Chapter 189: Consecutive Defeats

In the Song army camp outside Lingbi City, the routed soldiers arrived at midnight.

First came the sound of hooves, scattered and frantic, not like a messenger bringing good news, but like a fugitive being chased by ghosts. The camp gate sentries held torches and shouted for the password; the reply from the other side was jumbled, the voice trembling with sobs. The firelight illuminated the faces of the newcomers—covered in blood and grime, armor askew, with an arrow still stuck in the horse's flank that had not been pulled out.

"Suzhou... Suzhou has fallen!"

This sentence was like salt thrown into boiling oil; the entire camp instantly exploded. Soldiers crawled out of their tents, disheveled, surrounding the few routed men and bombarding them with questions. The words of the routed soldiers were fragmented, but every single one was terrifying enough: Marshal Guo's camp had been kicked in, many had died, and the corpses in the Huaihe River floated as densely as duckweed.

The main Song general attacking Lingbi was Li Shuang. He was woken by his personal guards at midnight; his first reaction to the news was disbelief—eighty thousand men, two months, and they collapsed just like that? But the routed soldiers kept coming; by dawn, over a hundred stragglers fleeing from the direction of Suzhou had gathered outside the camp gate, each looking dazed, as if their souls had not yet crawled back from that hell.

Li Shuang stood at the camp gate, watching those routed soldiers, and something inside him began to sink. He knew his own troops had heard the news. Those soldiers who had been crowding the camp gate to watch the spectacle, who had been overjoyed the night before for breaking through Lingbi's outer city, were now all silent. The way they looked at the routed soldiers was as if they were looking at their own future.

"Pass the order down," Li Shuang said in a low voice to his deputy general, "say only that Marshal Guo has temporarily retreated to Qixian to reorganize. Anyone who dares spread rumors will be beheaded."

The deputy general took the order and left. But Li Shuang knew that even he did not believe those words.

Morale is something that takes months and years to build, but only one night to scatter. That afternoon, some battalions refused to fight to the death during the siege. When the battering rams were pushed to the base of the city wall, the soldiers looked up at the dense arrows of the Jin troops on the ramparts and shrank back. The discipline squad raised their swords and advanced, and suddenly a soldier shouted: "Suzhou has already fallen, what are we still fighting for!"

This sentence was like a signal. The entire attacking force began to shrink backward; no matter how the officers shouted and cursed, the soldiers simply refused to move forward. The hands gripping the swords trembled; their eyes no longer focused on the enemy but constantly looked south, as if the other side of the Huaihe River was the only way to survive.

Li Shuang did not kill anyone to establish authority. He knew that killing one would make ten run; this was the law of defeat. He could only order a retreat, then sat alone in his tent for the entire night.

The next morning, even worse news arrived.

Heshilie Zhizhong gave him no chance. That Jin general who had stubbornly defended under the walls of Suzhou for two months, after crushing Guo Zhuo, did not stop to catch his breath but personally led a light cavalry unit all the way down in pursuit. His cavalry was not numerous, but their speed was extremely fast; like a sharp knife, they stabbed all along the Song army's retreat route, kicking in camps wherever they found them and charging through formations wherever they saw them, giving them no time to regroup.

Li Shuang received an urgent report from scouts at noon: Jin cavalry had already appeared on the official road thirty li south of Lingbi, intercepting and slaughtering the remnants of the Song army retreating from Suzhou. Thirty li was just a blink of an eye for cavalry.

"Retreat." When Li Shuang spoke this word, his lips were trembling.

Once the retreat order was given, the camp descended into chaos. Soldiers scrambled to pack their belongings; some drew swords against each other to seize a horse, while others simply threw away their armor and weapons, fleeing south with only dry rations. In the grain camp, no one bothered to carry anything; piles of rice sacks were abandoned on the spot. The armory was broken open; soldiers rushed in to seize valuable items, then, finding them too heavy to run fast, threw them away along the way.

Li Shuang rode on his horse, looking back once at Lingbi City. On the city walls, Jin soldiers were cheering; some threw the abandoned Song flags down from the tower. Those flags had been hung up two months ago, when they still felt that the most glorious moment of their lives was right before their eyes.

From Lingbi to Hongxian, less than two hundred li, the routed soldiers ran for two days and two nights.

The Song army in Hongxian learned the news even later. The main general, Tian Junmai—the very Tian Junmai who had lost his military banner in the Suzhou defeat—had barely gathered two thousand remnants and retreated to Hongxian, preparing to regroup, when he saw dust blocking the sun on the official road to the south. He thought reinforcements had arrived and sent people to welcome them, only to be met by Li Shuang's troops—or rather, not troops, but a group of routed soldiers supporting each other, discarding their armor and helmets.

"You have lost too?" Tian Junmai asked.

"We didn't even fight." Li Shuang rolled off his horse, collapsed on the ground, and only after drinking two bowls of water could he speak, "We didn't even fight. But the soldiers refused to fight. Hearing the news from Suzhou, they were like people who had lost their souls."

