Chapter 604: Who Can Stand Against Him?

When it came to attacking cities, Meng Shanming chose only those that were easy to take. He would never get bogged down in a prolonged siege. Difficult cities were bypassed entirely while his forces focused on defeating the enemy’s main field armies; those hard targets would be left for the troops coming behind to keep threatening until they could be dealt with later.

Meng Shanming’s task was to carry out Nanzhou’s strategic objective: race against time and seize the territory first. Cities that were difficult to storm could be left for the bulk of Nanzhou’s army to capture at leisure once it arrived.

In plain terms, he was relying on Nanzhou’s powerful troops and cavalry to exploit the shortage of forces in Dingzhou after so many had been transferred away.

The moment Meng Shanming adjusted his tactics, Dingzhou’s defenders began to suffer badly.

His carriage rolled from place to place. Meng Shanming did not establish a fixed command center; the command hub for the entire offensive was this moving carriage.

Inside it, Meng Shanming had not slept all night. Fatigue showed on his face, yet he never stopped studying the map, receiving military reports from every front and issuing one order after another.

Luo Da’an remained beside him throughout, attending him and learning by watching and listening.

Once the Yingyang and Wulie Guards arrived, the power of having a famed general of Meng Shanming’s generation personally in command immediately revealed itself in full.

On the main front, Meng Shanming used part of his force to pin down the enemy’s already concentrated main body. At the same time, the Yingyang and Wulie Guards raced in every direction to intercept smaller enemy detachments moving to assemble, preventing those forces from joining the main body and forming an overwhelmingly superior army. This also bought time for Nanzhou’s reinforcements to arrive.

The small Dingzhou contingents converging from every direction were no match for the Yingyang and Wulie Guards. One after another, they were routed and scattered, leaving the enemy’s main force isolated.

Once that objective had been achieved and Nanzhou had gathered part of its own strength on the main battlefield, the Yingyang and Wulie Guards immediately returned to the front and joined the forces there in a concentrated assault on the enemy’s main army.

Thirty thousand troops from Nanzhou faced fifty thousand from Dingzhou head-on. The defenders still held a clear numerical edge.

Banners snapped in the wind, war drums thundered, and killing cries shook the sky. Cavalry met cavalry as both sides launched the first frontal charge.

Dingzhou’s cavalry was already far fewer in number than the Yingyang and Wulie Guards. In fighting strength, it was even less capable of matching the famous Guards whose name was known beneath Heaven.

Men and horses went tumbling. Dingzhou’s assembled cavalry formation collapsed in a single head-on clash and was swallowed by the Nanzhou troops charging in behind.

Having broken the enemy cavalry, the Yingyang and Wulie Guards drove straight into the fifty-thousand-man army with ferocious momentum, tearing it apart and cutting it into isolated blocks while the forces behind surged in to exploit the breach.

Nanzhou pressed the attack without pause. Dingzhou’s fifty thousand troops broke. Corpses covered the field. Scattered remnants fought delaying actions while the greater part of the army fled in panic.

The routed troops poured into a mountain road running through a valley. Suddenly, heaps of brushwood and vegetation came tumbling down from above like rain, while at the far end of the valley great rocks rolled down with thunderous force and blocked the road.

More than a thousand archers appeared along the heights on both sides. They lit fire arrows and shot them into the valley. Flames surged up at once. More than ten thousand routed soldiers screamed like ghosts and howling wolves inside the valley, their shrieks so terrible they scarcely sounded human.

Those who tried to retreat toward the entrance found the way already sealed by pursuing troops. Wave after wave of arrows cut them down. Men staggering forward, begging for mercy and shouting surrender, fell in groups.

More than ten thousand men had no road to Heaven and no gate into the earth. Trapped inside a sea of flames, the cultivators accompanying the defeated army recovered from their shock just enough to seize their commanding general and flee, only to be pursued by cultivators from Dachan Mountain.

Carrying another man slowed them too much. The fleeing cultivators had no choice but to abandon the enemy commander and escape on their own.

Driven into a dead end, the commander drew his sword to cut his own throat, hoping to protect his family in the capital. His sword was knocked from his hand, and he was captured alive.

At sunset, smoke still curled from the valley. Two cultivators worked together to carry a wheelchair up onto the ridge. Luo Da’an climbed behind them, two spears over his shoulders.

