Chapter 888

Zhang Xianyu had predicted many things correctly — for instance, that the Buyid dynasty's mobilization capacity was indeed very weak.

This was not only because the old recruitment channels of the imperial guard had already been destroyed, but also because the Buyid rulers, known as the Daylamites, were in fact Persians themselves, and simply could not rapidly mobilize the Arabs for battle.

Well, calling them Persians may not be entirely accurate, but they were generally regarded as people who had come from Persia — not belonging to the Persian ethnic group, yet geographically belonging to Persia.

These were, in truth, barbarians from northern Persia who had seized control of both the Two Rivers region and Persia as geographical entities.

What was that equivalent to? It was equivalent to the Manchu Qing — they not only entered the pass and took control of China, they also took Mongolia.

The Samanid family, which now bore the name of Persia but had its center of rule in Transoxiana, was the equivalent of Galdan's Dzungar Khanate.

This resemblance grew even stronger after the Buyid dynasty swallowed Persia proper and Khorasan.

Over the past decade, the most important task of the Buyid ruler, Shahanshah Adud al-Dawla, had been to craft his image as a fellow Persian, and to brand the Samanid family, controlled by the Great Zhou, as shameless traitors who had gone over to the infidels of Taugast.

Moreover, when Zhang Xianyu attacked Semnan, Adud al-Dawla was in fact not in Baghdad at all, but in Shiraz.

Shiraz lies in southwestern Persia, near the Persian Gulf, roughly one thousand two hundred li from Semnan. Historically it was the capital of the famed and mighty Persian Empire — the empire of Cyrus I and Darius I.

Adud al-Dawla had even made Shiraz the seat of the Buyid court, while Baghdad served merely as a place of work, not a place where he often resided.

By this means he sought to strengthen the Persians' sense of identification with the Buyid dynasty, so as to swallow all of Persia proper and Khorasan.

The Buyid dynasty's current military strength consisted of roughly forty thousand standing imperial guards, men personally loyal to Adud al-Dawla and drawn chiefly from the Daylamites; thirty thousand enfeoffed vassal troops stationed in various places; and four legions totaling forty thousand men for guarding against the direction of Transoxiana.

In addition, there were twenty thousand Turkic imperial guards responsible for controlling Baghdad. The rest were holy warriors who could only be mobilized through large-scale conscription; these men were internally called the Mutawwi'a, meaning volunteers.

Judging by surface strength, the Buyid dynasty's core military force numbered about one hundred thirty thousand, with a further one hundred fifty to three hundred thousand holy warriors — far surpassing the allied army of the various Xia states, which had only sixty thousand main-force troops.

But the allied Xia army could commit nearly all of its sixty thousand men, whereas the Buyid dynasty found it very difficult to mobilize everything, because it still had to garrison its various territories.

Nevertheless, Zhang Xianyu had reined in his impulse, and his decision not to let his officers charge through the snow straight at Rayy (Tehran) was the correct one.

For not only were there thirty thousand Buyid Arab troops in the city of Rayy, but upon receiving the news, Adud al-Dawla had immediately led thirty thousand imperial guards through the wind and snow to Isfahan.

Isfahan was also a major Persian stronghold, no more than seven hundred li from both Rayy and Semnan, so the entire army could arrive within twenty days.

In the city of Isfahan, the long-faced, gaunt Adud al-Dawla, with his gray-black goatee, black hair, and narrow eyes, was gathering information on the Transoxiana allied army through every channel available.

As the outstanding figure of the Buyid clan, Adud al-Dawla placed great importance on intelligence from the direction of Transoxiana.

He knew not only that Guo Zhou'er controlled Samanid Persia, but also of the Zheng and Jin fiefdoms, and he was even well aware that the Taugast empire in the east had been revived.

Yet even so, he was still somewhat unprepared for Zhang Zhou to launch a western expedition in such an aggressive manner. Adud al-Dawla even concluded, through various intelligence, that the Transoxiana allied force that had taken Semnan was merely a vanguard that had rashly overextended.

Because from the perspective of timing, this was very reasonable — how could a main army possibly race over a thousand li in a little over twenty days?

Hmm, this fellow was just like Wang Zhao, the ruler of Goryeo — he had absolutely no conception of how far the warriors of the Central Plains had advanced, and was still using the ordinary armies he had encountered to estimate the fighting power of Five Dynasties warriors.

