Chapter 333: Snow Blocks the Pass at Lantian, the Horse Will Not Advance

"Then I must ask General Cen to explain himself."

The King of Wei's main camp was set in Lantian Valley. Inside the great tent, the two commanders, first and second, were at each other's throats.

After several days of heart-to-heart talks with Cen Peng, Zheng Tong's impression of the man had shifted somewhat, and Diwu Lun had also given him strict personal instructions: he was to handle only what he was good at; in matters of military strategy, the decisions were to be left to Cen Peng.

"Cen Peng decides whether to fight; you decide how to fight."

Their authority had been clearly divided in advance, to avoid the sort of situation Jing Dan had faced with Diqi Biao, where they had to resort to "you handle the big matters, I'll handle the small ones."

But after the long, stalled halt beneath Yao Pass, Zheng Tong's old fault — his fierce, unbridled urge to charge ahead — flared up again, and his heart grew deeply impatient.

"General Cen, you keep talking about washing away your disgrace — is this how you do it? We've been here over ten days, yet all you ever propose are probing attacks. Day after day you have the troops plant banners everywhere around the perimeter and build ramparts, and every squad of ten has to burn two cooking fires. What is the meaning of this?"

Outside, many colonels were already grumbling that Cen Peng was timid and afraid, seeing him as a second Dou Rong…

Cen Peng only smiled. "I recall General Zheng once told me about the first assault on Yao Pass."

"Seeing that Yao Pass was lightly defended, the General led four thousand men in an uphill attack — and still failed to take it."

Zheng Tong grew angrier still. "I have already reported this matter to the King, and I have told you of it no fewer than three times over wine. Cen Junran, do you bring it up again and again just to humiliate me on purpose?"

Cen Peng asked him to calm his impatience. "What I mean is, any officer, if he ordered a frontal storming of this pass when the troops were still unpracticed in siege warfare, would see his efforts fail on the verge of success."

A perilous defile still had to be respected. Cen Peng said, "The art of war states: siege warfare is a last resort. To build the assault carts and armored wagons, to prepare the siege equipment, takes three months to complete. When the General fought his first battle here, what siege equipment did our army have? We could only fill the gaps with human lives. Now, several months later, everything is at last prepared."

But Yao Pass sat high on the terrain, wedged into the narrow gap, so large siege engines could not be hauled up. They would still have to rely on simple equipment — and human lives — to fill the breach.

Cen Peng therefore said, "Even so, if a commander cannot contain his fury and sends his men swarming up like ants, and a third of the soldiers are killed yet the walls still do not fall, that is the calamity of an assault. If we rush for a moment's gain, not only will we fail to take it, we will also suffer losses. That is why we must use stratagem."

When Cen Peng had marched north with Liu Bosheng, he had noted the terrain of this pass, and he had already formed a plan in his mind.

"After Liu Bosheng's defeat, Greenwood is cautious; they will absolutely never come out of the pass to give battle. Deliberately feigning weakness to lure the enemy is useless, so I do the opposite — I feign strength."

"The reason I have the troops plant banners everywhere and set extra cooking fires is to make the enemy think we have tens of thousands of men. And Greenwood, in their alarm, can only respond by sending more troops."

Yet in attack and defense on such narrow ground, the number of men who could stand on that tiny pass was limited — a few hundred, a thousand at most. So more troops were not necessarily better. Once a certain threshold was reached, sheer numbers only became a hindrance.

Cen Peng had keenly perceived this. "In the several hundred years since Qin seized this place, Yao Pass has only ever had to face enemies from the south, never needing to guard against the north. That is why the barracks huts and small fort for the garrison were all built inside Lantian Valley — exactly where our main camp now stands."

Because of Diwu Lun's strategy of steadily pushing south, and with Ren Guang and Jing Dan handling matters, logistics were fully secured. The Wei River pontoon bridge had been rebuilt, and the grain and fodder Diwu Lun had stockpiled in the autumn, together with what the King of Wei's army had seized from the fortified manors south of the Wei, was being brought in an endless stream by civilian laborers — enough for Cen Peng's and Zheng Tong's troops to eat until after spring.

