Chapter 582: Fierce as Tigers

Young Geng's order was simple and clear, but to those watching from the sidelines, it was anything but.

The Household Counsellor Fu Long, besides being familiar with the roads around Linzi and useful as a guide, also served as a trusted civil official of the Emperor, there to exercise a supervisory role — though in practice he could not interfere at all with Geng Yan's military decisions and could only report back to Diwu Lun after the fact. Still, as a man personally chosen by the Emperor, Geng Yan retained a measure of respect for him and would notify him of all major matters.

Yet the one thing Fu Long alone did not know was that now, at the most critical moment of the day's battle, Geng Yan did not intend to remain at the rear directing operations — he meant to charge out together with the Shanggu shock cavalry!

"What? General Geng is personally leading the elite troops in a charge, aiming to smash straight through the Qi army's infantry formations?"

When Fu Long, who was observing the battle from a watchtower wagon, learned of this, he was utterly dumbfounded. No wonder General Geng had given him the telescope. He hastily raised it and scanned in every direction, searching for any sign of Geng Yan.

They were a full three li from the front line, yet the sounds of slaughter between the Jizhou troops and the Qi army rang clearly in their ears. The scene his eyes beheld, however, was far more chaotic than what his ears conveyed. Tens of thousands of friend and foe clashed and collided across the battlefield, like a vast, oil-fed sea of flames on the verge of boiling over — so dazzling and bewildering that one could find no pattern in it at all.

The pounding hoofbeats of a thousand charging cavalry seemed to trample right beside him. Fu Long could see the shock cavalry on both wings leaving the main formation. Their speed was not great; they moved like two slowly flowing rivers, about to merge into that "sea" — but he had no idea on which side Geng Yan actually was.

"Household Counsellor, the commander's banner is over there."

The lookout soldier beside him pointed it out to Fu Long. They had long been accustomed to picking out useful information from a chaotic battlefield and reporting it to the commanders. Fu Long hastily shifted his lens and indeed saw Geng Yan's "Bear-Tiger Banner" at the very front of the left-wing shock cavalry. This banner was raised for a military commander, symbolizing his ferocity, fierce as a bear and a tiger.

And beneath the banner, Geng Yan wore a suit of dazzling battle armor, covered by a white silk surcoat to keep the armor from growing unbearably hot under the blazing midsummer sun and roasting the general alive.

Just as the Bear-Tiger Banner symbolized, Young Geng truly had the momentum of a fierce tiger. Clustered in the midst of his personal guard, he advanced together with the Shanggu shock cavalry. He was now the heart of the cavalry force, and over two thousand Shanggu shock cavalry beat in unison with him.

They began to enter the acceleration phase, moving very fast. Fu Long had to constantly shift his telescope to keep pace with the warhorses' strides. He saw Geng Yan draw his saber and raise it high. When the blade swung forward and leveled to point ahead, the Shanggu shock cavalry were already fifty-odd paces from the enemy sea — and the horses' speed increased further!

The instant the shock cavalry struck the enemy formation was extraordinarily magnificent and bloody. The telescope showed Fu Long scenes of brutal carnage a civil official could never imagine: the chaos of rearing horses and tumbling men, the horror of fresh blood and severed limbs flying through the air. Only after he had blinked twice did the shrill, harrowing screams and roars of the slaughter that had just erupted reach the main formation several li away, making Fu Long's heart tremble once more.

But his gaze never left the commander's banner and Geng Yan. He saw Geng Yan fighting in person, spurring his horse and brandishing his saber, hacking to death several Qi soldiers who surged forward to block him. Then, together with the shock cavalry around him, he galloped straight into the enemy formation, leaving behind only a view of his back — which was promptly swallowed up by the densely packed enemy troops and the Wei soldiers streaming in behind him, vanishing from sight.

With the Shanggu shock cavalry joining the fray, the "sea" at the center of the battlefield, which had only been on the verge of boiling, now truly erupted! For several li in every direction, thousands upon thousands of soldiers were tangled together, the shadows of horses and men overlapping, everywhere the eye fell a forest of raised spears and lifted blades.

Fu Long could only struggle to search for the Bear-Tiger Banner, but it was obscured by the dust kicked up and churned by the trampling soldiers. He could only catch an occasional glimpse of a corner before it quickly merged with other banners, until he could no longer find any trace of it.

