Chapter 490: Liu Cheng Yun's Judgment

In truth, Cheng Yun was so terrified his legs were trembling uncontrollably.

He had never experienced a great rout, much less a rout with neither of his elder brothers at his side; at such a moment the entire army had no backbone, yet he, by bloodline alone, was the tallest among dwarves and forced to become that backbone.

But he knew his own limits — at a time like this, Liu Chengzu or Liu Chengzong could shoulder this beam, rally the troops, and steady the line; of the three brothers, he alone could not.

Gathering routed soldiers and stabilizing the line was not hard for him, but where should the line be stabilized? Cheng Yun did not know.

Worst of all, he had no one at his side who could make a decision. Basang and Xie Erhu were themselves the two weakest brigade commanders in the Marshal's headquarters; all the officers of the two garrison brigades put together could not match a single field-camp colonel when it came to offering advice.

But Cheng Yun could not blame them either. He knew very well that throughout this nearly four-month battle, Basang and Xie Erhu had consistently performed above their level — it was simply that their strength was limited; they were third-rate contenders to begin with, and above-level performance only made them second-rate.

That everyone had survived this long was thanks to united hearts overcoming every difficulty; expecting anything more would be simply unreasonable.

Ever since Xie Erhu's troops collapsed outside the city and Bai Guang'en launched his fierce assault on Zhuanglang Garrison, Cheng Yun's mind had been numb. When Basang and A Liu came forward to suggest breaking out, he agreed in a daze and fled with them.

Only when they reached West Datong River Fort did Cheng Yun's head clear a little, and he began to think about what he could do. While sending men to search for Xie Erhu, Wasi, and Ahai Daiqing from Hehuang East Pass, he summoned Basang and A Liu to ask why they had fled here.

Fortunately, Basang and A Liu had not fled blindly. They had been frightened by the fighting power of Cao Wenzhao's cavalry. From the first day Bai Guang'en attacked the city, they had been discussing a breakout; after two days of discussion and repeated deliberation, they had come up with this plan to flee to the Liancheng mountain region and hold West Datong River Fort.

The enemy was many and they were few. Staying in the city meant certain death a hundred times over; fleeing south and clashing with Cao Wenzhao's Ming army in the field meant certain death a thousand times over; the only option was to flee west into the mountains.

The tribal soldiers were not nimble forming large formations on the plains, but they crossed mountains and rivers as if on level ground; fighting the Ming army in mountain forests would let them play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses.

Understanding this, Cheng Yun asked, "Liancheng — can we hold it for three months?"

Basang and A Liu looked at each other; neither knew.

Basang had fought a few ragged battles with tribal soldiers against the tusi lord in Kangning Prefecture, but those were all swift advances and swift retreats — not a single battle had lasted more than ten days.

A Liu, by contrast, was rich in experience. In his youth he had followed She Chongming through over a hundred battles, but his experience in defending cities was something he himself had no confidence in — every city She Chongming had taken had been lost in the end.

Now Cheng Yun was asking them to estimate how long they could defend relying on the Liancheng mountain region — how could they possibly know!

The two said nothing, and Cheng Yun had a rough idea of the answer in his heart. He thought, this won't do — I can afford not to trust your strength, but you absolutely must not start doubting yourselves!

If even the confidence of commanders is beaten out of them, isn't collapse just a matter of time?

So he encouraged them: "Though we lost at the Zhuanglang River, do not be disheartened, Generals. We are merely a flank force on the battlefield. The more troops they waste on us, the longer they delay, the easier it is for my brother, isn't that the logic? As long as my brother wins, even if we lose a hundred times, in the end it is still victory!"

In truth, Cheng Yun himself had no confidence in these words. The men in northern Shaanxi who dared the beheading trade were all reckless daredevils; pick any one at random and he was reliable.

He was different — he was timid. Deep down, he had never considered himself a reliable person; it was only at critical moments that he forced himself to be reliable.

Fortunately, Liu Chengzong's prestige was as steady as Mount Tai in Basang's heart. The moment Cheng Yun invoked his second brother's name, Basang's fear vanished. He nodded and said, "Right. Even if we die to the last man, we will not ruin the Grand Marshal's plans."

