Chapter 193: Advance Like a Walnut Thicket, Array Like a Sea of Waves (8k Chapter

On the grasslands by the shores of Jining Lake, overnight, a cattle and sheep pasture had become the hunting ground of over a hundred thousand Mongol warriors.

The autumn grass, withered and yellow, drooped under the early morning frost. Across the vast plain, two great armies faced off east and west, silent as mountains.

To the east was the Chahar tribe, come from afar by the Laoha River.

Ligdan Khan's great banner snapped and thrashed in the wind, its jet-black field bearing a gold-traced wolf totem that seemed poised to devour.

To the west was the allied force of the Mongol Right Wing, their banners—the Tumed Prince of Shunyi, Haracin Khan Ahai, Buyan Huang Taiji, and others—clustered together, each a different color and totem.

The formations on both sides were identical: the great Fish Scale Array handed down from Genghis Khan.

The center held steady in the rear, the left and right wings thrust forward like unsheathed talons, and the vanguard pressed to the very front, giving the entire formation a heavy, convex structure.

(Image attached, from the paper "The Mongol Horse and the Art of Ancient Mongol Cavalry Warfare." Of course, actual combat had many variations—more on that when the chance arises later.)

Beyond the great formation, scattered like swarming bees, were the tolagachi—these screening cavalrymen galloped back and forth, vigilantly watching every movement around them.

And further out still was the battlefield of the algachi, the scouts.

Within a radius of several dozen li, these men moved in squads of five, driving each other off, killing each other.

In the most primal way, they contested for the battlefield's vision, probing each other's strength and courage.

In the northwest corner of the battlefield, an algachi squad under the Prince of Shunyi and a Chahar squad spotted each other almost at the same instant.

On the vast grassland, the third squad was still several li away.

Without the slightest hesitation, the two tanmachi officers—two Mongol men who had never met—reacted in perfect mirror image.

"Thrum—"

Bowstrings vibrated as each side loosed a whistling arrow, a declaration of challenge.

Then, at the same moment, they wheeled their horses around, spurred their mounts, and began a head-on charge.

The riders crouched low, pressing tight against their horses' backs. Their mounts, sensing their masters' will to fight, began to pick up speed step by step.

Walk, trot, canter, full gallop!

The warhorses panted heavily, white plumes of hot breath jetting from their nostrils. Their inborn competitive fire drove them to sprint almost to the limits of their strength.

The hoofbeats went from sparse to dense, finally merging into a continuous roll so rapid that only two hoof-falls could be heard.

In mere moments, both sides had accelerated to a terrifying speed.

The distance closed rapidly.

Both sides once more drew bows and nocked arrows. The fastest loosed two shafts; the slowest barely got off one before they were forced to draw their curved blades and grip them tight.

Yet at such breakneck speed, with adrenaline surging and nerves stretched taut, the arrows' accuracy was greatly diminished.

In this small skirmish, no one was struck by an arrow, and no one fell from his horse.

It was still five against five!

Both sides were still accelerating! Still charging head-on!

The scent of death rushed at their faces.

The leader of the Prince of Shunyi's squad, a young Tumed warrior, felt his heart pound wildly; his palms were already slick with sweat.

Without even realizing it, he nudged his horse's head to the left.

It was an almost instinctive reaction—by doing so, the whole squad could slice diagonally past the enemy's right flank, attacking with their dominant right hands.

That way, as the two sides swept past each other, even if they traded casualties, they would not both be smashed into pulp.

Yet in cavalry combat, courage is the sharpest weapon.

To turn your horse's head first is to expose the cowardice in your own heart.

Across the field, a savage grin split the face of the Chahar squad leader.

He had seen through his opponent's fear.

He did not alter course at all—still like an arrow loosed from the string, he charged straight at the Prince of Shunyi's squad!

The wolves on the steppe never retreat because of the enemy's numbers; they advance only at the glance of the alpha.

Their foe's cowardice emboldened this squad immensely. One after another, every man followed his leader closely and swept in for the kill.

It all happened in a flash of lightning.

Fear swelled rapidly in the hearts of the five cavalrymen of the Prince of Shunyi's squad.

