Chapter 567: Already Half Won

On the night of the thirteenth day of the fourth month, in the eighth year of the Chongzhen reign.

In Anding County, which borders both Gongchang Prefecture and Lintao Prefecture, there was a place called Neiguan Camp — it was where Liu Chengzong's mobile headquarters was stationed.

Near midnight, the marshal's mobile headquarters at Neiguan Camp was still brilliantly lit; intelligence from every direction poured into the headquarters day and night by every means, where the army's Feathered Forest riders collated it by importance, and it was finally laid before Liu Chengzong at his desk.

Inside the marshal's tent, Liu Chengzong studied a simple sand-table of Shaanxi made from paste, sand, and dye, and pinched a three-inch flag between his fingers, slowly planting it at Paoma Spring Fort east of Qinzhou Guard.

On the other side, Monk Xue, dark circles under his eyes, immediately led several cartography apprentices and transferred the change onto the hand-drawn march map.

Monk Xue was an instructor in the cartography section at New City Academy; he came from the Shaanxi roving bandits, and the sand-table in Liu Chengzong's marshal tent was his work — though this sand-table had the peculiarity of being extremely detailed in the useless areas, while the useful areas… were about as good as a flat map.

After all, the region Monk Xue knew best was Hexi, and the Marshal's Office's topographical surveys had basically stopped at Hexi; further east, there were only the routes the Lion Battalion had taken when they entered Qinghai back then, which had barely left behind reference materials.

However, as preparations for this war got underway, the Marshal's Office had actually gained an increasingly comprehensive understanding of the mountains and rivers to the east.

On the eastern side of this sand-table, near the Qin'an and Qingshui counties where Zuo Liangyu's troops were garrisoned, He Renlong and Yang Yanchang were stationed respectively; in Longzhou in Fengxiang Prefecture, and Huating and Zhenyuan in Pingliang Prefecture, the three forces of Deng Qi, Zhang Yingchang, and Tang Jiuzhou were stationed.

Beyond these, in places like Huan County and Ningzhou in Qingyang Prefecture, and Wugong County in Xi'an Prefecture, there were many flags without names written on them — the Marshal's Office's intelligence only knew there were troops there, but had yet to ascertain their strength or commanders.

And in the direction of Ningxia, limited by distance and the difficulty of infiltrating military garrisons, Liu Chengzong currently only knew of two battalions of troops: one was an old acquaintance, Shen Guangxian, now a Regional Commander, garrisoned at Ningxia Garrison City; the other Regional Commander was garrisoned at Weizhou, named Bu Yingdi.

Yingdi was a fairly common name in the Ming dynasty, similar to Yingxuan and Yingyu — all of them embodied the fine hope of rising to prominence, but paired with the surname Bu, it became a little odd, especially since the name's owner was a military officer.

Theoretically, names like Yingdi, Yingxuan, and Yingyu ought to belong to civil officials, because the hopes they embodied were all related to the imperial examinations.

Liu the Lion thought this name was a bit of a jinx on the man; he mused that this old brother might have taken the examinations in his early years, and the examiner, seeing that the lad was called "Should Not Pass the Exams," simply granted his wish and told him to go practice martial arts instead.

But Bu Yingdi was actually a tiger of a general, quite capable in a fight; when the Chahar crossed through Ningxia, he beat them twice in one month — the first time on defense, the second time pursuing them to the Helan Mountains, bringing back over four hundred heads.

Compared to the Ming troops in the north, the situation over in Sichuan was somewhat frightening.

Just the Sichuan troops already identified numbered three separate forces.

The first piece of intelligence was sent by Gao Yingxiang: it said that the Vice Commissioner-in-Chief, Chief Regional Commander, and Lady of Shizhu, Qin Liangyu, had led her son, the Shizhu Pacification Commissioner Ma Xianglin, and her nephew, the Deputy Regional Commander Qin Yiming, into Guangyuan, dividing their forces to defend the three passes of Baishui, Qipan, and Chaotian.

The second piece came from Feng Shuangli's intelligence: the Yunnan native chieftain Long Zaitian had led four war elephants, two thousand cavalry, and seven thousand five hundred infantry into western Sichuan; they might remain to guard Chengdu Prefecture, or they might continue on to northern Sichuan.

