Chapter 393: Lu Xiangsheng's Burning of the Boats

The flintlock musket roared with a thunderous blast, smoke jetting from the muzzle as Xu Chen felt a tremendous force slam into his shoulder.

Through the smoke, he saw a scattering of enemies fall.

Xu Chen then flipped open the frizzen; blue smoke curled from the flash pan. With practiced ease he pulled out a paper cartridge, poured about a tenth of the powder into the pan, dumped the rest down the barrel, rammed the lead ball and paper wadding in together, then drew out the ramrod and tamped the charge tight.

Xu Chen couldn't tell if he was afraid or nervous—his whole body was trembling—yet his movements flowed like water, not a grain of black powder spilled.

Among this batch of recruits, he had trained the hardest. While others slept, he drilled extra, loading until it became muscle memory. Even though his mind was a blank right now, his hands never stopped.

In a brief moment, he finished loading, raised the musket to his shoulder—while the soldiers in his row were still tamping their charges with ramrods.

Once most of the soldiers had finished loading, the officers shouted in unison again: "Fire!"

"Bang! Bang! Crack…"

The soldiers fired in succession, a wall of smoke rising along the line of ranks, then blowing back toward the Ming army with the wind.

Xu Chen quickly finished loading, raised his musket and aimed. The front sight shook before his eyes like an earthquake, his heart pounding like thunder.

He kept taking deep breaths, telling himself that what stood across from him were nothing but straw targets.

Suddenly, several flashes of orange light cut through the smoke, followed by the shrill shriek of something tearing through the air.

Xu Chen heard a wet squelch to his left, and scalding liquid splashed across half his body. Then came several heart-rending screams. "Bang!" Someone fired without orders, and then gunfire crackled into a continuous roar.

Xu Chen squeezed the trigger without a second thought; the recoil slammed his shoulder with a dull ache. As he reloaded, he heard the officers shouting: "Fire at will! Fire at will!"

Then another series of earth-shattering explosions erupted. Xu Chen felt his chest go tight from the shockwaves, his ears ringing, dust kicking up from the ground all around. That was the old First Battalion's cannons opening fire, all loaded with grapeshot, sweeping over the Ming army like a black fog.

When Xu Chen raised his musket to aim again, the Ming soldiers' figures had visibly thinned out.

Amid the smoke and dust, Dong Yongwen, the Tianxiong Army's central-column Mobile Corps Commander, was shouting himself hoarse: "Stay close to your squad leaders! Any man who retreats will be beheaded!"

"Boom, boom, boom…"

From the distance came a rumbling of cannon fire, followed by a buzzing shriek growing from far to near.

Dong Yongwen instinctively crouched low, hearing nothing but screams and the thud of flesh hitting the ground all around him, crackling and pattering like hail.

He straightened up and looked left and right. The shao of Zhejiang soldiers advancing ahead had taken three or four cannon hits—flesh and blood sprayed across the ground in streaks, no fewer than ten blasted dead, with seven or eight more lightly wounded.

The entire shao halted in place, glancing about nervously.

"Why aren't you advancing? Where's your squad leader? Where is your squad leader?" Dong Yongwen grabbed a Zhejiang soldier and roared.

The soldier sobbed: "Dead… dead…"

It wasn't grief for the squad leader—pure terror. The entire shao was on the verge of collapse.

Dong Yongwen shoved the soldier aside and bellowed at his own men: "This shao is finished! Get another shao up there to replace them!"

"Yes, sir!" His subordinate acknowledged, then passed the order back. About a hundred paces away, a shao of soldiers who had not yet engaged was sheltering behind the reverse slope of a small hill. The Tianxiong Army ordered them forward, while the badly depleted shao withdrew from both flanks to rest and reorganize behind cover.

Throughout this, the Tianxiong Army supervisory detachment under Dong Yongwen stood in place, using their firearms to cover the rotation of formations.

Once the fresh shao moved up, the whole force continued advancing.

Dong Yongwen commanded seven hundred Tianxiong soldiers in total, divided into three columns—left, center, and right. In front of each Tianxiong column stood three to six shao of Zhejiang soldiers.

