Chapter 564: Waves Surge Beyond Yizheng City

Taizhou, Yangzhou, Yizheng, and Guabu were laid out almost in a single straight line along the Yangtze River.

Taizhou lay furthest east, followed in order by Yangzhou, Yizheng, and Guabu.

This was precisely why Bian Gao did not believe Murong Xinzhang could launch a surprise attack on him. Now, with Zhao Kuangyin holding Yizheng with his troops, if Murong Xinzhang in Taizhou wanted to strike the Southern Tang army that had just landed at Guabu, he would have to go around Yangzhou.

That route was no short distance — nearly two hundred li — and the surrounding area was densely populated, making it utterly impossible to come and go without a trace as one could in the northwest or on the grasslands.

The Southern Tang army could easily use local strongmen to set up short-range lookout posts everywhere. The Zhou army's movements would be discovered while still more than ten li away, and no matter how fast a warhorse ran, it could not outrun the spread of a smoke signal.

Li Jingda also quickly adopted Bian Gao's suggestion. He personally led the main force east from Guabu to besiege Yizheng.

He then dispatched large numbers of civil and military officials originally from the Eastern Capital to go everywhere winning over hearts and minds. While retaking the Eastern Capital, they also conscripted able-bodied men and militia from every locality to come reinforce the fight.

It had to be said that at this time, the Southern Tang's mobilization capacity in its core regions of Huainan and Jiangnan East Circuit was still very strong.

Before the Southern Tang officials had even entered Yangzhou city, those Yangzhou officials and clerks who had gone over to Murong Xinzhang immediately switched sides again.

Feng Yanlu, the Administrative Assistant of the Eastern Capital who had hidden himself away in a temple, appeared on the streets of Yangzhou with a shaved head.

It turned out the fellow had actually put on a monk's black robe and shaved his own head to disguise himself as a monk, which was how he had evaded the Zhou army's searches.

This was also clear proof of where the hearts of the people of the Eastern Capital, Yangzhou, lay. Feng Yanlu hid right in Yangzhou, and though Murong Xinzhang offered rewards several times, no one could catch him.

When it came to attacking Taizhou, Murong Xinzhang had to threaten with blades before he could barely conscript fewer than ten thousand able-bodied men.

Yet Li Jingda of the Southern Tang did not even show his face. He merely sent a few officials and officers, and at once more than thirty thousand able-bodied men were mobilized around Yangzhou, along with over a hundred thousand shi of grain and more than a thousand boats of all sizes.

With this, the pressure on Zhao Kuangyin, camped at Yizheng, suddenly became enormous.

The Southern Tang had crossed the river with around fifty thousand men. After retaking Yangzhou, within a few days they mobilized another thirty thousand.

Although most were militia with very poor training, the sheer display of force was still startling, and they were quite useful for winning easy battles and lending support from the sidelines.

This was also why Zhao Kuangyin chose not to defend Yangzhou. Murong Xinzhang, in order to draw off the Southern Tang army, could only split his forces as a diversion.

If he had left his three thousand men to stubbornly defend Yangzhou, then it was highly likely that the hundred thousand-plus people of Yangzhou, along with the able-bodied men of the surrounding prefectures and counties, would all have been mobilized.

Those Southern Tang men, colluding from within and without, would have used sheer human waves to "drown" his three thousand men alive in Yangzhou.

But Yizheng was different. Zhao Kuangyin had shipped thirty thousand shi of grain downstream by boat, so there was no shortage of food. Yizheng was not far from the riverbank, so there was no worry about water either.

As for firewood for cooking, Yizheng was at least a small county town of two or three thousand people. Once its own firewood was burned up, they could still tear down civilian houses.

Of course, the most important reason was that there were no moles here — everyone was one of their own, so the defense could be arranged at leisure.

Zhao Kuangyin also had full confidence in Murong Xinzhang and these ten thousand comrades. If the Southern Tang really had come with fifty thousand elite troops, the outcome would have been uncertain, or victory would have come very hard.