Sitting in the wheelchair, Meng Shanming smelled the stench of charred corpses and looked down at the horror in the valley without expression. Bathed in the glow of the setting sun, he gave no hint of what was passing through his mind.

More than ten thousand defeated soldiers had begged to surrender in their desperation. He had refused them and issued an order to kill without mercy.

It was not because he was heartless. The situation simply did not allow him to spend time and manpower on those captives. Time did not permit it. Speed did not permit it. His available troops were already stretched thin; where could he find enough men to guard more than ten thousand prisoners? If they suddenly turned on him... he would not permit that kind of uncertainty to exist on his battlefield.

The scene before them was so ghastly that even Luo Da’an wanted to vomit.

The two Dachan Mountain cultivators carrying the wheelchair were chilled by what they saw. From time to time they secretly glanced at Meng Shanming, feeling that this man was far more ruthless than cultivators like themselves. When he killed, he did it by the tens of thousands.

At Rongyang Commandery Capital, the captured enemy commander was dragged outside the city gates. Nanzhou’s assembled forces shouted demands toward the walls: if the city did not open its gates and surrender, then once the walls were breached, every official in the city, high and low, would be slaughtered. Open the gates now, and past offenses would be pardoned.

Nearly all the city’s troops had been stripped away for the decisive battle. There was practically no force left to defend the place. Knowing the city could not be held, the cultivators assigned to its defense fled. The gates of Rongyang Commandery Capital opened wide, and the Nanzhou army quickly entered, took control, and rested.

The army rested. Meng Shanming did not. He continued directing and redeploying forces elsewhere to keep up the offensive.

This was the first commandery capital Nanzhou had captured after entering Dingzhou.

The Governor of Rongyang Commandery had no choice. He was now a surrendered official, and every member of his family, young and old, stood beneath the butcher’s blade. With no other path left to him, he ordered every county seat under Rongyang Commandery to open its gates and surrender.

This was the first day of the war, and also the first large-scale head-on clash between the massed forces of Dingzhou and Nanzhou. It ended in a catastrophic defeat for Dingzhou.

The battle had taken place outside Rongyang Commandery Capital. Fifty thousand Dingzhou troops had faced thirty thousand from Nanzhou and been nearly annihilated. Only about two thousand men escaped in scattered groups.

Once the news spread, its effect on the regions being swept by Nanzhou’s advance was impossible to measure. Imperial troops were plainly no match for Nanzhou’s forces. Fifty thousand men had faced thirty thousand and had nearly been wiped out instead?

What shook people even more was the report that more than ten thousand routed soldiers had tried to surrender after resisting to the end, only to have their surrender refused and be slaughtered to a man.

Some of the cities that had previously held firm and proved difficult to attack now began opening their gates one after another under threats from the Nanzhou troops coming behind.

The Dingzhou forces that were still preparing to meet Nanzhou’s army were likewise terrified, their will to resist badly weakened.

Nanzhou’s army, meanwhile, learned that its side had destroyed a larger enemy force while taking relatively light losses, and morale soared.

That was exactly the effect Meng Shanming wanted from this battle. A victory in the first major engagement would raise the spirits of his own exhausted troops after their forced march and crush the enemy’s morale.

He had another purpose as well: frighten the enemy out of using smaller detachments to entangle his forces, compel Dingzhou to contract and concentrate its troops, and thereby allow Nanzhou to pick up territory even faster.

Only a handful of people in Nanzhou knew the highest strategic objective of the campaign. It was not to fight Dingzhou’s army to a final decision. The hidden true aim was to seize as much territory as possible, as quickly as possible.

That objective could not be revealed. If Dingzhou learned it, they would certainly devise every possible means to delay Nanzhou’s advance.

...

When news of the defeat reached Dingzhou’s central army camp, Xue Xiao stood inside the newly erected command tent in armor, holding the battle report with trembling hands. He murmured to himself, “How could we lose so disastrously? Could Meng Shanming himself be commanding them...? If so, who can stand against him?”

Wan Qingyan and Gai Huan both looked grim. It was only the first day of the war; not even a full day had passed, yet an entire commandery had already been lost.

Gai Huan suddenly said, “Brother Xue, send another message to the imperial court immediately. Request emergency reinforcements from the neighboring prefectures and provinces!”

