Chapter 387: Vanguard

ps: Today is the last day of the month. Everyone, check if you have any overlooked monthly tickets — don't let them go to waste, please cast them for Late Ming. Welcome to read 【this article comes from】 Thank you.

Over the next two days, Chen Xin made the rounds with every military commander he could find, especially over at Ma Xianglin's side. He pounded his chest and promised to get the Liaodong Heroes' Saga produced as soon as possible, and no matter how far away, he would have someone deliver the book to Ma Xianglin's hands, leaving a loose end for future dealings. Ma Xianglin's impression of Chen Xin was excellent — reliable in battle, no bureaucratic airs, generous when distributing spoils and military merits, and he even helped those fallen heroes publish a book. In every meeting, he stood on Chen Xin's side. Chen Xin also requested Ma Xianglin to provide ten Shizhu soldiers as instructors, on the grounds of training mountain troops for combat in Liaonan. In reality, Dengzhou had many mountain folk; Chen Xin was merely using these ten men to strengthen the sense of closeness between the two sides.

Among others he met was Deng Ke. The one Chen Xin most wished to see, Cao Wenzhao, never came. That heavy blow from Dengzhou Garrison had scared the roving bandits out of their wits. Many bands fled back into Shanxi and were now fighting Mobile Corps Commander actions against government troops in Zezhou. Unless utterly desperate, they had no intention of heading toward Henan for the time being. That night of slaughter was etched into the bones of many.

Chen Xin's reputation was slightly better than Cao Wenzhao's, because he did not kill those refugees who surrendered. Only those identified as the most vicious offenders were shot by firing squad; even some mounted bandits were released. As for the ordinary refugees, he gave them two meals and then let them leave on their own. These people remembered his kindness, and even the nickname they gave him was relatively gentle. Because of the Dengzhou Garrison's red uniforms, Chen Xin earned the nickname Red Yama. After that battle, no large band of roving bandits ever again approached the Dengzhou Garrison's encampment.

Song Wenxian acted as intermediary and finally settled the matter of presenting the captives. Xuan Mo gave them two thousand dan of grain. Lu Zhi yielded Cui Shanhu to Xuan Mo, and the two sides jointly escorted the Purple Gold Beam to Jingshi. Chen Xin wrote a private letter to Liang Tingdong, mentioning that Jinzhou might come under attack. The Later Jin might come with their entire force, and he hoped the Ministry of War would permit him to return to Dengzhou. He made no mention of military equipment, horses, or other supplies.

The night raid on the Purple Gold Beam not only struck terror into the roving bandits but also drew the sidelong glances of other Ming army units. A small number of government troops wished to come and join him, but the Dengzhou Garrison only accepted the Night Scouts among them. Some local men from Henan also came to enlist, many of them having had their homes destroyed by the roving bandits. After screening, the Dengzhou Garrison also accepted over a hundred of them and sent them ahead to Linxian.

During this period, the various government forces entered Huaiqing Prefecture to pursue and exterminate the roving bandits. Xuan Mo could not move the Dengzhou Garrison, so he led only the other troops in pursuit. Spurred by Dengzhou's great victory, they assumed the roving bandits could not withstand a single blow and practically took themselves for the Dengzhou Garrison. They advanced triumphantly all the way, looting everywhere in the countryside.

The Dengzhou Garrison troops did not go out on the attack. Their reason was that the Purple Gold Beam was in their camp, and the main army had to remain on guard to prevent a raid on the camp. The screened captives were sent in batches to Linxian. After on-the-spot investigation, Chen Xin found that Huixian had no basis for military farming. Nearly half the land in Weihui Prefecture belonged to various Henan princes.

The algorithm for princely fiefs was complex. The figures truly made Chen Xin click his tongue. Prince Lu's legal estate was forty thousand qing — that is, two million mu. Prince Fu's was twenty thousand qing. However, these lands were scattered across three provinces, mainly Henan and Huguang. For instance, Prince Lu's forty thousand qing of land was what remained from the former Prince Jing, which the Wanli Emperor had given wholesale to Prince Lu. In practice, it was not a direct grant of land, but the produce of the land. Every year, the Huguang Provincial Administration Commission had to deliver payment to Prince Lu's palace, a matter that led to wrangling every single year. The Provincial Administration Commission was not such an honest and submissive entity either. Prince Fu had once sent his own men to measure the land and ended up in a fight with the locals.

As for the actual fields in Weihui itself, Prince Lu, Prince Fu, and others seized them by various means. Their methods were more direct than Chen Xin's. Surreptitious donations and occupying idle fields were considered gentle; outright forcible seizures were not few, and the local officials dared not interfere at all.

