Chapter 733: A Fire Breaks Out in the Rear Courtyard

Cao Huachun went to Songmo Prefecture.

The captives everywhere in the prefectural city of Songmo caused Huangtaiji's rumors to collapse on their own.

But compared to the captives repairing the city walls, even more powerful evidence lay in Liu Chengzong's central army tent.

That terrain map densely annotated with the Eight Banners' designated zones convinced Qian Shisheng that Liu Chengzong was preparing for a major battle.

In truth, that was an outdated map, originating from Gao Yingdeng's plan to encircle and annihilate Dorgon, who was covering the Eight Banners' rear — but by the time the troops pushed forward, Dorgon had long since fled.

In the Marshal's army, Cao Huachun's greatest function was spreading false information.

Liu Chengzong felt that Huangtaiji was far too good at keeping his composure; faced with the plundering of the various Khorchin tribes, he still had not mustered his forces to strike back, which surely meant he was brewing something big.

So he had to find a way to prod Huangtaiji.

In Songmo Prefecture, the Brocade Guard agents Cao Huachun brought, under Liu Chengzong's direction, loudly trumpeted the false news that the Ming army had won a great victory in the capital region, that Ajige's forces had first won then lost there, and that he had ultimately been defeated and captured at the Battle of Baoding.

Then, over the next several days, amid the celebrations in Songmo Prefecture, prisoner-of-war management grew lax, ultimately allowing over forty captives to band together, steal more than ten mules and horses under cover of night, and flee eastward in one stretch.

Along the way, they were intercepted repeatedly by relay cavalry armed with three-eyed guns, and in the end, only two riders made it across the Qagan Moron River.

The number of captives who escaped was far smaller than Liu Chengzong had imagined; he had originally thought at least a hundred or so would get away.

This was mainly because the majority of the over twenty thousand captives had been resettled in Monan, leaving only a few thousand able-bodied men repairing the city walls in Songmo Prefecture.

Many of them did not want to run at all.

It was not that Zhang Xianzhong treated the captive laborers so well that they forgot about home, but rather that Little Jamusu and his men had plundered the grasslands far too thoroughly.

They simply had no idea where else they could flee to besides Monan.

Flee to Shengjing?

They would just end up as slaves there too, no different from repairing the city walls here. Besides, even if they made it to Shengjing, they would not be spared — they would just be issued armor and weapons and sent back as expendable death soldiers.

They were truly terrified of the Marshal's Monan Army.

Although the matter was not executed very well, Liu the Lion had no other options; he could not very well keep management lax after people had already escaped — that would be far too obvious.

At this point, he could only play it by ear and see whether Huangtaiji could accurately receive his message, then rush forward eagerly to fight a decisive battle with him.

Because he really did not want to send troops to fight near Shenyang; the terrain over there was too terrible, utterly unsuitable for battle.

Among those around Liu Chengzong, few were familiar with the Greater Khingan Range region, but Chetu Taiji was actually quite familiar with the terrain near Shenyang.

During the Tianqi era, the Chahar tribe had once dispatched two thousand cavalry to press toward Shenyang, attempting to rescue the Inner Khalkha nobleman Jaisai, who had been captured by Nurhaci, but they withdrew after only a brief skirmish with the Shenyang garrison.

Shenyang, in this era, was an independent geographical unit.

To the northeast, due east, and south lay mountainous regions; due north, due west, and southwest, it was encircled by the Liao River — more precisely, the Liao Marshes, all swampland.

Back when Nurhaci captured Shenyang, the very first thing he did was build a raised causeway from Shenyang to the banks of the Liao River, three zhang wide and one hundred twenty li long, to allow troops and horses to sortie westward.

Beyond that raised causeway, it was still mire everywhere.

This swampland had formed from the repeated course changes of the Liao River, West Liao River, and Hun River.

And in the intermediate zone between the north bank of the Liao River and the Khorchin grasslands, an even stranger landscape had taken shape: desert interspersed with marsh.

Beyond the sea-bubble lakes was marshland, beyond the marshland was desert, bordering another stretch of marsh, and within that marsh were more sea-bubble lakes.