The third piece was when the Marshal's Office's mounted scouts intercepted a Ming army patrol report, which stated that the Sichuan Chief Regional Commander Hou Liangzhu had already led nine thousand troops out of Sichuan with his subordinate generals to garrison Hanzhong Prefecture, dividing his forces to defend the strategic passes and guard the Rui Prince's estate, while another two thousand elite troops were advancing toward Sanjiangkou in Feng County, attempting to sever Shaanxi's route into Sichuan.

This intelligence made the Feathered Forest riders and subordinate officials around Liu Chengzong restless; each opponent was more formidable than the last, and all had great reputations, all earned through slaughter.

The only one without a reputation was Long Zaitian, yet he had brought nearly ten thousand troops and four war elephants — those huge creatures were clearly more terrifying than the renowned Qin Liangyu.

To the Tiger Guard officers and Feathered Forest riders in the marshal's tent, every piece of this intelligence meant a mountain-toppling, sea-overturning pressure.

While the central army camp delivered a midnight snack to the adjutants in the marshal's tent, the cartographer Monk Xue walked over to Liu Chengzong's side and looked at the sand-table with deep worry, saying, "Marshal, the enemy has more troops than we prepared for."

Monk Xue was indeed afraid; in truth, it wasn't just him, a low-ranking officer working in the central army camp — most officers who had entered the marshal's tent, even Zhang Tianlin, who had been transferred from Zhuanglang to Jin County, and Gao Yingdeng, who had returned from Gansu, those top generals of the Marshal's Office, all harbored misgivings about the situation when faced with the great net the Ming army was spreading from all directions.

Of course, the direction of the misgivings differed; someone like Zhang Tianlin was worried about why the marshal was once again holding the troops back — the Ming army's great net was already spread; if they were given more time to maneuver troops and deploy generals, the real trouble would come when every force reached its position.

Monk Xue, being closer to Liu Chengzong, was not too worried about the war situation — he knew himself too well; although he held the title of Commandant, his actual job was just making maps, and whatever his state of mind, it would have no effect on the war situation whatsoever.

That was also how he comforted the cartography students from New City Academy around him: no matter how many enemy troops there are, don't panic; even if you scare yourselves to death, if this battle is meant to be lost, it will still be lost, and if it's meant to be won, it will still be won, so maintain a good attitude, do your own job well, and just follow the marshal's mobile headquarters and wait for the dust to settle.

What Monk Xue was worried about was Liu Chengzong's mental state.

He had watched the marshal fall ill again; he was eating quite well, never missing a meal, and had even specifically ordered the mess soldiers to add fatty meat to the central army camp's rations.

But over two days and two nights, apart from dozing off for less than a single two-hour period during gaps between receiving generals, Liu Chengzong had spent the rest of the time either busily arranging affairs and deploying troops, or in the dead of night staring at the sand-table, writing and drawing, muttering to himself.

He was extremely agitated.

If this went on, the marshal would collapse on his own before the fighting even began.

But if Liu Chengzong had maintained this state of high tension and agitation, Monk Xue might not have been so worried; instead, it was as intelligence from Ningxia, Henan, Xi'an Prefecture, and Sichuan grew more and more plentiful, and Ming reinforcements grew more and more numerous, and the total of Ming defensive garrisons and mobile forces on the entire sand-table exceeded eighty thousand — that Liu Chengzong suddenly and visibly relaxed.

That was terrifying.

"Many?"

Liu Chengzong was sitting before the sand-table, holding a bowl of mutton soup and blowing away the layer of oil floating on top; hearing this, he asked in return, then raised his chin toward the sand-table and said, "There should still be forty or fifty thousand troops not yet identified, but no matter… we've already half won."

Monk Xue's face fell, and he thought to himself, This is bad.

The marshal couldn't withstand the pressure after all; he's truly gone mad.

Seeing his expression, Liu Chengzong smiled and asked, "What, scared stiff?"

Monk Xue mused that this wasn't a matter of them being scared stiff or not — the situation was genuinely terrifying.

