Chapter 446: Relief Force

Although the Transmigrators' offensive plan this time was highly flexible, no matter what, Qian'an County town, as the first checkpoint, had to be taken swiftly.

Only by taking this place as quickly as possible could the Transmigrators calmly handle the situation that followed.

As expected, the Tartars on the city wall lit the wolf-smoke and sent out messengers the first moment they saw the Transmigrators. The troops in Luanzhou and Yongping must already be on the move by now; Qian Tieshan's side needed to end the battle as fast as possible.

Therefore, whether He Tuo came out of the city to give battle or not would not change his impending doom — at most another half an hour, once Qian Tieshan found the Tartars were defending to the death without coming out, he would order a direct assault.

A direct assault posed no technical difficulty whatsoever; neither the drawbridge nor the city gate would hold any effect against the Transmigrators.

The reason they were unwilling to assault directly was that once fighting broke out inside the county town, the scene would easily descend into chaos, fires could easily start in the city and burn their own men, and many enemies would escape.

So luring the defending troops out was the optimal choice, but if the opponent truly defended to the death and refused to come out, then to save time, they would have no choice but to assault directly.

The city gate slowly opened. The moment He Tuo and Da He Ren rode out first, leading three hundred and eighty armored elite soldiers out of the gate tower, the Green Jacket Army opposite actually shouted and fell back several dozen more paces?

He Tuo, clad in iron armor and wearing the classic pointed iron helmet from the queue dramas, burst into loud laughter at this sight — cavalry retreating before the fighting even started was something he was seeing for the first time.

This retreat by the Green Jacket Army perfectly left the Tartar cavalry the optimal offensive space.

Normally, when dealing with Ming Army troops equipped with bird blunderbusses and three-eye blunderbusses, the Tartar cavalry would charge repeatedly at a safe distance, luring the opponent into firing early, and then collapse the enemy formation in one go.

This battle pattern had accompanied the Tartar soldiers all the way from the White Mountains and Black Waters to the foot of Beijing's walls; it worked every time, proved effective on every occasion, and the Ming Army had never let the men down.

And now the performance of this Green Jacket Army crew had once again refreshed the worldview of the Banner's Great Lord. He Tuo's current state of mind was like that tiger in the story "The Donkey of Qian" — he had thoroughly seen through his opponent's weakness and incompetence: "Who gave these stupid dogs the guts to come and provoke us men?"

Reining in his horse at the open ground before the drawbridge, He Tuo cheerfully watched the stupid dogs opposite while waiting for his own cavalry to assemble. Three minutes later, the elite Tartar cavalry had already formed a neat cavalry array behind He Tuo, the two armies' formations facing each other from a distance.

Because of the opponent's earlier retreat, the Tartar cavalry now had space to wheel and maneuver. The two armies were now one hundred and fifty meters apart; the Tartar cavalry could feint a charge to a safe distance of sixty or seventy meters, then play tricks to lure the opponent into firing.

The next moment, He Tuo drew his saber, raised his arm high, and drew three circles counterclockwise in the air. The three hundred-plus Tartar soldiers, drilled together for years, understood perfectly in that instant; together they raised their sabers and began urging their horses forward, and at the same time, every man let out all manner of high-decibel shrieks and howls to heighten the tense atmosphere.

The rumbling, approaching hoofbeats accompanied by the shrieks, plus these Tartar soldiers with their brutish faces and bodies radiating killing intent — the battlefield atmosphere was indeed ratcheted up to an extremely tense pitch.

He Tuo, charging at the very front, had now covered fifty meters. Just as he expected, the soldiers mounted on horseback opposite began raising the bird blunderbusses in their hands.

He Tuo was absolutely certain that when he charged another twenty or thirty meters forward, the opponent would fire — first one or two piss-pants cowards would open fire, and immediately after, everyone would pull their triggers.

For He Tuo, clad in heavy armor, even at a distance of fifty meters, these bullets hitting him would at most sting a bit; they would cause him no real harm.

So he brandished his saber with force, roared furiously, and desperately projected an aura of charging headlong into the fray. But in reality, the reins in his hand were not loosened; the horse beneath him was ready at any moment, under his control, to wheel and shift sideways, cutting across horizontally in front of the opponent's formation.

The next moment, He Tuo charged to seventy meters' distance; eighty meters still remained between the two sides.

At the same time, the musketeers opposite fired two neat volleys in unison.

Seeing the orderly white smoke erupt from the formation, He Tuo bared his teeth in a grin: just as expected, these cowards from the south were far worse than the Border Army, firing at such a distance.

Then he went flying.

He Tuo had been the most eye-catching during the charge, so he was the first to be hit by four shots. After the massive impact force was partially spread by the iron armor, the result was him flying straight off his horse, rear-end first, blood spraying from his mouth.

In that instant, time became incredibly slow. He Tuo flew through the air, first glancing in astonishment at the severed arm flying beside him, and then he saw the jets of flame spraying from the hands of those colorfully-clothed auxiliary soldiers at the corner of the opponent's formation.

Finally, when He Tuo slammed heavily onto the corpses behind him, blood continuously gushing from his mouth, gazing up at the starry sky, a thought passed through his mind: So these people retreated... to keep us from escaping back...

Setting out from Tianjin, after traveling two hundred li across the plain, the upper left corner is Beijing. If you head straight north, passing through a section of the Yan Mountains' remaining veins, you reach Santun Camp.

If you head toward the upper right corner, passing through the plains around the Tangshan area, you will circle around to Luan County below Qian'an.

