Chapter 518: Hurling Abuse

In truth, long ago, though both served as military officers in Gansu, Yang Siren did not know Ding Guodong or Mi Layin at all.

Or rather, they had met, but to the young Yang Siren, a Company Commander in the Regional Commander's Guard Battalion, he had retained no particular impression of Mobile Corps Commander Ding Guodong or Suzhou Company Commander Mi Layin.

Yang Siren's military career was very brief. Although he also bore the surname Yang and came from a Liangzhou military family, he and Yang Jiamo were not of the same branch. Their branch had no kinsmen of Commander-in-Chief rank, and in nearly every generation the eldest son inheriting the father's post would be transferred to Nanjing to serve as a mid-ranking officer.

Yang Siren was the small landlord who stayed behind in Liangzhou to watch over the land, studying and practicing martial arts, overseeing servants and tenant farmers — a pampered, carefree life that continued until the third year of the Chongzhen reign.

That year, the great general of the same clan, Yang Jiamo, led troops to the sovereign's aid and was subsequently dispatched by the court to Shaanxi to suppress the rebellion. Through successive campaigns, men never shed their armor and horses never shed their saddles. The army suffered heavy attrition in battle, and trusted clansmen were wounded or killed one after another.

It was under these circumstances that Yang Siren donned armor and mounted a horse, leading his clansmen and fellow villagers to join Yang Jiamo's army as a Centurion — and to this day, it has only been a little over three years.

In the past, he had no real opportunity to cross paths with Ding Guodong or Mi Layin — until the news of Yang Jiamo's death reached Liangzhou and Zhuanglang.

Along with the news of Yang Jiamo's death came word of Liu Chengzong's generous post-battle rewards to the Suzhou Battalion. It was then that the names Ding Guodong and Mi Layin truly crashed into Yang Siren's sight.

Their hero, my mortal foe.

From that moment on, the soldiers of the Gansu Regional Commander's Guard Battalion already knew whom they should seek vengeance upon.

Only, none of them imagined their revenge would turn out like this.

The relief force was caught in a pincer, trapped with no way forward or back, while the defeated troops were even more bewildered. Many were within Mi Layin's army, enveloped deep inside the Marshal's Army's encirclement; many, the moment friendly troops tore off their helmet tassels and helmet flags, drew their blades and struck — only to be swallowed up in an instant.

Yet those with quick wits and the truly muddled made the exact same choice at this moment: all followed orders and tore off their helmet tassels and flags, then were swept along in the charge against the relief force.

Within a battle formation, the room for individual choice is vanishingly small.

Yang Siren had only just grasped the situation he was in, his mind still unable to analyze how this situation had come about, when thirty Lion Cannons at the front of the formation fired in unison, blasting one-pound iron balls into the ranks.

The officers of the Regional Commander's Guard Battalion's various units were not to be outdone; each unit's gunners vied to fire dense grapeshot from their Gushing-Bead, Barbarian-Slayer, and Crouching-Tiger cannons. Stone and iron shot sprayed from the muzzles, and for a time the space between the two armies was thick with gunpowder smoke. Layers of shot tore through the smoke, some in direct fire, some in plunging fire, turning the front into a blazing storm.

But the relief force's greatest crisis came from the rear.

The Ming army had no cannons in the rear, not even many arquebuses. Mi Layin's more than fifteen hundred men massed into fifteen columns and launched an assault. Though the assault did not look particularly pretty — his soldiers fled even as they charged — in the end, one sharp short blade after another still stabbed deep into the formation.

Multiple line formations embedded themselves into the relief force's formation simultaneously. In an instant, not only was the command of the central Company Commander and the left and right Platoon Commanders severed, but even the command of each Centurion's line formation was thrown into chaos. The entire army fell into paralysis.

Ding Guodong at the front seized the same opportunity, and his prepared line formations swept forward in a wide envelopment. The Ming troops, having lost command and fighting in isolated pockets, retreated on their own.

