Chapter 1504: His Fortune Is Spent

Gao Pin's grand strategy had already been laid bare: drag the State of Qi down without paying any price at all. Jin had no worries in its rear and nothing forcing it to hurry, so why would it suddenly launch a full-scale offensive?

What Huyan Wuhen did not know was that Gao Pin had no choice either. Those above him would no longer allow him to keep dragging matters out.

Though Gao Pin could not withstand the pressure from above, he did not act recklessly. As the army began its full advance, he once again set his sights on the Qin army, which had already lost half its life.

Because of the ruthless move Gao Pin had made in secret, nearly all the provisions plundered by Qin's force of more than two million had been destroyed in one stroke. The Qin army had sought to surrender, but he had flatly refused to accept it, forcing the Qin army to retreat in full. Otherwise, if they waited until the soldiers were starving and had lost all will to fight, then the moment the Jin army attacked, the entire force would inevitably be wiped out.

The retreating Qin army could only flee toward the Qi army. Along the way, men deserted and fled in droves. By the time they finally linked up with Qi, more than half their strength was gone, leaving only an army of one million. Neither Xiaoyue Pavilion nor commander-in-chief Luo Zhao could do anything about it. They could only turn a blind eye.

The troops had nothing to eat, and they themselves had no food to provide. What else could they do?

Grain! Grain!

All along the road, the Qin army had repeatedly sent messages to Qi begging for aid. When the two sides finally met, grain was still the first thing they asked for.

The Qi army was in a difficult position, and so was Huyan Wuhen. This was plainly Gao Pin's scheme.

More precisely, it was an open stratagem. Anyone with even a little battlefield sense could see through it: Gao Pin was forcing the Qin army to consume Qi's grain.

An extra million mouths had suddenly appeared. The limited provisions stockpiled by the Qi army came under enormous pressure.

But what could they do? Unless the Qi army massacred its own ally and wiped out those million Qin troops, the moment Qi dared say, "No grain," there was nothing the starving, red-eyed Qin soldiers would not be capable of. They had already slaughtered many of their warhorses for food on the road.

If Qi still refused to feed them, not even Xiaoyue Pavilion and Luo Zhao would be able to suppress the backlash from below. Under that pressure, the Qin troops would have no choice but to attack the Qi army and seize its grain.

The local countryside had already been plundered savagely once by the armies of both states. Under Gao Pin's measures, there was almost nothing left to seize locally. The only supplies that could still be taken, and the only ones that could carry Qin quickly through the crisis, were the Qi army's stockpiles.

Either fight a war against a million Qin troops or give them grain. There was no third choice.

The price of fighting those million Qin troops was too great. Trapped by Gao Pin's open stratagem, Huyan Wuhen was caught whichever way he turned. In the end, he issued the Qin army five days of grain in a single allotment. After that, supplies were sent one day at a time, enough for only that day's needs.

There was no chance he would agree to hand over a large quantity of provisions all at once.

Giving half of Qi's stores to Qin was even more impossible. Qi had more troops of its own and still had the remnants of the Qi court to keep alive.

The Qin army had no choice either. They knew Huyan Wuhen was using grain to keep them under control and would judge the situation as it developed. The moment he sensed something wrong, he could cut off Qin's supplies at any time.

And this temporary arrangement, born of necessity, gave Gao Pin another opening to exploit.

Though pressure from above had forced his hand, and though his absolute numerical superiority meant victory was already in his grasp, Gao Pin still wanted to avoid a head-on collision whenever possible. Taking a direct blow from Huyan Wuhen would be unpleasant. At this stage, there was no need to pay an enormous price in battle losses.

This time, Gao Pin took the initiative and sent men to contact the Qin army, saying that he was now willing to accept Qin's surrender.

The Qin side was naturally furious and aggrieved. They had tried to surrender before and Jin had refused. Now, after reducing them to this state, Jin had come asking for their surrender. What did Jin take them for?

How could Gao Pin not know they were angry? But since he dared make the move, he naturally had something to rely on. He would never attempt something he had no means to accomplish.

He sowed discord by using Qi's stinginess with grain against them, telling Qin that once battle began, the Qi army would inevitably use Qin as a shield.