But of these seventy or eighty thousand men, fewer than twenty thousand were elite, so there was nothing much to worry about.

On the eighth day of the fifth month, the Southern Tang main force of thirty thousand, plus thirty thousand conscripted militia, plus twenty or thirty thousand laborers — claiming to be an army of one hundred fifty thousand — surrounded Yizheng from the east, west, and north.

Yizheng, for its part, fully revealed its frailty. Its four tightly shut gates and earthen walls of two or three meters stood alone under the siege of nearly a hundred thousand men, solitary by the spring-flourishing riverbank, like a scrawny sheep about to be devoured by a fierce tiger.

However, this "tiger" Li Jingda looked more like a fat cat. At the beginning of the wei hour (1 p. m.), the great army began assembling on all sides, and the laborers and militia began setting up camp.

But by the beginning of the you hour (5 p. m.), far from having the camps set up, many soldiers and laborers had still not even reached their assigned positions.

Most of the camps merely had bamboo or wooden palisades stuck around them; there were no stone walls, no chevaux-de-frise, nothing.

Li Jingda was also extremely displeased, roaring for his personal guards to go urge the officers of each camp.

But managing so many people was no easy matter, and first of all, the arrangements from his own end had not been made properly.

The personal guards took a chicken feather as a token of authority and went about throwing their weight around, and their bullying haste only made things even more chaotic.

To avoid military punishment, the officers of each camp scrambled everywhere to seize supplies for building camps. In the end, they even fought over the laborers. Everywhere was a foul mess, and the pace only grew slower.

If Li Jingda had possessed x-ray vision, he would certainly have been badly startled, for inside Yizheng, more than two thousand men had already finished eating and drinking and were now donning armor and helmets.

Zhao Kuangyin was tightening the leather belt around the waist of a young cavalryman with arms as long as an ape's. The cavalryman looked at Zhao Kuangyin, who was not much older than himself, and grinned.

"Lieutenant, are you trying to squeeze out the beef cake I just ate?"

Zhao Kuangyin lightly punched the young cavalryman's chest on the heart-protecting mirror, his plump face full of smiles.

"One beef cake and you're so pleased with yourself. I hear Jiangnan has many fine foods. Once we've wiped out this bit of Southern Wu's army, I'll treat you all to the finest Jiangnan feast there is!"

Back in Hexi, beef had actually not been scarce, because the Tibetans had many long-haired cattle, and there were merchants who specifically bought them, slaughtered them, and sold the meat.

But in the Central Plains, it was a rarity, for plow oxen were the most important labor force.

In the present state of Zhou, if anyone's ox died, the village head and elders had to sign and report it, and the county magistrate had to approve before the meat could be sold.

Generally, except when the army was about to fight a decisive battle and could eat a meal of air-dried beef to raise morale, even Zhang Zhao had none to eat.

"Jiangnan has fine food, but what about fine women? I for one don't like our Hexi girls. No matter whether they're good-looking or not, the moment they open their mouths they can choke a man to death. At home they're overbearing, and they like to use their fists too.

I hear Jiangnan beauties are gentle. I've saved up five strings of cash, and I'm determined to marry one and bring her back!"

A short fellow who looked no more than seventeen or eighteen said this with a laugh as he fastened his neck guard, and his words immediately struck a chord.

In the eyes of these young men, Hexi women were indeed terribly dull, because the Hexi women they could marry at their station were basically all from families with solid roots, and the two sides were of roughly equal status.

Moreover, under the influence of their fathers and elder brothers, many Hexi women could don armor and mount horses, and could even shoot linked arrows. They were fierce indeed, and naturally not as gentle as women of the Central Plains or Jiangnan.

The men laughed and joked, utterly unconcerned that they were about to go out and raid tens of thousands of Southern Tang troops.

For these cavalrymen were no ordinary men. Thirty percent of them came from Hexi, and over seventy percent came from Hexi and Longyou. The most elite core among them were even Han sons of the two prefectures of Gua and Sha.

These young men of Gua and Sha were different from their fathers' generation. Their fathers had all been somewhat old by the time Zhang Zhao returned east.