A head-on charge is a game for the brave.

Once two cavalry squads racing at high speed collided, neither side had any chance of survival.

Galloping warhorses and fragile bodies of flesh and blood would grind everything to splinters and scatter them across this withered yellow grass.

Almost as if by unspoken agreement, the entire Prince of Shunyi's squad wrenched their horses' heads even more sharply, wheeling away to the left in a desperate, ragged turn.

They had lost their nerve!

The outcome was decided!

The Chahar riders did not miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance. With a bestial howl, they seamlessly followed through, like a pack of wolves sinking their fangs into the left rear of the Prince of Shunyi's squad.

A one-sided slaughter began.

Every man in the Chahar squad swung his weapon with his right hand, striking with ease at the enemy's utterly undefended left side.

Blades hacked! Maces smashed!

In an instant, one Tumed cavalryman lagging at the very rear was struck in the back by a heavy mace. With a scream, he tumbled from his horse.

However, cutting so hard into the enemy's left rear had, after all, cost the Chahar squad even more speed.

The four remaining Tumed cavalrymen lashed their horses desperately and gradually pulled beyond the reach of blade and mace.

"Bah! A bunch of cowards!"

The Chahar squad leader spat in contempt. He gave no order to pursue, for in the distance, a new squad of algachi had already appeared in his field of vision.

He dismounted, planted his feet, held his breath and focused, then loosed a few arrows at the fleeing backs.

His luck was good—one of the arrows struck a warhorse in the hindquarters.

Pity — the horse had been wounded, and instead of slowing, it grew wilder, its speed increasing as it charged, screaming, to the very front.

Well, bad luck.

The Chahar squad leader paid it no mind. He swung back into the saddle and led his men back to the original battlefield.

The Tumed cavalryman had been knocked from his horse at high speed; the blunt-force and blade wounds he suffered were minor things.

But his lower leg had twisted into a grotesque shape, the stark white jagged ends of bone jutting out.

He struggled to rise, but it was utterly futile.

Seeing the squad leader approach, a desperate will to live blazed in his eyes. Bloody froth bubbled from the corner of his mouth as he struggled to plead: "Spare… spare me… I surrender… I'm willing to surrender… For the Buddha's sake, for the sake of Eternal Heaven!"

The squad leader looked down at him, then glanced at the blood bubbles ceaselessly welling from the corner of his mouth, and shook his head.

"Your heart and lungs are damaged. You won't live long."

The squad leader's tone was utterly calm, as if stating the simplest of facts.

As he spoke, he dismounted.

Ignoring the cavalryman's futile pleas entirely, he shoved him onto his back with a foot, drew his curved blade in a reverse grip, laid it across the man's neck, and then pressed down hard.

A head was easily ground off, and blood instantly dyed the grass crimson.

"Amitabha, may you be reborn in the Pure Land." The squad leader chanted in a low voice, then grabbed the queue on the severed head and tied it to the side of his saddle.

"Move out! Back to camp to rest and refit! With this head, our shift's work is done!"

"Ha ha ha! Let's go, let's go!"

This scout squad let out a burst of wild laughter and, clustering around their officer, galloped back toward the main camp to the east.

Across the entire shore of Jining Lake, a battlefield over ten li wide, hundreds of such scouting squads took turns entering the fray, pairing off to fight.

Sometimes, the Chahar men won.

Sometimes, the warriors of the Mongol Right Wing proved the better.

But more often than not, the two sides did not charge and clash at all, and suffered no casualties whatsoever.

Both sides would simply loose a few arrows in the gallop, carry out some driving and counter-driving around a certain area, and then return to their own lines to change horses.

Yet even such empty running was a part of the contest for control of the battlefield.

Every low, gentle slope, every unremarkable puddle, might not decide the overall outcome for tens of thousands of troops, but it determined life and death for these squads of scouts.

Of course, terrain, tactics, and skill combined were still far less important than one single factor: courage.

Because, in cavalry warfare, all the factors above were, in a sense, nothing more than means to bolster courage.

The more one believed one could win, the more one saw victory approaching, the more likely one was to win in the end.

