Chapter 601: The Bottom-Line Answer

The peasant army's large-scale eastward movement could not be hidden from the various Ming forces using the outskirts of Baoji as their base.

During the same period, Cao Wenzhao, Zuo Liangyu, and others also seized the moment to widely dispatch messengers deep into the countryside across Fengxiang Prefecture, spreading word among the local populace.

For a time, the clouds of war gathered thick over all of Fengxiang Prefecture, and false reports like "a hundred thousand Ming troops have invaded Fengxiang" and "the Grand Marshal's army is retreating east in panic" flew wildly through the air.

But very soon, Mongol cavalry in groups of three and five swarmed into Fengxiang from the east, bringing thrilling news to the poor commoners still loyal to the Marshal's headquarters: Binzhou and Qianzhou, two key strongholds, had fallen on the same day!

And Wang Wenxiu, the defending commander of Fengxiang Prefecture, received an even clearer battle report from Liu Chengzong.

The fighting in Binzhou was street-by-street; on the second day after the commander tasked with besieging Binzhou, Ren Quan'er, led his troops to the city, the defending army launched a raid against the forces outside the walls.

Zhang Yingchang had intended from the start to array his troops with their backs to the city and fight a defensive counterattack beneath the walls.

This tactic was somewhat reckless, since the forces Ren Quan'er commanded actually posed little threat to the Binzhou garrison and had no opportunity to storm the city by force.

But he simply could not suppress his urge to curse them out; only by leaving the city could the two armies get close enough—close enough for him to point at Ren Quan'er's nose from a distance and hurl abuse.

As it happened, Cao Bianjiao was immediately and wholeheartedly on board with this.

The two of them truly could not fathom how, in a matter of days, the court's pillar of Yan'an had suddenly transformed into a rebel and bandit faction.

The troops under their command had not come to terms with it either, still harboring some degree of old affection in their hearts.

But they were clearly overthinking it.

If being within the Great Ming brought the officers and soldiers of the Yan'an Battalion a feeling of contradiction, then for the banner officers and banner troops of Yan'an Guard, it was sheer unease.

Yan'an Guard had always been the Great Ming army most loyal to Liu Chengzong.

Because the basis of their existence and the way they obtained benefits were different from the Yan'an Battalion's.

From the very beginning, the way people in the Yan'an Battalion gained rank, promotion, and improved their lives was by "fighting Liu Chengzong"—even if it was a tacitly understood fake fight, it was still a form of confrontation.

The foundation that allowed Yan'an Guard to exist in Yan'an Prefecture was that the people of Yan'an recognized the brand of Liu the Lion; because of that brand, the Chuang King would give them grain, and the local commoners would exchange goods with them.

Even when their home villages ran out of water, people would temporarily go to labor on the military fields of Yan'an Guard, which had the best irrigation works, and wait for the river levels to rise again.

All of this relied on Ren Quan'er being the greatest inheritor of the old Liu family's legacy in Yan'an Prefecture after they moved west.

The chiliarchs under him were either Shi Wanzhong, a tenant of Fourth Master Liu, or Chen Ruji, who was connected to Fourth Master Liu by kinship, or at the very least, Lu Bin, a neighbor from Black Dragon King Temple Mountain.

And as the inheritor, he held both the goodwill of the Lion Camp toward the common people of Yan'an Prefecture for consolidating villages and merging jia units, the support from aiding the petty officials of the prefectural government, and the awe inspired by his ruthless expropriation of the local great households and powerful families.

As long as Ren Quan'er did not announce the collection of taxes in Yan'an Prefecture, he was the most respected man among the baojia heads of every county and the common people of the villages.

So long as passing banner troops revealed their identity, people would not beat, rob, or kidnap passing banner troops, nor would they deliberately lure them into minefields to be blown sky-high, much less poison the wells in the encampment grounds assigned to them.

This treatment was even better than what Chen Qiyu, who had declared Yan'an Prefecture tax-exempt, received.

At this moment, Ren Quan'er had no attention to spare for the Ming army; his subordinate Yan'an Guard officers like Shi Wanzhong, Chen Ruji, and Lu Bin were all in a state of manic exhilaration, like tigers returning to the mountain forests, on the verge of rank and promotion.