Compared to that area, the open ground east of the Greater Khingan Range was clearly far more suited for battle.

A few days later, Little Jamusu's Darkhan Army completed its reorganization, and over two thousand cavalry rode south toward the former territory of Daning, only to find it empty.

The small tribes that had originally been encamped there as retainers of Daiching had all migrated eastward in their entirety.

The Darkhan Army followed the ruts of their migrating carts all the way into Kulun, where they encountered the large eastward-migrating force. After fighting a battle they could see they would not win, they withdrew back to Daning.

At the same time, the First Brigade's relay cavalry also discovered that the Eight Banners troops on the grasslands were retreating. They pressed forward step by step until, at the confluence of the Nen River and Songhua River, they ran into the large force of the Khorchin Right Wing migrating south.

One urgent report after another was delivered into Liu Chengzong's central army marshal tent. Compiled on the map, they showed with perfect clarity that Daiching Gurun's troops and territory were rapidly contracting.

Liu Chengzong thought this could not be right — just a piece of false news about Ajige being captured was enough to make Huangtaiji pull back his forces across the board?

This kind of change surely had nothing to do with him. Either something had happened in Daiching's rear, or Huangtaiji was planning to lure him deep into a trap.

However, even if it was a trap to lure the enemy in deep, Huangtaiji's full-scale contraction in the Khorchin region was still a good thing for Liu Chengzong.

Along with this intelligence came another piece of good news.

Erenchin and Sanang Taiji, who had vanished for a long time, sent word via messengers from the territory of Sechen Khan Sholoi.

The letter said their raid on Khorchin had been extremely successful — they had captured a high-ranking nobleman of the Right Wing, shaken off their pursuers, and brought back a topographic map of the forts and stockades in the Nen River basin. They had now crossed the Greater Khingan Range into Sholoi's territory and would soon return to Xanadu.

Liu the Lion thought to himself that these two brothers were truly talents — they had taken an army of ten thousand to war, the entire force had scattered to the winds, and the commanding generals were actually the last ones to come back.

But this was indeed the order Liu Chengzong had given Erenchin: avoid the Eight Banners troops, and coming back alive would be victory.

Erenchin had carried it out quite well, and bringing back a high-ranking noble captive was an unexpected delight.

Beyond that, Erenchin's shaking off of pursuers and shifting to the territory of the Sechen Khan tribe on the western side of the Greater Khingan Range meant that in the northeastern direction of the Khorchin grasslands, there were no longer any traces of the Marshal Army's Monan cavalry activity.

This corroborated, from another angle, the truth of the Khorchin Right Wing's southward migration and the Eight Banners' contraction.

Liu Chengzong set aside, for the moment, the question of Huangtaiji's purpose in withdrawing his troops.

Because no matter what the Eight Banners' objective was, Liu the Lion realized that an opportunity had come.

By a fortunate accident, with the various Khorchin tribes migrating south — whether for the long term or short term — the Songhua River basin had been vacated, giving the Marshal's Office a chance to establish contact with the various Solon tribes.

So for Liu the Lion, this was an opportunity to provide them with iron weapons and have them tie down the Eight Banners from the rear!

This was something Huangtaiji, no matter how much he racked his brains, could never have anticipated.

On one hand, Liu the Lion sent out orders summoning officers of all ranks, including Subadi, to Mane Mountain to raise the tent and hold council.

On the other hand, he sent men to fetch Tiger of the Heizhen tribe from the Tiger Guard Battalion and Little Jamusu of the Darkhan Army.

"Khorchin has already been defeated and has migrated south with its entire tribe. There are no enemy troops to the north. Now is a perfect chance to send you home — you will dispatch three to five hundred cavalry."

Liu Chengzong's first words were directed at Tiger; his latter words, he spoke while looking at Little Jamusu: "Escort a shipment of arrowheads, spear tips, and armor plates along the Songhua River, and send Tiger and a few officers back."

As he spoke, Liu the Lion studied the map: "My army will advance toward Kulun and pin down the enemy from the northwest. The Darkhan Army, from the east, will pursue and raid along the Right Wing's southward migration route, creating an opening for this escort convoy to send them safely back."

