Chapter 741: Second Breach of the City

Liu Chengzong was not at the siege position.

The Marshal Army's main camp was stationed in a temple dedicated to Juliu Sun on a low hill west of the city, with only a few hundred Feathered Forest Guards on perimeter watch.

The Tiger Guard Battalion's officers had all dispersed into small squads at the start of battle, surveying terrain and scouting strategic features across the Liaoyang countryside, while quite a few of the Feathered Forest Riders were operating alongside Zhang Xianzhong.

The Feathered Forest Riders, however, were not following him to set fires — they too were tasked with mapping terrain, recording fortified manors, farmsteads, and residences, tallying plunder, and taking captives under escort to the siege encampment.

Liu Chengzong and the officers left at central command, meanwhile, collated the streams of intelligence arriving from every direction during the battle, analyzing it to grasp the full operational picture of the Liaodong theater.

The moment word arrived that Sun Long was coming out of the city to surrender, Liu Chengzong sensed something was off.

Because according to Zuo Guangxian, the force Sun Long brought out of the city was smaller than he had imagined — far smaller.

Zuo Guangxian's cavalry, upon receiving word, had ridden at speed to meet them. They saw over three hundred people, more than two hundred of whom were family members and servants. The actual soldiers numbered just over eighty, and counting Sun Long himself, there were only sixteen officers.

The families of Sun Long and his men were assigned to the Clan Battalion's designated zone for settlement, while Zuo Guangxian brought only Sun Long and a few officers to the temple to pay their respects.

Sun Long looked utterly terrified. The moment he saw Liu Chengzong, he kowtowed and begged for forgiveness, babbling nonsense — saying he had not opened the north gate, nor had he opened the west gate for the Marshal's headquarters, that he had only fled with his family and subordinates.

This jumbled plea for forgiveness left Liu the Lion stunned.

He thought to himself, this man is sick, and gravely so.

Wasn't your order precisely to flee with your family and subordinates? What is there to beg forgiveness for?

Liu Chengzong wondered to himself, how had Huang Taiji managed to twist Li Jiucheng's fierce rebels — men who had fought successive battles against the various garrisons — into this state?

The distant rumble of cannon fire pressed down on his thoughts. Liaoyang was proving easier to assault than expected. The defenders' counter-fire was feeble and weak, and especially after Sun Long led his men out of the city, the defenders' deployment on the walls had fallen into disarray.

Listening to Sun Long's incoherent pleas for forgiveness, Liu the Lion suddenly realized where the problem lay. He asked Sun Long, "Did you simply not read my reply at all?"

Sun Long, raising his head, looked dumbfounded.

What reply?

"To be clear, Marshal, this humble man wrote a surrender letter on the wall, but not long after, I was transferred to the west wall by the Prince."

As expected.

Understanding dawned in Liu Chengzong's mind, but a greater doubt immediately surfaced: "Then why did you come out of the city to surrender?"

"This humble man shaved his head and surrendered to the Jin only under duress. Hearing that the Marshal was leading the imperial army into Liaodong was a heaven-sent chance for this humble man to redeem himself and return to the fold!"

"Ha!"

Seated in his folding chair, Liu the Lion let out a single laugh, then his smile faded. His gaze fixed steadily on Sun Long. He pointed at him. "You are not telling the truth."

Liu Chengzong believed that Sun Long's surrender might partly stem from an unwillingness to serve the Chongde Emperor, but that was certainly not the decisive factor.

Yet the man had not seen his reply either. To say he did it for promotion and riches did not hold water.

Could it truly be that he came out of admiration for his name?

Liu Chengzong himself did not believe that. What reputation could he possibly have in Liaodong?

And besides... his gaze shifted to the sixteen officers kneeling not far away. These were undoubtedly Sun Long's trusted confidants.

Their official ranks ranged from Sun Long's Mobile Corps Commander down to squad leader. Their greatest commonality was their youth.

Not a single one of them looked over thirty.

At that age, one could easily believe they were a company commander leading a bunch of squad leaders.

Clearly, this was also a defining trait of the Three Compliant Kings' forces. They themselves were Dongjiang soldiers and refugees from southern Liao recruited by Sun Yuanhua. After the mutiny, they were promoted through a short, high-intensity rebel campaign, and a small portion later defected to the Jin, where they were promoted yet again.

Their official ranks were all inflated by at least one grade.