Setting everything else aside, just Long Zaitian's four war elephants alone were enough to scare a man's soul right out of him — and this wasn't the elephant of four hundred years later, popularized by the overwhelming spread of the internet, photographs, and books.

The Marshal's Office had already assembled forty thousand troops along the line from Jinglu Guard to Gongchang Prefecture; of these forty thousand-plus people, never mind the blind men and the elephant — not a single one of them had ever seen an elephant.

Not to mention over a hundred thousand troops faintly encircling them from every direction — this was a colossal force that the Marshal's Office could never organize no matter what.

Monk Xue was originally just a painter eking out a living in chaotic times; he had followed roving bandits and also surrendered to government troops, and only under Liu Chengzong had he picked up his brush again to return to his old trade, yet he never imagined that being transferred out of the academy would land him in such a major affair, exposed to the Marshal's Office's most detailed intelligence on the enemy — he was scared to death.

"Before the war began, I already knew the court would certainly mobilize around a hundred twenty or thirty thousand troops — Shaanxi is worth that number — but I didn't know where they would be, so at that time I was afraid too."

Liu Chengzong did not despise Monk Xue for his timidity; a fierce general who charges into battle is of course better the braver he is, but Monk Xue was a professional with a craft, and his profession was not charging into battle — as long as he could make good maps, it didn't matter if he was as timid as a mouse.

Still, for someone who had access to classified intelligence, Liu Chengzong intended to boost his confidence.

He took a sip of the warm mutton soup, put away the smile on his face, raised his hand, and pointed at the dense markings on the sand-table representing patrol cavalry engagements, saying, "Right now it seems they are more afraid than I am. Look at the locations of these patrol cavalry clashes — they are all concentrated near the Liupan Mountains, and all near the official roads."

"Why don't they take the small paths, the mountain roads? Is it that they don't want to?"

Liu Chengzong grinned, slowly shook his head, and said in a deep voice, "They don't dare."

The barefoot have never feared the shoe-wearing, and at this moment in the north, no power, including Liu Chengzong, had the right to consider a fallback; once war broke out, there were only two outcomes: victory or death.

Liu Chengzong needed to assemble ten thousand troops on the very front line, twenty thousand on the second line of defense, and only by scraping together garrison troops at the end might he be able to field sixty thousand mobile troops.

If these sixty thousand men lost twenty thousand in the war, the Marshal's Office, this small northwestern regime, would fall apart within the next two or three years.

But Liu Chengzong did not feel much pressure, because there was no fallback — even without fighting, they would fall apart in two or three years, and might even fall apart faster than if they lost a battle.

Only the Great Ming was shoe-wearing.

To assemble a hundred twenty or thirty thousand troops with the strength of the entire west — that number was already so large that no one could afford it, and before the encirclement was complete, the pressure was enough to make every general timid and hesitant.

In other words, if the Great Ming suffered a crushing defeat in this battle, it would completely lose the initiative in the northwest.

"Thus the enlightened ruler and the worthy general who move and conquer men, and achieve successes surpassing the multitude — they know beforehand."

Liu Chengzong quoted a line from the chapter "The Use of Spies" in Sun Tzu's Art of War, and swept his hand over the sand-table: "From the end of the third month when the Marshal's Army began assembling until now, half a month — west of the Liupan Mountains, the patrol cavalry of the two armies have clashed over a hundred and sixty times along a thousand-li battlefront."

"At the start, the fighting broke out in Qinzhou and Guyuan. After that, Guyuan's relay riders were pinned inside the city. Qinzhou could still hold its own against our relay riders, but only enough to protect itself, so we bypassed it."

"Then the fighting shifted to the ridges, hills, and plateaus west of Liupan Mountain. The Ming army's relay riders were completely suppressed. In fact, the last twenty engagements have already taken place east of Liupan Mountain — our relay riders are the best in the northwest!"

This was not Liu Chengzong boasting.

By the fourth year of the Chongzhen reign, of the veteran relay riders trained in the three border commands and five garrisons of the northwest, eight out of ten were in the Marshal's Manor. Those not in the Marshal's Manor had all been killed in battle.