Having predicted that only twenty or thirty thousand vanguard troops had arrived, Adud al-Dawla dispatched his cousin and finance minister Ali to Baghdad to raise troops, while he himself summoned the Buyid clan, and indeed all the Daylamite military nobility, to assemble their forces at Isfahan.

The reason he did this was that the Daylamites were in fact a Manchu Qing-style bandit military bloc, and Adud al-Dawla was their Hong Taiji.

But this Hong Taiji was still in his early phase, and had not yet succeeded in toppling the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers, that supreme decision-making body.

Therefore, the current Buyid dynasty was one in which Adud al-Dawla's uncles, brothers, and nephews each held and governed various territories, and beneath these uncles, brothers, and nephews there were still large numbers of Daylamite military nobles.

Historically, it was not until 979 that Adud al-Dawla succeeded in gathering all the power of the Buyid clan into his own hands.

So the twenty-six-year-old Adud al-Dawla had not yet completed that consolidation. He had to follow the old path of his uncle Mu'izz al-Dawla and first resolve the Samanid Persian problem.

Fortunately, however, it was now the depths of winter, and Adud al-Dawla still had enough time to move troops and deploy his commanders.

In the fourth year of Qianyuan of the Great Zhou, 963 CE, as the ice and snow first began to melt, Zhang Xianyu left Zhang Xianxi and Guo Shouwen with four thousand troops to hold Semnan, while the remaining fifty thousand troops, along with more than ten thousand Samanid Persian auxiliary troops and tens of thousands of laborers, began advancing toward Rayy.

At this time, Zhang Xianyu still did not know that Adud al-Dawla had already arrived at Isfahan to his south; his main attention remained fixed on Rayy and on Baghdad to the west.

Although Rayy (Tehran) later became the capital of Iran, at this time it was not a particularly important city, its status far below that of Isfahan and Shiraz.

Were it not for the Buyid dynasty's current struggle for Persia, it would never have had so many troops stationed there.

One could also put it the other way: Rayy was a purely military fortress.

This city held great significance for the allied army coming from Transoxiana, because after taking Rayy, the allied army would have a bridgehead for advancing into the Two Rivers region where Baghdad lay.

But for the Buyid dynasty, its position was somewhat awkward. Rayy's location in the Persia of this time was actually quite inconvenient — it could neither shelter the wealthy Khorasan region to the east, nor influence the even wealthier Isfahan and Shiraz to the south.

Yet if you did not defend it, once the enemy seized it, it could become a bridgehead thrust into the Two Rivers region.

Thus, on the tenth day of the second month of the fourth year of Qianyuan, 963 CE, Adud al-Dawla, having barely managed to conscript some troops, impatiently led forth forty thousand imperial guards and sixty to seventy thousand holy warriors, proclaiming them two hundred thousand, and began marching north to relieve the city of Rayy.

At that moment, the allied Xia army from Transoxiana had just set up camp beneath the walls of Rayy; the siege had only just begun, a mere warm-up.

Then the rear-guard troops responsible for the safety of the supply train suddenly collided head-on with the Arab army coming from Isfahan.

Amid the mountain-shaking, sea-surging roar of battle cries, Dalidi, who came from the Yedigua myriarchy, commanded over a hundred soldiers, surrounded on a hilltop and fighting desperately.

He was the unluckiest of all, because no one in the entire allied army had anticipated that Adud al-Dawla was not in Baghdad, but in Shiraz to the south.

Therefore they had never imagined the Arab army could arrive so quickly, and on top of that, the previous several supply convoys had encountered no danger at all, which had lulled everyone into complacency.

But the one stroke of fortune amid misfortune was that the twenty thousand laborers, over a thousand mules and horses, and more than a hundred thousand shi of grain that Dalidi was escorting had not been suddenly cut off on the road, but had been trapped at a small military supply transfer station the allied army called Left Flank Jia-San Fort.

As Dalidi looked out, Arab armored soldiers in dark blue-black outer robes were advancing in orderly ranks, unhurriedly closing in on the hilltop where he stood. From a distance, banners and flags stood thick as a forest, and all around his ears came the steady beating of barbarian war drums.

Dalidi knew these Arabs were in no hurry to kill them; they sought above all to keep them securely surrounded on this small hill, preventing them from breaking out.

Because Dalidi had been entrusted by Zeng Zheng, the garrison commander of Jia-San Fort, to break out and warn the main army beneath the walls of Rayy.

And the Arabs, needless to say, wanted to seal off the news, wait until they had taken Jia-San Fort, then calmly lay traps to cut off the main army's rear. Hence they did not seek to kill everyone, but rather to be thorough and secure.

