Chapter 537: Late Emperor Li, You Must Pretend to Be Alive — Part 2

On the Tangjia Mountain battlefield, cannon fire rumbled and war cries shook the heavens!

A night of fierce fighting had passed, and now the sky was fully bright, yet the battle showed no sign of stopping — on the contrary, it grew ever more intense.

Outside Lotus Flower Temple, beneath the great "Roving" banner, Li Zicheng was observing the fighting in the direction of Tangjia Mountain. The sound of cannon fire came from afar, and large numbers of Shun infantry launched wave after wave of uphill assaults from the east, south, and west, but the battle remained deadlocked.

The Shun army was formidable in the field, but its siegecraft was nothing to boast of. And once the Ming troops had terrain to defend, they were quite hard to wipe out.

Tian Jianxiu commanded more than twenty thousand men and had been attacking Tangjia Mountain since yesterday evening, fighting all the way until now — nearly eight double-hours — charging ten times in all, yet still without success.

"Your Majesty, it is about time — the hour is late!"

At Gu Junen's reminder, Li Zicheng lowered his telescope and glanced back at his second military adviser with a trace of impatience. "Second Military Adviser, what are you afraid of? We have cavalry all around. Even if that Zhu traitor sends a large relief force, we mount and ride off. Can their two legs outrun our four?"

"The defenders on Tangjia Mountain look tough to crack — likely elite troops. We should wipe them out now, lest they pursue us into Sichuan."

Li Zicheng was right: the troops on Tangjia Mountain were extraordinarily tenacious. Fortunately their equipment was poor — no arquebuses or cannon — otherwise the twenty thousand-plus Shun troops besieging them would long since have broken under unbearable casualties.

And Zhu Cilang had plenty of firearms and cannon. Once he saw how well this unit could fight, he would surely give them good equipment and send them in pursuit into Sichuan.

Li Zicheng spoke again: "What use is it to destroy thirty or fifty thousand of a rabble? There are plenty of starving, hardy men in the southeast now. So long as the Zhu crown prince can pay, how many men can he not raise? But these elite household retainers are precious!"

Just as he was speaking, cheers erupted from the Shun troops up ahead!

Li Zicheng hastily raised his telescope to look, and saw that Shun soldiers had fought their way up to the halfway slope of Tangjia Mountain and were locked in close combat with the Ming troops. This was not the first time such a thing had happened, but this time the Shun troops had charged closer to the summit than ever before, and the Ming resistance had clearly weakened.

Perhaps they could take the summit in one push!

Just as Li Zicheng held his breath and stared intently at the slaughter on the slope ahead, he suddenly saw a hundred or more iron-armored giants burst out of a grove of trees at the summit, all brandishing what looked like extremely heavy iron cudgels, descending like gods of death into the Shun ranks. Their appearance seemed to catch the Shun soldiers completely off guard; the Shun troops, who moments before had been fighting with rising fervor, wilted all at once and came tumbling back down the slope in disorder.

Li Zicheng lowered his telescope and sighed. "Ai, lost another round."

His words had barely faded when the urgent clatter of hoofbeats reached his ears. He turned his head and saw several cavalrymen — scouts, most likely — lashing their horses on as if the beasts' lives meant nothing, clearly bearing some dire military intelligence!

Li Zicheng's heart gave a lurch, but outwardly he remained composed. What could be so serious? At worst, Ming reinforcements had arrived!

The lead scout, a squad leader, gasped for breath as he reported: "Reporting to Your Majesty: from the northeast, along the north bank of the Hudu River, a large force of Zhu-traitor infantry is approaching! More than ten thousand strong."

"Did you get close to reconnoiter?" Li Zicheng asked.

"We could not get close," the scout said. "We were blocked by the Zhu traitors' iron-armored cavalry and could not approach too near."

Gu Junen said at once, "Your Majesty, withdraw!"

Li Zicheng was unwilling, but he drew a sharp breath. "Recall the troops, form ranks. We shall spare the Zhu traitor for now."

Gu Junen let out a relieved breath. "Your Majesty is wise. The Zhu traitor has also been badly weakened this time and will not trouble us for a while!"

His judgment was very soon proven wrong.

For what was coming along the Hudu River were four infantry regiments of the New Army's Right Division, led by Wu Guoyong. They had originally been traveling by boat from the vicinity of Huya Mountain toward Gong'an County, but as the fleet neared Jiangling they suddenly received orders from Zhu Cilang: all infantry were to disembark at once and force-march to Gong'an.

Wu Guoyong did not dare delay. He immediately found a dock, landed the four infantry regiments, and then drove them on at top speed. After marching for nearly two and a half days, they had now finally reached the battlefield.

While marching along the Hudu River, Wu Guoyong had encountered Sun Fugui, who was leading cavalry in control of the west bank of the lower Hudu. The latter had suggested a plan: seal off the west bank of the Hudu and block Li Zicheng's line of retreat.

