Chapter 419: All Quiet on the Western Front

For over a full month, the Western Route Army made no progress, and in recent days, the endless winter drizzle falling from the sky dealt a fatal blow to the Wei army — many men froze and fell ill, and even the commander Jing Dan caught the sickness.

He insisted on directing operations despite his illness, wrapped in a bearskin coat, and as he looked up at the fine snow covering the layered ridges and peaks of the Taihang Mountains, he spoke these words in the midst of his worry.

"Could there be a woman in the army?"

The place where Jing Dan's rear encampment was located was called "Jealous Woman Pass" (present-day Niangzi Pass), said to have been built in the Spring and Autumn period; inside the pass there was also a "Jealous Woman Shrine," and whenever a woman in fine attire passed by it, the local deity would invariably stir up thunder and lightning in a fit of jealousy and send down rain and snow.

This region should have had a dry climate, but ever since Wang Mang usurped the Han, the weather had grown increasingly strange — the ice age arrived earlier, and rain and snow were no longer regular; Jing Dan had the misfortune to encounter this, which made the Jingxing Road east of Jealous Woman Pass slippery and difficult to traverse.

Jing Dan had to lead his army forward mountain by mountain: Weary Donkey Ridge, North Hengkou, Mianman River, Liangzi Ridge — along this entire route, carts could not travel side by side, cavalry could not form ranks, and the column had to stretch out in a single long serpentine line; only after several days of such climbing over mountains and ridges could they reach Jingxing Pass (present-day Tumen Pass), which the King of Zhending, Liu Yang, personally guarded.

Upon arriving there, even a man of Jing Dan's composure wanted to curse at the sight of the formidable pass before him.

Jingxing Pass commanded the Changshan territory east of the Hu River, and to its southwest, ten thousand peaks stabbed into the sky, with only a single thread of a goat path. The pass was surrounded by mountains on three sides, facing the plain only to the east, guarding the narrow passage through the mountains; the King of Zhending and the Tongma army could securely hold the pass, supplied by Hebei grain.

And by the time they had marched here through bitter cold and frost, the Wei army's vanguard was already utterly exhausted.

Even so, Jing Dan still ordered his vanguard to shout provocations — such as having men hold up women's clothing and mock Liu Yang for his cowardice — but no matter how they postured and preened, the King of Zhending inside Jingxing Pass refused to take the bait.

Liu Yang was fond of the cold weather, and gently stroking his tumor, he said: "Do those fellows think I don't know how Han Xin defeated the Zhao army back then?"

Though Liu Yang was a mediocre man, his family had after all lived in Zhending and Changshan for so many years, and he knew the local history.

Over two hundred years ago, a great battle that decided the balance between Chu and Han erupted at Jingxing. The Han general Han Xin led his troops here and was blocked by the King of Dai, Chen Yu, and the King of Zhao, Zhao Xie, who had sided with Chu. The Zhao-Dai allied army numbered two hundred thousand and held Jingxing Pass. Han Xin lured them into coming out to fight; the Zhao-Dai allied forces underestimated the enemy, and Han Xin feigned defeat, retreating west to the Mianman River, where he fought the famous "Last Stand" battle!

The situation between the Wei general Jing Dan and Liu Yang now was remarkably similar to that of old; although the Zhending troops plus the Tongma numbered a full forty thousand, at least twice the Wei army's strength, Liu Yang was not so foolish as to repeat the same mistake.

Seeing that their challenges had once again failed, the Wei army withdrew to their camp on the Mianman River. They had already been delayed there for over a month; the soldiers grew wearier by the day, and their grain had to be transported over a thousand li from Taiyuan Commandery via Jealous Woman Pass, with Guo Ji, the Inspector of Bing Province, mobilizing the people of Taiyuan to carry provisions.

"The time to counterattack has come."

Seeing that the Wei army's fighting spirit had been worn down sufficiently, the King of Zhending, Liu Yang, discussed sending out troops with the Tongma commander, the King of Hejian, Shang Huai Kuang, who had been sent by Liu Ziyu to assist him.

Liu Yang had already positioned himself as Liu Ziyu's successor after the latter's six-or-seven-year limit, and he still looked down on the Tongma commander, speaking condescendingly: "Has the King of Hejian heard of Li Zuoche, the Lord of Guangwu?"

To his shame, Shang Huai Kuang truly did not know him and could only shake his head.

Liu Yang grew even more arrogant: "You must at least know the Zhao general Li Mu?"

"Li Zuoche was Li Mu's grandson and inherited his family's art of war. During the Chu-Han conflict, as Chen Yu's advisor, he proposed that since the Han army was raiding from a thousand li away, its soldiers were hungry and exhausted, and the Jingxing valley was narrow and long, preventing chariots and horses from advancing together, defense was preferable to offense. As long as they held firm, all would be secure."

"But Chen Yu disagreed and did not strictly defend Jingxing; he was lured out by Han Xin with the slightest provocation and suffered a crushing defeat."

