Chapter 358: Crescent-Moon Blade

The entire force was deployed.

The eight thousand troops mustered from Xining City split into three columns and advanced swiftly abreast along the Huang River.

Chengyun shed his blue satin robe, donned a yellow-brown soldier's tunic with a coat of chain mail, shouldered a heavy arquebus, and rode his beloved little donkey, pressing on with his head down.

The true commander of this army was Battalion Vice Commander Wang Wenxiu of the infantry camp, who personally led thirty-six hundred infantry as the central column; the left wing was Chengyun's Liu Family Army, and the right wing was a motley force under Zhong Hu, the garrison commander of South Mountain Fort.

The left wing was called the Liu Family Army mainly because the two acting battalion commanders under Vice Commander Liu Chengyun were Heaven-Scaling Monkey Liu Jiusi and Collapsing-Sky Liu Guoneng — both surnamed Liu.

Under these three Lius were over two thousand men, more than half of them hastily conscripted tribal and Mongol soldiers; had the exceptionally cautious Liu Chengzong been here, he would not have used these people to fight even if he were short on recruits.

A person's political standing in the Marshal's Manor was determined not by bloodline or ethnicity, but by how the Marshal's Manor perceived that person.

The common folk of the two counties of Haixi and Haibei were no longer the same as before under the Marshal's Manor's rule; through intermarriage, labor, and conscription, the local tribal people and Mongols had all gone to places like Ju'er Bay, and merely herding cattle and sheep for the Marshal's Manor earned them more than they had ever made in Haixi.

Poor commoners might not have much education, but they were not stupid — if herding sheep in Haixi was for milking, selling sheep, and exchanging for Lion Notes to buy fine dried noodles in Ju'er Bay, then why not go straight to Ju'er Bay to herd sheep, drink the Grand Marshal's milk, earn Lion Notes, and buy fine dried noodles?

The tribal and Mongol soldiers there now were all outsiders just like the Han people — prisoners of war from the southern and northern campaigns; the tribal soldiers were captives from failed rebellions, and most of the Mongol soldiers were subordinates of Choktu Taiji.

Those who surrendered were all under Ahai Daiqing's command; these were the ones who refused to surrender and were defeated.

They lived the same life as those who had lost battles in Mongol tribes — discriminated against because of their prisoner-of-war status, unable to find wives or bear children.

Chengyun calculated again and again in Xining: with the military strength the Marshal's Manor currently kept in the rear, it was insufficient to simultaneously defend Xining and reinforce Liu Chengzong.

Even deploying the entire force, Xining City needed at least eight hundred reliable soldiers to guard the granaries under Liu Xiangyu's command... defending the city walls was out of the question — there were fewer soldiers than battlements, utterly unrealistic.

So Chengyun made lavish promises to these prisoners of war, offering them the status of ordinary civilians; only then did he manage to pull together over a thousand men, issue them weapons, find some unwanted old armaments from the storehouses, hastily arm them, and bring them to the battlefield.

The troops Collapsing-Sky Liu Guoneng led out — over four hundred Haixi soldiers carrying stone mortars and landmines on their shoulders — were the elite of the elite in the left wing.

Though the right wing was called a motley force, it was actually far more reliable than the left wing.

In terms of elite troops, the right wing had twelve hundred crack soldiers under Zhong Hu, all drawn from the Lion Army, plus Bao Hu's two hundred banner troops and Chen Shiwen's two hundred native soldiers.

In terms of arms and equipment, Zhong Hu had a full complement of roaring-bead cannons, one for every sixty men; Chen Shiwen had Mongol-forged wrought-iron cannons made under Choktu Taiji's supervision; and Bao Hu was even more impressive — he had dragged out the very Hongwu-era piece that guarded the parade ground at Guide Battalion.

On the earthen hill at Thirty-Li Post, He Yongji watched this exceedingly strange army, his brow furrowed, forcefully suppressing his urge to charge up and attack.

Chengyun's — or rather, Wang Wenxiu's — army looked very beatable.

The left wing's attire was a jumbled mess: some wore cloth-faced armor, some wore Mongol leather armor, and over a thousand wore nothing but fur-lined jackets.

The right wing's attire was passable, but bizarrely, Yuan-dynasty heavy armor and early Ming Hongwu cannons appeared among them.

The central column was clearly a crack regular force at a glance, but the problem was that all three battle formations were advancing abreast in deep columns, with two rows of dark figures sandwiched between them — most likely scattered cavalry.

What did this mean?

He Yongji could not understand.

Three parallel single-file snake formations were for marching on the road, but he could see the enemy, and the enemy could certainly see him — both sides were already within visual range, at most five or six li apart, so why had they not yet switched to layered formations advancing in waves?