In essence, it should have been a collapse, yet it was not a complete one, because this mountain valley, even counting the wooded slopes, was less than three li wide, and within a stretch of a few li nearly seven thousand men were jammed — nowhere to retreat to, nowhere to run to.

The world is never short of men of blood and courage. Seeing retreat was hopeless, many Ming soldiers chose to level their spears and fight to the death; some even threw down their spears, drew their blades, and shouted, rallying the troops to charge into the woods and cut a bloody path out.

But after the initial life-or-death struggle, the scattered sand of the Ming army was hammered by the pincer attack until their own mothers wouldn't recognize them. Many were forced to calm down and flee in every direction.

An army in a solid formation is a pack of jackals, wolves, tigers, and leopards. When scattered soldiers and stragglers who have lost their formation fight in isolated pockets, the successive emergence of different survival strategies inevitably adds a touch of farce to a battlefield of bloody valor.

For instance, when survival outweighs all else, soldiers belonging to both sides of the battlefield produced a certain... a certain type of slacker.

They hid in the dense woods, carrying bows, firearms, even waist swords. If there were more helmeted heads with tassels around them, they stuck a tassel on their own heads; if there were more bare-helmeted heads around them, they tore their tassels off.

Men fought to the death in every farmland, hillside, dense wood, riverbank, and any place beyond the temple where battle could be waged. At every moment, soldiers were struck by hidden guns and concealed arrows, and just as many soldiers fled toward the rear or in any direction at all.

The melee lasted for the better part of a shichen, until the early-autumn sun grew somewhat glaring. No more helmet-tasseled soldiers could be seen on the farmland, and the sporadic gunfire within the dense woods gradually fell silent. Even then, Liu Chengzong on the mountaintop did not order the troops withdrawn; he simply had Ding Guodong reform the ranks and continue advancing south.

With the Ming army rushing to relieve Xianglin Temple defeated by Mi Layin through devious means, Liu Chengzong's army quickly passed Xianglin Temple and advanced along the Gulang Gorge toward Huangyang River and Black Pine Post.

That same afternoon, Bai Guang'en led his troops into Huangyang River.

Ten li north of Black Pine Forest Post Fort, the Gulang River and Huangyang River converged at a fork. The Gulang River flowed from the northwest, the Huangyang River flowed eastward, and the valley at their confluence was less than two li wide.

During the time the battle at Xianglin Temple was being fought, Ding Shaoyin and Bai Guang'en, after a field survey, decided to make a stand at this fork.

Cannon fire rumbled from beyond the mountain. For the two of them, a fork at a bend in the mountain terrain like this could, to the greatest extent possible, restrict the Marshal's Army's Red Barbarian Cannons.

They built two stockades on the hills. Ding Shaoyin encamped on the west bank at Camp Crest, and Bai Guang'en stationed his troops on the east bank beyond the hill. The southern part of Huangyang River had a place called Camp Flat.

Using the river valley terrain, the two camps formed a mutual horn-support — the encampment method most likely to deadlock the battle situation.

By now, Ding Shaoyin had again changed his thinking due to the shifting situation. He believed that the wily and treacherous Liu Chengzong had deceived him on the battlefield — that the army arrayed on the official road was the main force, and the Marshal's Army troops appearing among the surrounding ridges and valleys had been the diversion.

Thus, he had only one thought in mind: bottle Liu Chengzong up at Gulang, for as long as he could. If he could hold out until Cao Wenzhao disrupted Gansu's grain supply route, that would be best; if not, there was nothing to be done, but he had to drag things out for at least a few days.

The distance between Xianglin Temple and Black Pine Post was not far. Liu Chengzong's forward scout cavalry soon spread along the official road all the way to the two-river fork, where they clashed with the Ming army's scout cavalry. Only when the Marshal's Army's main force arrived did the scouts of both armies withdraw.

At the fork, Ding Guodong merely swept a rough glance over the terrain and sent a man to report to Liu Chengzong.

