Chapter 143: I Fight Dirtier Than You

A gentleman can wait ten years to take revenge.

But Zheng Fan had absolutely no intention of actually waiting ten years.

That would seriously reduce his quality of life for the entire decade.

So when Liang Cheng ordered the charge, Zheng Fan bit his lower lip against his teeth and raised the saber in his hand.

He liked this feeling.

You had just cut him once and now he was turning around to grind you into the dirt.

Truthfully, the fury of the Huo Clan men was even greater than Zheng Fan's.

Zheng Fan had lost capital.

They had lost family.

The barbarian soldiers had accompanied Zheng Fan into this city before. They had assumed this visit would be just as familiar and easy.

Instead, they had been driven back out.

The barbarian soldiers naturally did not dare direct much anger toward Yan itself, and certainly not toward Zheng Fan.

But they had their own hierarchy of contempt.

After seeing how weak Qian's soldiers were, the barbarian cavalry of Green Willow Fortress had already placed Qian beneath themselves on that scale.

So being humiliated by them just now was intolerable!

Warhorses pounded the earth.

This was the strongest rhythm in the world before them.

The Wolf Native Troops had already broken.

Some had even turned their backs directly toward the sabers sweeping in behind them.

Warhorses smashed them aside without mercy.

Cold blades cut them down.

Before the torrent of charging cavalry, their lives and their flesh looked unbearably fragile.

Pfft!

Zheng Fan cut down one native soldier.

The man's blood splashed across him.

Zheng Fan had no interest in tasting it this time.

He simply kept charging.

The Wolf Native Troops were like wheat in a field being harvested without mercy.

One patch after another fell.

Some of the native soldiers understood that they could not simply keep fleeing.

Dying like this was too miserable.

But under the momentum of the greater collapse, the resistance of a handful of men was utterly feeble.

Any small pocket of resistance that appeared was immediately smashed apart.

They were given no chance to organize.

No possibility of rallying.

This was a slaughter.

A completely one-sided slaughter.

Everyone was pursuing and encircling his own prey.

Everyone swung his saber with all his strength, venting the suffocating shock and frustration these Wolf Native Troops had inflicted when they suddenly charged out from the city.

If you lived by the knife sooner or later the knife came back for you.

The best way to wash away humiliation was to kill the one who had humiliated you.

The Wolf Native Troops could not understand why the Yan people they had just driven back had transformed, in the blink of an eye, into such terrifying demons.

Lady Daxi understood a little.

But there was no longer time for her to reflect or regret.

She suddenly began to understand why Qian, which had been able to suppress the native-chieftain rebellion in the southwest, feared the people of Yan so deeply.

These Yan troops truly were terrifying.

Especially on open ground.

Their warhorses stood far taller than the horses she normally saw.

They almost looked like two entirely different creatures.

Their horsemanship, coordination, and discipline were all far superior to anything she had seen from Qian's armies.

Equally terrifying were their arrows.

Even from galloping horses, they could shoot with astonishing accuracy.

It had been volley after volley of arrows that shattered the courage and confidence of the men under her command.

Because Zheng Fan's force contained more than four hundred barbarian cavalry.

Mounted archery was their specialty.

And the scions of the great clans Zheng Fan had taken in were themselves men of high quality.

Their horsemanship was not poor either.

Had the Yan Emperor not trampled down Yan's great clans, Zheng Fan could never have inherited so many excellent soldiers.

In the Han Dynasty of the era Zheng Fan knew, the state had in fact particularly favored recruiting sons of respectable households—for example, the cavalrymen from the Three Rivers region.

And strictly speaking, the Three Rivers region was essentially the imperial heartland.

A family needed money and property before its sons could eat their fill.

Only then could they grow strong.

Only then could they practice martial arts.

Only then could they free themselves from exhausting agricultural labor and pursue greater personal development.

For the ancient dynasties of the Central Plains, men like these were the finest source of soldiers.

Thanks to the Yan Emperor, the men Zheng Fan had inherited came from households that had long surpassed anything one might call merely "comfortable."

And thanks to Xu Wenzu opening a back door for him, all the Huo Clan descendants had been left to Zheng Fan.

Their mounted archery could not compare with Green Willow Fortress's barbarian cavalry, who came from penal tribes.

But the gap was not enormous.

The people of Yan had indeed begun picking up some of Qian's habits.

Yet their mainstream culture still valued bows, horses, riding, and shooting.

Most importantly, the quality of these clan scions was already there.

