Chapter 153: The Old Fox

That day, Wu Zimian dispatched his retainers, who together with Zhu Guobin and Cao Wenzhao pursued and attacked the Later Jin troops all the way. The two sides fought and skirmished along the route. Commanders like Amin cared only about the loot they had seized and fled first with their own Bordered Blue Banner main force. The Later Jin troops' retreat was chaotic, their organization completely broken. Large groups of over a hundred men, small groups of thirty or forty — what began as a retreat turned into a complete rout. They abandoned all their oxcarts and horse carts, and also cast aside many women and gold and silver, which the Ming army seized, causing the Ming army to also lose some of its formation. After entering the mountains, the roads gradually narrowed. Zhu Guobin and the others, fearing an ambush, could only slow their pace.

Two days later, Amin took the Later Jin troops from Qian'an and Yongping and exited the pass through Lengkou. In the end, only Wendeng Battalion and Cao Wenzhao with a small force pursued them as far as Lengkou. In this pursuit, they took a total of over two hundred and thirty heads and seized a considerable amount of Later Jin soldiers' property. The three parties divided the heads equally and returned to Yongping to report. By this time, Wendeng Battalion's infantry had already reached Yongping and were burying the commoners' corpses outside the west gate.

On the twelfth, it rained in Yongping. In past years, this would have been a cause for universal celebration, but this year, no one had the heart to celebrate.

An open area outside the west gate was filled with the corpses of Yongping's commoners. After the rain stopped in the afternoon, Wendeng Battalion soldiers continued digging pits for burial. Many commoners from the vicinity of Yongping also came to help, and in passing searched for their own relatives and friends from the city. The sound of weeping was everywhere.

Chen Ying and Zhou Shao'er stood on the south side, holding blade and spear, coldly watching a group of Guanning Army soldiers opposite them, preventing them from coming over to cut the heads off those commoner corpses. Most of Yongping's commoners had been forced by the Jianzhou Bandits to shave their heads; to the Guanning Army, they were military merit.

The combat group Chen Ying and Zhou Shao'er belonged to had been temporarily reorganized. Zhou Shao'er was now the leader of this combat group. Their original killer squad had suffered heavy casualties in the north gate blocking action; only three were still able to fight — Chen Ying, him, and that horse-slaying blade-and-staff man. Even Zhong Laosi had been wounded, neither light nor serious, and was still recuperating in Luanzhou. This time, their killer squad had performed bravely, and most would likely be promoted after returning.

The others beside them had all been transferred in from the First Company Headquarters as replacements. Under the guidance of the training officer, they likewise held the utmost contempt for the Guanning Army, which had done nothing outside the city, and they utterly detested the Guanning Army's practice of cutting heads from commoner corpses. Chen Xin required all Wendeng Battalion soldiers to help collect and bury the remains. The corpses filling the city filled the Wendeng Battalion soldiers with righteous indignation. After this imperial relief expedition, the Jianzhou Bandits' image of invincibility had been thoroughly shattered. The only impression they left on the Wendeng Battalion soldiers was one of brutality and savagery. The frustrating thing was that they now could find no Jianzhou Bandits to kill, and on two feet they could not catch up with the fleeing Jianzhou cavalry.

Zhou Shao'er looked at that group of Guanning Army men and said to Chen Ying, "These scoundrels never give up their wicked schemes. They show no zeal for killing Tatars, but they're mighty eager to scramble for merit."

Chen Ying was not a talkative person by nature, but having fought through life and death together with Zhou Shao'er, they were old comrades-in-arms, and these were the only familiar faces around him. He gradually began to speak more in front of Zhou Shao'er. Hearing this, he said in a deep voice, "Liaozhen is just like this. Only after this imperial relief expedition did I realize there's no hope of relying on them to fight the Tatars. If Lord Chen were made Regional Commander, I'd actually believe we could pacify Liao within five years."

Zhou Shao'er said, "I reckon it wouldn't even take five years."

Chen Ying also nodded and cursed, "Lord Chen is a military officer; he can't be Regional Commander. But I think Lord Chen understands everything; everything he says makes sense. Anyway, I listen to him. If he told me to fight the Guanning Army, I'd fight them too."

