Chapter 455: All Parties (I)

After discovering Santunying had become a trap, the messenger hiding behind the tree silently bent at the waist, retreated step by step, then rushed downhill at a sprint, ran back to where the horses were tied with cold sweat covering his head, untied the reins, mounted up, and left.

Although the Yan Mountains had few roads suitable for large troop movements, and all were guarded by passes, there were quite a few paths for scout riders, so the messenger soon vanished into the vast mountain range.

In truth, the messenger did not go far out of the way. Since Santunying held only 200 soldiers and lacked the capability to post patrols around its perimeter, the messenger only needed to bypass the stretch of Santunying through the mountains to the north.

After a detour of less than ten li, the messenger emerged from the mountains.

Santunying was only 40 li from Zunhua. The messenger, leading three horses, had no need to spare their strength at all; racing at full speed by starlight, he reached the walls of Zunhua City before midnight.

The two thousand Later Jin troops inside Zunhua City were at that moment locked in a confrontation with the two hundred thousand Ming troops of the Ji Garrison, maintaining a state of round-the-clock alert, so the messenger was quickly able to see the defender of Zunhua City, Aisin Gioro Shuotuo.

Shuotuo, now thirty years old, was tall and brawny, shrewd and capable — exactly the peak age for a military commander.

Shuotuo was a grandson of Nurhaci; his father was the foremost of the Four Great Beile, Nurhaci's second son, Daišan.

Shuotuo was without a doubt among the finest of the Later Jin's third generation. This man had followed his elders in attacking the Ming Dynasty, attacking Menggu, attacking Korea, and attacking the Ningjin Defense Line from the time he came of age — one could say his battle record was thick with merit, and he was enfeoffed as Beile at a young age.

In this defense of Zunhua, Shuotuo served as Amin's deputy commander in charge of the Zunhua forces. The two sides, one in the west and one in the east, were each responsible for one end of the dumbbell.

When, deep in the night, he heard the news that Santunying had been seized and Amin was under enemy attack, he could not help but be greatly startled, almost thinking he had misheard.

What startled Shuotuo was not Amin, but the news about Santunying.

The Later Jin army had already been inside the pass for several months; by any reckoning of time, the King's Rescue troops rushing in from every part of the Ming realm were already far too numerous to count, so it was perfectly normal for some of those troops, rather than wasting away in the Ji Garrison to the west, to launch an attack from the North China Plain to the south and come straight for Amin.

Yet the loss of Santunying struck Shuotuo's mind like a bolt from the blue, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.

With a bang, Shuotuo slammed a fist down; the candlestick on the desk jumped, light and shadow flickered across the walls, and the room wavered between brightness and darkness.

"Someone come! Summon the Niru of the East Gate to see me."

Rising from his official's hat chair, Shuotuo paced ceaselessly about the room, his face utterly grave — the first thing he had to do now was verify whether the news was true or false.

Yet he himself knew that this news was most likely real: Santunying was only 40 li away, a single man sent to check would know at once, there was no way to fake it.

In a moment, when the Niru guarding the East Gate entered, Shuotuo confronted him directly: "Have the scout riders sent eastward a few days ago reported back?"

The Niru looked baffled: "Yesterday and today, no one has yet come."

With a crack, Shuotuo lashed him across the head with his horsewhip: "Why did you not come report this?"

The Niru was beaten senseless, clutching his bleeding forehead with no idea what to say.

Under normal circumstances, it was common for scout riders returning from Amin's side to be delayed by a day or so due to the distance. Although this time had been slightly longer, had it really been serious enough to alarm Shuotuo?

So the Niru was dumbfounded.

"Someone come! Summon Murt."

By now Shuotuo had no time to spare for this fool of a Niru; after waving him out, he hastily summoned his own personal guard Niru, hurriedly gave him face-to-face instructions, and ordered him to take men to Santunying and investigate.

After sending Murt off, Shuotuo questioned the messenger in fine detail once more, and after this, he began pacing back and forth in the room like a caged beast.

Shuotuo was not going to pin his hopes on the messenger lying, so as far as he was concerned, the situation was now extremely perilous.

Compared to the loss of Santunying, Amin's side was already of no consequence — Amin could leave at any time, but his own, Shuotuo's, retreat route had been cut off!

The reason Santunying was a strategic location was precisely because Xifengkou lay to its north; the army could march north all the way along the Luan River Valley, solving the problem of watering horses along the route, then exit the pass wall, head east, and slip back out through the Liaoxi Corridor to return home.

Now that someone had unknowingly stabbed them in the back, the situation for Shuotuo's forces was extremely dire: not only were they caught in a pincer attack from front and rear, but even if they wanted to leave, the entire series of checkpoints they had breached when entering the pass lay east of Santunying — without retaking Santunying, how could they leave?

Or should they steel themselves and enter the mountains directly from north of Zunhua?

"Not feasible." Shuotuo thought to this point and shook his head wordlessly.

The Changcheng passes north of Zunhua were all in Ming hands; although these passes lacked sufficient defensive strength, he must not forget that the troops he now had in hand were a mere two thousand homeless wretches, no longer the starved, red-eyed Eight Banners Army that had entered the pass before.

The enemy would only need to block them briefly, and that would be enough.

Because once the Zunhua troops abandoned the city and sortied, the Ji Garrison Ming troops, who had been locked in tense confrontation for over a month, would surely pursue and harry them from behind... by then, with sheer mountains and formidable passes ahead and countless pursuers behind, his two thousand men would not even be able to deploy a cavalry formation amid the towering peaks and ridges of the Yan Mountains, and total annihilation would be inevitable.

"We still have to go through Santunying!"

In that moment, Shuotuo was determined.

The reason driving his determination was simple: the enemy had few men.