There was no better means of bolstering courage than the prospect of victory.

And so, control of the battlefield's vision — or rather, the initiative on the battlefield — was, through these countless tiny victories and defeats, slowly slipping from the Mongol Right Wing coalition toward the Chahar side.

Within the Mongol Right Wing lines, on a slightly elevated gentle slope, stood a great banner painted with a goshawk.

Beneath the banner, the Tumed Prince of Shunyi, Boshetu; the Kharchin Khan, A Hai; Buyan Taiji; and the other chieftains of the Right Wing tribes all wore ashen faces.

Their gazes were fixed on the vast, chaotic battlefield before them.

"We have no choice but to commit our main force." Khan A Hai's voice was hoarse and heavy. "If this drags on, in less than a shichen, Ligdan Khan's scouts will be pushing right up to our main formation!"

"If we let their scouts circle around to our rear, this battle will be even harder to fight." Buyan Taiji nodded in agreement. "On the Kharchin side, I will lead the troops in a charge. As long as we can bloody him today, this battle may yet be drawn out a while longer. He has come from afar; the longer it drags on, the worse it is for him."

The Prince of Shunyi, Boshetu, drew a deep breath of the icy air and nodded.

He was about to order his trusted aide, Obuyan Taiji, to take the field, when out of the corner of his eye, as if by some trick of fate, he caught sight of Sunang Taiji's unruly, defiant face not far away.

That was the face of his rival for the khanship, a face he had loathed for over twenty years.

Boshetu's movement halted.

A thought, like a venomous snake, slithered out from the depths of his heart.

He slowly turned his head to look at Sunang Taiji, forcing a stiff smile onto his face.

"The Tumed tribe truly needs a real warrior to lead it."

"Sunang Taiji, this is your moment to prove yourself. Take your troops as the left wing and join Buyan Taiji in the assault."

He paused, then added: "Those dozen-odd taijis who came to reinforce us earlier — they will all be placed under your command, to follow your orders."

Sunang Taiji was briefly startled, then let out a scornful laugh.

He heard the hypocrisy in Boshetu's words and saw through the calculation behind them.

But he did not refuse.

The intrigues of the steppe are, in the end, settled by the blade.

A Tumed tribe facing the fires of war might well reconsider what kind of khan they truly needed.

"You've fought far too ugly a fight." He cast a contemptuous glance at Boshetu. "Just keep your eyes wide open and watch how I do it!"

With that, he turned and left without the slightest hesitation, swinging directly into the saddle and galloping toward his own men.

On the gentle slope, a moment of silence fell.

Khan A Hai looked at the Prince of Shunyi's expressionless face, and a sudden chill ran down his spine.

—An ominous suspicion formed in his mind.

Khan A Hai pondered for a moment, already forming his own plan, but his face betrayed nothing. He merely said, "I will go down and prepare as well. If you need a charge, just send word."

With that, he too rode away.

Silence settled over the gentle slope, broken only by the snapping of the great banner in the wind.

A moment later, the Prince of Shunyi, Boshetu, turned his head to look at his eldest son, Omubu, who had been standing in attendance behind him, and sighed.

"Go down and ready the central army. Ensure… that our line of retreat to Qingcheng is secure."

Omubu did not move at once.

He was silent for a moment, then finally could not help but ask, "Aba, if you believe we cannot win, why fight at all?"

Bushitu turned to look at his son and gave a rare smile, though it was filled with bitterness and helplessness.

"You'll understand when you're older." He patted his son on the shoulder. "Some battles, you have no choice but to fight."

"Don't ask so many questions. Go down and prepare."

"Yes, Father." Emubu bowed in acknowledgment, then turned and left.

Only then did Bushitu shift his gaze back to the battlefield, where the situation was already shifting rapidly.

As Sunang Taiji and Boyan Huang Taiji of the Mongol Right Wing coalition pressed forward with their troops,

the light cavalry scouts at the very front of the battle line scattered like the tide to both sides. Everyone's focus turned to the two great armies about to collide.

Some scouting squads even stopped their paired skirmishes by unspoken agreement, turning aside one after another like spectators to watch the movement at the very center of the battlefield.