They had not fought a proper battle in years, always immersed in monotonous training day after day, their only amusement being the confiscation of friendly forces' illicit gains.

Now, seeing Zhang Yingchang march out of the city to form ranks, Ren Quan'er gave a single order and these men spread into an engagement formation and attacked.

The two sides fought fiercely for one double-hour, inflicting comparable casualties; as the sky gradually darkened, the Yan'an Guard banner troops pulled back, and the Ming army also withdrew their units to the sound of gongs and drums, retreating into the city in good order.

But that very night, the east gate of Binzhou opened, and a squad of Pingliang Guard banner troops slipped out and ran to Ren Quan'er's camp, calling on them to enter the city and relieve the guard.

On one hand, Ren Quan'er feared a trap; on the other, he genuinely did not have many troops to spare.

More than half of the Yan'an Guard's core troops were exhausted and drained of strength from the fierce fighting at dusk, and the remaining fraction still had to be kept back to keep an eye on Zu Chengyong, so he sent only four hundred men into the city first to test whether it was genuine.

Unexpectedly, the state of the Ming army over there was much the same; in truth, the situation over the past few days—with friendly forces defecting to the enemy and their strength greatly diminished—had long since turned them into birds startled by the mere twang of a bow.

Zhang Yingchang was jolted awake from his sleep by the great chaos within the city and instantly panicked, hurriedly sending men to find Cao Bianjiao in an attempt to organize a defense and launch street-by-street fighting.

But his troops were even more panicked than he was; of the defending forces stationed in camps at the four corners of the city, two were so startled that they erupted into camp panics—hundreds of soldiers, exhausted from the bitter daytime fighting and deep in slumber, were jolted awake and, with no time to tell friend from foe, drew their blades and started hacking with their eyes still shut.

Of the remaining two camps, one was the Pingliang troops, fully arrayed and waiting to be reorganized, while the other had a battalion commander who was calm and collected; the moment he heard the chaos inside the city, he opened the north gate and fled.

Zhang Yingchang and Cao Bianjiao were likewise powerless to quell the camp panics amid the chaos; in the end, the two men combined their efforts to rally the troops, and counting their own mounted attendants, support personnel, and household retainers, managed to gather just over a thousand horse and foot, then left the city through the north gate.

Not far north of Binzhou lay Zhenning County in Qingyang Prefecture, and to the west lay the territory of Pingliang Prefecture, but Zhang Yingchang and Cao Bianjiao dared not go to either place.

Pingliang Prefecture went without saying—Cao Bianjiao had recruited troops there and was now a commander stripped of his army without having fought a single battle—and as for Zhenning County, there was that madman He Renlong who had escorted them into Binzhou.

The two put their heads together and decided to simply bypass Zhenning, flee past Ningzhou overnight, and withdraw directly from the battlefield controlled by the Marshal's headquarters.

The Qianzhou campaign on the other side was far less dramatic; the fighting there was a matter of course—no, to be precise, it was a case of the course being ready and the water simply flowing away.

Over these thirteen days, Zhang Xianzhong had not been in a hurry to storm the city; borrowing Liu Chengzong's awe-inspiring authority to keep generals like Shi Xiang and Yang Guodong in check, he made the siege preparations outside the city utterly flawless.

In the ruins of the suburb outside the south wall, he had his men dig twelve zigzag trenches, six of which, following Liu Chengzong's requirements, were dug all the way to the moat to divert its water toward the Qishui River.

Meanwhile, the artillery outside the city bombarded the defenders nearly every double-hour, fr expending the gunpowder and cannonballs inside the city, to the point that four cannons were wrecked from overuse.

On another front, he had built blast furnaces outside the city to cast cannonballs and cannons, but even after scouring all the troops stationed at the siege camp, he could not find a cannon-founder capable of replicating the thousand-jin cannon.

So he could only copy the design outside the city and cast twelve heavy cannons that fired the same shot and had the same range, but were over seven hundred jin heavier than the standard-issue thousand-jin cannons fielded by the Marshal's headquarters.

Still, since they were siege cannons, it did not hinder their use.

