Chapter 189: Chaotic Slaughter

General of Renewal Lian Dan never understood, from start to finish, how this battle was lost. Though a mediocre commander, he still knew the basics of deploying troops and forming formations. He stationed himself in Wuyan City and spread his fifty thousand men across the surrounding villages and townships.

When he first heard that a small band of Red Eyebrows had attacked a grain convoy, he casually dispatched a company to the rescue, only to receive word back that the entire company had been surrounded by a large Red Eyebrow force.

Surprised, Lian Dan sent an entire regiment to reinforce them, only to learn that they too had been surrounded.

"Haven't the local Red Eyebrows been wiped out? Where are all these bandits coming from? Could it be Fan Chong's main force from Mount Tai?"

Before new reinforcements could be dispatched, several defensive sectors around Wuyan sent men to report simultaneously that they were under attack by the Red Eyebrows.

Lian Dan had allowed the imperial army to massacre Wuyan City. Though this had, in a sense, "boosted" their morale, making the soldiers think the Red Eyebrows were nothing to fear, they only learned their true measure when they suddenly encountered real Red Eyebrow fighters.

They surged in from all directions — from the tall grass, from the woods, from the ditches, even from deep within the hamlets the government troops had nearly wiped out. Peasants who normally cowered and stammered under the abuse of soldiers became warriors the moment they grabbed a pitchfork or a manure rake!

Answering the call of Elders and giants shouting "Kill the government troops!" in their native accents, they stepped to the edges of the fields. As long as they scooped up a handful of red mud — scarlet soil, brown soil, even yellow earth stained red by the blood of their kin — and smeared it thickly across their eyebrows, every soul in Yan Province who harbored hatred for the government troops became a soldier of the Red Eyebrow Army!

With those bold, heavy strokes across their brows, they looked like wrathful giants. Barefoot or in straw sandals, they had no unit structure, no banners, not even leaders. Driven solely by fury and the fire of vengeance, they surged forward wave after wave, using their bodies to withstand the army's powerful bows and crossbows, using crude weapons to shatter sturdy armor. In a single day, they routed the fifty-thousand-strong army of the General of Renewal, reputed to be the dynasty's finest.

Lian Dan was certain he had encountered the true main force of the Mount Tai Red Eyebrows. He decided to fight while retreating, aiming to withdraw westward, stretch the Red Eyebrow battle line, then have his chariot and cavalry units circle around behind them. With Grand Preceptor Wang Kuang coordinating, they would encircle and annihilate them in one stroke!

But no matter how brilliant the plan in his head, it required men to execute it. Forget the counter-encirclement — the retreat alone suddenly turned into a rout.

To the soldiers' ears, "shifting westward" sounded no different from "our army is defeated," and they scrambled to flee. Panic spread like contagion, and in the end, even Lian Dan's own elite troops joined the stampede, shouting that they were "protecting" the general.

In this dazed confusion, Lian Dan withdrew to Chengchang Township. He had barely caught his breath when he ran into the remnants of Grand Preceptor Wang Kuang's force, retreating from their defeat at Mount Liang.

When these two unlucky brothers met again, they stared at each other like a pair of turtles eyeing mung beans — neither could believe it. Each had been counting on the other to pull him out of the fire.

"General of Renewal, how did you lose?"

"I was about to ask the Grand Preceptor the same thing. How did you lose?"

With matters at this pass, further talk was useless. The two could only gather their scattered troops, mustering tens of thousands of men. The Red Eyebrows, their eyes blood-red with slaughter, would be upon them in an instant. There was no time to organize regiments or build ramparts, so they huddled together in a chaotic mass, letting whoever held higher rank take command, and hastily formed a back-to-back battle line to meet the attack.

According to the art of war, if your back is to a solid city wall, you fight with a firm city at your back and feel no panic in your heart. If your back is to a surging river, you are placed in a death trap to fight your way to survival — a last stand with the water behind you.

But what if your back is to a pig of a teammate who is just as bad as you are?

Then you are attacked from both front and rear!

The formula 1+1<1 was laid bare in Lian Dan and Wang Kuang.

The two commanders still hoped to salvage the defeat, but their subordinates had long since shed every last shred of the false morale they had gathered from massacring cities during the retreat. Though they now barely managed to form ranks, when the setting sun cast its lingering glow and they saw the Red Eyebrow Army striding forward, saw those coarse, brownish-red eyebrows on their foreheads, they could not help but tremble.

Apart from the two generals' personal troops, this so-called army of a hundred thousand was nothing but a force cobbled together from press-ganged men. They could only fight when the wind was at their backs; once they met a setback, not a man among them would truly risk his life in a desperate fight.

