Chapter 616: Homeland

Banda Gu, meaning "Village of Rice Paddies," was the largest settlement of the Western Ou, where several thousand people lived. It also held the largest ancestral worship ground, and on the birthday of the first ancestor, Buluotuo, the Ou and Yue people from hundreds of li around would gather here, beat bronze drums engraved with frog patterns, celebrate this festival, drink rice wine, and dance for three days and three nights straight!

But now, Banda Gu was completely deserted. The Ou and Yue people, supporting the old and carrying the young, had left their bamboo stilt houses. They slaughtered livestock and dried the meat, hanging it from their shoulders, carrying bows and arrows, and balancing grain on their other shoulder.

As for the "trophies" from over a decade of headhunting: bleached white human skulls! They could only be buried at their doorsteps.

Several thousand people left the stockade one after another, standing on the hills outside the village, looking back at this land with reluctance.

"Tebo."

Looking at the settlement where he had grown up, the young Ou man Adagu's eyes brimmed with tears. "Must we truly leave?"

"We must go."

The Western Ou chieftain, Yixusong, was resolute. "The Qin have already razed seven or eight Ou villages to the north, killing the men who resisted and turning the women and children into slaves. Although the Thunder King and Frog God showed their power and sent a rain to delay them, it is only a matter of time before they find Banda Gu."

Adagu muttered, "When leopards and wolves attack the village, the Ou can drive them back outside the walls. How can we retreat before we've even fought a single battle?"

Yixusong shook his head. "The Qin army is denser than the leaves in the Yulin forest! More numerous than the stones in the Li Stream. Fighting in villages and on flatlands, the Ou cannot win. The destruction of the Gui tribe a year ago is proof. According to those who escaped, the seven or eight stockades that resisted lasted, at most, only a single day."

It was also thanks to the Western Ou's land being a continuous stretch of mountains and vast highlands that the newly arrived Qin army simply could not march quickly.

"But Tebo, you also said that the Ou people's determination to resist is firmer than the Hundred Thousand Mountains!"

Hot-blooded Adagu did not fear battle, nor did he fear death, but he felt shame at fleeing without looking back.

"The determination to resist alone cannot defeat the Qin."

Yixusong patted his son and was about to continue when an elder leaning on a cane, supported by his sons and grandsons, approached and pointed at Yixusong, cursing.

"Yixusong, we told you long ago, you have provoked a bloodthirsty beast, you have brought disaster upon the Ou and Yue!"

"That is correct."

Yixusong did not evade this point at all; it was his act of killing the Qin envoy that directly triggered the war.

"If we surrender like the Yue people north of the mountains, the Qin will spare me, the chieftain, and the elders, but they will put all Ou people in chains, making us toil day and night in the fields where sweet bamboo grows. The Ou and Yue people will forever lose their freedom, lose their land and water, and become the Qin's slaves, their li-chen-qie!"

He declared proudly, "If we resist, the Ou may die in battle, their bodies dying, but they will win their souls! The Ou who lose their souls will surely be abandoned by the ancestral spirits, abandoned by Buluotuo!"

"Right!" Adagu and a group of young Ou people echoed.

"Can resistance win?"

The elder shook his head, utterly pessimistic. They had already heard from those who fled that the Qin's swords and blades were incomparably sharp, their armor harder than crocodile skin, their crossbows accurate and fierce. They also rode tall horses, their war chariots rumbled as they rolled, and they marched in formation as neatly as a single man. With the Ou's backward weapons and loose formations, there was simply no way to resist.

Yixusong, however, said, "Giant elephants often appear in the forest. Their tusks are long and sharp, their hide thick and tough, their strength immense, and they can easily trample an Ou person to death. The Qin are like such a beast."

"If we fight it head-on, we certainly cannot win. Adagu, what is the Ou way of hunting elephants?"

Adagu recalled the secret his father had told him. "Hide yourself well, make it bleed continuously, and most importantly, patience!"

"Exactly. That beast rampages around, but as far as I know, they can only march on flatlands and detour around mountain forests. The Ou are different; we can not only grow rice but are also the best hunters in the mountain forests."

Almost every Western Ou person present had been hunting since their early teens, generally using arrows and sometimes traps. Surviving in the dense forest was a piece of cake for them, and in the vast mountain forests spanning over a thousand kilometers, there were plenty of places to hide.