Chen Xin could not compare with them, nor could he afford to provoke them for the time being — not because the princes were powerful, but because they represented imperial authority. Coming into conflict with them was extremely unwise and could easily give the Emperor unpleasant associations.

By the eleventh day of the seventh month, the careless government troops finally met a head-on blow. Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, and Luo Rucai combined their forces and routed the rash Henan "Mao" troops twenty li southwest of Qinghuazhen. Over two thousand Henan soldiers collapsed in a great rout; fewer than five hundred fled back to camp. They looted their own camp in chaos, then fled further east. In the end, Xuan Mo only managed to rally a little over two hundred men. Their rout also triggered chaos among the capital garrison troops. Li Zicheng and the others did not even pursue; the mere appearance of a few scout riders sent the capital garrison fleeing in a panicked rout, losing over a thousand men and horses.

The capital garrison troops sent to Henan had a paper strength of five thousand but an actual strength of only three thousand, and they were filled with idle loafers and beggars. After forcibly pressing men along the way in Huaiqing, they had scraped together five thousand troops. After this incident, they were again left with just over three thousand.

In the end, relying on Zuo Liangyu and Deng Ke, the government forces steadied their footing. But the gap torn open by the government troops was not small. Li Zicheng, the boldest of them all, slipped straight through this gap into Weihui Prefecture. Xuan Mo had no choice but to lead his various units to turn around and pursue. The momentum of the government forces' coordinated advance was lost, and Huaiqing Prefecture once again descended into chaotic fighting.

By the time Chen Xin received news of the government troops' great defeat, he had already packed his traveling gear. This situation suited him best. He had previously released many infantry and mounted bandits under the pretext that it was inadvisable to kill captives. The nature of the roving bandits allowed them to rapidly regroup — if one master wouldn't take them, they'd find another. When one Purple Gold Beam fell, an even stronger bandit chief would emerge.

Liang Tingdong's reply was faster than the Ministry of War's military order. He agreed wholeheartedly to Chen Xin's requests. The Dengzhou Garrison had won successive victories this time, and the capture of the Purple Gold Beam was no less significant than Cao Wenzhao's slaying of Wang Jiayin, with the added bonus of being able to present captives at the palace gates. The overall war situation this year had been very smooth, forming an encirclement of the roving bandits. The Chahar incursion from the northwest to plunder had also been repelled by the frontier troops. His position was relatively secure this year, and he absolutely did not wish for the Later Jin to ruin this good situation now.

What Wang Mafu found strange was that Chen Xin was in no hurry to depart. He marveled that Chen Xin could so disregard the Later Jin. After enduring for several days, he could finally hold back no longer and asked Chen Xin about this matter.

Chen Xin listened with a faint, enigmatic smile. Looking at Wang Mafu, he said, "I, as Regional Commander of Dengzhou Garrison, gained this post by taking Jinzhou. According to our contingency plan, Jinzhou is not a place that must be held at all costs. Heaven knows when Zhu Guobin will abandon Jinzhou. Once Jinzhou falls, a city lost and territory ceded, this official will be impeached. However, I was also dispatched by the Ministry of War to suppress bandits in Zhongzhou. Since I was not in Dengzhou, I have grounds to evade that responsibility. I must wait. Whenever Huang Taiji comes, that is when I shall return to Dengzhou."

"Yesterday, we recorded four entries of troops into the Buzi Fort, totaling two hundred men, and thirty men exiting. Observing the amount of water drawn from the fort and the number of cooking fires, we estimate the total population in the fort is seven hundred, with likely three to four hundred armored soldiers. On the return journey, we encountered Jianzhou bandits patrolling the mountain. We should have killed two of them and wounded two. Our squad lost three dead and one wounded... The wounded man may have been captured by the Jianzhou bandits. He was shot in the leg. The situation was critical; there were over fifty Jianzhou bandits."

In a concealed camp on Jianzi Mountain, Li Tao, his eyes red from lack of sleep, listened to a reconnaissance squad's report. This was the forward operating base of the Special Service Unit near Fuzhou. The camp was hidden in the dense woods halfway up the eastern slope. A hundred paces west of the camp, there was a rock that served as an observation post, with a wide field of vision overlooking the surrounding area. Three squads were permanently stationed here. There were two other camps, closer to the Jinzhou direction. This camp on Jianzi Mountain was the closest to the Jianzhou bandits and also the harshest. No fires could be lit day or night. They rarely got to eat a cooked meal. Generally, they rotated every five days, but Li Tao had already been here for fifteen days.