"Finally lost patience, have they?"

To the east, within the great formation of the Chahar, Ligdan Khan gave a cold sneer, his eyes full of mockery.

He pondered for a moment, then spoke decisively:

"Pass the order! Have Sanghar Jal lead the Alakchut tribe and Guntu lead the Dododote tribe — each take their own forces and attack!"

The courier shouted his acknowledgment and spurred his horse away at full speed.

Ligdan Khan narrowed his eyes and gazed toward the battlefield, which was already beginning to seethe.

Come on, then. Let me give you a little taste of something sweet first.

Surely you can at least stomach that much?

By now, the sky had fully brightened. The thin mist shrouding the grasslands had completely dispersed, and the tempo of the battle abruptly accelerated.

There were none of those foolish wall-formation charges that later scholars would idly imagine.

These Mongols, raised in the bitter winds of Siberia, trusted only the tactics passed down through their ancestors for generations — the simplest tactics, and the ones that most tested a rider's instinct.

— Advance like a walnut thicket, array like a sea-like formation!

Both sides made almost exactly the same choice.

Four tribes, several thousand cavalry who had been the first to take the field, automatically divided into small squads of two to three hundred men each.

On the battlefield, there was no fixed battle line.

Every squad chased after their opponent's left rear flank, seeking to strike at the enemy's most vulnerable point.

And these pursuits were often forced to break off, take casualties, or even retreat, because other squads joined the fray.

Figure-eight-shaped cycles rose and fell across the vast battlefield, one after another.

Instincts honed from growing up on horseback and from hunting made them like flocks of swallows — with only a few turns from their leader, they would converge with perfect understanding into torrent after torrent.

When one side's cavalry squadron launched a charge, the other side's squadron would often choose to evade the brunt, falling back to regroup with their reserves.

Then another squadron, which had rested for a moment, would immediately break from the reserves and launch a fresh charge, chasing down the stragglers and those who had fallen behind during the enemy's withdrawal, reaping their lives with bow and saber.

Until the opposing reserves launched their own countercharge.

Across the vast battlefield, the struggle between the two sides' thousands of cavalry was like a spectacular and brutal performance of ocean waves, surging and receding, tide rising and falling.

There was no fierce clash of metal striking metal, no charge of overwhelming momentum with no thought of return.

There was only endless shouting, hacking, the whistle of arrows, and the deafening thunder of hoofbeats.

Torrents of arrows, like pouring rain, fell haphazardly across the entire battlefield.

Every man's life was like duckweed in the wind, not entirely determined by his own valor.

A stray arrow from nowhere, a stone that made a horse stumble, an inadvertent drop in speed after wheeling around, a charge too rash or a lag too far behind — any of these could become the death-god that took their lives.

After the engagement had continued for some time, the situation on the battlefield was nearly even.

On the left wing, where Sunang Taiji commanded, the Mongol Right Wing coalition even held a slight advantage.

Sunang Taiji was indeed fierce and brave. He led from the front, charging with his men again and again to scatter the formations of the opposing Alakchut tribe.

The Chahar side's Alakchut tribe fell back steadily in defeat, the "wave range" they could project compressed bit by bit.

Fewer and fewer of their cavalry returned to their own lines to regroup; instead, more and more men, after being routed, fled to who knew where.

At last, Bushitu gave the order again. The remaining half of the forces on both wings were committed to the battle, while the original contingents gradually withdrew behind the main army to reorganize.

On the other side, Ligdan Khan watched the course of battle, his expression still as cold as ever, as if those dying in battle were nothing more than insignificant livestock.

He waved his hand again and ruthlessly dispatched the other half of the outer vassal tribes onto the battlefield.

He was waiting.

He was waiting for the moment Bushitu committed his entire army.

At the very least — it had to be the moment he committed half of his main army.

Otherwise, even if he routed these exhausted troops on the two wings, Bushitu's main army could simply turn their horses and leave. The casualties he could inflict would be greatly diminished, and the subsequent battle for Qingcheng would only face more complications.

This was the principle of bitterness before sweetness.

