Chapter 196: Life Is Full of Unexpected Encounters

By the time the main Chu army learned of the Battle of Tongyang, it was already two days later — the fourth day of the eleventh month.

Xiang Rong, having just retaken Pingyu, was still standing atop the city wall brimming with pride; when he heard that Hu Gong Douran and Qin Gongsun Feng had suffered a crushing defeat at Tongyang, losing several hundred troops and with Douran himself taken captive, he instantly flew into a thunderous rage.

"Defeated by a remnant force, and captured by the enemy — Douran is truly the shame of the Ruo'ao lineage!"

As for Qin Gongsun Feng, who had reportedly abandoned Douran and fled, Xiang Rong intended to petition his father to strip this man of his fief. Being overrun once by Li Xin's great army was one thing, but now abandoning allies and fleeing again — it seemed the descendants of Sunshu Ao had long since grown cowardly and weak, no longer worthy of holding a noble fief.

"How many men are in that Qin force that defeated Douran and Sun, and where have they gone?" Xiang Rong asked.

Zhou Wen, the "Day-Watcher" in charge of military intelligence, reported: "According to officers who fled back, roughly seven or eight hundred men. Their current whereabouts are unknown; they should have headed west — either making for Shangcai or heading to the Ru River..."

"If they're foolish enough to go toward Shangcai, they'll run right into our main army."

Though Xiang Rong found this hard to swallow, he knew he could not afford to bother with this tiny remnant Qin force — he had more important matters to attend to.

After the Battle of Xiangcheng, the strategic situation between the Qin and Chu armies had shifted considerably. First, Meng Tian had rallied thirty thousand defeated troops and retreated westward, while Xiang Yan personally led the main Chu army in close pursuit. Regrettably, they still failed to catch up, and could only first storm Dun County, then break Boyang and Ruyang, advancing at a pace of one city per day until they reached Yangcheng.

Meanwhile, Xiang Rong had taken a detached force of twenty thousand to attack Pingyu. The Qin army had already withdrawn to Shangcai, so he took the city with ease.

"Next, the main army must march immediately for Shangcai!"

Now, because Lord Changping had risen in revolt, Chenying had already been restored. If they could also retake Shangcai and Yangcheng, Xiang Yan's plan would be perfectly fulfilled.

This was the most critical matter at hand for Xiang Rong. As for those several hundred Qin soldiers — if they headed for Shangcai, they would run straight into the vanguard he had dispatched; if they fled west across the Ru River, they might just collide with the five thousand Huainan reinforcements moving north from Xincai!

On the fifth day of the eleventh month, three days after the Battle of Tongyang, one hundred and fifty li to the southwest, at a fork in the road not far from the Ru River, Zhongli Mei crouched on the ground, staring at the dense tangle of footprints and wheel ruts leading west, sinking deep into thought...

"These tracks are from half a shichen ago."

Months earlier, Zhongli Mei had been at Ming'e Fortress constantly advocating for an advance into Nan Commandery to open a second front, until his superiors grew sick of him and simply transferred him to Xi County to get some peace and quiet.

Zhongli Mei's luck was poor; he missed the fiercest period of Qin-Chu fighting in the tenth month. Only in the past few days, after learning that General Xiang Yan had turned the tide of battle, did Xi County dispatch five thousand Huainan Chu troops north via Xincai, intending to coordinate with Xiang Rong at Pingyu to attack Shangcai and reclaim lost territory.

In this campaign, Zhongli Mei had been assigned to the reconnaissance unit, serving as a "Cavalry Clerk."

Cavalry organization differed from that of charioteers and infantry: five riders made a squad under one Chief, ten riders under one Clerk, one hundred under one Commander, and two hundred under one General. Although a Cavalry Clerk and a Two-Sima Officer drew the same salary, the Clerk commanded fewer men — the unlucky Zhongli Mei had been demoted yet again.

Despite some friction with his superior, the Cavalry Commander, Zhongli Mei still carried out his duties diligently. At this moment, having spotted something amiss at the fork in the road, his sharp instincts immediately told him something was wrong.

"This is a force of several hundred to a thousand men, with war chariots. The wheel ruts are still deep — they must be carrying more than three men per cart. The army strictly forbids overloading chariots with personnel. Judging by this, they're either hauling provisions and military equipment..."

Zhongli Mei walked forward a few steps and picked up a strip of cloth that had been trampled into the dust. Unfolding it, he saw it was covered in dried blood — a bandage for binding wounds...

"Or wounded men!"

He tossed the cloth aside. "A troop movement of this size — why did we receive no word of it beforehand?"

Rising to his feet, Zhongli Mei gazed westward. From here, a narrow road stretched west, flanked on both sides by ordinary farmland. Apart from a few fields planted with winter wheat, everything else was bare and empty.

"I recall that following this road west for ten li brings you to the Ru River, and there's a ferry crossing there that can take you to Ancheng Township in Shenyang County..."

"But all the armies north and south of the Huai have been ordered to move to Shangcai, east of the Ru River, to join the siege. Why would this force be crossing the Ru westward?"

A cavalry attendant beside him took a sip of water and said, "Perhaps they've been temporarily reassigned to set up defenses west of the Ru? Or maybe they're troops pulled back from Pingyu, ordered to take the wounded west of the Ru to recover?"

As far as they were concerned, the general had only ordered them to scout northward — whatever was to the west was none of their business!