Chieftain He's heart itched with eagerness; he had eight thousand native soldiers under his command — if his infantry held the front and his cavalry struck the flanks, cutting across the waists of those two long snakes on the left and right wings, scattering their messengers and formations, then even an immortal could not command these seven or eight thousand men through dream messages.

Unfortunately, Wang Cheng'en would not let him strike, and the enemy's three columns were moving quite fast; He Yongji could only order his native soldiers to form columns and pull back as well.

For a time, at the western end of the He-Huang Valley, nearly twenty thousand men formed a mass of columns advancing eastward together, their vast, majestic dust clouds blotting out the sky.

Before the dust ahead had even settled, the loose soil behind was already kicked up by donkey hooves; as they pressed on with heads down, messenger cavalry raced back and forth between the columns, delivering Wang Wenxiu's orders one after another.

Wang Wenxiu issued an order to all three columns: advance and do not retreat; any who retreated would be executed.

Then he specially sent a messenger to Chengyun, urging him to hand his troops over to Liu Guoneng and Liu Jiusi and move to the rear of the central column.

Chengyun thought to himself, urging me several times — this is a bit contemptuous; I gave you command of the army because I thought I couldn't win, not because I, Liu Chengyun, am a coward who fears death.

When my second brother fought, I personally escorted the carts and delivered cannonballs to the front line!

Chengyun waved the messenger back and said, "I'm not going. I'm staying with the left wing."

Not long after, Wang Wenxiu's messenger came again and said, "General Liu, General Wang says that since you wish to stand with the soldiers, he hopes you will not act rashly. The left wing need only face the enemy and hold them for a moment; after victory, General Wang will share wine and pleasant talk with you."

Chengyun nodded.

Hold for a moment?

What was Wang Wenxiu planning?

Chengyun did not ask. Having long since resolved to trust Wang Wenxiu, he sent no one to question him, only informing Heaven-Scaling Monkey and Collapsing-Sky, who led the troops, of this message.

Yet even though the message had been delivered, Wang Wenxiu still dispatched cavalry to raise flags at three positions — directly ahead, right-center, and right-rear of the left wing — to relay the advance order.

The two armies moved farther and farther through the river valley; Wang Wenxiu, at the rear, used flag soldiers to control the marching speed of the three great columns, slowing them one moment and quickening them the next, making the commanders of the left-wing formation utterly miserable.

There were already problems with verbal communication, and they were not on foot — they rode mules and donkeys; Liu Guoneng and Liu Jiusi paid an even greater cost in leading their units, and the formation marched in chaos.

It was Liu Chengyun, serving as a mascot within the army, who, in the spirit of learning more, raised his telescope and discerned a hint of the pattern — he could see that Wang Wenxiu was constantly controlling the distance from the enemy ahead.

But exactly what that distance was, he neither had as much command experience as Liu the Lion nor had studied at the training camp, so he did not know.

This set his heart pounding directly: was that fellow Wang Wenxiu actually planning to charge the enemy straight from column formation?

With a deep column like theirs, if it were struck squarely by a thousand-catty heavy cannon, a single cannonball would probably crush twenty men dead.

But if they were going to charge the enemy in deep columns, why had they brought so many firearms and cannons?

Liu Chengyun racked his brains but could not fathom it.

The infantry camp's heavy arquebuses, jingals, and cannons were all present, not one missing.

Lion cannons alone numbered forty pieces hauled along — twelve from the infantry camp, and twenty-eight that Liu the Lion had battered nearly to scrap at Eight-Pointed City, left at Ju'er Bay to await recasting, all dragged out by Wang Wenxiu.

That batch of cannons had thirty-six pieces in total; eight had bulges on the outside of the barrel, and Wang Wenxiu had not brought those.

But in truth, the bores of these twenty-eight had also expanded and deformed inside; if fired slowly, they could still manage a couple of shots.

Now Wang Wenxiu led thirty company columns, concentrating the Lion cannons, jingals, and heavy arquebuses in the front ten columns, and was even changing formation on the march — at first the infantry camp advanced in three parallel company columns, but as they marched they shifted into two parallel company columns, stretching the entire force even longer.

In truth, Wang Wenxiu's army was quite at ease during the advance; though most soldiers wore armor, it was the donkeys that bore the hardship. The Hezhou native soldiers ahead were different — they did not have so many donkeys and mules, and having crossed mountains and ridges to get here, they did not even have many cavalry.

Just then, through the sky-filling dust raised by the marching army, the great wailing sound of horns rose from ahead, and Chengyun saw the enemy before him spreading outward from the center toward both flanks.