Moreover, they still bore the status of the Zhang family's former rebels, so both in martial skill and in closeness to Zhang Zhao, there were problems.

But these young men were different. When Zhang Zhao returned east, these lads were as young as six or seven, and the oldest were only around ten.

They had suffered hardship in early childhood, and then in adolescence had witnessed with their own eyes Zhang Zhao's meteoric rise and personally experienced the elevation of their own status. Now every one of them had a bright future.

Therefore, whether in closeness to Zhang Zhao or in their own pride and sense of mission, they were formidable indeed. Add to that the strict military training they had received since childhood, and their fighting strength could well be imagined.

Zhao Kuangyin watched as the soldiers under his command finished their preparations. His face was full of satisfaction, but inwardly his mind was churning.

For he knew the reason Murong Xinzhang had left the young men to him.

It was not because these young men had the firmest will and could better accomplish the mission, but because he, Zhao Kuangyin, could only command these young men.

Before these young men, although he, Lieutenant Zhao, was a man of Luoyang, the Divine Capital, he was Murong Xinzhang's "underling," the earliest Central Plains man to go serve in Hexi, and the Sage also thought highly of him, so he could count as half a Hexi man.

But whether among the Yuan Cong faction, the East Return faction, or the Dragon-Following faction of Hexi and Longyou, anyone with a bit of age would never truly submit to the command of a pale-faced young lord like him, Zhao Kuangyin.

Zhao Kuangyin drew a sharp breath. He knew that if he wanted to advance further in the short term, becoming the Sage's adopted son was the only path left to him, because only then could he command the obedience of the troops.

The trouble was, Zhao the Elder had his father Zhao Hongyin ask through every branch of the family, high and low, and there was not a single suitable beauty to be found.

Well, it was not that there were none at all — it was just that they had all married off early, and already had several children each.

Otherwise he could have followed Li Cunhui's example, offered up a stunningly beautiful aunt, and then been promoted to adopted son.

Now that he had no stunningly beautiful aunt to "sell off," there was only one road left.

Military merit!

Xue Guizhong, who came from one of the three new Kucha families, was small and slight; like a macaque he slid down from the observation nest-cart, and the moment his feet touched the ground he began writing and sketching on a sheet of prepared white paper.

Zhao Kuangyin also brought over the officers above the rank of squad general and gathered around. Xue Guizhong quickly drew out the Southern Tang army's formation on the western side.

"The chevaux-de-frise on this side were set up the slowest. Right now there is only one row of them, from here to here. On either side of the chevaux-de-frise there are roughly two commands' worth of troops.

The banners in the formation are a jumble. I saw no sign of the Southern Wu imperial guard main force, nor of the banners of the Jiankang prefectural and county troops, but I did spot a large number of Jinghai Army banners.

Unless the Southern Wu commander is deliberately laying a false formation, the western side is their weak point."

The so-called Jinghai Army was, of course, not the Jinghai Army of Southern Han. In fact, Southern Tang, Qian Yue, and Southern Han had all established a Jinghai Army under that same designation.

Southern Han's Jinghai Army was, naturally, in the old land of Jiaozhi. It was first established by the Tang dynasty, later seized by Qu Chengyu as a military province, recovered by Southern Han more than twenty years later, and then promptly lost again.

Qian Yue's Jinghai Army was at Wenzhou, called the Wenzhou Jinghai Military Governor.

Southern Tang's Jinghai Army was at what later became Nantong in Jiangsu. Moreover, although Southern Tang's Jinghai Army was only a Commission Office, it was in fact a separatist regime within Southern Tang's own territory.

Because the predecessor of the Southern Tang Jinghai Army Commission Office was the Tang dynasty's Dongzhou Defense Suppression Commissioner. Defense Suppression Commissioner Yao Cunzhi had held this territory for over thirty years, and throughout the wars between Yang Xingmi, Sun Ru, and Qian Liu, he had always supported Yang Xingmi.

After Xu Zhigao (Li Bian) usurped the throne, Yao Cunzhi went in person to pay court, confirming the Yao family's separatist status within Southern Tang.

