Chapter 308: Unclear

On the snowy mountain, Guyang Batur, wrapped in a thick fur robe, bounced lightly on the snow. He raised a hand to rub his chapped face, sniffled through his red, frozen nose, and an involuntary grunt escaped his throat. This place was a frozen world of bitter cold, and he couldn't stop shivering.

His thick Mongol riding boots crunched and squeaked against the snow as he hopped. Guyang gazed across the Yellow River toward the far bank, where halfway up the mountain, those Han soldiers under the Marshal were putting on a show of force.

Watching the scattered fires on the snowy mountain across the river, Guyang sneered inwardly with contempt. Those fellows knew how to spare their horses, hiding themselves up in the mountains, afraid no one would spot them.

Guyang gave a cold laugh, but a bubble of snot burst from his nostril. He hastily pinched it away with thumb and forefinger and wiped it on a snow-covered rock. "Move, move, move. Too cold. They've got no reinforcements, they won't dare attack. Without their three-eye guns, they're nothing."

They had tried to capture the enemy scouts and suffered a bitter, silent loss. Now they simply made camp at the two mountain passes on the north bank. The climate here was too harsh, almost unbearable.

The herdsmen-soldiers standing guard on the snowy mountain felt as if they'd been granted a great pardon. One by one, they hurried down the mountain, chatting as they walked about roasting a whole sheep.

Guyang and the black-hatted, red-crested monk beside him lagged behind. Hearing his men's talk, he couldn't help but laugh. "Roast a sheep, heh!"

Ever since the Khalkha nobles drove them from the Tuul River, they had followed Choktu Taiji, drifting from place to place, living a hard life.

It had been five or six years since he had heard such carefree, hearty, extravagant words from his men.

In the past, when it came to food, the most common question his men asked was not what they would eat tomorrow, but whether they would eat at all.

Guyang Batur led his shivering herdsmen-soldiers down the mountain and suddenly turned to the monk and asked, "Great Master, we don't launch the campaign until winter ends, right?"

The black-hatted monk, also freezing, had his arms wrapped around himself and was stamping his feet. He paused at the question, then nodded. "Right. Has Batur's head been frozen numb? We skirt the Gansu border, enter northern Su from Yumen, cross the Gobi, spend all spring grazing horses at the oases of Greater and Lesser Chuodan, and only raid the territory of Chancellor Duoluo Huoluochi as summer approaches."

Chancellor Duoluo Huoluochi — that ancient, almost childish title suddenly yanked Guyang Batur back into memories from sixteen years ago.

Back then, Choktu Taiji was still young, around thirty-eight, born into the most powerful noble family of the Khalkha.

His eldest uncle was named Abatai, his third uncle was named Tumengken, his father was the military aristocrat Hoshoqi Bakalai, and his mother was the daughter of an Ongniud Bek.

But until the age of thirty-eight, Choktu Taiji had never done anything of real consequence. He spent seventeen years with his mother on the Mobei grasslands, building six great temples.

Though, to be fair, hardly anyone on the grasslands did anything of real consequence back then. The biggest undertaking was temple-building.

Whether obeying the Great Ming Khan or the local Mongol lords, it did nothing useful for daily life. Fighting and selling your head in battle wouldn't get you a few iron pots. But if you drove tens of thousands of livestock to Guihua City, the great monk Sonam, who resided among the Tumed, didn't deal in empty promises — he could genuinely make you a Khan.

This Huoluochi, the Chancellor, was none other than the Chancellor of Altan Khan at the time.

In those days, Choktu Taiji had few people around him. Only two youths shadowed him daily: one was the attendant Daiqing, and the other was Batur Guyang.

Guyang came back to himself. The 464th year of Genghis Khan — the memory of hunting with the Taiji in the Khangai Mountains felt like yesterday. In the blink of an eye, he found himself in a place even colder than his mother's Khangai Mountains.

This made him curse, and he turned to the monk and asked, "We spent half a year fighting Guru?"

The monk shook his head. "Less than a month."

"Then tell me this: how did I walk out of the winter desert, spend a month, and walk straight from spring back into winter?"

This region was far too strange. Everyone said the further south you went, the warmer it got, and Han territory was especially warm. Yet they had been traveling south the whole time, and the further they went, the colder it became.

