Chapter 893: Sage in Letters, Divine in War, Supreme in All the World's Martial Arts (Part 2)

"A-yi-la-oh..."

The resonant, drawn-out chanting of the Quran spread across the whole city of Baghdad.

On the spiral Malwiya minaret of the famous Great Mosque of Samarra, countless black-robed imams gazed solemnly into the distance; it was they who had begun the Quranic chanting.

The chanting, solemn and steeped in religious flavor, rose higher and higher. Everyone in the city who heard it stopped their work, standing or kneeling, and followed along in devout recitation.

And amid this chanting, black banners led an army stretching beyond sight as it slowly marched out of the outer city of Baghdad.

Sultan Alim stood on a spire of the royal palace, watching the army depart like a black torrent, his eyes full of worry.

For he knew that the enemy they would face in this battle was more terrifying than any he had encountered before.

And this understanding of his had not existed until not long ago.

For in the eyes of Sultan Alim, who had entered Baghdad, the Taohuashi conquerors over in Persia and their Turkic servant cavalry had already been fed to bursting by Persia.

They could not even spare an army of twenty or thirty thousand men to come probe the depths of the Hamdanid dynasty.

For Sultan Alim, who had grown up in a great tribal aristocratic family, this was a situation he had seen many times before.

The poor and fierce who stake everything on a desperate fight, once they gain great wealth and beautiful women, quickly lose their drive.

Sultan Alim even thought that he could first maintain a low-intensity war footing, and after they had rotted for two or three years, he could begin trying to make contact.

After another two or three years of contact, once he confirmed they were thoroughly corrupted, he could begin stirring up the Persians to make trouble.

In the end, these conquerors would either be overthrown by the local Persians they themselves supported, or convert to Islam and then be divided into a host of petty vassals.

Perhaps in the future they might even become an important source of ghulams to guard Baghdad.

But before Sultan Alim's pleasant dream could last long, the Taohuashi conquerors over in Persia suddenly stirred into action.

In just two months, they had smashed most of the forts, great and small, that the Arabs had established on the Zagros Mountains, opening a passage from the Zagros Mountains to the Two Rivers plain.

The Zagros Mountains are the great mountains on the border between Iran and Iraq, and have always been the key to shielding the Two Rivers plain where Iraq lies — comparable in status to the Yan Mountains of the Central Plains.

No, they are even more important than the Yan Mountains!

Because if the Central Plains lost the Yan Mountains, it would only lose a barrier.

But if Iraq lost the Zagros Mountains, not only would the barrier be gone, it would also provide the attacker with a rapid passage.

This passage is the Karun River, which rushes down from the Zagros Mountains and empties into the Persian Gulf. Apart from the uppermost reaches, where the current is too swift for navigation, most of the middle and lower stretches are navigable.

This provides an army coming down from the Zagros Mountains with an extremely convenient, fast, time- and labor-saving transport route.

One could say that once this mountain range is lost, the entire Two Rivers region would face an even greater threat. Basra, Baghdad, and other cities would be in more danger than the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng Prefecture, which lay on open ground with no natural defenses to hold.

Sultan Alim had originally intended to fully stabilize the Two Rivers plain before going to establish a defensive system on the Zagros Mountains.

After all, he had come to reassert control over a region of more than seven million people; it could not simply be taken at once. Reality forced Sultan Alim to first stabilize Iraq.

At the same time, on the original Zagros Mountains there were still dozens of forts, great and small, and more than ten vassals holding them — all Daylamites belonging to the Buyid family, which had just withdrawn from Baghdad.

Sultan Alim, with great forbearance, had pardoned Ayad al-Dawla of the Daylamite Buyid family, and even ceded Basra and Khuzestan to this man, hoping that he could pacify the Buyid family vassals stationed on the Zagros Mountains and hold this mountain range.

Of course, at the very beginning, Ayad al-Dawla did accomplish this task.

But very soon, everyone underestimated the great terror brought by the death in battle of the Buyid Shah Adud al-Dawla together with a hundred thousand troops. (They did not know that Adud al-Dawla had been captured; they all believed he had died in battle.)

The annihilation of the Buyid dynasty's elite in a single stroke gave the Daylamite vassals, great and small, on the Zagros Mountains an extremely severe fear of the Han.

Without strong support from Baghdad, they did not have even the slightest confidence that they could hold the mountain fortresses.

Moreover, Ayad al-Dawla's abilities simply could not compare with those of the captured Adud al-Dawla.

He had carried away an astronomical amount of wealth from Baghdad, yet was unwilling to take out much of it to distribute to the defenders on the Zagros Mountains.

At the same time, using the excuse that the current ruler was Sultan Alim, he shifted the responsibility of supplying these defenders onto Baghdad.

This was practically courting death. He left the defenders on the Zagros Mountains to face the threat of the mighty Taohuashi conquerors, while cutting off even the benefits they could originally have obtained from Baghdad.

It was precisely at this moment that Zhang Xianjing arrived with his army. On Lu Duan's advice, he immediately sent out a message in the name of Ansu (Mansur).

He declared that the Taohuashi people absolutely did not seek to found a state in Baghdad, and that they had come to restore the Sassanid Persian kingdom, which had sent to the Taohuashi for aid several hundred years ago.

He called on these Daylamite vassals — who could be said to be Persians — to switch sides, to follow Mansur to Baghdad to overthrow Caliph Muti and Sultan Alim, and to restore the Kingdom of Persia.

At the same time, the army moved at once: those willing to join in reviving the Sassanids were given great rewards; those unwilling were mercilessly suppressed, even with slaughterous assaults.

Thus, in less than two months, the situation across the entire Zagros Mountains completely changed.

