Chapter 1293: Let's Go — We're Heading to Sichuan!

Since Young Master Li had said to retreat, Yang Sanbao naturally couldn't be bothered with his good brother Wang Sihu, whose head had been split open. Quite disloyally, he left him to the enemy and followed Young Master Li toward Tiger Tooth Mountain. It had to be said that working as a hired hand for Ding the Skinner had been good for building up his strength. Ding the Skinner couldn't be called generous, but he didn't starve Yang Sanbao either. And the Ding family's farm work wasn't busy all year round; during the slack seasons Yang Sanbao often went hunting on Tiger Tooth Mountain, and over time he built up his strength and could move through the mountains and forests as swift as flying. So although he started running from the rear of the column (originally the head of the column), it wasn't long before he reached the middle of the group, and only stopped when he bumped into someone. He looked closely and found he had actually run into "Young Master Li."

Niu Jie recognized Yang Sanbao as the guide and hurriedly shouted, "Quick, lead the way, to Tiger Tooth Mountain!"

"Right, right."

Yang Sanbao answered, grabbed Niu Jie, and ran off toward Tiger Tooth Mountain without stopping, dragging the man the whole way without a single pause.

At that moment, the shouts of battle rose up from right behind them! They grew louder and louder, accompanied by the ceaseless crack of gunfire and the horrifying screams of the dying!

So this was what a battlefield was like! Yang Sanbao was full of regret now. If he'd known it would come to this, couldn't he have just stayed an honest hired hand? There was food and drink, and there was the Ding family's young mistress to... look at! Though he could only admire her from afar, Sanbao had good eyes and could see clearly, and it was a feast for the eyes!

Now it was all over. What Young Master Li, what Shun heavenly troops — a few hundred local soldiers from Yiling Prefecture had beaten them into this state. If they met the Emperor's own personal guards, even your Roving King would be finished!

Niu Jie had also lost faith in the uprising by now. His core force was a thousand "prefectural second-generation" men from Sichuan and Yunnan, and he had no idea how many of them would make it out!

It seemed that staging an uprising on Zhu Ming territory was impossible. If he could make it back to Tiger Tooth Mountain alive, he should disband the group and run for it at once!

"We can't disband!"

"How can we disband?"

"We've only suffered a small setback — how can we scatter now?"

"Right, there are still three or four thousand good men on Tiger Tooth Mountain. How can we disband?"

"And where would we scatter to? When the government troops arrive in force and search everywhere, will any of us keep our lives?"

"Right! We can't disband!"

"We'll fight the Zhu family to the death!"

To the surprise of Niu Jie and Yang Sanbao, the good men on Tiger Tooth Mountain were all very loyal to the Shun dynasty's peasant revolutionary cause and refused to accept "Young Master Li's" proposal to disband.

Niu Jie was at a loss for what to do, so he turned to Xiucai Zhang for advice.

Xiucai Zhang was the local power broker around Tiger Tooth Mountain, and now he seemed to have become the backbone of a group of jianghu bosses — apparently he had some real ability.

"Young Master Li," Xiucai Zhang said, waving a goose-feather fan he'd found somewhere and pretending to count on his fingers, "going west along the Yangtze is blocked, and going east seems out of the question too... The only plan now is to cross the river and take the Jingmen Mountain and Qing River route to Sichuan."

"Go to Sichuan?" Niu Jie frowned. He thought to himself: Sichuan's prefectural military households are already so numerous there's no way to place them. If you people go there, will you have anywhere to settle?

"Can we get through?" Niu Jie didn't dare tell them the truth, because the core men who had returned with him from Wujiagang numbered only a little over a hundred... He couldn't control these three or four thousand good men now!

"We can get through!" Xiucai Zhang said. "The Jingmen Mountain and Qing River route has always been a passage for private merchants entering and leaving Sichuan. There are no cities or towns along the way, but there are plenty of mountain strongholds held by Jing-Chu good men. Even if we can't reach Sichuan for a while, we can settle there. Young Master Li, don't hesitate — while there are still plenty of boats on the river, let's get moving!"

Niu Jie thought for a moment, then nodded heavily and said, "As you say! We... take the Jingmen Mountain and Qing River route, to Sichuan!"

Gunfire and battle cries resounded through the mountains and fields in the dark of night.

Battle cries in Shaanxi accents pressed in from both north and south. Light cannons mounted on wooden boats fired ceaselessly, and shells struck the walls of Lueyang, the sound of cannonballs smashing bricks from the wall everywhere.

