Chapter 188: West Mountain Pass

Temptation — people find it very hard to refuse temptation.

A temptation that can be refused is usually just a rational decision made after weighing the pros and cons.

He Huchen's troops were, for Liu Chengzong, the greatest temptation in the world.

These Ningxia border troops were the toughest unit the Lion Battalion had ever faced, and to put it another way, they were probably the closest thing to a normal border army unit.

But only close to normal — although Ningxia had no drought last year, Ningxia's land cannot grow silver, so their pay was still in arrears.

Even so, if the positions were swapped, and they fought on different terrain under clear skies without rain, the Lion Battalion might not have been able to beat the Ningxia Battalion.

Because the Ningxia Battalion had almost no weaknesses, while the Lion Battalion's shortcomings were glaringly obvious.

Scout cavalry.

Apart from fighting Zhang Yundeng's Fuzhou troops and the banner soldiers of Fenzhou Garrison and Pingyang Garrison, in every battle the Lion Battalion had fought against border troops, Wei Qianer's scout cavalry was always suppressed.

And in terms of message transmission speed, they lagged a whole era behind the border troops.

The Lion Battalion's messages, day or night, relied on four legs and one mouth.

But He Huchen's scout cavalry, spaced ten or twenty li apart, could send a message just by waving a flag along the line.

Liu Chengzong had seen scout cavalry like this before, but those scout cavalrymen... all died in battle.

Li Bei's, for instance — during the fighting, Zhang Tianlin used regular cavalry to kill every last one of them.

And Ai Mu's — Yang Yao's troops wiped them all out before the battle even began.

Yet He Huchen's force still had its scout cavalry intact. If this unit could surrender and join the Lion Battalion, then Liu Chengzong would have a chance to form the Lion Battalion's own scout cavalry force.

To remedy his last remaining weakness compared to the border troops.

From then on, he could use his scout cavalry to suppress the enemy's scout cavalry.

While his main force was still forty li away, the government troops' scout cavalry would already be compressed to within ten li, and every government unit would be forced to don armor and defend in all directions.

Just imagining such a scene filled Liu Chengzong's heart with bliss.

Only, it made life very hard for Lion Battalion vanguard commander Yang Yao.

West of Yellow Dragon Mountain, Yang Yao and Zhang Tianlin — the two "Speedsters" — had joined forces.

Both were masters of mounted operations: one excelled at attack, the other at flight. After Du Wenhuan's remaining troops withdrew from the prefectural seat, their two forces cut off the communication routes for He Huchen's remaining troops from the outside.

Zhang Tianlin also took the opportunity, using Li Laochai's name, to loot two forts in Fuzhou.

This made the Fuzhou troops inside the city so furious they were hopping mad, but they could do absolutely nothing about it.

Their weapons and armor had all been plundered by Ai Mu's household retinue. Ever since returning to Fuzhou, they had been busy buying weapons, and even now they still hadn't gathered a full set of arms, let alone armor.

They simply dared not leave the city to fight. Fortunately... it was not a kind thing to say, but with the Hexi Military Defense Circuit Intendant Zhang gone, there was no one to press them to go out and fight.

Zhang Tianlin was slyly wicked, too. After breaking into two forts, he had someone haul twenty dan of millet and dump it at the Supervisory Platform south of Fuzhou city. Then, across the Luo River, he shouted up at the city walls: "Brothers of the Fuzhou troops, your share is right here!"

This made the Fuzhou troops inside the city grind their teeth in fury. Of course they wouldn't go take it, but they couldn't stop the common folk from thinking they were in league with the bandits.

That grain sat outside the city for two whole days. Only when it looked like rain was coming did the poor folk sneak out at night to carry it home.

The next day, word spread through the northern and southern outskirts of Fuzhou: the Fuzhou troops had taken the grain the bandits left.

Yang Yao and Zhang Tianlin were out of options, too. They had attacked He Huchen's stockade twice.

At first, a thousand troops were stationed in that stockade. Later, those thousand marched east to suppress them, and the garrison left behind became six hundred men.

