Chapter 182: Narrow Road Encounter

Yang Yao, like Liu Chengzong, was deeply resistant to entering the mountain roads at heart.

The Lion Camp was accustomed to threading through the hills, ridges, and plateaus, but not to the mountain roads of great ranges like Ziwu Ridge and Yellow Dragon Mountain.

Those small hills and ridges were barren heights; these great ranges were wild, desolate mountains, with untamed, trackless forest on both sides — nowhere to run.

What he worried about most was not the Ningxia troops led by He Huchen, but rather Du Wenhuan's Yulin army.

When the time came, with Ningxia troops to the west and the Yulin army to the east, they would be trapped in the Yellow Dragon Mountain road — death at either end.

Facing Li Laochai, who dared to form ranks and wait for him in Fuzhou, He Huchen felt greatly astonished; he had never seen anything like it.

Just over two thousand men, and they dared to form ranks facing him?

The outcome spoke for itself: with only brief contact, Li Laochai and Ma Maoguan were once again dealt a head-on, crushing blow by He Huchen.

To the north, Zhang Tianlin, and to the south, Yang Yao, though their forces were small, each fought the three hundred Ningxia troops to a standstill; only when Li Laochai's central army retreated into the mountains did they each leave the battlefield.

With the battle over and the bandits scattering or retreating, He Huchen was not particularly pleased.

Where were the supplies?

Where was Li Laochai's grain?

Gone!

Li Laochai had fled deep into the mountains, leaving two forces on the Hexi Road, one to the south and one to the north, watching him from afar — they looked different from bandits, both had command flags, clearly units formed from deserters.

He Huchen split his force into three: one to pursue Li Laochai, one to garrison the western mountain pass, and one to drive Zhang Tianlin northward.

The unit driving Zhang Tianlin was the most important; they also bore a mission — to send word to Du Wenhuan that the bandits had entered Yellow Dragon Mountain, and to have him go to Yichuan to block them.

With fewer pursuers, Li Laochai, fleeing ahead, did not feel any relief.

Freed from the burden of supplies, Li Laochai began trying to seize the initiative.

Every night, he pressed eastward along the mountain road with his head down; at daybreak, he found a place to sleep. Upon waking, he would hold the ground, fight any government troops he saw, and if he couldn't win, keep running.

The Ningxia vanguard pursued twice, but they were waiting for the troops behind and unwilling to advance deep alone, which gave Li Laochai an exploitable opening.

In this topsy-turvy routine of reversed day and night, Li Laochai grew more and more adept at night marches, and the distances he covered grew longer and longer.

Zhang Tianlin, too, was steering the fighting toward his strongest suit; he led his friends from Ningxia through Fuzhou, past Ganquan, covering one hundred fifty li in a day and a half.

The friends from Ningxia stopped playing with him, and moreover, decided he was a complete idiot.

Heading north — wasn't that just Yan'an Prefecture up ahead? And wasn't Du Wenhuan's Yulin army just arriving today?

Zhang Tianlin was nearly scared to death.

In the past, on such marches, he always did thorough scouting; this time alone, thinking he had just come from Yan'an Prefecture, he just ran forward blindly.

By the time he got back to Yan'an Prefecture, he arrived just as Du Wenhuan was entering the city, and had to immediately turn tail and flee west.

Fortunately, Du Wenhuan's troops had not initially imagined that bandits would dare be so brazen.

They had thought Zhang Tianlin was a friendly force; only when Zhang Tianlin started running did they realize something was wrong.

Zhang Tianlin ran a marathon; the Ningxia army and the Yulin army ran a relay race against him.

On the third day after the battle of Fuzhou, Zhang Tianlin fled into Ansai; on the fourth day, into Bao'an County. That night, utterly unable to walk further, he secretly circled back to Ansai and slipped into the Sai Men Battalion.

He Huchen's three hundred men and Du Wenhuan's six hundred — frontier troops from two garrisons — were everywhere asking after him; if they caught him, they were determined to kill him.

Things did not go as Du Wenhuan had imagined. He sent word to the prefectural office that five hundred government troops were entering Yan'an Prefecture, but this time, Liu Chengzong did not appear.

