Chapter 625: The Most Important Matter

While the Great Ming's emperor and courtiers were still endlessly debating such trifles as the empire's future.

The Great Marshal Liu Chengzong, who dominated the northwest, was already pondering the most important matter in human society:

What to eat?

Cao Wenzhao was a long-renowned field commander, both wise and brave, who had rendered tremendous service to the court in Shaanxi and achieved the highest kill count since the Shaanxi rebellion began.

Yet in large-corps operations, he was as green as a child, and he botched the night assault on Liu Chengzong's main camp beyond recognition.

Liu Chengzong did not even need to strike back; of Cao Wenzhao's ten-thousand-strong army closing in from four sides, three fronts collapsed, leaving only his own core troops still able to hold formation in the west.

But with only this one battalion left, they quickly realized the tide had turned. To reverse the rout, they charged the western face of Liu Chengzong's battle formation once, but the formation stood firm as a mountain. With no other choice, they withdrew westward before the encirclement closed, retreating all the way past the Qian River, then feinted once and fled south.

As for his other three battalions: Regional Commander Shen Guangxian, seeing the situation turn dire, led his troops racing toward Qianzhou at breakneck speed — Wang Wenxiu could not catch him even in pursuit. Mobile Corps Commander Cao Wenyao was blasted into utter disarray by Zhang Tianlin's rockets; two thousand picked shock troops collapsed upon themselves, swarming through Shiku Pass and scattering toward Lingtai and Jingzhou.

The one exception was Ningxia Regional Commander Bu Yingdi, who had been dazed throughout the entire battle. He led his troops fleeing to the banks of the Wei River, where the Marshal's army caught up. He fought until he could hold no longer and surrendered with his troops to Li Baliang, a battalion commander under Gao Yingdeng of the Marshal's army.

Then came the pursuit of the routed enemy.

Simultaneous with this night battle, on the southern bank of the Wei River, Zhang Xianzhong received Liu Chengzong's order and launched a fierce assault with the Lintao Army against the forces of Long Zaitian, Zuo Liangyu, Ai Wannian, and others.

In truth, this was the main event. The Ming army had been worn down for a full day and night; both body and spirit were spent. Zhang Xianzhong's Lintao Army, having force-marched over long distances, had gotten only brief rest, and their condition was no better.

Yet one side had numbers and commanders aplenty, the other had soaring morale — and both, as it turned out, possessed extraordinary endurance.

The two armies formed ranks and fought bitterly. Zhang Xianzhong's troops broke the Yunnan soldiers' line time and again, only to be stopped at the breach each time by Ai Wannian's Yansui Army, and were even forced back out of range repeatedly by breech-loading swivel guns. Under the cover of night, the two armies fought for two full shichen without a decisive outcome.

But it could only go so far. As daylight broke, Liu Chengzong, having won an easy victory on the Fengxiang Tableland, arrived at the northern bank of the Wei River. He arrayed heavy cannons along the bank and bombarded the Yansui Army's formation and the Yunnan Army's flank across the river.

The roaring cannons and screaming shot became the final straw that broke the camel's back. The vast force deployed on the Baoji Tableland, now surrounded on three sides, saw its battle formation collapse in an instant. Tens of thousands of troops swarmed in panic into the Baoxie Road.

Liu Chengzong was overcome with regret over this.

He had drawn a massive encirclement before the battle even began, yet had overlooked the one direction the Ming army would flee — south. As a result, no ambush had been laid on the Baoxie Road, allowing the Ming army to escape in disarray.

Zhang Xianzhong could not be counted on. In the battle's aftermath, the Baoji Tableland was covered with writhing wounded soldiers and scattered equipment that needed gathering. At the same time, fires set by the fleeing Ming troops to delay pursuit blazed along the southern foothills — smoke and flame everywhere, a vision of hell.

And the essential procedure of field battle is pursuit.

In a battle not fought to seize terrain, routing the enemy is not victory.

Only pursuit can maximize enemy casualties, take prisoners, and secure the fruits of battle.

A battle without pursuit is incomplete.

Liu Chengzong assigned the pursuit to Luo Rucai, who had emerged from Baoji city.

In truth, Liu the Lion was dissatisfied with Luo Rucai's performance, because Luo Rucai made him feel that his own dream-command inheritance, as a commander of Ming army origin, was not yet fully developed.