Then he heard faint but continuous hoofbeats.

A cavalry force emerged at a walk from the center of the river valley that the Hezhou native soldiers had opened; the native soldiers yielded the center, and one formation after another wheeled and reached its designated position in the process, like an ancient scroll unfurling across the river valley, slowly spreading from the center outward to both sides.

But those several hundred cavalry did not halt; they passed through the infantry lines and continued forward, then spread out across the river valley, seemingly intent on driving off Wang Wenxiu's scout cavalry.

Wang Wenxiu issued orders to both wings, commanding the army to continue advancing while the cavalry sortied to drive off the enemy horsemen.

On the right wing, the cavalry of Zhong Hu's unit moved at the order — three hundred mounted troops filed out through the gaps between the large columns, first spreading into three company formations before the line, then dispersing into six platoon formations, each man gripping a lance and bow as they rode to meet the enemy cavalry.

By comparison, the left wing was like a senile old man, muddled in the head and sluggish in the limbs — by the time the enemy cavalry had already galloped past the center of the battlefield, its horse troops were only just dashing out one platoon after another, and there were even Mongol soldiers riding mules who followed them out.

Chengyun sighed inwardly — with troop quality like this, holding them off for a quarter hour looked far from easy.

He urged his little donkey forward a few steps, found Liu Guoneng, and said, "Magistrate Liu, keeping the line steady will be up to you shortly."

Liu Guoneng, after all, had soldiers he could trust in his hands, and that stiffened his spine — leading his horse alongside the mule's back, he laughed and said, "Rest easy, Third General. When we form up, my men will be at the very front. We'll scare them with the stone cannons."

This batch of stone-cannon mines had originally been prepared for Arslan, but in the end no one went to attack him, and they nearly rotted away unused.

When Liu Chengyun summoned him this time, Liu Guoneng had originally intended to make some wooden palisades and chevaux-de-frise in Haixi County and bring them along on small carts, but later he figured they could just as well make those things in Xining City, so he brought the stone-cannon mines instead.

He had not expected to end up fighting a field battle — it was the perfect chance to use the stone cannons. With stone cannons, the enemy might not dare to charge head-on; firing arrows and muskets from behind a minefield would make it relatively harder for their own side to be routed.

Relatively, of course — because only the left wing was at risk of being routed by enemy arrow fire. They were not regular troops.

For regular troops, as long as the formation held and the enemy possessed no super-range weapon they themselves lacked, petty tricks like shooting arrows and muskets could at most drive them back. Unless they were losing in hand-to-hand combat at the same time as taking fire, they could not simply be routed.

Regardless, the lead cavalry of both armies still collided along the centerline of the battlefield, erupting into small-scale skirmishes, while all the while Wang Wenxiu's army continued its rapid column advance.

Lintao Regional Commander Wang Cheng'en arrived late, leading his infantry to the battlefield behind the cavalry. Just as he spurred his horse forward to hear the tribal chief He Yongji report the enemy situation face-to-face, he saw this Marshal's Headquarters army advancing rapidly through the river valley in three great columns, the two sides no more than three or four li apart.

After hearing He Yongji's report and learning that the enemy's left wing seemed a little weaker, and connecting that with the enemy's advance in large columns, a battle plan took shape in Wang Cheng'en's mind.

He immediately gave the order to his own standard-bearer camp, which was likewise marching in a single long line: "The head stays put; the main body shifts north into a horizontal formation."

The Lintao standard-bearer camp also had three chiliarchs. "The head" meant the lead chiliarch's unit would not move, while the two units behind would form up on the head's right flank, merging the three chiliarch columns side by side.

Since the enemy wanted to close to hand-to-hand combat in the shortest time using columns, that decided it — his Lintao troops could not use a shallow, wide horizontal formation to counter the columns. But even if he used columns too, he still had to maintain an advantage in width.

It was still the old tradition of dividing the force into five recon sections — only by being wider than the opponent in the lateral dimension could he complete the encirclement faster and better.

At this moment, however, Wang Cheng'en had no intention of enveloping them head-on. Although he had shown much contempt for Liu Chengzong during the Lanzhou council, Liu the Lion had, after all, defeated He Huchen in a frontal battle and possessed the ability to fight a regional commander head-on. This battle would not be easy.

So his plan was to envelop from the north, squeezing Wang Wenxiu and his right-wing forces against the southern mountains, while He Yongji led the Hezhou troops to first smash the left wing, which looked the weakest, and then rely on the double numerical advantage of over ten thousand men to deal with the remaining five or six thousand.

