Chapter 742: Heaven Sends Wealth

Liu Chengzong could scarcely imagine just how chaotic Liaoyang City could become after Sun Long surrendered.

These men had all wanted to surrender in the first place; it was only that Bai Yunlong and Kong Youde were both afraid, which created that bizarre loyalty to Daicing and the pretense of holding out to the death.

Sun Long's surrender shattered that balance and threw Liaoyang City, which had seemed as impregnable as a fortress of metal and stone, into utter chaos.

The moment the scene of Sun Long leading troops to force the Liao populace to fill in the moat appeared outside the north wall, Quan Jie's heart, up on the wall holding the defense, began to panic.

He of course knew why Sun Long had surrendered, and he knew even more that Sun Long would certainly tell Liu Chengzong about the false-surrender ruse, so during the moat-filling period he quietly sent men to seize the warships at the water gate and gave the order to take advantage of the dusk gloom to move the family dependents onto the ships in batches.

Liaoyang's garrison was already too small, utterly insufficient for guarding the streets during a siege and keeping idlers and riffraff off them.

As it happened, Obedient Prince Kong Youde had the exact same idea — to get his family onto the ships first.

He had not actually thought of abandoning the city outright; of everyone, Kong Youde was the one most loath to lose Liaoyang, for it was his garrison post — without Liaoyang and its troops and population, he, this Obedient Prince, would be nothing at all in the Daicing Empire.

He was merely keeping a fallback, so that if anything went wrong he could still board ship and flee.

Even this was a decision Kong Youde made only after discussing it with Bai Yunlong.

Bai Yunlong had never been optimistic about holding the city; the moment he heard that Kong Youde had finally seen the light and wanted a fallback, the man was overjoyed beyond measure, yet dared not show it too plainly, and with a face full of loyalty he helped Kong Youde check for gaps and shore up the plan.

He told him not to look after only his own people — Geng Zhongming's family and the dependents of the Heaven-Blessed Army's officers all had to be shipped out as well.

On this point, Bai Yunlong faithfully fulfilled the duty of a bodyguard.

What use would it be if Kong Youde ran out alone? If it came to that, never mind that Hong Taiji would want to kill him for losing Liaoyang — even if Hong Taiji didn't kill him, when Geng the Second and that lot saw that their families had all been abandoned in the city while you, Kong Youde, were still alive, the Heaven-Helped Army might very well fall into infighting and kill him first.

Only, this way, what had originally been a secret fallback deployment turned into brazenly shipping out the family dependents.

With so many people, you couldn't very well leave anyone behind.

To be honest, the plan had been quite perfect.

The Marshal's Army had no boats, could not control the Taizi River, and had not even sent troops to the river's east bank to blockade the crossing points.

The Marshal's Army's assault on the city would certainly halt at night; as long as they had not climbed onto the battlements, the fighting would not resume until the next morning.

Inside the city were several dozen boats, large and small, ferrying back and forth outside the east gate; just a few round trips would be enough to send the Heaven-Helped Army officers' families to the opposite bank, after which they could march east under cover of night — it was even possible they might leave the Marshal's Army an empty city.

As it happened, Quan Jie was also sending men to look for boats, and the two boat-hunting parties ran right into each other.

Bai Yunlong's bodyguards wanted to commandeer the boats to ferry everyone to the opposite bank, while Quan Jie's soldiers wanted to seize the boats and run for it themselves.

When enemies meet on a narrow path, the ruthless one wins.

Bai Yunlong's bodyguards had not yet realized what was happening; they assumed Kong Youde had also sent Quan Jie's men to commandeer boats, and with imperious arrogance they ordered the Han troops to bring all the boats over — whereupon more than half of them were cut down.

When Bai Yunlong received the news, he practically exploded with rage.

Damn it — the dog traitors have turned and bitten their masters.

Quan Jie seized over twenty large boats; not only did he take his family dependents, but as they were leaving the city his soldiers threaded through the streets and alleys and looted the shops in Liaoyang's southern quarter — the black smoke visible outside the city was from the fires his men set during the looting.

Just a little something on the side.

Because Quan Jie had thought it through clearly: if he stayed in the city, Liu Chengzong would never spare him; if he fled the city, Hong Taiji and Kong Youde would likewise never spare him.

So the man decided he might as well go all out — he seized only the large boats, brought over eight hundred soldiers, and once aboard set a course to the northwest.