The Zhejiang shao were divided into large and small. Under the Qi Family Army system, one shao was fifty men—that was a small shao. For field assault formations, four shao would be combined into a large shao of around two hundred men.

A Tianxiong Army shao, meanwhile, was one hundred twenty-five men—between the two, what could be called a medium shao.

Large, medium, and small shao were interleaved across the battle line, creating a scattered, flower-petal effect that maximally confused the enemy, keeping them from reading the formation. At the same time, following the Qi Family Army's principles of "rotating combat, dispersed small units," each shao kept seven or eight zhang of open ground between them, and within each shao, men advanced spread out by squad of ten, taking turns covering one another's advance.

Given the Zhejiang soldiers' organization and morale, their casualty tolerance threshold was roughly twenty percent.

So a hundred-plus paces behind the front-line units lay a second line, all waiting behind cover. Whenever the front line took too many losses, they would move up to replace them, and the relieved shao would be assigned to rest or temporary reorganization depending on their casualties.

Two shao with heavy losses would merge into one, or a shao would be broken up to reinforce other shao.

This was how the Tianxiong Army attacked—rotating replacements, advancing in echelons.

Behind the second line were the personal guards led by Lu Xiangsheng himself: three hundred cavalry and five hundred infantry. They served as both the supervisory force and the general reserve, every man clad in cloth-faced iron armor with excellent equipment.

The Ming army as a whole formed a dispersed pin-character formation, layer upon layer. Combat units and supervisory detachments overlapped, weak troops and strong troops combined—and somehow they managed to push forward against the ferocious cannon fire.

This was the Tianxiong Army's "strong supervise weak, rotate and advance" method of warfare.

In the final analysis, the Tianxiong Army was also drilled by Lu Xiangsheng in imitation of the Qi Family Army's methods. The Zhejiang soldiers and the Tianxiong Army could be said to share the same lineage, which was why they could coordinate so seamlessly.

And the Xia Army's earliest instructors had likewise used the training methods of the *Record of Military Training* and the *New Book of Effective Discipline*. Lin Qian and Lei Sanxiang had merely innovated on top of that foundation of formations and thinking, due to the upgrading of their weapons.

So the three armies in this battle, strictly speaking, could even be called disciples of the same school.

If one insisted on differences: the Zhejiang soldiers were more like a decaying version of the Qi Family Army, the Tianxiong Army was more feudalized, and the Xia Army was more modernized.

Lu Xiangsheng sat upright on his horse, guns and cannons blazing before him as if heaven and earth were splitting apart, yet his expression never changed as he calmly surveyed the battlefield. He could see that although General Mountain had many cannons, most were positioned halfway up the slope, far from the battlefield, and could only fire solid shot—which did little damage to a dispersed formation. On the southern flank of the mountain, the Xia Army's right wing had pushed most of its cannons forward onto the firing line; a single volley of grapeshot was devastating, and combined with the infantry's rotating volleys, the Ming advance was grinding to a halt.

Further south of the Xia Army's right wing lay hills, polder fields, and scattered mountain streams.

Lu Xiangsheng pondered continuously.

If the Zhejiang soldiers pinned the enemy from the front while he led elite troops in a flanking strike, routed the Xia Army's right wing, then drove from south to north up General Mountain—seizing the cannon positions while the enemy guns were still turning—he could then redirect those cannons to cut off the Xia cavalry, and finally press the advantage to take Ox Head Mountain.

This was the only way to break the deadlock.

Lu Xiangsheng looked south—still no sign of reinforcements.

He knew his forces held no numerical advantage, and the Xia cavalry was already racing back. Once that cavalry reached the battlefield, he would be doomed without question.

Things had come to this—even if it were a dragon's pool or a tiger's den, he would charge in anyway.

With that thought, Lu Xiangsheng sent his remaining five hundred Tianxiong infantry to assault the Xia Army's right wing with everything they had.

Then he said: "Bring me my blade!"

An armored soldier presented the saber with both hands, straining to hand it to Lu Xiangsheng.