And Wu Guoyong, eager to win an unprecedented feat of arms, gave no thought to how formidable Li Zicheng's cavalry was. He ordered his utterly exhausted infantry to deploy by battalion in a blockade line along the Hudu River.

This was going too far!

Beneath the fluttering red "Roving" banner, Li Zicheng stared fixedly ahead. It was now about noon, the hottest hour of the day.

Under the blazing sun, sixteen New Army infantry battalions had already formed Maurice-style squares, deployed one battalion after another along the Hudu River. Pikes stood like a forest, warriors like a wall, squarely blocking Li Zicheng's route of withdrawal to the west.

Behind these infantry squares, iron-armored cavalry in company units had also formed charging squares.

Li Zicheng watched for a while, then asked Tian Jianxiu beside him, "Yufeng, what do you think? Can we break through?"

If they could not break through, they would have to make a detour! That was not impossible — Li Zicheng and his mounted veteran-camp troops would have no trouble.

They had four legs; Wu Guoyong's infantry had only two, and those two were worn out.

But Li Zicheng had only some ten-odd thousand cavalry. Liu Zongmin had taken several thousand with him, leaving roughly ten thousand, with fewer than fifteen thousand horses remaining. That meant he could at most take fifteen thousand men with him — and would have to abandon the remaining twenty thousand-plus!

That was more than twenty thousand men, and all of them veterans. Zhu Cilang would not kill them all — he would absorb them into his own forces!

"We can!" Tian Jianxiu said with a laugh. "They're just pike formations, and they've stretched themselves into a long snake. How could that possibly stop the charge of ten thousand iron cavalry?"

"True enough!" Li Zicheng waved a hand. "Yufeng, go quickly — show us what you can do!"

Li Zicheng's army fought by the principle of the "Three Walls" — dividing the force into front, middle, and rear sections that pressed toward the enemy like walls, one section backing up another while also driving it forward.

But today the situation was special: the last of the three walls was made up of more than twenty thousand infantry advancing on foot. The middle wall was Li Zicheng's own imperial guard. And charging in front were six thousand veteran-camp cavalry led by Tian Jianxiu!

So the three walls were really only two walls. Could the Shun infantry at the rear possibly drive Li Zicheng's own troops forward? And they could not keep up anyway!

At that moment Li Zicheng was galloping at full speed, surrounded by the imperial-guard warriors who had followed him through years of campaigning, shielding him on every side. The red "Roving" banner streamed behind him, and the wind howled past his ears.

The feeling of leading cavalry to trample through the enemy's lines — it was quite something!

In a daze, he felt he was charging toward victory! If he could only break through the line ahead, he could march into Sichuan and carve out a realm of three-way division — and the three-way division was only the beginning; the unification of all under the Shun was the final goal.

For his three-way division came with the imperial house of the Guanzhong heartland.

Suddenly a thunderous volley of gunfire erupted ahead. Li Zicheng knew Tian Jianxiu's vanguard had slammed into the Ming infantry squares. Tian Jianxiu had six thousand cavalry under his command, and the target of his charge was merely three Ming infantry squares — fifteen hundred men at most.

Then came another earth-shaking volley. Li Zicheng could dimly make out chaos in the cavalry formation ahead: horses rearing in panic, many riders wheeling in place — though most of the cavalry were still pressing forward.

War cries rose, and with them came the tremendous crash of something colliding, boom-boom-boom, unceasing.

Li Zicheng knew this was the cavalry smashing into the enemy's pike wall!

Had they broken through?

Had they not broken through?

Li Zicheng craned his neck to see, while the squad leader of his personal guards beside him shouted wildly, "Your Majesty, they've broken through, they've broken through — let us hurry too!"

It seemed they had broken through — no, not broken through, but rather forced the three squares to "shrink." In truth, the musketeers had pulled back into the pike formations.

Although most of the New Army's musketeers had bayonets, the Shun cavalry charging today were too numerous. Wu Guoyong's musketeers did not dare stand and fight, so they withdrew into the pike squares, at the same time opening up several passageways.

Li Zicheng saw that the three squares under attack had not completely collapsed, and felt a pang of disappointment. But he dared not linger in battle. Under the protection of his guards, he galloped toward a middle passage wide enough for a dozen-odd horsemen abreast. What he had not expected was that many musketeers were still hidden inside the three "shrunken" pike squares. They had fired off all their ammunition earlier, and after pulling back into the squares had reloaded.

Just as Li Zicheng and his men galloped through, thirty or forty musketeers happened to have finished reloading. Under the command of a platoon leader, they fired a volley at the cavalry passing in front of them.

The personal guards clustered around Li Zicheng toppled in a swath. The squad leader guarding Li Zicheng was untouched. He noticed Li Zicheng's horse suddenly slowed for a moment, and hastily grabbed the reins of Li Zicheng's warhorse to keep fleeing.

But he did not notice that the Yongchang Emperor of the Great Shun had already gone limp and collapsed forward onto his horse's back.