Chapter 1426: They Need a Victory

Hearing Sun Chuanting's words, everyone's expressions eased considerably, but apart from Zhao Jin, no one smiled—after all, Cao Cao was hardly one to flatter others—though Zhao Jin did nod slightly.

"... Besides, while the whole realm suffers, Xuzhou is a paradise on earth, and this paradise on earth is not sustained by draining the strength of the entire world..."

He said this last seemingly rambling remark, and few took notice, dismissing it as merely Sun Chuanting's musings.

After a thorough and candid discussion, Sun Chuanting took his leave. Returning to Shanxi, there was much to do—whether it was settling the local New Army and the merchant circles, or communicating with the various powerful figures of Northern Zhili. Reaching a consensus did not mean immediate action, nor could anything be done right away.

At their parting, Sun Chuanting spoke even more directly: "Lord Zhao, a great matter is at hand. At this moment, stability is paramount. With Xuzhou's strength, achieving great deeds is as easy as turning over one's hand, but should there be any mishap, I fear it would mean utter and irreversible ruin. I ask you, Lord Zhao, to weigh which is lighter and which is heavier."

Zhao Jin did not answer directly, only gazing northward. They had talked through the night, and now the first light of dawn was breaking on the horizon. After a moment of silence, Zhao Jin said, "Advancing with the crushing force of Mount Tai bearing down—so long as we follow the principles of warfare, there will be no mishap."

Seeing Zhao Jin so confident, Sun Chuanting was about to sigh, but after a moment's thought, he shook his head and smiled. Zhao Jin had his reasons for confidence; he had the capital to be confident.

"The fighting should have started by now, but it likely won't be a major engagement," Zhao Jin murmured to himself.

The official road going north from Fuzhou to Gaizhou Guard City was nearly two hundred and fifty li, the terrain largely flat along the coast.

Before the Jianzhou Jurchen invasion, this area was the third most prosperous region in the Liao Garrison. The first was, of course, the core area of Shenyang and Liaoyang; the second was Guangning, the strategic throat of the Liao Garrison. Both were key towns with fertile farmland and hubs of trade. The coastal strip between Fuzhou and Gaizhou Guard City, however, was lashed by sea winds and encroached upon by seawater, leaving the fields severely salinized and barren. Fuzhou, Jinzhou, and Gaizhou Guard City could hardly be called key towns. The reason they became prosperous was because of the private ports here.

The military households of the Liao Garrison collected their own commercial taxes. Their own businesses were tax-free and unimpeded, but they levied heavy taxes on outside merchants. To earn higher profits, merchants had to smuggle goods into the Liao Garrison.

The area between Fuzhou and Gaizhou Guard City thus became the gateway for receiving smuggled goods. Almost every fortified village and military household participated, and the ones orchestrating and shielding it all from behind were, of course, the local military officers.

After the Jianzhou Jurchen invasion, this area became a battlefield where Ming remnants and the Jianzhou Jurchen fought a tug-of-war. To prevent the people of the Liao Garrison from defecting to the Ming forces, and to stop the remnants of the Dongjiang Army from landing by ship to harass them, the Jianzhou Jurchen troops implemented a scorched-earth policy in this region. Civilians were either concentrated in the cities or driven into the heartland of the Liao Garrison.

Now, the western coast of the Liaonan Peninsula has become a desolate, uninhabited land, waiting only to become a battlefield where the two armies would slaughter each other.

Before the sea froze over for winter, squads from the Zhao Family Army's 1st Provisional Division often landed by ship, either to reconnoiter or to harass, causing endless headaches for the Jianzhou Jurchen garrison.

The endless coastline was simply impossible to defend everywhere, especially for the Jianzhou troops, who knew nothing of the sea. They could only set up sentry posts at key points and station small cavalry squads. They ignored the Zhao Family Army's sporadic harassment and only watched for large-scale attacks. If there was any movement like the landings at Jinzhou and Fuzhou, they would immediately report it and send a large force to meet the enemy. At that point, it would have nothing to do with sea or land—it would simply be a clash of armies.