At the same time, he was also stealing people from the city.

Normally, a siege involves surrounding three sides and leaving one open, and even that open gap has troops deployed at a distance to block and encircle.

Zhang Xianzhong, however, did the opposite at Qianzhou, surrounding one side and leaving three open; he only encircled the south wall, and on the other three sides, under cover of darkness, he endlessly lobbed letters urging escape into the city.

He did not urge people to surrender, only stating that the defending commander Duan Fuxing had committed a grave crime by killing the Marshal's headquarters' envoys, but that the commoners and defending troops inside the city were innocent and had no reason to die with him; they should quickly find a way to flee the city, lest the city gate catch fire and bring disaster to the fish in the moat.

At first, the defending troops could still stop them, but as the siege camp's assault preparations grew more and more complete in recent days, the psychological pressure on the defenders mounted, and they could no longer block the commoners who wanted to leave the city.

Now that the moat had been drained dry and all the commoners who could flee had fled, Zhang Xianzhong had rushed to build a huge pile of siege engines and fashioned a batch of explosive tubes from tree trunks, just waiting for an opening when the defenders were exhausted to blast from below and storm from above, sweeping the city in a single wave.

He never imagined that Liu Chengzong would actually send Yang Yanchang's fresh troops over.

Zhang Xianzhong thought to himself, the Grand Marshal truly hasn't treated this old Zhang poorly!

In truth, he had always been afraid of Liu Chengzong.

Although Zhang Xianzhong spoke impulsively and appeared simple-minded and none too clever, he was not an impatient man.

Quite the opposite—the simple-mindedness was merely a disguise he used to observe others; beneath that disguise, Zhang Xianzhong was extremely cool-headed, cunning, and patient, a true smiling tiger.

But he could not read Liu Chengzong.

He had been unable to read him from the very start, and now he understood him even less.

He had assumed that after Liu Chengzong forced him to surrender, he would be thrown straight onto the front lines to fight and prove his loyalty with a pledge of allegiance. Instead, he was given the grand official post of Minister of Rites.

The wolf-tiger fierce troops of the Western Camp were tossed into the Zhuanglang River Valley to build temples; with a wave of the hand, months of rations were allocated, keeping them fed like mere livestock.

He had thought the Minister of Rites was a useless post, one that could be revoked at any moment, leaving him with nothing and no better than fish on a chopping block.

Who could have guessed that the moment he opened his mouth, he would be ordered to lead troops and attack a city.

He said five days, and was given a month. Even then, worried the troops were insufficient, they sent him Yang Yanchang's reinforcements as well.

By now, the army besieging Qianzhou was larger than the army at Liu Chengzong's own side.

He now could not figure it out at all — did Liu Chengzong want to kill his men, or seize his authority; promote him, or buy his life?

Every favor seemed to carry wariness; every trust seemed laced with hostility.

Liu Chengzong's way of dealing with him was like that of an erratic madman.

But this was entirely because people's views of one another have a reactive force — they are mutual.

Liu the Lion, from the very bottom of his heart, truly did regard Zhang Xianzhong as a madman.

When others did things that baffled Liu the Lion, he would guess, analyze, ponder, then prescribe the right remedy, correct them — maybe even lose his temper in between — and then, satisfied, turn the page.

But with Zhang Xianzhong, he would skip the analysis process entirely.

If Zhang did well, exceeding the lower limit of a normal person, then he had exceeded the upper limit of Liu the Lion's expectations — excellent!

And if Zhang Xianzhong did something baffling, Liu the Lion would not bother guessing; his brain would naturally find a reasonable explanation. No matter how absurd that explanation was, there was always a fallback answer: he's a madman.

Who has nothing better to do than quibble with a madman?

Fortunately, up to this point, Zhang Xianzhong had, in the vast majority of cases, behaved like a normal person.

Even an exceptionally outstanding, powerful, and commanding normal person.

The reinforcements Liu Chengzong sent him were troops who had just surrendered.

After briefly listening to Yang Yanchang report on the troop composition, Zhang Xianzhong instantly grasped Liu the Lion's intent: he wants old Zhang here to play the villain.

Easy enough!