"Cavalrymen, follow me!" The moment the words left his mouth, Lu Xiangsheng spurred his horse and shot forward, a great banner bearing the character Lu snapping loudly in the wind. On the General Mountain position, officers and staff officers tracked the Lu banner through their telescopes, seeing through his tactic at a glance.

"The enemy is going to strike our right wing!"

Lei Sanxiang spat: "Dream on, the hell they will! Tell the right wing to form an angled formation and guard against a flank attack."

"Yes, sir!" A messenger swung onto his horse and galloped off toward the right wing in a cloud of dust.

This was the second advantage of holding the high ground—on flat terrain, smoke and dust obscured everything and you couldn't see the enemy's movements at all, but from the mountain you could see everything clearly. Lei Sanxiang immediately followed up: "Where has the cavalry brigade reached now?"

The staff officer estimated, "They should be about three miles out."

Normally, at three miles' distance, one should already be able to see the dust kicked up by several thousand cavalrymen charging—but their line of sight was blocked by the mountain peaks. Lei Sanxiang sent someone up to the mountaintop to keep watch, then raised his telescope and continued observing the battlefield situation.

The entire battlefield was shrouded in thick gunsmoke, and cannonballs had torn the nearby ground to shreds like a plow carving through earth.

The Ming forces on the eastern side of General Mountain were relatively few in number, and they were all hiding behind hills, rocks, and trees—essentially just pinning the enemy down without launching any major assault. From the gunfire and battle cries, it was clear that the main body of the Ming army was concentrated to the southeast.

Through the vast haze of smoke and dust, a column of several hundred infantrymen could be seen moving toward the Great Xia right flank.

"Lu Xiangsheng has committed all his reserves to the right flank!" a staff officer shouted.

This was a burn-the-boats gambit—win or lose, everything hinged on this one strike.

Someone said, "Those green recruits on the right flank—I wonder if they can hold."

In Lei Sanxiang's original troop deployment, the Seventh Division's infantry brigade was stationed at Ox-Head Mountain, while the artillery regiment and the old First Battalion held General Mountain. General Mountain lay further east than Ox-Head Mountain, effectively pushing the strongest artillery and infantry forward to counter Lu Xiangsheng's forced crossing of the Qinhuai River.

Unexpectedly, Lu Xiangsheng had stolen across from the Moling Pass direction, appearing directly southeast of General Mountain and disrupting Lei Sanxiang's deployment—turning the newly raised infantry brigade into the right flank.

Still, this could hardly be called a tactical error. Even if Lei Sanxiang had swapped the old First Battalion with the infantry brigade, Lu Xiangsheng would simply have shifted his main thrust accordingly. After all, everyone knows you pick the softest persimmon to squeeze.

Lei Sanxiang pondered for a moment, then waved his hand broadly and said, "First Battalion, attack down the mountain! Split off a thousand men from the reserves to reinforce the right flank!"

Lei Sanxiang grabbed another messenger and said, "Tell the infantry Mobile Corps Commander—this is the Seventh Division's first battle. Don't you dare embarrass me!"

Two messengers received their orders and sprinted off.

Moments later, the war drums of General Mountain sounded, followed by the deep, muffled blast of conch horns.

The old First Battalion on General Mountain advanced to the drumbeat with an overwhelming, mountain-toppling momentum, while skirmishers charged ahead, picking off Ming soldiers behind cover one by one. Within moments, the northern line of the entire battlefield was on the verge of collapse.

Just then, over five hundred Tianxiong Army shield-bearers and spearmen surged out from behind the Ming lines, splitting into five-man teams and charging straight at the Xia skirmishers.

The Xia forces, locally outnumbered, were no match for them—after leaving behind a dozen or so corpses, they hastily fell back.

After the skirmishers withdrew, volley fire began, and the Tianxiong Army, covered by their shield-bearers, also retreated.

The two sides were roughly seventy-odd paces apart. Lead balls could penetrate shields, but their power was greatly diminished, and with the distance being so great, the Tianxiong Army's casualties were not heavy. On General Mountain, the officers watching this scene all furrowed their brows slightly.