A Liu had little in common with Basang. Hearing this, he turned his face away and said, "If you want to die, go die. I still haven't raced Liu Guoneng — I can't die. Third General, leave the defense of the Liancheng mountain region to us."

Having said this, A Liu glanced at Basang. Whatever else, having allies who did not treat their own lives as precious was always a good thing. He said, "Before General Ba dies, the Ming army will not enter Hehuang from here."

A Liu immediately led the officers of the Yongning Battalion to set up defenses in the mountains, digging trenches and laying traps. Basang called on the Western Tribal Battalion to fight to the death, issuing a military order that those who fell without merit would not be granted rites of deliverance and would be forbidden reincarnation.

And Liu Cheng Yun bore an even heavier mission — he had to ensure that Hehuang could hold out until the day Liu Chengzong was victorious.

The first place he had to go was East Pass Town, one of the Five Towns of Hehuang. There stood the five watchtowers Liu Chengzong had built with bricks torn from the walls of Xigu City, and it was also the direction in which Xie Erhu's Mongol brigade had fled.

On the road, Cheng Yun's mind was filled with one task after another he had to do. He had to first steady people's hearts, then stabilize the defensive line.

The situation in Hehuang was unprecedentedly chaotic. More than the Western Tribal Brigade, whose morale remained steady, Cheng Yun worried about the Mongol brigade's discipline collapsing after the rout — routed troops would rampage through the Five Towns of Hehuang.

So before he even reached East Pass Town, he dispatched Desheng and Guilai, his two personal attendants, with handwritten orders to the Five Towns: first, to summon the local militia; second, to order the village officials to mobilize the populace for recruitment; and third — to deliver the news of the frontline defeat to Liu Xiangyu, asking his second uncle to make preparations in New City and Xining.

The news of the frontline collapse was too dangerous for them. With hearts in turmoil, at the small scale it meant looting, hoarding, murder, and robbery; at the large scale, powerful families and tusi rising in revolt — one misstep, and before the battle was even decided, internal chaos would finish them.

Desheng and Guilai had just set off for the Five Towns when Cheng Yun received word from Xie Erhu — not meant for him, but for Old Master Liu in New City.

What he had feared most had not happened. Though Xie Erhu had been routed cleanly, he had not fled blindly with no care for anything else. The great rout he led looked terrifying, but it was also the ancestral Mongol battle tactic: advance when advantageous, retreat when not.

Mongol troops were accustomed to routing — as they routed, they would gradually restore order and turn it into a normal withdrawal. During this normal withdrawal, Xie Erhu had temporarily drawn the darhan from his army and formed an elite vanguard of one hundred and thirty-three riders, every one of them an expert capable of drawing a hundred-jin war bow.

Meanwhile, Cao Wenzhao's army, in the depths of their pursuit, first had their infantry and cavalry lose contact, then their large cavalry units broke into small squads. Instead, while they were making camp and eating, Xie Erhu's Mongol troops, having restored order, launched a sudden raid. First the vanguard fired at close range to throw them into disarray, then light cavalry charged in headlong, using superior numbers against smaller groups to swallow two hundred cavalry.

In addition, he sent Ahai Daiqing on a reverse maneuver from Hexi to smash eight hundred infantry.

Xie Erhu thought to himself, Your grandpa may not be good at much else, but following the Grand Marshal on round trips from Xining to Chamdo, covering thousands of li as a matter of routine — running a few dozen li here is nothing!

After several small-scale counterattacks, Cao Wenzhao's scattered cavalry were hammered into a head full of lumps. They obediently regrouped, fortified their camp, and set up defenses, while the infantry behind them advanced with fearful caution, their marching speed markedly reduced.

Yet despite winning back some pride, Xie Erhu still had a clear understanding of the balance of strength. In a head-on clash with massed forces, they simply could not win — no use denying it. But Zhuanglang Garrison could not be abandoned, for he did not know that Basang had already fled with Cheng Yun.