"Can General Geng break through the enemy lines?" Fu Long could not help but be deeply worried. Even if he broke through, blades and arrows had no eyes. If anything were to happen to Geng Yan, the Wei Emperor would lose a great general, and Young Geng, like Huo Qubing, would only have time to leave the world a single, breathtaking glimpse...

"He's out!"

The lookout soldier suddenly shouted. Fu Long thought it meant Geng Yan had broken through the lines, but the lookout tugged at him, pointing behind them, and said, "Household Counsellor, the Qi reinforcements are coming out of the city!"

Fu Long was horrified. He turned to look and saw that the Ji Gate southwest of Linzi had already opened. At least four or five thousand Qi soldiers were filing out in succession, slowly shifting in this direction. In just one ke, they would be upon them — and with the Wei army's elite troops all committed, only a few hundred wounded and sick remained to guard the camp. How could they hold them off?

Could it be that he, a bookish scholar, would have to draw his sword and cut men down?

It was not entirely out of the question. Fu Long's hand moved to the hilt of the sword at his waist. In that instant, he was already prepared to die to repay his sovereign's grace, and to buy time for Geng Yan's victory.

Just then, he heard wave after wave of mountain-shaking, sea-roaring shouts from the battlefield ahead, and at the same time, the other lookouts on the watchtower wagon cried out in wild excitement.

"General Geng has fought his way out too!"

Fu Long could no longer concern himself with the threat behind him. He shifted his telescope and aimed it at the rear of the enemy formation. There, like skin pierced through by an iron needle, a great gap had been torn open. Qi soldiers who had lost their will to fight were fleeing in utter disarray, and behind them came the Shanggu shock cavalry, galloping and trampling in pursuit!

The Bear-Tiger Banner was among them, intact and undamaged!

But when Fu Long found Geng Yan beneath the banner again, his heart lurched. He saw that the white surcoat over Young General Geng's armor was already stained crimson with blood — whether his own or the enemy's, he could not tell.

Wounded or not, it did not affect Geng Yan's will to fight. He had already led the left-wing shock cavalry in a charge that smashed straight through the Qi formation, piercing it from front to back! The Qi army was cut into two segments. The main force, already under fierce assault by the Jizhou troops, could no longer hold, and as for the part directly shattered by the shock cavalry's frontal strike, it collapsed entirely, soldiers scattering in every direction.

And Geng Yan had already fixed his sights on his next target: the Coiled-Dragon Banner of the King of Qi, Zhang Bu!

Only then did Fu Long have a chance to look at their enemy. When the King of Qi, Zhang Bu, realized that Geng Yan was leading the shock cavalry straight toward him, he lost all will to fight. He actually abandoned his crumbling great army, wheeled his horse around, and, using the fleeing Qi soldiers as cover, fled directly north toward Linzi under the escort of one or two thousand troops.

"Defeated. Defeated."

As his chariot raced away in headlong flight, Zhang Bu looked back and saw that the Qi formation, under the combined assault of Wei infantry and cavalry, had collapsed on nearly all fronts. And the ten thousand men he had placed at his rear had also proven unreliable — they had actually been shattered by a mere two thousand Yuyang shock cavalry and were now broken and scattered.

And all this, mind you, in just three short ke of battle! The military treatises say that one cavalryman can defeat ten infantrymen — truly, those are no empty words.

Yet Zhang Bu still clung to hope. He still had Linzi. Fierce as the Wei cavalry were, they could do nothing against deep moats and high walls. As long as he held out inside the city, the loyal core troops left behind in his old base in Langya to the east could come to their king's rescue, and the newly formed anti-Wei coalition would lend a hand — at least, that was what Fang Wang had promised...

Zhang Bu had long since notified his younger brother Zhang Lan inside the city, ordering him to send reinforcements from the Ji Gate southwest of Linzi, but also instructing him: "Keep the northwest gate ready to open at any time. If the battle turns against us, I shall return to the city through the Yang Gate."

Now the entire Qi army had collapsed, and the reinforcements emerging from the Ji Gate were merely throwing their lives away for nothing. Zhang Bu cared only for his own life. With only a small number of chariots and horsemen breaking away, he rushed to the "Yang Gate" northwest of Linzi and, looking up, called for the gate to be opened.

But what awaited Zhang Bu was only slaughter and chaos atop the city wall. Qi soldiers were being cut down and toppled over the parapets in a steady stream, some even plummeting down into the moat and trenches below.

Zhang Bu was utterly stupefied. Had the Wei army already fought its way into the city from other gates and even climbed the walls to do battle? Where had they gotten so many men?