Above and below Lueyang's walls, and on Elephant Mountain, against which Lueyang was built, fire blazed fiercely.

Wu Sangui stood at the summit of Elephant Mountain, crouched behind a low wall of rammed earth and timber, staring fixedly at the battlefield before him. Around him crowded his Wu family personal guards, every one of them wishing they could haul him down from that low wall. Now the entire Lueyang battlefield was watching the summit of Elephant Mountain — Lueyang was built against Elephant Mountain, with four tiers of walls rising from bottom to top.

To attack Lueyang from below and fight upward was nearly impossible!

But Elephant Mountain behind Lueyang was somewhat too tall. If Lueyang's walls had to be built all the way from the foot of the mountain to the summit, the work would be enormous. So Lueyang's walls only reached halfway up the mountain. At the same time, to guard against the enemy seizing Elephant Mountain first and then attacking Lueyang from the heights, a wooden fort had been built at the summit.

When the Shun army withdrew, the originally sturdy wooden fort had been burned to the ground, leaving only its foundation. After Wu Sangui resolved to defend Lueyang to the death, he immediately sent men to repair the summit fort. But the work was only half done when Li Dingguo attacked.

Although Wu Sangui now had tens of thousands of men, most were "righteous soldiers" who had never been properly trained — the Shun, with its prefectural military household system, placed strict limits on civilian armed force. Non-military households were forbidden to possess weapons and armor, and forbidden to practice formation combat. Relying on them to defend the city was no problem, but relying on them to hold the mountain was indeed somewhat difficult.

So Wu Sangui had no choice but to abandon the northern slope of Elephant Mountain and hold only the summit and the southern slope. He himself personally commanded from the summit!

Except for those hundred thousand-plus Imperial Guards who had trained hard in military arts since childhood, the rest of the Ming army was inferior to the Shun army in mountain warfare — let alone this current force, which had only a small core of Ming soldiers and was mostly "righteous civilians," a half-militia. So the fighting on Elephant Mountain was perilous in the extreme!

By the fifteenth day of the second month, Li Dingguo's troops had infiltrated the southern slope of Elephant Mountain, threatening the link between the summit fort and Elephant Mountain City.

Wu Sangui knew his men couldn't fight the enemy on the slopes, so he simply handed the city defense to his son Wu Yinglin, took a few thousand men with ample food and water up to the summit (the summit fort's foundation contained a stone reservoir for water storage, and because it had rained for several days before, it was full of rainwater), and prepared to hold out to the death — as long as the summit didn't fall, the main Shun force couldn't reach the southern slope. A few hundred or a thousand elite troops could defeat several times their number of Wu's men in the mountain forests, but they weren't enough to gnaw through Lueyang's walls.

So Li Dingguo concentrated his forces in a fierce assault on the summit of Elephant Mountain — if he took the summit, Lueyang would be his for the taking.

Recover Lueyang, kill Wu Sangui, and the southern Shaanxi front would at least be stabilized!

Now Aiqineng had already led troops into Tibet. Once Wusizang was taken and the Great Lama seized, the Shun dynasty might yet turn things around...

Under Li Dingguo's urging, another wave of Shun army shock troops surged up the northeastern, eastern, and western slopes of Elephant Mountain toward the summit fort. At the very front were all musketeers, carrying matchlock muskets with bayonets fixed, howling as they charged up the mountain. They didn't fire wildly, but held their fire until they were within thirty paces of the summit fort before firing in volleys! A storm of bullets swept over, and men and horses toppled on the fort, cries of alarm and screams rising everywhere. Behind Wu Sangui, a personal guard fell face-first to the ground without even a cry. Bullets struck the sandbags around Wu Sangui, kicking up dust and smoke in chaos!

Several personal guards tried to pull him down, but he shoved them away violently. Old Wu was fighting for his life now. His face cold, he shouted, "Are there any deserters?"

Of course there were! Dozens had already been caught by the execution squads Wu Sangui had sent out. Their heads had been cut off and hoisted on spears, dripping blood — a terrifying sight!

Wu Sangui then shouted again with full force: "Brothers! The Imperial Guards are coming at double speed! Fifty thousand ironclad Imperial Guards are cutting off Li Dingguo's rear! Li Dingguo won't be arrogant much longer, and the roving bandits won't be arrogant much longer either! Once the Imperial Guards arrive, the dazzling world of Sichuan will be ours! Then there'll be silver, women, and land for all!"

(End of Chapter)