Chapter 684: Breaking Through the Defensive Line

The moment Zhang Hu’s order arrived, Left Commander Guo Xianfu rose from where he had been lying hidden in the darkness.

At his command, twenty-five thousand hardened soldiers broke into a run through the night, heading straight for the place where firelight illuminated the sky.

The ambush position had been deliberately kept far away. They had not dared lie closer. The danger of being discovered would have been too great.

Men stumbled and fell while running through the darkness, then scrambled back to their feet and kept going.

Whenever they encountered small harassment forces along the way, they simply killed their way through.

The battle at the riverbank was still raging when word arrived that troops had suddenly appeared behind the defenses. Xu Laiping nearly broke into a cold sweat. Fortunately, he had already been mentally prepared for something of the sort. He swiftly detached fifty thousand men to intercept them, then stamped his feet and cursed, wondering why the one hundred thousand reinforcements he had recalled still had not returned.

He did not know that those returning reinforcements were fighting through an extraordinarily bloody obstruction.

Guo Xianfu was indeed one of Zhang Hu’s most capable officers, a veteran seasoned by years of war, and his ability to adapt in battle was not weak.

Once he realized they had alerted the enemy, he immediately ordered five thousand men to continue the direct attack, drawing the enemy’s attention and the main body of the intercepting force.

Guo Xianfu himself led the remaining twenty thousand on a detour.

Before long, the five thousand-man assault force crashed into the fifty thousand Song troops sent to intercept it.

Another bloody battle began.

By the time Xu Laiping learned that yet another Yan force was approaching from a different direction, it was already too late. He could hardly draw away another large body of troops to block them.

“Kill!”

Reaching the river-defense zone, Guo Xianfu raised his saber and roared.

At the head of twenty thousand men, he drove into the enemy like a blade.

They did not stop to become entangled with the troops around them. They drove straight forward with everything they had, cultivators spearheading the advance and clearing a path.

Large numbers of Song cultivators were still locked in battle with Yan cultivators over the river. Even after learning the rear had been attacked, they could not simply disengage. If they withdrew, Yan’s cultivators would break through the bank defenses. The result would be the same.

With no large body of cultivators available to stop them, Guo Xianfu’s men tore into the forward defenses like tigers among a flock of sheep.

The moment they reached the front, they began destroying the archers and long-range engines supporting the river defense.

The bank immediately dissolved into chaos and close combat.

Without the deadly long-range weapons preventing the river-crossing army from approaching, Yan’s troops on the water surged forward desperately.

The masses of rafts jammed together near the shore formed something like a floating bridge. Soldiers leaped from raft to raft across the river as they drove toward land.

Cultivators continued blasting rafts apart in an effort to stop them, but it was like throwing a cup of water onto a cartload of firewood. It could not halt the dense masses of men surging forward like ants, especially with Yan’s cultivators obstructing them.

Men were constantly knocked from the rafts or missed their footing and fell into the water. Soaked through, they climbed back onto another raft and continued pressing forward.

When the latest battle reports reached Zhang Hu, he bared his teeth and raised his sword with a thunderous roar.

“Full assault!”

Upstream, the waiting rafts were released all at once.

Zhang Hu’s Changzhou army finally launched its full-scale attack.

The forces that had attacked first were all imperial court troops, used to die and wear down the enemy.

That arrangement did contain some selfishness on Zhang Hu’s part. No one wanted to watch his own brothers go first to their deaths.

But it was also Meng Shanming’s intention.

Meng Shanming knew perfectly well which strength had to be preserved.

Even after the river defenses were broken, more battles would follow and capable troops would still be needed to support the campaign.

Between the imperial court’s forces and the regional armies, whichever side was more useful in battle was the side he would preserve.

It had nothing to do with Zhang Hu having once served under him.

When Xu Laiping saw enemy troops pouring ashore like a tide and then learned that the force intercepted behind him had numbered only a few thousand, he too began roaring like a madman.

He urgently ordered the fifty thousand troops sent to intercept the rear attack to return and plug the breach in the river defenses.

But the situation had already passed the point of recovery.

The river defense was no longer a defense at all.