His plan was to sail all the way to where the Three Forks River enters the sea, then take his warships and defect back to the Dongjiang Garrison.

As for whether Shen Shikui of the Dongjiang Garrison could take him in, that could wait — at worst he could seize a small island and plan his next move later; in any case, he could not stay in Liaodong.

His fleet fled in frantic haste, and because their route passed the north wall, they saw Gao Yingdeng's troops storming the battlements — a sight that made Quan Jie's heart pound with terror.

What frightened him was not the Marshal's Army soldiers fighting hand-to-hand atop the wall — anyone could do that.

It was the Marshal's Army's siege positions — they were far too orderly.

Outside the moat was an earthen parapet, behind the parapet a row of light cannons, behind the light cannons a row of trenches, and in the trenches were long arquebusiers; further back still was the heavy artillery position.

And between these three lines of positions, every few dozen paces, an earthen mound was under construction — you could tell that once those things were finished they would be taller than the city wall — and alongside them were rank after rank of soldiers carrying Great Chasing-Wind Guns.

Liu Chengzong's jingal guns were originally the Great Chasing-Wind Guns of the Liao Garrison.

The only difference was that the Great Chasing-Wind Gun used a fuse thrust directly into the touchhole to fire, whereas the Marshal's Army's jingal guns had been improved by replacing the mechanism with a flintlock and firing by flint.

Quan Jie had never seen any unit field this kind of giant musket on a large scale.

He was deathly afraid the Marshal's Army would turn its cannons and bombard his fleet on the river, so every boat rowed for all it was worth, skirting the Marshal's Army's shore positions as they sailed northwest.

This fleet gave Gao Yingdeng, who was commanding the assault, no small fright.

At first he thought the defenders had sortied in boats to fire cannons at him, but when he heard no cannon fire and only saw the boats fleeing, he realized it was the enemy running away and immediately ordered the cavalry to give chase.

The fleet fled along the river, the cavalry chased along the bank.

They could not catch up.

But Quan Jie, his luck was truly abysmal.

If he had taken his fleet east, nothing at all would have happened.

As it was, he led the fleet west; ten li out, just past a river bend, the scouting skiffs passed without incident, but when the larger flagship went through, it rammed straight into a submerged stake, splitting its hull open.

Worse still, in the pitch darkness, the boats behind could not see clearly either; two of them collided with the flagship, producing a terrifying crash in the night.

Several other boats hastily swerved to avoid them, but the stretch of river where the stakes were planted was narrow to begin with — with three boats blocking the middle, if you didn't want a collision you had to sail over dry land and charge for the bank.

To be honest, it scared the wits out of the twelve Marshal's Army soldiers hiding in the reed beds.

This squad was made up of Ningxia troops under the former Ming Assistant Regional Commander Bu Yingdi; originally assigned to watch over the landmines, they had nursed plenty of resentment in their hearts, feeling that the battle honors within reach had drifted far away from them.

But they had never, ever imagined that as they watched the quiet river channel to the west, a fleet would actually come from the east — and charge straight into the submerged stakes they had laid in ambush, with some boats even rushing directly ashore.

The twelve Marshal's Army men, divided into three groups for setting off the landmines — four men to a group — were instantly frozen by this turn of events, unable to decide whether to move or stay put, rigid in the reed beds.

The nearest boat was a mere twenty paces from the nearest group of Marshal's Army soldiers.

But Quan Jie's men were even more panicked; they did not search the riverbank at all. The large boat's hull had been stove in and was leaking; they had no time to repair it — sinking was only a matter of time.

A crowd of men hurriedly lowered skiffs, unloaded valuables and goods, and scrambled to transfer everything ashore.

They were veterans after all; though caught by sudden disaster, Quan Jie's command still held. The men landed in chaotic haste, mustering their numbers and setting up a defense even as they tried, in the intervals, to dismantle the submerged stakes in the river.

And then someone heard the deadly hissing sound.

The sound moved along the ground; the veterans who recognized it scattered and ran, but before they could get far, the first buried landmine exploded.

With the first explosion, a chain of blasts erupted in succession across the two-hundred-pace-wide river shoal. Iron pellets and pebbles shot out in all directions, kicking up patches of gunpowder smoke over the shoal in the dusk.

The vast majority of the explosions were just hastily cobbled-together landmines, jarring enough to make one's head buzz. Unless a man had extraordinarily bad luck, he usually would not be struck by the flying stone fragments.