In the blink of an eye, the two armies were a thousand paces apart. Wang Wenxiu still did not alter his formation, simply charging straight ahead with his three divisions. This made the Lintao cavalry, locked in an indecisive struggle at the battlefield's center, dare not linger in the fight — they drew bows and nocked arrows, shooting as they fought a retreat eastward.

Seeing this, Wang Cheng'en also issued the advance order to his soldiers, who had not yet finished shifting from column.

This caused his army, while on the march, to form three disjointed columns from south to north, each lagging behind the one in front.

And on the left and right flanks of these three columns, the Hezhou native troops, spreading out to fill the river valley from north to south, took the shape of great pike formations, forming an ancient scroll slowly unrolling to both sides.

As his main force advanced, his right wing deployed in a slow march, and his left wing halted and deployed — eleven thousand men formed a colossal crescent-moon formation spanning the river valley, sweeping forward.

Eight hundred paces apart, the Marshal's Headquarters' left wing began to waver. His troops still rode their donkeys and mules forward under orders, but the soldiers were full of alarm. One doubt after another was reported up from the company commanders and even the centurions — men suspected the commander meant to have them charge the enemy line on donkeyback.

Liu Guoneng and Liu Jiusi were both full of misgivings, especially Liu Guoneng: "Halt! We need to get the soldiers off their mounts and reform the ranks. Any further advance and we'll rush to the front and take cannon fire!"

The government army's cannons were still fresh in his memory — if a government cannon hadn't shattered one of his legs, who knew how many campaigns he'd have fought by now, and he'd more or less be a general himself.

Even if not a general of the Marshal's Headquarters, he might have been a general of the imperial court — after all, that Yang Yanchang had already become a general!

Chengyun's brows twitched on his pale little face. His heart pounded fast as he wavered, but in the end a ruthless glint flashed in his eyes. He raised his horsewhip and said, "I don't understand military matters, but orders come from one mouth — without an order, no one stops. Advance!"

In the center, Wang Wenxiu kept glancing left and right as he advanced, his fists clenched tight, looking extremely flustered — until he saw that neither the left nor right wing had halted at this distance. Only then did he finally nod and smile: "Send the order — the left and right wings are to dismount at five hundred paces from the enemy, steady the line, and leave breaking the enemy formation to the center."

With that, he finally set his mind at ease and spurred his horse into the formation.

Then the soldiers of the center urged their donkeys and mules forward, and the pace of the advance suddenly quickened. The left and right wings halted at five hundred paces from the enemy, while the center continued driving forward, advancing straight into the sharpest blade-edge of that crescent-moon saber swinging toward them.

Four hundred paces. The cavalry of both armies slowly returned to their main formations; their mission now was to seek an opening to charge the formations during the infantry battle.

The Lintao border troops, marching in three chiliarch columns, also halted at this distance. Soldiers pushed Frankish swivel guns forward toward the front of the line.

Seizing this moment, Wang Wenxiu advanced his troops another fifty paces, and only then ordered the soldiers to dismount from the donkeys and mules, driving several dozen of the animals forward ahead of the formation.

Just then, the government army's cannons finished setting up, and one Frankish swivel gun after another opened fire, booming straight at the front of the great column formation.

Some cannonballs struck the donkeys, and the herd, panicked, ran wild before the line. Other cannonballs landed in front of the formation, and a few fell within the ranks. But the range was great and the shot was small-caliber, so the casualties were light — only a few men in the two foremost company formations were knocked down.

One Frankish swivel gun after another fired, reloaded, fired again, reloaded again.

Enduring volley after volley of rapid cannon fire, Wang Wenxiu's vanguard trampled over the carcasses of donkeys and mules, driving still more of the animals forward as they advanced slowly. Fifty paces — in fifty paces, the government army completed one full cycle of Frankish rapid fire.

As the gunpowder smoke before the line gradually cleared, Wang Cheng'en spurred his horse forward two steps and frowned. He saw donkey and mule blood spattered all across the valley floor. Amid the sound of horns, the enemy's two columns parted like cleaved waves, and the two foremost units, like an unrolling scroll, pushed their cannon carts outward to both sides and deployed into square formations.

Without a doubt, the opponent had also recognized the width problem of two columns. Wang Cheng'en immediately gave the order for his own formation's left side to march left, the right side to march right, and the center column to advance and form a reserve, creating depth with two hundred-man square formations.

But he never expected that at this very moment, across the field, Wang Wenxiu — seeing the Lintao border troops spread out their formation — would clench his fists tight on horseback and let out an arrogant laugh: "Ha! You really did shift formation like that!"

