Chapter 756: Who the Hell Designed This Ass-Brained Plate Armor?

Outside the city of Sizhou, Liu Renzhan stood on a large flat-bottomed boat. This was a river vessel with a flat hull, square bow, and flat bottom. In Tang times, ship designs varied from region to region — hence the saying that Jiang ships did not enter the Bian, Bian ships did not enter the He, and He ships did not enter the Wei.

The advantage of this flat-bottomed boat was that even a small vessel could carry heavy loads, and it rode very steadily.

The drawback was high drag and sluggish handling, especially when turning around. It was therefore suited only to calm stretches of river; on the Yangtze, with its larger waves and swifter currents, it would surely come to grief.

The stretch Liu Renzhan's boat was now traveling was the placid moat of Sizhou. It was not far from the city wall, so arrows kept flying at his boat, while the elite Huai-River crossbowmen around him fired back without pause.

Arrows fell on the hull like rain. Men screamed as they were hit, one after another, and were dragged into the cabin for treatment. Several arrows struck close to Liu Renzhan, yet he stood unmoved.

His second son Liu Chongliang and third son Liu Chongjian shielded him with large shields. As the arrows grew denser, Liu Chongjian tried to pull Liu Renzhan back, but Liu Renzhan shoved him to the deck.

A wave of startled cries arose. Liu Renzhan looked toward the west of the city — what was fleeing out in disorder was none other than the Southern Tang army, clad in black.

Yao Feng, the Troop Commander leading the assault, had even lost his command banner. Thousands of men fled in wild panic, wishing only that their parents had given them two more legs.

Pursuing them from behind were Zhou troops, armored and robed in white over white. Two days earlier, Liu Renzhan had first battered the wall with trebuchets, then hammered it with battering rams, smashing a huge breach in the wall thirty paces from Sizhou's west gate. Since then, the Zhou and Tang armies had fought seven battles, large and small, over that breach.

Yet every time it ended with the Southern Tang army driven back out. This time, Liu Renzhan had ordered Commander Yao Feng to personally don armor and attack. They had almost fought their way in — only to be driven out again, and in such wretched disarray.

"Beat the drums. Crossbowmen, ready!" Liu Renzhan barked, his face livid. At once, the war drums on his boat and the several large vessels behind him thundered to life.

This man — the last of the Southern Tang's great generals, or perhaps one should say the only one; even Chai Kehong could not compare — was the sole renowned commander the Southern Tang had before Lin Renzhao appeared, and he ran his army with extreme strictness.

So when the routed Southern Tang troops heard the war drums and saw Liu Renzhan's banner, they did not scatter in all directions, but slowly began to reform their ranks.

The pursuing Zhou troops, seeing the dense ranks of crossbowmen aboard the boats, wisely halted. But they did not withdraw into the city; instead they stopped just beyond crossbow range, howling and jeering at Liu Renzhan in defiance.

In the distance, the Southern Tang troops who had just regrouped still numbered a full two or three thousand. Watching some two hundred Zhou armored soldiers strut and swagger three hundred-odd paces away, not one of them dared step forward.

After a moment, with a roar, a Zhou armored soldier in silver-white padded armor suddenly ran to a spot only a hundred-odd paces from Liu Renzhan.

He swiftly raised the divine-arm crossbow unique to the Zhou state, and with a twang, loosed a bolt at Liu Renzhan on the boat.

Liu Renzhan's third son Liu Chongjian let out a howl of fury and threw himself onto his father. He had already recognized that the weapon in the enemy's hands was no ordinary bow, but a divine-arm crossbow.

At a hundred-odd paces, that thing's killing power rivaled a crossbow's. Sure enough, the bolt came in with terrifying speed, its head of fine steel and wickedly sharp.

With a crack, the bolt punched through the rattan shield Liu Chongliang was holding, then struck Liu Chongjian in the shoulder as he lay atop Liu Renzhan. Liu Chongjian screamed in pain.

Liu Renzhan hurriedly checked whether his son was wounded. Liu Chongjian grimaced and shook his head. By the time the bolt reached him, it had spent its force; the head had not pierced his armor. Only the tremendous impact had likely bruised his shoulder black.

At the same moment, the dozen-odd crossbowmen at the bow of Liu Renzhan's boat fired at that Zhou officer. But the man did not dodge — he only laughed loudly.

Liu Renzhan was just thinking the man was doomed, when the volley passed. At over a hundred paces, bolts from two-stone crossbows had not so much as grazed him. The man tore the spent bolt shafts from his armor and laughed even louder.

Liu Renzhan's third son Liu Chongjian stared, dumbstruck.

"What precious armor are these Zhou curs wearing, that it can stop a crossbow bolt!"

"Liu Renzhan! The Chief Commander of the Sage Zhou Inner Court, the Marquis of Jinchang, bids me tell you: surrender early, and perhaps you may save your whole family's lives. Delay any longer, and when the Sage's great army arrives, all of Shouzhou, high and low, will be ground to dust." A great cry of alarm rose from the boat. It could not be helped — the fame of the four bears and tigers under Sage Zhang was simply too great: Man Xiong, Dunzhu, Wang Tongxin, and Qiong Reduojin.