"After the battle, when Han Xin learned of Li Zuoche's strategy, he was greatly alarmed, offered a thousand gold pieces as a reward for this man, and ultimately honored him as a distinguished guest."

The reason Liu Yang knew this so clearly was that he possessed a copy of The Lord of Guangwu's Art of War.

"Li Zuoche had volunteered to lead thirty thousand troops through the mountain byways to the north to emerge behind the enemy and cut off the Han army's provisions — that would have guaranteed victory over Han Xin! But Chen Yu rejected this, and instead allowed Han Xin to send Guan Ying through the byways to strike his rear, leading to the great defeat."

"From this we can see: whoever can make good use of the mountain byways will hold the advantage at Jingxing. Today, the Wei army, riding the momentum of their victories at Taiyuan and Shangdang, is fighting far from home. Jing Dan once routed the Greenwood at Tongyuan and can be considered a famous general — his edge cannot be met head-on. I have delayed for over a month, letting their morale drop somewhat. And now, with their provisions being hauled from a thousand li away, their soldiers show signs of hunger, they gather firewood before they can cook, and the army never has its fill — their grain must be in the rear. We can fully employ Li Zuoche's strategy!"

Liu Yang said: "I will take over ten thousand Zhending troops, dig deep moats and raise high ramparts, fortify the camp, and refuse to engage them."

"Meanwhile, the King of Hejian will take the Tongma troops, travel light through the byways, and cut off their baggage train. In this way, Jing Dan will be unable to fight ahead and unable to retreat behind; the Tongma raiding force will sever his rear, leaving the countryside with nothing to plunder. Within ten days, the Wei army will surely collapse, and Jing Dan can be captured!"

Brilliant!

Shang Huai Kuang was also very pleased and clapped his hands, saying: "The plan is a good plan, but…"

He had long been fed up with Liu Yang's arrogance, so he straightened his face and said: "You are a king, and I am also a king. You have over ten thousand troops under your command, I have thirty thousand. Your Zhending troops even have winter clothes to wear, while my Tongma soldiers can only wear thin summer garments. In terms of armor and weapons, yours are also better. Why shouldn't the Tongma troops guard the pass and the Zhending troops go out to fight?"

The factional infighting and mutual distrust within Northern Han had begun again. Over the question of who would go out through the byways to raid the Wei army's rear, the two sides bickered endlessly and could only write a memorial to report to Liu Ziyu for him to decide.

This back-and-forth took several more days; the weather grew even colder, and Jing Dan's illness worsened to the point where he was too weak to rise from his bed and had no choice but to return from the Mianman River camp to Jealous Woman Pass. Every day when he woke and before taking his medicine, he would ask one question: "Has the enemy come out through the byways to raid us yet?"

The Last Stand battle of old was no secret — Liu Yang knew of it, and so did Jing Dan. He understood that simply luring the enemy out would be difficult to replicate Han Xin's miracle, and could only scheme around the supply route, hoping that his own long, drawn-out supply line could trick the enemy into coming out to be destroyed.

Had the opponent been a decisive general, he would have long since walked into Jing Dan's trap. Who would have thought that Northern Han's internal strife and inefficiency would instead leave the Wei army's ambush troops waiting in vain for many days — this greatly discouraged Jing Dan.

If the King of Zhending and the Tongma were determined to hold the pass and refuse battle, then in the Jingxing sector, Jing Dan truly had no way to deal with them.

Several more days passed like this, and just as Jing Dan was about to write a memorial to the King of Wei admitting his fault and explaining that there was truly no way to break through Jingxing Pass, good news arrived.

"General, the enemy has secretly dispatched troops out of the pass and is coming along the byways!"

"The Emperor's surname is Liu, after all — his elbow bends inward. As expected, he still favors Liu Yang."

Although he had deployed his troops under imperial decree, Shang Huai Kuang was still displeased. Within the Tongma army, there was considerable discontent over Liu Ziyu's promise to pass the throne to the King of Zhending's family in the future; they always felt that the fruits of the realm, hard-won by the Tongma, were being stolen by the King of Zhending's faction, who had done nothing. On what grounds? Just because he was of the imperial clan? Just because of the big tumor on his neck?

In Shang Huai Kuang's opinion, they should take advantage of the Tongma's numerical superiority to force Liu Yang to lead his troops out of Jingxing to fight the Wei army — ideally, Liu Yang would be defeated, and he, Shang Huai Kuang, would shut the pass and offer no aid, letting Liu Yang die outside. That way, they could justifiably swallow up the King of Zhending's forces.

But Liu Ziyu did not fully trust the Tongma either and wanted Zhending to serve as a check on them. If he struck a lethal blow now and forced the Zhending faction to defect to Diwu Lun, that would be a path to self-destruction. To secure the interior, one must first repel the external threat — Liu Ziyu understood this. Recently, on the eastern front, the city of Xindu had already fallen, and the central front had made little progress; the western front absolutely could not fail!

