Chapter 191: Central Route Withdrawal

At the foot of Dengzhou City, Xue Shusi dropped the bowl of porridge in his hand the moment he received the news of the eastern front’s collapse.

No one laughed at his lapse. All the officers in the tent had risen to their feet, staring at the battlefield report as if it were a venomous snake crawling ashore from the Huai River. Eighty thousand troops, two months—from beneath Suzhou City, they had collapsed all the way to Qixian. Guo Zhuo was arrested, Lingbi lost, Hongxian lost, Sizhou lost—Sizhou, the first banner of the northern expedition, now a rag beneath the Jin cavalry’s hooves.

Xue Shusi bent down, picked up the report, read it again, his finger pausing on the eight characters: “Wu Xi holds position on the western front.” He looked up, scanning the officers; all read the same meaning in his eyes.

“Wu Xi will betray us.” Xue Shusi spoke the four words softly, as if speaking them aloud might make them true.

Deputy Commander Zhao Chun slammed his fist onto the table: “We’ve fought two months here at Dengzhou, lost three thousand men, made not an inch of progress. The east has collapsed, Wu Xi won’t move—how do we fight this war?”

No one could answer him.

Outside the tent, a commotion rose. Xue Shusi pulled back the curtain and saw soldiers huddled together, whispering, faces pale with fear. Someone had spread the news of the eastern collapse; panic was spreading faster than any military order. An old soldier squatted by the camp gate, sharpening his blade. He paused mid-stroke, looked up at his squad leader, and asked: “Squad leader, they say Sizhou’s fallen too? That wasn’t ours to take before? How did we lose it so fast?”

The squad leader opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Xue Shusi turned his gaze away and said two words to Zhao Chun: “Withdraw.”

The order to retreat was issued that very night. Fifty thousand troops of the central army, having wasted two months beneath Dengzhou City without even chipping a single brick off its walls, now quietly broke camp under cover of darkness, burning the siege engines they had laboriously transported. The soldiers carried out their orders in silence—no complaints, no grand speeches—complaints and heroism both required faith, and faith had evaporated the moment the central army learned the news from east and west.

Fire lit up half the sky. Ladders, battering rams, trebuchets—these siege engines carried all the way from Xiangyang—cracked and burst in the flames like firecrackers at a funeral. Xue Shusi stood amid the firelight, gazing north at Dengzhou City. The Jin sentries on the walls had clearly noticed the disturbance and were shouting and running, but they did not sortie to pursue—not because they didn’t want to, but because they were waiting too.

“They know about Wu Xi,” Zhao Chun said, stepping beside him, voice low. “The Jin don’t rush to fight us now. They’re waiting for Wu Xi to openly rebel, waiting for us to collapse on our own.”

Xue Shusi said nothing. He mounted his horse, took one last look at Dengzhou City. Two months ago, when he led his troops out of Xiangyang, he had dreamed of retaking Tang and Deng, then pressing straight toward Bianjing. Now he thought of only one thing: bringing these men home alive.

The retreat route from Tangzhou to Xiangyang was not long, but every step was heart-stopping.

On the afternoon of the second day, Jin cavalry caught up. Their commander, Wanyan Gang, was a thirty-something Meng’an, leading only three thousand horsemen, yet he pursued with savage tenacity. He avoided direct clashes with the Song main force, instead like a wolf pack hanging at the tail of the retreating column, striking whenever an opening appeared. Stragglers, scattered supply teams, wounded left behind—his cavalry moved like wind, struck, killed, and vanished without lingering.

On the third evening, as the retreating column crossed an unnamed stream, Wanyan Gang launched his largest ambush.

The soldiers were wading across the river, the line stretched long and thin. Suddenly, Jin cavalry burst from the trees behind and to the side, hooves shattering the last sliver of sunset on the water’s surface. The rear ranks, caught utterly off guard, were instantly shattered. Screams and hoofbeats merged; the stream turned color in the twilight.

Xue Shusi, at the front, heard the cries from behind and yanked his reins hard. He turned back—dust choked the sky, fleeing soldiers surging toward him like a tide. His personal guard seized his bridle and shouted: “General! Don’t go back! Going back is death!”

