Chapter 566: Besieging Wei to Rescue Zhao

"This is the strategy of 'besieging Wei to rescue Zhao.'"

"After General Ma enters Nanyang territory, do not attack the county seats — take only the rural townships. In every county, widely display the banners proclaiming the return of the Imperial Han, so that those locals who resent the Wei officials will rise up in response. Let the banners first point east toward the Imperial hometown of Chongling, where you will link up with our agents within the enemy's ranks, then turn north, to the General's own hometown, Huyang County…"

Ma Wu was indeed a native of Huyang in Nanyang Commandery. His youthful dream had been to become a Precinct Chief, but instead, because he had killed a man, he fled to Greenwood Mountain and became a bandit whom Precinct Chiefs were ordered to arrest.

Though his dream had strayed from its path, Feng Yi's strategy was tailored to the man, laying out a clear objective for Ma Wu: "The Fan clan, the maternal family of the Han Son of Heaven, are great magnates of Huyang. Though driven out by that villain Diwu, the Fan clan treated the local people exceedingly well, and their legacy of goodwill remains to this day. When the General reaches Huyang with the sons of the Fan clan, he can obtain replenishments of manpower, grain, and fodder. After that, either threaten Wancheng, or strike east into Yingchuan and Runan. In short, you must throw Cen Peng's rear into utter chaos!"

This was the plan Feng Yi had devised to break the enemy. He himself remained at Liqiu to hold the position, assigning Ma Wu five thousand veteran troops to carry out this deep-strike plan to stab the enemy in the back.

Some time earlier, Li Tong and others, acting on Liu Xiu's orders, had attempted to raise a revolt in Nanyang — an effort that had already ended in failure. Events had proven that, thanks to the fatuous and reckless misrule of the Gengshi Emperor Liu Xuan, popular enthusiasm for the "Han" among the Nanyang common folk was not as high as Liu Xiu and his ministers had imagined. Ma Wu's mission was fraught with peril. Yet he steeled himself and accepted the task. Though inwardly resentful that Feng Yi, a "latecomer," had risen above him, as Liu Xiu's brother-in-law, Ma Wu still gave his all for the survival of the Eastern Han.

The initial march went smoothly enough. Over five thousand men set out carrying five days' rations, skirting the eastern foothills of Greenwood Mountain, bypassing Fancheng on the Han River where the Wei army had deployed its defenses, and heading northeast through forested hill country, their blades aimed straight at Caiyang and Chongling — both of which were marginal areas within Nanyang. Feng Yi, finding that he could not win the contest for the center, had simply decided to seize the corners instead.

When the walls of Caiyang County seat came distantly into view, Ma Wu did not forget to ask the scouts who had hurried up from the rear: "Have the Wei troops followed us?"

Ma Wu hoped the entire Wei army would come chasing after him; that would greatly relieve the pressure on Feng Yi. In years past, he had scouted the various counties for the Greenwood men many times and knew the roads of Nanyang well. If the worst came to the worst, he could simply lead his troops back to Greenwood Mountain.

When he learned that the Wei army had sent only a small force of cavalry to shadow him from a distance and had not dispatched a large body of troops in pursuit, Ma Wu was not pleased but worried instead: "Has Cen Peng seen through the fact that I am merely making an empty show of strength and am not the Han army's main force? Even so, to not even send a single Colonel to chase and suppress me — could it be that he holds me, Ma Wu, in contempt?"

At this thought, Ma Wu recalled his earlier defeat at Cen Peng's hands at Lankou Settlement. Fury surged in his heart, and he ordered his soldiers to quicken their pace:

"Then let Cen Peng pay the price for underestimating his enemy! Let us turn Nanyang upside down!"

…

"General Cen, the Han army has entered Nanyang territory from the east. The local garrison troops for bandit suppression number only a few hundred to a thousand per county and cannot withstand the rebel army. The county seats can still hold out, but the rural townships and village hamlets have mostly fallen to the rebels. The Magistrate of Caiyang and the Magistrate of Chongling have each sent men to report the emergency!"

"Governor Yin of Wancheng has also sent an envoy to inquire whether the General intends to divide his forces and turn back to secure the rear."

"Write back. Tell Yin Shi to keep a close watch on the area around Wancheng. As for Caiyang, Chongling, Huyang, and the rest… pay them no mind at all!"

In Cen Peng's eyes, aside from Sui County on the main communication route, where he had stationed one Colonel, all the other counties in that marginal corner of Nanyang were places he could temporarily leave to fend for themselves — or even abandon outright.

Cen Peng gave a cold laugh. "I have heard that Ma Wu has the worst military discipline among the Han troops. Where his army passes, thorns grow in its wake. That region has only just begun to recover its productivity and peace, and he wants to throw my rear into chaos? Fine. That is Liu Xiu and his ilk's native soil. If even they care so little for it, why should I be overly concerned? The more chaos there, the less the common people will feel any fondness for Liu Xiu. It will thoroughly extinguish this so-called 'hearts of men longing for Han.'"