They had prepared to deal with the Marshal's army, but never expected it to be this cold after following the Golmud River out. It was clearly summer, yet the mornings and nights were hardly warmer than the winter outside the Gansu border.

The monk, however, didn't care and shook his head calmly. "Lazang has fled. All of Chancellor Duoluo Huoluochi's territory now belongs to Choktu Taiji. Before long, the Taiji will become a Khan, Batur will become a Noyan, and even the little horses will grow noble because of it."

"Chancellor my ass, Noyan my ass, Khan... the Taiji becoming Khan is good."

Guyang spat out a string of curses, then realized he'd let a careless remark slip. He turned to the monk with a grin. "Great Master, don't tell the Taiji that, or he'll start lecturing me again about revering the Great Khan."

Shaking his head helplessly, Guyang led the monk down the mountain. They mounted their horses and rode toward the tent camp at the mountain pass, not daring to ride fast — speed meant cold.

Not long after they entered the camp, on the opposite riverbank, by the bonfire at the mountaintop sentry post, Liu Chengzong, his teeth clenched against the cold, put away his telescope and laughed as he cursed. "Damn, I refuse to believe that Tartar can outlast me in the cold. They've all crawled into their tents to warm up and eat. Tell Dai Daozi to wave the flag, and have Zou Feng cross the river!"

The summer evening here was slightly warmer than a winter day in Dajianlu. It was indeed very cold, but for Liu Shizi, who had come up from the south, as long as he didn't spend too long on the mountaintop, it wasn't a big problem.

Compared to Lucheng, it was colder here, but compared to the hardest stretch of the Xikang official road — the route north from Yushu and south from the Yellow River — reaching the Yellow River's source meant the environment was already improving for them. And once they crossed the Yellow River, the weather would be warmer and the roads easier.

The first to move out were the vanguard, Zou Feng, and his father-in-law's Mengxie Fanzi troops.

Over two hundred men launched cowhide rafts into the river east of the source to cross. This ancient craft from Ningxia was sturdy and reliable, though it pained the heart a little to see the hides used this way.

Zou Feng's batch of hide rafts had been hastily made, without being dried in the sun or oiled. After a few uses, they would rot and fall apart, unlike the more durable rafts Liu Chengzong had commissioned.

This group's crossing went very smoothly. They were few in number, without much heavy equipment, and the Mongol gear they wore was the best camouflage. Even if spotted from a distance, they had little to worry about.

Next, Huang Shengxiao and Gao Yingdeng led six hundred artillerymen and six hundred cavalry across the river, and their crossing was far less smooth.

Although they tried to place all heavy weapons on the two ferry boats, there were too many suits of armor and too few boats. The soldiers had to wear their armor and launch hide rafts from the various shallows on the southern bank for a mass crossing north.

The moment the main force entered the water, the entire stretch of the Yellow River erupted in noise. Men tumbled into the river, warhorses overturned the hide rafts — for a moment, human shouts and horse neighs shattered the tranquility beneath the snowy mountain.

The Mongol camp at the mountain pass instantly exploded into chaos. Liu Chengzong saw countless figures burst from their tents — some mounting horses, some running on foot. Both sides were rapidly forming up.

On the river, the soldiers manning the hide rafts were busy fishing out those who had fallen overboard. Eventually, they simply gave up, turned the rafts around, and came back to ferry Ba Sang's Left Battalion across.

Abandoning the rescue didn't mean leaving men to fend for themselves in the river. It was mainly because the river wasn't wide, and most had fallen in past the halfway point. The vast majority of the fallen soldiers, shouting and thrashing violently in the water, eventually discovered that if they knelt on the riverbed, half their heads still stuck out.

Survival had never been so simple — just stand up.

Huang Shengxiao's artillery unit reacted very quickly. They had trained for half a year at Juer Bay, their talents unused. They had finally marched south with the army, traveled three months to reach Nangqian, participated in a single assault on a mountain fort, and then became a garrison force training for another half year. From top to bottom, they were bursting with pent-up energy.

Especially since this artillery unit's equipment had been changed again and again — from the small cannons first captured from government troops, to the medium Lion Cannons they cast themselves, and back to seventy-jin small cannons. Everyone was eager to test the power of these little toys.