If the enemy had formed a perfectly seamless encirclement, that might have forced the imperial army, with no way to retreat, to stake everything on one throw. But the Red Eyebrows were a mob of stragglers themselves; their encirclement net was full of holes on all sides, and had long since devolved into every man fighting his own free-for-all.

When the fish caught in the net suddenly saw gaping holes before their eyes, they no longer cared about coordinating with friendly troops to resist the enemy. They plunged headlong through the first opening they saw, fleeing in panic, each man for himself.

By nightfall, the battlefield grew even more chaotic. Everyone was tense and uneasy, unable to tell friend from foe. At times, government troops fought government troops; at times, Red Eyebrows fought Red Eyebrows. Even when no enemy was present, camp panics broke out constantly and raged on through the entire night without cease.

In this Battle of Chengchang, which raged the whole night through, neither Lian Dan, nor Wang Kuang, nor the Red Eyebrow leaders Fan Chong and Dong Xian on the other side had any grasp of the overall situation.

And Geng Chun, caught in the middle and swept along by the chaos of routed soldiers, was even more dazed and bewildered, able only to drift with the tide. Even if someone had soared through the nine heavens to survey the entire field, they could have given this battle only a one-word assessment: chaos!

The opening was a chaotic clash, the fighting was chaotic melee, the retreat was chaotic flight.

The generals on both sides gave chaotic commands, and the Red Eyebrows killed in a chaotic frenzy.

In short, by the time the sky brightened again, the armies of the General of Renewal and the Grand Preceptor had completely collapsed. Few died in battle; the vast majority simply scattered and fled.

The Mount Liang Red Eyebrows were also exhausted from fighting. As their assault temporarily receded, Grand Preceptor Wang Kuang looked at his shattered battle line. With fewer than twenty thousand men left at his side, unable to withstand another charge, he let out a long sigh and sent a man to notify Lian Dan.

"The cause is lost. We had better gather our remaining troops and break through, preserving our useful lives to continue serving His Majesty."

Lian Dan had borne the brunt of the Mount Tai Red Eyebrows' assault head-on, and his losses were even more severe. Barely over ten thousand men still clustered around him, while the Red Eyebrows seemed inexhaustible. All the weapons and armor lost in the army's rout had been seized by Fan Chong; the elite troops of the various giant leaders gleefully swapped their gear, and the government army's last shred of advantage ceased to exist.

Yet Lian Dan still ordered his various units to resist with all their might. Now, hearing Wang Kuang propose they flee together, he could not help but rage: "A callow youth may flee — I cannot!"

Feng Yan had previously tried to persuade Lian Dan to hold his army and consolidate his power, to await the changing times and become a regional warlord in his own right. But Lian Dan had flatly refused. He harbored gratitude toward Wang Mang and was a loyal minister of the Great Xin through and through.

"The southwestern campaign dragged on for three years. Not only did we fail to take Gouding, but even the neighboring commanderies rose in revolt."

"Ordered to march north against the Xiongnu, we turned back before advancing a hundred li beyond the frontier, allowing the bandit slaves to enter the new Qin heartland."

"If I now lose another army and abandon more territory, defeated by the Red Eyebrows, then I, Lian Dan, am worthless and have no face left to see His Majesty!"

As Lian Dan reflected on his life, for a moment he was overcome with shame — shame toward Wang Mang, shame toward his sovereign, shame toward the people brutalized by his troops along the way, and toward the tens of thousands of innocent, unavenged souls in Wuyan City. Yet he felt not the slightest guilt.

Lian Dan removed his seal of the General of Renewal, his official ribbons, and his tally of authority, and had a trusted aide deliver them to Wang Kuang, ordering him to take his troops and break through in retreat.

"As for me."

Lian Dan shouted at the top of his lungs, as if wanting more people to hear: "Entrusted with a heavy responsibility by the state, if I do not give my body in the wilderness, I have no way to repay this grace or atone for my failures!"

After receiving Lian Dan's seal and ribbons, Wang Kuang did not hesitate for a moment. He abandoned the two motley units on the periphery that were still skirmishing with the Red Eyebrows, and ordered the troops of the General of Renewal to serve as the vanguard for the breakout. He himself, with his personal forces, sat securely in the center, riding in a four-horse chariot.

The Red Eyebrows, like the imperial army, had no plan before battle and no coordination during it. After fighting for a full day and night, they were growing weary, and their various chieftains were beginning to calculate their own interests. When Wang Kuang led his troops in the breakout, they failed to organize any effective counterattack. More eyes were fixed on the supplies and grain strewn everywhere around Chengchang Township.