He had no time to think further. As the King of Qi's banner atop the Yang Gate was torn down, snapped, and hurled below the wall, and a five-colored flag — clearly stitched together in haste from cloth of various hues — was raised in its place, Zhang Bu knew that Linzi, too, could no longer be held!

Seeing the pursuing Wei cavalry closing in ever nearer behind him, Zhang Bu hastily wheeled around once more.

"East!"

"Withdraw to the secondary capital, Ju County in Zichuan Commandery! (near present-day Changle, Shandong)!"

Although the Qi army collapsed in less than a shichen, because of the vast number of combatants and the enormous scale of the battlefield, it was not until the hour of bu, well past noon, that scattered clashes fully subsided. The entire western side of Linzi was littered with countless dead and wounded, the great majority Qi soldiers. The trenches and moats were filled to the brim.

Gai Yan led the Yuyang shock cavalry eastward in pursuit of Zhang Bu, and it was through this blood-soaked battlefield that Fu Long made his way to meet the victorious Young Geng.

Only upon seeing Geng Yan in person did Fu Long realize that what he had witnessed was no illusion. Geng Yan was still mounted, but his horse had been changed. His surcoat and armor were covered in blood, but all of it belonged to others. Only a broken arrow shaft was embedded in his thigh — a wound Geng Yan had sustained during the charge.

The personal guards told Fu Long: "During the charge, a stray arrow struck the General in the thigh. The General simply cut it off with his own saber, and none around him even knew."

It was a deed of heroism well worth recording in glowing detail, but what made it absurdly ironic was that when the arrow was later pulled out and examined, the arrowhead turned out to be from the Wei army's own stocks — specifically, the Handan triple-edged arrowheads used by the Jizhou cavalry, with an artisan's inscription still on the shaft. Most likely, in the chaos of battle, some archer among the Jizhou troops had loosed a shot into the sky, and as it fell, it happened by sheer coincidence to strike Geng Yan as he charged on horseback...

Had that shot been just a little more accurate, the Wei State's General of Chariots and Cavalry might well have died an unjust death under his own men's arrows.

When the truth of the matter came out, several colonels of the Shanggu shock cavalry flew into a towering rage. Convinced that those bastards had deliberately loosed a hidden arrow to take revenge on their commanding general, they were about to go pick a fight with the Jizhou troops — but Geng Yan stopped them.

"Arrows have no eyes. Accidental wounds in the chaos of battle are a common occurrence. How can we, because of one stray arrow, launch an indiscriminate investigation and punish an entire brigade? The Jizhou soldiers contributed greatly in this battle and suffered many casualties. We must not wound their hearts."

Geng Yan treated the matter as if it were nothing at all. After the wound was bandaged, he chatted and laughed as usual, and asked Fu Long, who had come to pay his respects: "Household Counsellor Fu, through that telescope, did you see me break their lines? When you write your memorial to His Majesty afterward, you must describe it truthfully — and write it in detail!"

Fu Long was now thoroughly convinced of Geng Yan's prowess, both in heart and mind. He bowed with clasped hands and said, "The General's valor and keen edge are matchless. No wonder, before I set out east, His Majesty praised you, saying, 'Bo Zhao and his troops are all fierce as tigers'..."

Yet Fu Long held back part of the remark. Diwu Lun's original words had two more lines: "Geng Yan, Gai Yan, and the men under their command are all fierce as tigers, ruthless as goats, and greedy as wolves!"

The first part needed no explanation — Fu Long had witnessed today how Young Geng fought like a fierce tiger descending a mountain. But "ruthless as goats" was intriguing. Goats appear docile, but when livestock fight, most stop at a mere show of force. Only goats are the most stubborn. A goat's ruthlessness lies in this: once it starts a fight, it throws all caution to the wind. It first backs up, then charges forward, attacking its opponent viciously with its horns, and it is nearly impossible to separate them. Geng Yan fought with great "ruthlessness" — even when seemingly at a disadvantage, he pressed forward relentlessly, never stopping until he had butted Zhang Bu to death.

What's more, goats are not only "ruthless" in fighting — they are even more ruthless when eating. There is a saying: "Goats graze as if by fire." A fine stretch of green land, once goats have grazed it over, will eight or nine times out of ten be stripped utterly bare.

