Chapter 73: The Battle of the Thirteen Wings

The next morning, Zhang Chu'an and Zhang Xiaofan departed.

Guo Jing and Nie Huaishang were not idle either; Nie Huaishang went to scout the Qiyen tribe of Temujin to see if there was absolute certainty to kill Temujin.

If there was no absolute certainty, Nie Huaishang would absolutely not act, after all, this world has the protagonist halo; Yang Guo and Guo Jing, these two martial world protagonists, could both have a miraculous encounter, could it be possible that if no one saved Temujin, the protagonist of this era, at a critical moment of danger?

As for Guo Jing, he went to find tribes suitable for developing revolutionary base areas; after searching for nearly half a month and establishing several options for the base area, he met up with Nie Huaishang at the designated location.

Watching Nie Huaishang arrive from a distance, panting heavily, Guo Jing handed over the prepared water and food and asked, "It's just scouting Temujin's situation, why are you in such a rush?"

Nie Huaishang gulped down a large mouthful of water and waved his hands repeatedly, saying, "You don't understand; this time I witnessed a grand scene in history."

"What grand scene?" Guo Jing asked in confusion.

"Temujin and his good brother Jamukha fought; Jamukha, along with the Taichiwu tribe and thirteen other tribes, raised an army of thirty thousand to attack Temujin, while Temujin also mobilized thirty thousand men." Nie Huaishang's words immediately sparked Guo Jing's interest.

After all, this battle was Temujin's first time commanding such a large-scale campaign; through this battle, he could guess Temujin's command talent.

Under Nie Huaishang's narration, this great battle was outlined in his mind: first, Temujin ordered the entire army to form thirteen Guryen to meet the enemy; the entire army took his white banner as the standard, advancing and retreating in unison, with no unauthorized movements allowed.

Subsequently, Jamukha's army arrived like a whirlwind; both sides deployed their formations. After a busy night, Jamukha's offensive was dense and compact, methodical and orderly, while Temujin's troops lacked training in coordinated combat and thus appeared inferior; although the forces on both sides were equal, they often found themselves in situations where they were outnumbered in various aspects.

As each Guryen suffered varying degrees of trampling by Jamukha's army, the white banner began to slowly retreat; the horn-blowers sounded the horns, and with the issuance of the retreat order, the troops' morale miraculously recovered, moving with renewed vigor.

After the entire army withdrew into the entrance of the Zhele Valley, Temujin's troops, still maintaining their complete formation, deployed defenses at the valley entrance; they used large trees felled by the tribespeople who had withdrawn into the valley earlier to completely seal off the valley entrance, serving as a defensive barrier. They ordered other units with heavier losses to rest and reorganize on the spot. The elderly, weak, and women of the tribe were also mobilized to treat the wounded soldiers.

The marshy terrain restricted Jamukha's army's pursuit speed, giving Temujin's troops time to calmly deploy defenses. When they chased to the entrance of the Zhele Valley, they immediately encountered fierce resistance from Temujin's troops, becoming unable to advance an inch. When Jamukha's central army arrived, they attacked for several more days, but because the valley entrance terrain was narrow and the troops could not deploy, every charge only left a batch of corpses on the slope before the valley entrance before returning in vain.

"Temujin, you coward! If you have the guts, come out and fight with real swords and spears to decide the winner! Why are you hiding like an unweaned lamb, too scared to make a sound?" Jamukha's troops shouted insults loudly at the valley entrance.

"If you are brave, come over and attack us. Doesn't Jamukha like attacking? Are his horse's hooves tangled in his wife's belt?" Temujin's troops retorted.

The attacking and defending sides exchanged verbal blows for half a day like this, only stopping the name-calling after the sun set. Seeing that this tactic had no effect, Jamukha resumed the attack on the valley the next day. Unfortunately, for the Mongols, who were not good at siege warfare, crossing this valley entrance was harder than climbing to the sky.

When the stalemate reached the third day, Jamukha's troops set up seventy large cauldrons on the open ground before the valley entrance, threw all the prisoners captured in the previous days' battles into them, and boiled them alive into meat paste, then publicly held a banquet to eat them. They also bound the leader of the Niewudai tribe, Chagaan Ua, who had unfortunately been captured before the battle lines, to the front of the army and beheaded him, then tied the head to his horse's tail and galloped back and forth dragging it until it became mush, unrecognizable in its original form.

However, this act not only failed to frighten the Mongol tribe's army, but instead ignited the anger of the entire garrison; everyone shared a common hatred and fought even more diligently.

With the failure of a series of tactics including fierce assaults, insults, and intimidation, Jamukha's troops could only retreat unwillingly.

"How was it?" Nie Huaishang, having vividly recounted this great battle, asked Guo Jing curiously.

Guo Jing pondered for a moment and said, "I am now very curious how Temujin came to see Jamukha as a brother."

"Hey, this battle was won by Jamukha; why do you evaluate Jamukha this way?" Nie Huaishang asked mockingly.

"Won? Won where? Temujin's true power remained intact; the losses were all the followers who did not obey him. Jamukha was clearing out Temujin's enemies for him."

"Furthermore, Jamukha's act of cooking people told the world two things. The first thing was to tell the people under him: if you commit offenses under me, I will definitely cook you; the people under him would behave properly and not make mistakes, of course, they would seek other places, as the grasslands do not have only his tribe; without Jamukha, they could still live."

"The second thing was to tell his enemies: if you oppose me, I will cook you. But doing this obviously makes one's enemies prefer death over surrender. The awkward thing is that Jamukha did not yet have the strength to crush his enemies; I really don't understand what meaning there is in doing this; it feels a bit like a child throwing a tantrum."

Guo Jing quickly shook his head; in his opinion, it was too incredible for someone like Jamukha, who commanded thirty thousand troops, to act like a child throwing a tantrum.

If this were true, wouldn't dealing with him be too easy? Setting aside other things, with his understanding of Zhang Chu'an's bottomless lack of integrity, he could completely break Jamukha's mentality in minutes.

"It seems Temujin's rising momentum is unstoppable; we have no certainty to kill him in the short term; let's quickly plan the development of the base area."

"Oh, tell me quickly which tribe you chose as our future base area." Nie Huaishang was extremely excited.

"It is this tribe called Bului Hui Tatar." Guo Jing pointed to the location on the map near the Jin Kingdom and continued, "Although this tribe is the weakest among the six Tatar tribes, it still has a population of over three Battalion Commander and five hundred soldiers."

"This number looks large, but the core management layer is very small, only about a dozen people; with our strength, a surprise attack to control them is as easy as turning over one's hand."

Nie Huaishang nodded in agreement, saying, "With our strength, we can indeed easily launch a surprise attack and control them, but will those five hundred soldiers and herdsmen willingly accept our policies? After all, liberating slaves and distributing cattle and sheep means distributing their property."

Guo Jing looked puzzled and said, "Property? What property? The slaves are all in the hands of those dozen tribal nobles; the cattle, sheep, and pastures are almost all theirs; the soldiers' equipment for fighting and their money and grain must be prepared by themselves; to distribute their property, at the very least they must have property to begin with."

Nie Huaishang was somewhat stunned; if this were the case, then they only needed to control these dozen people to easily establish a revolutionary base area.