Someone drew in a cold breath and said, "Hiss—they've got some tricks!"

Just then, a messenger arrived with a report: "Regional Commander, our right flank has come to close quarters with the enemy!"

All the officers raised their telescopes and looked toward the right flank.

There, about two or three li away at the southernmost end of the Great Xia formation, the dark crow-blue and crimson red had become tangled together.

A staff officer exclaimed in astonishment, "How did they get up there so fast?"

"These Tianxiong troops truly know how to fight!"

At the southernmost tip, four more crow-blue companies were hurrying toward the battle line—these were the infantry brigade's reserves, and the thousand men Lei Sanxiang had sent over had only covered half the distance.

Lei Sanxiang gritted his teeth and said, "Send three more banner companies to reinforce them."

"Yes, sir!" The messenger acknowledged and departed.

By now the entire battlefield had descended into chaos—gunfire and battle cries rang out everywhere, and the smoke and dust had grown so thick it nearly swallowed General Mountain whole. Messengers scurried back and forth, the sound of hooves almost running together into a single continuous beat.

Amid all the bustle, a messenger came running down from the mountaintop and said excitedly as he arrived, "Regional Commander, the cavalry brigade has arrived!"

Lei Sanxiang was overjoyed inside but kept his face stern as he said in a low voice, "Tell Zhang Moye to circle through the valley, support the southern line, and send a thousand men to the northern line." "Yes, sir!"

The messenger vaulted onto his horse and galloped down the mountain, heading due north.

Four thousand cavalrymen thundered along, raising rolling clouds of dust—the messenger reached Zhang Moye without any difficulty and repeated the orders.

Zhang Moye roared from horseback: "First and Second Battalions, support the northern line—Ma Bingjie, you're in command of them! The rest of you, follow me!"

A whistle sounded from among the horses, and a young officer shouted, "First and Second Battalions, follow me!"

He shook his reins, and two triangular war banners turned toward the northern battlefield, with over a thousand soldiers following behind.

Ma Bingjie was only nineteen, his face still somewhat youthful, but he had served in the army for a long time and had risen through the ranks by merit to become a mounted infantry battalion commander.

As it happened, he was also an old acquaintance of Lin Qian's—on the third day of the first month of the second year of Tianqi, his father Ma Chenglie had brought him to pay New Year's respects to Lin Qian.

At the time, Ma Bingjie had been only nine years old, and because he had said something wrong, his old man had beaten him until he wailed.

Now he was already a young commander.

"Battalion Commander, these horses of ours can't hold out much longer!" the First Battalion's chief veterinarian shouted over the headwind.

Ma Bingjie looked back and saw that the warhorses behind him were all unsteady in their gait, their strides wobbling.

Even the mount beneath him was panting heavily through flared nostrils, its flanks heaving violently, sweat pouring off its body until Ma Bingjie's trouser legs were soaked through. The day before, the cavalry brigade had galloped sixty li to reach the Ox-Head Mountain camp; this morning before dawn they had been roused and galloped twenty li to reinforce Yuhuatai, then immediately galloped another twenty li back to reinforce General Mountain.

Even Yunnan horses and Jeju horses, renowned for their endurance, could not withstand such long-distance, day-and-night nonstop punishment.

"Men weary and horses spent" was truly the perfect description of the cavalry brigade right now.

Ma Bingjie said, "Only ten li to go—get the horses running! Hyah!"

Urged on by his repeated shouts, his mount could only gasp for breath and break into a full gallop—hooves thundering like drums, dust blotting out the sky.

As the horse's back pitched and rolled beneath him, the northern battlefield came into view before Ma Bingjie—the Ming army's gleaming, undefended flank looked to him like a half-veiled maiden, making his mouth water with craving.

A quarter-hour later, the mounted infantry had closed to within two li, and Ma Bingjie reined in his horse.

"Dismount!"

The entire force leaped from their warhorses, grabbed their flintlock muskets, formed into columns, and advanced at a run.

The chief veterinarian stayed behind to tend the horses, with two squads of soldiers assigned to guard and assist.