Zhou Shao'er spat and said, "Even the Tatars have suffered setbacks at our hands. Looking at the Guanning Army's state, even if you lent them the guts, they wouldn't dare provoke our Wendeng Battalion. I hear the Tatars have all left the passes. I'm afraid there won't be much fighting left this year. Once we're back in Wendeng this time, I'm going to find myself a wife first. Last time the training officer came and told us to write final letters, I didn't even know who to write to. My whole family's down to just me. Better leave an heir soon. What plans do you have?"

Chen Ying did not speak. Zhou Shao'er went on urging him, "You've already killed eight Tatars. Your vengeance is complete. It's time to leave an heir for your family."...

Chen Ying thought for a moment and said, "True enough, but I don't know anyone in the fortified village, and I don't know who to ask to arrange a match..."

"Zhong Laosi knows a lot of people. Nowadays, matchmakers come looking on their own. Our Wendeng Battalion is in high demand. Just now when the quartermaster came, I asked around — the combat reward this time is at least ten taels or more, plus cotton cloth. If you really fancy someone, go find that new training officer, Zhao Xuan, and ask him to speak for you. He's a smooth talker; it'll definitely work." Chen Ying agreed. After he had killed enough to reach seven, it was as if he had suddenly lost his purpose, even feeling a bit unsure of what to do in the future. Once Zhou Shao'er brought it up, he too felt he ought to leave an heir, and at last he had a near-term goal.

Over on the other side, the Guanning Army watched for a while. Seeing Wendeng Battalion's firm stance, they retreated resentfully. Zhou Shao'er stood down from alert. The firearms squad extinguished their match cords. The soldiers set their packs on the ground and sat down to rest.

Zhou Shao'er took out a flatbread and bit into it, then remembered that in ordinary days, it was always that simple-minded man from the Guandi Temple who handed them out. Now that Guandi Temple man had been reduced to a pile of ashes, stored inside an iron box. As if something were stuck in his throat, he put the flatbread away and wandered idly around the combat group. When he looked toward the burial site, he saw Liu Minyou standing before a fresh pit dug a few days earlier.

Zhou Shao'er nudged Chen Ying, who was still standing beside him, and said, "Mr. Liu has come again."

Chen Ying, gnawing on his flatbread, said indistinctly, "Come to see that mother and son again. Lord Chen and Mr. Liu are both good men. When I'm off duty later, I'll go buy some incense, candles, and paper money too, and offer incense for these commoners."

Zhou Shao'er snorted and said, "Where would you buy them? Everyone in the city is dead."

Chen Ying pointed in another direction. Zhou Shao'er turned his head to look. A group of peddlers was already hawking incense, candles, and paper money over there. Some residents from the vicinity of Yongping were buying them and lighting them beside some of the large pits, beginning their mourning rites.

Zhou Shao'er stared blankly for a moment before saying, "Damn, they really know how to do business. Hey, I'll go buy some later too."

Because the main force of the Later Jin army had withdrawn, both Qian'an and Zunhua were recaptured in succession. Before Amin fled Yongping, he dispatched couriers to notify Zunhua to retreat. When Li Sizhong and the others in Zunhua received the order, the Ming army was already attacking the city. These officers were relatively calm; unlike Amin, they did not think only of saving themselves. They restrained their troops and slowly exited the city, withdrawing in good order and giving the Ming army no chance to pursue and attack.

Thus ended the Four Cities Campaign of the third year of Chongzhen. When news of the recapture of the four cities reached Jingshi, the entire capital was in uproar, celebrating everywhere. The dark cloud hanging over their heads had finally been driven away.

The Later Jin's clumsy disposition inside the passes had put them at an absolute disadvantage from the very start. They divided their forces to defend separate cities and were weak everywhere. Within their salient, there was also a huge nail of a holdout like Santun Camp. Their intelligence was practically blind. Right up until the Ming army launched

its attack on Luanzhou, Amin still thought it was merely a harassment and sent only three hundred men to relieve Luanzhou. They encountered Ming blocking forces en route and were routed on the spot. Had the Ming army's organization not also encountered problems, they very likely would have been encircled and annihilated inside the passes.