Coupled with the final line, "greedy as wolves," Diwu Lun was satirizing the Youzhou troops: fierce as they were, their military discipline was a serious problem. They plundered wherever they passed, their hearts exceedingly greedy. This time, Fu Long had been sent to oversee the campaign, and several men from Qingzhou had been appointed as high officials to take over Qi territory, traveling with the main force — all precisely to prevent the Youzhou troops from wreaking too much destruction upon Linzi.

Now that the great battle was over and Linzi had undergone an internal upheaval, taking the city would be no problem. It was time for Fu Long to consider how to cooperate with the imperially appointed regional grandees who would arrive shortly, and how to restrain Geng Yan — and especially the two shock cavalry forces from Shanggu and Yuyang, whose very nature was to plunder.

By this time, what had happened inside Linzi had also become clear. It turned out that the Wei army had not stormed in; rather, an internal revolt had erupted within the city. A moment later, the Yong Gate due west of Linzi opened, and men from the city came out to report that the great merchant Dongguo Chang'an, in league with the city's scholars, merchants, and Elders, had seized and killed Zhang Bu's younger brother, rising up in support of Wei!

It was the same old playbook of "whoever wins, they help." From the city wall, Dongguo Chang'an and his associates saw that the Qi army's defeat was sealed, so they had the retainers and salt workers they'd brought out to "assist in the defense" stab the defending troops in the back.

Geng Yan was perfectly happy to see this. He looked at Fu Long. "Grandee Fu, does this count as an uprising or a surrender?"

Under the policy Diwu Lun himself had set, a voluntary uprising was treated quite generously, while a passive surrender after defeat was already certain rated one grade lower.

By rights it should count as an uprising, but Fu Long was no stranger to this Dongguo Chang'an. As early as his and Zhang Yu's first diplomatic mission to Linzi, he had sent Embroidered Uniform Guard to make contact with this great merchant. But Dongguo Chang'an's response at the time had been ambiguous. In the year since, although he had provided identity cover for the State of Wei's spies and some help with maps, it had been rather limited — far less than they had expected. He had helped, but not fully, keeping his balance with the utmost care.

Until today, when he finally switched sides. Though it was within expectations, after Fu Long met Dongguo Chang'an — who came out of the city to welcome them with Linzi's elders, "bearing pots and carrying broth" — he merely smiled and said, "Master Dongguo, the Embroidered Uniform Guard called on you many times. Today, at last, there is a response."

He was hinting that Dongguo Chang'an's "uprising" was somewhat watered down. The great commercial magnate of the east seemed thoroughly frightened. He bowed his head to the ground repeatedly, then looked up and said, "At the time, I feared that word would leak and Zhang Bu would notice, which would only make things worse. That is why I dared not fully agree, nor dared I be too eager."

He looked toward Geng Yan, who was in command, and said, "But this old man's heart has long belonged to Great Wei. And I have three reasons to aid Wei — the moment I heard that the heavenly troops had reached the walls of Linzi, I dared not delay an instant and immediately launched this righteous uprising!"

Geng Yan and Fu Long exchanged a glance. Geng Yan smiled. "Oh? And what are these three reasons?"

Dongguo Chang'an said, "First: the Wei Emperor's ancestors were men of Qi, and this old man, along with the several hundred thousand people of Linzi, are also men of Qi. There is the bond of fellow countrymen — Linzi ought, of course, to belong to His Majesty the Wei Emperor!"

His gaze flicked to the Shanggu shock cavalry behind young Geng — these fellows from the frontier must be itching to enter the city and indulge in a rampage of rape and plunder, surely?

Dongguo Chang'an said, "Second: Linzi is a thousand-year-old city. The wealth within its estates and markets is worth far more than a thousand in gold. Its people and its riches must be presented whole and intact to the Wei Emperor. There must be no disorder!"

These words seemed aimed squarely at Geng Yan and Fu Long. But Geng Yan's face was hard and resolute, seemingly unmoved, while Fu Long nodded slightly, also watching Geng Yan from the corner of his eye. He wondered whether the Wei Emperor, when dispatching him on this campaign, had instructed him to keep Linzi safe and whole — and how one was to placate the arrogant soldiers and fierce commanders under him, to keep their lust and greed in check.

Each of them harbored his own thoughts, but then, as if on cue, they all burst into roaring laughter together.

It turned out that Dongguo Chang'an had placed his hand over his heart and given his third reason.

"This humble man's ancestor bore the taboo name 'Dongguo Xianyang.' I myself am called 'Dongguo Chang'an.' These names bear witness: for a hundred years, the Dongguo clan's hearts have been set upon the orthodox Son of Heaven of the Central Plain, and have never changed!"