Even if struck, for an armored soldier it felt like little more than a shove. After all, an explosive's power is neither determined solely by the charge weight nor entirely by the size of the fragments — the prerequisite is the casing that contains the gunpowder.

The instant the casing bursts open, the pressure of the gas generated by the burning powder inside, and how much of that pressure is transferred to the fragments, is what determines the explosive's power.

Take those hastily cobbled-together clay pots: they burst before even a third of the powder had burned. The gas expansion was pitifully small, so the force of the flying pottery shards was naturally very weak.

But buried within this minefield were twelve warheads from Marshal's Manor rockets. Those things were specially made iron casings, repeatedly tested by the Marshal's Military Arsenal. Each one carried fifty-three tiny iron pellets that, in the explosion, tore through the air in every direction, punching out billowing clouds of blood mist.

In an instant, chaos reigned on the shore. Soldiers and their families fled in panic. Officers shouted fierce commands, but their voices were drowned out by the explosions.

At the same time, the Marshal's Army cavalry that had been pursuing the ships along the bank also hurriedly reached the outer perimeter.

Before the gunpowder smoke cleared, one after another, great vulture-feather arrows came piercing through the haze, aimed at the human silhouettes standing in the smoke.

Quan Jie, because he was shouting the loudest to direct his soldiers, was cut down with a single saber stroke by a Marshal's Army soldier lying in ambush nearby.

By the time Quan Jie's severed head was delivered to the main army, the great fire in Liaoyang City had already dyed half the sky crimson.

The fire had been set by Quan Jie's troops while they were seizing the boats. Because the defending commanders were all scrambling to flee across the river, the Marshal's Army pursued and fought their way into the city, missing the best window to extinguish the blaze.

"Grand Marshal, by the time our troops turned back to fight the fire, everything east of the Drum Tower in the south city was already ablaze. We could only tear down the houses on two streets to prevent the flames from spreading westward."

Gao Yingdeng's face was full of shame. He hung his head and said, "Kong Youde got away too."

"Let him run. We didn't come specifically to kill him. What are the losses of people, livestock, wealth, and goods inside the city?"

Liu Chengzong did not care about failing to capture Kong Youde. He was simply searching for the defense map on the strategic charts hung in the temple's main hall, speaking as he looked: "I recall there were several large granaries in the east of the city. Did those burn too?"

"They did burn. East of the Drum Tower, there were two granaries and one storehouse, as well as Kong Youde's residence. The storehouses were next to the main street. Before they caught fire, we managed to snatch quite a few firearms, cannons, and sets of armor. As for those two grain granaries…"

Gao Yingdeng shook his head, then looked up and added: "However, on the shore, Battalion Commander Li Baliang seized three grain boats, carrying over a thousand dan of rice, more than three hundred sets of armor and weapons, and ninety-three chests of gold, silver, utensils, and valuables."

Only a little over a thousand dan of rice. Liu Chengzong mused that these three boats must have been rather small, or else the evacuation was so hasty they couldn't transport the grain over and only focused on loading the gold and silver.

But these ninety-three chests of gold, silver, and utensils were no small amount.

Wasn't this exactly what we came all this way to fight for?

"What ninety-three chests? Hand them over to your main camp's military craftsmen. Set up furnaces on the spot and smelt them all into ingots. And don't let things idle inside the city either."

Liu Chengzong calculated the time and said: "People, livestock, wealth, goods — tally up the numbers for all of them. We can start transporting them beyond the border. Send fast riders along the entry route to deliver a message to Wang Cheng'en, telling him to dispatch troops to receive the people and livestock."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong raised his hand and pointed to the west city on the map, asking: "I see that east of the Drum Tower only accounts for about thirty percent of the city. West of the Drum Tower, there are still three granaries and one storehouse. Are they empty?"

"Replying to the Grand Marshal, they are not empty."

Gao Yingdeng immediately shook his head and reported: "The three granaries are extremely large, with many storehouses, but the grain stored is not much, only about thirty thousand dan, and a good deal of it is old rice. However, there are many bolts of cloth, furs, and miscellaneous goods."

"That Divine Machine Arsenal, however, holds quite a few firearms. Including the cannons on the city walls, there are currently one hundred and twenty Great General Cannons of three different models, mostly old cannons from the Wanli era, but there are new ones too. On the wall, there are also four Red Barbarian Cannons weighing over two thousand jin each."