"This humble man dares not deceive the Marshal. My heart is set on returning to the fold. Every word is true."

Having said this, Sun Long raised his head to glance at Liu Chengzong's expression, then cautiously added, "The feigned surrender was proposed by Quan Jie, the Vice General of Liaoyang."

Liu Chengzong nodded, waiting for Sun Long to continue.

But before Sun Long could open his mouth, Liu Chengzong suddenly grasped the implication of those words. He frowned and asked, "If our army entered the city, you had an ambush set in the barbican?"

Sun Long dared not speak further, only nodded his head like a pestle pounding garlic.

"Enough, get up."

Only at this moment did Liu Chengzong understand Sun Long's motive for surrender. He could not help but furrow his brow and gaze toward the walls of Liaoyang.

Kong Youde and his lot were ruthless enough.

With so few men in the city, they were still scheming to take a big bite, trying to trick his army into the barbican to slaughter them?

Knowing this, Liu the Lion no longer had any doubts about Sun Long's surrender.

Without question, Sun Long surrendered purely out of fear of retaliation.

Someone else proposed the feigned surrender, and Sun Long was tasked with carrying it out. If a few hundred Marshal's troops had truly entered the barbican of the Invincible Gate, with Kong Youde's troops firing muskets and cannons, likely few would have survived.

After the city fell, others who surrendered might still have a way out, but Sun Long, having earned Liu Chengzong's enmity, would certainly have no chance of living.

Liu Chengzong withdrew his gaze. As he paced, his eyes softened. He mused to himself that the officers of the Three Compliant Kings' faction indeed could not be treated as ordinary men.

These men had first rebelled, then surrendered. It was hard to say how skilled they were at fighting, but their ability to adapt on the fly and survive was truly formidable.

Take this Sun Long, for instance. He had not even read his reply, yet the moment he found an opening, he decisively brought his family out of the city to surrender, without the slightest hesitation.

After pondering a moment, Liu Chengzong looked again at Sun Long and the surrendered officers. "In my reply, I stated that General Sun, as the first to surrender in Liaoyang, would be welcomed by this Marshal with a swept couch. You need only bring your family and subordinates out of the city with care. A special Liaoyang Battalion would be established, with you, General, appointed as its Colonel. On the day the city falls, all Liao troops will be assigned to your battalion."

"Though that was a ploy by the defenders against me, I did not enter the city, yet you, General, still came out to join me. This is fate between you and the Marshal's headquarters."

"The rewards and appointments remain unchanged. All soldiers and officers who came out of the city with you to return to the fold shall be promoted by one rank."

"After the battle, if your numbers fall short of three thousand, you are authorized to recruit able-bodied men from the civilian population to fill your battalion."

Sun Long had just stood up, but upon hearing Liu Chengzong's terms for the first to surrender, he knelt and kowtowed again. "Thank you, Marshal, for your grace!"

His thanks were utterly sincere, but not because Liu Chengzong had given him the rank of Colonel.

For officers of the Kong and Geng faction, their need for official rank was very low.

To a certain extent, official rank was the very reason many of them had to walk on eggshells and keep their tails between their legs in the Later Jin state.

Kong and Geng's Heaven-Blessed Troops numbered just over six thousand men in total, but because they had built a large command structure during the earlier Dengzhou-Laizhou rebellion, the vast majority of their officers held fairly high ranks after surrendering to the Later Jin.

There were eight Regional Vice Commanders alone, while a Mobile Corps Commander like Sun Long had never led more than eight hundred men at most.

Official rank does not equal power and wealth. The Later Jin had no such thing as military pay — soldiers and civilians lived off plunder distribution and a slave-plantation economy. Official rank was nothing more than Huang Taiji handing out a little reward during festivals and at year's end.

In these times of natural disasters and man-made calamities, any regime that survived did so by making trade-offs and scraping by on bluff and muddling through.

The slave-plantation economy was very friendly to the Eight Banners nobility, but the Han Army were not Eight Banners nobility.

The Three Compliant Kings were relatively independent, but plunder had nothing to do with them either. Huang Taiji would often drag them onto the battlefield, but they rarely went into the fray — usually they just pushed cannons up to bombard fortresses.

Once the fortress was bombarded, others climbed the walls, and naturally others did the plundering.