That meant they learned obedience, coordination, familiarity, and comprehension much faster than the barbarian soldiers.

This was also why the Blind Man had insisted on waiting for the condemned great-clan men to arrive even after Green Willow Fortress's barracks had already been built.

He had refused to rush troop expansion beforehand.

Good food was always worth waiting for.

Zheng Fan had even discerned another layer to the Blind Man's thinking.

Once these men were properly molded and their loyalty consolidated, their excellent quality would make them ideal officers for leading new recruits in the future.

Germany had used a similar method after the First World War.

After losing the war, Germany had its army's manpower capped by treaty.

So the Germans trained the limited number of soldiers they were allowed to keep as though each one were an officer.

Earlier, inside the city, the Wolf Native Troops had charged them in cramped terrain where cavalry could barely maneuver.

They had also taken Zheng Fan's side completely by surprise.

Now this was what a true elite force looked like in battle.

Lady Daxi stood out far too clearly amid the routing troops.

She was mounted.

She was a woman.

And her clothing was striking.

In the darkness, she looked almost like a burst of brilliant fireworks.

Compare that with Zheng Fan.

He would not even wear a cloak, precisely because he feared ending up in this sort of situation.

Even during the charge, Liang Cheng maintained control over the cavalry under his command.

He forcibly redirected two detachments after they pierced through the enemy, making them wheel back across one another.

The maneuver cut the fleeing Wolf Native Troops apart once again.

During that cut, Lady Daxi and several dozen native soldiers around her were isolated and surrounded.

The few dozen clansmen beside Lady Daxi were clearly her most loyal guards.

They showed no fear of the cavalry before them.

They charged together and, for a moment, actually tore open a gap in the newly formed encirclement.

Fortunately, Fan Li arrived in time.

Several arrows were already sticking out of the giant's body.

Two were buried in his left arm.

One was lodged in his back.

Thankfully, his hide and flesh were so thick that none had penetrated deeply.

Now Fan Li swept his enormous axe through the air like Cheng Yaojin reborn.

With his monstrous strength combined with the momentum of that massive weapon, the native soldiers leading the breakout were chopped apart at the waist.

Blood sprayed everywhere.

This was a true fierce general.

This was what "a warrior worth ten thousand men" genuinely looked like on a battlefield.

In a great clash involving thousands, individual martial prowess often struggled to have a decisive effect.

But in a small-scale engagement like this the strength of the Demon Kings could finally be displayed in full.

The Blind Man, A'Ming, and the Fourth Lady made their move.

The Blind Man's mental power struck directly at Lady Daxi's horse.

The animal immediately went mad.

It crashed through the native soldiers protecting the front and charged straight toward Fan Li.

Fan Li had already raised his axe.

But Lady Daxi kicked off her stirrups.

Her entire body sprang up from the saddle.

Still in midair, she drew her longbow and nocked an arrow.

The arrowhead aimed directly at Fan Li's brow.

Whoosh!

The arrow flew.

Fortunately, Fan Li brought his axe across above his head in time.

Clang!

The arrow was knocked aside.

Fan Li himself staggered two steps backward.

He knew that taking arrows elsewhere on his body did not matter much.

But if one like that struck his head he really might die.

Before Lady Daxi could land, two silk threads wrapped around her ankles and suddenly twisted.

Lady Daxi lost her balance and crashed down.

The surrounding riders immediately hacked at the native soldiers, tightening the encirclement.

Zheng Fan hesitated over whether to invoke the Demon Maru's power and join the attack.

But Liang Cheng suddenly shouted:

"Master!"

Zheng Fan paused.

Then he spurred his horse after Liang Cheng.

Lady Daxi was already trapped.

With the Blind Man and the others there, no matter how troublesome she might be, dealing with her would not be a problem.

The encirclement and cutting apart of the routed troops was still continuing.

However far the Wolf Native Troops had greedily chased them before that was how far they would now have to run and die.

At that moment, Liang Cheng led Zheng Fan out of the fighting.

A hundred barbarian cavalry followed close behind them.

Very quickly, Zheng Fan realized what Liang Cheng intended to do.

They were going to take the gate again!

They would recover their lost pride in the very place they had lost it.

Use the momentum of the rout.

Charge back into the city.

It was an extremely bold plan.

And under the circumstances an extremely feasible one.

The fastest few hundred Wolf Native Troops were already close to the city gate.

Their courage had completely collapsed.

All they wanted was to flee back inside.