Large numbers of Yan troops had landed, and the entire area had collapsed into a confused melee, while still more Yan soldiers continued coming ashore without end.

Once Zhang Hu’s main force reached the bank, the battle became completely one-sided.

“Lord Xu, we cannot hold! We have to go!”

Several cultivators seized the struggling Xu Laiping and dragged him up the steps behind the defensive position, trying to take him away.

Amid killing cries that shook the sky, Xu Laiping stared at the battlefield lit by fires on every side and watched the situation collapse overwhelmingly against them.

He struggled and cried out, “Let go of me! I’m not leaving! I’m not leaving! If the Hukou defensive line stands, I stand. If the Hukou line falls, I die. I must defend this place to the death!”

“Lord Xu, stop talking nonsense. While the green hills remain, there will still be firewood to burn. Give the order to retreat now. If you wait any longer, it will be too late!” one cultivator pleaded.

Tears streamed down Xu Laiping’s face as he shook his head.

“Heavens! I, Xu Laiping, am a sinner against Great Song for all ages! I will be condemned through the ages as Great Song’s sinner!”

“The Grand Commander-in-Chief trusted me in every way and placed me here personally, yet I lost the Hukou defensive line. With what face can I ever meet the Grand Commander-in-Chief again?”

He swung the sword in his hand toward his own neck, intending to cut his throat without hesitation.

Luo Zhao had penetrated deep into Yan on campaign. Naturally, he had entrusted the defenses behind him only to men he considered capable and reliable.

The arrangements along the defensive line had been extremely careful, and every commander posted there had been personally selected by Luo Zhao from among his trusted officers.

Xu Laiping was one of them.

That was why he felt he had betrayed such heavy trust.

But his suicide failed.

A cultivator beside him seized his wrist, took the sword from his hand, and rebuked him.

“Is ending everything with one death the act of a true man? What you should do now is salvage the situation and find a way to repair the damage. That is how you avoid failing the Grand Commander-in-Chief. How can you trade one death for your own release?”

The words finally brought Xu Laiping back to himself.

He immediately ordered a retreat, intending to preserve whatever strength he still could.

Before leaving, he issued one more command.

“Send word to the grain-depot commander. Set fire to the grain immediately. Not one grain is to be left for the Yan bandits!”

At that single order, military provisions sufficient to feed two million men for one month were reduced to ashes.

The Yan troops who had broken ashore pursued the retreating defenders for some distance before Zhang Hu ordered them to stop.

This was not the moment to chase fleeing soldiers.

By the time Yan’s army had taken full control of the Hukou defensive line, several ragged figures appeared, supporting a man whose condition was almost unrecognizable.

It was Sun Gaotian, who had led a little over four thousand men in blocking the enemy’s one hundred thousand reinforcements.

At some point his topknot had been hacked away. His hair hung loose in uneven lengths. Mud and blood had mixed across his clothes and body, and his streaked face looked like a painted cat’s. He scarcely looked human.

Someone had slashed him across the abdomen, and he kept one hand pressed against the wound.

When he saw Zhang Hu standing beside the firelight, Sun Gaotian shoved away the men supporting him and staggered forward.

He dropped to his knees before Zhang Hu with a thud and burst into sobs.

“This subordinate was incompetent! Every brother under my command was wiped out, and we failed to stop the enemy reinforcements! This subordinate deserves ten thousand deaths. I beg for a swift death!”

Tears streamed down his face.

Beside him, Left Commander Guo Xianfu, his whole body covered in blood, wept as well.

Many of the officers nearby wiped their eyes. Others stood silently with tears running down their faces.

Zhang Hu’s jaw clenched hard. His five fingers tightened around the hilt of the sword at his waist. His eyes reddened, and for a moment he was too overcome to speak.

Several cultivators, equally battered and hardly recognizable, came forward. Every one of them was wounded.

One spoke in a voice broken with grief.

“Grand General, this was not General Sun’s fault. Truly, it was not his fault! Four thousand men faced a frontal assault by one hundred thousand enemy troops and held them back for nearly an hour. The battle was too terrible!”

“They did everything they could. General Sun did everything he could. We truly did everything we could!”