These guesses were all plausible, but Zhongli Mei still had his men follow him. He had to investigate and get to the bottom of it before he could rest easy.

The party of ten riders slowly advanced along the road. The footprints and wheel ruts continued unbroken, but along the road, Zhongli Mei found nothing else suspicious.

Before long, the small ferry crossing called "Ancheng Crossing" came distantly into view.

"There really are people crossing the river."

Everyone looked over and saw that at the crossing, about one li away, a force of seven or eight hundred men was indeed waiting. Drawing closer, they saw the soldiers wore ochre-colored clothing and crimson armor, and their banners were unmistakably of Chu design — among them, one Thousand-Man Commander's banner and five or six Hundred-Man banners.

The war chariots had been unhitched from their horses and stood parked by the riverbank. A steady stream of men and horses was boarding the crossing's only four or five small boats, the boatmen rocking the wooden oars as they slowly ferried them toward the opposite shore...

Judging by the scale of the operation, these men had been crossing here for at least half a shichen. More than half were already across the river, with only one or two hundred left on the eastern bank.

Seeing that they were indeed Chu troops, Zhongli Mei's men all breathed a sigh of relief. But Zhongli Mei felt that something was off. This Chu force gave him a feeling unlike that of ordinary Chu troops — yet from this distance, he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong.

Perhaps if he got a little closer, he could spot the telltale signs!

"Come, let's go over and ask."

Zhongli Mei spurred his horse onward. By now, the other party had also spotted their small group, and they promptly sent a single rider over.

"This Cavalry Clerk."

Even from a distance, Zhongli Mei could see the sharp-featured, gaunt-faced young man on horseback greeting him: "May I ask where you've come from?"

His men were about to answer truthfully, but Zhongli Mei waved them silent and countered: "We are scouts of the great army, under orders to reconnoiter this area. And where have you come from?"

The gaunt young man looked a bit awkward, glancing back at a squad of men also heading this way, and said with a smile, "We've come from Pingyu, under orders to escort the wounded west of the Ru to recover."

It matched what Zhongli Mei's men had guessed, but Zhongli Mei frowned. "I heard Pingyu has already been taken by our forces. Why not recover in place? Why must you go west of the Ru?"

A flicker of surprise flashed through the young man's eyes, as if he hadn't known this. But he covered it at once, shaking his head. "That's a question for the senior officer. We're just following orders. Perhaps they want us to garrison the area west of the Ru."

But then Zhongli Mei fired off a rapid volley of questions — which unit did they belong to? What was their commander's name? A whole string of them. Though the young man answered smoothly, and Zhongli Mei didn't know the specifics of every Chu army north of the Huai well enough to spot an obvious flaw, he did notice something else.

This young man spoke the Western Chu dialect of Huaibei, but it was clearly learned. The common phrases used by Huaibei Chu people couldn't mask his original accent. Unfortunately, Zhongli Mei couldn't place where that accent was from, not right away.

"Where is your native place?"

The young man froze for a moment, then smiled. "I'm from Chengyang."

Chengyang was the westernmost city of Chu, bordering Sui and Tang in Chu's Nan Commandery, and the accent there was extremely similar.

"I see..."

Zhongli Mei hadn't uncovered any further points of suspicion and was about to press on, but he noticed sweat beading on the young man's forehead. Looking past him, he saw over a dozen fully armed Chu soldiers, led by a dark-faced Chu officer, heading their way.

The dark-faced man looked at Zhongli Mei, and Zhongli Mei looked back at him. Though more than ten paces apart, they recognized each other at first glance.

At that moment, Ji Ying was still trying to steady the Chu Cavalry Clerk before him. Pointing behind him, he smiled and said, "Clerk, if you have questions, why not ask our Centurion? He..."

But before the words were fully out, Zhongli Mei suddenly shoved him hard, knocking Ji Ying off his horse, then dug his heels into his mount's flanks and shouted, "Ride! Now!"

In the blink of an eye, the "Chu soldiers" who had been walking toward them with smiling faces, rallied by the dark-faced man, now either lunged forward with blades drawn to stab the lead riders, or raised crossbows and loosed bolts at Zhongli Mei's stunned men!

It happened so suddenly. The riders were caught completely off guard — men kept getting struck by arrows, men kept falling from their horses. But Zhongli Mei could no longer afford to care. He pressed himself flat against his horse's back and galloped away at full speed!

That was it — no wonder the young man's accent had sounded so familiar. It was Anlu speech! One's native accent is etched into the bone; unless one spends years deliberately correcting it, no matter how well it's disguised, it can still be heard.

As for that dark-faced man — wasn't he Heifu, the Chief of Huyang Village, who had once crossed paths with Zhongli Mei back in Anlu County?

"What's he doing here?"

The next moment, Zhongli Mei had no time to think. He only felt a searing pain in his back — an arrow had struck him dead center, its point tearing through his armor, shredding flesh and blood, and burying itself deep inside!

This was the crossbow bolt Heifu had personally loosed after sprinting forward for some time! Seeing Zhongli Mei struck, a satisfied smile appeared on his face, but then the smile faded.

Because Zhongli Mei had not fallen from his horse.

The sudden, violent pain nearly threw Zhongli Mei from the saddle, but he swayed and steadied himself, clinging desperately to the horse's neck as he bolted forward like a shot arrow.

He had to get back to the main force and report this to the General!

A Qin army unit had disguised itself in Chu soldiers' garb and was brazenly moving through Chu territory!

(End of chapter)