Chapter 181: A Rout Like a Mountain Crumbling

"By military law, one who praises the enemy to frighten the masses shall be executed!"

On the twenty-ninth day of the tenth month, in the Qin army camp outside Xiang City, under everyone's gaze, an unlucky soldier was tied to a post beside the command gate. First he was publicly shamed for a full day while a military law officer announced his crime, and then the executioner put him to death on the spot.

The troops were long accustomed to such scenes; they watched with blank expressions, warning one another to take this as a lesson. Only Heifu, standing among the crowd, stared at the blood-soaked corpse, and for no apparent reason, a chill rose from the crown of his head.

"If these past few days I had dared to say that Li Xin would be defeated, that the Qin army would lose, that the Chu army would prevail, then right now I would likely share this man's fate."

Qin military law was severe: anyone who dared to praise the enemy and undermine morale would, once reported, meet exactly this end.

Given the Qin army's mutual guarantee system of squads and fives, with everyone watching and spying on one another, unless they were brothers born of the same mother, you could hardly expect the men you shared a tent and meals with not to inform on you. It was not that the bonds of comradeship were worthless, but because military law stipulated that if someone in a five-man squad violated a prohibition and a squadmate exposed him, the entire squad was absolved; if they knew but did not expose him, the entire squad was punished.

And so this unlucky man before him, merely because the siege had dragged on and he had spoken one word of despair, had met such an end. This sounded a warning bell for Heifu: though he knew the outcome of this campaign would be defeat, he could not speak it aloud.

So Heifu could only keep his prophet's big mouth shut. Upward to Colonel Li You, downward to the men under his command, he sealed his lips and said nothing at all. Every day he simply had his hundred men keep their bedding packed and tidy, their weapons on their persons, ready to shoulder and flee at any moment.

But as events proved, when a defeat descends suddenly, no matter how much you prepare, you are still caught off guard.

First, on this very twenty-ninth day of the tenth month, the Chu garrison inside Xiang City, after cowering for a full month, abruptly changed their approach and began pouring out in full force to attack the Qin army.

When he heard the drumbeats signaling assembly, Heifu was eating his evening meal. He hurriedly swallowed a mouthful of the tough-to-chew rice, grabbed the weapon at his side, and walked out of the tent with the others.

The Qin army, long stalled beneath the city walls, feared nothing more than that the men inside Xiang City would refuse to come out. They immediately beat the drums to assemble and mount a defense. Although they were mostly a motley force from the eastern commanderies and counties, their fighting strength was no less than the Chu men's, and they held the advantage of superior numbers.

But just as the Qin army had cut down large numbers of Chu troops and were about to counterattack into the city, they never imagined that chaos would break out first in their own rear.

The Southern Commandery corps was tasked with holding the left flank, serving as a reserve force ready to be thrown into the battle at any moment. But on that battlefield where shouts roared like thunder, Heifu was tapped by Ji Ying, who loved to look every which way. He turned his head and was stunned to discover that in the direction of the Ying River bank, where the Qin army stored its grain, flames had actually broken out!

Firelight soared into the sky and thick smoke rolled — this spelled bad news.

In an instant, behind the two ramparts, the Qin men who had been composed and at ease were all horrified. The soldiers all saw what was happening behind them; alarm and unease spread contagiously among them.

"How did a fire start?"

"Could there be Chu troops behind us?!"

Heifu's heart gave a thump.

"The docks by the Ying River — either supplies coming from Yingchuan Commandery upstream, or grain and fodder sent along the Hong Canal."

"Yingchuan is the Qin army's deep rear; it's unlikely anything went wrong there. Could it be that Chenying has fallen?"

This moment of panic brought the Qin assault to a halt, for the soldiers were stricken with fear, all looking back toward the rear, and could no longer concentrate on the fight.

"Southern Commandery troops, follow me!" At that moment, orderlies began relaying the command of Li You and Commander Du: Meng Tian was ordering them to move along the riverbank and reinforce the rear.

A thousand men advanced as the vanguard, with the main force following close behind. Heifu and the several hundred close-guards tightly encircled Li You's war chariot. By the time they reached the riverbank, they found the place already in utter chaos: the troops guarding the docks and granaries were locked in combat with enemies who had appeared from nowhere.

A supply officer, his face smeared with soot, hurriedly reported: "They were boats that came from Chenying. They were taken for ordinary grain transports, but who would have guessed they would ram straight ashore, first set the docks ablaze, and then try to charge into the granaries, starting fires everywhere."

Li You extended a hand to gauge the wind direction, and his expression instantly changed drastically. The wind was the north wind common in winter, and with the weather dry and everything parched, the flames that had ignited at the dockside were already spreading southward; tent after tent was slowly being lit up…

"First and Second Companies, repel the enemy! Third and Fourth Companies and the close-guard retinue, follow me at once to fight the fire!"

Once the order was given, the Southern Commandery troops split into two groups.