All manner of strategic strongpoints where one man could hold off ten thousand were surrendered with barely any fighting by Daylamite vassals terrified out of their wits and wanting only to preserve their families, or genuinely hoping to go to Baghdad and become great nobles.

Ahvaz, as the provincial capital of Khuzestan, was moreover the first strong city after the Karun River rushed down from the Zagros Mountains onto the Two Rivers plain. Ahvaz served both as provincial capital and fortress, and could barely be counted as a border stronghold.

But although the siege of Ahvaz looked intense, in reality it was not intense at all.

Because the main force of the siege was the Samanid Persian army from Transoxiana and conscripted auxiliary troops from Khorasan and Persia proper.

Most importantly, the cannons equipped by the three new du of the Hanshan Du that Zhang Xianjing had brought from the Central Plains never made an appearance at all.

This was Yang Jiye's plan — besieging a point to strike the relief force. Since ancient times, it has been the unrivalled choice in the art of war for the well-rested to await the exhausted, and for the strong to use a small force of elite troops to strike the enemy's numerous but weak host.

Before Yang Jiye had even reached the Two Rivers plain, he had already found out clearly that Basra and Baghdad were both giant cities with populations of several hundred thousand, both wealthy and cultural centers.

It was said that the House of Wisdom in Baghdad alone held a million volumes, covering astronomy, geography, medicine, divination, and astrology — everything under the sun.

Yang Jiye, thirty-one years old this year, could be said to be the most experienced commander of the younger generation in the Zhang-Zhou court.

He knew very well that cities like Baghdad and Basra were like Chang'an of the historical Great Tang: they looked to have high walls and strong fortifications, moats deep as abysses, and layer upon layer of inner and outer cities, but in reality they could not be defended at all.

Because in such great cities of nearly a million people, there are nothing but fat-headed great nobles and wealthy merchants, who cannot muster even a bit of courage to defend the city, and whose petty calculations are more numerous than anyone's.

Even the merchants and common townsfolk in the city are completely different from those elsewhere.

On ordinary days they hold their heads high, but when it truly comes to a desperate fight, they are not as resolute and tenacious as the common people of small towns and the countryside. This is the common failing of giant, extravagantly wealthy cities — the same all over the world.

Yang Jiye believed that Sultan Alim, who now controlled Baghdad, and Ayad al-Dawla, who ruled Basra, also understood this in their hearts.

So while ordering men to build logistics transfer forts along the Karun River, he surrounded Ahvaz and feigned a fierce assault, precisely to draw the enemy in and destroy them right here.

The facts were just as Yang Jiye had predicted. Sultan Alim in Baghdad had no other choice; if he sat by and watched a stronghold like Ahvaz fall,

he could only, when the enemy advanced to Baghdad,

adopt the best plan: burn Baghdad to the ground and retreat to Syria to hold out.

The middle strategy was to hand it over without a fight, using Baghdad's wealth to sate the enemy's appetite.

The worst strategy was to fight a defensive battle for Baghdad, and then in all likelihood be annihilated to the last man.

But for a city as wealthy and strategically vital as Baghdad, Sultan Alim, from whatever angle he considered it, could not bear any one of these three outcomes, so he had no choice but to march out with his army.

And Ayad al-Dawla in Basra had even less of a choice, to say nothing of the hatred he bore after the Buyid dynasty was shattered and his mother, maternal aunt, and paternal aunt were all taken captive.

From Basra to Ahvaz was only two hundred li, and the ground was flat and open with no defensible terrain; he had no road of retreat either. Once Ahvaz fell, Ayad al-Dawla could only wait for death.

Thus, even before Sultan Alim dispatched the famed general Husayn ibn Qaki and Little Chaghani at the head of a great army,

Ayad al-Dawla had already scraped together nearly every soldier capable of moving and transported all his wealth to the city of Umm Qasr, southwest of Basra.

Then he led his troops forward to a small hillock just over forty li from Ahvaz, raised his great banner, and bolstered the morale of the city's defenders.

Seeing this, Yang Jiye immediately ordered Shi Shouxin to draw several thousand laborers of various ethnicities who resembled Han people, mix them among several hundred Han soldiers, and, with half of them wearing armor, send them forward to attack under the protection of three thousand unarmored horse archers of the Dilie.

Ayad al-Dawla's Basra army was, after all, a regular army, and it contained no small number of the Buyid family's household guards; it was certainly not something this force, composed mostly of laborers, could handle.

Shi Shouxin understood what Yang Jiye was trying to do, so he deliberately exercised only fifty percent of his command ability, and simply watched as these nearly ten thousand infantry and cavalry fought bitterly against the Basra army for about two shichen.

By the end, the laborers simply could not hold on any longer. They were routed and scattered like fleeing wolves and stampeding boars, and fled back in disarray under the protection of the Dilie light cavalry.

In this engagement, over a thousand men were lost, more than a hundred sets of armor were abandoned, and several hundred warhorses were lost. It could be counted as a crushing defeat.

Ayad al-Dawla had participated in the fighting from beginning to end, and his brow finally relaxed. Not only because he had defeated the Taohuashi army, but also because he had essentially "figured out" the Taohuashi army's fighting strength.

Their cavalry's combat power was extraordinary, but most of them were Turkic-speaking peoples conscripted from the steppe, and their armor rate was somewhat low, so they could not deliver the decisive hammer-blow that armored cavalry could.

The small number of armored cavalry and the large number of Taohuashi infantry were indeed excellently equipped, and the elite among them were extremely formidable fighters. Several times, with only a few hundred men, they nearly broke his own forces.

But most of the infantry were conscripts, and a great many were men from Transoxiana posing as such; their fighting ability was quite ordinary.