Yixusong laid out his plan. "Follow me into the dense jungle, into the Hundred Thousand Mountains. Like hunting an elephant, set traps, emerge at night, and continuously fire poison arrows, wounding this beast, making this beast sick. When it is utterly exhausted, then deliver the fatal blow!"

Yixusong convinced his people. As the Western Ou retreated into the forest one after another, a massive flame soared into the sky. The stockade of Banda Gu was burned down by his own hand. Every house, every grain of food here was to be burned. All the Qin would get from this place was ashes!

Amid the towering inferno, Adagu knelt down with Yixusong, facing the phantoms of the ancestral spirits dancing in the fire, and made a vow.

"Buluotuo above, the Ou will return sooner or later to reclaim our homeland!"

……

Ten days later, at the Qin army's main camp, named "Guilin," General Tu Sui received a report from the vanguard: the advance troops had occupied Banda Gu. Although it had been burned to barren ground and no Ou people were found, only the footprints of people and livestock leading into the forest were discovered.

"Congratulations, General!"

Several commandants from Guanzhong rose one after another to offer their congratulations to Tu Sui. In this southern campaign against the Baiyue, the Western Ou were the main target of the attack. Now, in just two months since the troops marched, they had already taken over ten settlements, captured over ten thousand Yue people, and even seized the capital settlement of the Western Ou, expanding Great Qin's territory by hundreds of li. In their view, this was truly a great victory!

Besides the Western Ou fleeing in panic without daring to resist, the Qin army also had frequent reports of victory in Nanyue and Eastern Ou. General Jia on the central route had already slain several hundred heads of the Yangyue Mei clan, opened the Meiling Road, and was about to join forces with another Qin army in Nanyue. On the eastern route, Yin Tong was also in talks with the Eastern Ou, who were willing to surrender to Qin, with the sole condition that Qin help them fight their sworn enemies, the Minyue people...

Under the impact of this string of good news, some optimistically estimated that the Baiyue region could be easily pacified before summer.

But the commander-in-chief of the three armies, Tu Sui, showed no sign of joy. Instead, he stared at the fragile supply lines between the Qin army's various strongholds on the huge map, deeply worried.

He was also a veteran general, having garrisoned Changsha for many years, and knew that the hardest part was not a direct battle with the Ou and Yue people, but the enemy avoiding battle!

The Ou people had no walled cities or capitals; they lived among streams and valleys, within bamboo groves. Therefore, this war was no longer like those in the Central Plains, limited to fighting over cities and land, but was about attacking the people!

Only by crushing the Western Ou's armed forces in one blow could the war be ended quickly. Now that they had fled into the mountain forests and dangerous obstacles, it had become somewhat troublesome...

It seemed this war would drag on for quite a long time, shifting from rapidly annihilating the enemy to slowly establishing strongholds, then finding ways to encircle and suppress them.

But Tu Sui still believed he could achieve total victory in this campaign within the two years he had guaranteed to Qin Shi Huang!

The only thing worth worrying about was...

Tu Sui looked out the window. The scenery of Guilin was quite beautiful, with elegant mountains and clear waters, and no snow even in the twelfth month. But here, there was something more terrifying than frost and snow...

Miasma! Pestilence!

"In a few more days, spring will begin."

In the northern lands, a warm spring was something to look forward to, but in Lingnan, the start of spring meant an endless rainy season. Once miasma and pestilence ran rampant, and two hundred thousand soldiers grew moldy and sick in the high heat and plum rains, these commandants from Guanzhong probably would not be so optimistic...

……

While Tu Sui in Lingnan was worrying about the start of spring, Heifu in Jiaodong in the north was overjoyed at spring's arrival.

As the wind and snow ceased and the harbor thawed, Jiaodong's ships could go out to sea again...

Not only warships and grain ships, but in Heifu's plan, a force in Qi that had long been marginalized could also be put to use!

In the thirty-third year of Qin Shi Huang, the first month of spring (January), on the first day of the month, after obtaining Qin Shi Huang's permission, Heifu summoned the great merchants from Jiaodong, Linzi, Jibei, and Langya—from all over Qi—to gather in Jimo for a meeting...

Hearing Chen Ping report that over a dozen merchants were already waiting, Heifu rose and thought to himself:

"Widow Qing of the west, Old Woman Tang of the south, the Wu clan of the north...

"The world already has three great merchants, only lacking one in the east. I wonder, among this group of Qi merchants, who is the most savvy?"

PS: Something came up today, so only a short, weak chapter.

(End of chapter)