Chapter 886: The Battle of Jiao Lake

The water level kept falling.

The Zhao troops wanted to save the wooden rafts while the mudflats were still narrow enough, preserving a road of retreat for the army.

But dragging those rafts was extraordinarily difficult. Even a whole group of men could not lift and carry one properly. The soldiers themselves could barely walk through the mud, much less haul heavy objects across it.

Worse, the depth beneath that mud was utterly unpredictable. In some places it barely reached the knees. In others, a man could sink until his entire body disappeared.

At the front, Zhao's troops were enduring a fierce assault from Yan. Behind them, the soldiers trying desperately to recover the rafts were being tortured nearly to despair by the muddy flats.

It was the kind of despair where salvation seemed close enough to touch, yet remained as distant as the ends of the earth.

They could only watch helplessly as the receding water drew farther and farther away with every passing moment.

When the Zhao commander directing the fighting at the front learned what was happening behind him, he wept.

A dignified grown man stood there with tears filling his eyes.

The battle was still far from over, yet tears silently rolled down his face, soaked into his beard, and covered his cheeks. His lips trembled as he murmured to himself, "Zhao... is finished. Zhao is finished..."

He was not one of the ordinary soldiers below who knew nothing and merely obeyed orders.

He understood the entire situation.

After Yan joined forces with Zhao's rebels, their combined strength was twice Zhao's. Whenever they launched an offensive, they could often bring twice as many troops against a Zhao position.

And the man commanding that force twice their size was no wine sack or rice bag. He was a famous general whose name shook all beneath Heaven.

The balance among cultivators was no better.

Yan's three great sects could already confront Zhao's three great sects head-on. Now Xiaoyue Pavilion, a force of considerable strength in its own right, had joined hands with Yan's three sects.

The enemy therefore held the advantage among cultivators as well.

His own forces were being hammered from the front by superior enemy numbers.

A forceful counterattack was impossible.

Behind them, their one route of retreat had been Jiao Lake.

Yet now even that final road had been cut off by the sea of mud.

His men could not withdraw.

Then how were the million troops out on the lake ever supposed to come ashore?

A man-made natural barrier.

It had to be man-made.

He was certain of it.

Jiao Lake was no little pond. If someone had not torn open an enormous outlet, the water level could never have fallen this fast.

And Yan would never have launched its offensive at precisely this moment by coincidence.

Once the army was trapped behind this artificially created barrier, Yan would need only a small portion of its strength to keep the million Zhao troops on the lake pinned there until death.

Those million troops could no longer contribute anything to Zhao.

They might as well have ceased to exist.

And one thing was obvious.

If the lake level was dropping here, it was dropping everywhere.

It was not only his own troops who had lost their road of retreat.

Every Zhao force deployed around Jiao Lake had lost it.

With the war reaching this point, he no longer needed to see the final result.

He already knew Zhao was finished.

His face covered in tears, he raised his head to the sky without a word.

That Meng Shanming, across this vast land, had commanded armies by the millions and laid down a great design capable of swallowing mountains and rivers, seeking to settle everything in a single battle.

And he had done it...

...

Out on the lake, amid the units paddling desperately forward, a general pointed ahead and shouted, "Grand Commander-in-Chief, we can see the shore! We're almost there!"

Pang Teng urged them on again.

"Faster! We must land before dusk! We must join the defenders and break out before dusk!"

Even he no longer believed the words coming from his own mouth.

He knew he was forcing himself to keep the army's morale alive.

When the foremost rafts finally approached what they had thought was the shoreline, one soldier after another froze.

Men sitting on the rafts began standing to look.

What shoreline?

The true green, grassy bank was still a good hundred zhang away.

More than a li of mud lay between them and dry ground.

From atop the rafts, they could even see numerous people struggling in that mud beside the real shore.

Zuo Chengfeng, Jiang Wanlou, and Mi Man all darkened.

At last they understood why Pang Teng had said, "I'm afraid it's too late."

Zuo Chengfeng's voice was icy.

"Grand Commander-in-Chief Pang, you are commander of this army. Keeping the troops alive is your responsibility. What method do you have to get the army out of this predicament?"

Jiang Wanlou and Mi Man stared at Pang Teng as well.

Crossing this muddy stretch themselves would naturally pose no problem.

But they had no way to carry this many people across in a short time.

They could only hope Pang Teng, as commander, could think of something quickly.

Pang Teng turned toward the three men.

"Send some cultivators down. Have them test where the mud is shallowest. Let them use their own height to judge the depth and spread out in a line to scout a path forward."

The three great sects immediately sent out a group of disciples.

They flashed onto the mudflats, spread apart into a line, then withdrew their spiritual power.

Their feet sank instantly.

In some places, the mud stopped at the knees.

In others, it rose past the thighs.

Some sank to the waist, then the chest, then the shoulders, and still kept going.

The places where it stopped around the knees seemed walkable at first, but they were only small patches.

After moving forward another few zhang, a man could suddenly sink until even the top of his head vanished.

No one knew how many years of silt had accumulated across the bottom of Jiao Lake.

Pang Teng knew there was no road across.

He slowly closed his eyes, his face filled with anguish.

No one could understand the grief in his heart.

For three successive members of the Pang family—father and two sons—to serve as Grand Commander-in-Chief of Zhao should have been an honor.

His father and elder brother had both led Zhao's armies into battle.

Both had ultimately been defeated.

Both defeats had brought Zhao enormous losses.

Pang Teng had wanted to reverse that fate.

Instead, he was now about to follow in the footsteps of his father and brother.

Was this simply the fate of the Pang family?

"There is no need to keep testing," Pang Teng said after opening his eyes again. He gave a soft sigh. "We cannot cross."

Jiang Wanlou exploded.