Because within the framework of the Later Jin state, the Three Compliant Kings, with their mere six thousand men, eight Vice Commanders-in-Chief, and a dozen or so Colonels, simply could not achieve great merit — there were no more titles or rewards left to give them.

What truly made Sun Long feel heartfelt gratitude was that one line from Liu Chengzong: after the battle, he would be permitted to replenish his troops to a full three thousand.

One sentence, and the sincerity was laid bare.

He really was letting him serve as a Battalion Colonel!

In truth, never mind replenishing to three thousand — even if he were only allowed to command two thousand men, Sun Long would be overwhelmed with gratitude.

"Serve this marshal well, and that will be worth more than any words. First, sit. I have something to ask you."

Liu Chengzong, having spoken, looked toward the officers still kneeling behind and said to them as well, "All of you, rise. The marshal's domain is vast in territory and great in population — there is ample ground here for you gentlemen to put your talents to use."

"The garrison troops inside the city, the officers of every rank, the defense map — you will need to draw all of that. And aside from that... where is Huang Taiji?"

The group of Kong-affiliated officers still hesitated somewhat over this matter, but Sun Long did not hesitate at all and was the first to speak, laying out in full the troop dispositions and defenses as they were when he left the city, as well as every critical point within the city.

He even added a justification for his trusted subordinates afterward: "The easier the Marshal takes Liaoyang, the fewer casualties our brothers suffer, and the more men our Liaoyang Battalion will have when the time comes."

Then he poured out a torrent of grievances, recounting a long list of the injustices suffered ever since Kong Youde had led them to defect to the Later Jin.

Liu Chengzong had no interest in their grievances, but he did pick up on some rather interesting things.

Sun Long believed that persuading Kong and Geng's troops to surrender would be very easy, and his words were full of contempt for Shang Kexi's forces. The implication was that Kong and Geng's surrender to the Jin had been a choice made out of desperation after setting themselves up as independent warlords, whereas Shang Kexi was a profit-driven opportunist blinded by greed.

Dongjiang Garrison possessed a very strong cohesive power.

To put it less charitably, a severe separatist tendency.

But separatist tendency did not equal a tendency to surrender to the Jin. On the contrary, they were extremely hostile toward the Later Jin.

When they were in Shandong, they were all dead set on rebellion. Li Jiucheng, with just one rallying cry, could incite Kong Youde's eight hundred men to mutiny. Once those eight hundred sent word to rally Mao Wenlong's old troops, their strength swelled to over ten thousand, and at its peak, they even had an army of over ninety thousand.

But when it came to the final act of shaving their heads and surrendering to the Jin, most were forced by circumstance — they had no other choice.

They were not like Shang Kexi, who had offended the Dongjiang Garrison. Ming-dynasty Shandong had merely refused to let him bring his troops over to serve as an official, but his room for choice was still very large.

Taking a few household retainers to Shandong to live as a wealthy man would have posed no problem at all. He could even have taken a few hundred troops to Jinzhou and thrown in his lot with Zu Dashou — he had no feud with the Guanning Army.

It was just that Zu Dashou might not necessarily have wanted him. Who would want a twenty-nine-year-old Vice Commander-in-Chief?

Shang Kexi's one act of defying the collective will of the Dongjiang Garrison — helping Huang Long, who had been sent by the imperial court, seize power — was repaid in kind by Huang Long, who entrusted him with heavy responsibilities and promoted him in rapid succession. It took him only three years to go from Guard Commander to Vice Commander-in-Chief.

This was not a question of whether he could fight.

Wu Sangui could fight very well too. He had trained in martial arts since childhood and excelled at mounted archery. At the age of twenty, he served as a vanguard shock trooper, crossing blades with the Later Jin's Forward Camp.

And he had a father who was a Commander-in-Chief and an uncle who was a Commander-in-Chief, yet it still took him five years to go from Guard Commander to Vice Commander-in-Chief.

Shang Kexi, amid all his choices, chose to shave his head and surrender to the man who had killed his father.

It was only at this moment that Liu Chengzong realized that the titles Huang Taiji had bestowed upon the Three Compliant Kings were all praising himself.

Kong Youde was "Compliant" to Huang Taiji; Geng Zhongming's title, "King of Cherished Compliance," referred to Huang Taiji's magnanimity in not holding his status as a deserter against him.

And Shang Kexi's title, "King of Wise Compliance," referred to his wisdom in clearly having other options yet choosing to surrender to the Jin.