"Next to the Divine Machine Arsenal, there is an Imperial Horse Pasturage with over six hundred horses. They look quite good as well."

"Apart from that, there are a great many single-eye and triple-eye guns. Should we just leave those old things behind?"

"Take them. Why wouldn't we!"

Liu Chengzong glared, raised his hand, and pointed in the direction of Liaoyang City, saying: "Watch the time. First, prioritize moving the livestock, coin, and grain out of the city. Once the coin and grain are moved, transport the firearms and miscellaneous goods. By tomorrow afternoon, if there's still no news from the east, bring the people out too."

"Before leaving the city, tear down two sections of its walls first. Throw all the city bricks into the river for me. If Hong Taiji comes slowly, set another great fire. Don't leave him a single grain of gunpowder, a single lead ball, or a single block of wood."

Liu the Lion thought to himself: if these firearms and cannons were in Liaoyang City before and remain in Liaoyang City afterward, then wouldn't he have come for nothing?

To put it bluntly, even a triple-eye gun could count as something if sold to the Mongols of the Northern Desert. A Great General Cannon could be placed in the Songmo Prefectural City. Even if you spiked the touchhole, plugged the muzzle, and sank it into the river, that was still better than leaving it for Hong Taiji.

In the early hours of that morning, at several of Liaoyang's city gates, convoys of horse-drawn and mule-drawn carts transporting provisions, wealth, and goods streamed out in an endless line.

Outside the Suqing Gate, over ten large furnaces were set up to smelt the gold and silver.

In mere moments, the huge silver "melons" were cast into row after row of silver bars using the molds for lead ingots.

Liu Chengzong could foresee that the legend of the Later Jin Kingdom being rich in silver would certainly be cemented in the Marshal's Manor from now on.

For the single city of Liaoyang, the search and census of the population was not yet complete, yet the valuables seized from the households of Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming alone were worth at least two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand taels.

On those three boats Li Baliang seized, there were twelve large silver melons stamped with the character 'Geng.' He had no idea what the man intended to do with them; each one weighed three thousand two hundred taels.

Liu Chengzong could already imagine that when Geng Zhongming received this news, he would surely cough up blood from sheer rage.

By noon the next day, a report came from outside the city: over seventeen thousand small silver bars, each weighing one jin, had been smelted, along with over one thousand two hundred gold bars.

The military craftsmen smelting the gold and silver had not yet had a chance to rest when Zhang Xianzhong arrived, escorting over three thousand people, driving ox carts and mule carts, and herding a vast, sprawling mass of livestock. He also unloaded over two hundred chests of valuables looted from nearby manors and stockades outside the west gate.

The fires in the great furnaces had not yet died down, and more charcoal was added.

Zhang Xianzhong was so excited his eyes were red. Not caring whether the Grand Secretary Qian Shisheng wanted to listen or not, he jabbered away, sharing his looting experiences to his heart's content.

Liu Chengzong found his chatter annoying. He waved for Li Hongsi to lead the camp soldiers to their designated area to rest, then attached Tang Tong's reinforcement camp to Zhang Xianzhong's command, telling him to take his men and cross the Taizi River again, heading to the Eastern Capital City on the river's east bank to grab whatever they could.

The most important thing was to guard against a sudden raid by Hong Taiji from the east.

However, just as he was counting the days, estimating that Hong Taiji would arrive before Wang Cheng'en's reinforcements from the north, the roving scouts spread along the banks of the Taizi River brought an alarm amidst the dust of galloping horses.

"Grand Marshal, urgent report! A fleet is coming from the west, carrying armored soldiers and cannons. Thirty li away!"

It was Shang Kexi.

Ever since Sun Long told him that Shang Kexi was an opportunist adept at seizing the moment, Liu Chengzong had considered that Shang Kexi would likely use his naval force to cause him trouble at a critical juncture.

But for him to come at this moment, Liu Chengzong could only chalk it up to his bad luck — the Taizi River was already blocked. The navy had no way to cut off his route for transporting grain north.

If Shang Kexi wanted to make trouble, he would have to land and fight from twenty li away.

"Send word to Gao Yingdeng and Zuo Guangxian. Have the Ranger Camp bring a brigade's worth of thousand-jin field cannons and go meet Shang Kexi's fleet!"

Good morning, everyone!

(End of Chapter)