Moreover, in mountain warfare, the light-footed and agile Tongma were indeed more adept. Under Liu Ziyu's orders, the King of Zhending reluctantly had his men hand over their winter clothes and shoes to the Tongma army.

This mountain byway was still extremely narrow, its treacherousness even surpassing the main Jingxing road. After leading his troops onto this path, Shang Huai Kuang deeply suspected that Liu Yang's The Lord of Guangwu's Art of War was not at all reliable.

"This wretched road can accommodate thirty thousand men? Can it take cavalry?"

Shang Huai Kuang had brought only five thousand, and already they were strung out in a long tail through the mountains, unable to coordinate front and rear. The cold night made the Tongma soldiers shiver uncontrollably. Passing a spring called Deer Spring, they found it had frozen solid and had to break the ice just to get water; the ice-cold water poured into their bellies, making them even more miserable.

The next day, after wading across the Mianman River, many soldiers' feet were frostbitten and they could no longer walk, so they had to be left behind to rest. After climbing over Ox-Horse Mountain, the entire force was panting and utterly unable to march further. The Tongma soldiers' stamina was already exceptional, yet they still had to rest a night on the road before they could use this Jingxing byway to circle behind the Wei army and raid its grain depot at Xingshan Post.

"If the Zhending troops had taken this route, it might have taken them an extra day."

When Xingshan Post was finally right before his eyes, Shang Huai Kuang let out a huge sigh of relief. Lying prone on the mountain, he could see carts laden with grain arriving from Taiyuan Commandery to the west, concentrated here, and then transported by men to the Wei army's forward outpost dozens of li to the east.

Shang Huai Kuang called together the severely depleted Tongma troops, and with a great roar from him, several thousand Tongma charged out of the mountain forest, attacking Xingshan Post!

However, after the panicked Wei soldiers withdrew and the Tongma occupied Xingshan Post, when Shang Huai Kuang gleefully cut open a grain sack with his knife, intending to let his brothers first have a hot meal, he discovered that the sacks contained not millet, but nothing but dry grass, sand, and stones.

Had the Wei army's skimming of provisions reached such an extent?

Before Shang Huai Kuang could cry out in alarm and withdraw his troops, the Wei soldiers lying in ambush around Xingshan Post surged out to attack. Jing Dan had reckoned that the King of Zhending would not come out from the front to fight; the so-called forward outpost had only a few thousand men left behind, while the main force had been held in the rear, waiting for the Tongma for an entire month!

A few hours later, at Jealous Woman Pass, the true storage point for the Wei army's provisions, Jing Dan, on his sickbed, finally received the report of victory from the front.

"Three thousand heads taken — only the bandit leader escaped back with a little over two thousand men!"

This was the Western Route Army's first victory after a bitter wait of over a month, and the colonels were all very pleased, feeling they could now give a satisfactory account to the King of Wei. Jing Dan alone was greatly disappointed.

"The Tongma didn't come out in full force — only a few thousand came, and we failed to annihilate them completely?"

He pounded his chest, which would not stop coughing, with some resentment. Because of his illness, he had been unable to personally direct the battle, and sure enough, the outcome was not quite the same.

The King of Wei doesn't care how many enemies he kills or how many losses he takes — the King of Wei wants only Jingxing!

"If that happens, we'll only have startled the enemy. The King of Zhending and the Copper Horses will never come out of the pass again!"

Jing Dan, agitated, broke into another violent coughing fit, then finally stretched out his hand: "The map!"

A subordinate presented the map. Jing Dan's trembling hand groped across it. The Taihang range rose like a heaven-built rampart, cutting Bing Province off from You and Ji, leaving only narrow defiles threading through the mountains — eight major ones in all.

Jingxing lay at the center. North of Jingxing, there were indeed several other routes — called Puyin, called Feihu…

The entrances to these two routes were not at Taiyuan, but far off in Dai Commandery, a no-man's-land currently ignored by the Hu-Han, Wei, and Northern Han alike — utter chaos. The exits of Puyin and Feihu, meanwhile, lay in the northern reaches of Changshan and Zhongshan Commanderies.

But just as Jing Dan's troops reached Jingxing, the King of Wei, realizing this was no campaign that could be won in a single push, acted on a sudden impulse and began micromanaging. Diwu Lun detached a flanking force of over a thousand men from Bing Province and sent them on a risky thrust into Dai Commandery. On one hand, they were to contact Geng Kuang, Governor of Shanggu, and ask him to follow Diwu Lun's plan by sending a "Northern Route Army" south to strike the King of Guangyang. At the same time, they were to attempt a southward advance through Puyin, to circle behind Jingxing and throw the enemy's rear into chaos.

No one expected that a casual chess piece the King of Wei had set down back then would now become the Western Route Army's only hope.

"As things stand, we can only pin our hopes on this surprise force!"

……

PS: Second chapter at 23:00.