The victory report soon reached the Provincial Inspector’s Residence in Nanzhou. Inside the Hall of Martial Valor, Shang Chaozong and Lan Ruoting looked at each other over the report and burst into laughter, while the generals around them cheered.

“Quick. This is what quick means!” Shang Chaozong said in delight. “An entire commandery taken already. Uncle Meng has personally entered the field, and sure enough, the result is extraordinary.”

One general grinned. “Your Highness, back when Marshal Meng commanded Yan’s armies and shook every direction, even the other states trembled before him. Xue Xiao is nothing. If he knew the opponent he was facing was Marshal Meng himself, he would probably scare the courage right out of his own guts!”

“Hahaha!” The room erupted in hearty laughter again.

In another courtyard of the Provincial Inspector’s Residence, Huang Tong hurried inside and found Huang Lie, then reported the victory to him.

Huang Lie was visibly surprised. “They took an entire commandery in so little time? That is a huge territory. Even an army would have trouble traversing the whole commandery that quickly.”

Huang Tong smiled. “Strictly speaking, if you count the county seats that opened their gates and surrendered elsewhere, it is already more than one commandery. Scattered together, the territory may amount to a commandery and a half. Sect Leader, I have to admit it: Meng Shanming truly is formidable on the battlefield. A famed general of his generation lives up to his reputation. The moment he takes command, he sweeps everything before him.”

Huang Lie, however, could not smile. He gave a soft sigh. “This time, we really have been dragged into the water. After this, I fear no one outside will believe that Dachan Mountain and Niu Youdao are not wearing the same pair of trousers.”

He had originally thought the two sides would clash, become deadlocked for a while, and then stop once the three major sects intervened. Who could have known Dingzhou would prove so incapable of resisting? Now the matter had truly become real, and Dachan Mountain was riding the tiger with no way down. With the fighting already gone this far, if Dachan Mountain withdrew its people now and thereby caused Nanzhou to lose, there would be no explaining it to the people of Nanzhou.

The smile stiffened on Huang Tong’s face. He said nothing.

...

“You want me to release them?”

At Maolu Villa, Niu Youdao sat in a pavilion reading the message from the imperial court that Shang Chaozong had forwarded to him. He gave a cold laugh.

Shang Chaozong had not told him to release anyone. He had simply sent the message over and left the decision to Niu Youdao.

Niu Youdao slapped the letter down on the stone table. “Send word back to the Prince. Tell him to agree to the court’s demand.”

Guan Fangyi, standing beside him, looked surprised. “You hung those people from the city walls. The court simply cannot bear the loss of face. Now they want to take them away under the pretext of an interrogation. Once they have the prisoners, what the interrogation concludes will no longer be up to us.”

“Nanzhou is still Nanzhou of the State of Yan in name,” Niu Youdao said. “There are rules to these things. We cannot have the Prince openly defy an imperial edict, can we? Agreeing is one thing. When we carry it out is another. They beat me half to death and now expect me to hand people over easily? Is there such a wonderful bargain in this world? Send word to the commandery capital. Kill a batch of the people hanging from the walls, in public!”

He paused, then continued, “As for the reason, announce it far and wide. Say those people falsely accused the imperial court by claiming the court had sent them to launch the surprise attack.”

Guan Fangyi shook her head and sighed. This was plainly another slap across the imperial court’s face. Nanzhou had received the edict, yet rather than release the prisoners, it was going to kill some of them instead. Where was the court supposed to put its dignity?

Just then, Yuan Gang arrived and set a letter in front of Niu Youdao. “Victory report from Dingzhou.”

“Oh?” Interested, Niu Youdao picked it up. Guan Fangyi quickly stepped behind him, rested one arm on his shoulder, and bent down to read along, making little sounds of amazement as she went.

“Haha!” After reading it, Niu Youdao laughed happily and shook his head in admiration. “As expected of Meng Shanming. Beautifully fought. The speed of these gains is far beyond what I expected!”

His highest expectation had been that, by the time the three major sects formally intervened, Nanzhou might manage to bite off one commandery of Dingzhou. Instead, the brilliance of the campaign was almost unbelievable. In less than a day, Meng Shanming had already occupied territory amounting to a commandery and a half. And he truly had done exactly what Niu Youdao asked: struck hard enough to display Nanzhou’s full momentum.

[End of Chapter 604]