An Sicun took off his iron helmet and wiped away the cold sweat he had worked up in the depths of winter. He sighed. "If fortune is yours, you need not seek it; if disaster is yours, you cannot escape it!"

Fifteen years earlier, after he had followed the Great King of Zheng, Bai Congxin, in capturing the city of Shiguo, he had put down roots in Shiguo City, which had been renamed the New Zheng Royal City.

He had been allotted a grand residence with more than forty rooms, and had risen to the rank of Jiangyuhou in the Left Guard of the Zheng fief. He had eight wives and concubines, every one of them beautiful, and outside the city he had more than two thousand mu of fine farmland, leased to seventeen households of native tenant farmers.

One could say that he had spent fifteen years living happily and very securely, a life he would never even have dared dream of in the Han lands.

Even during the Fourth Battle of Shiguo City, when he had guarded Bai Congxin through several months of siege at Heyang Town, it had not been as dangerous as this.

Because back then he had been certain the Persian army could do nothing to them, but now, their hundred-odd men were surrounded on this small hill by several thousand Arab troops, with very likely tens of thousands more beyond.

The Arabs could not defeat the main army, but killing this hundred-odd men of theirs would still be easy.

An Sicun gritted his teeth. The faces of his lovely wife and young children flashed before his eyes, but this only hardened his resolve.

Living in a foreign land, a Xia ruler over barbarian subjects, there was no room for retreat — only perseverance. He went to find Dalidi.

"Da Baihu, pick ten men, rest now, and wait until dawn to charge out and report to the Chief Deployment Officer."

Dali Di glanced at this young officer from the Zhengfan command who had Sogdian features but insisted he was Han, and nodded silently.

The Arabs still didn't know their fighting strength. Getting a dozen or so men out was possible, but the rest would probably have to die here.

An Sicun drew the long dagger at his side. The blade was forged from fine steel of the Tiangong Institute, its edge gleaming cold, and the deep blood groove was chilling to look at.

This thing was a fine treasure in Transoxiana. Not only could it slice meat for eating, it could also break through the rotten armor of the Transoxianan barbarians. One pounce and a few stabs would finish an enemy. It was An Sicun's divine weapon, never leaving his side.

After a few reluctant caresses, An Sicun, together with its gold-inlaid, jade-studded scabbard, handed this divine weapon to the squad leader he valued most behind him — Chen Sanlang from Yingchun Fort in Wanli City.

"Sanlang, this blade is yours. Of my two newly taken concubines, you may choose one. But Xiao Ge'er is still young — help look after him.

Tell Zeng Zheng, Brother Zeng, that he must hold on to my family property."

An Sicun had already resolved to die, but he could not ignore his family. His eldest son An Yixiao was only thirteen, still at least four or five years away from being able to shoulder the household.

And once he died, most of his concubines would certainly be sent away. Even those with children would be hard to keep, so he might as well do a favor and let Chen Sanlang help look after his eldest son's future military career.

As for Zeng Zheng, Zeng Dalang — An Sicun had come to Transoxiana with him to seek their fortunes, and he was one of the few people An Sicun could truly trust.

Chen Sanlang's eyes reddened. He was about to say something when a big-bearded armored soldier beside An Sicun cut him off.

"You, Chen Sanlang, are superb at riding and archery, with limitless prospects. If you die here too, who will help look after the children of us comrades?"

As he spoke, soldiers who were normally close to Chen Sanlang came over one after another to entrust their final affairs.

In addition, An Sicun singled out a soldier who was only seventeen but also skilled with bow and horse, to charge out together with Dali Di and the others.

That day, the Arab army attacked from two sides the hundred-odd armored soldiers of the allied Xia forces on the hill. An Sicun concentrated the armor, divided the men into three shifts, each shift wearing three layers of heavy armor and rotating to hold the mountain pass.

More than three thousand Arab troops attacked in waves. The battle raged from noon until midnight, with over a hundred casualties, yet they could not advance a single step.

At dawn, Dali Di, Chen Sanlang, and a dozen or so elite riders who had not fought at all suddenly charged down from the hill. Chen Sanlang, cavalry lance in hand, led the charge and broke straight through the Arab camp.

Over a hundred Arab cavalry on night patrol heard the news and gave chase. Dali Di and the others turned and shot with their strong bows, one man with three horses, leading them on at varying speeds for several li. The Arab cavalry lost several dozen riders and dared not pursue further.

