Chapter 1203: This Is Victory

"To the east! Enemy troops coming from the east!" someone reported to Regional Commander Yang Guodong in utter terror.

At this moment, the entire government army was in forward motion. For enemies to suddenly appear on the flank was a huge problem — even turning the troops around would be a major hassle, and mounted units couldn't be recalled in time.

"Old Chen, take your battalion to the east and hold them! Hold no matter how many die! I guarantee you a promotion afterward, and I'll replace every man you lose!" Shandong Regional Commander Yang Guodong roared, his face ashen.

A Battalion Commander near the main force clasped his fist in salute, shouted orders, and led his troops eastward. This sudden change of direction had already thrown the main government force into chaos. The personal guards around Regional Commander Yang were visibly uneasy — they had been told earlier there were no enemy ambushers around, so how had these appeared? The conclusion was easy enough to reach: the enemy must have been hiding in a nearby village or concealed spot, and only began moving toward the battlefield after the fighting started.

Battalion Commander Old Chen drove his men to turn and resist, but the sight of the enemy charging at him made his eyelids twitch violently. Didn't the Xuzhou rebel army always fight with strict discipline, advancing in neat, uniform steps? Why were these men in front such a disorderly mess, and acting like a pack of madmen?

"This is wrong — the rebels have at least several hundred cavalry! Report to the Grand Commander at once! We can't hold against several hundred cavalry!" Old Chen was already panicking. Dust filled the sky over the battlefield, making it hard to judge the enemy's details when they appeared so suddenly. And from the intelligence they had received, the Zhao Battalion's mounted units were all in Xuzhou and the Southern Metropolitan Region — in Shandong they had at most a little over four hundred cavalry, all of which had already been spotted in the enemy formation.

When the enemy suddenly appeared from the east, the government troops panicked and instinctively assumed it was a small cavalry force with the rest being infantry — the usual composition of Xuzhou troops. They never imagined they'd judged it wrong.

Hoofbeats thundered. By this point, the government soldiers couldn't even tell whether the enemy was riding horses or donkeys. They only knew they had to get out of the way and not get caught up in these crazed rebel riders. The situation was already chaos — why should they throw their lives away?

"Hold! Hold, I said!" Old Chen bellowed furiously, drawing his blade and cutting down two soldiers who were hesitating and retreating. But there was no stopping the rout. Seeing the situation was beyond saving, Old Chen glanced back, then turned his horse and fled with his trusted men. Why should he be the one to die?

The government army had still made some preparations, dispatching troops to block them. Ji Xiang showed no hesitation — if someone stood in his way, he would charge right through. His target was the center of the enemy formation. But less than a hundred paces away, the blocking troops actually scattered on their own!

"A bunch of cowards! Boys, follow me and kill!" Ji Xiang roared with laughter from horseback, brandishing his long blade.

The main government force was already panicking. Watching this thousand-odd enemy troops charge right up to them, and seeing the battalion sent to block them collapse without a fight — how could they possibly hold? Turn and fight, or flee? The army was in motion; how could they conveniently turn around? Flee, then. There were no battle supervisors watching this flank.

Ji Xiang led his household troops charging forward. A sparse volley of arrows came from the government side, along with some firearms going off. The household troops' armor could withstand it, but their mounts couldn't — several riders went down. But Ji Xiang and his men couldn't care less. All they wanted was to charge — charge right in!

The plan had been to open fire at forty paces, but the charge was too fast. At twenty paces, the firelocks and bows finally fired in volley. With a roar and a shriek, dozens of government soldiers dropped at once. The household troops tossed aside their firearms and bows, drew blades and axes, and rode their horses straight into the collision!

This kind of charge held nothing back — no conserving the horses' strength, no regard for whether the mounts lived or died. The only goal was to crash in, knock the government soldiers down, trample them, penetrate as deep as possible, and then start the slaughter!

The government army fell into complete chaos. The several hundred riders Ji Xiang led swept through as if entering uninhabited land. Wherever they crashed into, that place collapsed, and the soldiers shoved each other, spreading the chaos further. Government officers shouted and yelled, desperately trying to hold the formation together, to surround and destroy these several hundred riders who had charged in. But there was no way to rally the troops. The spot where the enemy had broken through was already a boiling mess, and the chaos kept spreading.

"More rebels coming!" a government soldier shrieked. Countless eyes turned eastward and saw several hundred armored Xuzhou troops charging in on foot, wielding blades, axes, spears, and halberds as they plunged straight in. In the rush, who could tell it was only a few hundred men? Dust filled the sky, everyone was panicking, and it felt like wave after wave of Xuzhou troops, all striking their most vulnerable flank.

Some battalions that had just barely restored order were thrown into complete chaos by this second wave. If the First Brigade's square formations were a great saw steadily cutting through the government army, then the force Ji Xiang led was an axe, chopping hard into the center of the great tree that was the government army — and this one axe blow was about to sever it entirely!

The government soldiers resisted on instinct, but the blades and spears in their hands could barely harm the iron armor of the Xuzhou troops, while the enemy's weapons showed no such mercy. What the government soldiers wore — called cotton armor but in reality just padded jackets — offered virtually no protection. Once the shock of the charge passed, the bloody, one-sided slaughter was even more devastating.