And on Lian Dan, who, in a rare moment of valor in his lifetime, had decided to use himself as bait to buy his allies' escape.

Wang Kuang looked back from his four-horse chariot and saw the great banner of the General of Renewal swaying amidst the furious tide of the Red Eyebrows, until at last it toppled.

Lian Dan, with his loyal followers who refused to leave, fought the Red Eyebrows to the death. It is laughable to say: when he commanded fifty thousand men, his army was routed and crushed; when he commanded fifty men, he fought a back-and-forth battle against Red Eyebrows ten times their number.

But in the end, he could not overcome their overwhelming numbers. The great banner snapped, his loyal followers fell dead, and the Red Eyebrow soldiers surged forward, throwing themselves at Lian Dan. "The Grand Preceptor may live, but the Renewal General kills us!" — they wanted revenge!

In this final moment, Lian Dan still swung with all his might the horse-butchering sword of the Masters of Writing bestowed by the Emperor. But suddenly, he recalled a man: Han Wei, the General Who Swallows the Hu, whom Lian Dan had deliberately refused to send troops to rescue beyond the northern frontier, leaving him surrounded by tens of thousands of cavalry of the Xiongnu's Right Division, where he fought valiantly and died. Han Wei must have fought with such fierce courage too, hadn't he?

Once, Lian Dan had watched another die without lifting a hand; now he too would be abandoned by his allies.

Yet Lian Dan did not receive the same tragic, solemn end as Han Wei, whose body was covered by a blanket of ten thousand arrows and eagle plumes. As the long sword in his hand was knocked flying, a Wuyan peasant strode forward — the marks on his brows were not red earth, but blood!

In his hands he held a manure fork still caked with dung and soil, and he drove it viciously into Lian Dan's chest, where the armor was already broken!

Then dozens of men surged forward, and ten thousand blades fell upon him. Lian Dan's head was hacked off, and together with his exaggerated iron helmet, it was raised aloft by the Red Eyebrow soldiers as they cheered in victory:

"The Renewal General kills us? We kill the Renewal General!"

On the other side of the battlefield, just as Wang Kuang, having lost half his troops, burst out of the encirclement, he encountered a group of the General of Renewal's personal guards who had been swept up among the chaotic soldiers and were fighting on their own.

Lian Dan had indeed treated his trusted followers well. These butchers who had wantonly slaughtered the innocent in Wuyan City, upon hearing that the General of Renewal had refused to break out and had perished among the Red Eyebrow Army, were all overcome with grief and fury, shouting: "Lord Lian is dead — for whom should we live?"

And then they wheeled their horses around and galloped straight at the pursuing Red Eyebrow Army, all fighting to the death.

"Fine warriors!" Wang Kuang was instead quite delighted. Thanks to the sacrifice of Lian Dan and his loyal followers, after abandoning one motley unit after another, he had finally broken through the encirclement. He swept his gaze around and counted heads: fewer than eight thousand men remained, their unit structures shattered, simply following the Grand Preceptor's banner in a dazed retreat.

"Grand Preceptor, where should we withdraw to?"

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The Red Eyebrows were busy fighting over the spoils of war, and for the moment no large force came in pursuit. The Colonels, still in shock, came to ask Wang Kuang where they should go.

There were many choices: fall back to Puyang City in Zhiting Commandery to regroup and fight again, withdraw to Dingtao City in Jiping Commandery to hold off the bandits, or even flee to Baima Ford and cross into Hebei, where there were no Red Eyebrows — all were viable routes.

But Grand Preceptor Wang ignored these destinations within a few hundred li. His courage shattered by the true Red Eyebrows, he chose instead to rout a thousand li in a single bound!

"Yanzhou is likely lost. Luoyang — we withdraw to Luoyang!"

……

It was not only the Grand Preceptor's own forces who broke through successfully.

Geng Chun had come this way on his journey to Wuyan. Skilled at observing terrain and details, he had led Peng Chong and the several hundred conscripts into a grove far from the center of battle before the chaos of the previous night.

"The Red Eyebrows are convinced that anyone fleeing is government troops, and they're chasing hard. In a pursuit like this, the numbers will dwindle with every step. I fear no more than one in ten will survive."

Geng Chun steadied the men, and they spent the night in the woods. A Red Eyebrow detachment even passed by, but luckily Geng Chun had the Clerk Zhen, who spoke the local dialect, smear red mud on his eyebrows. Under cover of darkness, they bluffed their way through.

This gave Geng Chun an idea. He had word passed from man to man: "Throw away every seal, ribbon, armor, and helmet that bears the mark of government troops."