Cen Peng believed he had already left ample garrison troops and contingency plans in his rear. Since he had seen through the fact that this was Feng Yi's strategy of besieging Wei to rescue Zhao, he simply ignored it.

This Wei was not that Wei. He was no Pang Juan, and the Great Wei Emperor, Diwu Lun, was no King Hui of Wei!

"Then, General, what should we do next?"

In the view of the various staff officers at the headquarters of the General Who Guards the South, there were only two choices now: one was to take Deng County, which sat like a thorn in their back; the other was to attack Liqiu City, where Feng Yi was garrisoned.

Cen Peng, however, chose a target none of them had anticipated.

As if he had been waiting for this moment for a long time, now that the game had entered the middle phase, Cen Peng smiled and said: "Naturally, we cross the Han River, link up with the detached force that has long been waiting at Mount Atou, and use the siege equipment they have prepared to attack Xiangyang!"

"Xiangyang?"

The staff officers and Colonels were shocked. "But Feng Yi is right there to the southeast of Xiangyang! Though he has divided his forces, he still has several thousand men — enough to give the enemy in Xiangyang false hope and make them resist to the death. What's more, we still have that rebel force at Deng County behind us. If Deng Feng joins hands with Feng Yi and, while the General is focused on taking Xiangyang, strikes first at our Fancheng and cuts off our line of retreat, what then?"

"The whole point is to assault Xiangyang right under Feng Yi's nose!"

Cen Peng replied, "Otherwise, how could we force that Feng Gongsun, steady as a turtle in the Jianghan lands, to come out and fight in the open field?"

"If Deng Feng comes out as well, so much the better."

"I hold the advantage in riverine naval forces and command the Han River. If they dare strike at my rear, the three armies will recross via the pontoon bridges, and Fancheng will become the burial ground for both of them."

"And if they dare not, then they can only stand by and wait for the five-colored banner to be planted atop the walls of Xiangyang!"

…

As the situation grew tense, that King of Chuli, Qin Feng, had finally consented to let Feng Yi station his troops in his capital of Liqiu, lest they be swept away by a single Wei assault and annihilated beneath the city walls.

When word of the Wei army's latest troop movements reached Liqiu City, Feng Yi's staff officers and deputy generals were likewise thrown into an uproar:

"What is Cen Peng's intent?"

"Not only did he not send troops after General Ma Wu — he has actually gathered the entire strength of his three armies and is driving straight at Xiangyang!"

"Is he abandoning his rear entirely?"

This way of fighting was completely beyond their comprehension. Relying on his superior numbers and the Emperor's trust, Cen Peng had grown even more aggressive than in his humble early days.

Yet the men also felt that this was a rare opportunity.

"Would it not be better for our army to take advantage of Cen Peng's southward strike at Xiangyang by first moving north to join forces with Deng Feng? That would be enough to sever Cen Peng's rear line."

"How could Cen Peng not have thought of that?"

Feng Yi, for his part, was full of reflections. "The art of war says: if you prepare the front, the rear is weak; if you prepare the rear, the front is weak. Prepare the left, and the right is weak; prepare the right, and the left is weak. Prepare everywhere, and everywhere is weak."

"Before the great battle, Cen Peng deliberately divided his forces, seeming to guard every point, hoping to lure me into his trap and annihilate me. When one ruse failed, he simply resorted to an open stratagem, uniting his three armies into one and making a show of being determined to take Xiangyang. This is forcing me to come out and fight."

Once it came to a decisive battle, he would have fewer than ten thousand men left. How could he contend with Cen Peng's host of thirty thousand?

What was more, Feng Yi had absolutely no trust in Deng Feng. This was a man who could betray even his own uncle — how could he possibly be of one heart with the Han? Deng Feng's greatest hope was surely that Han and Wei would both be wounded, leaving him to reap the fisherman's profit. A man of such fickle treachery could not be factored into any calculation that determined victory or defeat.

Sure enough, two days later, scouts brought word that Deng Feng, who had been bottled up in his county for two months, had finally marched out with his troops!

Yet the direction his blades pointed left the Han officers and clerks speechless with astonishment.

"Deng Feng ignored Fancheng and Xiangyang entirely and headed straight north with his main force."

"What does Deng Feng intend now?" The men were more baffled than ever. It was Feng Yi who hit the mark with a single sentence: "Deng Feng wants to take advantage of the clash between Han and Wei to recover Xinye and the surrounding lands. That man is still dreaming of becoming 'King of Nanyang'!"

This development held one slight benefit for the Han army: with Deng Feng on the move, combined with Ma Wu's raiding, Cen Peng's rear might grow even more chaotic. But it would not directly aid the Han army or tip the scales of war. This Deng Feng truly was a master at treading on eggshells without breaking them.