"As commander, you dare say something so damaging to morale? If we cannot cross, then we cross anyway!"

Mi Man said, "Join the rafts together and try laying them down as a floating bridge."

Pang Teng replied, "It won't work. A raft floats on water. It cannot float on mud like this. Throw one down and the mud will swallow it. Even if it appears to stay up, the moment men step onto it, it will sink."

Mi Man refused to believe it.

More precisely, none of them wanted to accept reality.

Were they supposed to admit defeat just like that?

If they did not try, they could not accept it.

They quickly organized an experiment.

The soldiers on one raft were redistributed among several others, after which a few cultivators used spiritual power to carry the emptied raft out over the mud and lower it down.

The result proved that, in some matters, even Sect Leaders of the supposedly widely experienced three great sects could not compare with Pang Teng.

Pang Teng had spent his life campaigning.

He had led men and horses through too many kinds of terrain to count.

What ground an army could cross, what ground it could not, where troops could make camp, where they could not—such judgments had long ago become basic military instinct to him.

A single glance at the terrain was often enough to know the result.

In this respect, Sect Leaders accustomed to flying back and forth through the air were far inferior.

The failed attempt made Mi Man furious.

He shouted at Pang Teng, "Then what do we do now?"

Pang Teng did not answer.

His eyes remained fixed on the shore one or two hundred zhang away.

The grief in his gaze ran impossibly deep.

The three Sect Leaders followed his line of sight.

From the opposite shore, the faint sounds of slaughter could already be heard.

Those on the lake could see the shore.

Those on shore could see the dark mass of Zhao troops spread across the water.

Yet across this short distance, the two sides could not reach one another.

Jiang Wanlou suddenly said, "I have an idea worth trying. The army can follow the current downstream through the drainage breach. We should be able to land there!"

The moment he said it, everyone understood the implication.

They would abandon the Zhao troops now being attacked on the south shore.

No rescue.

Pretend they had never seen them.

Yet if they refused to abandon them, there was still no way to save them.

"Not bad," Zuo Chengfeng said.

The words meant he too agreed to ignore the lives of the south-shore troops and give them up.

Pang Teng finally spoke.

"It won't work."

"For a lake this enormous to drop this quickly, you can imagine how violent the current must be at the breach."

"If this many people rush into it, the enemy won't even need to attack us. We'll destroy ourselves."

Jiang Wanlou cursed furiously.

"This won't work, that won't work—then what do we keep you as commander for?"

"Since the war between our states began, once Meng Shanming took command, you've been at a disadvantage everywhere."

"Who was it who claimed before the war began that victory was assured?"

"Who was it who insisted on persuading us to launch this war?"

"Yan was already so weak, yet Meng Shanming could still turn heaven and earth around. What about you?"

"You had a perfectly good Zhao handed to you, and you've fought it into this state!"

"Useless trash, drawing high office and generous salary for nothing!"

Pang Teng's face was bleak.

Jiang Wanlou had cursed him without leaving even a shred of dignity, but Pang Teng accepted it.

"I, Pang Teng, am a sinner against Zhao for a thousand generations."

The generals around him were equally despondent.

Mi Man said, "Calling yourself a sinner is useless. The problem before us has to be solved. Are we supposed to let the entire army sit here and wait to die?"

"Whether Brother Jiang's method works or not, it is at least the only method left that has any possibility. We have to try."

Pang Teng closed his eyes in bitter regret.

"There is no need."

"Even if we somehow rush out of Jiao Lake, the land downstream must already have become a vast flooded marsh."

"If we head that way, we lose."

"I, Pang Teng, was incompetent and dragged Zhao's people into disaster."

"Those poor commoners downstream... who knows how many will suffer because of this flood?"

"Meng Shanming has repeatedly used such vicious, ruinous schemes. Heaven will surely punish him!"

Jiang Wanlou cursed him again.

"What heavenly punishment?"

"A commander's duty is to win battles. If you can't defeat your enemy, what ability is there in standing here and cursing him?"

"If you, Pang Teng, have the ability, then devise one of those vicious schemes yourself!"

"I'll take the heavenly punishment on your behalf!"

Whatever Jiang Wanlou said, Pang Teng accepted it.

A defeated general had no standing to speak of courage.

No matter how many reasons he might have, there was no point arguing.

This was not a court debate where clever words could change the outcome.

A loss was a loss.

...

The Zhao army holding the south shore lost more than half its men.

With no hope of breaking out, no road to retreat, and no reinforcements coming, the remaining three hundred thousand troops finally...

Surrendered.

Of Zhao's last three-million-plus elite troops, those killed in battle, those who surrendered, and those trapped on the lake together amounted to more than half their strength already lost.

Zhao had never possessed as many troops as the combined armies of Yan and Zhao's rebels.

Now, with losses this severe, Zhao's entire defensive strategy built around Jiao Lake collapsed.

The remaining Zhao troops on land were compressed into a tiny region.

The allied army did not force another assault against them.

Instead, it encircled them and continuously urged them to surrender.

Victory was already in hand.

Zhao no longer had any possibility of reversing the situation.

Neither Shang Chaozong nor Meng Shanming wished to keep launching costly attacks and make Yan's soldiers pay still greater casualties.

From the eastern campaign against Song to the western campaign against Zhao, Yan's sons had already paid far, far too great a price to defend their homes and resist foreign enemies.

By this point, nearly all the shore defenses around Jiao Lake had fallen into the hands of the allied army.

The million Zhao troops stranded on the lake had become turtles trapped in a jar.

News of the Battle of Jiao Lake spread.

All beneath Heaven was shaken.

Anyone with eyes to see understood that although the war had not formally ended, once matters had reached this point, Zhao's army had no possibility of overturning the result.

The destruction of Zhao was already before their eyes.

[End of Chapter 886]