Atop the wall, Meng Gong clenched his teeth as he saw the routed troops returning.

If he could, he truly wanted to drag Lady Daxi in front of him and curse her to her face.

But now, whether Lady Daxi herself could even return alive was uncertain.

"My lord, close the gate!"

A Lieutenant Commander of Mianzhou City shouted.

The routed troops were coming back.

And Yan cavalry could clearly be seen following behind them.

If the Yan riders rode in on the heels of the rout, then the entire situation would collapse again.

The Yan had already entered the city once tonight.

If the Wolf Native Troops had not used their fierce momentum to drive them back out, Mianzhou City might already have changed hands for the second time in a matter of months.

But now the Wolf Native Troops had been shattered.

When the Yan charged back in again who would drive them out?

The Lieutenant Commander knew he could not do it.

He did not believe his men could either.

In truth, the repeated reversals were already inflicting a tremendous blow on the fighting spirit of Mianzhou City's defenders.

And because the Yan had only killed officials the last time they entered the city—without massacring the populace or searching every household—it had planted a certain suggestion in the minds of the lowest-ranking soldiers.

Something like:

If the city falls, maybe I still won't die?

Officials might be implicated.

But what could happen to men at the very bottom like them?

Qian soldiers were already mocked as "convict troops."

They were near the very bottom of society.

How much farther could they fall?

Meng Gong, however, laughed.

If some other commander were here, he would almost certainly order the gates closed without a second thought.

But he was Meng Gong.

Meng Gong pointed toward the more than one thousand Wolf Native Troops who had remained inside the city.

"If we close the gate now, are you trying to start a mutiny inside the city first?"

The Wolf Native Troops had little discipline.

So after the fighting inside the city had ended, more than a thousand of them had stayed behind to clean the battlefield and cut off heads rather than following Lady Daxi in pursuit.

If Meng Gong now dared order the gates shut and locked the routed Wolf Native Troops outside, the native soldiers inside would not care about his difficulties or the greater situation.

Their blades and bows would immediately turn on the Qian troops.

Once fighting broke out inside the city what difference would it make whether the gate was closed?

Meng Gong slapped a hand against his armor and made his decision.

He raised the imperial edict in his hand and shouted to the defenders around him:

"The imperial edict is here! All of you, follow me out of the city and stop the enemy!"

The command stunned the Qian soldiers both atop and below the walls.

Outside the city?

Had he lost his mind?

The Wolf Native Troops had been so ferocious, and they had gone outside only to be smashed and sent fleeing back.

Now he wanted them to go outside?

Meng Gong roared again:

"His Highness is inside the city! If the city falls today, every one of us, high and low, will have our homes confiscated and our clans exterminated! Don't think you'll escape responsibility. You won't!"

Meng Gong drew his saber.

Then shouted:

"Anyone with balls, follow me down and stop them!"

Meng Gong led the way down.

The Prince's guards looked at one another.

Then followed.

Their families were all tied to the Prince's residence.

If anything happened to His Highness, then they would be guilty of failing to protect him and their families would be implicated as well.

They had no choice.

The surrounding Qian soldiers hesitated.

But between the authority of the imperial edict and the danger to a Prince's life, some finally followed Meng Gong down.

Once a few men led the way, more joined them.

At the city gate, Meng Gong shouted to the Wolf Native Troops inside in their own language:

"Lady Daxi has been ambushed by the Yan outside! We're going to rescue her!"

The Wolf Native Troops looked at one another.

They did not trust the Qian people.

But they understood that their own lady could not be left in danger.

Many immediately stopped stripping the battlefield, picked up blades or bows, and followed Meng Gong.

Meng Gong marched out through the gate.

Behind him stood a dark mass of men.

There was no proper formation.

No real order.

But through his personal example and sheer force of encouragement, Meng Gong still managed to lead more than two thousand Qian soldiers and native troops some distance beyond the gate.

Then he stopped.

He did not dare go any farther.

The farther they moved from the city gate, the weaker the resolve of the two thousand men behind him would become.

And if he gave the Yan cavalry enough open ground, his force might simply repeat the Wolf Native Troops' earlier collapse.

Besides, many of the defenders who had disobeyed him and remained on the walls out of fear were still holding bows and crossbows along the battlements.

If Meng Gong advanced any farther, he would leave their effective range.

As for actually charging out to rescue Lady Daxi he had no intention of doing that.

All he wanted was to prevent the Yan from using the fleeing Wolf Native Troops to ride straight back through the gate.