Their level of unspoken mutual understanding had not kept pace.

According to his plan, Luo Rucai in Baoji city should have sallied forth from the city the very moment the Ming army began to rout.

He never imagined that Luo Rucai, having held out for a full day and night, had watched the two sides fight from the city wall for two shichen, grown drowsy, and dozed off at the critical moment when victory was about to be decided.

So when his uncle Luo Daien woke him, the golden opportunity had been missed. By the time he led his troops out of the city, the battle was already over, and the routed Ming troops had fled into the Baoxie Road a full quarter-hour earlier.

A terrified Luo Rucai, expecting a black-faced Liu Chengzong, was met with no criticism at all. The pursuit was simply assigned to him in an offhand manner. Bathed in the joy of a narrow escape, he plunged headlong toward the mountain fires without a word.

What Luo Rucai did not know was that this was entirely because Liu Chengzong had mentally credited him with a merit.

It was that brother-in-law of his whom he looked down upon, Wang Guocai, who had led cavalry to trample Bu Yingdi's formation and earned the first merit for breaking the enemy line.

However, after Luo Rucai led his troops in pursuit, Liu Chengzong learned from the surrendered soldiers he had gathered that, although Luo Rucai had been holed up in Baoji city all night, his merit was no less — and perhaps greater — than that of the commanders who had fought outside the city.

His brother-in-law Wang Guocai's cavalry trampling the enemy formation aside, there was also his subordinate Li Rujia, who had sallied from the city by night, first killing Mobile Corps Commander Cao Dingjiao of Cao's camp, then killing Regional Commander Luo Dai of Zuo's camp — two senior officers slain by whistling arrows in a single night.

This battle record even stunned Liu the Lion: What kind of creature was this Li Rujia? Moving through the enemy camp as if no one were there, charging left and striking right, like a ghost!

But the pursuit of the routed would have to wait. The battle had barely drawn to a close when vexing matters caught up with Liu Chengzong like a shadow.

He had more surrendered troops again.

The two battles north and south of the Wei River had yielded countless prisoners, weapons, and armor. It was not until the evening of the next day that the central army staff produced a clear tally.

When the central army clerk reported the figures, Liu Chengzong was on the earthen mound that Zuo Liangyu had built earlier during his siege outside Baoji city, summoning Baoji's County Magistrate Yang Mai to inquire about conditions within his jurisdiction.

Yang Mai poured out his grievances — the situation in Baoji County was poor.

Although the local agriculture was actually among the better in Fengxiang Prefecture, the war had cut off trade routes. The people could not sell what they produced nor buy the goods they needed, and the economy was on the verge of collapse.

Below the earthen mound, Zhang Xianzhong had brought a group of officers from the Lintao Brigade to watch the mess soldiers dismember an elephant carcass.

This war elephant was also Liu Chengzong's spoils of war. In the previous night's fighting, they had acquired the bodies of two war elephants in total.

It was somewhat absurd: Long Zaitian had brought four war elephants in all. Two died in the previous night's fighting, and both war elephants were killed by the Ming army.

One of them, during the battle with Zhang Xianzhong, had been released by Long Zaitian when he saw an opening, coordinating with the Yunnan troops to charge the formation of Zhang Yunchi, a commander under Shi Xiang's division, and break it open.

Seeing this, Zhang Xianzhong urgently ordered his subordinate Wang Ziqi to take thirty men and stop the war elephant. They first fired muskets at the elephant's head, but unfortunately they were using traditional bird guns with too small a caliber, causing only superficial wounds. In desperation, Wang Ziqi took up a long blade and entered the fray himself, slashing the elephant's trunk, which finally forced the war elephant to retreat.

In truth, compared to Zhang Xianzhong, his subordinate Wang Ziqi was the one truly suppressed by Liu Chengzong.

He had originally been a senior general of the Western Army, Zhang Xianzhong's right-hand man during the early uprising. But the Western Army had been forced to surrender by Liu the Lion at Zhuanglang Garrison City, and when the Western Army's four battalion regional commander posts were abolished, he was left with nothing.

Yet he could not leave either, because Liu Chengzong had given his younger brother Wang Ziyu a regional commander's post, and all the old brothers who had risen with them in Jiazhou were in that battalion.