Relay riders are different from other branches. Even in the Marshal's Manor, which has schools like the New City Academy that teach every branch of military science, the relay rider branch still follows the old tradition of master teaching apprentice. Because standing alone on horseback to screen the battlefield simply cannot be taught from a textbook.

You need a trustworthy, reliable master standing in front, teaching by word and deed.

When the master dies on the battlefield, the manner of his death imparts the final lesson to the disciple. Only then is the apprentice truly considered to have completed his training.

And because of Liu Chengzong, the Ming army in the northwest suffered a massive generational gap in its relay riders. Not only were the old relay riders gone — in some places, even the second wave of newly formed relay riders had been wiped out.

Not to mention that Liu Chengzong had also issued his own relay riders with weapons, armor, and military supplies specifically designed to counter the Ming army's relay riders. Their three-eyed guns had longer barrels, their armor was more finely crafted, their warhorses were stronger, and the rations and tea they carried provided an even greater boost to morale.

This individual combat strength — a bit more experience, a bit better equipment, a bit higher morale — manifested on the battlefield as a steady upper hand, winning nine out of ten engagements.

Their victories in relay rider clashes were entirely expected.

As for Qinzhou, that was just a minor accident.

The Ming commander stationed there was Zuo Liangyu, a man of petty cunning. After two relay rider clashes, he conceded defeat with breezy indifference. After that, whenever he spotted the Marshal's Army relay riders, he would directly dispatch picked vanguard cavalry from camp to charge and drive them off.

Even if Liu Chengzong's relay riders were all Lü Bu reincarnate, one man cannot possibly hold off an entire squad. Defeat was only natural.

Local defeats did not affect the bigger picture. As long as Zuo Liangyu's army remained garrisoned in Qinzhou, his picked vanguard cavalry could not range far. Beyond ten li from Qinzhou city, it was still the domain of the Marshal's Army relay riders, with no impact on the overall situation whatsoever.

"Right now, how the Ming army has divided its forces, where they are encamped, and their troop strength," Liu Chengzong pointed at the sand table and turned to look at Monk Xue and the Feathered Forest Cavalry in the tent. "We see it all with perfect clarity. As for what we don't know, that lies in Qingyang Prefecture, Xi'an Prefecture, and even Henan. Meanwhile, they know almost nothing about our troop strength and encampments."

The reason Liu the Lion said "almost" was that the day before yesterday, relay riders had intercepted a Ming commander's letter mentioning that they already knew the Marshal's Manor had troops stationed in Jingning Subprefecture — but they had no idea who the commander was or what the troop composition was.

The troops stationed there were Yang Chengzu's men, transferred over last year. Originally, it should have been Wei Qian'er in Jingning Subprefecture, but Wei Qian'er commanded a large camp of five thousand men. The entire population of Jingning Subprefecture was only one thousand nine hundred. Stationing a large camp there meant consumption equivalent to marching every single day — the logistical pressure was simply too great.

So later they switched to Yang Chengzu. His camp was originally a standard camp of three thousand men. Five hundred had been transferred to the desert south, leaving twenty-five hundred. But even so, stationing them in Jingning Subprefecture was a struggle, so they fell back to Huining County in Gongchang Prefecture, leaving only a squad commander there to grow vegetables for a living.

"By this point, the Ming army's intent is obvious. To leverage their numerical superiority, they must attempt an encirclement. Their objective is Lanzhou — they even want to push me back into Hehuang. To encircle us, they must first get moving. But the moment their various divisions begin to move, that is our opportunity for victory."

Having laid out his thoughts, Liu Chengzong added, "Being able to anticipate the enemy through intelligence and screen the battlefield west of Liupan Mountain — that alone already wins half the battle."

Just then, the sound of a report rang out from the direction of the camp gate. Moments later, a Feathered Forest Cavalryman approached and said, "Commander, Vice General Gao requests an audience."

Liu Chengzong walked out of the tent. Before long, he saw Gao Yingdeng, travel-worn and dusty, his eyes brimming with excitement, step forward and salute. "Commander, you're still awake? Excellent! My unit has won over some prisoners and discovered where the money and grain are stockpiled!"

Liu Chengzong was overjoyed at the news. He glanced at him and said, "Come into the tent and tell me in detail!" (End of chapter)