Watching the warhorses gasp for breath, drenched in sweat that steamed white vapor in the late autumn chill, the chief veterinarian's heart ached as he urged repeatedly, "Loosen the girths, quick! Bring water!"

Once the saddles and girths were loosened and cool water was splashed over the horses' legs, the warhorses immediately perked up considerably.

On the other side, Ma Bingjie had already led the mounted infantry more than a li out, and the soldiers were so exhausted they were swaying and stumbling.

Galloping at full speed isn't as comfortable as it looks—the rider is actually standing nearly upright in the stirrups, legs clamped tight around the horse's barrel, body rising and falling with every stride of the horse's back, while the abdominal and lower back muscles must stay rigidly tensed to absorb the jarring. It is genuinely exhausting.

After day-and-night nonstop riding, the riders were hardly better off than their horses.

Even Ma Bingjie himself felt his legs heavy as lead, his steps unsteady, his vision swimming, his chest burning as if his lungs were about to explode. He gritted his teeth against the discomfort while barking at the companies that were falling behind.

Under his desperate urging, the thousand mounted infantrymen finally formed their line on the northern battlefield, linking flank with the First Battalion soldiers at the foot of General Mountain to form an L-shaped formation.

The Ming army formation looked very loose from the front, but the multiple sentry squads stacked on the flank made it appear dense.

The horse and foot soldiers fired from the flank, and their hit rate was very high.

The Ming army's cover also failed one after another—they had nowhere to hide, and fell one after another, struck by gunfire.

"Hahaha! Good! Well shot!" Lei Sanxiang raised his telescope and laughed loudly.

In his field of vision, the Zhejiang troops who had withdrawn to the second line and were resting collapsed first, and even the relatively intact Zhejiang sentry squads scattered along with them. The supervising squads beheaded deserters in turn, but could not stop the decline; instead, the supervising Tianxiong Army was struck by the routed troops and teetered on the brink of collapse.

The Mobile Corps Commander in charge of the northern line could only order the Tianxiong Army to gather in one place and form a battle formation to withstand the impact.

This in turn made them a living target for the cannons.

In an instant, dozens of cannonballs smashed toward the Tianxiong Army formation. Smoke and dust rose all around, the earth shook and the mountains trembled, and the vast majority of the cannonballs missed. But three cannonballs struck true, and the solid shot directly carved three bloody furrows through the Tianxiong Army's deep formation.

In Lei Sanxiang's eyes, the enemy formation looked as if invisible claws had raked three bloody gashes across it—flesh turned outward, blood dripping, hideous and terrifying. At the same time, the thousand horse and foot soldiers to the north were pressing southward, while the soldiers of the Old First Battalion continued eastward, flintlock muskets ringing out in a continuous cascade like mercury pouring across the ground.

Under this hail of bullets, the Zhejiang troops on the Ming northern line all routed, leaving only a few hundred Tianxiong Army soldiers still holding on desperately.

As the L-shaped battle line pressed ever closer, the Tianxiong Army fell layer upon layer, nearly dying in place to form a hill of corpses.

Finally, even elite troops like the Tianxiong Army could not hold on. The entire northern line of the Ming army scattered, the crimson military uniforms swiftly vanished, and crow-blue occupied the entire battlefield. Lei Sanxiang's heart was now settled—the Ming army's flank had been completely pierced through, and the outcome of this battle was already set in stone.

"Pass the order—turn the cannons on General Mountain toward the south, and blast them to hell!"

A moment later, more than twenty cannons on the southern slope of General Mountain opened fire first. Solid iron shot slammed diagonally into the scattered Ming army formation with astonishing force. One cannonball landed exactly twenty paces in front of Xu Chen.

He only saw a black shadow smash toward him—the soil ahead was thrown up like splashing water, the cannonball plowed a foot-long furrow through the ground, then rapidly bounced up and vanished from sight.

Only then did the dirt come pattering down.

Before Xu Chen could even react, another cannonball smashed over, striking directly into a small Ming sentry squad. Flesh and severed limbs mixed with smoke, dust, and soil sprayed toward the rear and sides.