Adud al-Dawla watched all this from nearby. He did not care that these men were breaking out to report, because he had never planned to attack the allied Xia forces beneath the walls of Rayy anyway.

Rayy was still over two hundred li away. Going there would only turn his troops into exhausted soldiers.

He planned to take Fort Jia San, cut off the allied Xia forces' retreat, and force them to turn back in haste and attack the strong fortress he had already built — waiting at ease for the weary enemy.

But as Adud al-Dawla looked at the hill where An Sicun and his men were holding out, and at distant Fort Jia San, something exceeded his expectations.

Yesterday he had dispatched three thousand and twenty thousand troops respectively to attack the hill and Fort Jia San. It was one thing that Fort Jia San could not be taken quickly, but three thousand men against a hundred-odd on the hill — how could a full day of fighting still fail to take it?

Beneath the walls of Rayy, Zhang Xianyu couldn't help patting his own forehead. It seemed military affairs truly were an obvious weakness of his. Professional matters should be left to professionals.

Zhang Xianyu quickly summoned Hu Guang, Cao Bin, Shi Shouxin, Zhang Xiantai, Lu Ketu, Cui Han, and the other generals, and briefed them on the news.

Hu Guang was quite composed. He smiled contemptuously. "The army still has twenty days of grain. The defender of Fort Jia San is Zeng Zheng, of the Wenbu clan of the Liugu tribe in Liangzhou. He commands cautiously, skilled in both attack and defense, and has several hundred elite troops and two thousand laborers under him. The Arabs cannot take Fort Jia San within at least fifteen days."

"Then we turn back at once. First use our Dinghai light cavalry to screen the battlefield and keep the Arabs in the dark. Once they've worn themselves out attacking Fort Jia San, we strike suddenly."

Lu Ketu had deeply absorbed the cold-blooded tactics of Lu Sanlang and Bai Congxin. He actually intended to let Fort Jia San hold out for around ten days, then strike when the Arabs least expected it.

"We can fight it that way!" Cao Bin nodded in agreement, then looked at Zhang Xianyu and asked, "Prince An, how many men should we take back?"

The combat troops now beneath the walls of Rayy numbered only around forty-two or forty-three thousand, the rest being laborers.

And inside Rayy were thirty thousand Arab troops and an unknown number of Persian conscripts. The allied Xia forces had no advantage in numbers.

"Leave me three thousand men." Hu Guang was even colder. "Everyone else, turn back with the whole army!

I've thought it over. It's very likely that the Buyid king Adud al-Dawla was originally in Shiraz or even Isfahan, which is why he came so quickly. To defeat such an Arab main force, a small army won't do."

Zhang Xiantai thought for a while, then nodded at Zhang Xianyu. "Chief Deployment Officer, we can fight it this way. But I request to lead my own troops and be the last to leave. We must teach the Arabs in Rayy a lesson no matter what."

The fourth year of Da Zhou Qian Yuan, 963 CE, the second month.

After the allied Xia forces in Transoxiana received word that an Arab army had suddenly appeared behind them, they immediately decided to turn back.

And it was fought exactly as Hu Guang demanded — leaving only three thousand infantry, with everyone else turning back.

On the walls of Rayy, the Arab garrison commander saw the allied Xia forces withdraw "in haste," nearly the whole army turning back, and was overjoyed. This must be the Shah attacking from the direction of Isfahan.

The garrison commander suppressed his wild joy and forced himself to wait a full day before cautiously leading over twenty thousand men out of the city to attack Hu Guang. He knew the fighting strength of these Han troops outside the city quite well.

But even with such caution, luck did not favor him. He sent twenty-three thousand troops to besiege Hu Guang's five thousand. Crackling and crashing for two hours, he lost over two thousand men himself, yet failed to break even one small Han formation.

Just as the Rayy garrison commander was agonizing over whether to commit his entire force, earth-shaking hoofbeats sounded.

It turned out Zhang Xiantai had been waiting with ten thousand cavalry over twenty li away for more than a day. Only when Hu Guang ordered the wolf-smoke lit and raised the great red banner to summon him did he begin returning with the whole army.

The moment Zhang Xiantai arrived, he first ordered eight thousand light-armored lancers and unarmored horse archers to raise a huge clamor, making it look like tens of thousands of iron cavalry were returning.

Amid the sky-filling dust, the Arab army panicked and fell into disorder. Then Zhang Xiantai personally led two thousand heavy-armored elite riders in a fierce charge at the Arab main force's command position.