Hearing that another man had been captured, his expression darkened. Scouting was becoming harder and harder now. The Jianzhou bandits' scout riders had multiplied several times over. Neither the Dengzhou scout riders nor the Special Service Unit could easily cross Jianzi Mountain.

In the previous months, the two sides had traded offense and defense. The Jianzhou bandits had once been pressed back west of the Fuzhou River. The vast area on the eastern bank had become the domain of the Dengzhou Garrison's scout riders. Now, with more and more Jianzhou White Armor soldiers appearing, the Dengzhou Garrison had fallen back several dozen li eastward. They dared not cross Jianzi Mountain during the day. They generally infiltrated the mountains near Fuzhou under cover of night, stayed for a day or two, gathered intelligence, and then returned under cover of night. The timeliness of intelligence was far worse than before. Captures had also occurred multiple times. As long as there was combat, this was unavoidable. The Dengzhou Garrison had also captured eleven Later Jin scouts, who were interrogated and then sent to Lushun.

"Find the main unit's clerk and write up the circumstances. The civil affairs office will look after his family. We can only hope he had the chance to end it himself in time. Otherwise, falling into the Jianzhou bandits' hands means asking for a bitter fate." Li Tao clapped his hands and praised the squad leader. "Be more careful from now on. Are the Tatars patrolling even at night now?"

"Yes. They seem to have discovered the route we use most often and set up an ambush nearby. These Tatars are extremely strong. Not only are they fiercely unafraid of death, their combat skills are also exceptional. They leap and bound through the mountains as if flying, much like our most elite trained squad members."

"Understood. You may withdraw first. Don't take that route again. Today, His Excellency Zhu sent orders: the Special Service Unit's mission is to shift primarily to interdiction. After the Jianzhou bandits pass through, infiltrate the mountains and raid the enemy's supply lines." After Li Tao finished speaking, the squad leader saluted and left.

Li Tao rubbed his face with his hands. Judging from the Jianzhou bandits' troop movements in the previous period, the two Yellow Banners had the most men. That meant the Later Jin would certainly commit their main force. The scouts around Fuzhou were absurdly numerous. There was also unusual activity in the Xiuyan direction; the Bordered Blue Banner had reoccupied Huanggudao Fort. Zhu Guobin's order indicated that the senior officers had basically judged that the Jianzhou bandits would attack Jinzhou and were unwilling to lose more elite troops on reconnaissance. After all, the Dengzhou Garrison's Special Service Unit was not easy to train and had already suffered over forty casualties this year.

By Li Tao's own estimate, there was no doubt the Jianzhou bandits would attack in force, but exactly how many men they would commit was hard to say. Currently, there should be around seven thousand between Fuzhou and Gaizhou. North of Gaizhou was impossible to scout. This involved whether Jinzhou needed to be evacuated. The Later Jin troops had suffered repeated heavy blows. They could not possibly think they could take Jinzhou with just a few thousand men. Once a large cavalry force advanced eastward, there would certainly be even more troops behind them.

So Li Tao also understood Zhu Guobin's order. The official road from Fuzhou to Jinzhou was key. The Special Service Unit and the roving cavalry were to delay the enemy's vanguard on this road, buying time for the evacuation of Jinzhou. Li Tao still felt some pride overall in the Special Service Unit and the cavalry. Their raids on Fuzhou this year had caused a grain shortage there, making it impossible to supply a large army on the march. Otherwise, the Jianzhou bandits would not have needed to transport and stockpile grain first, then intensify the scout war, which in turn allowed Dengzhou to deduce their intentions. Only through contact could there be military intelligence — this was Li Tao's own summary. Through continuous sorties, the Dengzhou Garrison both struck the enemy and obtained necessary intelligence.

"Squad Leader, dust and smoke! Over a thousand cavalry!"

Li Tao turned his head to look. It was a squad leader from the Second Squad, running over from the direction of the observation post. The squad members resting around him all looked up.

Li Tao immediately stood up, habitually grabbed his pack, and swiftly went to meet the squad leader. The two exchanged no words. In a flash, they ran the hundred paces to the observation post. Li Tao raised his telescope. In the lens, yellow dust and smoke rose from the western official road, with black dots flickering within it.

"They've really come. They want to force-march and besiege Jinzhou. Those staff officers already figured you out long ago. Send word to Jinzhou first, then tell the ones behind us to rig up all those nasty little toys for me. Let's see how much farther they can run."

Novel Network