However, from start to finish, there were only small squads. This made the beile of the Jianzhou Jurchen Jin Kingdom breathe a sigh of relief, thinking the Zhao Family Army was still inexperienced and did not understand how to fully exploit its advantages. If they had directly loaded a large army onto ships and delivered them to Lianyun Island or the Niangniang Temple area, they could have seized the throat of the Liao Garrison and advanced along the Liao River system into the heart of Liaodong. But the enemy had already missed this best opportunity. With the bitter cold and the sea about to freeze over, movement by sea was no longer possible. They could only advance step by step overland from Jinzhou and Fuzhou, which would be a straightforward matter of meeting force with force.

Advancing overland, the main force of the Zhao Family Army was stationed around Fuzhou City. To move north, they had to pass four fortresses: Yongning Fortress, Wushizhai Fortress, Xiongyue Post, and Yulinpu. These four were all located at key junctions on the official road, spaced from south to north at intervals of roughly a day or two's march for infantry and cavalry.

In a normal battle between two armies—meaning the wars between the Ming, the Mongols, and the Jurchens, or campaigns to suppress rebellions and bandits—these four fortresses would be of paramount importance. They would serve as supply depots for the advancing army, the sites of encampments and granaries.

A large army cannot advance too quickly. Under normal circumstances, thirty or forty li a day is the limit. When encamping, they need the shelter of fortresses and a supply of provisions.

To advance and retreat at will, one must ensure these fortresses are under one's control. Otherwise, there is the danger of being blocked or having one's rear lines cut off, which could lead to the catastrophe of the entire army's collapse.

Therefore, by conventional logic, for a large army to advance, it must fight for each fortress one by one. The fighting would first erupt around these fortresses, escalating from skirmishes to major battles, with both sides continuously committing more forces until a decisive battle.

After the Jianzhou Jurchen seized this area, despite the civilians fleeing or being relocated and most villages falling into ruin, these four fortresses—Yongning Fortress, Wushizhai Fortress, Xiongyue Post, and Yulinpu—were preserved by the Jianzhou Jurchen. Provisions and garrisons were maintained as before.

At that time, Ming remnants were holding out in the Jinzhou and Lüshun areas, and a large army was stationed in Dengzhou Prefecture across the sea. If the Ming forces launched a massive counterattack across the sea, the Jianzhou Jurchen army would move south along these four fortresses to block them.

Normally, an army on campaign must secure its supply lines and build encampments—this is standard practice. However, when operating on interior lines, one naturally does whatever is most convenient. Moreover, the organizational capacity for such things had vanished in most Ming battalions. The army would only rely on cities and villages, carrying three to five days' rations on campaign and depending on local supplies for the rest. When supplies ran short, they would resort to plundering and extortion.

As for the Jianzhou Jurchen, since their initial uprising, they had no precedent for building fortified camps and fighting protracted battles. From Hetu Ala to Liaoyang and Shenyang, and then to Guangning, the entire route was dotted with villages and cities rich in stored supplies, while the Ming army was too weak. There were simply no instances of prolonged sieges or battles. Now, fighting on territory they occupied, they were accustomed to relying on the dense network of fortresses and cities as supply depots, using civilian houses as barracks. They rarely built field camps.

Since the time of the Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di, the armies of the Ming and its surrounding powers had become increasingly inept at building field camps and fighting in the open. The nomadic Mongol tribes were an exception, and the most recent exception was Qi Jiguang's Qi Family Army.

Now there was another exception: the Zhao Family Army. This army could not only build field camps, but fortresses and city walls posed no obstacle to them whatsoever.

You lead your troops on a grueling march to a city, hoping to rest and recover under the shelter of its walls and fortifications. Sieges and city assaults are usually measured in months and years, so entering a city often meant safety. At the very least, fighting the enemy from within a city gave you an immense advantage.

