Chapter 107

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Most of the Han Banners soldiers and camp soldiers fled toward the west side of the city, but a small number who had no time to escape were surrounded by the Taiping Army — the larger groups numbering a dozen or so men, the smaller only two or three.

These men fought on their own, utterly unable to gather in one place, and facing a Taiping Army far superior in numbers and morale, some banner soldiers and camp soldiers chose to lay down their arms, while others preferred death to surrender.

In a few places the banner soldiers put up astonishing resistance, relying on skills honed through life-and-death battles to keep the Taiping Army surrounding them from ever finishing the fight.

But as time passed, their resistance was no more than a tiny spray upon a great wave, utterly unable to change the final outcome. All they could do was drag a couple more men down with them before they died.

Some of the surrendered banner soldiers and camp soldiers were killed on the spot by Taiping soldiers whose bloodlust had been roused; others were taken into custody by units that arrived afterward. All told, they numbered over forty.

After the forward report came that most of the banner soldiers and camp soldiers had fled toward the west side of the city, Zhou Shixiang immediately sent orders for Ge Zheng's and other units to speed to the west side — no matter what, these Qing troops must not be allowed to escape the city.

By now he had almost no troops left in hand; apart from a few personal guards around him and a few recruit squads, every combat soldier who could be used had already been committed.

To end the fighting as quickly as possible and stabilize the situation in the city, Zhou Shixiang ordered Chen Mo to take his few dozen old, weak "death warriors" into the fight as well.

Upon receiving the order, Chen Mo at once began bellowing for his men to move up, saying that this time, no matter what, he would not let the battalion commander look down on him — even if he died, he would die looking like a man.

The burly Chen Mo had committed a grave offense in Xinxing and had nearly had his head cut off by Zhou Shixiang.

Now he was desperate to redeem himself through merit, but the few dozen so-called "death warriors" under him had no fighting strength to speak of and had never experienced real slaughter.

From the very beginning, Zhou Shixiang had invested no resources in this death-warrior unit, nor given it any training.

And so these prisoners from the Deqing jail, after hastily picking up Qing weapons and joining the battle, not only failed to bring glory to Chen Mo's face, but instead caused trouble for the various units pursuing the Qing troops — in later parlance, they were a drag on the rear.

Seeing this, Zhou Shixiang could only pull Chen Mo's men back to guard the east gate, then turned his attention to those few recruit squads.

Apart from the recruit squads that had entered the city to pick up weapons and cut off heads, there were still four full-strength recruit squads that had not been committed. But these recruits were just as useless as the old and weak death warriors.

They could wave flags and shout, but when it came to actually going into battle and fighting the Qing soldiers to the death, they were of no use.

Zhou Shixiang's original idea had been to let these recruits follow the combat soldiers to get a feel for the battlefield, adapt to the cruelty of combat, and handle some logistics and miscellaneous tasks, tempering the recruits' mettle through continuous fighting, and then use them to fill gaps in the combat units as reserve troops — not committing them to the battlefield unless absolutely necessary, so as to avoid needlessly wasting his scant manpower.

After all, even counting these recruits, the Taiping Camp had no more than 2,000 soldiers. The road south to Xiangshan was still long, and there would be many battles to come; needless losses had to be avoided.

But now the Qing troops in Gaoyao city had already collapsed, and Zhou Shixiang wanted to end the battle as soon as possible, lest the night bring more dreams and complications arise.

So he wanted to send these recruit squads up, to serve as the final straw that breaks the camel's back.

Gaoyao county town was only a few dozen li from Zhaoqing prefectural city, and after taking the city there would not be much time for the vanguard camp to rest and regroup; moreover, grain and fodder in the city still had to be requisitioned and shipped to the rear camp.

Every minute and every second was therefore critical to the Taiping Camp. The appearance of the Han Banners, which had not been in the intelligence at all, made Zhou Shixiang even more unwilling to drag the fighting out.

Heaven only knew whether there were other Qing troops nearby; if another Han Banners unit came, who would win and who would lose would be hard to say. Today's battle had caught the Qing army off guard — but had it not done the same to the Taiping Camp?