In this campaign, he had summoned every ounce of his strength to achieve merit, so that Zhang Xianzhong might secure an official post for him from the Marshal's headquarters.

When attacking Qianzhou, Wang Ziqi had personally led the death squad, fighting as the vanguard to scale the city and carve out a breach.

Now, seeing the war elephant driven back by him, he decided to go all the way. Shouting orders for his men to follow, he charged into the breach along the path the elephant had trampled, leading his main force all the way to the front of the Yansui Army's formation.

Then this war elephant, its trunk wounded and its head bloodied by musket fire, was knocked flat by a single cannon shot from Ai Wannian's Yansui troops.

The other war elephant had its leg shattered by a cannonball from Liu Chengzong's cross-river bombardment. When the Ming army retreated, it could not move, so Long Zaitian, to prevent Liu Chengzong from using the elephant against Ming forces in the future, ordered it killed.

Even so, Liu the Lion was still very grateful to Long Zaitian for delivering the elephants from a thousand li away.

Especially at this moment, when the clerk from the Tiger Guard Battalion responsible for tallying casualties and spoils came to report, the numbers were not as promising as imagined.

The dead and the wounded requiring treatment alone exceeded seven thousand, a figure that shattered Liu Chengzong's expectations and shocked him greatly. He blurted out, "How can it be this high?"

He thought to himself, this battle was fought so easily!

The Ming army's two divisions had close to thirty thousand troops, with over twenty thousand on the battlefield.

And although the Marshal's headquarters had many troops, those actually committed to battle numbered just over forty thousand — and that was counting even units like Yang Chengzu's, which had sallied out to burn camps and returned intact.

Over seven thousand casualties in one stroke — Liu Chengzong was stunned.

Not because the losses were heavy, but because… he lowered his eyes and looked around the earthen hill, at the soldiers standing in scattered groups on the small knolls, watching the slaughter of the war elephants.

The bearing of the troops under his command did not look at all like an army that had just fought its way to a bitter victory.

What's more, minor wounds weren't even recorded. To make it onto the casualty report, you at least needed a saber cut or an arrow wound.

And as it happened, the Marshal's main army was superbly equipped. As long as they weren't routed, basically only those with extraordinarily bad luck ended up on the casualty roster.

This perplexity lingered until the central army junior officer presented the roster. Liu the Lion read through it name by name, and only then did the doubt in his mind unravel.

The largest share of casualties came from Shi Xiang's Lintao Brigade — they alone accounted for nearly over five thousand.

But this was a special case. By the Tiger Guard Battalion's statistical standard, this counted as one campaign, but for the banner troops of the Lintao Brigade, they had fought three battles before they could even make it onto the casualty report.

Shi Xiang first fought Yang Guodong. Yang Guodong defeated Shi Xiang, but was then persuaded by Shi Xiang to surrender. After that, they attacked Qianzhou City. Once Qianzhou City was taken, Zhang Xianzhong dragged them to the south bank of the Wei River to fight the Ming army.

In that army of theirs, nearly every man was wounded.

And because the battle Shi Xiang fought against Yang Guodong later turned them into comrades, the casualties from both sides counted as their own.

This brought a helpless smile to Liu the Lion's face.

The second-highest share of casualties was Luo Rucai.

His battalion had suffered many dead. As early as when Liu Chengzong was still fighting in the east, Luo Rucai had already clashed with Long Zaitian's Yunnan troops. By the time they besieged the city, the battalion had already taken in many new recruits enlisted within the city.

Defending the city cost few lives, but during the two sorties out of camp, those who didn't come back were truly gone. Very few wounded ever made it back.

The remainder were from Liu Chengzong's own four main battalions — soldiers stationed in the small camps on the perimeter of the Six-Flower Formation, wounded or killed in Cao Wenyao's night raid.

Seeing this, Liu Chengzong's smile faded. He raised his eyes and said to Baoji County Magistrate Yang Mai at his side, "Magistrate Yang, summon the city's medical craftsmen. Set up a camp on the city drill ground to tend to the wounded. You will handle this."

Yang Mai hastily assented, nodding his head like a chick pecking at grain. He could barely speak, just mumbling and stammering about mustering civilian laborers to build a wounded soldiers' camp.

Liu Chengzong found this demeanor irritating. He frowned and said, "Are you very afraid of me?"

"This humble subordinate wouldn't dare!"

