — he had long since been wounded by the tiny fragments that burst in the air, tumbled from his horse, and then been thoroughly trampled.

It was plain he was dead beyond dead.

Zhang Xianzhong and his party of thirty-odd men stood staring, dumbstruck, at everything unfolding before them, utterly unable to believe that this could be the work of the legendary Dongjiang army — that famously wretched, hard-luck force.

Geng Zhongming, seeing that the other Ming troops had all gone off to harvest heads, came back over to Zhang Xianzhong. Noticing that Zhang Xianzhong suddenly seemed rather crestfallen, he asked curiously: "Brother Zhang, what's the matter?"

Zhang Xianzhong said listlessly: "Zhang here thought that by coming to Dongjiang he could make something of himself. I never imagined Dongjiang was such a crack army. What am I even doing here?"

Then, abruptly, Zhang Xianzhong roused himself: "In a moment, Zhang will go and ask Grand General Mao for an official rank, and then take his brothers to some place near the Jianzhou barbarians' territory, seize a hilltop, and at the very least make sure those Jianzhou barbarians get no peace.

When the time comes, I reckon we can collect quite a few Jianzhou heads too."

Geng Zhongming, hearing this, finally understood. He let out a helpless laugh: "Brother Zhang, what are you saying?

These things — even Dongjiang doesn't have many of them. If it came to a straight-up hard fight with the Jianzhou barbarians, we'd mostly still come up short.

This time was just taking advantage of their small numbers to give the things a trial run."

Seeing that Zhang Xianzhong still looked unconvinced, Geng Zhongming said: "Believe it or not, Brother Zhang, just wait here a moment. Once Geng the Second has prepared a fine gift for the Jianzhou barbarians, we'll go see Grand General Mao together."

Zhang Xianzhong asked curiously: "What fine gift?"

Geng Zhongming pursed his lips and said: "Back at Liaoyang and Tongyuan Fort, Grand General Mao developed a fondness for raising victory mounds.

Now that we've got over three hundred Jianzhou barbarians here, if I don't properly raise a victory mound, your brother here will likely get a thrashing when we get back."

With that, he brought Zhang Xianzhong along to watch the Ming soldiers raise the victory mound.

The Ming soldiers worked with brisk efficiency. It was, after all, just one man attending to one Jianzhou barbarian — first behead them, then pile the headless corpses together, layer upon layer.

In a little over an hour they had stacked them over ten chi high, then packed earth over the pile. Before long, a grave-like victory mound was declared complete.

Zhang Xianzhong stared, dumbfounded. He said to Geng Zhongming: "That's it? So fast?"

Geng Zhongming grinned and said: "Not quite. There's still one more step."

Before Zhang Xianzhong could open his mouth to ask, Geng Zhongming took a wooden board that a nearby personal guard had just finished preparing, dipped his finger in Jianzhou blood, and wrote upon it: Over three hundred Jianzhou barbarians slain in battle — congratulations on Great Ming's ten-thousand-fold victory!

Geng, Assistant Regional Commander of Dongjiang Garrison, Great Ming. First year of Chongzhen.

When he finished writing, Geng Zhongming wiped his fingers on his clothes, walked around to the north side of the victory mound, and drove the board deep into the earth with the inscribed side facing north.

He gave it a firm shake, and only then said with satisfaction to Zhang Xianzhong, who had followed him over to gawk at the novelty: "There. Now the final step is done."

Zhang Xianzhong had studied some and could certainly read what was written on the board. He said to Geng Zhongming at once: "Stirring! Stirring! That's the way — let these dog Jianzhou barbarians know the might of our Great Ming!"

Geng Zhongming laughed: "Exactly — make these dog Jianzhou barbarians feel the pain in their hearts and their heads. Kill them until they're afraid! So long as Liaodong is not pacified, the victory mounds will never cease!"

First, apologies to my brothers. After posting a chapter last night, I meant to nap on the sofa for a bit, but I ended up oversleeping...

Then during the day today I went to a friend's house to celebrate the birth of his son, and ended up drinking too much again... My head still hurts even now.

Sorry, sorry. Now I'm truly starting to grind out the words at liver-bursting speed.

I have nothing else to do tomorrow.

(End of chapter)