"And what of south of the pass?"

Cen Peng told Zheng Tong, "When I arrived, south of the pass was originally just a stretch of gullies and woods. Now that Greenwood has been forced to send reinforcements, the three armies must have somewhere to shelter, must they not? So they have cleared the hills and opened up ground. I sent men up into the mountains to observe, and they found that Greenwood's tents are crude and their daily need for firewood is enormous. They have already stripped bare many of the surrounding woods. And the grain they eat — they have no reserves left. Every day they must rely on several thousand men to haul it from Shangluo over a hundred li away. Yet Shangluo's grain is also insufficient; they even have to bring it from Nanyang."

Why did Wang Yi's army of several hundred thousand not take this "shortcut," instead making a long detour through Luoyang before heading south? It was not that he was foolish, but that the Wu Pass road was simply too difficult to traverse. From what Cen Peng understood of the Greenwood Army's organizational capacity, they did not fear a quick battle — what they feared was a protracted war.

Zheng Tong now understood Cen Peng's plan, but he had seen feigning weakness to lure the enemy — he had truly never heard of feigning strength to lure the enemy. As it happened, after Fang Wang, from the Longyou Strategic Deception Bureau, had gone to Wancheng and talked his way through the court, the Greenwood kings truly believed Diwu Lun had three hundred thousand troops! Under those circumstances, Cen Peng's bluff of tens of thousands here seemed perfectly reasonable.

"But we cannot simply drag this out forever." Zheng Tong pressed him. "The King said that whether we fight or not must be decided by General Cen. May I ask, how long exactly must we wait?"

"The General is a northerner, is he not?"

Cen Peng changed the subject, rubbing his hands, which were chapped red from the cold and would not warm no matter how he rubbed them.

"Like the Greenwood Army, I am a man of the south. My home is in Jiyang, in Jingzhou. Coming north, I find the air terribly dry and harsh. After winter set in, the cold has been especially bitter. I imagine it is hard to adjust to?"

"And in Nanyang, snow falls perhaps once a year, sometimes not at all. If it should snow during a battle…"

Cen Peng smiled. "I fear those fellows will not even be able to grip their spear shafts!"

…

Cen Peng's assessment was not wrong. Because the mountain roads twisted and turned, logistics were nearly impossible to sustain. Although Greenwood had thirty thousand men in the Shangyu valley, at the very front line, only Liu Ci, the King of Wan, could personally lead six thousand men to hold Yao Pass.

South of the pass, there were no ready-made walled towns or encampments, so they had no choice but to camp in the open field. Cen Peng had now deliberately stalled for a long time. The King of Wei's troops ate and drank well, wrapped snug and warm in the winter clothes sent from north of the Wei. Greenwood's men, by contrast, were wrapped in looted thin garments to make do, living in crude tents, cramped and crowded, with no warmth at all. Once night fell, the freezing wind pierced through every gap. After enduring over ten days of this, the blow to their morale and physical strength was undoubtedly immense.

And Greenwood's dependence on grain transport through the valley road indeed drew harassment from the King of Wei's army. Zheng Tong personally led a thousand-odd men on a detour over Mount Kuai, raided the supply train on the narrow track, and burned it all to ashes!

As the thick smoke billowed upward, Greenwood's morale suffered another heavy blow. The winter clothes Wang Feng had scraped together with such difficulty in Shangluo, the grain the soldiers craved — all of it, gone!

Liu Ci was horrified. "Back then, when the Exalted Emperor struck Yao Pass, he sent men around by the mountain trails to its rear. I already took precautions and posted troops to guard against that — how could they still have gotten through?"

Upon inquiry, he learned that the attackers were suicide troops, so fierce none could withstand them. The Greenwood soldiers guarding the trails had instead been routed by them.

