Chapter 190: Casting Aside Armor and Baring Clothes to Rush the Enemy

Half a quarter-hour later, outside Fuyang City, before the Chu army already arrayed for battle, Dou Ran looked at the twenty or thirty blood-dripping heads in the basket, then glanced at Ji Ying kneeling on the ground before him — a man with a pointed mouth and monkey-like cheeks, groveling and obsequious — and suddenly revealed a contemptuous sneer.

"It seems all the Qin men with blood in their veins are right here."

The implication was clear: those who remained were all cowards who clung to life and feared death.

Truth be told, when they had demanded the surrender of Qin Hill, a similar scene had played out — some Qin men, believing that surrendering to Chu would cause their families back home to be punished by collective liability, resisted and refused to submit. Liao Ping could not suppress them, and it was only by releasing the Duke of Qin's grandson Feng and mobilizing the Chu residents within the town to help that they managed to kill those hundred-odd Qin men who would not surrender.

Having witnessed this scene, Dou Ran no longer harbored any doubt about the sincerity of the surrender within the city.

"When will you leave the city to surrender?"

Ji Ying bowed his head to the ground and said, "Chief of Five Hundred Cheng says he will first lead men to extinguish the fires still burning in the city. When the sun climbs three poles high, he will have everyone come out of the city, just as agreed when Village Chief Zhong left the city."

"Good."

Dou Ran nodded from atop his war chariot. On another chariot, Sun Feng asked Ji Ying with concern, "How much grain is left in the city?"

"Several hundred dan still remain, all sealed in the granaries, awaiting the general's inspection and acceptance."

Ji Ying put on a fawning smile. He did not need to feign humility — before becoming a postal runner at Huyang Station, he had always been a lowly commoner, and when meeting noblemen, he naturally trembled with fear.

But now, for some reason, all he wanted was to see the look on these Chu nobles' faces when Heifu routed them and they knelt before him begging for mercy.

"Your daddy wants a turn sitting in your fancy chariots too."

At that thought, he hurriedly lowered his head, afraid his eyes might betray his true heart.

"Several hundred dan of grain — enough for ten days' needs."

Sun Feng stroked his beard, his fingers tapping incessantly on the chariot rail. He was a lord who knew how to manage a household. Seeing that this war was about to end, he had already begun calculating. By rights, the rations for these two thousand-odd soldiers, as well as the prisoners, all had to be supplied by Qin Hill. Watching cartload after cartload of grain hauled out of his own granaries, he could not describe how much it pained him. Saving a few hundred dan now was actually a good thing.

At this very moment, the foremost concern on the minds of the two Chu commanders was no longer fighting the war. One was thinking about how to put on a majestic display when accepting the surrender, to show off his nobility; the other was wholly preoccupied with saving grain and cutting losses.

With commanders in such a state, the common soldiers were even more lax. These past days, relying on Xiang Yan's command and the defection of Chen Ying, the Qin army had been battered and suffered defeat after defeat, while the Chu men had sailed with the wind and the current, and thus grew to look down on the Qin.

Now, hearing that Fuyang was going to surrender and that no one would have to fight, everyone was happy and pleased. Though they had reluctantly formed ranks, the soldiers all stood crooked and slanted — arrayed but not orderly. A constant buzz of whispered chatter rose up: some discussing the cowardice of the Qin men inside the city, others talking about Fuyang's local specialty, the "snakehead fish."

"Once the surrender is accepted, I'm definitely going to the stream to catch a few to taste, and right in front of the Qin men, let them watch us eat meat while they go hungry," someone joked with a cheeky grin.

Ji Ying and the ten men he had brought with him passed right by the slack and careless Chu troops just like that. They did not need to go back; instead, they were to be escorted to the rear formation and locked up together with the Qin soldiers captured along the way.

The Qin prisoners of war were kept in a large earthen pit, which the Chu troops had likely forced them to dig that morning. The pit was several chi deep and over a hundred paces square. Within that cramped space, three hundred dispirited Qin prisoners were packed in tight as a dense thicket.

Over a hundred Chu soldiers stood guard around the pit with sturdy shields and sharp spears, bows drawn and arrows nocked, though their attitude was equally slack. They merely glanced at Ji Ying and his group, saw that they carried no weapons, and shoved them inside.