Liu the Lion knew in his heart what this was about. The previous Baoji County Magistrate had been Li Jiayan. When Li Jiayan surrendered, he had just gathered the local gentry of Baoji in the city to discuss supplying provisions to Zuo Liangyu's troops — and then Zhang Tianlin arrived.

After surrendering, Li Jiayan was appointed Prefect of Fengxiang. Before leaving, he recommended Yang Mai, a local scholar-gentry living at home, to succeed him.

Yang Mai probably never wanted to be an official in the first place, but Liu Chengzong had made a puzzled "Hm?" sound at the time, and Yang Mai had hurriedly nodded and become county magistrate.

The very first time they met, he was already afraid of him.

Now, meeting for the second time, he was clearly even more afraid.

Liu the Lion mused — fine if you're afraid of Zhang Tianlin. Zhang Tianlin is a big reckless brute with no brains. Fine if you're afraid of Luo Rucai too. Luo Rucai is a greedy, lecherous savage driven purely by his appetites.

I'm smiling all day long — what are you afraid of me for?

What he didn't know was that this was precisely why Yang Mai feared him even more.

What heroic spirit did Zhang Tianlin have? And as for Luo Rucai, Yang Mai had been trapped in the city with him and had come to know him deeply — a ruthless character who, with only a month's provisions in his pocket and thirty thousand troops besieging the city outside, still dared to go wild up on the walls.

And those two were as meek as kittens and puppies in front of Liu Chengzong. How terrifying must Liu Chengzong's hidden side be?

Not to mention that the soldiers in Luo Rucai's battalion were all vicious desperadoes and unorthodox renegades, yet the Tibetan soldiers treated him like a bodhisattva descended to earth, and the Han soldiers, dozing off on city watch, would mutter "Long live the Emperor" in their dreams and then giggle foolishly.

Thinking of this, he heard Liu Chengzong say, "Just do your work at ease. There's no need to fear me. I'm not going to eat you."

Yang Mai was greatly shocked and couldn't help recalling the earlier rumors about roving bandits killing people, cutting out their hearts, and having them with wine.

Not eating me — then could it be… he eats children?

"Ah."

To be honest, seeing Yang Mai like this, Liu Chengzong felt he had entrusted Baoji County to the wrong man, and by extension, he began to seriously doubt Fengxiang Prefect Li Jiayan's ability to judge people.

He thought to himself, Damn it, I've let a fucking idiot be county magistrate.

Fortunately, just as Liu Chengzong was considering whether to replace the county magistrate, the central army junior officer sensed the awkwardness in the air and timely presented two rosters, diverting Grand Marshal Liu's attention.

One was a roster of surrendered troops, the other a register of spoils.

Liu Chengzong felt a headache the moment he saw them. A single flimsy booklet — another eight thousand mouths to feed.

And the corresponding spoils were nowhere near as plentiful. There were plenty of weapons and armor, but provisions were pitifully scarce. After deducting the grain and fodder burned after the defeat, what remained couldn't even supply the army for five days.

Only those two war elephants counted as high-value spoils, able to provide some meat.

Liu Chengzong raised his eyes toward the soldiers not far away who were butchering the war elephants and mused that the coarse flesh really didn't look like it would taste any good.

His army provisions were insufficient. He needed to find some food, and fast.

On the other hand, within the boundaries of Fengxiang Prefecture, farmland lying fallow because of the war was also a major problem demanding urgent attention.

He set his sights on the last army of the Ming court coalition — Grand Commander Hou Liangzhu from Sichuan — figuring that the Sichuan side ought to have army provisions.

Liu the Lion planned to write a letter and ask Hou Liangzhu whether he had provisions. If he had provisions, don't dawdle — hurry up and bring your troops for a fight. If he had no provisions, then go scrape some up and send them over quickly, and he'd spare his life.

He never expected that just as he was fretting over provisions, from the north, Bee-Tail Needle Zhang Zhen, sent from Yan'an Prefecture, dispatched a man with a letter for him.

The letter said… Yang Qi's Mobei Protectorate had launched troops against the Haracin tribe and had nearly plundered them to extinction, seizing countless cattle, sheep, and livestock. Over ten thousand women and children alone had been taken. Now, to evade the Later Jin attacks, they had all been moved north of the border wall.

Liu Chengzong's eyes lit up in a flash.

He had a plan!