This impression perfectly matched the stereotype the Arabs currently held of this suddenly appeared Taohuashi imperial army.

That is, these Taohuashi people were immensely formidable fighters, but Persia and the Arab lands were too far from them, so they could only use a small number of native elites to drive a large number of auxiliary troops into battle.

As long as the Taohuashi elite were defeated, the auxiliaries would never fight to the death for them.

Overjoyed, Ayad al-Dawla and his generals, having reached this conclusion, immediately sent men to share all the armor and warhorses captured in this battle, along with an account of the fighting and their predictions, with Husayn ibn Qaki and Little Chaghani, who had just left Baghdad and were not far away.

This emboldened Husayn to advance rapidly toward Ahvaz, stretching his supply lines and making vigilance more difficult.

Seeing that his stratagem had worked, Yang Jiye immediately ordered his sworn brother, Seljuk, Marquis of Shunyi, to personally lead several hundred elite cavalry, along with several hundred Persian cavalry who had come over to their side, northward to begin reconnoitering the situation of the Baghdad army.

The fifth year of Da Zhou's Qianyuan era, 966 CE, the seventeenth day of the fifth month.

Seljuk, Marquis of Shunyi, sent word from the north: Sultan Alim of the Hamdanid dynasty had dispatched a great army of one hundred ten thousand, with over a hundred thousand laborers, under the command of the famed Arab general Husayn ibn Qaki as commander-in-chief and Little Chaghani as vanguard, descending from Baghdad in a host that blotted out the sky and covered the earth.

The commander-in-chief, Husayn ibn Qaki, came from the famous Qaki family and had campaigned alongside Sultan Alim for many years. His crowning battle had been at Mar'ash twelve years earlier.

That battle had broken out between the Hamdanid dynasty and the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine regent Bardas had personally led one hundred seventy thousand troops to attack, and Sultan Alim of the Hamdanid dynasty had likewise led one hundred twenty thousand troops in person to resist, appointing Husayn ibn Qaki as commander of the left wing.

Husayn ibn Qaki shone brilliantly in that battle, using inferior forces to successively break several of Byzantium's elite main-force divisions (of ten thousand men each), playing an enormous role in the outcome.

On that battlefield, he had even nearly slain the father of the current Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II — the famed Byzantine general Bardas Phokas.

And the one called Little Chaghani, Abu Ali Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Muzaffar, and his father Old Chaghani, had both originally been governors of Khorasan under Samanid Persia.

The once-mighty Ziyarid dynasty and the rapidly expanding early Buyid dynasty had both been defeated by this father and son.

This Little Chaghani had even been a great loyal minister of the late Samanid Persian Emir Nasr II.

More than twenty years earlier, after Zhang Zhao had taken Kangju (Bukhara) by surprise attack, causing Nasr II to die at the hands of his son Hamid, Little Chaghani had organized an army in Khorasan, intending to march back to Kangju to avenge Nasr II.

But at that time, Little Chaghani was engaged in battle against the combined forces of the Buyid and Saffarid dynasties. By the time he freed his hands, Zhang Zhao had already led his army away, and Hamid had firmly secured his position as Emir.

This situation, combined with the fact that Nasr II had wanted to forcibly promote the Shia sect in the regions where the Sunnis were concentrated, causing most of the people of Transoxiana to withhold their support, meant that Little Chaghani's military action lost its legitimacy and rallying power.

After stirring up a small measure of unrest in Khorasan, he was swiftly defeated and pacified by the army Hamid dispatched. Little Chaghani then hardened his heart and defected to the Buyid dynasty.

But the Buyid rulers did not trust him, so Little Chaghani fled once more, slipping away to the Hamdanid dynasty, which greatly admired his abilities.

This man had ranged across Khorasan and moved among multiple powers; his military ability was quite outstanding.

And the fact that these two men were placed in command showed that the Hamdanid dynasty had indeed committed its finest troops, bringing out nearly everything it could muster, leaving only a few legions in the west to defend against the Byzantine Empire.

Seljuk sat astride a Hexi dragon horse, gazing at the distant army whose banners blotted out the sky and covered the earth, still slowly chanting the Quran. The corner of his mouth curved slightly upward, and a single word slipped out: "Idiots."

This man — the founding ancestor of the Seljuk Turks in history, the fierce general whose name became the title of a mighty empire that made Eastern Rome tremble at the mere mention of it — was at this moment filled with adoration for his adoptive father, the Great Emperor, Sage Zhang.

You ask why Seljuk does not hate Sage Zhang for sending troops to destroy the Kirik tribe? What a joke. Seljuk could not be more grateful.

Without the Kirik tribe's experience of being captured and taken to the Central Plains, could he have received such a fine education? Could he have achieved what he has today? Could he have married the own cousin of the Crown Prince, the Duke of Dunhuang Commandery?

More importantly, how could he have learned that the Six Dharma Sect is the world's truth, that his adoptive father, the Supreme Heaven, is the true lord of the mortal world, and how could he, Seljuk, have become one of the Buddha's Sons?

Moreover, the Kirik tribe was not mistreated after arriving in the Central Plains. His father enjoys life in the immortal realm that is the divine capital Luoyang, and his sisters have all married into the great noble houses of Great Zhou.

The warriors of the tribe have all joined the Basmil Tumen, one of the Heavenly Khagan's guard tumens, and become the Heavenly Khagan's eagles.

With treatment like this, Seljuk would have no problem giving his life — how could he possibly hate!

"Wei Yingbiao, take thirty riders and go over there. If the enemy is few, strike; if they are many, draw them back to me. We must make the last fifty li of these idiots' march unbearably difficult!"