When the Qin prisoners saw new comrades being pushed in, they showed little reaction. After their defeat, they had retreated in a daze, exhausted and hungry, and the Chu men gave them no food. Now confined here, though they had the will to resist, they had no strength.

"Heifu was right. If captured by the Chu men, eight or nine times out of ten you'll be taken to Chu to be a field slave or a mine slave."

Ji Ying observed the situation and got a sense of things. His eyes searched everywhere for the person Heifu had told him to find.

He soon spotted his target. Zhou Hua and a dozen or so others were tied up at the far end of the pit. There, three paces from the pit's edge, several wooden stakes had been erected. These men were all Qin clerks who wore short caps. Their bodies already bore a few lash marks, and water had been deliberately poured over them. In the early eleventh-month weather, they shivered violently from the cold.

The Qin prisoners looked at them with indignation, sympathy, and helplessness.

Ji Ying signaled with his eyes to the companions who had come with him. They dispersed, spreading out to various positions without drawing the Chu men's attention.

Ji Ying, taking three men with him, pushed through the Qin soldiers blocking the way ahead and felt his way to the area below the wooden stakes. Taking advantage of the Chu soldiers' inattention, he picked up a small pebble and flicked it toward Zhou Hua's position!

The pebble struck the wooden stake with a faint sound. Zhou Hua lifted his head and, amid the crowd, spotted Ji Ying winking at him.

Ji Ying had often accompanied Heifu escorting Li You to the main camp, so he knew Zhou Hua. The two had even exchanged a few words, so Zhou Hua still had some impression of him.

Seeing Ji Ying, a trace of a smile appeared on Zhou Hua's parched and cracked lips.

"They've finally come, huh?"

That man Heifu, who had taken the false name "Zhong" and during the surrender negotiations had spoken a phrase that only a Qin military clerk would understand — now it seemed he indeed had a follow-up move.

Ji Ying could only see Zhou Hua's lips move slightly. He could not speak; he merely nodded, then from his own hair bun, he drew out a concealed paring knife and gripped it in his hand!

Heifu's "surprise force" was now in position.

Ji Ying clenched his teeth. His hand gripping the bronze paring knife trembled slightly, but inside, he was wildly excited. He牢牢 remembered the signal Heifu had given him — a military term that every Qin military clerk knew by heart from rote recitation.

"Heavy drumbeats — then strike!"

"Lord of the County, the Qin men have climbed the wall and are throwing down their armor."

As the time when the sun would climb three poles high approached, Dou Ran was still composed, but Sun Feng was already yawning repeatedly. At last, someone came to report that the Qin army had begun the surrender procedure as agreed, throwing armor and weapons down from the city wall.

Sun Feng hurriedly rubbed his eyes and looked. On the eastern wall of Fuyang, there were indeed Qin soldiers with heads bobbing about. One by one, they came to the wall's edge, stripped off their armor, and threw it down from the ramparts.

Weapons fell alongside — swords, bows and arrows, dagger-axes and spears. These were a warrior's most trusted comrades-in-arms, yet now they were discarded like worn-out sandals.

"I don't know about the Duke of Qin Hill, but I most enjoy watching the Qin men throw away their helmets and abandon their armor."

Dou Ran took a swig of wine and laughed heartily. He relished victory. The happiest thing in the world was nothing more than watching a once-formidable foe kneel before him in abject misery.

Sun Feng, smiling broadly, said, "I, for my part, would rather see these surrendered Qin soldiers become bondservants in my fief, laboring in my fields to compensate for the losses they have brought upon Qin Hill in this war."

Like their two commanders, the Chu men in the formation also burst into loud laughter, their ranks growing even more disordered.

Then, the gates of Fuyang City opened, and the Qin soldiers, having already discarded their armor and weapons, slowly walked out. They all kept their heads lowered and their fists clenched tight, as if suppressing something. Shame? Or unwillingness to accept defeat?

Because Fuyang's terrain was several chi higher, from Dou Ran's and Sun Feng's vantage point, the Qin men in the front rows were indeed just as agreed — wearing only thin garments, empty-handed as they left the city, some even barefoot. But what the rear rows looked like, they could not see clearly.

However, as those Qin men slowly advanced, Dou Ran sensed something amiss.

These Qin men were walking far too neatly! They stood very close together, their steps following some fixed rhythm, striding forward continuously, and their strides were growing larger and larger. This did not look like a disorderly surrender procession — rather, it was...

