Chapter 1230: Everyone Is Driving Qin to Its Death

Supreme General Tian Zhengyang was dead.

The imperial court issued the decree, and Xiaoyue Pavilion personally carried out the execution.

Back then, Luo Zhao had repeatedly tried to persuade him, to no avail. Meng Shanming of Yan had even sent a letter urging him to reconsider, but that too had been useless.

Tian Zhengyang and Ma Chang'an had acted for their own selfish interests and missed the best opportunity for war.

Afterward, Tian Zhengyang repeatedly attacked Xiping Pass, losing soldiers and generals again and again without being able to take it. The State of Qin suffered grievous losses as a result.

Now food shortages were spreading inside Qin, and the people were panicking.

In truth, the state had not yet reached the point of exhausting its grain reserves.

But those who obtained news early had already begun hoarding supplies and cornering the market, triggering panic in advance.

Yucang was furious.

Ma Chang'an, who remained behind to oversee domestic affairs, panicked as well. He personally ordered troops dispatched to confiscate property and executed a number of profiteering merchants in an attempt to preserve normal order.

But once panic had taken hold, killing a few merchants could not solve the problem.

Those without grain desperately searched for food.

Those who had grain continued hiding it in secret.

The normal circulation of goods began to break down.

It was the kind of disorder that came before great chaos.

Thus, even before Qin had truly run out of grain, a famine market had already emerged.

The wealthy could still spend enormous sums to purchase grain from outside the state.

The common people, who made up the overwhelming majority, could only fill the streets with bitter complaints.

The foundations of Qin's rule had already begun to shake.

Yucang personally rushed to the State of Han and then to the State of Yan, offering enormous sums for grain.

Who would sell to him?

Even if Qin returned every copper earned from its liquor trade, principal and profit alike, no one would provide enough grain.

It was not simply that they refused.

They could not afford to.

Apart from Wei, the granary beneath Heaven, neither Han nor Yan possessed reserves large enough to fill Qin's enormous stomach.

Many people within those two states still did not eat their fill.

If they truly tightened their belts and transferred enough grain to save Qin, problems would erupt inside their own countries instead.

More importantly, signs of greater chaos had already appeared.

Every state was quietly stockpiling grain and preparing for war.

Who had surplus grain to spare for Qin?

Even Nanzhou, which had once cooperated closely with Xiaoyue Pavilion, now watched coldly from the side under Shang Chaozong.

There was perhaps some element of refusing to save a dying ally.

But the greater purpose of Yan and Han was to drive Qin into attacking Xiping Pass with everything it had.

Only when Qin was forced to the brink of death would it become willing to pay any price.

Both Shang Chaozong and the State of Han were waiting.

If Qin could not break Xiping Pass, then sending grain to Qin served no purpose.

If Qin could not break through, feeding it merely so it could keep gasping for breath would actually work against Yan and Han.

Better to let Qin collapse by itself.

The logic was simple.

If Qin broke Xiping Pass and helped Qi and Wei contain Jin's ambitions, then all was well.

If Qin failed, then after Jin conquered Qi and Wei, Jin would inevitably need time to rest and reorganize.

It would have to stabilize its newly conquered territories before it could march east without fear of trouble behind it.

A Qin barely clinging to life could never stop Jin's advance.

If that was the case, Yan and Han might as well let Qin lose the strength to resist first.

Then those two states could seize the opportunity to sweep across Qin with little effort.

While Jin rested and consolidated its new holdings, Yan and Han could use the same window to stabilize the Qin territories they had occupied.

After that, they could join forces against Jin.

To put it plainly, Yan and Han had also fixed their eyes on this piece of meat called Qin.

Every state had set Qin above the flames to roast.

Once it was cooked, the only question would be who moved first to carve off the largest portion.

As for Shang Chaozong's earlier gathering of the states to discuss resisting Jin, that had been little more than empty theater.

Everyone had come to assess the situation.

Everyone carried private calculations.

How could such people possibly reach agreement?

Of course, Nanzhou's refusal to help also had something to do with Niu Youdao.

Shang Chaozong had asked for his opinion.

Niu Youdao's answer had been simple:

Not one grain of rice!

Niu Youdao was waiting.

He was observing.

He too was driving Xiaoyue Pavilion toward the edge of death, wanting to see whether Yucang would call upon some other force for help.

What Sha Rulai had told him in the Sacred Realm had never stopped troubling him.

Yucang had been involved in the assassination of Prince Ning, Shang Jianbo, all those years ago.

Shang Jianbo had even been killed by Yucang's own hand.

Then there was the Crow General that appeared when Dong Guo Haoran died.

