Chapter 171: Faster and Heavier

Liu Chengzong stayed in Shaanxi until early April.

Lion Camp remained garrisoned in the Dianshan River valley south of Crouching Tiger Mountain.

Using the opportunities of burying subordinates and settling wounded soldiers, Liu Chengzong and the outpost commanders had plenty of time to review the lessons of the battle.

Liu Chengzong mainly discovered two things.

In the battle with Ai Mu, during the close-quarters night raid, their direct fatalities were very few.

Over half the casualties came from those few cannons at the southeast corner tower of the post town; the narrow terrain of the Wen'an Post river valley made the cannon grapeshot immensely powerful — one blast scattered iron pellets everywhere, even spraying all the way to the hillside across the river two hundred paces away.

Auxiliary troops with incomplete armor had trouble withstanding that kind of damage.

Lion Camp's auxiliary troops all had armor, but most of it was not a full set — some wore just a helmet, some draped a piece of mail, some went straight into battle wearing only shoulder guards or sleeveless brigandines, and some had armor skirts tied beneath their padded jackets.

"Why is it like this?"

In the camp's central command tent, Liu Chengzong was utterly baffled by this question: "Our armor is plentiful — unless someone took the spoils out and sold them."

Earlier, armor and weapons had been stored as spoils with the work outpost and logistics outpost; when Lion Camp distributed reward silver, the camp's soldiers set off a buying frenzy in Huojia Fortress.

Their money didn't have many other uses anyway, so much so that from top to bottom, outpost commanders were willing to pay to buy armor for each squad, and squad leaders and fireteam leaders were also willing to purchase weapons and armor for their men.

This was even more true for the combat soldiers; Lion Camp had only raided one fortress upon entering Shanxi and gained an income of twenty thousand taels, giving them a very bright outlook.

It brought Lion Camp extraordinary hope and aspiration; the combat soldiers were willing to exchange all their money for armor and weapons, wishing they could arm the auxiliary troops to the teeth, in hopes of surviving the next battle.

The good days were ahead.

Liu Chengzong tallied the buying and selling accounts of the work outpost and logistics outpost from those days; although the whole camp's armor was not yet complete, those spoils were enough for most auxiliary troops to wear a full set of armor.

And they had a set of rules for distributing spoils according to rank and military merit; apart from the camp headquarters, no one could become enormously wealthy, so there was no possibility of anyone buying up all the armor.

But in battle, the troops' appearance was not like that.

"No, no, no, that's impossible." Cao Yao waved his hands repeatedly and said, "The camp soldiers are all confined within the outpost encampment — they don't even have a chance to meet outsiders, let alone run into anyone else. Who would they sell to?"

Yang Yao also said, "In my outpost, the combat and auxiliary troops have enough armor, but when it's time to fight, the auxiliaries just won't wear it. They casually hang a couple of pieces on and go into battle. I've always thought they just weren't as well-trained as the combat soldiers."

"General, my rear outpost is the same."

Wang Wenxiu chimed in as well, stroking his thick beard and shaking his head: "They even dare to scale city walls wearing only shoulder guards. Every time they go into battle, there's no time to say anything; after the battle, when you bring it up, they just mumble and let it slide. There's no cure for this bad habit."

Just as the outpost commanders were all puzzled, Chengzu, a bit lacking in confidence, pondered for a long time before quietly saying, "Brother, I might know what's going on."

Chengzu glanced at the burly warriors sitting beside him, sighed, and looked up: "They can't bear the weight. I have a suit of armor too, but I just can't bear wearing it. The auxiliary troops... their bodies aren't necessarily stronger than mine."

Not only was Liu Chengzong stunned — Cao Yao, Wang Wenxiu, Yang Yao, all these officers were completely stunned.

Flying Monkey, sitting off to the side, gave Chengzu a deep look and nodded to Liu Chengzong: "Yes, I was too embarrassed to say it, but Chengzu said it. I can't bear wearing a full set of armor either."

"That can't be?"

Cao Yao's eyes widened: "When I first became a soldier in Henan, my full kit was forty jin, and it was no problem at all!"

Liu Chengzong understood now. Everyone has their own curse of knowledge, and it had simply never occurred to him from this angle.

It was like how he could draw a war bow of eighty or ninety jin, even a hundred jin; if you said someone was weaker, the first thought in his mind would be — can't they even draw sixty jin?

But in reality, without training, most people can't even draw thirty jin.

Their whole group were veterans long accustomed to armor; they simply never considered that someone might be unable to bear the weight of armor, because in their minds, "unable to bear armor" meant those weaklings who felt stuffy and tired wearing it and wanted to slack off.

That was a completely different concept from what Flying Monkey and Chengzu meant by "unable to bear armor."

And the physical condition of these two was actually on the better side among the auxiliary troops — at the very least, Chengzu had never gone hungry during the four-year drought in northern Shaanxi.

This was just like when Cao Yao first joined the army: a strapping young lad at the end of the Wanli era, well-fed and well-watered in the military, his body got used to bearing weight within two months.

The auxiliary troops from the refugees were different.