“Not one man fled. Almost all of them died in battle. General Sun refused to save himself. If we had not fought desperately to drag him out, he would already be dead!”

It had not only been the several thousand soldiers.

The large number of cultivators who had accompanied them had likewise nearly all died.

“Hah...”

Zhang Hu raised his head toward Heaven and slowly released a long breath, forcing his emotions under control.

Only then did he step forward and use both hands to lift Sun Gaotian to his feet.

“The fault is not yours. You did well. All of you did very well. The brothers did very well.”

“You did not fail Marshal Meng’s trust. The Hukou defensive line has been taken successfully.”

“You have committed no crime. You have rendered great merit!”

Those were no empty words.

If the one hundred thousand reinforcements had arrived even an hour earlier, no one could say how the battle might have changed.

That was exactly the possibility Zhang Hu had feared.

When Guo Xianfu’s ambush force struck the defenders from behind, Zhang Hu had feared the one hundred thousand reinforcements would arrive and trap Guo’s men between them and the river-defense troops.

If the ambush force failed to throw the defenders into chaos in time, the consequences would have been disastrous.

The crucial point was that Zhang Hu could not order Guo Xianfu’s force to attack the moment the river battle began.

He first had to draw large numbers of Song cultivators out onto the river and tie them down before he could give the order.

Otherwise, with large numbers of cultivators blocking them, Guo Xianfu’s troops would have found it extremely difficult to play their role.

That was why the ambush force had remained hidden and motionless beforehand.

It had also helped numb the enemy’s vigilance.

And the length of that waiting period had depended entirely on how long Sun Gaotian could hold back those one hundred thousand reinforcements.

From the moment Zhang Hu gave Sun Gaotian that order, he had known what kind of horror the man would face.

A few thousand men against one hundred thousand.

The likely outcome was not hard to imagine.

Zhang Hu had hated giving the order.

But he had no choice.

The outcome of the entire battle depended on it.

If they lost, then forget Great Yan. All those brothers who had already died would have died for nothing.

Once Sun Gaotian had been helped to his feet, he shook his head through tears.

“I ask for no merit. I ask only for revenge. Grand General, if you still trust me, give me another force. I will annihilate those reinforcements and avenge the dead brothers!”

Zhang Hu refused.

“Treat your wounds first. Someone else will handle the revenge.”

Then he turned toward the cultivators beside him and said coldly, “Cultivators, I leave Commander Sun in your hands. If anything happens to his wounds, don’t blame this old man for turning hostile!”

This time, not one cultivator took offense at his words.

One nodded. “Grand General, rest assured. We will do everything possible to treat General Sun. There will be no mistake.”

He gestured for others to carry Sun Gaotian away for treatment.

“Guo Xianfu!” Zhang Hu called sharply.

“Present!”

Guo Xianfu, drenched in blood, stepped out and cupped his hands.

Zhang Hu clenched his teeth.

“Muster one hundred thousand men and make the trip. If you encounter those reinforcements, kill every last one of them for me.”

“Take no surrenders. Leave no survivors!”

“And while you are there, take the grain depot as well!”

“Yes!”

Guo Xianfu accepted the order and left immediately.

In the end, however, he found nothing.

Those reinforcements had originally been heading back toward the Hukou line. Once Xu Laiping realized the situation could no longer be reversed, he had sent an emergency order telling them to withdraw.

In truth, the one hundred thousand reinforcements had suffered severe casualties as well. They lost nearly thirty thousand men before finally breaking through the obstruction.

Sun Gaotian’s men themselves had not known how many enemies they killed. They had only known to use the obstacles they had built and fight desperately to hold the road.

Only when Yan’s side later counted the battlefield did they learn that four thousand men had traded their lives for nearly thirty thousand enemy casualties.

The grain depot was not taken intact either.

By the time Guo Xianfu’s troops reached it, the garrison had already withdrawn.

All that remained for Yan was a field of charred ash beneath the fine rain.

Burning that grain had hurt Xu Laiping as well.

But he had no choice.

There had been too much grain to carry away at speed.

If the enemy caught them, not only might the provisions fall into Yan’s hands, but the soldiers escorting the grain could also be trapped and destroyed.

[End of Chapter 684]