That indicated a connection between the affair and Wu Chang.

There was also the Shang Mirror.

Niu Youdao had clearly been the one who gave the mirror to Yucang, yet Yucang claimed Tong Mo had given it to him.

Yucang had not told the truth.

And strangely enough, his lie matched the record contained in the Misty Pavilion's secret archives.

Someone had altered the Misty Pavilion's secret records.

Who?

By this point, the main opponents Niu Youdao faced had already shifted to an entirely higher level.

In short, everyone was driving Qin toward death.

As disorder within Qin intensified, the newly founded state was already facing collapse.

At last, Yucang could no longer remain seated.

At last, he became angry.

At last, he moved against Tian Zhengyang.

Tian Zhengyang was not solely responsible for what had gone wrong.

Yucang's own misjudgment of the situation bore a large share of the blame.

But at a time like this, Yucang could hardly step forward and carry that burden himself.

So Tian Zhengyang had to die.

With morale at the front already low, action was taken almost simultaneously at the front and in the capital.

At the front, Tian Zhengyang and a group of his trusted subordinates were executed.

In the capital, his entire household was thrown into prison.

For the moment, they were not killed.

Xiaoyue Pavilion carried out the executions at the front.

But the man placed in charge of enforcing the order was Ma Chang'an.

Ma Chang'an replaced Tian Zhengyang and continued leading the army against Xiping Pass.

Xiaoyue Pavilion's people watched him so closely that escape was impossible.

His family had also been seized by the court as hostages.

The consequences of failing to take Xiping Pass required little imagination.

Now that matters had reached this point, Ma Chang'an regretted everything.

He even begged Luo Zhao to take command.

His pleading was useless.

Even when Yucang personally asked Luo Zhao, Luo Zhao refused.

Not because he was unwilling to help.

Because he could not.

Luo Zhao was no fool.

Where had these people been earlier?

Now that the situation had deteriorated this far and Yin Chu's defenders were completely prepared, what good would it do for Luo Zhao to attack Xiping Pass?

Tian Zhengyang had just been killed.

If Luo Zhao took over Tian Zhengyang's army at this point, how was he supposed to command those troops?

Only Ma Chang'an, who still held forces loyal to himself, had any chance of keeping them under control.

That was exactly how Luo Zhao explained the matter to Yucang.

Since he refused to step forward and command the army now, all he could do was follow the plan Yucang had proposed earlier: seize the opportunity to purge Tian Zhengyang's and Ma Chang'an's personal factions, then take full control of the military afterward.

With Qin in such a condition, if forces behind him continued restraining his hands, there would be no way for Luo Zhao to fight a proper war.

...

At Xiping Pass, Ma Chang'an launched another offensive.

It failed.

News of the defeat was sent back.

Inside Qin's imperial palace, Yucang shut himself inside a pitch-black room and sat in silence.

A long time passed.

Then, in the darkness, he released a faint sigh.

"Brother Niu... you died a little too early. You harmed me as well!"

He had gone to beg Yan.

He had gone to beg Zijin Cave.

He had gone to beg Shang Chaozong.

None of it worked.

He had almost knelt.

If kneeling would have helped, he truly would have done it.

At a moment like this, what was face worth?

So long as he survived and stabilized the situation, there would still be opportunities to regain what had been lost.

At this moment, he missed Niu Youdao immensely.

Only now did he realize how pleasant it had been to cooperate with him.

There had been arguments, naturally.

But everything could still be discussed.

If Niu Youdao were here, then with his ability and influence in Yan, perhaps there would be some turn for the better in the matter of obtaining aid.

But such thoughts were nothing more than lamentation.

Even if Niu Youdao were alive, Yucang knew he would still be trapped inside the Sacred Realm and impossible to contact.

When Yucang said Niu Youdao had harmed him, part of what he meant was that Niu Youdao should never have given him that liquor-brewing secret formula.

Part of it was also blame directed at himself for being short-sighted and greedy.

Yet many things had been difficult to avoid given the circumstances of the time.

Niu Youdao had been generous.

When he said he would give away the formula, he simply gave it.

Yucang, however, had been unable to stop himself from accepting.

And when Qin had first been established, the state desperately needed enormous sums of money to stabilize the population and improve its circumstances.

With a way to make fast profits placed before him, how could he have resisted using it?

...

The sky was only beginning to brighten.

Inside Qi's central command tent, lamps were still burning.

Huyan Wuhen received an intelligence report.

When he saw the news of Tian Zhengyang's death, he shook his head slightly.