The Arab cavalry had long been drawn off by the lancers and horse archers and did not notice Zhang Xiantai's elite riders.

And the several hundred cavalry and two thousand infantry guarding the Arab commander were utterly unable to withstand the charge of elite riders carrying horn-crossbows. In a single assault, they broke straight through to the Arab commander himself.

But fast as Zhang Xiantai was, the Arab commander of Rayy was faster. Before Zhang Xiantai reached him, he had already retreated under his guards' protection. Seeing he could not kill the commander, Zhang Xiantai could only cut down his great banner.

The Rayy garrison saw this and thought their commander was dead. They collapsed at once. Hu Guang immediately counterattacked. The Rayy garrison was routed, thousands were killed, and they nearly lost Rayy itself.

At Fort Jia San, Adud al-Dawla personally supervised forty thousand troops in a fierce assault. They attacked for nearly ten days straight, tearing down several sections of wall, but could never take the fort.

And as the allied Xia forces returned, their light cavalry began steadily sealing off and screening the battlefield, and the Arabs' "vision" was steadily compressed.

As a rising new regime, the Buyid dynasty still had many experienced great generals.

On the eighth day of the assault, the Buyid general Muhammad Fakhir and Adud al-Dawla's third brother Fakhr al-Dawla both sensed the danger.

At their urging, Adud al-Dawla decided to adjust strategy the next day — besiege Fort Jia San as the main effort, rest the main force, and prepare to deal with the returning allied Xia forces.

But all this came a little too late. In fact, the allied Xia forces had already returned to within less than fifty li of Fort Jia San, and the vanguard was only twenty li away.

On the eighth day of the third month, seeing that the Arabs had stopped attacking Fort Jia San, and also worried the fort could not hold out, the allied forces began to show themselves.

The two armies first engaged in cavalry skirmishes on a vast plain more than ten li from the main camp.

In these small-scale battles, the allied Xia forces, equipped with horn-crossbows, ring-mail armor, cavalry lances, fine hengdao sabers, and Hexi warhorses, won repeatedly. The Arab light cavalry suffered heavy casualties.

Seeing the allied cavalry's ferocity, Adud al-Dawla immediately ordered the whole army to withdraw into the fortified camp they had built, using chevaux-de-frise and other fieldworks to neutralize the allied cavalry threat.

The allied forces did not advance either. Zhang Xianyu sent Lu Ketu with five thousand cavalry to cut the Arabs' grain route from Isfahan. Wasn't it just a matter of endurance? Let's see who runs out first.

Good lord — the allied army had cut off the Arabs' grain route, and the Arabs had cut off the allied army's grain route too. The two armies now began a standoff across this great flat plain.

Five days later, the Arabs could hold out no longer. Though their grain was still plentiful, the river upstream of their camp had been flooded with vast amounts of human and animal filth by the allied army, and the water could no longer be safely drunk.

On the thirteenth day of the third month, the Arab host of a hundred thousand marched out of their camp of their own accord and formed up on the open field, sending men to deliver a written challenge demanding a decisive battle to the death with the allied army.

Such a demand Zhang Xianyu naturally refused. The allied army still had three days of grain left; there was no hurry.

Adud al-Dawla had never imagined Zhang Xianyu could endure so much. He could only frantically send men to hurl abuse from not far outside the allied camp.

Most of the allied soldiers understood Turkic. Even if they did not fully understand it, everyone understood those few stock national insults that came back and forth.

As they cursed on and on, the Arabs went from abusing Zhang Xianyu to abusing Zhang Zhao himself, reviling the supreme heaven of my august Six Laws Sect as a devil-spirit out of hell.

The allied officers and men were utterly enraged, so furious their eyes split with fury. To curse our Great Zhou Emperor, the Heavenly Khagan of the steppe, the Shahanshah, Zhang the Supreme Heaven, was harder to bear than cursing their own fathers and mothers.

This was exactly the moment Zhang Xianyu had been waiting for. On the fifteenth of the third month, when he saw that the officers and men had reached the peak of rage, he immediately ordered the whole army to cook at the fifth watch and eat every last grain of their provisions.

At the same time, he had the soldiers smash the iron cauldrons, push down the wooden palisades of the camp, and pour out all the clear water from their waterskins — the act of burning one's boats and breaking the cauldrons.