Although the Qin camp was laid out sensibly, it still could not withstand the combination of fierce flames and the north wind. The dockside was littered with the burning husks of wooden boats, and everywhere felt tents were catching fire. The blazing flames spiraled upward, reaching over ten feet high; the firelight soared into the sky, casting a red glow across the faces of Heifu and the soldiers under him.

A blaze of this magnitude could no longer be extinguished by human hands alone. What was more, the Chu men who had landed at the docks were charging into the camp with reckless abandon, not to kill the enemy, but solely to set fires.

"This fire cannot possibly be stopped," said Bu Cheng, coughing uncontrollably from the smoke.

Heifu had his comrades pass the word among themselves: "If chaos breaks out, immediately rally around the Commandant!"

He had a premonition: the Qin army would be defeated today!

Just as expected, the chaos in the rear affected the bitter fighting at the front. The Qin men's morale wavered, and their assault gradually slowed. At this very moment, from behind Xiang City, a fresh force of over ten thousand men also swept in to attack.

In an instant, the roles of attacker and defender were reversed. Instead, it was the Qin men who began falling back step by step, while the Chu men fiercely assaulted the Qin ramparts, which were less than ten feet high. The first to scale the ramparts — the commandery corps of a Commandant tasked with holding the defense — were swallowed up in the tide of Chu soldiers.

In the half-hour that Heifu and the others were busy fighting the fire, the Qin army's first line of ramparts was breached by the Chu army. Meng Tian had no choice but to order his forces to fall back and hold the second line of ramparts.

But the Chu army showed no sign of stopping. Xiang Yan's great command banner, which should have been atop the city wall, now appeared conspicuously between the two ramparts. At the same time, those Chu soldiers were also holding aloft many captured tattered Qin army banners — where they had gotten them from, no one knew.

The Chu men raised a unified shout.

"Li Xin is already defeated, his entire army wiped out! Chenying has also been recovered! Will you not yet lay down your arms and surrender?"

…

The grain boats from Chenying had instead delivered enemy troops who set fires everywhere. The rear army camp blazed with towering flames, while at the front they came under fierce assault by the Chu army. Qin morale crumbled, the first line of ramparts was breached, and soon after, the second line did not hold for long either.

The Chu army had built up overwhelming momentum, and the Qin army, having lost the ramparts, no longer held the slightest advantage. With the camp behind them in chaos and flames, they could not even form battle lines to engage the Chu army. Under these circumstances, any further attempt to stubbornly hold the encampment was suicide, so Meng Tian had no choice but to issue the order to retreat.

To withdraw under such conditions could only end one way: endless pursuit and slaughter by the Chu army. Meng Tian's move was like a gecko severing its tail — between total annihilation and preserving half his force, he chose the latter.

That being the case, for each camp, the question that followed was whether they would be the head or the tail.

Most unfortunately, the Southern Commandery corps, whose formation was still relatively intact, was assigned the task of rear-guard blocking.

"General Meng means for me to be the gecko's tail."

The moment he received the military order, Li You let out a long sigh, his face showing a few traces of resentment, but he still chose to obey. He led the Southern Commandery corps to reposition behind the camp.

Under Li You's stern orders, the Qin soldiers, facing such a rout for the first time, began forming ranks alongside another Commandant's corps. They had been ordered by Meng Tian to abandon the camp, cover the retreat of their comrades, and at the same time block the Chu army's pursuit!

Heifu and his men did not scatter; they still clustered around Li You. He saw crossbowmen at the front bracing their mechanisms, shooting dead those Qin stragglers who had lost their heads and run wildly, to prevent them from crashing into the formation. The stragglers wisely veered off to either side, and the two Commandants' formations, over ten thousand men, gradually took shape. These were the last two Qin units still capable of fighting.

The two lines of ramparts had already been broken, and they were now the final bulwark. They had to face not only the assault of tens of thousands of Chu troops, but also withstand the landslide-like collapse triggered by the routing soldiers.

The military law officers still stood at the rear with grim faces, their swords already drenched in blood — not the enemy's, but that of those who had tried to desert and flee.

With flight also forbidden, the palm of Heifu's sword hand was already soaked with sweat. He looked at Li You, who was equally uneasy, then glanced at the men behind him, whose unit structure was still intact. He had once sworn to preserve his own life and theirs.

Heifu admired those who fought bravely, fought nobly, fought with honor, but even more, he did not wish to die a senseless, inexplicable death.

"Pass the word down…"

Heifu had Ji Ying relay his order to Dongmen Bao, Gong Ao, Xiao Tao, and the other die-hard loyalists.

"The moment the battle turns against us and the front line is defeated, follow me, seize the Commandant's chariot, and retreat!"

The swords of Qin military law officers could only spare one kind of man: the close-guards who shielded their commander while withdrawing!

PS: Didn't sleep a wink last night, woke up and it was already dark, ⊙﹏⊙b sweat, can't get it out before midnight. Looks like I'll owe another chapter today, plus there's a new Alliance Master, so I currently owe 6 chapters. Starting tomorrow, I'll resume morning updates.

(End of chapter)