The government army's formation change had the rearmost units spreading diagonally toward the farthest edges. The closer a sub-unit was to the front within the larger formation, the shorter the distance it had to march and the more strength it conserved; the further back it was, the longer the march and the later it arrived.

But in Wang Wenxiu's formation, the men at the very front marched the farthest, while the two rearmost sub-units only needed to advance straight forward to fill the foremost positions. Overall, each small square formation took nearly the same amount of time, but the formation change as a whole was faster.

Faster by three volleys of musket fire.

One military formation after another rapidly deployed. The government army's two hundred-man companies that finished forming up first were still hurriedly stowing their cannons when Wang Wenxiu's last four company square formations reached the front, pushing four lion cannons forward under Wang Wenxiu's command as they continued to advance.

The four company formations on the left and right flanks followed like shadows, slightly behind, likewise pushing lion cannons forward. Close behind came the ninth and tenth companies on each flank. The entire battle formation had completed its deployment — with the four center companies as the arrowhead, it continued its assault in a wild-goose formation.

Two hundred fifty paces. The Lintao army, its formation still unsteady, grew more and more tense. Over ten crouching-tiger cannons before the line let loose, spraying a skyful of stones and iron shards. At the same time, one Frankish swivel gun was finally cleared, loaded with a cooled sub-chamber, and fired a shot toward the front.

But Wang Wenxiu's two arrowhead companies had already reached two hundred paces. They set four lion cannons before the line and, at the cannons' maximum point-blank range, sent cannonballs slamming into the enemy formation ahead.

Yet this was only the beginning. The two formations clinging close to their left and right also reached position and likewise fired several cannonballs in the same direction — like a wild goose beating its wings one after another, they sent cannonball after cannonball crashing into the enemy ranks at point-blank range.

Cannonball after cannonball struck, smashed down, bounced up, and smashed down again, grinding over one soldier after another.

Until, at the very edges to the north and south, the square formations facing government troops that had still not managed to form ranks — these two formations fired a shot first, then launched a rapid charge at the enemy.

The enemy's matchlockmen fired scattered, panicked shots, and feeble, sporadic lead pellets struck the ground at the soldiers' feet.

A few men let out muffled grunts as they were hit. Two clutched their wounds, dug out the little lead cakes, and kept advancing. Three more were knocked down, struggled to their feet, and moved aside into the gaps of the formation, their fighting capacity spent.

The others kept advancing, their pace quickening step by step. Then they halted. Ten heavy muskets, at the command, loosed massive lead slugs into the enemy ranks. At a hundred fifty paces, several breaches were torn through the hundred-man square formation.

Then the heavy muskets were discarded. The heavy-musket men went light, and the formation surged forward again in a rapid assault. Another hundred paces. The enemy, in their haste, had finally completed their formation change, steadying their ranks as the soldiers behind filled the gaps at the front. But the Marshal's Headquarters' hundred-man company also halted — this time, it was a line of heavy musketeers.

Bang!

A cloud of gunpowder smoke rose before the line. The same scene — one heavy musket after another was thrown to the ground, and the formation continued forward. The musketeers drew their waist sabers and rested them on their shoulders, following the formation as it advanced another sixty paces.

The company commander, waist saber in hand, directed his left flank to wheel left and forward. The entire formation suddenly veered left at a distance of eighty or ninety paces from the enemy line.

Revealing another hundred-man squad twenty paces behind them: their waist-sword men had already picked up the heavy muskets, their blade-and-shield men had retrieved the heavy arquebuses, finished loading powder and shot, and were now forming a double-strength heavy musket and arquebus squad, deploying in a double-width firing line.

Before their centurion could give the order to fire, the enemy formation before them was already wavering and trying to retreat out of fear. Amid the roar of a volley, gunpowder smoke bloomed. Row after human wall collapsed. In the silent thud of bodies struck down and faint groans, the centurion squad that had finished firing abandoned all firearms and, forming a four-rank horizontal line — archers forward, blade-and-shield next, long-spears after, swordsmen last — strode forward with a battle cry.

At the same time, on the right wing, Zhong Hu's unit bombarded the native soldiers with a mass of gushing-bead cannons, then immediately closed to hand-to-hand combat.

And at the very center of the battlefield, where Wang Wenxiu stood in the middle of the wild-goose formation, he surveyed the tactical situation. Along his battle line, he saw no enemy breakthrough anywhere. A cruel smile spread across his face: "Commander-in-Chief Wang, that playbook of yours is obsolete!"

The deformed wild-goose formation launched an assault forward as a whole. The crescent-blade halberd that had been hacking at their faces was now chipped and blunted; they, in turn, formed a brand-new crescent-blade halberd, striking straight for the throat of the Lintao Army!