There were more Yan cavalry this time than there had been during the previous attack.

But fundamentally, the situation was still the same.

Against an entire city their numbers were simply too few.

The first groups of routed Wolf Native Troops finally came running back.

When they saw the mass of men stationed outside the gate, they looked uncertain.

But their feet did not slow.

Meng Gong shouted in their language:

"Run to the sides! Anyone who charges our line dies!"

Then he personally stepped forward and cut down a Wolf Native soldier who was about to crash into the formation.

That caused a stir among the native soldiers behind him.

But the fleeing Wolf Native Troops ahead immediately began veering off to both sides.

Soon, Meng Gong saw the Yan cavalry.

They had remained just behind the routed native troops the entire way.

They were waiting for the fugitives to open a path so they could charge the gate again.

Meng Gong understood.

The commander of this Yan force knew how to wage war.

Every single move had been judged with precision.

The initial retreat.

The counterattack that followed.

And now, after the counterattack succeeded, the immediate attempt to ride the momentum of the rout through the city gate and expand their victory.

Everything had been timed perfectly.

Meng Gong knew the Yan commander's only disadvantage was that he simply had too few cavalry this time.

Give him another thousand riders and Mianzhou City absolutely could not have been held today.

Meng Gong suddenly felt like laughing.

He had always thought highly of himself.

He believed he had inherited his father's true teachings.

Yet here he was defending a city with the numerical advantage and he had somehow allowed the battle to turn into this.

Clang!

Meng Gong drove his saber into the frozen earth before him.

Then he roared:

"Meng Gong stands here! Which Yan dog dares come take your grandfather's life!"

...

"Stop!"

Liang Cheng raised one hand, signaling the barbarian soldiers behind him to halt.

The cavalry pulled on their reins one after another, bringing their warhorses under control.

Zheng Fan saw them too.

A dark mass of men standing in the open ground before the city gate.

They could charge.

Of course they could try.

But only a hundred cavalry had broken away from the main battlefield with them.

You might know perfectly well that the enemy was probably holding together on nothing more than a single breath of courage.

Perhaps one charge would break them.

But if they did not break then Zheng Fan, Liang Cheng, and these hundred riders would all be buried there.

Zheng Fan still remembered perfectly well how Huo Guang's hundred cavalry had been swallowed by a human tide inside the city.

"Master, someone over there knows how to fight."

That was all Liang Cheng could say.

"I can see that."

Zheng Fan nodded.

Seeing that his Master had no intention of charging the formation, Liang Cheng immediately turned and looked at the scattered native soldiers fleeing behind them.

"Cut them off!"

The barbarian cavalry spread out at once.

They wheeled back to continue hunting down the routed Wolf Native Troops.

"Meng Gong stands here! Which Yan dog dares come take your grandfather's life!"

The shout carried across the distance.

Zheng Fan suddenly smiled.

"Pretty arrogant."

"A general is the courage of his soldiers," Liang Cheng said. "But we've killed a great many native troops this time, and there was even a female native chieftain among them. Master, we haven't come out behind."

Zheng Fan knew Liang Cheng was trying to comfort him.

"We definitely haven't lost overall. But getting our heads through the door only to be shoved straight back out again still feels awful."

Liang Cheng nodded faintly.

In truth, he wanted to advise Zheng Fan to take the victory they had and stop.

But he understood that those words were not appropriate coming from him.

"I hope the Blind Man and the others captured that female native chieftain alive instead of killing her."

Liang Cheng's eyes sharpened.

"Master, you mean...?"

Zheng Fan pointed toward the Wolf Native Troops standing behind the Qian commander at the city gate.

"What do you think? If we use their female chieftain's life to trade for this city, will they agree?"

"My concern is that the woman may be a true heroine—someone who would rather die than submit."

"The Blind Man doesn't eat for free. Have him use his mental power to control her and make her go forward to speak to her men. Even if he has to overdraw himself so badly he passes out afterward, he does it."

Liang Cheng's mouth opened slightly.

After a moment, he said:

"Master is wise."

This time, the words "Master is wise" were no longer the empty formality they usually were, little different from saying hello or remarking that the weather was pleasant.

"I'm not as good at marching and fighting as you are."

"Master is too modest."

"But there's one thing I'm better at."

"Please enlighten me, Master. This subordinate will learn."

Zheng Fan turned to look at Liang Cheng beside him.

This ancient zombie had always carried a streak of arrogance deep inside.

"I'm dirtier than you."

(End of Chapter)