A sly smile appeared on Seljuk's face as he pointed with his hand. The Wei Yingbiao beside him was the fifth of the Five Biaos of the Wei clan of Qian County.

He had been only fourteen when he followed the King on campaign, but he had grown faster than a rocket soaring upward. This year he was only seventeen, yet he was already a cavalry commander famed throughout the Han armies of the five westernmost provinces.

At seventeen he had already become a Jiangyuhou. During the last great enfeoffment, Zhang Xianyu had even specially issued an instruction that Wei Yingbiao was not to receive a fief.

This was not suppression, but rather a sign that Wei Yingbiao was about to soar straight to the top.

Only someone with such boundless prospects would have the King himself step in to prevent him from being enfeoffed — just as in later Song and Ming times, a man of great talent would never be married to a princess.

Wei Yingbiao clasped his hands in salute and immediately set off with his own thirty riders.

It happened exactly as Seljuk had arranged. The Baghdad army sent out thirty to fifty riders to drive them off, but before those riders could even get close, Wei Yingbiao and his men shot them down.

If they sent out three to five hundred riders, Wei Yingbiao's men would fight while retreating. Once these several hundred enemy cavalry were far from the main army, Wei Yingbiao would fire a signal rocket, summoning Seljuk's several hundred ambushed riders to easily slaughter these Arab cavalrymen.

By the end, in order to drive off these cavalry, the Arabs had no choice but to advance with infantry and cavalry together, greatly widening their defensive perimeter, using strict formations and a snail's pace to counter the endless harassment.

If they dared not come out to drive them off, or dared not advance at a snail's pace, Wei Yingbiao and his men would even dismount, take up powerful crossbows of over two dan draw weight, and shoot directly at the main army from close range. It was utterly shameless.

And the closer they drew to the westward-expedition Han army, the stronger this resistance became. Not only did Seljuk arrive with Wei Yingbiao and the others, but the King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, and the King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, even brought the Xiliang Iron Cavalry and Helong great horses — the finest cavalry under heaven, including the son of Chen Achong of Xiping Fort — to block their advance.

For a time, on the hundred-li stretch of road from the Baghdad army's logistics stronghold of Chofair to Ahvaz, the light and heavy cavalry of the Zhou army participating in the interdiction alone numbered more than ten thousand riders.

Under the leadership of a new generation of fierce cavalry commanders such as Zhang Xiantai, Zhang Xianjiong, Yelu Xiuge, Yelu Xidi, and Saierzhu, they scattered like stars across the sky and gathered like a single blaze of fire — at times dispersing to harass, at times massing to strike hard — harrying the Baghdad army until it crawled at a turtle's pace, every step a struggle.

While the elite cavalry delayed the Baghdad army, Yang Jiye left his elder brother-in-law Zhe Yuqing with three thousand men to hold the ground below the city of Ahvaz, bottling up the several thousand defenders who had come out of the city.

He himself led the main army through a mountain pass where a road had been blasted open with gunpowder, bypassing Ahvaz entirely, and advanced to attack the Basra army led by Ayad al-Dawla.

The Far West Five Provinces Field Army under Yang Jiye's command numbered sixty-three thousand in total. Apart from those garrisoning Persia proper and Khorasan, virtually all the Han men had already been called up.

Subtracting the seven thousand elite cavalry Zhang Xiantai had taken with him, the three thousand Zhe Yuqing kept at Ahvaz, and the several thousand protecting the supply lines, roughly fifty thousand remained.

His enemy, Ayad al-Dawla's Basra army, numbered about thirty thousand and lay to the southwest of the Zhou army. It had already built stockades and fortifications on a hill Yang Jiye had named Little Lone Mountain, and was fully on the defensive.

Hussein ibn Qaki's Baghdad army, numbering about one hundred ten thousand with seventy or eighty thousand logistical personnel, was crawling slowly over from Jofair in the northwest.

Presumably the strategy of these two armies was to catch the Zhou army, which was "madly besieging" Ahvaz, in a two-sided pincer.

The far larger Baghdad army would come from the northwest to cut off the Zhou army's line of retreat and force a decisive frontal battle.

The smaller but more elite Basra army to the southwest, more familiar with the terrain, would handle harassment and surprise attacks.

But now the tables had turned. Before the Baghdad army even arrived, the Zhou army had moved first, dealing the Baghdad army a crippling blow.

As for the Basra army, originally meant to be the surprise force, naturally it now had to be dealt with.

On the twenty-ninth of the fifth month, the Zhou army under Yang Jiye's command marched at extreme speed. The ten-thousand-man vanguard, infantry and cavalry together, covered more than sixty li in just half a day, and the remaining forty thousand were in position within a single day.

Ayad al-Dawla stood on Little Lone Mountain watching the distant Zhou army, armor flashing in the sun, its formation sweeping in like wings blotting out the sky, and cold sweat poured down his back.

Of his thirty thousand men, only ten thousand were the original guards of the Buyid dynasty stationed in Baghdad. The rest were hastily conscripted holy warriors, whose fighting strength was nowhere near what it appeared.

He suddenly realized — he could even be certain — that the army he was seeing now was on a completely different level from the one that had attacked him ten-odd days ago. Judging by its formation alone, this army was made of battle-hardened elites.

A sense of having been deceived swirled in Ayad al-Dawla's mind. He very much wanted to abandon the position on Little Lone Mountain immediately and flee back to Basra. The only reason he had not done so was sheer willpower holding him in place.

But the officers under him did not see it that way. Little Lone Mountain rose more than four hundred meters, and the trees around it had basically all been cut down.

Several rivers flowed past the western side of the mountain, so water was easy to obtain. On the mountain, stockades and forts stood thickly around an old fortress — it could be called easy to defend and hard to attack, and could surely hold out for some time, until the great Baghdad army arrived.