Then they helped each other paint red mud on their eyebrows. At dawn, just as the main Red Eyebrow force launched its general assault on the imperial army trapped at Chengchang, Geng Chun led his men out of the grove and they ran for their lives.

Though they had a disguise, and a few locals under Geng Chun's command fended off questions with their speech, the conscripts' eyes still darted like startled hares. The whole way was a chaos of battlefields. The corpses of government soldiers and Red Eyebrows lay strewn across the wilds — men shot dead by crossbows, stabbed to death, or trampled by their own comrades as they fled.

It had been a chaotic battle of over two hundred thousand men, after all. This corpse-dotted wilderness stretched on so far it numbed the mind. Fortunately, they had already witnessed a true hellscape at Wuyan; the sight of guts spilling from bellies here was nothing by comparison. Most men fixed their eyes on the back of the man ahead and thought only of walking out alive.

They were all conscripts from Yuzhou. Most were poor wretches press-ganged into service, but the Red Eyebrows cared nothing for that. Along the road, they often saw Red Eyebrows who had caught government troops force them to kneel and interrogate them in the local tongue. Answer correctly, and you lived; fail to answer, and you died!

The Red Eyebrows were loath to use blades in ordinary times — a blade that struck bone would dull. Their method of execution was to order the captive to strip off every stitch of clothing, shoes and all. Then a Red Eyebrow fighter would raise a large rock and bring it smashing down on the back of the soldier's skull! Once, twice — until the brains burst out.

Then the Red Eyebrow soldiers would contentedly walk off with clothes unstained by a single drop of blood. They meant to have a warm winter and would not let a single scrap of fabric slip by.

Not one of the Yuzhou conscripts under Peng Chong tried to rescue their "comrades." They had long since grown numb and cared only for their own safety.

Geng Chun, however, suddenly thought: "If Boyu were here, with his gift for local dialects, he'd never be found out. He might even turn it around and infiltrate the Red Eyebrow high command — become some 'Giant Diwu'!"

Now and then, alert Red Eyebrow troops would stop and harass them. At those moments, Geng Chun displayed his full talent in both letters and arms, directing the conscripts to cut the blockers down with blade and sword, then withdraw at once.

Gradually, as they left the battlefield behind, the Red Eyebrows grew scarce, but the government soldiers who had routed earliest grew more numerous. Catching sight of Geng Chun and his men approaching in their Red Eyebrow guise, they reacted as though seeing demons — some kowtowed and begged for mercy, others fled in panic. The battle of Chengchang had shattered their courage.

And across this floodplain of the Yellow River, all were shattered, weary, and broken comrades of the imperial army.

Geng Chun grew thoughtful and instructed Peng Chong and the others: "Wash off the red and raise the government banners again."

A headcount revealed they still had over five hundred men. Thanks to Geng Chun's quick wits, they had not lost many — a few dozen unlucky stragglers abandoned along the way, at most. He hoped they would keep silent and not be identified by the Red Eyebrows.

But danger still lurked. The battle of Chengchang was over, yet the Red Eyebrow army's Elders and Attendants, in bands of hundreds or even thousands, were still sweeping the outer areas for government troops. They had to keep moving.

Moreover, government Colonels and Majors who had regained their nerve were also gathering scattered remnants. Even to turn brigand, a man needed numbers. But seeing that Geng Chun's force kept its formation and still held their weapons, they dared not rashly attack.

And Geng Chun now began doing his utmost to swell the small force he had gathered.

Peng Chong did not understand. Wouldn't withdrawal be faster with their current numbers? Why go to the trouble of collecting stragglers along the way?

"Botong, you've surely seen wild geese before."

Geng Chun looked up and pointed at the swan geese flying south, as though the slaughter of men on the earth below was no concern of theirs.

"Wild geese fly in two lines, or in a V-formation. The old, the weak, and the wounded are sheltered in the middle. Hundreds of small wings become two great wings — and they can fly ten thousand li!"

Geng Chun meant to form a flock of geese, not a scattering of tiny sparrows each dashing blindly on its own.

And he had the bargaining chip to rally the scattered soldiers to join him.

At every post station, hamlet, and village gate they passed, Geng Chun would ride up to the routed soldiers — men sitting dejected on the ground or slumped against trees, with no idea where to go — and strike up a conversation as if he had known them for years.

Dingtao lay to the south, screened by the main Red Eyebrow force. Geng Chun could not go find his father for now, but he did not intend to return empty-handed. Wasn't Diwu Lun fretting over a shortage of troops?

Geng Chun smiled and called out his invitation to the scattered soldiers and conscripts: "Have you heard of Weicheng Commandery in Hebei?"

……

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