Those were the two Battalion Commander units He Huchen had earlier sent north to pursue Zhang Tianlin. The first Battalion Commander led his troops safely into camp, but the one behind was badly mauled by Zhang Tianlin, and because he had strung up a few human "lamb skewers," Yang Yao intercepted him with a flanking strike.

In the end, six hundred men remained from the two Battalion Commanders' units, and they held this stockade.

A direct assault couldn't break through, so Yang Yao and Zhang Tianlin discussed it and dug three rings of trenches outside. If they couldn't take it, they wouldn't let them escape.

But as for besieging it — their thousand-odd men didn't have that capability.

After all, it was raining, and his and Zhang Tianlin's men were having a hard time of it too.

Moreover, Fuzhou had its own troops, Yan'an Prefectural seat lay to the north, Golden Lock Pass and Yaozhou were to the south, and Qingyang Prefecture was to the west — the place was accessible from all directions.

With the handful of men they had, fighting a brief field battle was still manageable, but the longer they kept up the encirclement, the more uneasy they grew.

Then one day, Yang Yao noticed the garrison inside the stockade had grown larger.

Yang Yao deduced this from the daily volume of night soil the government troops inside the stockade were dumping. These Ningxia soldiers were truly wicked — they had no intention of running.

It was raining, so they couldn't dig pits inside the camp. Therefore, the Ningxia soldiers sent men out with buckets every morning to dump it.

When they discovered Yang Yao had dug trenches cutting off the roads, these night-soil-dumping Ningxia soldiers simply poured the filth straight into the trenches.

Yang Yao was absolutely furious. So I've gone and built you a giant cesspit, is that it?

But at first, only twenty-some soldiers came out each day to dump the night soil. Then suddenly one day, it became fifty-some.

Based on this change, Yang Yao judged that roughly another six hundred troops had entered the stockade.

Yang Yao stood on a distant hilltop, watching the soldiers dumping night soil in the rain, his expression shifting between dark and light. He said to Zhang Tianlin, "The troops inside the stockade now match our own numbers."

By this point, the two of them had already stopped thinking about besieging it.

They voluntarily pulled back their defensive line and began searching the surrounding area for terrain suitable for an ambush.

But the Ningxia government troops in the stockade had no intention of breaking out. Instead, they set up defenses along the eastern official road, and even sortied once to drive the two of them off.

Both sides took casualties. After fighting for a short while, Yang Yao and Zhang Tianlin withdrew.

Then, two more days passed. The soldiers dumping night soil became thirty-some, but they dumped it once in the morning and once in the evening.

More reinforcements had arrived.

Yang Yao and Zhang Tianlin calculated that the government troops inside the stockade were now close to two thousand.

Why this was happening, the two of them could not figure out.

The information Yang Yao had received was that Liu Chengzong planned to fight a decisive battle with He Huchen at Yichuan. Even if they had marched at a run, they could not have fought a battle at Yichuan and returned this quickly.

So he wondered: could it be that because of rain on the mountain paths, the Ningxia troops had pulled back, and the two sides never actually engaged?

If so, the situation right now would be the Lion Battalion's main force trapped in the mountain paths, with He Huchen to the west and Du Wenhuan to the east.

Yang Yao was so anxious he was scratching his ears and cheeks. He discussed it with Zhang Tianlin: "This won't do. We have to stir up some trouble for He Huchen, lure him into attacking us."

"Are you insane?"

Zhang Tianlin had just begun to warm to this Lion Camp vanguard outpost commander, but in a flash the goodwill vanished completely. "He's got over two thousand border troops, and I've got mostly raw recruits here. We'd manage a tailwind fight, but one slight setback and it's a rout."

Yang Yao scratched his head. "Then what do we do? How about you rest, and I'll go stir up trouble for him."

He explained, "The General is blocked in the mountains. We have to break an opening here, or Lion Camp will be finished bottled up inside. If we provoke He Huchen out here, at least we can still run."

The two were racking their brains in burning anxiety when they noticed something off about the defenders on the stockade.