Those people had genuinely come through starvation; eating their fill for a few months or even half a year could not make up for the depletion and damage to their bodies from enduring prolonged hunger.

In fact, their bodies were still in recovery, still preparing for the next drought.

"I understand now. All outpost commanders, go back and ask your auxiliary troops. If it's because they can't bear the weight, then we'll have to think of other solutions."

Liu Chengzong was unwilling to accept this situation.

What general wouldn't wish for his soldiers to be fully and uniformly armored?

He wished the entire army could be fully armored, reaching the top-tier equipment of the late Ming border forces, or even the top-tier equipment of the early Ming.

Because he came from the border forces, he understood the border forces' situation most clearly. The Ming dynasty, in response to the problem of constant Mongol incursions from the north, had developed its military in an increasingly targeted manner.

Warhorses went from full barding to half barding or even light equipment; soldiers' armor also went from the eighty-jin heavy kit of troops beyond the passes to the roughly forty-jin medium kit of today.

Cavalry adopted soft bows, long arrows, fast horses, and light sabers as their main weapons; infantry adopted the three-eyed gun loaded with nine or ten lead pellets as their primary fighting method.

Large numbers of small field cannons, using mixed loads of grapeshot and solid shot, were used to kill roving cavalry at close range.

Military thinking struck a compromise between mobility and protection.

The outpost commanders dispersed. Cao Yao saw that Liu Chengzong was unwilling to accept the current situation; he followed him out of the central command tent, then made an excuse to come back, sighed, and said, "How did we never think of this before?"

"Before? Before, we weren't worthy of thinking about it. Before we fought the Fenzhou and Pingyang garrisons, where would we have had so much armor?"

Liu Chengzong asked in return and shook his head: "Before, it wasn't strange for auxiliary troops to go into battle wearing little. Now that everyone has armor and they still go into battle wearing little — that's what makes them stand out."

"Then what do you plan to do?"

Cao Yao offered an idea as he spoke: "I think we should still bring the armor along. When there's no fighting, have them wear it and practice. With enough practice, they'll be able to bear it."

Liu Chengzong waved his hand dismissively: "I'm not too worried about this matter itself. I'm just thinking about the troops. We're all from the border forces; what we learned and used all came from the imperial court."

"What's going on in the east, no one knows, but these things from the three border commands of Shaanxi were developed over decades, even a century, to devise a set of methods for dealing with the northern caitiffs."

Liu Chengzong sat cross-legged on the carpet in the central command tent, raised his hand, and pointed in front of him: "Our opponents aren't the northern caitiffs. What we have to deal with are light and fast government troops."

He brought both hands together, then parted them before his face: "Either we become lighter and faster than them; or we become heavier and more ferocious than them."

Having said that, he closed his fist and smiled at Cao Yao: "No state is perpetually strong or perpetually weak. If people like us one day seize the realm, we'll still have to deal with the eastern caitiffs."

Cao Yao had listened very attentively to the earlier words, but this last sentence he simply took as a joke. He laughed: "The eastern caitiffs aren't something we need to worry about for the time being. Are you planning to go lighter, or heavier?"

Cao Yao was partly fishing for information.

For a long time, Liu Chengzong's behavior had seemed novel to him, and also very strange.

He had never seen Liu Chengzong worry about the various peasant armies being wiped out by government troops. In truth, everyone worried about this — only Liu the Lion never gave it a thought.

Nor was he like the other leaders, so keen on plundering and expanding their forces.

Cao Yao had thought more than once that if Liu the Lion were willing, he could swallow up seven or eight leaders at any time and directly expand his force to eight battalions without any problem.

But Liu the Lion didn't do that, and Cao Yao felt it was deliberate — the Lion was deliberately holding back, fiercely suppressing the Lion Battalion from forming its own consciousness, refusing to let the Lion Battalion push him along.

For an entire year, apart from Apricot River, they had never properly stayed anywhere. The force drifted and roamed; it was always the Lion who wanted them to do something, and they went and did it.

Not that they ran out of grain and had to go rob, so they went and robbed.

The feeling this gave Cao Yao was that Liu the Lion never worried about the immediate things, but he worried intensely about things three or five years down the road.

The exact opposite of the other leaders.

Others worried about what to eat for the next meal — beyond that, the sky could fall and they wouldn't care. He didn't worry about the next meal; he was only preparing for when the sky fell.

Liu Chengzong had no idea about these thoughts of Cao Yao's. He frowned in consideration for a moment, then raised a hand. "Here's my thinking: the battle soldiers heavier and fiercer, the auxiliary soldiers lighter and faster."

"I'm thinking that if the auxiliaries truly can't wear a full set of armor, have them remove the armor plates from the inner coat and attach them to their combat tunic — front chest and back."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong gestured on his own body. "Twelve or thirteen jin, wear a helmet, make a notched arm-shield — won't interfere with shooting arrows or firing guns. That way, the full kit is around thirty jin."

He took a deep breath. "If they still can't carry thirty jin, then I'm out of options. If I can't protect them, they'll have to fend for themselves and try to survive until they can carry it."

He had also come to terms with it — this was purely a problem of abundance.