Aside from that, the unexpected delight was that Sun Long truly did know Huang Taiji's location.

When Liu Chengzong had breached the border and invaded Liaodong, Kong Youde had already sent word to Shengjing as a warning.

Before Sun Long left the city to surrender, Shengjing's reply had just been delivered into the city via the East City Water Gate. The reply was not from Huang Taiji, but from Wei Qi, the Defender of Shengjing, saying that Shen Shikui's petty bandits had raided a walled fort southeast of Shenyang, that the harassment would soon be suppressed, and that Kong Youde need not worry about Shengjing.

Based on this distance, Liu Chengzong estimated that Huang Taiji's main Eight Banners force would soon return to Shenyang.

The Subadi tribe's Mobei cavalry, who were plundering near Shenyang, would not fight the Eight Banners to the death. The moment they spotted the main force, they would come racing over. By the most generous estimate, the time left for him to attack Liaoyang was not much.

Time was tight.

"General Sun, newly surrendered, should by rights rest a while. But the fires of war brook no delay. I place the civilian laborers sent to the front from all over Liaoyang under your command. Direct them to fill in the moat and support our allied forces in storming the city."

Sun Long and his men naturally accepted the order, and the group immediately rushed to the north of the city to receive the civilian laborers sent over by Zhang Xianzhong's men.

In truth, they knew perfectly well — what "sent"? They were Liaoyang commoners, plundered and then escorted over.

Precisely because of this, Sun Long and his men not only felt no resistance to the order, but were actually quite pleased.

Having the Liaoyang commoners transferred to serve under their command was far better than leaving them in the hands of the Marshal's army, those old Shaanxi hands.

They had only just arrived when Wai Liangzi, the Camp Officer, was sent over from Gao Yingdeng's side, who was directing the siege. He reported, "Grand Marshal, something's off on the walls of Liaoyang. There's a bit of chaos inside the city — they've stopped firing from the walls. General Gao intends to fill in the river and send troops to scale the walls for a probe."

Scaling the walls already?

The attack on the north of the city had been planned as a probing assault.

What they truly wanted to strike was the western wall of the southern city.

But clearly, the situation had shifted now with Sun Long's surrender.

Liu Chengzong raised his telescope and looked toward the north of the city. He saw that the defenders on the northern wall not only did not appear to have decreased, but had even grown in number — yet they indeed looked to be in disarray.

They did not look like battle-hardened veterans.

Even more strangely, from his high vantage point he could see far, and he could even make out cannons simply sitting on the horse paths, not even hoisted onto the walls, while the defenders nearby paid them no mind at all.

"Approved. Have Gao Yingdeng commit full force to a probing assault."

In truth, the siege preparations were not yet complete at this point. Outside the northern wall, the several earthen mounds meant to suppress the defenders' firearms were not yet as tall as the city wall. The scaling ladders and wooden screen carts for the assault were not yet finished either — only some trenches had been dug.

But since the defenders inside the city were clearly in disarray, it was better to launch a probe first and see.

With Liu Chengzong's approval of the order, the well-rested First Brigade's Main Battalion immediately joined the moat-filling effort. The roar of cannons outside the city intensified, and lion cannons were pushed to the far bank of the moat to begin suppressive fire.

The wagons carrying supplies were emptied one after another, loaded full with earth and rock, and tipped into the river. A road cutting across the moat was quickly paved over the water.

Until dusk.

A plume of black smoke rose from the southern city of Liaoyang, surging over the city wall and into the sky.

The city is in chaos!

Horns wailed outside the city. At Gao Yingdeng's command, across the still unfilled moat, the First Brigade's regular troops laid long ladder after long ladder over the gaps, laying down door planks to cross swiftly.

Only a hundred or so men had crossed when the first long ladder was already set against the parapet of Liaoyang's north wall.

Just as the Marshal's troops scaling the north wall locked in desperate, deadly combat with the defenders, the Suqing Gate in the south city's western wall swung open for the second time.

"Marshal! Liaoyang's Vice General, Xian Guo'an, has opened Suqing Gate to surrender the city. He says Vice General Quanjie took a boat without orders and fled first through the east city water gate along the Taizi River. Prince Gongshun, Kong Youde, failed to seize a boat and has led his troops toward Dongjing City. The city is already in chaos!"

?? Good afternoon!

? (End of chapter)