One must understand that Nantong was not far from Nanjing. With a semi-separatist regime this close, the Southern Tang court could not possibly have been without precautions.

Therefore the Jinghai Army's replenishments of equipment, pay, and silver within Southern Tang were all at the very bottom tier.

The Yao family's Jinghai Army held only three counties, and could not support many troops. Never mind armored soldiers — they did not even have much rawhide armor. Their elite troops numbered at most around a thousand.

Moreover, they were better at naval warfare. In a head-on clash on land, one can imagine how low their fighting strength was.

Everyone's eyes turned to Zhao Kuangyin. This decision was his alone to make.

The nineteen-year-old Zhao the Elder looked perfectly composed, but inside he was extremely nervous. He rapidly ran through everything he knew about Li Jingda in his mind, then a confident expression appeared on his face.

"Li Jingda is a mediocrity! He absolutely does not have the ability to lay a false formation. And even if he did, would the Southern Wu army outside the city be in such utter chaos? Is that not a little too convincing?"

At his words, the soldiers and officers around him all burst out laughing. Right! Even if they were putting on an act, no Southern Wu army would put on a show this earnest!

The laughter had barely died down when Zhao Kuangyin's face turned stern. He reached out and pointed at the sketch Xue Guizhong had drawn.

"My intention is this: the left and center battalions will attack, while the right battalion, fully equipped with stiff bows and divine-arm bows, will provide support.

We strike out from due west, fight straight through the Southern Wu Jinghai Army's position, and the right battalion will support from the east."

"Yes, sir!" The officers hastily clasped hands and acknowledged the order. No matter how much joking went on beforehand, during a council of war no one was permitted to laugh or treat matters lightly.

Zhao Kuangyin's face grew increasingly dark and stern; faintly, he already had the bearing of a famous general.

"Let me say this in advance: this time we are using few to strike many, so we must follow the route agreed upon.

If anyone gets carried away killing and loses discipline — do not think that just because you are the Sage's most trusted warriors, demotion and beheading cannot fall upon your heads.

Military law is merciless. Even I, Zhao Dalang, am no exception."

Xue Guizhong had seen correctly. What was arrayed on the western side was the more than six thousand men of Jinghai Army Commissioner Yao Yanhong, plus over ten thousand militia and village troops.

Zhao Kuangyin had also guessed correctly. Li Jingda had no such ability to lay a false formation. Not only did he not know how to lay a false formation, he had not even imagined that the three thousand men inside the city would dare to sally out and raid him.

The Southern Tang western commander Yao Yanhong had placed his own command tent on the right side of the main army.

The reason he did not place it in the center as regulations required was that the Yangtze River lay on the right. If anything went wrong, he, the great Army Commissioner Yao, could immediately board a small boat and flee without a trace.

This gentleman, though a second-generation military man, carried no small shadow over war.

That shadow came from a great battle fought between Southern Tang and Qian Yue in the fifth year of Zhenming of the Later Liang (919).

It was also the last of the three battles between Southern Tang and Qian Yue for control of Wuzhong. The Southern Tang army suffered a crushing defeat on the river south of the Jinghai Army's territory.

The Southern Tang Prefect of Shuzhou, Peng Yanzhang, committed suicide after his troops were wiped out. Yao Yanhong's elder brother Yao Yangui and more than seventy other Southern Tang deputy generals were taken prisoner.

What was more horrifying was that of the more than seventy captured Southern Tang deputy generals, over ten were from the Yao family. One could say the clan's talent was utterly wiped out.

Yao Yanhong had personally lived through that catastrophic defeat, which nearly drove his father Yao Cunzhi to suicide, and he remembered the grim sight of every household in the clan wearing mourning.

Even his elder brother Yao Yangui was never released, and had died in Qian Yue a few years earlier.

From then on, a deep terror of war was planted in Yao Yanhong's heart.