Back in his Fish River Fort days, he wore a cotton armor with rusted armor plates where the cotton had worn through. When had he ever worried about having too much armor?

If he had known back then that one day he'd be troubled by this, he'd have laughed himself awake from his dreams.

Not just for him — for those auxiliaries too, it was a problem of abundance. In truth, at this time, most peasant soldiers went into battle in ordinary clothes. Where would they get any armor?

Snatching an iron helmet to wear was already pretty good. Only as a minor squad leader might you maybe get a suit of armor.

Cao Yao knew how shields were built. There were two handles on the back; the arm passed through them — one handle rested on the forearm, the other was gripped in the hand.

And what Liu Chengzong meant by not affecting shooting was that the hand passed between the two handles, holding a bow or gun to fire.

He thought it through carefully and nodded. "This shield is good. Make the outside rounded and convex — that won't hinder keeping the elbow slightly bent when holding a gun. But whatever you do, remember to specifically tell the craftsmen that the shield needs a rolled edge."

By "rolled edge," Cao Yao meant the rim of the round shield curling slightly outward. That way, when an arrow struck the round shield and glanced off, it would finally be stopped by the rim and not slide on to hit the person.

"That goes without saying — of course I'll remember."

Liu Chengzong answered with a smile, then added, "There's another thing I didn't mention earlier. This time, more wounded died than before. A lot of them burned up with fever after being wounded and died from that."

The smile vanished entirely from his face. "Before the breakout, Ai Mu had the government troops smear filth on their blades and arrowheads. Is there any good defense against that stuff?"

Filth, after being boiled down, had most of its bacteria killed off, but it was an excellent breeding ground for bacteria — who knew what kinds of bacteria might multiply in it.

Ai Mu's reason for using it was all too simple. Nearly two thousand of them had been besieged in the city for days; their excrement couldn't be carted out, so they simply set it on the battlements in readiness for defending the city.

When needed, they mixed it with scalding hot liquid and poured it down. The direct harm wasn't great, but the insult was extreme — it dealt a heavy blow to the morale of the assaulting troops, and the subsequent infections killed many.

Cao Yao shook his head. No one had a good solution for that stuff. Armor couldn't stop it either. Large-area burns and the infections that followed — even an immortal would struggle to save you.

But then something occurred to him, and he said, "For poison smeared on blades, there's no real solution — just don't get cut. But for sieges, I remember the Eastern Invaders are especially good at assaulting cities. In Liaodong, I saw a kind of tube-ladder — four wheels, with a wooden canopy on top to block arrows and bullets and ward off 'Ten-Thousand-Man Defeaters.' When the cloud ladders wouldn't go up and the city wall was breached, they'd pile corpses to build a ramp and set the tube-ladder against the wall to storm the city."

Liu Chengzong had never seen such a scene. With just a few simple words, Old Cao had painted a harrowing picture of a siege assault.

The city wall, blasted open by cannon fire; corpses fallen from the cloud ladders piled below, gradually building a sloping path; the canopied tube-ladder set against the wall to block the defenders' view; the Eastern Invaders climbing over the bodies of their comrades to ascend.

He shook his head. "Assaulting a city is still hard!"

"You're too sparing of lives. How many people in this world were meant to die anyway?"

Cao Yao paused and took a deep breath. "The Lion Battalion has never fought a bitter battle. You've always been clever — if it's hard to fight, you evade; if you can't evade, you besiege. You're unwilling to let the men who follow you die. I know that."

"But a bitter battle will have to be fought sooner or later. A force that can only fight when the wind's at its back will suffer terribly in the future. When that happens, everyone will die. And the Lion Battalion..."

Cao Yao scratched the scar on his face, his tone sincere. "The Lion Battalion can endure far heavier casualties than you imagine. The rations these men eat are something plenty of government troops would beg for. There's no shortage of people willing to die for you. Always fighting these shabby little engagements..."

Cao Yao laughed. "Men like us are wasted on this."

Liu Chengzong smiled. Cao Yao's words had struck home.

But this wasn't something he could control. He shook his head. "Just wait. A bitter battle is coming soon. Didn't Master Gao say earlier that the two provinces are about to join forces? When that happens, even if we don't want to fight a bitter battle, we won't be able to dodge it."

Having said that, he waved a hand. "Right — in a bit, help me find Song Shouzhen. Tell him about the battalion-affiliated instructor corps. I plan to take the eighty who are literate and disperse them into the eight posts. From post commander, to squad leader, to corporal — all must be literate, and they must study every day."

Liu Chengzong shook his head. "Still too few talented men. The battle and auxiliary soldiers will have to wait. If we had eighty more who were literate, I'd assign them too."

Just as the two were talking, before Cao Yao could start complaining on behalf of his junior officers, the voice of Heaven-Soaring Monkey came from outside the central army tent.

"General, great news!"

When Heaven-Soaring Monkey came in, the grimy monkey rubbed his hands together, sat cross-legged, greeted Cao Yao, and then said, "The Emperor has issued an edict to transfer silver from various regions to the capital. Shaanxi's silver escort will take the Hexi Circuit — that's from Fu Prefecture to Yan'an Prefecture and into Yulin!"

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