When Amin withdrew from Qian'an, he also massacred the city. Because time was pressing and they could not search carefully, nearly thirty percent of the Han commoners survived. After he reached Yongping, the Later Jin forces were more numerous, and with the bondservants also participating in the Yongping massacre, only about ten percent of Yongping's Han commoners survived. Even the local officials Huang Taiji had appointed, such as Prefect Bai Yangcui, were all slaughtered by Amin in one fell swoop.

In Luanzhou, of over fourteen hundred Later Jin soldiers and over a thousand bondservants, only a little over two hundred escaped. Wendeng Battalion was the first to enter the city; their losses were the heaviest, but their gains were also the greatest. In total, they took seven hundred and twenty heads of true barbarians and over two hundred bondservants, and also captured twenty-three true barbarians and over a hundred bondservants alive. The remaining Later Jin soldiers were scattered throughout the city and killed by the other various Ming forces; even the righteous commoners of Luanzhou obtained over a hundred heads.

The Jianzhou Bandits' losses in the other three cities were very small. Combined with what Zhu Guobin and the others gained in pursuit, the total losses across the three cities were only a little over four hundred men....

He Kegang had not managed to get any heads in Yongping, so he set his mind on the corpses of the Han commoners after the massacre. All of them had shaven heads and thus held the possibility of being passed off as something else. He sent men to approach Chen Xin to negotiate a purchase. Although Chen Xin could not stop the killing of innocents to claim merit, he deliberately

created friction with the Guanning Army. No matter what He Kegang came to propose, no matter how much silver he offered, Chen Xin just laughed and brushed him off, his attitude extremely courteous, but he never handed over the commoner corpses he had collected for the Guanning Army to cut heads from, nor did he sell any true barbarian heads to He

Kegang.

Wu Zimian had several dozen true barbarian heads from pursuing the Jianzhou Bandits, plus those Chen Xin had shared, totaling over one hundred and twenty. He had also quietly cut heads from some corpses, but he was even less well-disposed toward the Guanning Army. Now,

seeing Chen Xin act this way, he was quite straightforward about it. He himself did not ask Chen Xin for those corpses either, and he openly declared that if the Ministry of War recognized the Guanning Army's heads, he would file an appeal with the Emperor and request the Chief Surveillance Bureau and the supervising secretaries of the Office of Scrutiny for War to re-examine them. This made relations between the two sides extremely tense.

The two sides faced off multiple times inside the city. The Guanning Army was quite wary of Wendeng Battalion and did not dare to come up and PK them; they could only gnash their teeth in hatred behind Chen Xin's and Wu Zimian's backs.

Not only did the Guanning Army fail to take any true barbarian heads, they were also slow

to enter the city. Wu Zimian entered first and raised his Regional Commander's red banner at the west gate. Both men claimed that their own side had entered the city first and each reported the merit up their respective chains of command. This dispute traveled all the way up, turning into a conflict between the Imperial Relief Army and Liaozhen, with Ma Shilong and Zu Dashou

respectively representing the two sides, and it was fought all the way before Sun Chengzong. Chen Xin also wrote a field report, attesting that Wu Zimian had entered the city first, and he protected as witnesses those commoners they had first encountered outside the west gate. His relations with the Guanning Army grew even

worse.

But the one with the biggest headache was still Cao Wenzhao. He was a Guanning man, yet he had fought alongside the Imperial Relief Army. He could only make the excuse that he had gone directly to pursue the Jianzhou Bandits and had not seen who entered the city first. In the end, he pleased neither side. The Imperial Relief Army regarded him as an outsider, and within the Guanning Army, he was further isolated.

Hu Fuhong was the Army Supervisor for the Imperial Relief Army and stood on Ma Shilong's side. Zhang Fengyi was the Viceroy of Ji-Liao; he had a share in the Guanning Army's military merits and firmly supported Zu Dashou. Sun Chengzong was unable to mediate the dispute, and so the case continued upward to the Ministry of War. Liang Tingdong was also at a loss and personally traveled to Luanzhou to inspect, preparing to smooth things over with a muddled compromise.

When Chongzhen heard that the four cities had been recaptured, he sent Wen Tiren to convey his appreciation and to bring thirty thousand taels of silver from the inner treasury. At the end of the fifth month, these two men arrived together in Yongping.