He could only first read the court decree and arrest Zhang Nian, escorting him to Yulin, and then send him via the Great Wall to the capital.

The day Zhang Nian left, the whole of Yan'an Prefecture was crying out with hunger.

With this matter settled, Du Wenhuan received word from He Huchen and, in frantic haste, mustered his troops and rushed for Yanchang County.

On the other side, Yang Yao had it much easier than Zhang Tianlin; on the very first day, he recognized that he could not defeat the Ningxia troops garrisoned at the western mountain pass.

He Huchen had left a full thousand men there, and they had occupied the camp Yang Yao had built. With the five hundred or so men under Yang Yao's command, let alone battle, even harassment was extremely difficult.

So Yang Yao did not fight these men to the death; he led his troops in a feint southward, made a loop, and returned north to camp on the ridge at the border of Fuzhou and Ganquan County.

His army provisions were running low. He had heard Li Laochai say the grain was dumped in a ravine near Zhiluo, and sent men to search, but they found nothing.

Just as Yang Yao was at a loss for what to do, the unit He Huchen had sent north returned.

Two Battalion Commanders, each leading about four hundred men, one in front and one behind, half a day's march apart.

The Battalion Commander in front was in quite good spirits; Yang Yao dared not provoke him and hid in a gully.

The Battalion Commander at the rear had been tormented to exhaustion by Zhang Tianlin — weary, hungry, and tired, his whole unit listless, and traveling through relatively safe territory, their vigilance was lax.

At first, seeing their state, Yang Yao was on the fence about whether to attack.

After all, the morale of his own vanguard cavalry was not great either; government troops were swarming everywhere, they had lost contact with battalion headquarters across a great mountain, and their attack on government troops had been repelled — the soldiers' spirits were genuinely low.

But, as it happened, this government unit had somehow acquired a few goats.

The moment he saw the goats, Yang Yao made up his mind: he had to take this government unit down.

The Lion Camp soldiers, on one hand, received a great deal of meat in their supplies, yet on the other, were desperately short of meat.

Eating the sinewy leg meat of horses and donkeys day after day, they had grown a bit sick of it; everyone sorely missed mutton and pork rich with dripping fat.

The temptation of mutton was simply too great for them.

Especially for Yang Yao. Some time ago, after seizing government silver, the general had shared out money and sent them to spend it in the villages; Yang Yao had led his men through several villages looking for goats.

He found only four, and all kids at that, which the common folk were counting on to bear lambs.

To be honest, the sight of the mighty Lion Camp's Squad Leader, who ran rampant across northern Shaanxi, standing before a goat pen swallowing his saliva — that was something the people of Yanchuan could laugh about for half a year.

Word of the goats was passed down to the vanguard cavalry, and suddenly, everyone's morale was boosted.

In a single ambush, the government troops had no time even to don their armor; before their formation could shift from its single-file line, Yang Yao's cavalry struck in three prongs.

The front and rear prongs both galloped in firing arrows, closing to melee after a few volleys; only the center prong was the most outrageous — cavalrymen carrying several pre-loaded squatting-tiger cannons charged straight at the column's midsection.

Arriving, they flipped off their horses, pressed the small cannons to the ground, and fired, blasting a skyful of scattered shot.

They achieved the first victory since the fighting began.

That very night, a cave on the eastern slope of Ziwu Ridge glowed with light; the vanguard cavalry built a fire inside the cave and ate roast mutton.

"This gamey smell — truly a gift from the heavens!"

Yang Yao held a bunch of skewers in his hands and handed them out to the soldiers, saying, "Quick, quick, quick — get these to the brothers on sentry duty while they're hot. There's more when you come back!"

"Damn it all, what a shame there's no steamed buns. If I'd known we'd be eating mutton today, I'd have steamed some buns a few days ago."

"Momo" meant steamed buns. Lion Camp had flour, but steamed buns were fluffy and bulky, and once they dried out and hardened, they were inconvenient to carry and eat.

By comparison, fried flour was far more suitable.