By the time the large clumps of dirt dispersed, all that remained of that Ming sentry squad was the sight of their backs fleeing madly. On the ground lay a radial smear of indistinct flesh and blood, with the wounded writhing and squirming within it—it was impossible to count how many were dead or wounded.

"Fire! Don't stop—load and fire!"

The officer's roar came from behind him. Though Xu Chen was observing the enemy situation, his hands never paused. He finished loading without even looking much at the barrel. Panic, nervousness, trembling, and ringing ears all vanished—his entire being entered a state of flow, knowing only loading, aiming, and firing.

Following the officer's roar, Xu Chen raised his musket and aimed at the back of a fleeing Ming soldier. Eye, front sight, and rear sight aligned in a straight line, his hands steady enough to astonish. As he squeezed the trigger, a thunderous gunshot rang out, and through the gunsmoke, that Ming soldier's figure toppled straight to the ground.

Xu Chen's heart was calm. He didn't feel at all like he had killed a man—instead, it felt like practicing calligraphy, growing ever more still and undisturbed.

At the same time, his hands loaded rapidly. He only glanced down twice when pouring the powder; the rest of the time he was searching for the next target.

The battle had lasted nearly an hour. He was drenched in foul sweat, half his body covered in blood and mud, reeking of sulfur. His right shoulder was agonizingly bruised from the musket butt, and his left hand had been burned by the barrel.

Xu Chen felt as if this body wasn't his own, commanding it carelessly without a second thought. In the blink of an eye he had loaded another round, raised the musket to his shoulder again, taken a brief aim, and fired.

The bullet flew past corpses and gunsmoke, drilling straight into the charging Tianxiong Army formation.

Behind the shield bearers, Dong Yongwen, the Mobile Corps Commander of the Tianxiong Army's central force, let out a muffled grunt. His body stalled, then he pitched forward and fell to the ground.

The surrounding soldiers were greatly alarmed and shouted one after another: "General! General!"

The shield bearers closed up their formation, the bird-gun musketeers fired under the shields' cover, and a long-blade soldier turned Dong Yongwen over.

They saw that his chest and the ground were all bright red—the amount of bleeding was astonishing. Most of his cloth-faced armor was stained with blood, and on the left side of his chest, a hole about an inch across was gushing blood.

That single shot had actually pierced through the iron armor scales, killing Dong Yongwen on the spot.

And the shield bearer's shield was completely undamaged.

That shot had grazed the upper edge of the shield and flown in past the bodies of several men—as if it had been meant specifically to kill Dong Yongwen. The Tianxiong Army soldiers felt their hairs stand on end.

On the firing line, Dong Yongwen's body was blocked from view by the crowd. Xu Chen only assumed the shot had missed. Not discouraged in the least, his hands loaded and fired again without the slightest disorder.

In the time it took the soldiers beside him to fire two shots, Xu Chen could fire three.

The staff sergeant platoon leader stood behind Xu Chen, staring dumbfounded as he fired round after round. Then, from that mouth that only ever cursed people's parents, came praise: "Damn! Good lad!"

At this point, even the low-ranking officers could clearly see the battlefield situation. The Ming army's northern and central lines had nearly completely collapsed, leaving only the southern line still putting up stubborn resistance. Just as everyone was secretly letting out a breath of relief, a conch horn sounded.

That sound was deep and low, raising goosebumps on everyone.

Xu Chen was completely unaffected, still firing continuously. He felt around his body and only then realized he had used up all his paper-wrapped gunpowder.

It was at that very moment that thunderous hoofbeats sounded from the southern line—a sound like heavy hammers pounding the earth, completely different from the surging, chaotic torrent of the cavalry brigade's Yunnan horses charging.

Xu Chen only heard the staff sergeant platoon leader suck in a breath of cold air and mutter in a low voice: "We're in trouble!"

A moment later, the hoofbeats of a messenger rider sounded nearby.

"Form hollow square formation!"

"Form hollow square formation!"

Yahei

Pink Round

Pen