Of course, the crucial point was that the bitterness was all borne by the troops of the outer vassal tribes, so Ligdan Khan was naturally even less concerned.

The more of them who died, the smoother his consolidation of the entire Chahar would be.

Ever since suffering repeated setbacks in Liaodong, he had deeply understood one truth.

Ten thousand men of his own trained gushan were worth far more than a hundred thousand drifting, loosely-attached outer vassal tribesmen!

After this battle, he expected that his six gushan might finally be fully reorganized, and perhaps even expanded to eight gushan — that was not impossible.

As long as he took the Mongol Right Wing! As long as he swallowed up these feeble lambs!

Once he controlled the entire grasslands, he could naturally take whatever he wanted from the Ming dynasty to the south!

At the very least, the annual reward payments for all the Mongol tribes should belong entirely to him!

Reorganize, take the field, reorganize again, take the field again.

After more than ten long and grinding intervals,

the time finally drew near to high noon.

The storm raised by this wave-after-wave, surf-like cavalry battle gradually began to subside.

Several chieftains of the Mongol right wing withdrew from the battle line one after another and gathered once more below that gentle slope.

"Press the whole army forward!" Sunang Taiji, his face flushed crimson, wiped a smear of blood from his face and roared through clenched teeth at Boshugtu, "What in the world are you still waiting for!"

"Our earlier defeat was only because their scout cavalry were more elite! Now that we're fighting blade to blade, their weakness shows at once! Ligdan Khan is nothing to fear!"

Buyan Huang Taiji also spoke with a smile: "It is indeed so. Ligdan Khan came on a forced march; his horses are clearly spent and poorly rested. In the fighting, we can truly feel they are much weaker."

Boshugtu clenched his jaw, gazing out at a battle situation where his side's advantage was growing ever more apparent, his heart locked in fierce struggle.

Reason told him Ligdan Khan must have a hidden card yet to play.

But the advantage before his eyes, and the soaring fighting spirit of his allies, made it hard for him to decide.

In the end, he chose a middle course.

"Wait a while longer," he said in a deep voice. "It is already midday. Wait two more shichen, and the sun will move behind us. When that happens, the sunlight will aid us; we will have the advantage. We can indeed fight with full force in the afternoon!"

"That way, even if we lose, it will be evening by then, and Ligdan Khan still won't be able to break through our encampment. That is the safer course."

Khan Ahai opened his mouth, then hesitated, wanting to speak but holding back.

He wanted to remind Boshugtu that the six elite gusas of Ligdan Khan's own main division had yet to commit a single soldier.

But on second thought, had not their own elite forces likewise been held back in the central army as reserves?

When the time came, it would simply be drums facing drums, gongs facing gongs — a straight-up fight with real blades, that was all.

Only…

Khan Ahai studied Boshugtu's expression and in the end said nothing to warn him, merely turning his horse in silence and returning to his own formation.

No matter what, the interests of the Kharchin came first!

This cavalry engagement, at once swift and sluggish, soon passed another two shichen.

The battle, which had dragged on for half a day, left every participating cavalry unit increasingly spent, increasingly going through the motions.

It even reached the absurd point where both sides would charge a short distance, tacitly trade a volley of arrows from a distance, then each wheel their horses around and withdraw to their own lines.

Once one wave began like this, every wave thereafter followed suit.

Everyone on both the left and right wings was waiting for that signal to beat the gongs and recall the troops — no matter which side sounded it.

Suddenly!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The deep, muffled beat of war drums rose from the central army's great formation of the Mongol right wing!

Just as another wave of the right-wing coalition's charging troops was pulling back, the main central force — which had been pressing behind them, silent all morning — finally moved!

Over ten thousand riders poured through the gaps in the forward cavalry formations, sweeping forth like a flood bursting through a dike, charging with irresistible momentum straight at the Chahar division to the east!

At that moment, the sun slanted down from behind them, stretching their shadows long and casting a golden radiance over their armor and blades, making them blaze with light as if gods had descended to the mortal world.

Almost the instant the opposing force surged out, the Chahar left and right wings, which had been locked in bitter combat for the greater part of the day, melted away like spring snow before a warm breeze.