From the very beginning, once he learned Yin Chu had occupied Xiping Pass, Huyan Wuhen had known the place would be difficult to attack.

Qi's troops were especially unsuited to mountain warfare.

That was why he had decisively abandoned the attempt.

Instead, he forced Qin to attack at any cost, making it more likely that Xiping Pass would consume greater amounts of Jin's strength.

Events proved his judgment correct.

Even when Qin paid any price it could bear, the result had still amounted to little.

Huyan Wuhen pressed the report of Tian Zhengyang's death onto the desk, then turned toward the map.

His brows gradually knitted.

His face was full of worry.

The situation displayed on the map showed that after Gao Pin's defeat, Jin had rebuilt a stable defensive line.

Qi's attacks were being obstructed everywhere.

An outsider might not understand the subtleties.

Huyan Wuhen did.

In some places, Gao Pin would rather abandon territory and retreat into mountainous ground to construct defensive positions.

Doing so weakened the offensive power of Qi's enormous cavalry force to the greatest possible degree.

Behind that stable front, Gao Pin was also dispatching forces to swallow, piece by piece, the territories of Wei factions whose attitudes remained uncertain.

Gao Pin had clearly adopted a policy of advancing steadily and fighting securely.

He intended to drag the war out.

Intelligence from Jin showed that after obtaining ample grain, the State of Jin had already begun mobilizing toward a state of every household producing soldiers.

Huyan Wuhen understood the strategic shift.

Jin was accumulating strength for an overwhelming crush.

If he could not rapidly defeat Gao Pin's army, the consequences that followed would be unthinkable.

Yet launching costly frontal attacks regardless of losses was equally unrealistic.

If Qi exhausted its elite troops, that might be exactly what Jin wanted.

How could the deadlock be broken?

The weight of the problem pressed heavily on Huyan Wuhen's heart.

...

The character of the war between Jin and Qi suddenly changed.

The previous pattern of both sides attacking and counterattacking, killing each other relentlessly, disappeared.

Inside Nanzhou's Hall of Martial Valor, the situation Meng Shanming least wanted to see had appeared.

Unfortunately, his prediction had proven correct.

Jin had indeed begun mobilizing the entire state for war.

He too stood before a map, studying the confrontation between Jin and Qi.

Something about Jin's defensive posture felt familiar.

It carried the unmistakable flavor of Jin Jue of Han.

The whole defensive line could be described with one word:

Steady.

When it came to offense on the battlefield, Meng Shanming could probably be counted among the finest beneath Heaven.

But when it came to defense, Jin Jue of Han stood among the very best.

The nickname Steady Marshal had not been given without reason.

The use of terrain.

The style of defense.

The similarities were too strong to be coincidence.

Meng Shanming realized that although Gao Pin's own battlefield ability might not rank at the absolute summit, his ability to learn from others and apply what he learned could not be underestimated.

Gao Pin must have spent tremendous effort studying Jin Jue's style of warfare.

He was now using the very method once used to contain Meng Shanming himself in order to contain Huyan Wuhen.

Yet under these circumstances, Huyan Wuhen had still been unable to launch an effective offensive.

That alone proved he had indeed encountered serious trouble.

Meng Shanming stared at the map as well, racking his mind for a way to break the situation.

...

Inside a tent, Shao Pingbo lay on a simple cot.

He was awake.

In fact, he had been awake for quite some time.

He simply lay there silently, staring blankly at the roof of the tent without saying a word.

Shao Sansheng had called to him several times without receiving any response, so he remained nearby and kept watch.

Suddenly came the sound of coughing.

"Cough, cough..."

Shao Sansheng, who had been dozing in a chair, jolted awake.

Shao Pingbo was already struggling to sit up.

"Eldest Young Master!" Shao Sansheng hurried forward to support him.

Shao Pingbo rose and said, "I'm going outside for a walk."

Shao Sansheng looked worried. "Eldest Young Master, the cultivator said you should no longer exhaust your mind or body. You need quiet rest."

Shao Pingbo gave the same answer.

"I'm going outside. I need some air."

Shao Sansheng had no choice.

He hurriedly grabbed the cloak lying nearby and chased after him.

Once they were outside the tent, he draped it over Shao Pingbo's shoulders.

The sky was only faintly bright.

The morning wind carried a slight chill.

Dew clung to the grass.

The air was fresh.

Unfortunately, it was also mixed with the smell of horse dung.

And horse dung was hardly the worst of it.

In a temporary military camp, the stench of human waste was equally unavoidable.

An army on campaign could not afford too many niceties.

There were simply too many men and horses for such smells to be avoided.

[End of Chapter 1230]