The prelude to a charge!

The next moment, atop the wall of Fuyang, a dark figure swung both arms and began beating a drum. The rapid, clamorous light drumbeats rang out. The hundred-odd Qin men in the front shifted from walking to a jog, and they revealed the short swords hidden in their sleeves!

As these men charged down the small slope, the scene behind them was fully exposed. Three or four hundred Qin men surged out from the city gate, their bodies clad in dark black armor, gripping dagger-axes and spears, and they were rapidly forming ranks. Seen from afar, it looked like a forest of metal and steel swaying in the wind.

This was not what had been agreed upon!

"The Qin army is faking surrender!"

Because Heifu had played his part so convincingly, and because sending Ji Ying to present the heads had dispelled Dou Ran's and Sun Feng's last sliver of suspicion, they had never even considered that possibility. Now that the situation had suddenly changed, Sun Feng, whose head had been full of saving grain and acquiring field slaves, was so shocked he lost all presence of mind.

Dou Ran was somewhat calmer. He bellowed an order:

"Pass the word — beat the drums, form ranks, form ranks!"

With even the commander in such disarray, the common soldiers were caught all the more off guard. Those Chu soldiers who had been slacking off, sitting on the ground chatting among themselves to kill time, suddenly heard the drumbeats. They froze for half a beat, then scrambled to their feet, straightened their helmets, and gripped their spears tight — yet had no idea what was happening up ahead.

Weren't we supposed to be accepting surrender? Why are drumbeats rising everywhere, as if gearing up for battle?

Chu officers sprinted past, urging these loose, scattered Chu soldiers to close ranks, but one officer unexpectedly tripped and sprawled flat on the ground. Paying no heed to the broken tooth knocked out by a stone, he scrambled up at once and kept running rearward, shouting at the top of his lungs:

"Form ranks! Form ranks! The enemy is coming!"

"Where's the enemy?" Some still hadn't grasped the situation.

But it was already too late. Just as the Chu troops were reforming their lines, atop the walls of Tongyang City, the drumbeats suddenly changed — from light, scattered taps to deep, heavy pounding!

Every heavy drumbeat seemed to hammer straight into the hearts of Dou Ran, Sun Feng, and the Chu soldiers, shattering their easy fantasy of accepting surrender.

Every heavy drumbeat, like an iron mallet, smashed apart the shackles that had long bound the Qin soldiers. Those Qin men — without armor, without helmets, stripped bare to the waist, clutching only a short sword — lifted their heads one after another and let out a mountain-shaking roar suppressed for far too long!

"How can you say we have no robes?"

"We share the same battle gown!"

In this moment, it was no longer merely the longing to go home, no longer merely the desire to survive. The emotions pent up ever since the great defeat at Xiangcheng erupted in this instant.

The colossal roar drowned out the Chu army's war drums, startling Dou Ran's flank horses and shaft horses into restless agitation, and throwing the Chu ranks — which they had barely managed to re-form — into chaos once more. The Chu soldiers gaped, mouths wide, dumbstruck. Were these the same Qin men who had fled in utter disarray all this way, surrendering and being captured in droves?

Without a care that they wore not a shred of armor, without a care for formation, without a care for life or death, they charged wildly forward — their target aimed straight at the Chu line!

The scattered arrows hastily loosed by the Chu bowmen could not stop this pack of ferocious beasts with bloodshot eyes. Even when men were struck by arrows and blood streamed unceasingly, they paid it no heed, still throwing their strides wide as they hurtled toward the Chu troops, faces twisted in savagery, as if yearning to devour men alive!

"The warriors east of the mountains don armor and wear helmets, but the Qin men cast off their armor and strip bare to charge the foe, clutching a severed head in the left hand and a live captive under the right arm..."

Dou Ran's face turned deathly pale. He recalled his elders' descriptions of the Qin army on the battlefield. Had he thought that without armor and helmets, they could no longer fight? How naive. He was beginning to understand what kind of opponent he had encountered...

They were tigers, they were wolves!

They were the nightmare that made the armies of the Six States quake at the mere rumor of their approach!

They were the black shadow that had loomed over the eastern nobility for over a hundred years!

They were the true Qin army!

In the next instant, Dou Ran watched helplessly as these wolf-like, tiger-like Qin vanguard shock troops howled furiously and plunged headlong into the Chu formation!

(End of Chapter)