At the same time, he combined threats with inducements and told them directly that Jin was about to launch a full-scale offensive. The Qin army could weigh for itself whether it had the strength to withstand Jin's armies.

He also promised Xiaoyue Pavilion that if it surrendered now, then after Qi was destroyed, Jin would grant it the territory of three prefectures.

If it refused, the Jin army would simply pay a somewhat higher price and crush the Qin army in one stroke. At that point, Xiaoyue Pavilion would receive nothing at all.

As for who would ultimately win this war, so long as Xiaoyue Pavilion was not blind, it ought to be able to see clearly enough. The choice was theirs.

Xiaoyue Pavilion hesitated. The situation was obvious: once Jin launched a full-scale attack, Qin might hold out for a time, but it could not endure. Yet the fate of the three great sects of the former State of Wei stood as a warning. Xiaoyue Pavilion feared being used and discarded for nothing. Back when Gu Yuanda attacked the Qi capital, Gao Pin had also promised to send reinforcements. In the end, he had not moved a single soldier and merely watched as Gu Yuanda and the three great sects of the former State of Wei were destroyed. He had ruined those three sects thoroughly.

Gao Pin, however, gave them his assurance. If the Qin army did not believe him, then it could simply watch what the Jin army did next.

What followed left the Qin army alarmed. The Jin army really did move. It abandoned its defensive line and marched out in full, bearing down from all sides to encircle them.

Huyan Wuhen, however, made a grave misjudgment.

They were all commanders of armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands and millions. Huyan Wuhen was convinced that with victory already assured, Gao Pin could not possibly choose to pay an enormous price in a direct attack unless Gao Pin had gone brain-dead. Huyan therefore believed the movement was a feint, meant to force the Qi army to march back and forth and increase its consumption of supplies.

He adopted the strategy of meeting all changes by remaining unchanged.

It became a disastrous blunder.

Only when the Qin army suddenly launched its attack did Huyan Wuhen realize something was wrong. If Qin dared strike at a time like this, then it had to be coordinating with Jin. Otherwise, how could it possibly dare? That meant the Jin army truly intended to launch a full-scale offensive this time.

The Qin army's attack itself also caught Huyan Wuhen by surprise. When Qin's troops had still been strong and well supplied, Jin had not used them to attack Qi. Why wait until they were half crippled before putting them to use?

Luo Zhao, however, truly deserved his reputation as one of the great generals of his age. Almost beneath Huyan Wuhen's very eyes, he pulled off a classic "Deceive Heaven to Cross the Sea" stratagem.

He had emptied the five-day grain allotment provided by Qi and secretly stockpiled the grain. Then he used the emptied grain sacks to carry earth, conducting earthworks in secret and excavating tunnels beneath the ground.

He had anticipated in advance that once Qin launched its attack, Qi's cavalry would most likely charge in from a particular direction. He therefore prepared the underground works along that route specifically to deal with Qi's most formidable cavalry.

This was also the most important task Gao Pin had assigned the Qin army. Gao Pin feared Huyan Wuhen's Valiant Cavalry. He knew that once a full-scale battle began, the Valiant Cavalry would inflict enormous damage on the Jin army, so he wanted Qin to cripple them as badly as possible, whatever the cost.

And once Qin launched its attack, Huyan Wuhen could not possibly allow such an enormous threat to remain on his flank. Before fully engaging the Jin army, he was bound to gather a large force quickly and counterattack to eliminate that danger.

That was how the horrific scene before them had come about, as though Heaven itself had collapsed and the earth caved in.

"Retreat!" shouted the Qi general commanding the attack.

Amid killing cries that shook the sky, the Qi troops wheeled around and began withdrawing at speed.

Beneath the ground, Qin cultivators lying in ambush along the Qi army's line of retreat received their signal and immediately knocked down the wooden support posts in the excavated chambers.

The surface above had been trampled by masses of men and horses and could no longer bear the weight. Along the retreat route, the ground suddenly collapsed into trenches, trapping large numbers of cavalry as though on an isolated island. Men and horses shoved and crushed against one another. Some soldiers leapt from their mounts, jumped down into the pits, and scrambled toward the far side.