According to the messenger's testimony, Santunying had likely been taken by a small unit in a surprise attack; the enemy force was insufficient, with not even sentries posted around the city perimeter.

Shuotuo himself agreed with this assessment: it was impossible for a large body of troops to slip past Zunhua and the three cities on Amin's side without being detected, so Santunying must have been taken by a small elite force in a raid — perhaps there was a hidden tunnel beneath the city that Ming troops familiar with the terrain had exploited.

In that case, Shuotuo's forces had a chance to retake Santunying and then leave.

Furthermore, since the enemy lacked numbers, if it truly came down to it, the main force could also force its way past Santunying, link up with Amin's troops to the east of the corridor, and then together flee through Lengkou Pass, Baiyangyu, and other passes.

Once his mind was made up, Shuotuo began anxiously awaiting word from the scouts.

Just as dawn was breaking, Murt, his face covered in blood, came galloping back with definite ill tidings: Santunying had been occupied.

When their party of cavalry, torches raised, had ridden through the night to the walls of Santunying and sent men to knock at the gate, the people on the battlements, seeing they could no longer keep up the pretense, fired a volley of repeating crossbows down at them, killing several Banner Troops; what was more, Murt's own mount was shot down, throwing him and bloodying his face.

Hearing this, Shuotuo hesitated no longer; he immediately rose to his feet and bellowed: "Pass down my command! The entire army is to make ready for an hour. After that, leave one Niru to defend Zunhua to the death; the rest will follow me to take Santun Camp!"

With Shuotuo's single order, the two thousand troops inside Zunhua City began preparations for the whole army to leave the city, seething like a boiling pot.

At exactly six-thirty in the morning, Shuotuo led the entire army out of Zunhua's East Gate and headed straight for Santunying, 40 li away.

At the very moment Shuotuo opened the gates, plumes of thick black smoke rose from the forested hills to both the north and south of Zunhua.

As a salient, Zunhua City had for this period of time been kept under watch by the Ming troops of the Ji Garrison in a semi-encirclement formation.

Not only were there observation posts on the hills north and south of Zunhua, but even the plains to Zunhua's west were ordinarily a zone where Ming troops and Tatar riders infiltrated against each other.

So when the great force of two thousand men and over four thousand horses rolled out in a torrent, every observation post and scout around Zunhua sent out signals, notifying the Ji Garrison's direction: Zunhua had a development.

Comrade Ma Shilong — intimate comrade of Sun Chengzong, Military Commissioner, recipient of the Imperial Sword, Regional Commander of the various King's Rescue Armies, and Right Chief Commissioner — was the first to learn of Shuotuo's escape, right there in the garrison city that later generations would call the seat of Jixian.

Ma Shilong was a hereditary military officer of Ningxia Guard and a Hui. He had previously passed the military examination and held posts including Mobile Corps Commander of Xuanfu and Regional Commander of Santunying.

At the time, Grand Secretary and Minister of War Sun Chengzong had been dispatched to Liaodong and recommended Ma Shilong to accompany him, serving as Shanhai Pass General and assisting in the defense of Liaodong; later, for accumulated merit, he was given the additional title of Right Chief Commissioner.

In 1625, while defending Liaodong, Ma Shilong mistakenly trusted the words of the surrendered officer Liu Boqiang and sent Lu Zhijia and Li Chengxian to raid Yaozhou; the two fell into a trap and died, with over four hundred men lost.

This incident gave the Nine Thousand Years Wei Zhongxian, who was then locked in fierce struggle with the Donglin Party, a huge handle to exploit, and so both Sun Chengzong and Ma Shilong were sent packing back to their old homes by the Nine Thousand Years to live off their old rice.

Four years later, during the Jisi Incident, the Later Jin army invaded the Capital Region; in his panic and desperation, Chongzhen recalled this pair — Old Sun, who had once overseen Jizhou and Liaodong, and Ningxia's Ma Hui, who had defended Shanhai Pass.

And so the two were once more called into service. Sun Chengzong was given the titles of Grand Secretary and Minister of War, with supreme command of the King's Rescue forces. Ma Shilong assumed the post of Military Commissioner, left vacant by the fallen Man Gui, received the Imperial Sword, and was appointed Chief Steward of the Beijing Grand Army.

This pair, one civil and one military, worked together with tacit understanding. Now one guarded the throat of the Ji Garrison, the other held Shanhai Pass, jointly commanding all the King's Rescue troops and the Shanhai Pass standing army.

Historically, Sun Chengzong, who held Shanhai Pass, would finish coordinating with Ma Shilong of the Ji Garrison in early May, then both sides would launch troops simultaneously, driving all the Later Jin troops from Zunhua and Yongping. Ma Shilong even bagged over four hundred heads.

But in this timeline, because the Transmigrators had intervened, Ma Shilong now faced an unexpected situation: Shuotuo had run?

Not long after the wolf-smoke rose, the astonished Ma Jinglüe received a steady stream of scout reports: Shuotuo really had run!

By this point, Ma Shilong, who had dealt with the Tartars for many years, was already half believing and half doubting.

Yes, half believing and half doubting. At this moment, all the many Ming generals around Ma Shilong, including the cannibal Zu Dashou, were in the same state of half belief and half doubt — could it be that Shuotuo was digging a pit for everyone? A feigned retreat and sudden strike?

There was no helping it; these past few years they had truly been scared witless by the Tartars, so everyone had to proceed with caution.

Thus, after thorough discussion with his subordinates and careful deliberation, Ma Jinglüe made the following prudent choice: first dispatch five thousand infantry to probe and attack Zunhua City, and simultaneously send five hundred cavalry to round Zunhua, tailing behind Shuotuo to gauge the wind direction before acting.