Watching through his telescope from the mountain, Liu Chengzong found Huang Shengxiao's artillery unit rather interesting.

One after another, seventy-jin Lynx Cub cannons were unloaded from the ferry boats. Each gun crew was three men. This cannon was designed for rapid movement in mountain warfare and assaulting forts. In design philosophy, it was basically a patchwork monster; Liu Chengzong could see the shadow of every cannon they had ever used.

For instance, the combined ammunition-box-and-carriage of the Rolling Pearl Cannon, the proportionally scaled-down shape of the Lion Cannon, and the single-wheeled cart of the General Cannon — Huang Shengxiao had crammed them all into one gun.

Through the telescope, he saw the three-man gun crew: one man wrapped a thick cotton pad around the barrel, hoisted it by the trunnions onto his shoulder; the other two, one carrying the ammunition box that doubled as a carriage and the other pushing a single-wheel cart, quickly assembled it. Finally, they placed the small cannon onto the cart, locked it in place with a mortise-and-tenon joint, and pushed it straight onto the battlefield.

And the jingal teams — Huang Shengxiao's jingal teams were also three men. Two blade-men carried the jingal gun, while the gunner, like a turtle carrying its shell, bore a large shield on his back and carried half a bench in his hand — perfectly suited for a brawl.

The equipment of the other six soldiers in the squad was much lighter: four arquebusiers and two pikemen, using four little donkeys in patterned cloth coats to carry four Nangqian-made bird guns and eight large baskets containing all the supplies the squad needed for battle.

In the mountains on the south bank, they still had a large number of mules, warhorses, and heavy supply carts that hadn't been brought across to the north bank.

This group rapidly assembled on the riverbank — five squads to a platoon, two platoons to a company — forming a horizontal formation with wide frontage and shallow depth. Before Gao Yingdeng's cavalry had all mounted up, six companies had already stepped off to launch an assault on the Mongol camp at the mountain pass.

Seeing this through his telescope, Liu Chengzong first furrowed his brow, then quickly relaxed. The Khalkha herdsmen-soldiers' reaction wasn't slow. After all, his men had to board and disembark from rafts, while the Mongols only needed to rush out of their felt tents.

Though most of them would still have to run back in to put on their armor.

By the time Gao Yingdeng's cavalry finished assembling, the enemy infantry and cavalry would be assembled too. Better to strike first.

Liu Chengzong knew in his heart that Little Huang definitely hadn't launched the attack early for any grand strategic reason — it was simply because fighting Tartars was his specialty.

This young battalion commander of the Lion Army, with only one ear, had been born on the frontier. He had spent the most terrifying time of his life in a yellow-earth beacon tower beyond the Great Wall, often facing sudden raids by hundreds of Mongol soldiers, with nothing to rely on but an old cannon, a beacon tower with no ladder, and a few branded convict-soldiers.

Liu Chengzong could guarantee that, at this very moment, as Huang Shengxiao looked at the Mongols, the only thought filling his heart was: "Your old man's finally got his day."

Six horizontal ranks spread out in a single line and pressed toward the narrow mountain pass. From the Mongol main camp behind the wooden palisade, two hundred-man squads rushed out to spread across the flanks on alert, and an iron-armored Tatar who looked like a centurion spurred his horse to the front, raising his hooked sickle-spear and shouting something unintelligible.

Then Liu Chengzong saw that Huang Shengxiao's artillerymen remained utterly unmoved, but from the flanking cavalry a single rider burst forth with leveled lance, charging straight at that iron-armored Tatar to kill. With still forty or fifty paces between them — bang! — a cannon roared, and a cloud of smoke rose before the formation.

The iron-armored Tatar collapsed at the sound; both man and horse were dead.

Gao Yingdeng, who had charged halfway, was left reining in his horse and standing dumbfounded between the two battle lines, his lance tucked under his arm. He looked at the fallen warhorse, then at the gunpowder smoke slowly dispersing over the artillery ranks. He looked back and forth twice, then, amid the Mongols' furious arrow storm, cursed under his breath and rode back to his own lines.

Huang Shengxiao waved away the smoke at the front of the formation and handed the firing hook to a subordinate. "What are you standing around for? Load the shot… What, only he gets to ride and shoot arrows, but I don't get to fire a cannon from the ground?"