Having fought all the way east of the Greater Khingan Range alongside the Tiger Guard Battalion, Tiger was already quite exhilarated. Now, hearing that Liu Chengzong wanted to send him home, he immediately kowtowed in gratitude, overjoyed.

To him, Liu Chengzong was like an immortal — he had sent people to teach him to read, write, and speak, to learn martial arts and military tactics, had fed him until he was plump and fair, had never made him risk his life, and was even going to dispatch troops to send him home.

He had never imagined he would ever be able to go home again.

If this wasn't divine intervention, what was?

"You need not thank me. Go back and rally your tribesmen. Put these weapons to good use, and don't let the Eight Banners capture you again and send you to the battlefield to fight me."

Liu Chengzong laughed as he spoke, shaking his head. "If you get captured again, you might not be so lucky as to survive this time."

Tiger deeply agreed.

Who knows how many of the fish-skin armored soldiers captured with him there were — the others either died under Yang Qi's command at Guihua City, or are still being used by the Eight Banners at the front lines.

He alone was lucky — Yang Qi thought him a rare commodity worth investing in, and sent him before Liu Chengzong, which is why he received better care.

Though Tiger was uneducated, he was no fool. After spending a year in the Tiger Guard Camp, he had a thorough understanding of the Marshal's Manor.

They had veterans well-versed in law and discipline, mutinous soldiers seething with rage, and even more bandit soldiers who were cruel and cunning.

The genuinely good people in the Marshal's Manor were pitifully few — it was only that the Grand Marshal himself harbored a heart of benevolence and righteousness.

Liu Chengzong had Wu Sihu take men to Shangdu to select suitable weapons — mainly arrowheads and spearheads, supplemented with tools like arrow-tip sharpeners for smoothing arrow shafts — and let Tiger take them away.

In truth, Guihua City had already forged a batch of custom arrowheads for Tiger, but at the time Liu Chengzong had not expected the Mobei cavalry to charge into the grasslands and wipe out half of the Khorchin, much less that the various tribes formerly under the Chahar would be brought back wholesale by the Northern Yuan Camp.

To put it bluntly, Liu Chengzong simply could not afford the cost of arming the Solon army.

The various Solon tribes were a loose sheet of sand — they only identified with their own clans and would never mobilize together, or listen to anyone's orders.

If they wouldn't even listen to Daiching Gurun, the overlord of the northeast, could they possibly listen to some man in a black coat?

Unrealistic.

At most, he could provide a small amount of arms to maximize the cost for Daiching Gurun to take captives.

Daiching's captive-taking was also conducted in small squads. In the past, they faced bone arrowheads and stone weapons. A few niru formed into a hundred-man company could sweep through tribes across a hundred li, capturing several hundred people at a time without suffering a single loss themselves.

In the future, with these iron weapons, if the enemy starts taking casualties during their raids, they'll either have to stop taking captives or expand their raiding parties — either outcome achieves Liu Chengzong's goal.

He was here simply to make trouble for the Eight Banners.

The Marshal's army prepared fourteen lele carts of weapons for Tiger, loaded with four thousand finished war arrows, over ten thousand arrowheads, more than six hundred iron spearheads, over two thousand armor plates, and two hundred forty hundred-jin war bows.

Essentially all spoils from the Lingdong campaign.

Though the quality was quite ordinary — not the standard-issue equipment meticulously crafted by the Marshal's Manor Armory Bureau — for the Hezhen and Solon tribes, it was more than sufficient.

The Darkhan general Shandan was ordered to lead troops as escort, and four officers were drawn from the Tiger Guard Camp, assigned with twenty combat soldiers from the Feathered Forest Camp, to accompany Tiger to the Hezhen tribe.

Liu Chengzong's orders to them were to map the terrain of mountains and rivers along the way, and through Tiger's Hezhen tribe, to gather more intelligence on the Reindeer-Using, Dog-Using, and Fish-Skin tribes, doing their utmost to establish contact with all these forest tribes.

On the other side, at the great tent beneath Horse Mane Mountain, when the various tribal commanders assembled as summoned, Liu Chengzong immediately issued the order to break camp.