In the Ming Dynasty, Luan County was called Luanzhou, the city named after the Luan River.

Because Luanzhou blocked the key plain route from the North China Plain to cities like Qian'an and Yongping, its geographical position was relatively important. At the time the Transmigrators launched their attack, over eight hundred Tartar soldiers were gathered within Luanzhou City.

Early this morning, when the Luanzhou city wall saw the wolf-smoke billowing straight up on the northern horizon, Namutai, the Bordered Blue Banner's Jiala Ezhen in charge of defense, immediately began mustering troops and opened the north gate to go reinforce Qian'an.

This Namutai fought bravely and carried out orders without the slightest discount; from another angle, you could say he was a bit single-minded.

Historically, when Sun Chengzong led troops to retake the cities of Zunhua, Qian'an, and Yongping, the Ming and Qing sides had formal engagements, and the only place the Ming Army achieved any gains was at Luanzhou.

At that time, the Tartar soldiers in Luanzhou City, under Namutai's command, had once assumed a posture and defended three cities.

When Amin in Yongping learned that Luanzhou was besieged, he sent the general Baduli with several hundred troops to reinforce, while simultaneously withdrawing the defending troops from places like Qian'an to Yongping.

After the Ming Army drove off Baduli's relief force, they began bombarding Luanzhou City with Red Barbarian cannons. The defending commander Namutai felt he could not hold out after three days and finally abandoned the city, his forces scattering toward Yongping.

During the escape, Namutai's men were intercepted by the Ming Army's Ma Rulong, losing over four hundred of his troops. Then Amin ordered a full-line retreat out of Shanhai Pass, returning to Shenyang, and the Ming Army retook Luanzhou and the other three cities.

That is to say, in the historically so-called "Zun Yong Great Victory," Sun Chengzong mobilized over two hundred thousand King's Rescue Army troops to attack the four cities, only for Amin to calmly withdraw his troops and leave, and even massacred Yongping before he went. In the end, the only actual Tartar heads taken were those four hundred who were scattered and cut down.

In short, Comrade Namutai fought bravely and was straightforward; there was no discount on that point.

Historically, after the great Ming Army attacked, he could still hold the city for three days. So in this timeline with the Transmigrators, upon seeing the wolf-smoke rise from Qian'an, he likewise did not overthink it and immediately mustered half the troops in the city to go out and provide relief.

A cavalry force of four hundred men would not take long to reach Qian'an, because the distance between the two places was only a little over fifty li.

This point in time was exactly when He Tuo was in the gate tower unifying thinking with his subordinates, preparing to go down and fight the Transmigrators.

However, Namutai's relief force was forced to halt just fifteen li out of the city.

The relief force was moving along the official road. At first, everything went smoothly without any obstacles, but as they went on, Namutai suddenly saw the forward unit stop moving. Then, after he urged his horse to the front of the column and parted his men who had crowded into a large circle, he could not help but suck in a breath of cold air.

On the official road before Namutai, someone had at some unknown time set up a circle of chevaux-de-frise using sharpened wooden stakes. This circle of chevaux-de-frise was very crudely made — just some hastily cut tree branches sharpened and stuck into the earth; the color on the branches was still very fresh, definitely not more than one hour old.

With such a shoddily made chevaux-de-frise, any one or two men could casually pull out all the branches, but there was something else strange in the middle of it — a wooden stake half a man's height stood upright, and atop it rested an iron box two chi square.

After seeing this scene, Namutai immediately began looking around in all directions. The issue was not the chevaux-de-frise itself: since someone had set up this strange array on the official road, the intent was to make the horse column halt. So Namutai quickly scanned to see if there was any terrain nearby suitable for an ambush.

The result was nothing at all — within Namutai's line of sight, aside from a patch of woods three hundred meters away, everything else was flat, open ground.

And this patch of woods was very small, not even enough to hide a hundred men, let alone conceal a large force capable of devouring four hundred Manchu Tartar soldiers.

So after looking around once, Namutai focused his attention back to what was in front of him: "Dismantle the chevaux-de-frise."

Someone beside him dismounted upon hearing the order, went up, and with ease, using hands and feet, tossed aside all the sharpened wooden poles that had been carelessly stuck into the earth — things that could not even be called chevaux-de-frise.

"Bring the box over. Do not open it."

Upon hearing this, the subordinate first circled the wooden stake once, and finding no mechanisms, then extended both arms and, under the watchful eyes of the crowd, somewhat laboriously "lifted" this dark green iron box from the stake — there was a handle on the box, just right for lifting.

"Great Niru, there's something inside this box. I reckon it's bricks or stone; it has some weight."

Namutai, seated on his horse, did not reply. Instead, he slightly raised both hands, signaling the subordinate to lift the box higher, and then he began to carefully study the box before him.

The dark green iron box was square and upright, gleaming with an eerie metallic luster. On the side facing Namutai, there were some ghostly talismans painted on with white lacquer, just like the chalk markings warriors painted on their foreheads and faces before setting out for battle.

After examining them carefully, Namutai found that he did not recognize a single one of these painted talismans, including the three large letters "USA" written on it — he could not understand them at all.

Namutai still did not touch this monstrous thing. Instead, he waggled his finger, signaling the subordinate to turn the box around.

On the other side of the crate there were still those ghostly scribbles. Namutai, still on horseback, leaned forward slightly, brought his cheek close to the crate's surface, and stared at the three letters "TNT," frowning as he tried to recall.

The next moment, the crate exploded.

Inside was a full twenty pounds of U. S. military-issue Type 28 TNT explosive.