But all of this, in Yang Jiye's eyes, was garbage!

Because he had in his hands the Hanshan Capital's Fengming Ward Capital, which specialized in operating artillery. They carried three five-thousand-jin "Divine Might Grand General" bronze cannons and six more three-thousand-jin ones — they feared no stockade or fort.

No sooner said than done. Yang Jiye appointed Shi Shouxin and Dang Jin as vanguard commanders, each to pick eight hundred brave men wearing three layers of armor. When night was about to fall, he ordered the soldiers to haul the cannons to the foot of Little Lone Mountain.

There was no need for anything elaborate. They only had to drive the Basra troops outside the stockades back inside, then let the cannons blast away. In an instant the sturdy stockades would be smashed open with several great holes, or the flimsy earthen walls, never strong to begin with, would simply be brought crashing down.

Once that was done, Shi Shouxin and Dang Jin would immediately lead the three-layer-armored warriors charging in through the breaches — and after that there was basically no suspense left.

On the fourth day of the sixth month, the Basra army, nearly frightened witless by the roaring of the cannons, could no longer endure this onion-peeling style of defeat. Ayad al-Dawla gathered the ten thousand-odd men still able to fight and broke out from the western side.

Then, with no suspense whatsoever, after they had fought their way out of the encirclement with terrible casualties, what awaited them was ten thousand elite steppe cavalry.

In this battle, more than a hundred officers from Ayad al-Dawla on down were killed. Of the thirty-thousand-strong army, over six thousand were cut down on the field, and the entire army was annihilated.

While Yang Jiye was annihilating the Basra army, Hussein ibn Qaki's host of two hundred thousand, counting laborers and auxiliary troops, finally reached Ahvaz.

Their view of the battlefield had been cut off by the Zhou cavalry. Only when they came within forty-odd li of Ahvaz did they learn that the Zhou army had marched out in full force to attack Ayad al-Dawla's Basra army.

Hussein ibn Qaki was so anxious his palms sweated. Although he had killed several hundred Zhou cavalry along the way, he simply could not shake off the harassment and screening of these horsemen, and therefore could not immediately maneuver southwest to rescue the Basra army.

And in his heart, Hussein had also begun to sense, darkly, that this was very likely the Zhou army besieging one point to strike at reinforcements.

"The infidels abandoning Ahvaz to attack the Basra army may not necessarily be a bad thing!

They have left their rear open to us. As long as we seize Ahvaz and order every region to hold its fortresses tightly — last year the whole country suffered a great drought and grain stores are low, and this year's summer grain is not yet ripe — let us see who can hold out."

Little Chaghani's pale-violet eyes went wide, and he immediately came up with a vicious scheme. As for how many Iraqis would die under this vicious scheme, he did not care in the slightest — the more dead the better.

Hussein also thought the plan was good, but he pointed at the three thousand men commanded by Zhe Yuqing in the distance. Those three thousand were holding the slope passage that led through to Ahvaz.

Little Chaghani snorted coldly. "Rest easy, Salar. The Taohuashi infidels number only a few thousand — how could they stand against my two hundred thousand? I need only ten thousand elite troops to wipe them out!"

And so, brimming with confidence, Little Chaghani charged in.

Half a day later, he requested ten thousand reinforcements.

A day later, Hussein could wait no longer and again ordered the governor of Homs Province, Hassan, to personally lead ten thousand men in support.

In this narrow little passage, thirty thousand men was already the absolute limit for mounting an attack. Any more and there would be no room to deploy.

Zhe Yuqing laughed heartily, because his three thousand men were a mixed formation from the Hanshan Capital's Inner Ward and Front Ward. The vast majority of the officers had been practicing various battle formations and killing arts since the age of five, and more than half of the soldiers held military rank.

They were not invincible, but they were certainly not something that could be overcome in a short time.

Sure enough, three days later, when the silver-white banner with the Three Stars and the great silver-white banner of the Golden Sun Illuminating All appeared in the sight of the Arab army, Zhe Yuqing still stood on the slope with two thousand men. The Three Stars banner and the great silver-white Zhou-character banner on the crude earthen wall still flew high.

The moment of decisive battle had finally arrived. Hussein ibn Qaki abandoned the continued assault on Zhe Yuqing, who held the defensible ground, and pulled his entire army back to the west and north of Ahvaz.

He opened a link with the city and deployed nearly two hundred thousand men across a battlefield of a dozen-odd li in circumference.

This vast army was composed mainly of soldiers of the Hamdanid dynasty.

There were the heavy-armored nobles and armored cavalry of the various tribes belonging to the broader Arab category. They wore iron helmets with nose guards or wrapped turbans rich in Arab elements, and carried pointed spears several zhang long. Some also carried round shields for deflecting arrows.

On their bodies they wore large numbers of disc armor and mirror armor, with a few wearing East Roman-style lamellar armor. This was the core military force of the Hamdanid family, made up of royal family members and a host of vassals and their sons.

The most numerous were the Caucasian ghulams in mail and leather armor, quivers hanging at their sides, wielding long spears, great axes, and short maces.

The Hamdanid dynasty's territory was in Syria, so it could not conscript many Turkic-speaking ghulams.

Therefore the barbarians of Syria and the mountains of the northwestern Iraqi highlands became the source of the Hamdanid dynasty's finest ghulams.

The Kurds, for example, and the big-bearded Chechens of the later Kalu Mountain, were just such barbarians.

As for light cavalry, most were conscripted Bedouins, with a smaller portion being Turkic-speaking steppe cavalry conscripted earlier.

Among them there was even a certain number of cavalry wearing East Roman-style leather armor — prisoners of war and mercenaries captured in various wars.