The Shandong government troops were all fleeing. No one was willing to stand in front of the Xuzhou troops, and no one wanted to fight them. Ji Xiang had already swung his long blade and struck empty air twice in a row. The space around him was growing emptier and emptier. He looked back — the dismounted household troops who had fallen behind had caught up and regrouped with him.

"Form up! Long and short weapons working together — follow me and charge where the enemy's thickest!" Ji Xiang roared, and his household troops answered in unison.

Shandong Regional Commander Yang Guodong's face had lost all color. He could see the battalions of Liaodong origin up ahead collapsing and surging backward in retreat. No amount of battle supervision could push them back. And the main army behind them was growing more chaotic by the moment, no longer able to hold formation.

"Pass my order — have Yang Gushen go block this raiding rebel force. The rest of the troops..." Regional Commander Yang was still making his final struggle.

But halfway through his shout, it was drowned out by a deafening roar from the front. He saw the Liaodong-origin troops had completely collapsed and were now surging backward toward the Shandong army's main formation.

"Grand Commander, go! We've already lost. Preserve some seeds to return with — we can still rise again!" A personal guard beside him was already urging him to flee. Regional Commander Yang stared at the collapsing formation before him. He understood perfectly well what this meant. The forward formation would soon crash into the rear formation, and then it would be total collapse. That raiding force that had charged in had cut off any hope of rallying and reorganizing. If this kept up, forget victory — even retreat was impossible. No one but the mounted units could escape.

"Grand Commander! If you don't go now, it'll be too late!" The personal guard was already reaching to seize Yang Guodong's reins, ready to drag him along in flight.

Just then, Regional Commander Yang Guodong let out a wretched howl to the heavens and cried out in a tearful voice: "It's over... it's all over!"

Was the Grand Commander about to take his own life and die for the dynasty? The personal guards were all shocked, unsure whether to stop him or not. But the next moment, Shandong Regional Commander Yang Guodong, tears streaming down his face, simply bellowed: "Go! We're going!"

With those words, Regional Commander Yang Guodong wheeled his horse around without the slightest hesitation. His personal guards all followed suit. They charged straight ahead regardless of whether their own soldiers were in the way. If any soldier was truly blocking the path, a single slash from horseback cut them down.

In a situation like this, the government officers had long been wound tight as a bowstring — thirty percent of their mind on the fight, seventy percent fixed on the commander's movements. The moment they saw Regional Commander Yang flee first, they all followed suit. By now, this was no longer a battle but the Xuzhou troops driving the government army in a panicked rout. If they didn't run now, it really would be too late. The foot soldiers had no way to escape, but the officers and their personal guards could — four legs always ran faster.

The government cavalry, which had been waiting on the flank ready to maneuver, was no slower to react at this critical moment. Under Battalion Commander Yang Gushen's leadership, they changed direction, merged with the fleeing Regional Commander Yang Guodong, and together raced northward. The government soldiers were already in a state of panic. Seeing their own commanders fleeing for their lives, every last one of them — whether caught up in the chaos or not — scattered and fled. The government army's grand formation, which moments ago had still held some semblance of order, collapsed in an instant!

The collapse of nearly twenty thousand troops brought chaos and impact like a landslide and a tidal wave. Ji Xiang and his household troops had been merrily hacking and slashing to their hearts' content, but this sudden collapse nearly threw their own formation into disorder. They had to temporarily pull back from the army's core just to stabilize.

The collapse of the Shandong troops triggered an even greater collapse among the Liaodong-origin forces. Then the routed soldiers crashed into each other, making the situation utterly unsalvageable. Officers and cavalrymen still in the army cared about nothing but saving their own skins. They no longer cared whether the ones blocking their path were their own men — they just swung their blades and cut them down. The common soldiers weren't resigned to it either: if someone ahead blocked the way, they'd slash them too. And if officers or cavalrymen tried to kill them, they'd fight back just the same.

The chaotic mass of men and horses kicked up dust that blotted out the sky. Visibility on the battlefield had become terrible. Yet the rhythmic drumming of the Xuzhou troops kept drawing inexorably closer. To the government soldiers, that sound was now the same as death itself — everyone wanted to get as far away as possible.

"Drop your weapons, kneel and you won't be killed! Drop your weapons, kneel and you won't be killed!" The Xuzhou troops' unified shout drowned out every other sound on the battlefield. The government soldiers, endlessly fleeing and surging backward, had lost all strength. Many, upon hearing this, simply threw down their weapons and knelt on the ground. They were then cursed at and driven to the sides by the approaching Zhao Battalion square formations — kneeling in the road was a nuisance. Those who moved too slowly received no courtesy from the Zhao Battalion either.

Ji Xiang and his men also heard the First Brigade's voices. Ji Xiang wiped the sweat from his face and said bitterly, "A shame the government cavalry got away. Otherwise, this would've been total annihilation. You men join in the shouting too. If these government curs don't behave, just slaughter them."

The cry of "Drop your weapons, kneel and you won't be killed" rang out everywhere on the battlefield. More and more government soldiers heard it, and they kept kneeling. By this point, even the government cavalry couldn't escape. Those who hadn't broken out in time, or who were trapped in the formation and unable to move, could only surrender now — because the Zhao Battalion's mounted household troops and the Xuzhou volunteers had already swept around to encircle them.

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