Seeing that he had tied down Cao Wenzhao, he turned at once to Lanzhou for reinforcements. In his mind, the only ones who could face the Ming army in pitched battle were the Marshal's field battalions; he had to call out Wang Wenxiu.

That was why Xie Erhu wrote to Old Master Liu, telling him not to worry — though the front had lost, he was working on a plan and would surely follow Brigade Commander Wang to turn defeat into victory and rescue Liu Cheng Yun.

Reading this letter warmed Cheng Yun's heart, but immediately afterward he hurriedly wrote to Xie Erhu and Wang Wenxiu, telling them that he had already gotten out, that Zhuanglang Garrison was to be abandoned, and that Brigade Commander Wang must on no account abandon Lanzhou.

Liu Cheng Yun had his own judgment of the war situation.

He reckoned that by now his brother should have entered Jiayu Pass — otherwise the Ming army would not have suddenly changed tactics. But to fight their way from Jiayu Pass, even marching without battle would take over a month; add in the fighting, and even with lightning speed, three months at the shortest, a year or more at the longest, was unavoidable.

In his letter to Wang Wenxiu, he wrote that what the Marshal's headquarters needed now was not the victory or defeat of a single day, a single city, or a single patch of ground. Turning the defeat around and retaking lost territory was, on the one hand, already virtually impossible; what mattered was forming a prolonged stalemate and standoff with the Ming army in the Hehuang Valley.

On this point, abandoning Lanzhou to retake Zhuanglang Garrison would harm the overall situation without any benefit. Wang Wenxiu had to ensure Lanzhou remained in the Marshal's hands in order to better protect Hehuang.

Once this letter reached Wang Wenxiu, stationed at Lanzhou, the overall defense of Hehuang was effectively stabilized by Liu Cheng Yun.

If the Ming army entered the Liancheng mountain region from the north, Basang's Western Tribal musket battalion would defend it. If they attacked East Pass Town, on one side there was Xie Erhu's Mongol troops, and even if those could not hold, Wang Wenxiu, separated by the Yellow River and poised to strike, could cut off their rear.

Wang Wenxiu received the letter in Lanzhou, but he did not rest easy.

Although he personally commanded a field battalion, with Luo Rucai, Li Wanqing, and Yang Chengzu — three battalions close to full strength — under him, plus the Lintao Brigade, formed from former Ming troops under the three surrendered officers Shi Xiang, Li Zude, and Zhang Yunqi, his forces were formidable. Yet with the fall of Zhuanglang Garrison, he now had to face Ming armies from both east and west, and dared not be careless.

South of the Yellow River, he dispatched Li Wanqing to build camps and stockades at Dongchuan, Xigu, and other places; sent Luo Rucai to commandeer every boat on both banks of the Yellow River to the south bank; and sent Yang Chengzu to cross the river and build camps and stockades at Shajing Post and other places north of the Yellow River, dispatching pond cavalry through the mountains to scout enemy movements in the Zhuanglang River valley.

Intelligence made the round trip in two days. Wang Wenxiu in Lanzhou gained a rough understanding of the battle situation and could not help but strike his wrist and sigh that the window of opportunity had slipped away in an instant.

In truth, he had favored Xie Erhu's original idea. If Basang's defense at Zhuanglang Garrison had been a bit more resolute, and Cao Wenzhao had been completely drawn away from the battlefield by Xie Erhu, he could have seized the chance to devour Cao Wenzhao's entire battalion.

But now Basang had already abandoned the city and broken out, and three battalions of reinforcements behind Cao Wenzhao were converging. If he risked sending troops out with the Lintao Brigade liable to revolt, his confidence in annihilating the enemy was very slim.

Things having come to this, Wang Wenxiu fully accepted Cheng Yun's three-pronged defensive plan, with just one suggestion: ask Liu Cheng Yun to go to the Five Towns of Hehuang and recruit troops — recruit in large numbers.

When Wang Wenxiu's message reached East Pass Town, Cheng Yun held the letter and read it over and over, sideways and upright, several times before he understood — this one sentence contained two suggestions.

He could not even tell whether the troop recruitment at the end was a genuine necessity, or whether Brigade Commander Wang, mindful of his pride, had simply found a random excuse.