Even in the Southern Tang, their names were like thunder. The world regarded them as peerless fierce generals on the order of Yuchi Jingde.

"This is but a Zhou trick to deceive us! Zhang Zhao must guard the imperial palace — how could he come here?" Liu Renzhan retorted loudly. But the moment the words left his mouth, his own heart gave a jolt.

Even his own subconscious believed Zhang Zhao was that kind of bear-and-tiger general — as if he were invincible.

And since Zhang Zhao had not come, the man flying the banner of the commander-in-chief bearing the character "Fu" in the city could only be Fu Zhaoxu, the Troop Supervisor of Xuchang Prefecture, as the Zhou army had publicly announced.

He, Liu Renzhan, had personally brought twenty thousand elite troops, plus forty or fifty thousand laborers, proclaiming a host of a hundred thousand — yet he could not break Sizhou, defended by a Zhou general no one had ever heard of. What point was there in fighting on?

... Zhang Deqing scrambled and tumbled his way back onto the wall of Sizhou. This man — Seventh Squad General of the Bear Guard, Third Class, of the Hanshan Inner Court — was of the Zhang Zhou imperial house.

For the Longshe Zhang clan's generational order ran by the sequence Yi, Huai, Cheng, Zhao, Lie, De, Ze, Cun, Zhong, Yi. This man was not merely of the imperial house, but of the close branch: he was Zhang Zhao's third grand-uncle, the fifth-generation descendant of Zhang Huaizhen, Zhang Yichao's own nephew.

Of the De generation, he counted as Zhang Zhao's grand-nephew. Reckoning from Zhang Zhao, he was the fiercest of the third generation of the Zhang Zhou imperial house — without equal.

After taking seven or eight crossbow bolts, he had fled straight back to the wall of Sizhou, and now immediately unbuckled his padded armor, revealing a single great steel plate across his chest.

The thing gleamed with a peculiar dark-silver light; clearly it was no common article. Zhang Deqing gasped for breath in great heaves. The hard sprint had drained him; had his breathing been any shallower, he had no doubt he would have passed out.

And while Zhang Deqing stood there gulping air, four so-called erudites from the Academy of Heavenly Works crowded around him, their eyes shining with the light of scholarly inquiry.

Once he could breathe more evenly, Zhang Deqing waved a hand absently and said, haltingly: "Tell my fourteenth cousin-uncle that when I get back to the Divine Capital, if he doesn't send five hundred strings of cash for medicine, he needn't look for me again. What the hell kind of plate armor is this? I say it's no plate armor at all — it's a damn turtle shell. Hard enough, I'll grant you! Took a crossbow bolt and I was fine. But can you lot stop thinking only about protection and spare a thought for the fact that the soldiers wearing it are flesh and blood, not forged iron? All right? This cursed thing is just one big iron plate over the chest, with no support at the back at all. That Southern Tang armored soldier swung an iron mace at me, and I saw stars on the spot — damn near passed out from the pain." Zhang Deqing's rant was on the mark. This thing was no plate armor at all — just a big iron plate strapped to the chest, utterly failing to form the barrel- or box-shaped defense around the torso that true plate armor required.

It looked strong enough in defense, but it could not dissipate force at all. If an enemy struck with a heavy hammer or great axe, the wearer would still be pounded until his organs burst and he died. And this single iron plate weighed thirty or forty jin — it could not compare at all with cloth-faced iron armor that covered the whole body at just over thirty jin. It was flawed in every respect.

"This is an ass-brained design. Only a damn fool would wear it into battle." Remembering how he had believed the nonsense these four idiots had fed him — that it could truly stop heavy weapons — and had then nearly been hammered to death, Zhang Deqing was boiling with rage.

Mimicking Zhang Zhao's pet phrase, he delivered his final verdict. One of the Academy of Heavenly Works armor-department erudites stopped writing and looked at Zhang Deqing, a sly smile flickering across his face.

"You should know, Squad General, that the design concept for this plate armor came from the Sage himself — he even drew the sketches in his own hand."

"Ah!" Zhang Deqing was instantly terrified out of his wits. He grabbed the armor erudite's hands.

"Dr. Du, I didn't say anything just now, right?" Dr. Du clasped Zhang Deqing's hands in return and said with great sincerity: "When I return, I intend to make revisions based on the Squad General's feedback. But I wonder who might be public-spirited enough to help us test it again?"

"Of course, of course!" Zhang Deqing pulled his hands back with a pained face and said insincerely: "Dr. Du need not worry. I am precisely that public-spirited man! Next time, come find me again." Dr. Du nodded with satisfaction, then continued questioning Zhang Deqing about his experience wearing the armor, filling a full half-volume of notes. Afterward, the four men muttered and debated among themselves for a long while before reaching a unanimous conclusion.

First, it must be made as a single barrel-shaped piece, so that it could fully cushion the impact of heavy weapons like axes, hammers, and maces against the wearer.

Second, current smelting techniques still needed improvement. Otherwise, the finished product would likely weigh over a hundred jin — no one could wear it, and the cost would be far too high.