They too would advance east.

Broadly, the army split into two routes.

One route, with Little Jamusu's thousand-odd Darkhan cavalry as a flanking detachment, advanced east along the edge of the sandy marshlands southeast of Khorchin, moving to the area between the East and West Liao Rivers to screen the homeward journey of Tiger of the northern Hezhen tribe.

The other route was the main force, personally led by Liu Chengzong, advancing through Khorchin toward Kulun to threaten the northwest of Shenyang.

Of course, to guard against the Eight Banners feigning weakness to lure them deep, they still used relay cavalry to scout the path and Mobei cavalry to screen the army's flanks, advancing cautiously and carefully into the heartland of Daiching Gurun.

He wanted to go see for himself near Shenyang what medicine the Chongde Emperor was really selling in his gourd.

Why had he withdrawn his troops just like that?

In truth, this was a matter Liu the Lion had overcomplicated.

Hong Taiji's reason for withdrawing was very simple — it was neither a trap to lure the enemy deep, nor panic from hearing the false news of Ajige's capture.

It was that his own backyard had caught fire.

That Shen Shikui of Dongjiang Garrison, the moment he learned Ajige had marched out, had already rallied the island troops, intending to land and grab some spoils.

But before his troops could even land, he heard that the Eight Banners forces from Shenyang were being dispatched outward in waves, and that niru everywhere were pulling back their people and livestock. Sensing an opportunity to strike, he immediately pulled all four thousand island troops ashore and launched raids on the Jurchen settlements in the Liaodong mountains.

They attacked Xiuyan, three hundred li from Shenyang, defeating the garrison forces there led by Niyahan of the Plain Yellow Banner and Xihan of the Bordered Blue Banner.

And they withdrew before Eight Banners reinforcements from elsewhere could arrive, then proceeded to attack Jianchang City by the Taizi River.

This city was originally called Jianchang Fort. Li Chengliang built Jianchang City when he was Vice Commander of Liaoyang, but it was later destroyed by the Later Jin. It was not until the seventh year of Tiancong that the Later Jin rebuilt Jianchang City.

The character '鹻' in the city's name is interchangeable with '鹼', meaning salt-brine here. This city was also a relatively important small commercial town in the mountainous region southeast of Shenyang.

In the past, Hong Taiji had never feared those few thousand island soldiers Shen Shikui had on Pi Island.

Although Dongjiang Garrison posed a great threat and a significant containing force against him, the garrison itself was nothing to fear — its troops scattered at the first scare. They simply relied on being out at sea, backed by the support of the Great Ming and Joseon, leaving the Eight Banners with no way to deal with them.

Still, the island was plagued by disunity, dilapidated weapons, and destitute livelihoods. The entire island had only a thousand cavalry, all kept as personal retainers tightly held by the commanders and never deployed, so they posed no threat on the open battlefield.

But this time was different.

Liu Chengzong had struck like a venomous snake from the Xing'an Mountains, choosing an excellent moment.

To deal with the threat from the Marshal's Manor, Hong Taiji's forces were stretched thin on both flanks, and the garrison troops left in Shengjing were nearly insufficient.

So Hong Taiji calculated: Liu Chengzong was building fortifications in the Xing'an Mountains and wouldn't make any major moves for the time being. He could therefore first pull his defensive lines back, drive off Shen Shikui, then push his forces forward again to stand off against Liu Chengzong.

Shen Shikui — Hong Taiji knew him well. He had nothing but beggar soldiers who landed to steal and plunder the countryside.

But the problem was that Shen Shikui had good relations with Joseon. If left unchecked, and if Joseon also sent troops, things would get troublesome.

Fortunately, while Hong Taiji's Eight Banners army could not afford to die, Shen Shikui's Dongjiang Garrison could afford it even less, so they scattered at the first scare.

Yet, just as Hong Taiji's army had begun its phased withdrawal, a report suddenly came from the rearguard vanguard cavalry: Liu Chengzong's army had emerged from the Xing'an Mountains in a vast, surging tide!

?? Good afternoon!

? (End of chapter)