Watching Gao Yingdeng's reaction from the snowy mountain, Liu Chengzong couldn't help laughing out loud. The terrifying influence of Romance of the Three Kingdoms showed not only in how Ming army retainers and low-ranking officers all favored the crescent-moon blade as their weapon, but also in how, whether Han or Mongol, generals who clamored for single combat always appeared on the battlefield.

The key thing was, this wasn't something one man could pull off alone — someone had to issue the challenge, and someone had to accept it. Yet, as it happened, in this era someone often did accept.

Just a few years ago, the Taotie bandit chief Han Gan'erma, who plagued the four border-defense garrisons, challenged the Great Ming's Ningxia Regional Commander You Shilu to a duel before the battle lines. And You Shilu actually took up the challenge — in front of the formations, he struck Gan'erma from his horse with a single iron mace, and gear like golden-dragon armor and a red-sand warhorse scattered all over the ground.

In the past, Liu Chengzong had only heard of such things but never witnessed them. Today, he could count himself fortunate to see it with his own eyes — and what's more, he had two heroes under his command, both daring enough to answer the call.

A tremendous boost to martial prestige!

As the Tatar who looked like a centurion was toppled by Huang Shengxiao's single cannon shot, the two hundred-odd Tatar riders scattered, then adopted a formation of a hundred riders shepherding a mass of infantry as they swept in from the flank toward Huang Shengxiao's horizontal line, hoping to roll up the formation and create an opening for the mounted infantry behind them to charge through.

But the small cannons of the artillery horizontal line fired.

Huang Shengxiao's horizontal line possessed extremely high firepower density. Under the rotating volleys of muskets and cannons, lead balls and iron shot tore through the air, striking the flanking cavalry force so hard that men and horses toppled in heaps on both wings of the horizontal line. The survivors hastily pulled back, only to collide head-on with the mounted infantry surging out of the stockade, jamming together in a tangled mass at the mountain pass.

Liu Chengzong observed carefully before he finally discovered the secret behind the dense firepower of Huang Shengxiao's small-unit formation. Soldiers using matchlock arquebuses, if standing too close, were prone to accidents, so they were generally spaced half a person's width apart or even farther. But in Huang Shengxiao's formation, the arquebusiers stood with men between them, yet the firepower remained remarkably dense.

Because the heavy muskets had been designed by Shi Chengwo with flintlock mechanisms, and the priming pan of the heavy musket was on the right side, while the matchlock arquebus's slow match was also on the right.

In every squad, the arquebusier stood to the left of the heavy musket, and the arquebusier from another squad could stand right up against the left side of that heavy musket without worrying about igniting the slow match.

The artillerymen worked at their leisure, swapping canister shot for solid iron balls. The four central hundred-man squads fired one volley, then slowly and methodically lifted their equipment and advanced ten paces. The arquebusiers in front halted to reload, while those behind continued advancing and launched a fresh round of fire at the stockade. Meanwhile, the two hundred-man squads on the flanks anchored their positions and held firm, providing cover for the vanguard's wings.

Gao Yingdeng, watching from the flank, ground his teeth in fury. Fine, you stole my chance at a pre-battle duel by relying on firearms — but now you artillerymen are stealing my flank-covering duties too?

Taking advantage of the twenty-plus paces of space that opened up between the front and rear squads, Gao Yingdeng promptly split his six hundred cavalry into two forces, one left and one right, skirting around their own army's formation from the flanks.

But once he circled around, he was dumbfounded again. The musket and cannon fire was simply too dense, and Huang Shengxiao showed no sign of stopping. The artillerymen kept up their rotating volleys, advancing ten paces with each push, until the Mongol troops in the mountain-pass fort being pounded by the bombardment collapsed completely.

This artillery unit, specially drilled at Nangsuo Qianmo Palace for attacking and seizing mountain passes and fortresses, had six hundred men armed with a full fifty small bronze cannons, fifty heavy muskets, and two hundred matchlock arquebuses — and that was after they had left all their heavy muskets with Cao Yao to defend the city before setting out, for the sake of traveling light.

How could Gao Yingdeng have known that Huang Shengxiao wasn't just pressing forward relentlessly to steal glory?

It was simply that the gunpowder smoke was too thick, and he couldn't see a thing.