Yang Yao tipped a small mouthful of fried flour into his mouth and bit into a mutton skewer, not forgetting to remind his men: "Don't just eat meat. The general said a man can't live on fried flour alone — it's bad for the body. Come, eat some vegetables."

As he spoke, he reached out and handed his men several peeled cloves of garlic.

That night, crouched in the cave eating his meal, was perhaps the happiest day Yang Yao had known in the year since the Guyuan mutiny.

Well fed and watered, Yang Yao could not help but wonder how this battle ought to be fought next.

Although they had routed a Battalion Commander's headquarters, the government troops they had directly killed were few. The forward outpost lacked the capacity to annihilate or even recruit the defeated, and could only seize most of the arms, armor, and warhorses, letting the routed government troops flee southward.

The government forces were strong in numbers, and moreover, He Huchen's Ningxia troops had pulled back, yet Zhang Tianlin had not returned — which meant either he had been chased too far, or something had gone wrong in the north.

This made him deeply worried about the battle situation. He wanted to send men into the mountains by the small trails to carry word to Lion Bay, but he also feared exposing Lion Bay's position.

Before departing, Liu Chengzong had told him that if anything unexpected happened, they could withdraw from Lion Bay eastward. A little further north from here, there was a small mountain path too narrow for carts that connected to the east.

But that path was not to be taken unless absolutely necessary, for it would expose those in Lion Bay who were not skilled in fighting.

For this reason, Yang Yao had not disclosed this information to his men.

Early the next morning, the sentries below the mountain ran up to report that the bulk of the government troops had already entered Yellow Dragon Mountain. The encampment at the western mountain pass still stood, with over six hundred men left to guard it.

The stockade was set up with firearms and cannons; they could not hope to oppose it.

It was at this moment that he met Zhang Tianlin's scout cavalryman.

Zhang Tianlin was even more anxious than he was. Although the man himself was hiding in the Sai Men Battalion, over the past two days he had not let Ren Quan'er rest, sending him repeatedly to probe the situation in the prefectural city.

The situation Ren Quan'er had probed out was far more complicated than he had imagined.

The Chief Regional Commander of Yansui Garrison had gone to Yan'an Prefectural City and physically ejected the Prefect from the city.

It was very strange — the last loyal minister in Yan'an Prefecture had been seized by government troops.

Ren Quan'er had sent men to make inquiries from many sources, but they had not managed to find out exactly how many government troops Du Wenhuan had dispatched south, nor what their specific mission was.

The reason seemed to be that Du Wenhuan suspected there were still remnants of Zhang Nian's faction in the prefectural city and was extremely cautious with his own intelligence. All they knew was that Du Wenhuan had at least five hundred men marching to the prefectural city, with more troops massed to the east.

Now, the forces to the east had already set off and departed, but those five hundred men remained in Yan'an Prefectural City.

Zhang Tianlin's subordinate said, "Those five hundred Yulin troops will likely leave too. They've twice demanded grain from Sai Men and the northern and southern passes to supply the siege. If they don't leave soon, General Ren and the two Vice Battalion Commanders Shi and Chen intend to finish them off."

Were the battalion commanders in Yan'an Prefecture all this swollen with arrogance now?

If five hundred government troops could be left behind, Yang Yao estimated that Du Wenhuan's total force could not be fewer than two thousand five hundred.

Yang Yao could no longer sit still. At least two thousand government troops marching east — this news had to reach Liu Chengzong in the east as quickly as possible.

He made up his mind to head north. Immediately, he said to Zhang Tianlin's subordinate, "Go back and tell Chief Zhang to keep General Ren steady and continue probing for intelligence. I will lead my troops north at once and join forces with him to strike and eliminate those five hundred government troops there."

That very day, Yang Yao led his troops out. He dispatched a scout cavalryman to travel on foot through the mountains by a small path into Lion Bay and ask Liu Chengzu to find a way to deliver the message to Liu Chengzong as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Yellow Dragon Mountain, Li Laochai, who had been fleeing for days on end, finally glimpsed the light of survival.