Xue Shusi shook off his guard’s hand, drew his sword, and charged against the tide toward the rear. He gathered fleeing soldiers, cut down three deserters, and barely established a defensive line on the southern bank of the stream. Zhao Chun arrived with a squad of crossbowmen, raining arrows across the river, halting the Jin pursuit.

But the cost was terrible.

After the battle, of the two-thousand-man rearguard, fewer than eight hundred crossed the river alive. Commander Zhang Yu, in charge of the rearguard, fell in battle; his body was taken by the Jin and vanished thereafter. More than half the supplies were lost; most of the civilian porters fled; the survivors huddled behind carts, trembling, refusing to move forward.

Xue Shusi stood on the high ground south of the stream, watching soldiers drag the corpses of their comrades from the water. The bodies, bloated and white from soaking, had bled dry; fish had gnawed the submerged parts. Some men searched for their fellow villagers’ bodies—those who found them wept in despair; those who didn’t walked the riverbank, calling out names until their throats went hoarse, still refusing to stop.

“It’s the third day,” Zhao Chun said, stepping beside him, a bloody scratch across his face from a stray arrow. “We’ve only made it halfway. At this pace, we won’t reach Xiangyang for at least three more days.”

Xue Shusi watched the last glimmer of light vanish on the river, voice hoarse: “Three days.”

“The Jin cavalry will come again tomorrow. Wanyan Gang doesn’t aim to annihilate us—he hasn’t the numbers. He just keeps biting at us, gnawing until we break apart ourselves.”

“Let him chase,” Xue Shusi said, sheathing his sword—the scabbard caked in mud and blood. “Order: light the stoves at fourth watch, march at fifth. Rotate rearguards every hour. Leave the stragglers—our pursuers run faster than they do. They know it themselves.”

What he did not say: he had to walk this road. The eastern front had collapsed, the western front would betray—if the central army shattered here, Xiangyang’s gates would stand wide open. The Jin need not attack; they need only stand beneath the walls and shout, “Your army is all dead,” and the defenders would open the gates themselves.

Seven days later, atop Xiangyang’s walls.

The defenders first saw dust rising on the horizon, then a crooked Song banner. The flag was riddled with arrow holes and burn marks, its pole broken halfway, held together by strips of cloth. Beneath it rode Xue Shusi—his horse had died a day earlier; now he rode a mule borrowed from the supply train.

The moment the city gate opened, Xue Shusi nearly tumbled from the mule. His legs were raw and bloody from the saddle; his hands, stiff from days of gripping his sword, could no longer straighten. The Prefect of Xiangyang ran out to greet him, saw Xue Shusi’s condition, and choked on the words he could not speak.

Xue Shusi slid off the mule, stood firm, and turned to look at the army he had brought back. Fifty thousand had left Xiangyang; fewer than thirty-five thousand returned. They had lost Tangzhou, hundreds of carts of grain, over two thousand corpses—those bodies now lay somewhere in the Nanyang Basin, being devoured by wild dogs.

He pushed aside the soldiers trying to support him, stepped forward one slow step at a time, entering the city gate. As he passed through the tunnel, darkness swallowed him. He stood in the dark for a moment, then walked on, into the silent sea of people within Xiangyang.

That night, Xue Shusi wrote a memorial to Lin’an from within the Xiangyang Prefectural Office. He wrote for a long time, tore up several drafts. The final version sent out contained only a few brief lines:

“Your servant Shusi and others led the central army back. Lost over fourteen thousand men, lost Tangzhou. Jin cavalry pursued for six days; our troops fought their way free. Now defending Xiangyang, awaiting orders.”

He did not write of Wu Xi. But he left the words “western front” blank—a glaring void. He hoped Han Tuozhou would understand.

After sending the memorial, Xue Shusi climbed alone to Xiangyang’s city tower. The northern horizon was swallowed by night; nothing could be seen. But if he could look farther north, what would he see? Wu Xi, ready to betray? Jin forces regrouping? Or that beast from farther north, patiently waiting for all of them to bleed dry?

He did not know. He only knew: the central army had returned. But the northern expedition was dead.