Chapter 723

The Ming army cut in like boiling water on snow; the panicked Mongol cavalry before them were easily poked off their horses and killed, and the Ming cavalry were even more capable of simply hacking the Mongols off their horses from behind. All of this was entirely thanks to that great general who wielded a three-pointed double-edged spear to blood-sacrifice a large number of Mongols, and who would from time to time lift up men and horses together and fling them away, causing severe collateral damage.

In but a moment, as these Mongol soldiers fled in defeat, they left behind hundreds of corpses. As Bai Lang led his army in their advance, he saw the Bansheng City become chaotic. Amidst the sounds of long horns, the city gates began to close. The people outside the city were extremely panicked, running about like headless flies. The Mongols who had horses simply rode them away, abandoning their belongings, while those who farmed could not run and could only rely on their two legs to run for their lives.

The Ming army slowly pressed in; attacking the city was likely not possible. Although Bai Lang possessed Innate power, if there were enough experts inside this city, they could drag things out until his strength was exhausted—how could Altan Khan not have so many experts under his command? "Only those unlucky ghosts who limit their vision to the Five Mountains Sword Sects would think there are not many experts in the martial arts world. Those with real ability have long since relied on the martial arts in their hands to cling to wealth and status."

Just think of the experts who came to offer their services to the Jin Yi Guard and the Eastern Depot, and then think of the experts in Altan Khan's army when he fought him last time; which one of them would be worse than Yue Buqun? They were all better than him, weren't they? They just joined the government to seek a position and a salary. There is no future in hanging out in the underworld.

Bai Lang did not intend to attack the city; he only wanted to collect the good things that had not managed to enter the city. He collected the armor and weapons from the Mongol cavalry he had killed outside, as well as their heads, and then drove their still-living warhorses back to Datong. This was a successful raid. Coming to do this every now and then would allow him to get rich while also making Altan Khan continue to lose blood.

Strong bows shot down continuously from the city walls. Bai Lang ordered his subordinates to stop their advance and began to loot the civilian houses outside Bansheng City and the caravans that had been abandoned. After a thorough looting, he drove off the cattle, sheep, and horses that had also failed to reach Bansheng City in time. Bai Lang himself held the military flag high and galloped back and forth, while those on the city walls were each struck with terror.

The things snatched were not considered many. Besides several hundred heads and sets of armor and military weapons, there were also over a thousand head of cattle and sheep, several hundred horses, and several hundred taels of silver. Bai Lang waved his hand and let the troops divide the silver directly, greatly winning over the hearts of the army. On the way back, there were indeed Mongol cavalry who tried to intercept and kill them from front and rear, but the bravery of Bai Lang could not be withstood. A single charge by the ten-plus riders he led was enough to rout hundreds or thousands of cavalry.

The Mongols also lacked the patience for bitter fighting; Bai Lang killed only ten or so people in one charge, and this group actually began to collapse. As a result, the road from Bansheng City to Datong simply turned into an armed escort, which just allowed Bai Lang to collect a few dozen more heads and incidentally abandon a few hundred head of cattle and sheep. On the day they returned to Datong, those who came out of the city to welcome them were the various generals from the Governor down, as well as the unlucky Datong Magistrate who had the lowest rank and the most things to do.

Seeing Bai Lang return from the raid, "Yo! Governor. Here are the heads, count them up and give me the bounty?" This Datong Magistrate had the tone of a common soldier; at this moment, he was also wearing soft armor and a helmet, truly dressed as a martial man rather than having the demeanor of a civil official. The various generals of Xuan-Da had already surrounded the carts carrying the heads. They didn't care about the stinking and terrifying-looking heads; these soldiers also wished they had been the ones to cut them off.

This was merit from heads, the most solid way to count merit. How many heads could such generals cut off in a lifetime? In one raid, Bai Lang personally killed hundreds of enemy soldiers. Such a martial general was of course a ten-thousand-man enemy like Chu Bawang—Bai Lang did not forbid others from watching when he performed martial arts at the drill ground, but none of these generals and civil officials dared to go and watch.

Bai Lang entered the city in a show of force. If he were a martial general, this counting of merit would likely lead to a promotion, but he was a civil official and the Datong Magistrate, so what he harvested besides a memorial reporting his merit was only impeachment memorials—and they were just those censors impeaching him for not attending to his proper duties, saying that as a high-ranking official, the business of going outside the border to raid and fight the Mongols was not his turn to do.

He shouldn't even have left the jurisdiction of Datong Prefecture. The only time he should be facing the Mongol Tartars should be when the Mongol Tartars attacked Datong. Now that this guy had actually run out all the way to Bansheng City in Fengzhou, it was indeed not attending to his proper duties. Bai Lang had always ignored such fart-like impeachment memorials. With hundreds of heads in his hands, the fact that the Mongol Tartars at the border feared him like a tiger was Bai Lang's confidence.

Bai Lang even felt that he might not be able to hold onto this position as the fourth-rank Datong Magistrate, and he might just be promoted to a third-rank high official. "If things go wrong, I'll have to go to Nanjing to be the Minister of the Court of Imperial Stud..." Bai Lang thought happily, "Sigh, if I had switched to a martial post, I might already be a Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent by now."

Bai Lang was rewarded with a hundred taels of silver for this, and that was it. Altan Khan directly sent an envoy to request border trade, and at the same time was willing to accept the amnesty of the Great Ming court and be enfeoffed with a royal title. "Bah! This cunning old thief!" Bai Lang cursed. The White Lotus Sect in Bansheng City was also captured in one fell swoop by Altan Khan and sent into Ming territory to be handed over to the judiciary.

Bai Lang was a "gourd official." Since it was not easy to go out raiding while in the position of Datong Magistrate, he simply let things rot. Passing information up and down was simple; he had the six offices, so it was just a matter of circling and stamping. Anyway, everything inside and outside Datong City was left for the poor Datong Magistrate to do—who told him he was unlucky enough to be the magistrate of the prefecture seat.

Watching this unlucky guy running around exhausted day by day, with less and less hair, Bai Lang expressed sympathy but did nothing—in less than three years, after the Datong Magistrate had only served for two years, this guy was promoted to Minister of the Court of Imperial Stud in Nanjing. Sure enough, as Bai Lang expected, at the same time he was transferred to Nanjing, he also heard the news that Qi Jiguang had led troops to a great victory over the Japanese pirates in Zhejiang and Fujian. It seemed this person was going to be a high official.

Martial generals level up quickly. Like a civil official such as Bai Lang, he had to endure step by step, unless a large-scale battle occurred again—now it seemed that neither the Jiajing Emperor nor the various cabinet ministers were people with even a shred of ambition. If it were Bai Lang in charge, he would have pacified Bansheng City eight hundred years ago. Wouldn't it be good to use Bansheng City as a forward base to further attack the grasslands? This is the Hetao region! When did it fall into the hands of the Mongols?

"Just dogs guarding the house. They have the ability to learn from others to cultivate the Dao and waste money on schemes, but their passion for grand strategies and establishing eternal merit is not even as good as Emperor Yang of Sui." Bai Lang cursed and grumbled, but Bai Xu Shi in the magistrate's back garden could not understand—in another year she would blossom, and Bai Lang planned to do what needed to be done then.

Before, when there was an occasional need, Bai Lang simply promoted the Holy Maiden and Lan Fenghuang to be concubines. Bai Xu Shi did want to set some rules, but unfortunately, one of these two had good martial arts and the other was skilled with poisons, so after thinking it over, Bai Xu Shi didn't do it.