Chapter 769: Desperate Straits

Xuelu Town, in the western part of Jingzhao, forty li southwest of Wugong County, thirty li southeast of Xingping County, and less than thirty li northwest of Fengtian County, took its name from the fact that the early Tang famous general Xue Rengui had his fief here.

Because it sat at the junction of three counties with convenient transportation, since the rise of the Great Han it had become a famous market town in Jingzhao. The three surrounding counties and even Li County, farther to the northeast, all had merchants who gathered here to trade grain, local products, mountain goods, livestock, seeds, tools, and so on. By the ninth year of Qianyou, it had become the largest market town in western Jingzhao.

However, this renowned great town of Jingzhao had already shed its coat of prosperity, left to be wantonly abused and trampled by the rebel army. Under the blazing sun, all was desolation, and the town itself was in utter chaos.

Wang Shun's rebel army rampaged through the counties, killing and plundering the gentry and common folk, robbing the people, and forcing the good to become bandits. After turning west, they naturally would not pass over this famous town. To be fair, part of the credit for Xuelu Town's expansion went to the Shu army prisoners of war—many of those assigned to hard labor for the rebels had been made to build roads and ditches.

However, however hard and earnestly they had built back then, now they destroyed with equal abandon and ease. The only thing worth being grateful for was that before Wang Shun brought his men west, the townsfolk who got word had mostly abandoned their homes and businesses and fled into the county seats, seeking refuge under official protection to avoid disaster.

Even so, in Xuelu Town the rebels still scraped up large quantities of buried money, silk cloth, and grain. The knack of scraping the earth three feet deep seemed to be an inborn skill for bandits.

Up to now, excluding the dead and wounded rebels, there were still over four thousand men temporarily entrenched in Xuelu Town. Of these, nearly half had originally been prisoners or forced laborers. Wang Shun had tried hard to concentrate the surrendered men, but because they were scattered across various places, and the prefectures and counties of Guanzhong had adopted strict control measures, he ultimately failed to create the situation of "twenty thousand Shu soldiers wreaking havoc in Guanzhong."

Even so, getting nearly two thousand of his old soldiers to follow him was no small feat.

As for the rest, aside from a few ruffians, scoundrels, and criminals who had turned to evil by circumstance, they were all common folk who had been coerced and dragged along by the rebel army. In the early days of the "uprising," Wang Shun had not thought of mass slaughter; he even tried to incite the villagers with the slogan "The court is tyrannical, the rich and poor are unequal," hoping to recruit men and expand his ranks.

However, facts proved that Wang Shun was overthinking. Up to now, the Great Han's taxes were not light, and corvée labor was unending, but it had not reached the point of squeezing the people dry. The people of Guanzhong had enjoyed a few rare years of stability, and with Prince Yong's good reputation abroad and Administration Commissioner Hu Yanke governing peacefully and comforting the people, who would be willing to follow a bunch of broken Shu men in rebelling against the Great Han?

Once he understood this reasoning, Wang Shun decisively changed his strategy, resorting to force and plundering money and grain. The result was mass slaughter—wherever they passed, rivers of blood flowed. Too many rebel soldiers had pent-up malice in their chests, which only added to the bloodshed.

In the early days of the uprising, taking advantage of official negligence and the dispersal of the garrisons, while Zhao Hongyin was mobilizing troops to suppress the unrest in the east, the rebel army lived up to Wang Shun's name—smooth sailing, sweeping through the counties, unstoppable. The county governments could only gather their people and defend themselves. The Wei River plain became fertile ground for the rebels to gallop across.

Xianyang, Xingping, and Wugong had all been attacked by them. Though they failed to breach the walls, their momentum grew greatly. However, as time passed, the official army's movements and deployments were like a net strangling the throat and taking life, closing in on him with no escape.

Wang Shun had once staked everything on a desperate gamble, attacking Wugong County without regard for casualties, nearly breaking through the walls. But the Han army from Fengxiang arrived too fast, launching a cavalry dash without sparing their horses, and Wang Shun's plan came to nothing.

Knowing the power of the Han cavalry and fearing it, he decisively withdrew, crossing the Mo River eastward and burning the floating bridge behind him. Even so, he left over a thousand rebel corpses at Wugong.

Afterward, the situation for Wang Shun's "righteous army" took a sharp turn for the worse. From Fengxiang, two thousand Han cavalry came east in two waves, led by the Han generals Ma Renyu and Murong Chengtai. The two had been mobilized from Longzhou, riding over two hundred li in one stretch. After a brief rest at Wugong, they crossed the Mo River and pursued on their tracks.

Driving and killing all the way, like a hunt, they kept compressing the rebels' room to maneuver. If Wang Shun had not previously sent men to seize Xuelu Town in advance as a staging point, there would have been no place for them to stand on the Wei River plain. Even without Zhao Hongyin coming west, Ma Renyu and Murong Chengtai alone would have been enough to crush these several thousand rebels.

