Chapter 311: The Invincible Great Crossbow-and-Bow Formation

When the cavalry personally led by the Li clan chief fell into chaos, Erzhu Jing's side, though also surrounded by two or three thousand cavalry, faced a far easier situation than Ma Shacai's.

Because the great crossbow-and-bow formation laid out with one hundred horn crossbows and over three hundred stiff infantry bows was still a terrifying thing.

Infantry of this era were expected to shoot well at a distance and fight at close quarters; often a powerful crossbowman would also be extremely formidable in melee.

Among the Wenmo Li clan, there were not without descendants of the sons of Tang, and even if there were none, they themselves knew this characteristic of the Central Plains dynasties' military power.

So anyone who was not a fool understood that with their sorry lack of armor and helmets, attacking four hundred fully armored crossbowmen would absolutely gain them nothing good.

To deal with such a great crossbow-and-bow formation there were only two methods: either spend lives to fill it, or possess the same kind of archers yourself and trade shots with them.

Oh, right! Or you could have some small catapults or bed crossbows capable of flexibly adjusting direction and angle — long-range mass-killing weapons like those would also work.

But then again, even Zhang Zhao currently possessed only a very small number of such things, so for the Lanzhou Li clan Wenmo, there was even less need to think about it.

The ones tasked with attacking, or rather keeping an eye on, Erzhu Jing were the Pochou clan Tangut, allies of the the the Shatuo Li family.

These Tangut had long dwelt on the snow mountains of Hexi and Longyou; back then, part of them had migrated inward following the Tuoba tribe, while another part continued to submit to the Tibetans.

After the Wang clan recruited the mountain folk to come down, the remaining Pochou clan Tangut came down from the snow mountains.

Of course, as Hu people who, like the the the Shatuo Li clan, had initially been tenant farmers and dependents oppressed by the Wang family, they easily came together, and relying on their numerical superiority, gradually overwhelmed the Wang family.

The Pochou clan chief and a the the Shatuo Li cavalry officer beside him exchanged a glance, and the stocky Pochou man spoke with some difficulty: "Let's charge once! No matter what, we have to charge once, otherwise how can we face our clansmen?"

Hm, before the fighting even started, these several thousand cavalry had actually already lost their nerve. Never mind that they numbered in the thousands — four hundred crossbows were no joke.

The Li clan cavalry officer also nodded, but clearly held a different opinion. Pointing at the great crossbow-and-bow formation Erzhu Jing had laid out, he said:

"Just looking at the formation these Liangzhou infantry have set up, you can tell they will be anything but easy to deal with. So much iron armor, ranks so orderly — what good could we get by charging them?

I say we have half our lads dismount and form ranks, and try trading arrows with them. If they see our numbers and momentum and fall into disorder themselves, the rest of the lads mount their warhorses, and one charge will carry them off.

If these iron-armored soldiers do not break, then having tried once, we will have done right by our people. Surely you can't expect us to go fight iron-armored troops wearing hemp cloth? Wouldn't that be throwing our lives away?"

All the officers great and small and the headmen nodded, thinking this was a good idea.

In truth, they were all quite uneasy at heart. Just seeing the opposing formation stand motionless for two quarters of an hour without so much as shifting told them these were definitely elite troops.

With several drumbeats, a few tattered banners waved twice, and a dozen or so officers and headmen of various ranks scattered down the line with a flurry of shouted orders.

Roughly two thousand cavalry dismounted one after another, and the weapons in their hands switched from horse bows to infantry bows of greater draw weight.

They even made several large shields from simple materials such as planks and wooden rafts they had brought along, partly to guard against the one hundred horn crossbows of Yucheng Town.

The infantry in front raised their shields, while the archers behind crouched low, gripping their bows and arrows as they slowly pressed forward.

The range of the horn crossbows was far greater than that of ordinary infantry bows, so they had to close some distance before they even qualified to trade shots with the Yucheng Town crossbowmen.

Erzhu Jing gave a cold laugh. After waiting most of the day, the enemy cavalry had finally come up. But from the fact that they did not dare ride forward to harass them, or even feign a charge, it was clear these men had already lost their nerve at heart.

"Change formation, two-rank volley! Concentrate fire on the three wooden planks in the center!"

After his cold laugh, Erzhu Jing gave the order in a loud voice, and the personal guard beside him in charge of flag signals immediately waved a yellow triangular banner.

In an instant, the crossbowmen arranged in the crescent-moon formation thrust their front section forward, pushing the horn crossbowmen to the very front and forming a triangle slightly wider at the rear.

The Pochou chief's heart gave a thump, and he instantly regretted it. What the hell was the point of fighting this!

The enemy crossbowmen could actually change formation so calmly on the verge of battle, and apart from footsteps and the sound of officers giving orders, there was not the slightest noise. Could it be that the imperial guards of the Central Plains had come?

"Thunk! Thunk!" The sound of the horn crossbows firing was somewhat muffled. The powerful thrust of two shi and three dou propelled the short fine-iron bolts at a speed at least three times that of ordinary arrows.

The moment the fifty bolts arrived, those planks that looked so broad and large and ought to have been very sturdy were pierced straight through!

Amid the wet, tearing sounds of penetration, the Pochou soldiers behind the planks collapsed one after another, as though each had taken a blow to the chest from an empty fist.