The even lower-status auxiliary troops were made up of various marginal ethnic groups, both white and black, chiefly the Cushitic people who had fled to the Arab lands to survive after a recent civil war.

On the Zhang Zhou side, the heavy infantry and heavy cavalry were actually much the same as the Arabs' — composed of the core population, namely the Han people.

The light-armored hussars were mostly made up of naturalized Han, including large numbers of the various peoples of the Hexi-Longyou region who had been classified as Han, Tibetans from the highlands, and Tangut, the the Shatuo, and Sogdian peoples from the interior.

The light-armored or unarmored horse archers were mostly composed of Khitan, Zubu, Dilie, Wugu, Baximi, Menggu, and Chazhala peoples from the steppes.

Of course it was not entirely so. For example, among the heavy infantry under Zhang Xianjiong, son of Yelu Abuli and Great King of Liao, there were large numbers of fierce Jurchen soldiers. Among the heavy infantry under Zhang Xianyu, Great King of Anguo, there were also large numbers of Tangut Hengshan mountain skirmishers.

However, although the great armies of both sides had fully assembled, the fierce battle did not break out immediately.

The Arab army was still trying to choke off the Zhou army's seemingly insecure supply lines, while the Zhou cavalry had likewise begun larger-scale operations aimed at cutting the Arab army's supply lines.

But with both sides defending so tightly, the effects were not obvious.

They tugged back and forth like this for nearly twenty days. The weather had already become almost unbearable, and once both sides understood that petty maneuvers could not drive the other away, a major battle began to be put on the agenda.

The Arabs held a certain degree of initiative, so their commander-in-chief, Hussein, took the initiative to change his dispositions. He began summoning laborers to dig a transport trench from Ahvaz to Jofeir, a key logistics supply point.

Once this transport trench was completed, it would to a great extent neutralize the threat posed by the Zhou cavalry's constant harassment. This was a signal—a signal for the Zhou army to attack.

But Yang Jiye was unmoved. He knew that if he moved out to attack now, then even if the Arabs lost the decisive battle, they could still retreat to cities like Jofeir and hold out.

Only by making the Arabs pay more, until their sunk costs became too high to accept, would the moment for a decisive battle be at its best.

When Hussein saw that Yang Jiye was unmoved, he knew he had met a master. But he did not know where Yang Jiye got such confidence that he could certainly defeat his two hundred thousand troops.

So Hussein, on one hand, ordered the main army to prepare for a decisive battle, while on the other he continued to have the laborers dig the transport trench.

On the twenty-second of the sixth month, the weather in the Middle East at this time could already reach a maximum of thirty-four or thirty-five degrees. More than a hundred thousand forcibly conscripted laborers still had to dig the transport trench in such weather, and so deaths and injuries were heavy.

The residents of Jofeir and Ahvaz had not been killed by the Zhou army, but large numbers of their relatives died at the work sites.

For a time, popular resentment boiled over. The people of several surrounding cities had already been pushed to their limit. Combined with the high cost of transporting grain and fodder and the soldiers' bitter endurance at the front, even Sultan Alim in Baghdad could not help but send an edict of inquiry.

The cost was great enough! If Hussein dared to retreat, the fate awaiting him would certainly not be good.

On the Zhang Zhou side, nearly thirty days of standoff and scorching heat had also begun to unsettle the troops' morale. The moment for a decisive battle had arrived.

On the twenty-fifth of the sixth month, Yang Jiye issued an order to the entire army in the name of Zhang Xianjing, promising that for three days after entering Baghdad there would be no sheathing of blades, and that except for the palace of Baghdad, all gold and silver would be bestowed upon the officers and soldiers. Morale immediately soared, and the mobilization reached down into the hearts of the most ordinary soldiers.

Yang Jiye struck while the iron was hot and ordered each army to select brave warriors. With the Zhang Zhou imperial clan's foremost general, Little Black Bear Zhang Liechao, as the vanguard, he selected eight thousand elite heavy-armored infantry and ten thousand light-armored crossbowmen to advance beyond the main formation and directly attack the Arab army's central force, twenty li away, west of Ahvaz.

This tactic, which seemed like seeking death, left Hussein baffled.

After observing for half a day, he confirmed that these eighteen thousand Zhou troops had left the main force with almost no cavalry escort and were heading for his main camp in a completely all-or-nothing gamble. He therefore immediately dispatched fifty thousand infantry and cavalry to attack.

Zhang Liechao was not afraid at all. He had come out precisely to be the millstone.

Of his eighteen thousand men, seven thousand came from the Hanshan Unit, and the Fengming Wing Unit, most skilled in cannon tactics, was also here. Together they had seven Divine Might Invincible Great General cannons of over two thousand jin each, forty Martial Might Great General cannons of several hundred jin each, and more than eight hundred light Crouching Tiger cannons, Nine-Section cannons, and heavy matchlock wall guns.

This firepower, at this time, could be called unprecedented in all history. It could certainly give the Arabs a great surprise and make them fully understand what was meant by a dimensionality-lowering strike.

Little Chaghani led the troops at the very front. The battle a month earlier, when he attacked Zhe Yuqing, had utterly disgraced him.

Thirty thousand men had besieged three thousand for five days and still failed to take them. He had lost nearly three thousand of his own, while killing only a few dozen of the enemy and wounding several hundred. A casualty ratio of more than ten to one—too humiliating.

But in this battle, he was very confident. These Taohuashi people had actually abandoned their most threatening cavalry and used eighteen thousand infantry to charge two hundred thousand troops. They truly did not know whether they were living or dying.

Forcefully suppressing the faint warning in his heart that something abnormal must mean something demonic, Little Chaghani made what he considered the most perfect deployment.