Fighting a battle in a place like this would exact too great a price.

Liu Chengzong was also observing the terrain at the fork. The difficulty of the attack lay not in the hilltop encampment being easy to defend and hard to assault, but in the Gulang River splitting off toward Huangyang River. Though all was quiet over at Huangyang River, even if he thought with his toes, he knew there would be an ambush force there.

The problem was: attacking Camp Crest Ridge would invite a pincer from the ambush force at Huangyang River; attacking Huangyang River would invite a pincer from the army on Camp Crest Ridge; splitting his forces to attack both sides at once... the river valley could not deploy his full strength, but the enemy occupying the advantageous positions could deploy theirs.

Up on the hill, Ding Shaoyin did not sit waiting for death. The moment he saw the Marshal's Army deploy along the banks of the Gulang River, he dispatched soldiers down the hill to hurl abuse. The assorted foul language of the Liangzhou veteran slickers tore Liu the Lion, that down-and-out from northern Shaanxi, to shreds as utterly worthless.

The abuse was remarkably effective — not in whether Liu Chengzong, the target, cared, but in that the commanders under Liu Chengzong could not bear to hear their commander-in-chief cursed like this.

As the cursing on the hill grew spirited, Han Shiyou at Liu Chengzong's side could no longer endure it. He clasped his fists and requested battle: "Grand Marshal, let me take marksmen and shoot them all dead."

"What is there to fear? They are merely indulging in the sharpness of their tongues."

Truth be told, if he could shoot them, he would have spurred his horse out long ago and shot every last one of those bastards cursing him dead. The reality was that times had changed — in this age, there were cannons. Even marksmen of their caliber could at best guarantee a certain accuracy within seventy paces.

If the enemy had just two small cannons lying in ambush beyond that range, an expert archer of the past might well end up leaving his life in front of the battle lines.

Conversely, if they fired their cannons, hitting would be fine, but if they missed, it would instead damage morale and invite ridicule.

"Shiyou, think about it."

Liu Chengzong let out a laugh. From the hillside, he raised his whip and pointed toward Camp Crest Ridge. "We are encamped here just the same. What we are waiting for is Zhang Tianlin's flanking strike and Wei Qian'er's encirclement. They are bottling us up here — what are they waiting for?"

Han Shiyou pondered briefly and asked uncertainly, "The Grand Marshal means... they are also waiting for friendly forces to complete an encirclement?"

Only then did Liu Chengzong's expression turn serious. He slowly shook his head. "I can't say for sure either. We've already spotted one or two thousand enemy troops on the four surrounding roads, but in my gut I keep feeling that may not be the enemy's true reliance. The government troops should still have a card left to play — otherwise, they wouldn't dare curse me here."

Han Shiyou said, "Hong Chengchou?"

Liu Chengzong agreed with this thought. If calculated by marching speed, once Hong Chengchou reached Ningxia and mobilized the troops, the Ningxia army should be arriving soon by now.

Yet in his heart, he also felt that Hong Chengchou would not be so foolish as to transfer troops at this moment. If he truly meant to assemble the armies of the Three Frontiers and fight a major battle with him in Gansu, he should have assembled the troops back when Liu Chengzong breached Jiayu Pass.

Transferring troops now would render the earlier defeats meaningless, and would also render the scorched-earth policy at Liangzhou City meaningless.

The whole point of the scorched-earth policy was to make this winter hard on him. Even if the Three Frontiers and Five Garrisons were to be assembled, what the court should be considering right now was mopping up the peasant armies, then waiting until spring to fight him with full freedom of action.

After all, Gansu had no grain for him to survive the winter. If troops from Ningxia or even Yulin came, they would likewise find no grain to eat.

Hong Chengchou was no fool. The soldiers of Ningxia and Yulin bore him neither new grudges nor old enmity. Coming to Gansu and finding no grain would be tantamount to recruiting troops for him.