Before the screams even rose, the second wave of fifty bolts arrived, and this time even more men fell.

The three large plank shields in the center clattered to the ground, exposing the archers behind them.

The Pochou clan chief roared furiously, hoping the soldiers holding planks on either side would come over and fill the gap. But who dared? Who was willing?

The soldiers holding planks on both sides were drenched in cold sweat, stamping their feet in place, putting on an appearance of great urgency, yet never moving toward the center.

And the archers in the center, having lost the cover of the planks, immediately panicked, each one desperately shoving toward the sides.

These damn bolts could shoot straight through wooden planks — the rotten leather robes and hemp clothes on their bodies had even less hope of stopping them.

This was the truest face of soldiers in this era who had not undergone strict training and had been pulled straight from the fields and pastures.

Their equipment was poor, and fighting was not their own will. Their first thought on the battlefield was not winning merit and building a name.

It was how to save their lives. How to get back alive. There were still wives, children, and elderly parents waiting at home.

They could manage fighting when the wind was at their backs; when the battle went smoothly, they might even unleash the destructive urges in their hearts and do a little burning, killing, and looting.

But when it was obvious they could not win, and they were being asked to stake their lives, their will to fight was extremely low.

In the chaos, the second batch of one hundred bolts arrived right on schedule, still concentrated on the center, and this time the killing power was enormous!

The fine-iron bolts drilled one after another into different men's chests and bellies, and blood, driven by the tremendous kinetic energy, spurted from the small round holes, flying wildly outward.

For a time, those who had been hit but not killed rolled all over the ground.

"Mother! Mother, save me!" A young Tangut slave had probably been shot through the lungs. He cried out shrilly, and blood-flecked foam began to ooze from the corners of his mouth.

As he wailed, his hands twisted like chicken claws, and his fingers clawed streak after streak of bloody marks into the dry, hard, cold ground.

But this still could not ease his pain. Yet as his life drained away, his cries gradually faded.

Beside him, another Tangut slave, somewhat older and full-bearded, had also been pierced through the chest. He stared at the small hole in his chest that kept pouring blood, struggling desperately to breathe.

This Tangut slave did not even dare cry out, because the slightest cry would cut off his breath. In his eyes was a clinging attachment to life, but life no longer clung to him.

After a few terrified gasps, finding that not a trace of air entered his body, the Tangut slave raised his eyes to look at everyone around him, his gaze carrying the aggrieved look of an infant, as if asking: why is there no air?

"Change formation, archers loose!" Erzhu Jing would show no mercy to any enemy. At his command, the flag-signal soldier beside him raised another banner, purple with a wild goose painted on it.

The archers behind, who had been in the position of spectators, saw this banner and immediately scattered outward, forming a broad inverted-T formation.

The horn crossbowmen still held the very front, concentrating their fire on the center, while the archers began area bombardment.

Wave after wave, the physically fresh Yucheng Town elites loosed at extremely high speed, and within a few breaths they had sent out six waves of arrow rain.

The more than two thousand armed herdsmen massed across from them — men who could not really be called archers — swiftly collapsed under this fierce onslaught.

Wailing and howling, they scattered to both sides; many of them, once they reached the sides, simply mounted a horse and went straight home at a trot.

Only a hundred or so unlucky wretches were left on the battlefield crying and groaning. Even the commander of these horsemen, the chief of the Pochou clan, and that Li clan cavalry officer had been frightened into fleeing far away.

And just as they were trying to rally some horsemen to keep watching Erzhu Jing's force, an even greater clamor of terror and wailing reached them.

It was the shouting of the routed troops — the cavalry led by the Li clan chief, broken and scattered by Ma Shacai.

The ground was covered with routed soldiers running in every direction. No one could tell who was who. What was to be done?

This time the Pochou clan chief did not look at the Li clan cavalry officer. He simply yanked the reins, turned, and fled without a backward glance, his personal attendants around him.

The damage inflicted on Ma Shacai's nine hundred-odd men by more than six thousand cavalry was not even a tenth of what they had suffered at Hongchi Ridge and Yema Ridge.

Ma Shacai no longer restrained his soldiers. They had run so far and endured so many hardships; they needed release, and reaping the lives of the enemy was the best release there was.

Inside Lanzhou, the fighting had also reached its final stage. As soon as day broke, the two sides tangled in a chaotic melee instantly became distinguishable.

The entire area around Weiyan Temple was in turmoil. In knots of twenty or thirty, they grappled and hacked at one another.

The fighting here was far more brutal than outside the city, because these patrol soldiers were the true elite of the Li clan, while those outside could only be called armed herdsmen.

"The Wang clan of Jincheng has come to help slay the enemy! We wear red headbands!"

After Wang Tinghan arrived, he did not plunge straight in. With both sides already locked in such fighting, it would be disastrous if the Guiyi Army soldiers mistook them for Li clan patrol troops.

But of course they could tell who the Li clan patrol troops were, so they simply had the Wang clan youths around them raise the cry.

Hearing their shouts, Yue Saonu and the others began moving toward these red-headbanded Wang clan youths, and soon their formation was restored. The situation turned thoroughly against the Li clan.

At that very moment, a body of troops from the northwest, flying several great banners bearing the character Su, also arrived at Weiyan Temple.

"Su Lunluxin has come to aid the heavenly troops! Those wearing red headbands are our own!"

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