"Loose!" came a roar, and Qin's archers immediately sent volleys flying from a distance.

Closer in, the army seized the opening, surged forward, and began slaughtering the trapped troops.

"Good! Luo Zhao lives up to his reputation. To pull off such a move right under the Qi army's eyes... Huyan Wuhen's fortune truly is spent!"

When news arrived that the Qin army had dealt the Valiant Cavalry a severe blow and struck hard at Qi's morale, Gao Pin slapped the table in his central command tent and exclaimed in admiration. He immediately ordered the entire army to advance at full speed and sent orders to every force: whoever was first to launch a full-scale attack on the Qi army would be heavily rewarded.

He could not allow Huyan Wuhen to annihilate the Qin army. He needed to preserve that knife on Qi's flank, both as a threat and as a means to tie down a large number of Qi troops.

Inside the Qi army's central command tent, the atmosphere was heavy. Huyan Wuhen stood at the commander's place, more than half his hair and beard gone white, his face drawn taut.

A group of men knelt before the table, choking out pleas for mercy.

These were the men regularly sent to the Qin army to monitor its movements.

The Qin army had managed to excavate such long tunnels right under Qi's eyes, yet these men had noticed nothing at all. That failure had led directly to the Valiant Cavalry suffering grievous losses. If that was not dereliction of duty, what was?

The kneeling men cried out about Qin's treachery and recounted Luo Zhao's cunning at length.

Whether Huyan Wuhen heard any of it was impossible to tell. In the end, he merely said one cold word.

"Execute them."

Soldiers fierce as wolves and tigers rushed in and dragged the group away.

One of Huyan Wuhen's trusted subordinates shouted loudly, "Supreme General... Supreme General..."

He failed to change Huyan Wuhen's mind. Before long, counting the men who had been kneeling in the tent and those outside with them, nearly a hundred heads rolled to the ground.

Those heads did nothing to dispel the oppressive mood hanging over the entire Qi army. The battlefield defeat also sent the same heaviness spreading across the whole Qi court.

...

At Qiyun Sect, Hei Shi arrived in hurried strides and reported the Jin army's victory to Wu Chang.

Inside the pavilion, Wu Chang sat cross-legged in meditation. He showed no reaction at all, remaining as still as a statue.

Hei Shi continued with another report. "There has been movement on the Demonic Sect side. Zhao Xiongge shut himself in a room with Nantian Wufang and seemed to confer with him in secret for nearly half a day. Afterward, Nantian Wufang began quietly making arrangements in secret. From the signs we've observed, it appears he intends to send someone into the Sacred Realm."

Wu Chang's eyes snapped open. "Send someone in?"

Hei Shi said, "We don't know who."

Wu Chang asked, "It has something to do with Zhao Xiongge?"

Hei Shi replied, "Nantian Wufang only began making arrangements after conferring with Zhao Xiongge, so it should be connected to him."

Wu Chang said, "Given the present situation in the Sacred Realm, what purpose would there be in sending someone inside? Even attacking the various Sacred Lands would accomplish nothing. Zhao Xiongge..." His gaze suddenly flickered. "Could it have something to do with the Desolate Marsh Deadlands?"

Hei Shi nodded. "This subordinate thought the same. Other than the Desolate Marsh Deadlands, at a time like this, I truly can't think of any reason worth the risk of sending someone into the Sacred Realm."

Wu Chang said, "Lay the net. Watch them carefully and confirm it. Do not alert the snake by striking the grass!"

"Yes!" Hei Shi acknowledged the order, then offered a stream of flattery about how fortunate they were that the Sacred Venerable had predicted matters so accurately, allowing them to seize the initiative everywhere. Otherwise, he said, there were things from which they would never have been able to discern any clue.

...

In a secret chamber, Niu Youdao held a confidential letter in one hand and paced in silence, deep in thought.

A message had arrived from Jia Wuqun, conveying his judgment: controlling the Myriad Beasts Sect, Tianxing Sect, and Ling Sect was merely smoke and mirrors. The Three Sacred Venerables' true objective was to control Qiyun Sect and use the State of Jin to sweep all under Heaven clean, reshaping the order beneath Heaven.

[End of Chapter 1504]