This raid forced Greenwood to survive on their remaining grain, thinned into watery gruel, for several days. Liu Ci belatedly mended the fold, strengthening security all along the route. After that, they repelled several more risky attempts by the King of Wei's army, and no further incidents occurred.

Yet on this day, the thirtieth of the eleventh month, from the sky that had long been dark and overcast, goose-feather snow suddenly began to drift down!

"It's snowing!"

When they heard this cry, those Greenwood soldiers who came from Jiangxia and had barely seen a few snowfalls in their entire lives did not run out excitedly to watch. They huddled together, shivering, crowding around fires that, no matter how much they fed them, always seemed too small.

This was Lantian's first snow, and it came with a fury. Now, with the heavy snowfall, the drifts rose past the shins. The Greenwood soldiers were already short of winter clothing; ice formed on their beards, their padded garments gave no warmth, and countless men suffered from frostbitten fingers and cracked skin — some even froze to death in the night.

The King of Wan, Liu Ci, wrapped in furs, was also shivering uncontrollably. He could only think to himself, "They always say no troops should be raised in the sixth and twelfth months. When we were in the south, we never understood this. When we fought the battle at Tanghe, it was this very season. Only after coming north do I realize: in the bitter cold and snow of winter, one cannot wage war."

…

"Snow weather — now that is the right season for killing."

Flying snow settled on Cen Peng's hands. No matter how they slandered him in camp, no matter how many men secretly sent letters of impeachment to the King of Wei, this was precisely the moment Cen Peng had been waiting for. In the hands of a capable general, climate and terrain were both his weapons!

Cen Peng looked at Zheng Tong. "General, the great snow has sealed the mountains. Do you still dare to strike?"

"Why would I not dare?"

The snow had dyed Zheng Tong's brows and beard white, but now he showed no fear at all. "This bit of snow, compared to the frontier forts, is nothing but a fart!"

Cen Peng nodded. He toasted Zheng Tong and the eight hundred suicide soldiers with heated wine to see them off, and watched them depart through a place called "Fire Beacon Camp" — said to be where Fan Kuai had once lit signal fires, a place perpetually blackened and barren of vegetation — and onto the desolate mountain.

This was the opposite of the route Liu Bang had sent Fan Kuai over the mountains to strike Yao Pass. They climbed the Seven Coils, passed through Boulder Fork, Serpent Bay, and Wind Gate, and reached the ridge of Mount Yao. There, they saw heaven and earth open wide; after the great snow, the entire world was a single expanse of pure white, draped in silver.

Now, not a single flying bird or wild beast was to be seen. Only those thousand-odd King of Wei soldiers, draped in plain white cloth and wrapped in winter coats, marched through snow that rose well past their ankles.

Stragglers fell behind in droves. Some men's feet turned straight purple. Ordinary troops would surely have turned back, but these were death-sworn volunteers organized by Zheng Tong.

Zheng Tong grabbed a handful of snow and scrubbed his face. The party pressed on, descending twelve slopes in succession, and at last skirted around Mount Yao, which was not all that tall. The Greenwood Army's main camp south of the pass lay ten li in the distance.

Scouts crept back to report. "General, today most of the Greenwood men are huddled inside their tents. Even the guards on the mountain passes and trails have grown much laxer."

Zheng Tong gave a cold laugh. "This great snow seals the mountains. Southerners see snow and their feet shrink back — but they don't know that we poor folk of the north, in weather like this, still have to go out to cut firewood and hunt game."

He turned his head to look at the troops, now down to a few hundred after half had fallen behind. Every man was wrapped in a plain white robe, as if they were all in mourning. This time, crossing the mountain ridge, their aim was not to raid Greenwood's grain convoys — it was to strike straight at their nest!

"Wait for Cen Junran's signal!"

Zheng Tong washed down his dry rations with water, swallowing with difficulty. They waited a long time. Just as many soldiers were on the verge of drifting into unconsciousness in the freezing cold, suddenly, from north of Yao Pass, rose a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering roar of battle cries!