Historically, when the Later Zhou attacked Southern Tang, after the Zhou army captured Yangzhou, Li Jing ordered Yao Yanhong to advance west and relieve the city. Yao Yanhong simply took more than ten thousand men, abandoned his home, and defected to Qian Yue. His fear of war could not be clearer.

Carrying this fear of war, Yao Yanhong had already drunk a large horn of wine before the sky had even darkened. He could not sleep without drinking!

That said, to be fair, Yao Yanhong's side was actually the fastest in the Southern Tang army at setting up camp.

Because the Jinghai Army's territory was small to begin with, these few thousand men of his had followed him year-round. They were all fellow villagers or even relatives. Their battle formations and defense might not be up to par, but they had a natural tacit understanding for pitching camp.

After the camp was pitched, it was time for the evening meal. By this point the realm had been in chaos for nearly two hundred years, and production had fallen sharply. The three-meals-a-day custom that had begun to rise in the High Tang had been forced back to two meals a day.

Therefore this "evening meal," eaten in the afternoon, was extremely important to the people of this time, especially commoners.

The Jinghai Army soldiers and militia on Yao Yanhong's side began drawing water and cooking. When the other Southern Tang troops saw this, they too clamored to cook.

Li Jingda had no choice but to let them stop building the camp fortifications. Cooking smoke began to rise from the formation.

Zhao Kuangyin, atop the city wall, saw the curling cooking smoke rising from the Southern Tang formation and was overjoyed. This was exactly the moment he had been waiting for.

With a sudden wave of his hand, the south gate of Yizheng opened wide, and Zhao Kuangyin personally led the army out of the city.

However, the place where the Southern Tang main army was camped was still about a li from Yizheng. The Zhou troops leaving the city did not mount their horses directly, but led them out on foot.

They would mount only when they had covered about half a li, to conserve the horses' strength.

This was what showed the quality of an army: not only could they march in armor and knew how to conserve horse strength, they also had the skill and discipline to mount in armor.

At half a li, the personal guards around Zhao Kuangyin raised the red banner signaling the charge. The two thousand Zhou cavalry immediately began helping one another mount.

The horse archers, wearing light armor and using horse bows as their primary means of attack, immediately paired up one-on-one to help the shock cavalry in padded armor mount their horses.

Once the shock cavalry had mounted, they began slowly pressing forward. Only then did the horse archers mount up themselves.

At this moment, the shock cavalry still could not break into a gallop, because there was still half a li to cover. The horse archers who had mounted later, however, could begin gradually picking up speed.

Amid the rolling thunder of hooves, one thousand horse archers, guided by three great banners, suddenly broke into a charge at two hundred paces.

Although the Southern Tang's Jinghai Army had spotted the Zhou cavalry the moment they rode out, and the more dutiful junior officers had reported the situation upward,

Yao Yanhong, a military commissioner suffering from war stress, was still too slow to act.

By the time he issued the order to pull back and hold the camp, the horse archers led by the three brothers Xue Guizhong, Yang Guizhong, and Zheng Guizhong had already thrust to the very front of the Jinghai Army's lines.

At that moment, most of the Jinghai Army's soldiers were waiting to eat. Never mind that they had little armor to begin with — even if they had, not many could have donned it so quickly.

And after waiting half the day, the feast still had not reached their mouths. Many men's stomachs were growling with hunger. Who had the heart to fight?

Thus this wave of one thousand horse archers, originally sent to probe, had somehow produced the effect of shock cavalry.

The Jinghai Army's camp might as well have been made of tofu; a thousand men simply cut a huge gap straight through it.

Xue Guizhong's arms spread like an eagle's wings, and unarmored Jinghai soldiers toppled to the ground one after another. The camp, which had looked neatly built, proved utterly useless.

The soldiers set off a human wave of flight, surging and scattering in every direction amid screams of weeping for fathers and crying for mothers.

As a force that had held its own territory for decades and stood on the front line contested by the Southern Tang and Qian Yue, the Jinghai Army had few main troops — just the thousand or so yabing guards under Yao Yanhong.

Although Yao Yanhong's first instinct was to flee, the yabing officers under him stopped him.