No one would be so foolish as to collide head-on with cavalry on this scale — still less so when they were exhausted troops who had been fighting hard all morning.

The Chahar cavalry on both wings wheeled their horses around and, before the enemy's spearhead could reach them, scattered far out to the left and right, clearing the central corridor.

And at that very moment, Ligdan Khan at last played his countermove.

This was the moment he had been waiting for!

"Pass the order! The six gusas of the main division — all troops, attack!"

At his icy command, from within the Chahar central army's great formation, over eight thousand of the most elite riders of the main division erupted forth like a volcanic blast, sweeping in with a roar!

The scale of the entire battle instantly expanded from an engagement front of a thousand-odd meters to several thousand meters.

By the shores of Jining Lake, the largest pure cavalry battle since the era of the great Altan Khan had fully begun!

Both sides closed in at breakneck speed.

Three hundred paces, two hundred paces, one hundred paces!

And then, in a single instant, when the distance shrank to eighty paces, both sides simultaneously loosed a sky-darkening storm of arrows upon each other!

Under that dense arrow-storm, there could be none of the luck found in small-scale skirmishing.

The pitiful screams of warhorses, the agonized cries of riders, the dull thud of arrows piercing armor and flesh — an unending cacophony.

Horses, riders, armor, helmets, the grassland itself — everywhere the eye could see was thickly bristling with arrows.

Yet after only a moment of chaos, the Chahar cavalry recovered from the disorder more swiftly.

The riders clamped their legs tight to their horses' flanks, ignored the casualties around them, and spurred their mounts to even greater speed, sweeping onward like a surging tidal wave.

The opposing Mongol right-wing cavalry, however, fell into a brief disunity.

Some likewise spurred forward in acceleration, but far more instinctively reined in their horses and slowed their pace.

In the span of a breath, the entire tight charging formation transformed from a level, even line into a jagged, irregular wedge.

But in a cavalry clash, unless the decisive moment has come, what damned use is a wedge formation!

The side whose formation is tighter and whose speed is fiercer is the side that seizes that precious victory!

This is not only because the density of fire on the battlefield can be more concentrated, but also because it reflects the courage in the riders' hearts.

Unlike infantry, who can lock shields and fight to the death, cavalry formations scatter easily and are hard to rally. Whether they charge forward with fierce courage or shrink back in cowardice depends entirely on their daily drill and that indomitable spirit in their hearts.

The various tribes of the Mongol right wing had grown too comfortable for too many years beneath the border walls of Datong and Xuanfu.

How could they possibly be a match for the Chahar division, which had fought the iron cavalry of the Later Jin in bitter combat for over a decade?

More and more men felt cowardice sprouting in their hearts.

More and more men began to doubt whether this charge could succeed.

More and more men thought: better to let this wave pass first, just like that morning that had just gone by — wheel around, regroup, and then decide what to do.

Until at last, the first Mongol right-wing cavalryman could no longer bear the immense pressure bearing down on him, and suddenly wrenched his horse around, trying to veer off to the side and escape the torrent of the charge.

One, two, ten, a hundred…

The charge of ten thousand cavalry, riding with the sun at their backs, had already declared the Chahar tribe's initial victory long before they even made contact.

No one noticed that amid the rolling dust thrown up by the collision of the two main forces, a column of over a thousand armored horsemen, using the first wave of chaos unleashed by the six gūsas as cover, was shooting forward like a straight, swift arrow.

Ligdan Khan had finally played his most critical—and most lethal—winning hand!

Spend another afternoon in wave after wave of attack and defense?

Waste another precious day on this unfamiliar grassland?

No, Ligdan Khan had already received the signal he had been waiting for.

The art of war handed down by the great Chinggis Khan says this:

Advance like a thicket of wild jujube, array like a formation on a lake.

And when attacking, strike like a piercing awl into battle!

Now—now was precisely that moment!

Guyingqia, fully armored and helmeted, led Ligdan Khan's most elite bayara guards as they silently crossed the battle line of their own gūsas.

Speed up, speed up, speed up again!

A hundred paces' distance—closed in an instant!