He ordered thirty-five thousand infantry to push directly from the front in three directions, and more than ten thousand cavalry to thrust from both flanks into the waist.

Moreover, in order to maximize the results, Little Chaghani planned to let the Taohuashi people bake in the sun for a whole day and then launch the attack in the evening.

But Little Black Bear Zhang Liechao had long anticipated this. The previous night, the eighteen thousand troops suddenly marched in the dark, advanced into a stretch of forested hills, and quickly routed the two thousand advance troops Little Chaghani had placed there.

Now the Zhou army had trees for shade, and Little Chaghani's plan was ruined. He could only launch the attack at dawn. If he did not attack soon, this Taohuashi army would be pressing right up into his face.

On the twenty-eighth of the sixth month, a gentle breeze from the Persian Gulf brought wave after wave of coolness. It was a fine time for battle.

Little Chaghani personally led the main force of thirty-five thousand, forming up from three directions. The Arab army was also very skilled with bows and crossbows, so both sides opened the battle with massed volleys of arrows and bolts.

At the hour of Mao exactly (six o'clock), Little Black Bear ordered Dang Jin to lead troops to seize the high ground, and with four thousand crossbowmen shooting down from above at the Arab army.

Although the Arabs were also skilled with crossbows, that was only by Western standards. In the East, they could only count as little brothers.

As soon as the two sides made contact, the gap in training and equipment between the Arab army and their opponents became apparent. More than seven thousand of them attacked Dang Jin's four thousand, and were shot so badly that they suffered heavy casualties and kept retreating.

Seeing this, Little Chaghani immediately began rapidly feeding in reinforcements and bringing archers forward. Since quality could not match, he would make up for it with quantity.

He prepared to send heavy-armored troops with large shields forward as cover, with crossbowmen pushed to the very front and archers firing in arcs from behind.

Dang Jin had been waiting for exactly this moment. He had been waiting for the Arab army to set up their large shields, because hidden in his formation were several hundred-jin cannons pulled by carts and more than a dozen Crouching Tiger cannons.

When the Arabs set up their large shields, they slowed their advance and tightened their formation—precisely the best target for cannon fire.

Orange-red muzzle flashes, explosions that shook the fields in every direction—hidden within them was a terrifying destructive power.

Shot of more than ten jin, driven violently by gunpowder, was as fearsome as a fist thrown by a demon. No matter how many layers of heavy armor you wore, once it touched you, bones broke and sinews snapped. A single cannonball could carve a bloody trough through a crowd.

The Arab army was stunned. They had never seen such a weapon. Many shield-bearers panicked and threw away their large shields, trying to run to the rear, thereby directly exposing the crossbowmen they had been shielding.

Then came something even more terrifying. The horse-drawn Martial Might Great General bronze cannons were replaced by a greater number of Crouching Tiger cannons, and the stone shot was replaced with grapeshot.

Shot the size of pigeon eggs swept madly through the crowd. A single blast brought down a great swath of men.

The scene was truly like hell. The ground was covered with shredded flesh and shattered bone—red, white, and greenish-black.

There were lone heads burst on the ground like smashed watermelons. There were fragments of torsos struck into all manner of grotesque postures. And there were men whose bellies had burst open but who were not yet dead, wailing on the ground.

The Martial Might Great General cannons broke armor, the Crouching Tiger cannons poured out fire, then two volleys of arrows and the heavy-armored soldiers charged in to hack and slash, and the enemy scattered.

Once the enemy regrouped, this whole sequence began again.

The Arab cavalry fared even worse. Their warhorses were even less able to adapt to the violent explosions of the cannons and the brief, terrifying slaughter, and were often scattered before they could even get close.

Little Chaghani commanded in despair and futility. Every contact brought only rout. Fifty thousand men attacking eighteen thousand—the infantry shattered at the first touch, and the cavalry did not even dare to touch them.

Commander-in-chief Hussein finally understood what these Taohuashi people were relying on. They had invented a terrifying gunpowder weapon!

The Arabs of this time were not religious charlatans; on the contrary, they were one of the most cultured peoples of the age, so Hussein of course knew this was a gunpowder weapon and not some sorcery.

But unfortunately, he had no way to counter it. He could only order Little Chaghani to retreat.

Yet as soon as Little Chaghani retreated, the Zhou army came after him. Their pursuit was very fast, and Little Chaghani's fifty thousand men could not shake them off.

The battle lasted from early morning until evening, and only ended when darkness made it impossible for anyone to see clearly.

Hussein knew that in this battle, he probably could not win. What had happened to Little Chaghani's fifty thousand men would be what happened to the entire Arab army.

Sure enough, the next morning, the Zhou army began advancing again. Cavalry still flickered everywhere, and the infantry kept pressing forward, until they reached a point only five or six li from the Arabs' frontline supply fortress.

The decisive battle finally began. With no room left to retreat, the Arabs attacked on their own initiative. Hussein bin Qaki came out in full force. He reassembled sixty thousand men and sent even his personal guards to the front line, intending to swallow up Zhang Liechao's eighteen thousand men.

Solemn recitations of the Quran spread across the battlefield. Countless imams in black robes did their utmost to raise the warriors' spirits.

Encouraged by religion, the Arab cavalrymen charged fervently toward their enemies. Their warhorses had also somewhat grown accustomed to the huge explosions and were beginning to summon the courage to charge.

The battle raged until the end of the hour of Wei (three in the afternoon). Both sides had suffered heavy casualties, and everyone had exhausted their last bit of strength in the intense heat.

The Great Food army under Zhang Lie forced the Zhou army back several li, throwing the vanguard into chaos, but they could never defeat them.