Catching sight from afar of the wooden stockade fortifications built among the mountains, he was so overjoyed he felt as though he had found a mountain to lean on, a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

Li Laochai had arrived just before dawn. He had not expected that Liu Chengzong had come out to meet him, and had even built a simple camp in the mountains.

"General Liu, I…"

Li Laochai shook his head, unable to speak, terrified that if he said one more word his nose would sting and the tears would flow.

Three thousand brothers — some dead, some fled, some slipping away into the mountains in the dark of night. When he counted heads before the stockade of Lion Camp, nine hundred and ninety-six men had stayed with him.

This was the first time Liu Chengzong had met Li Laochai. The man before him was not short, lean and wiry all over, and in the firelight he bore the air of a fierce bandit — only now he was in a wretched state, hair disheveled, clothes ragged, utterly haggard.

Though the man said nothing, Liu Chengzong knew what he wanted to say. He simply patted him and said, "Those who stayed are all true men."

These men had endured such a harrowing flight — moving by night and hiding by day, clashing in battle time and again.

Those who could not walk any further, those with poor luck, those whose will was not firm — most were no longer in this unit.

Liu Chengzong could not easily gauge the talents of those who remained, but having survived this calamity, their circumstances would improve greatly from here on.

At the very least, given the chance to drill, they would possess a stronger will than others.

Li Laochai nodded heavily, then looked around and said, "General Liu, if we pull back to ground where we can spread out, I can still fight."

Liu Chengzong did not respond for the moment. He turned and ordered his men to prepare some food for Li Laochai's group, then asked, "Is He Huchen still pursuing you?"

"He was still in pursuit during the day. He probably won't stop until he's killed me."

Liu Chengzong thought to himself, I'm afraid even if he kills you, he still won't stop.

This was no longer about suppressing bandits. He Huchen was the Chief Regional Commander of Ningxia. He had taken the field when Heshui County was attacked, and must have received his orders from Guyuan.

Driving Li Laochai from Qingyang Prefecture back to Yan'an and routing him once would have already fulfilled his mission.

But He Huchen had not given up. He had routed them several times along the way, setting out from Ningxia on a pursuit that spanned a thousand li.

Even for the sake of military merit, he would not have pushed his men and horses to such a state of utter exhaustion.

Guyuan's orders were probably not to annihilate Li Laochai.

"You rest well for now. We have to drive He Huchen back westward. This stockade was built for the people behind us."

Li Laochai asked, "Built for the people behind us?"

Liu Chengzong slowly nodded. "The men I left to guard Yanchuan reported two days ago that Du Wenhuan was leading over five thousand troops toward Yan'an Prefectural City. Word just came that Du Wenhuan has encamped south at Yanchang County. So… you still have to run — you have to run west."

Liu Chengzong could not take this situation lightly. His original plan had been to draw He Huchen into Yichuan and use his advantages in troop strength and terrain to defeat him.

Over two thousand government troops — it was not as if he had never fought them before.

But upon learning of Du Wenhuan's advance from the north, the pressure had suddenly surged by a great measure.

The coordinated advance of these two Chief Regional Commanders was far more formidable than Liu Chengzong had imagined.

He said, "One hundred sixty li — by the afternoon of the day after tomorrow at the latest, Du Wenhuan will enter Yichuan."

Li Laochai said anxiously, "Then get out quickly — go to Hukou, go to Shanxi."

"If you run east now, it's already too late. Before dawn you can still cover ten li, but if you slip out of Yichuan tomorrow at midnight and sleep during the day, Du Wenhuan will catch you red-handed."

Liu Chengzong looked far calmer on the surface and shook his head. "Unless I abandon you and enter Shanxi alone — as long as I'm here waiting for you, the eastern route is blocked."

"Even if you somehow escape by luck, with seven or eight thousand government troops chasing you, it's still a dead end."

"Then what do we do?"

"There's only one way: fight in front and delay in the rear. First push He Huchen back out of Yellow Dragon Mountain."

His voice made Li Laochai shiver. "The mountain path is too narrow — you want to go head-to-head with government troops?"

Liu Chengzong said nothing. He raised his chin slightly and clenched his jaw.

They had met on a narrow road.