To put it plainly, it was one sentence: You, Liu Cheng Yun, stay away from the front line.

The Marshal's army was different from the Ming army, but human hearts were the same. Where the liege state lay, a Ming general, unless he no longer cared to keep his position, dared not flee; the same was true of the Marshal's generals — if the place Liu Cheng Yun was in got surrounded, who would dare not come to his rescue?

This in itself wasn't really a problem, but Liu Chengzong had pulled the Marshal's Army's main elite field corps all the way to Gansu, leaving behind second-rate or even third-rate units only good at mobile skirmishing — and then tied their feet so they couldn't move. How were they supposed to fight?

Liu Chengyun figured that since Xie Erhu had already gathered his troops and reached East Pass Town, he might as well go recruit soldiers in the Hehuang Five Garrisons and escort grain and weapons to the front lines — that was his old line of work anyway.

But the night before he was set to leave East Pass Town, he received an utterly unexpected letter.

The writer was a fellow from northern Shaanxi, claiming he had now built up a modest enterprise of his own — two battalions of crack troops, one large and one small. Tired from campaigning abroad, he wanted to borrow a patch of land from the Marshal's Mansion to rest and refit for a year, with freedom to buy and sell bedding, uniforms, grain, and fodder, to forge bows, blades, arrows, and bolts, and to have six heavy cannons cast for him.

In exchange, he was willing to offer ten thousand taels of gold and break the siege of Lanzhou for the Marshal's Mansion — whoever they pointed at, be it Yang Yanchang, He Renlong, Zhang Yingchang, or Lian Guoshi, he would strike.

The signature read: Eighth Great King of the Western Camp, Zhang Xianzhong.

To be honest, when Chengyun read this letter, he was rather baffled at first.

He had no idea who Zhang Xianzhong was. Even if someone mentioned a constable from Yan'an Prefecture, it was far more likely that Zhang Xianzhong had seen him, not the other way around.

Ren Quan'er had already reported to the Marshal's Mansion that the Shaanxi roving bandits were massing in Longxi. Liu Laoye was worried sick back in New City, hoping this crowd would go somewhere else. But Liu Chengyun had been in Zhuanglang Garrison lately and had no time to deal with the various chieftains coming in from the southeast.

The chieftains had all, as if by unspoken agreement, chosen to make for Longxi. Their thinking was clear to everyone: they wanted mutual defense and offense with the Marshal's Mansion — operating together meant a better chance of survival. Their intentions were good.

But in Liu Laoye's view, no matter how good their intentions, the fact that they all came was a disaster... and this wasn't because he was narrow-minded.

Liu Chengzong had seized such vast territory in the northwest, yet he hadn't dared to maintain a hundred thousand troops. The Four Oirat Tribes held the entire northern slopes of the Tianshan Mountains, and they didn't have a hundred thousand troops either. Huoluochi and his two brothers dominated Ü-Tsang, and they still didn't have a hundred thousand troops.

In terms of territory alone, this Duntawulus — nominally under the leadership of the Khitan Khan Liu Chengzong — was larger than all eighteen provinces of Han China, yet all its forces combined amounted to only a little over two hundred thousand.

But now, just counting Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, and He Yilong, they had eighteen battalions of combat troops. Add the other chieftains and their dependents, and no matter how you calculated it, they exceeded a hundred thousand souls.

All of these were non-productive mouths that still had to be fed, and a large portion of them were soldiers who needed good grain. Bunched up on this less-than-fertile stretch of land in the western Qinling range — what were they supposed to eat?

There wasn't even enough bark and grass roots to go around.

This problem had not only been seen by Liu Xiangyu — Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng had seen it too. That was why the current situation felt slightly awkward. Though they were barely a hundred li apart, no one was willing to be the first to broach the subject of joining forces, submitting, or asking for aid. Everyone was waiting for Liu Chengzong to return.

Yet Zhang Xianzhong, of all people, had taken the initiative to contact Liu Chengyun. The reason was simple — Zhang Xianzhong was out of grain.

Good morning!