After days of probing attacks, Cen Peng finally got serious today!

The Greenwood main camp erupted like a pot boiling over. Soldiers huddled in their tents were hurriedly roused, weapons thrust into their hands as they scrambled out — some rushed to reinforce the pass, while the rest were tasked with hauling arrows and other supplies. The worst part was that in this bitter cold, they couldn't even get water hot enough to boil, making it hard to scald the enemy troops swarming up like moths.

"General, let us sally out and fight!"

Seeing that Cen Peng was now truly committing, the deathsworn warriors were thoroughly roused. They were the Wei army's finest armored troops, enjoying the best treatment, the greatest battle honors, and the richest rewards of land and spoils. Even the wounded and crippled among them were settled in the rear. With Zheng Tong as their leader, they were all fearless and ferocious.

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Zheng Tong, however, was in no hurry. He pressed his lips together and waited, and waited, until the Greenwood forces, battered by Cen Peng's exceptionally fierce assault today, began to fall into disarray, their camp in chaos, struggling to cover every front — only then did he rise abruptly.

His hands, sheathed in deerskin gloves, gripped his sword and shield and slammed them together with a sharp crack!

The motion shook the snow from the pine branches overhead, dumping a faceful of it onto Zheng Tong. The soldiers, who had been coiled tight with fighting spirit, instantly broke composure and ducked their heads, stifling laughter.

Zheng Tong shook the snow from his helmet and shouted:

"Gentlemen!"

"To wash away shame — without snow, how does one wash away shame?"

He turned, raised his blade, and led his several hundred soldiers at a pace far swifter than usual, striding toward the distant Greenwood Yao Pass camp.

"In my opinion, there must also be blood!"

"On the thirtieth day, Cen Junran, braving arrows and stones in the snow, personally led the frontal assault up Yao Pass, and the soldiers were heartened by it. Meanwhile, Zheng Tong circled the mountain with his deathsworn troops and struck the enemy's rear, breaking through three layers of flank defenses and setting fires within the camp. The Greenwood forces fell into chaos. The pass-assault troops were the first to scale the walls, taking several thousand heads and captives, while our own casualties numbered over a thousand. The remaining Greenwood troops fled in rout to Shangluo, and the Wan King Liu Ci died amid the chaos of battle..."

On the second day of the twelfth month, at Xiliu Camp north of the Wei River, Diwu Lun raised this silk missive, covered in stark crimson characters, and announced this tremendous news to Wan Xiu, Jing Dan, Diba Jiao, and the others!

"And this memorial of victory — it was written in the blood of the Wan King!"

The silk reeked of the battlefield's blood and the bone-chilling snow of Yao Mountain, yet to Diwu Lun it felt like a spring breeze, his cold mood instantly dispelled!

For if Cen Peng and Zheng Tong had failed to succeed any longer, Diwu Lun would have had to issue an edict of rebuke.

Because in the very days that Diwu Lun had dispatched troops to Weinan, the Wei clan's forces had been massing in Right Fufeng, predominantly cavalry.

Although the two sides had already entered a state of hostilities in Beidi Commandery, they had not yet fully torn their faces apart.

But now, the Greenwood Han had clearly reached some kind of strategic alliance with the Western Han, and the Wei clan had already abandoned any illusions about Diwu Lun. Just yesterday, word came that Wei Cui and his nephew had concentrated over ten thousand infantry and cavalry from the six commanderies, left Chencang, reached Yong, and then advanced east to Haozhi, invading Wei army territory!

"Thanks to Cen Junran, the Shangyan Marquis, and the thousands of soldiers who staked their lives, the southeast gate of Guanzhong has finally been shut."

Diwu Lun looked at the assembled men. "And once the gate is shut — what then?"

The men bowed low and spoke in one voice: "As the King commands — beat the dogs that have forced their way in!"

PS: Chapter 3 at 23:00.