Time reached the hour of shen proper (four in the afternoon), and the round belonging to the Great Food men came to an end.

The main body of the Zhou army finally arrived, and the cavalry had also completed their flanking maneuver. In an instant, offense and defense reversed. With no way left to retreat, the Great Food cavalry were steadily annihilated under the blows of the Zhou cavalry, and Bedouin corpses covered the ground west of Ahvaz.

After the cavalry was essentially suppressed, the desperate Great Food army began to mass west of Ahvaz, using the fortifications they had built to resist stubbornly.

But these fortifications were no match at all for the five-thousand-jin Shenwei Great General cannons that Yang Jiye had dragged from the Central Plains to Iraq at the cost of several hundred conscripted laborers worked to death.

Seeing this, Husayn ibn Qaki could only gather his army once more in despair. They fell back five or six li and abandoned their positions.

Because the Great Food men had realized that the Zhou army's cannons moved very slowly; as long as they retreated quickly enough, they could keep the enemy's cannons from keeping up with the main army.

But in doing so, while they avoided the cannons, the Great Food men also came out completely into open country.

Yang Jiye's method of battle was simple: when the Great Food men concentrated, he struck them with cannons combined with crossbows and bows. The moment the Great Food men tried to shift their formations to avoid the fire, the cavalry began to charge.

To prevent the cavalry charges, the Great Food men could only mass together again to resist — but at that point, the Divine Arm crossbows, Wuwei Great General cannons, crouching-tiger cannons, nine-section cannons, and great pole guns came into play again.

Infantry positions that could not maneuver quickly were the best targets, and they could only be forced to adjust their positions again.

And so it went: the cannons fired, then the cavalry charged; the cavalry charged, then the cannons fired — over and over until the Great Food army collapsed. It was completely unsolvable, so to speak.

By the start of the wei hour of the second day of battle (one in the afternoon), the nearly two hundred thousand Great Food men had completely collapsed. The vanguard general Little Chaghani was blasted into pulp by a crouching-tiger cannon during a charge, and senior officers such as Hasan, governor of Homs Province, were cut down in the chaos.

The Great Food commander-in-chief Husayn ibn Qaki fled early with several thousand cavalry. Although he knew the roads well, he was finally overtaken at Nasiriyah, a small town on the banks of the Euphrates.

In despair, this famed general of the Hamdanid dynasty waded into the river with his sons and several dozen trusted generals, seeking to save their lives. Zhang Xiantai immediately led several dozen elite riders along the river in pursuit and shot them down one by one in the water.

The Great Food army was utterly annihilated.

In the fifth year of Qianyuan of the Great Zhou, 966 CE, on the tenth day of the seventh month, the great battle that had lasted nearly two months finally came to an end.

The Great Food army of two hundred thousand was almost entirely wiped out. The two sides pursued and fled for more than forty li. Over sixty thousand Great Food men were slain, more than a hundred thousand were taken captive, and only a small number escaped with their lives.

On the thirteenth of the seventh month, before news of the defeat had even reached Baghdad, the Medicine Master Light King of the West, Great King of the An State Zhang Xianyu, Great King of the Shu State Zhang Xiantai, and Great King of the Liao State Zhang Xianjiong charged to Baghdad with ten thousand elite cavalry.

Sultan Alim was terrified beyond measure. He wanted to kill Caliph al-Muti and then retreat, but the caliph, grown crafty with age, had long since gone into hiding. Sultan Alim could only flee in panic toward Syria with a hundred or so personal guards, each man riding with three horses.

Baghdad had fallen!

Zhang Xianyu laughed heartily and waved his hand. "Have Ansu (Mansur) send men into the city to pacify the people. This city is his now."

Heh, handing Baghdad over to Ansu at this point — there was no way the matter would be settled that simply. This was nothing more than Zhang Xianyu's stalling tactic.

With ten thousand men trying to control a great city of seven or eight hundred thousand, it would be very hard to avoid chaos. The best course for now was to temporarily keep them settled, and then slowly carve them up once the main army arrived.

On the twentieth of the seventh month, the main Zhou army arrived in full and began entering the city of Baghdad as conquerors.

Then Yang Jiye made good on his promise — except it was not three days of unsheathed blades, but a differentiated slaughter.

All the great nobles of the Great Food realm who were detrimental to Mansur's puppet rule, all those with the strength to resist, and all religious figures were put to death. More than fifty thousand people were executed within seven days.

Afterward, Yang Jiye ordered the soldiers to plunder district by district. In total, more than thirty thousand able-bodied young men and beautiful women were carried off from the city, along with gold, silver, brocade, silk, and goods of every kind worth more than nine million strings of cash.

As for livestock, grain, serfs, carts, and the like, they were boundless — no one knew how much was taken.

The Great Food men's savings of several centuries were all plundered away.

Before this, Zhang Xianjing, following the instructions of his father Zhang Zhao, had loaded up and carted off all the books and scholars of the two cities of Baghdad and Basra — whether astronomy, geography, medicine, divination, astrology, or anything else, as long as it was writing unrelated to religion, it was all packed into carts and taken away.

In total, more than one million one hundred thousand volumes of books were carried off, along with over a thousand great scholars of every field. The House of Wisdom of Baghdad was almost entirely emptied out.

Zhang Zhao would never imitate the Mongols, who after capturing Baghdad squandered such treasures of nature. At this time, Baghdad and the Great Food realm had many unique and distinctive achievements in culture.

Of course, what was also carried off at the same time was the entire clan of the Abbasid caliph, more than three hundred people.

And with that, this vast empire, which had once been able to stand alongside the Great Tang, came crashing down into the dust of history.

There is one final chapter tomorrow, and this book will be complete.

(End of chapter)

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