The first reaction of these yabing officers and guards was: don't joke with us. The enemy has only come with a thousand-odd riders. If they let that punch through a camp of more than ten thousand men and send their commander fleeing onto the river, how would they ever hold their heads up again?

But after the Jinghai yabing officers and guards — who had calculated the Zhou cavalry's fighting strength as twice that of Qian Yue's army — finished assembling and organized the fleeing soldiers and local militia, they were instantly stunned.

Because by then Xue Guizhong's one thousand horse archers had already swept through their camp like a whirlwind. By the time they came out, they could barely even see the horses' rear ends.

And what they ran straight into was one thousand shock cavalry personally led by Zhao Kuangyin.

A Jinghai Army officer, seeing Zhao Kuangyin charging at the very front in white cloth-faced iron armor, raised his hand and loosed an arrow — but the next instant his eyes flew wide.

Because the arrow had simply bounced off. Zhao Kuangyin also noticed this officer. With a roar, he fired the horn crossbow in his hand.

The short crossbow bolt, trailing a wisp of white light, slammed into the officer's chest.

The officer's oxhide armor could not stop a bolt from a one-dan-eight-li horn crossbow. He could only watch helplessly as the bolt shaft sank into his chest, then vanished.

As if struck by an invisible blow from across the air, the officer screamed. He threw away the longbow in his hand and clawed frantically with both hands at the spot where the bolt had disappeared, as though trying to dig it out.

But after only two grabs, his strength drained away, the world spun around him, and he crashed heavily to the ground. Within a few breaths, he had lost even the ability to scream.

At the same moment, brilliant firelight flared — the foremost shock cavalry had lit the pear-blossom guns in their hands.

A nearby Jinghai Army Captain took the blast full in the face. In an instant, the iron sand packed inside the pear-blossom gun sprayed his face into a perfect pockmarked mask.

After inhaling a choking mouthful of poisonous smoke, the Captain screamed and collapsed. The poisonous smoke, the iron sand, the searing burns — the pain nearly stopped his breathing.

The Captain on the ground writhed like a fish hauled ashore, his hands curled into chicken claws, scratching line after line into the earth. He clawed until his fingernails peeled back, and still could not ease the agony of being blasted head-on by at least four pear-blossom guns.

The Jinghai Army soldiers had never seen anything like this. Gunpowder was no stranger to them — Yang Xingmi had once commanded troops who used gunpowder — but they had never seen gunpowder made so terrifying.

With pear-blossom guns clearing the way, horn crossbows volleying, and cavalry lances and sabers hacking and slashing, Zhao Kuangyin's one thousand shock cavalry instantly scattered the Jinghai Army's feeble resistance.

Going by instinct, Zhao Kuangyin charged toward the Jinghai Army's central command. Since these troops were so weak, he might as well seize their commander.

But the next moment, Zhao Kuangyin ran into a shocked-looking Xue Guizhong.

Xue Guizhong glared at Zhao Kuangyin, fuming. "Fuck his mother — the Jinghai Army's command tent isn't even in the central army!"

Zhao Kuangyin was speechless too. Only now did he notice that at the most suitable command position in the central army, there was indeed no commander's great banner or canopy.

"What kind of dog-shit commander is this? Does he have no military sense at all?"

Even as the two were cursing, the deep thud of war drums sounded. Li Jingda might have been somewhat inept, but the Southern Tang's imperial guards and the Jiankang Army defending the area around Jiangning were no incompetents.

Li Jingda merely had to issue a symbolic order, and Bian Hao began assembling several thousand imperial guards, Jiankang Army troops, and several thousand prefectural and county soldiers.

At the same time, several hundred cavalry from the imperial guards charged out ahead, preparing to cut off Zhao Kuangyin's route back to the city.

Zhao Kuangyin spat fiercely, immediately wheeled his horse around, and the commander's banner changed direction at once. Following the original plan, they were going to charge back.

Hah! Zhao Kuangyin laughed coldly. They think they can block this old man's return to the city? This old man never intended to return to the city right now.

The real show is only just beginning!

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