"How come men in only thin tunics are up there too, and some empty-handed?"

In the stockade across the Luo River from them, He Huchen was equally troubled.

The purpose of this stockade was originally the same as when Liu Chengzong had Zhong Hu set up camp in the mountain pass — solely to guard against having their rear route cut off.

But the construction of a stockade is tied to the number of defenders, just as the city of Nanjing was clearly an impregnable fortress, yet most of the time it had almost no defensive strength at all.

The defensive works of Nanjing City had over ten thousand crenellations alone; stationing ten defenders per crenellation would require an army of one hundred thirty thousand.

The larger the stockade was built, the more garrison strength it required. That was why this West Mountain Pass stockade was not large — it was a stockade built to a standard of six hundred troops.

A six-hundred-man stockade crammed with thirteen hundred men was unbearably crowded, and problems arose with eating, drinking, shitting, and pissing.

He Huchen had spent an entire day with great difficulty rallying the morale of his routed troops.

The morale of these routed troops was indeed not easy to lift.

The elite soldiers who had first engaged the enemy had fled in rout three times in quick succession, and the troops on the second line of defense had also collapsed twice. By now, all were utterly terrified out of their wits.

They had also endured over a hundred li of muddy marching. Those who fell ill, those wounded in battle, those who went missing — the retreat back to West Mountain Pass was truly wretched to the extreme.

The first thing He Huchen did upon returning to West Mountain Pass was to have the mounted squad commander who had been first to flee executed as a warning to the troops.

Others had been routed; that man was a bona fide frontline deserter.

He Huchen forcibly suppressed the heartache of losing his son, rallying morale again and again, telling everyone that Lion Camp's skill was no greater than theirs — they had merely profited from that Red Barbarian Cannon.

With the rainy weather making the roads impassable, who knew when that Red Barbarian Cannon would even arrive.

Du Wenhuan's troops would certainly arrive first. When the time came, a two-pronged pincer attack would not lose.

In any case, that was what he said, and the soldiers listened with half-belief, half-doubt.

But as for actually making them take the offensive, they no longer dared.

Defending the stockade, however, posed no problem. After all, with many men and a small fort, the camp was packed full.

Yet, something He Huchen had never anticipated in his wildest dreams happened.

Two days after occupying the camp, He Huchen heard a subordinate report: "Commander, from the east — our captured soldiers are coming back."

"The captured soldiers are coming back?"

A sudden surge of joy rose in He Huchen's heart, and he hastily sent troops to receive them.

But when he actually saw the prisoners, his expression turned extremely complicated.

The captives looked truly wretched.

Stripped one and all of weapons and armor, wearing soaked thin tunics, you leaning on me, me leaning on you, some with leaves hanging off their bodies, others carrying the sick and wounded.

A vast, mighty procession of over six hundred men.

He Huchen could not say he did not want them back — they were, after all, soldiers under the Ningxia Regional Commander.

But truth be told, he might have felt a little more at ease if they had not come back.

In fact, the disaster for the Ningxia Camp truly began only after these six hundred-plus captives entered the camp.

Shen Guangxian had retreated together with He Huchen. Although his troops had collapsed, they had fought a hard battle after all, so He Huchen did not rebuke him much. Now he did not assign him to defense lines, only telling him to look after these returned captives.

Who would have thought that after just one night, Shen Guangxian came knocking, brimming with resentment.

"Commander, we can't keep these men."

Inside He Huchen's central command tent, Shen Guangxian shook his head and waved his hands. "They can't do any work. Six out of ten are sick, and they can't lie down with the wounded either. The moment they lie down, they start whispering about how well Lion Camp treats surrendered troops."

"They can't do anything, but they can eat plenty. Give them proper soldiers' rations, and they wolf it all down clean — that's one thing. But after eating their fill, they still complain, saying the food they got back here isn't as good as what they had at the enemy's place."

He Huchen asked, "They complained to you?"