No matter how defensible Xiangyang was, in this era it was, after all, only a small county seat, and it had lost the natural barriers of mountain and river. As Cen Peng's main force shifted south, urgent appeals for help came one after another; the city was in imminent danger.

Yet Feng Yi still kept his troops in place and made no move.

What was he waiting for?

On the third day after the Xiangyang siege began, Feng Yi laid out the truth to his staff officers: "Reinforcements!"

…

Yicheng, situated on the middle reaches of the Han River, was not as strategically vital as Xiangyang, but it was still a hub of water and land routes. This great city had suddenly turned against Chu and surrendered to Wei, becoming a sharp thorn lodged in the Han army's throat.

Though communications with Feng Yi had not been entirely severed, being cut in two made victory in this war even more distant for the Han army. Thus the Han generals Wang Chang and Deng Chen, burning with impatience, had led the Greenwood troops in fierce assaults on Yicheng, trying to retake the city and clear the obstacle to the contest for Xiangyang.

However, the remnant Greenwood soldiers, hastily recruited, were not only low in morale but poorly trained and equipped. The various chieftains, each with their own agenda and seeking to preserve their own strength, waved banners and shouted war cries beneath the walls with great enthusiasm as they watched the battle's fortunes unfold. But the moment it was their turn to storm the walls, they found every excuse to delay and stall, utterly unwilling to approach those high, thick city walls.

Left with no other choice, Wang Chang could only consult with Deng Chen about emulating the strategy used by the Qin general Bai Qi to break Yan, the predecessor of Yicheng.

It turned out that in former times, when the Qin army broke Yan, they had done so by building a long canal a hundred li west of the city, diverting a river to flood it. The water entered the city and became a deep pool, and the city's northeastern corner, soaked by the river water, had collapsed.

Now, that long canal which once took human lives still remains, only repurposed into a ditch for irrigating crops. The Han army intends to repeat the old trick — turning this channel that benefits the people back into a weapon of slaughter by water!

Once this intention became clear, the Han army met with even fiercer resistance from Yicheng. Some soldiers even broke out of the city to sabotage the Han army's canal-digging works. The two sides fought back and forth over the long canal outside the city, yet neither could decisively defeat the other. As time dragged on, the Han army also suffered from a shortage of manpower — the nearby common folk had all fled. After spending over a month, the Han army was still at an impasse before Yicheng. Some Greenwood commanders, seeing no profit to be gained and only bitter, grueling toil left, even began leading their troops back to the hills. Deserters grew by the day, and the forces under the two generals dwindled ever further.

Zhang Yu inside the city, seeing this scene, breathed a sigh of relief. He only needed to hold out until General Cen broke Xiangyang, and his mission would be complete. He could then push the State of Wei's zone of control southward to this point — which would be all the more advantageous when Wei campaigned against Han in the future!

Yet this fragile equilibrium held only until the last ten days of the third month.

The first to detect a change in the situation were the Wei army's warships on the Han River. They held the advantage of the upper reaches, while the Han army's large vessels found it difficult to sail upstream this far from the Yangtze and Yunmeng, making the Wei ships quite insolent.

However, column after column of troops flying fiery red banners arrived via the land route along the Han River's banks, tripling the number of Han soldiers at Yicheng in an instant.

"How have Han reinforcements come so quickly?" Zhang Yu was alarmed when he observed the change. Outside the city, Wang Chang and Deng Chen were overjoyed, their confidence in the war suddenly bolstered.

"It's Chancellor Deng himself, come in person!"

"By His Majesty's decree, I have led my forces with provisions and baggage to reinforce you." The Han Grand Chancellor Deng Yu wore an easy expression, the very picture of having a well-thought-out plan.

But in his heart, Deng Yu was full of worry.

In the plan he had originally settled with Liu Xiu, Feng Yi should have been sufficient to seize Jingzhou and Xiangyang. Yet the State of Wei, as if anticipating it all along, had matched Feng Yi to a standstill with a single Cen Peng.

Feng Yi had also spoken frankly: over a month ago, he had already sent an urgent report to Liu Xiu, stating that with twenty thousand troops from Jingzhou plus ten thousand Greenwood irregulars, he likely could not take Xiangyang — he needed reinforcements!

Liu Xiu was at that time directing the army at Chaisang. After much hesitation, he transferred Deng Yu, then in Huainan, bringing a second wave of troops — a full twenty thousand strong — to rush to the aid of the Jiang-Han region!

With this, the scale of this battle suddenly escalated.

Yet preparing on the left leaves the right sparse. This also meant that if the State of Wei launched a fierce offensive against Xu and Yang in the east, the Han army available to respond would be even fewer.

"With less than a tenth of Wei's forces, Cen Peng has tied down nearly half of Han's entire army. This campaign must be decided swiftly, or there will surely be trouble later!"

After entering the main tent, Deng Yu produced a brocade letter and shared it with Wang Chang and Deng Chen:

"I am not the only one to have arrived. There is also His Majesty's secret-brocade directive — it can defeat Cen Peng!"