Fu Zhaoxu waited until the four zealots had walked far off before sidling up to Zhang Deqing. Somehow, Fu Zhaoxu felt that in this Academy of Heavenly Works, from the Duke of Ziting Commandery Cao Yanming down to the lowliest sweeping servant, there was not a single normal person.

Seeing Fu Zhaoxu approach, Zhang Deqing immediately perked up.

"Supervisor, Liu Renzhan is sure to withdraw now. We didn't plug the breach to make him attack, but he threw twenty thousand men at it in rotating waves for seven battles — and lost all seven. He's lost four or five hundred armored soldiers and has thousands wounded. He can't keep fighting." Fu Zhaoxu had a white bandage wrapped around his head, still seeping blood, and his left arm hung unnaturally limp — but his face instantly lit up with delight.

The orders he had originally received were to lead four hundred elite troops from the Zhongwu Garrison of the imperial guard and the Xuchang Left Guard, plus a hundred elite cavalry from the Hanshan Inner Court, to Huai'an Prefecture — at the very least, to hold Huai'an Prefecture.

But Fu Zhaoxu understood the real situation in Huainan far better than Commissioner of Military Affairs Guo Tiance in the eastern capital of Kaifeng, or the empress deep in the palace.

Zhang Yanqing, Governor of Huaiyin Prefecture and its Troop Supervisor, and Zhang Xiong, Commander-in-Chief of the Baisheng Garrison of the imperial guard, were far stronger than Guo Tiance and the others assumed.

Moreover, that year the Sage had dispatched Vice Commissioner of Military Affairs Li Gu to carry out land equalization in Huainan, and the Sage himself had personally ordered that the three hundred thousand mu of prime farmland in Huai'an Prefecture — seized in former years by high officials and nobles of the Southern Tang court — be largely returned to the people of Huai'an.

Such great favor had made Huai'an Prefecture the most solid fortress of the entire Great Zhou in the Huainan region — far more reliable than Xuzhou Prefecture.

The people there bitterly hated the Southern Tang court's old oppression, and the upper-class vested interests had been almost entirely rooted out by Li Gu. High and low alike remembered the benevolence of the Great Zhou and the Sage; the place was like an iron barrel. Liu Renzhan could never take it.

So Fu Zhaoxu had proposed going straight to Sizhou, because in his view, Huai'an Prefecture needed no defending, and Haozhou was too close to Shouzhou — there would be no time. Only by going to Sizhou could they make it in time.

Of course, more importantly, merely going to Huai'an Prefecture and holding it — how could that display Fu Zhaoxu's abilities?

The result now was exactly as Fu Zhaoxu had predicted. First he sent an eight-hundred-li express dispatch ordering Zhang Yanqing and Zhang Xiong to draw a thousand elite troops from Huai'an Prefecture. Then he personally led five hundred elite troops into Sizhou and took command from Gao Yunquan.

By the time Liu Renzhan sent Huangfu Hui with five thousand vanguard troops, Fu Zhaoxu had essentially completed his defenses. Huangfu Hui besieged the city and attacked for a full day without making any progress. Instead, Fu Zhaoxu seized an opening and charged out with armored cavalry, breaking their momentum so badly they could not hold their ground and had to fall back and wait for the main army to arrive.

But with this retreat, the one thousand elite troops of Huai'an Prefecture, personally commanded by Zhang Xiong, immediately entered Sizhou City.

After that, no matter how Liu Renzhan attacked, their fifteen hundred men plus the fifteen hundred from the Sizhou garrison — three thousand picked troops in all, along with two or three thousand laborers — Liu Renzhan claimed to have a hundred thousand soldiers, yet he could not bite through.

Although the Qinghuai Army used its naval superiority to control the moat, it could advance not one inch farther. After twenty days of fierce assault, apart from suffering heavy losses itself, it had gained nothing.

... At the Qinghuai Army's main camp, Liu Renzhan rode through the deep night to a hillside and gazed toward the southeast. The southeast was pitch black — still no sign of movement.

Before raising his troops, he had repeatedly memorialized the court, asking the Jiangning court to send the newly established imperial guard army, the Longwu Army, to Shouzhou and place it under his command.

That way he would have thirty thousand picked troops at his disposal and could certainly recover Huainan. If it failed, then it would be Liu Renzhan acting on his own authority — they could push him out and behead him. If it succeeded, they could use him as a shield in dealing with the Zhou state.

But he had not expected the sovereign to fear the Zhou state so much. Not only did no Longwu Army come, but not even an imperial messenger with a reply was sent — it was as if his memorial had never been received.

"Alas! Heaven's mandate does not rest with the south! The foundation laid by the Illustrious Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor, is about to fall into the hands of the Zhou." Liu Renzhan raised his head, gazed at the sky, and let out a long sigh, his heart aching unbearably.

"Pass the order: break camp at the third watch tomorrow, abandon all baggage and supplies, and let the army withdraw in proper sequence. The iron cavalry will form the rearguard to guard against pursuit by the Zhou iron cavalry."

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