After the order was passed down, even though they knew the Qing troops had already been defeated, the recruits who had joined the Taiping Camp less than half a month ago all hesitated, not daring to advance.

"Death to any who disobey military orders!"

Seeing that the recruits did not dare to kill the enemy, the several platoon leaders and squad leaders in command said nothing more and began to threaten them, snarling viciously at the terrified recruits: "Any who dare not advance will be beheaded!"

"Death to any who disobey military orders! Advance or be beheaded — and any who retreat will be beheaded!"

Under the officers' threats, the recruits had no choice but to steel themselves and march into the city squad by squad.

Xiang Guoqing, who had galloped all the way to the west side of the city, found upon arriving that there were no Ming troops here, and could not help breathing a sigh of relief. Then confusion arose in his mind.

He hesitated a moment and stopped, in no hurry to leave the city, intending to wait for the routed survivors under his command to come over so he could gather some of them and leave together, lest he return in such a sorry state with no way to explain himself.

He had not waited long when he saw a crowd of banner soldiers and camp soldiers come running over howling in terror, fewer than a hundred men, with no Ming troops in pursuit behind them.

Xiang Guoqing glanced at them and saw that among them the banner soldiers numbered only a few dozen. His heart suddenly sank, and he knew things were bad.

It looked as though most of his men had been overtaken by the Ming troops, and eight or nine chances out of ten they would not escape.

"Sir, let's go!"

The head of his personal guards urged Xiang Guoqing in a low voice not to wait any longer. Xiang Guoqing sighed, gave a slight nod, and was about to spur his horse out of the city.

But just as the whip came down, from both sides outside the city gate — which a moment ago had been completely empty — a great crowd of black-clad Ming soldiers appeared from nowhere.

The sudden appearance of the Ming troops startled Xiang Guoqing so badly that he reined in his mount at once. The Ming troops came on with overwhelming force, and as he watched them about to seal off the city gate, Xiang Guoqing instinctively spurred his horse forward: "Run! Run!"

The personal guards needed no reminder from their company captain; they too knew they had to flee at once. Those black-clad Ming troops far outnumbered them, and if they did not charge out before the enemy sealed the gate, they would never get out of the city again.

Frustrated. I tried hard to write a ten-thousand-character update, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't manage it.

Will five thousand characters do? I talked with my editor, and it may be arranged to go on sale Friday.

Sigh. This book, up to now, has never had its numbers inflated, so it has never been able to get good recommendations from the site on the strength of fake numbers, and as a result the collection count is very poor.

Of course, maybe I just haven't written well enough to attract readers' eyes or keep them.

Poor is poor. If the numbers really were good, it would inevitably be reported like "The Wicked Slave" and "The Great Ming Wolf Cavalry," written past a million characters and then forcibly banned, all that effort poured down the drain.

I am Han. I only write novels that belong to the Han people.

Whatever ideas I express in my novels, however ruthless and cold the depiction, I always place the interests of the Han people above all else. Han supremacy is the driving force and the thought behind my writing.

No matter what blows I suffer, I will not change this. Otherwise, I could just go write buyout fiction for other sites set before the Ming-Qing or Yuan periods, avoiding ethnic issues entirely — that would certainly bring in seven or eight thousand yuan a month.

That income, in my hometown, would absolutely let my whole family live without worry. It's a pity: as long as I don't starve to death, I'm stubborn to the core.

You won't let me write Han novels, so I insist on writing them.

I'll grind it out slowly. Persistence always brings rewards. As long as Han'er Bu Wei Nu isn't forcibly banned, I will keep writing until it is finished, to make up for the regrets of "The Wicked Slave" and "The Great Ming Wolf Cavalry."

Going on sale isn't a bad thing for me either. Few collections is few; no matter how few, I think there will always be readers willing to subscribe to my work.

At least then I'll have some income. Otherwise, after writing for so long with no income apart from readers' tips, it's disheartening to think about (mainly my wife is disheartened — she often scolds me 0.0).

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