Tian Junmai's face changed. His soldiers also crowded around, listening to the news Li Shuang brought: Guo Zhuo had gathered remnants in Qixian, totaling less than forty thousand; Lingbi had already been lost, and the Jin army was in pursuit; Heshilie Zhizhong's cavalry might already be on the road.

Panic began.

Just like the chaos in Lingbi, the Song army in Hongxian also began to abandon their positions and flee south. Tian Junmai tried to stop them but was pushed to the ground by the routed soldiers, who broke two of his ribs. His personal guards desperately dragged him to the roadside, saving him from being trampled to death by the crowd. Lying in the mud by the road, watching his own soldiers surge past him like a flock of sheep, only one thought filled his mind: It's over.

The Jin pursuit turned into a massacre over the next three days.

Heshilie Zhizhong was a genius hunter. He knew his own forces were actually not numerous—barely six or seven thousand in total—but he also knew the Song army had been terrified out of their wits. Prey that is terrified out of its wits does not need to be surrounded and captured; it only needs to be chased relentlessly from behind, and they will run themselves to death.

He divided his forces into three routes: one swept along the banks of the Huaihe River, one drove straight into the official road south of Hongxian, and one circled around to cut off the Song army's retreat from the rear. These three groups combined totaled less than ten thousand, yet they chased tens of thousands of Song soldiers like homeless dogs. Those strongholds previously recaptured by the Song army—Sizhoucheng, Hongxian, Lingbi, and dozens of large and small fortresses along the way—were all retaken by the Jin army within just three weeks. In some places, no attack was even necessary; as soon as Jin cavalry appeared under the city walls, the Song garrison inside opened the gates and surrendered.

The most tragic scene occurred in Sizhoucheng.

Sizhoucheng was the first victory of the Northern Expedition; originally, Guo Zhuo had captured the city there in just three days. At this moment, there were still one thousand Song soldiers left in Sizhoucheng, led by a commander named Zhao Duan. After hearing the news of the defeat on the front lines, Zhao Duan did not flee but decided to defend to the death. He counted the grain in the city, which was enough for a month, blocked all four gates, and prepared for street fighting.

But Heshilie Zhizhong gave him no such chance.

The Jin army besieged the city for three days without attacking. On the fourth night, the Jin army brought hundreds of captured Song routed soldiers to the foot of the city wall and made them shout into the city.

"Brothers, come out! The Jin people do not kill prisoners!"

"So many people died in Suzhou; the Huaihe River has turned red!"

"We are also from Sizhoucheng; we still have old mothers at home; stop fighting!"

The Song soldiers on the city walls listened to these voices in silence. Zhao Duan stood on the tower, trying to shout them down, but his voice was drowned out by the weeping below. He watched his soldiers one by one put down their bows and crossbows; some began to sob quietly.

At the fifth watch, the city gate was opened from the inside. It was not breached by the Jin army; the defenders opened it themselves. Zhao Duan drew his sword, intending to commit suicide, but was tightly held back by his personal guards. He was shoved out of the city gate and looked back to see the Song flag on the Sizhoucheng city wall, which had only been raised two months ago, being cut down by a Jin soldier's sword, the rope severed, slowly falling.

By mid-August, all the territory occupied by the Song army in the early stages of the Northern Expedition, except for one spot in Qixian, had been lost. The Huaihe defense line had returned to its pre-war state—if one ignored the losses.

But these losses could not be ignored.

The eighty thousand main forces of the Eastern Route, when counted after retreating south of the Huaihe River, numbered only forty-three thousand. Of these, fewer than eight thousand had actually died in battle; the rest had scattered during the retreat, drowned, been captured, or simply deserted. The loss of grain and supplies was incalculable; the military grain abandoned solely in Lingbi and Hongxian was enough to feed the Jin army for half a year. Weapons, armor, and siege engines were piled as high as mountains; the Jin state later used this captured equipment to arm three Meng'an-Mouke units.

But the most fatal loss was not these.

The most fatal was that the backbone of the Song army had been broken. Those soldiers who fled back to the south bank of the Huaihe River no longer had the light of the early Northern Expedition in their eyes. They squatted in the camps, saying nothing, training not, just staring blankly at the north bank. Some were woken by nightmares at night, shouting "The Jin people are coming," causing everyone in the tent to scramble up and run in panic; only after discovering it was a false alarm did they silently lie back down, unable to sleep again.

Guo Zhuo was recalled to Lin'an to be held accountable. On the day he left, outside the walls of Qixian, an old soldier suddenly asked him, "General, can we fight back?"

Guo Zhuo paused, did not turn around, and did not answer. He climbed into the carriage and lowered the curtain.

On that very same day, Wu Xi on the Western Front finally made his move—not by advancing north, but by sending an envoy galloping on fast horses to Bianjing, bringing his latest bargaining terms.