At that thought, Liu Chengzong swept his gaze across his own battle formation. The Gansu Second Battalion on the front line, having been cursed at, was itching for a fight, while the two thousand officers of the Tiger Guard Battalion looked utterly furious.

The different emotions these officers and soldiers displayed when they were the targets of abuse gave Liu Chengzong a bit of insight.

The Tiger Guard Battalion officers were enraged because Liu Chengzong and they were fundamentally the same kind of people. They had spent years together, day and night, and shared deep bonds. To curse Liu Chengzong was to curse themselves.

As for the Gansu Second Battalion soldiers' eagerness, it held little anger—only excitement. They had no real bond with Liu the Lion; they only knew Liu Chengzong was a generous employer.

The more viciously their employer was cursed and the angrier he got, the greater the reward would be when they helped him wipe out these people.

By the same logic, the same held true for the Ming army.

Liu Chengzong said to Han Shiyou, "Pick some men and go down the mountain to curse them back for me."

Han Shiyou was dumbfounded by the order. Was this a children's shouting match? Get cursed at and go curse them back?

Seeing his expression, Liu Chengzong knew Han Shiyou couldn't grasp this order, so he explained in detail: "The surrendered troops from Xianglin Temple said the enemy commanders stationed here are Lu Yunchang, Ding Shaoyin, Bai Guang'en, Chai Shihua, and Cao Wenzhao."

"I don't yet know which enemy commander is on this Camp Ridge. Go and curse all five of them, one by one." Liu Chengzong raised his whip again, pointing toward the ridge. "Whichever one gets the biggest reaction from the soldiers when cursed—those are his troops."

Han Shiyou understood now. He quickly nodded in agreement, spurred his horse through the ranks to round up every troublemaker he could find, and swiftly assembled a cursing squad of just under two hundred men, surging toward the foot of the mountain in a grand procession.

For a time, vile obscenities like "I fuck your old man" and "too many dads, not enough moms" echoed through the river valley, so foul that the Gulang River seemed to blush and want to flow backward, and the birds covered their ears as they flew away.

Ding Shaoyin, up on the mountain, was also dumbfounded.

He knew his opponent was that crafty and wily Foolish Khan. The purpose of sending men to hurl curses was to make him fly into a rage from shame and attack the mountain recklessly, so as to avoid being pinned down at the foot of the mountain with nothing to do, where he might then apply his clever wits to some other scheme.

Although history did record an instance where relying on prostitutes to hurl curses forced an enemy general to retreat, Ding Shaoyin was not that naive. He knew perfectly well that Liu Chengzong was determined to win this war.

But what he never expected was that Liu Chengzong not only kept his cool, but even sent out a group to curse back at him, like a child's game of house.

Now the pressure was on him. He absolutely dared not charge down the mountain to clash with the Marshal's Army. Running into such a copycat, he had truly lifted a rock only to drop it on his own foot.

What embarrassed Ding Shaoyin most was that the soldiers at the foot of the mountain cursed Cao Wenzhao, Chai Shihua, Lu Yunchang, and Bai Guang'en in turn, and finally concentrated their fire on the name Ding Shaoyin. Originally, the cursing had been fairly evenly spread, but somehow, the cursing soldiers at the foot of the mountain began cursing only him.

What he did not know was that the fact that the soldiers below were cursing only him was something Liu Chengzong took very seriously.

Liu the Lion had always assumed that the enemy commander holding Camp Ridge was Cao Wenzhao. Camp Ridge bore the brunt geographically, and among all the commanders, Cao Wenzhao was the most experienced, the fiercest in battle, and the only general on the Zhuanglang defense line who had fought Liu Chengzong head-on in earlier years.

By all reason and logic, if Cao Wenzhao was here, who else but him could be the commander guarding Camp Ridge?

Coupled with the fact that the soldiers cursing on the mountain all had Liangzhou accents, with no Shanxi or even Liaodong accents, the answer was already on the tip of Liu Chengzong's tongue—Cao Wenzhao was not here.

But if he wasn't here, where else could he have gone?

Good evening!