Chapter 180

The sea of fire at Bagongyuan turned the entire sky into a strange orange‑red.

Countless Khitan cavalry were trapped in the blaze; their warhorses, startled, ran wildly, flipping their riders to the ground, then trampling them to death.

Even more people were either burned to charcoal in the thick smoke and flames, or turned into hedgehogs by the Later Zhou army's rain of arrows.

Harsh cries of agony and desperate wails echoed through the entire valley.

Khitan commander Yang Gong, his personal guards, and the elite iron cavalry

Watching the remaining people being slaughtered to the last in the fire and arrow rain, a mouthful of old blood spurted out.

"Guo Rong… you're so ruthless!" he gritted his teeth, his eyes filled with bloodshot veins and resentment.

He couldn't understand how his near‑perfect ruse had been uncovered; how could that yellow‑mouthed youngster Guo Rong devise such a counter‑ruse in such a short time?

"General! Hurry and leave! If we don't go now, it'll be too late!" a personal guard shouted anxiously, pulling his horse's reins.

Yang Gun turned his head and saw the Later Zhou cavalry having completed an encirclement from the valleys on both sides. The dark cavalry formation, like two massive iron tongs, was slowly closing in on the remnants of his troops.

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Only two words remained in Yang Gun's heart.

He knew that he and the last of his cavalry would have to answer for themselves here today.

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Later Zhou army formation

Countless Later Zhou infantry, led by their commanders, bearing long spears and simple swords, surged down from the Bagongyuan positions like a tide.

These infantry, having finally encountered war, had long been blood‑shot with anger, knowing that fighting now was not a senseless death march.

It was all for their families, for their descendants to have a better life; even if they died, death compensation would be paid to their families to ensure their livelihood!

Thus, those originally assigned to clean the battlefield persuaded the commander to charge out early; they wanted to seize military merit. The Khitan elite on horseback dared not challenge them, but now a group of broken soldiers was far easier to kill than before!

"Brothers! The Khitan barbarians are right ahead! One head, fifteen taels of silver, ten points of merit!"

"Charge! Grab the money! Grab the merit! Grab the women!"

"No one else take it from me! That one in silver armor is mine!"

Driven by the naked profit of the "military merit ledger," these Later Zhou soldiers turned into starving wolves on the battlefield.

Later Zhou soldiers, Khitan people

A Later Zhou soldier saw a Khitan centurion falling from a burning warhorse, his leg burned, writhing in pain on the ground. His eyes lit up, and with a howl he leapt onto him.

The Khitan centurion tried to resist, raising the curved sword in his hand.

But the Later Zhou soldier, heedless, thrust his own chest straight into the blade.

"Puff"—the curved sword sank into flesh.

Yet the Later Zhou soldier didn't even furrow his brow; instead he grinned a ferocious smile, using his wounded body to pin the opponent down, then cleanly slashing off the enemy's head with his short knife.

"Hahaha! A centurion! At least worth thirty points!" he hoisted the still‑bleeding head, laughing wildly.

His comrades, seeing his wound, felt not sympathy but cast jealous glances at him.

"Damn it, that kid got there first!"

"The next one! The next one will definitely be mine!"

The whole battlefield became their hunting ground, but this also gave Yang Gun a chance; under the cover of his wounded troops, he finally slowed the enemy's advance, gaining a sliver of survival.

Later Zhou soldiers

"On what grounds do you claim that head as yours? I was the one who first cut him!"

"Bullshit! I knocked him off his horse! Without me, could you have cut him?"

the scribe official

the scribes of the Military Merit Accounting Office

Zhang San

"Li Si, one captive, record five points."

"Wang Wu, you damn it, don't mix up the heads! This one in your hand was clearly cut by Zhao Liu!"

This efficient yet brutal method of recording merit pushed the bloodshed and profit of war to the extreme.

Guo Rong, Ba Gongyuan

In his heart, there was both the joy of victory and pride in the present military bearing.

These were the troops he had raised; he knew that the army he had personally reformed had become immensely powerful.

But now they no longer fought to protect home and country; they fought for merit, for money, for land.

This also gave Guo Rong a hint of worry; lacking merit, money, and land now, those could be used as targets to clamp down on them.

It's like raising a wolf; you feed it meat every day, but what if one day it can no longer give them the meat it wants?

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He set down the Thousand‑Mile Mirror, and his face regained the emperor's majesty.

"Send the order: clean the battlefield, tally the merits. In three days, the army will return to the capital!"

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Battle of Gaoping, Later Zhou army

Northern Han ruler Liu Chong, after learning that the Khitan army had been completely annihilated, dared not linger; he burned the camp overnight and fled back to Taiyuan with the battered remnants, in a sorry state.

Later Zhou emperor Guo Rong, Later Han emperor Liu Chong

Inside Kaifeng, the city was filled with jubilation.

The common folk ran about spreading the news, and firecracker sounds rang through the night without cease.

They, they did not know the significance of Guo Rong's victory in the Battle of Gaoping, but they knew that their land was preserved, that Later Zhou defended their hometown, and that their land would no longer be lost to war!