The Tumed cavalry, still in place as the central army's reserve, had just received the forward troops retreating—or rather, "redeploying"—from the front and were in utter chaos.

And the bayara central strike force that Guyingqia led was already right before their eyes!

"Loose!"

At ten paces, the powerful volley fell like rain!

The first three ranks of cavalry loosed their arrows even as they charged, sending the Tumed reserves directly ahead tumbling, men and horses sprawling.

The remaining several hundred horsemen, still at full gallop, gradually unfolded their formation from the column they had used to pass through their own gūsas into a broad horizontal line.

By the time those Tumed cavalrymen finally made out the fine armor on this force, gleaming with reflected sunlight—

That cavalry square, their last reserve, collapsed on the spot almost in an instant with a thunderous roar!

They had no cohesion, no training, no equipment that could sustain them in this doomed contest!

Perhaps certain Han armies from the Central Plains could.

Perhaps the Mongol Yuan warriors of Chinggis Khan's era could.

But absolutely not this disordered, panicked Tumed cavalry troop before them now.

Apart from a handful of men fierce and reckless enough to be fools, who spurred their horses forward, everyone else was lashing their mounts desperately, fleeing for their lives to the northwest or southwest.

No formation, no organization, no purpose.

Only—flee, flee, flee!

The bayara cut them down at will from behind, butchering this flock of unresisting lambs, amplifying their terror further, driving them utterly from the field.

Guyingqia let out a hearty, exultant laugh, but gave no order to pursue these routed soldiers.

On the battlefield, once a cavalry force loses its cohesion, it is no different from being annihilated.

Not worth wasting another shred of effort on.

He wheeled his horse around and charged obliquely toward another Kharchin cavalry position, one still wavering between holding firm and breaking.

The same practiced tactics as before.

At a walk, then a slow trot, the scattered bayara horsemen slowly reassembled as they advanced.

Once their numbers had gathered sufficiently, it was the same old routine, drilled countless times.

Fast trot, then full charge—the front ranks slanted across, loosing volleys! The rear ranks, in broad line, struck head-on!

First wave—done! Second wave—done!

No force could withstand these elite cavalrymen, fully equipped with armor—even if most of it was only leather.

Every cavalry formation turned to look back toward their own main camp.

—They were waiting for the reserves their central army would send.

Yet Ligdan Khan's reaction was swifter than that of the Mongol Right Wing's allied forces.

From the rear, within the great Chahar battle array, came the urgent, piercing beat of war drums.

That was the signal to advance! The signal for the general assault! The signal to wheel no more, to stake every last chip, to seize final victory!

The remaining central army troops surged forth like a swarm!

The six gūsas of the Chahar main cavalry force charged at full speed!

The outer-subject tribal cavalry, scattered across the left and right flanks, also swept in from both wings, closing the pincer!

They seemed utterly certain that they had already won this battle!

And precisely because they were so certain, the Mongol Right Wing tribes lost what little faith in victory they still had!

The waves of cavalry that had been locked in stalemate for most of the day seemed, for a single moment, to freeze.

But in no more than an instant, that towering tidal wave came crashing down—hard—toward the west!

Bushitu and Sunang Taiji's great banners fled west; Khan Ahai and Boyan Huang Taiji's great banners fled south; the many other tribes scattered in every direction as well, retreating in defeat like a directed-spray Brownian motion.

The Mongol Right Wing—was defeated!

Ligdan Khan laughed uproariously, racing his horse across the field, his heart surging with boundless exultation.

After half a year of planning, after leading his army a thousand li, he had finally, on the shores of Jining Lake, seized the victory he had dreamed of!

That victory—the kind he had never once won against the Ming army or the Jurchen—a thorough, complete, utterly exhilarating victory!

The great Divine-Among-Divines, All-Wise Chinggis Prosperous Khan was about to enter the great game under heaven!

And yet,

just as Ligdan Khan was swelling with pride and satisfaction,

he had no idea that a tiny but vital force was beginning to sprout from a humble room within the Forbidden City.

In a sense, it didn't matter whether he knew or not.

Because this power was never meant for him in the first place.