Zhang Xianzhong convened a council with Brigade Commander Shi Xiang and Xie Erhu, gathering Colonel Zhang Yunqi, Li Zude, Yang Guodong, Yang Yanchang, Zhang Shangxuan, Mo Yujing, and others. In a flash, the deployment for all four gates was issued.

Outside the east gate, Colonel Yang Yanchang of the Yan'an Camp led two thousand troops deployed on the front line, backed by two thousand soldiers under Colonel Zhang Yunqi of the Lintao Brigade.

Outside the south gate, Battalion Commander Liu Xiangshan of the Yan'an Camp led his own unit and part of the Zhen'gan Corps, totaling two thousand troops, deployed on the front line, backed by over two thousand soldiers under Yang Guodong, formerly of the Lintao Brigade.

Outside the west gate, Colonel Zhang Shangxuan of the Zhen'gan Camp led two thousand troops, backed by two thousand soldiers under Colonel Li Zude of the Lintao Brigade.

The north gate was left as an opening, entrusted entirely to Xie Erhu's Mongol cavalry, who were not tasked with storming the walls.

Zhang Xianzhong's order was: if any defending troops fled through the north gate during the assault and did not immediately drop their weapons and surrender, the Mongol cavalry were to drive them into Yellow Nest Gully to fall to their deaths.

In addition, Zhang Xianzhong drew men from each unit to form a thousand-man detachment, temporarily commanded by his former Western Camp Colonel, Wang Ziqi.

The brothers Wang Ziqi and Wang Ziyu had once held high status in the Western Camp, owing to the clan forces from Jiazhou, Shaanxi, they had brought when they joined Zhang Xianzhong years ago.

But after Liu Chengzong broke up the Western Camp, Wang Ziqi now held not a single official rank or post, reduced to serving as the head of Zhang Xianzhong's personal guards.

Now Zhang Xianzhong had finally found the chance to assign Wang Ziqi a thousand-man suicide assault battalion, to serve as the core shock force for breaching the walls, deployed outside the south gate.

Then, with a single order from Zhang Xianzhong, the thirteen-day-prepared assault on Qianzhou officially began.

The first step was to push the gunpowder-packed tree trunks into the tunnels beneath the city.

With a chain of explosions, the blasting tubes — their charges redesigned by Liu the Lion — detonated one after another beneath the south wall. Massive tremors and flames bulged up from the ground; the force of the blasts seemed to lift the wall slightly upward before slamming it back down hard.

But in truth, the explosions did not have that much power. The blasting tubes had shattered the support pillars inside the tunnels. With the city foundation's supports gone and the soil layer destroyed by the shockwave, the wall collapsed downward.

As the enormous cloud of dust slowly dispersed in the air, the south wall caved into two slopes four to five zhang wide. War drums then thundered; the defenders atop the wall reacted and rushed toward the slopes to reinforce them.

Below the wall, Zhang Xianzhong revealed a grin of triumph. He waved the command flag, and the army's cannons roared to life. In an instant, the assault troops arrayed outside three sides of Qianzhou received the signal and, amid battle cries, launched a fierce attack on the walls.

Dozens of scaling-ladder carts, their wooden mantlets shielding against arrows and lead shot, advanced toward the wall. At the same time, rows of long ladders supplemented the assault, set against sections of wall lacking defenders, as close-quarters combat with the garrison erupted.

Wang Ziqi's suicide squad, shields in front and earth-filled sacks on their backs, charged up the two breaches. Under the cover of shield-bearers, they piled the earth sacks onto the uneven footing of the breaches, clambered up, and surged onto the gaps, drawing blades to meet the onrushing defenders in a bloody melee.

Just then, a column of black smoke rose from within the city, piercing straight into the clouds.

Duan Fuxing, the Grand Ming Shaanxi Assistant Administration Commissioner, tossed aside his torch. He had personally ignited the firewood piled beneath the drum tower, cast his official seal into the flames, and bade farewell to his elderly mother, wife, and concubines on the upper floor.

Then he turned, tore off his official hat, and without a backward glance, gripped his iron mace and led his household servants in a charge toward the rebel troops who had breached the city.