The soldiers had long been blazing with fury. Seeing that the Sage's own sons, Prince An and Prince Shu, his cousin Prince Jin, and the heir of Duke Dinghai, Luktu, were all willing to share life and death with them, their morale soared straight into the heavens.

At the hour of chen, the great army reached the appointed battlefield: forty thousand allied soldiers of the various Xia peoples against a hundred thousand Arabs.

Zhang Xianyu decisively handed over command to Cao Bin, personally leading three hundred elite cavalry as Cao Bin's bodyguard, ready to take the field himself if necessary.

At such a moment, Cao Bin accepted command without the slightest courtesy. He saw that the Arabs had hidden their cavalry within the infantry formations — clearly, after their cavalry had suffered in earlier engagements, they no longer dared let it out recklessly.

Cao Bin therefore immediately ordered Luktu and Cui Han each to lead five thousand light cavalry, galloping ceaselessly back and forth around the Arab formations, loosing volleys of arrows from time to time to shake the enemy's morale.

Luktu and Cui Han were both fierce horsemen. Like cunning wild wolves, they probed everywhere for the Arabs' weak points.

When they met elite troops with strict formations and many crossbows, they only feinted and did not close. When they met troops whose hearts wavered at the first probe and who had few crossbows, they charged in savagely and beat them down.

Adud al-Dawla had no choice but to shift his infantry back and forth, deploying his elite troops as far to the outside as possible, and pulling the God-Warriors back into the center of the army lest they be frightened into collapse.

This was exactly the moment Cao Bin had been waiting for. What he wanted was a quick, decisive battle. Seeing that the Arab elite troops had all been spread thin like a pancake across the front of the formation, he immediately ordered Shi Shouxin, Liu Tingrang, Li Jiwu, and the others to lead the heavy-armored troops forward to engage.

The Arabs had crossbows too. The Caliph's guard had always included dedicated crossbow units, and though the quality of their crossbows was inferior to Great Zhou's, their killing power was still considerable.

But now they had been spread thin and could not concentrate their fire. As a result, when the elite Xia heavy infantry struck, the Arabs suffered terrible casualties under the sky-filling rain of arrows, while the volleys the Xia heavy infantry received were not even half of what had been expected.

Adud al-Dawla was frantic. Seeing that the Xia heavy infantry had advanced far from their main formation, he could only order the hidden Arab cavalry to come out and assist in the attack.

Little did he know this was exactly Cao Bin's intent. These Xia heavy infantry on campaign were the elite of the elite, far more elite than the cavalry. Every man wore two or more layers of heavy armor. When enemy cavalry came, they shot them down with bows and crossbows at range; at close quarters, they struck savagely with modao glaive glaive glaives and great staves.

Twenty thousand Persian cavalry, coordinating with thirty thousand infantry, besieged seven thousand heavy-armored soldiers for a full half hour, yet could not break the formation at all.

Adud al-Dawla knew that if the fighting went on this way, all was surely lost. He could only stake everything on one throw, committing all the God-Warriors in a desperate bid to drown the Xia heavy infantry in sheer numbers.

From afar, Cao Bin saw that the Arab God-Warriors had all been committed. He immediately returned the long command halberd to Zhang Xianyu and said with a great laugh:

"Your Highness, the Arabs are finished. There is no need for me to command any longer — order the whole army to attack with full force!"

Zhang Xianyu took the golden long halberd that symbolized command, and ordered his attendants to raise the Six Laws Sect's silver-white banner with the golden swastika, and the great silver-white banner of the golden sun shining everywhere, symbolizing the descent of the Supreme Heaven.

"Children of the Supreme Heaven, warriors of Great Zhou — kill all those heretics! Let us present the head of the King of the Arabs to His Majesty the Emperor!"

The armored soldiers of the allied Xia army around him shouted "Long live!" three times, and then the whole army surged forward in a full assault. Even Zeng Zheng in Fort Jia San selected five hundred brave men and sallied out of the city to join the battle.

An Sicun on the hilltop had already fallen in battle, but the thirty-odd remaining warriors summoned their last courage and charged down the hill.

Gongs and drums thundered to the heavens, flesh and blood flew in every direction. After about two hours of battle, the entire Arab army collapsed. Pursued by the allied Xia army like geese being driven, they were herded back toward their camp, the road strewn with corpses and the blood flowing deep enough to float a pestle.

There are still two or three chapters left before this book comes to an end. The western campaign and the world thereafter will be described in about ten chapters of side stories, which may be updated intermittently. A new book is also slowly in preparation, expected to go online in early September.

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