But this logic did not apply to the Zhao Family Army. What use were your high walls and deep moats? The Zhao Family Army would arrive, set up their cannons, and blast away. The city walls were no obstacle at all. Then, hiding inside the city would be like a turtle in a jar, and your people and provisions would just fall into the enemy's hands.

Originally, the Jianzhou Jurchen nobles had only a vague understanding of this. But with so many spies inside the pass, a steady stream of news came through, and combined with the battle reports from Fuzhou, no matter how unwilling they were to believe it, they had to take precautions.

Since these cities could not be held, they decided not to defend them at all. The Liaonan Peninsula, ravaged by constant fighting and scorched-earth campaigns, was already in ruins, and since it was newly conquered territory, losing it would not be too painful. They simply enforced a scorched-earth policy and abandoned it entirely, to avoid giving the Zhao Family Army any advantage. Thus, the population and supplies from these fortresses were all withdrawn to Gaizhou Guard City.

Pity those Han people of the Liao Garrison. After enduring hardship after hardship, they had finally found a sliver of stability, toiling like beasts of burden in these few places, only to be displaced once more.

The western side of the Liaonan Peninsula, from Gaizhou Guard City south to the Fuzhou City area, had become a near no-man's-land, waiting only for the two armies to clash.

Both sides were preparing, and the great battle had yet to begin. Yet this area was not entirely devoid of human activity. Cavalry from the Zhao Family Army and the Jianzhou Jurchen, carrying dry rations, roamed back and forth, scouting, probing, screening the battlefield, and hunting each other. In a sense, the fighting had already begun.

The 1st Provisional Division had no more than two thousand cavalry in total, while the Jianzhou Jurchen main force under Amin boasted a full ten thousand horsemen. The balance of power on the battlefield was naturally unequal. Before the troop deployments from Gaizhou Guard City and Haizhou Guard City were complete, there were still gaps to exploit. But once the main army set up camp at Gaizhou Guard City and prepared to move south, it became very difficult for the Zhao Family Army's cavalry to penetrate further.

Know the enemy and know yourself, and you will never be defeated. Pre-battle intelligence is a matter of great importance. Yet in such a narrow strip of land, with the two armies at opposite ends, the information that needed to be gathered was not all that much.

Moreover, the Zhao Family Army's 1st Provisional Division plus a reinforced regiment, over twenty thousand men, were right here. Before the sea routes reopened the following year, there was no possibility of reinforcements. And whether the Jianzhou Jurchen numbered fifty thousand or a hundred thousand, this battle had to be fought. Once the armies began to move, it was impossible for either side not to notice.

There was no great need for reconnaissance, but what had to be done before battle had to be done. War, especially a major war, is not about who is more brilliant, but about who makes fewer mistakes.

That said, at this stage, the probing and hunting between the cavalry units was more like a pre-battle contest of spirit. Though the outcome of these small-scale clashes would not affect the overall situation, they could boost morale.

The generals of the Jianzhou Jurchen army valued this especially. In the past, from outside the pass into the Liao Garrison, they had won every battle, large or small. But against the Zhao Family Army, it was a different story. First, nearly ten thousand troops could do nothing against the Zhao Family Army's small fort on Pi Island. Then, they were swept back with irresistible force at Jinzhou and Fuzhou. Each time was a complete defeat, and even a bastard son of the Great Khan was lost in battle. No matter how much they suppressed the news, such defeats damaged morale. So, they needed a victory.

Spent five days of the Spring Festival holiday weak with a cold.

I originally wanted to use this time to write more—and that's no lie—but over the entire holiday, I only managed fifteen hundred words.

Writing hard, updating hard—that's what I've always done. But there's just too much going on, and sometimes there's nothing to be done about it.

The simplified and traditional Chinese publishing rights for this book are still in my hands, and I'm eager to sell them. If possible, I'm willing to accept a symbolic royalty of one cent (the prerequisite being that I see a physical book, not just a rights sale for hoarding).

All rights to Brocade Guard: The Kingdom, Wicked Ming, and Obedient Ming belong to Yuewen Group. I hope everyone will actively negotiate for them.

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