"No, they complained to the other soldiers. When they see me, they don't say a word." Shen Guangxian grew angry just talking about it. "Now everyone in the stockade knows Lion Camp eats well and treats surrendered troops well. Some are even saying the Ningxia troops never should have come here."

After saying this, Shen Guangxian told He Huchen, "Right now, none of the soldiers in the whole stockade want to fight anymore. Shall we go back to Ningxia?"

He Huchen listened to these words, and no matter how he heard them, they left a bitter taste in his heart. Then, thinking of the frontline collapse, his tone toward Shen Guangxian turned sour. "Is it that none of the soldiers in the whole stockade want to fight, or is it that you, General Shen, don't want to fight?"

"Commander, I meant no such thing!"

Shen Guangxian was already nursing a grievance. I fought a bloody battle against the enemy on the front lines, my soldiers dead and wounded by the half, and still I did not retreat. In the end, the central army was scattered by a single cannon shot, and the two defense lines behind were as good as nonexistent — and now you turn around and blame me?

His words came out harsh too: "Go ask Zan boy yourself — he just came back from the captives!"

The moment these words were spoken, He Huchen's face lost all composure, and he glared with eyes full of murderous intent.

But it lasted only an instant. Then, thinking of his son's condition, he let out a long, deep sigh. In his heart, he more than half believed what Shen Guangxian had said. Suddenly seeming years older, he asked, "Guangxian, were we... were we wrong to come to Yan'an?"

He Zan's condition was extremely poor. Since returning, he had been utterly listless, speaking to no one, unable to muster any spirit all day, just sitting inside the army tent.

The moment those words left his mouth, Shen Guangxian knew he had blundered — he had surely wounded the Regional Commander's heart. In that instant, he had even thought up his outlaw name for after his rebellion.

But then, seeing He Huchen's tone unexpectedly soften, he finally relaxed and sighed. "In any case, this Liu the Lion is truly hard to fight. No wonder Du Wenhuan won't come fight him."

"Commander, I've been thinking. This Regional Commander Du of Yansui Garrison..."

Shen Guangxian shook his head, skipping the ugly words himself, and said, "We can't count him as part of our strength."

He Huchen did not want to speak ill of a colleague either.

Could Du Wenhuan fight? He could fight extremely well. He had fought over a hundred battles, large and small, against the Mongols and never lost. In terms of prestige, among the nine border commands of the imperial court, he ranked in the top three.

But as this man aged, he lost his ambition. He craved pleasure and was clever enough only to preserve himself. Sent to fight She-An, the man felt he could not win and resigned. Sent to reinforce Liaodong, he went and bullied the Mongols instead.

He had everything now and clearly had no wish to fight to the death anymore.

He Huchen shook his head. "With just our two thousand men against Liu the Lion, how can we not count him as part of our strength?"

But in truth, what He Huchen found hardest to accept was still He Zan's condition.

That night, He Zan entered the command tent, knelt, and pleaded: "Father, withdraw the troops."

"Brother Zan, what foolish talk is this?"

"Your son speaks no foolishness. We cannot defeat Liu the Lion. Withdrawing now is still in time. If we do not withdraw, all two thousand men will be taken by him. The more government troops campaign against him, the stronger he becomes."

He Zan hung his head low, not daring to look at his father.

He could not easily describe his feeling, but after pondering for days, he still could not think of how to deal with Liu Chengzong.

"He knows what the border troops want, yet what we cannot give, he can."

He Huchen had not yet fully grasped the meaning of these words. He had just thought, the border troops want promotion and wealth — how could his Liu the Lion give that?

Then chaos erupted outside.

Moments later, a household soldier entered the tent: "Grand Commander, Liu the Lion is here!"

"Liu the Lion is here — why is it so chaotic outside?"

He Huchen strode out of the command tent and saw every unit filing out of the camp in good order. He wondered, I gave no such order?

Immediately after, Shen Guangxian came galloping over, panic-stricken, shouting: "Grand Commander, the battalion commanders and company commanders can no longer control their men! All are defecting to the enemy, all defecting!"

Source: The Stubborn Bandits