However, every advantage has its disadvantage—while they had a foothold, it also bound their hands and feet, trapping them in a city of sorrow, waiting to die.

At the outer edge of Xuelu Town, under the arrangement of rebel officers with military experience, some defensive works had been repaired, though crude and makeshift. Fortunately, the town's earthen wall was still fairly solid, built of rammed earth with lime, and could be relied upon.

However, several thousand rebels crammed into it made for a crowded, chaotic scene. Morale was low, hearts were lost and disordered. If not for those Shu soldiers keeping order, the rebel army would have scattered on its own. And the only reason the army could still hold together to resist the official forces was a single thought: survival.

On the low town wall, a few crude banners were sparsely planted, bearing the characters "Righteous" and "Wang." Few had armor, weapons were lacking, and the soldiers' faces practically spelled out four words: a ragtag mob. Earth and stone supplies, however, were piled up in abundance—clearly they had prepared for the Han army's attack.

Many of the rebels wore looks of despair, immersed in a suffocating atmosphere. Bands made up of Shu army prisoners constantly patrolled among them, both to watch for the enemy and to keep an eye on the coerced rabble.

Some people were crudely haranguing among the rabble, the gist being that they were already members of the "righteous army," regarded as rebels by the government. If they did not want to die, they had to take up arms and resist. Otherwise, once they fell into official hands, the reckoning afterward would surely leave them without even a place to bury their bones...

In the center of Xuelu Town, in the former government office, more rebels were crowded together. Compared to most of the rebels, they looked noticeably more disciplined, better equipped with iron weapons, and some even wore armor. This unit was naturally the picked elite formed by the rebel leader Wang Shun—all old Shu army soldiers, the backbone of the rebel force.

The entire rebel army was organized by Wang Shun into eight battalions. Wang Shun styled himself General, commanding them all, with four "great generals" under him, appointed as commanders.

The blazing sun hung high, and all evil things hid away. But the "righteous army" leader Wang Shun, sitting in the town office, was discussing military matters with his men, his heart growing colder and colder.

Wang Shun was in his thirties, tall and skinny, with a sallow complexion that looked very unhealthy. He had originally been a low-ranking officer in the Shu army's anti-Han forces, wounded and captured during the great battle of Qinfeng. It was precisely because of his wounds that he had not been selected for the Huaiwei or Huaide armies. Otherwise, his fate might have taken a different path—becoming a fang and claw of the Great Han.

"General, we've been trapped in Xuelu Town for three days now. The situation is bad!" One of the rebel officers said to Wang Shun with a grave expression: "You need to think of something fast. If we drag this out any longer, the righteous army is just waiting to die!"

"The brothers are scared too. Those Han people aren't staying quiet either. Morale is wavering..."

"The official army is probably mobilizing right now, coming to attack us. We can't just sit and wait for death!"

The group all talked at once, speaking of the difficulty of their situation, their emotions tense. Gone was the bold heroism and thrill of the initial uprising—all that remained was confusion and despair about the future.

"How about we just flee Xuelu Town as soon as possible!" someone suggested.

"How do we flee? There are official cavalry roaming outside, ready to cut us down at any moment. All contact is severed—we don't even know how the other righteous armies are doing. And where would we flee to?" someone retorted.

"We don't have much food left either. If we stay any longer, we'll starve to death without the official army even coming to wipe us out!" someone reminded.

"If I'd known this would happen, we should have grabbed more food!"

"How? The villages and towns around here have already been stripped clean—nothing left to rob, no one left to kill. Besides, going out there means death!"

"We still have to leave!"

"How? Where to? Going out means death!"

"That's still better than waiting here to die!"

"Back then, we should have fled south to Zhongnan Mountain before the official army reacted. Maybe we'd still be alive!" someone said, his words laced with regret and resentment.

"Why didn't you say so then? You were too busy killing, robbing, and playing with women!" another rebuked.

When faced with a survival crisis, the brains of these common ruffians seemed to sharpen, and they could even see the situation fairly clearly.

"Enough!" Finally, Wang Shun spoke, his face exceptionally grim. After a moment of silence, he looked around and sighed: "Right now, staying in Xuelu Town, we still have defenses to rely on. Once we leave this town, we'll be hunted down like prey by the Han army. When we raised our forces this time, it was always a desperate gamble—win and we live, lose and we die, that's all. Things have come to this, what use is lamenting?"

"How about... we just surrender..." someone weakly suggested.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Wang Shun glared at him: "Foolish! Idiotic! In the days since we raised our forces, we've breached cities, killed officials, plundered the people. With crimes like these, would the court let us off? Even if they spared our lives, we'd probably be dragged back as coolies, doing forced labor—with even stricter supervision, harder and more bitter work, until we drop dead sooner or later! Death is coming either way—might as well die a clean death!"

At these words, everyone present was cowed, and the thought of surrender that had just arisen was quickly snuffed out. Wang Shun's words made good sense.

Silence, then more silence. Finally, one rebel leader looked at Wang Shun: "General, no matter what, just make a decision. Live or die, we'll follow you!"