Chapter 312: Around Winter

There was still no word from the Marquis of Jingnan.

The imperial court had likewise refrained from bypassing the Marquis of Jingnan’s Residence to issue military orders directly to the Jingnan Army beneath him, because doing so would effectively force the Jingnan Army to choose between the Marquis’s Residence and the imperial court itself.

And when everyone already knew that choice was unlikely to produce a pretty answer, why personally tear away the last layer of courtesy?

Even so, the troops from Shengle City and Xinsu City had moved.

Both forces took the initiative to enter Dacheng territory and advance toward Yingdu.

Previously, Chen Yang, Chief Commander of the Jingnan Army stationed at Xinsu City, and Zheng Fan, General of Shengle, had paid the First Prince no attention whatsoever. Chen Yang shut his gates and refused to emerge. General Zheng went even farther and sent men to the First Prince’s central army to demand grain and supplies.

But now, after the defeat at the Wang River, whether for stabilizing morale, reinforcing the defensive line, or any other reason, it was only natural for these two armies already positioned along Dacheng’s border to march toward Yingdu.

At the end of the day, they were all Yan men.

Of course, General Zheng’s motives were probably somewhat less pure.

If Shengle City did not get another war soon, it was going bankrupt.

Shengle sent out ten thousand troops and five thousand laborers.

The moment they entered Dacheng territory, they immediately copied the behavior of the First Prince’s Eastern Expedition Army during its own advance and notified the local yamen that they were responsible for supplying the army with grain and materials.

Then, without the slightest courtesy, they requisitioned another five thousand Dacheng laborers.

We are helping you fight a war.

What?

Is feeding us three meals a day somehow unreasonable?

If the First Prince was allowed to squeeze you, why couldn’t General Zheng?

One county magistrate with rather more backbone than most refused General Zheng’s demands outright.

He stated bluntly that the population under his jurisdiction was already badly depleted and that any further requisitioning of laborers would damage the region’s vitality too severely.

To be fair, he was telling the truth.

Ever since the Situ Clan founded its state, from the snowfields to Snow Sea Pass and then all the way to the Wang River, the fighting had never stopped.

And after the Situ Clan lost the territory east of the Wang River, the remaining regions naturally had to bear even heavier taxes, grain levies, and labor demands.

They had already supported the First Prince’s Eastern Expedition Army as well.

To say the people were exhausted was no exaggeration at all.

General Zheng greatly admired the county magistrate’s integrity.

He praised the man’s character at length.

Then he had him beheaded.

Once the head was hung above the county-town gate, the great households inside the town immediately pooled together grain and supplies to support the Shengle Army.

The requisition of laborers also began with remarkable speed.

...

Inside the command tent, Zheng Fan was flipping through a book.

Naturally, it was not *The Zheng Treatise on War*.

General Zheng had not yet become so shamelessly narcissistic and self-deluding that he would sit around reading his own work.

This was a book on magic that he had gone to considerable trouble to buy.

Its author was a Western mage.

The copy in Zheng Fan’s hands was a translation.

Naturally, Zheng Fan had no intention of cultivating according to it.

Heaven alone knew whether the Eastern scholar who had translated the thing had misunderstood something somewhere.

What if Zheng Fan actually followed the instructions and cultivated himself into a problem?

Still, as a popular-science book for broadening his horizons, it was quite good.

The march was dull.

Siniang had not come along this time either.

So he could only read a book about magic to pass the boredom and barely get through the days.

It really was boring.

Zheng Fan felt that he had already attended the “Big Shot Military Academy” many times.

Several true masters had kept him by their sides and personally taught him through words and example.

But war was genuinely difficult to predict.

Sometimes, the moment you thought you had become impressive and felt exceptionally good about yourself, you might discover that you had turned into Zhao Kuo.

Especially after seeing that even someone as cautious as the First Prince could still overturn the cart, Zheng Fan decided it was better to continue serving as the army’s mascot.

Every morning, Zheng Fan rode one circuit around the military camp and accepted the soldiers’ gazes and cheers.

He did not dismount.

Nor did he go among the men asking after their warmth and hunger.

He did not sit down beside them and stir a communal pot of food.

Tian Wujing had once told him that sometimes, becoming too intimate with ordinary soldiers could instead cause them to lose their sense of awe toward you.

Zheng Fan had specifically asked Liang Cheng about this once.

After all, in many of the “stories” and “records” he had read in his previous life, there were endless tales about some general loving his soldiers like sons, even personally sucking pus from their sores.

Liang Cheng had answered with a single question:

“Who wrote those stories?”

And Zheng Fan understood.

The people who wrote such stories might well have added their own private ingredients.

What people called taking things for granted.

An army was a terrifying machine for killing.

Strict discipline and harsh law were the keys to ensuring that machine functioned properly.

As for all the other performances and displays if you were truly bored out of your mind, you could indulge in them occasionally for entertainment.

The Shengle Army dragged its feet as it marched.

As if sharing some strange telepathy, Chen Yang’s force behaved exactly the same way.

It was almost as though the two armies were competing to see who could march more slowly.

The moment both forces entered Dacheng territory and began eating the local population’s “supplies,” the spirited young men instantly transformed into ancient elders tottering along at the edge of death.

There were several reasons.

First, on the eastern bank of the Wang River, neither Chu nor the savages appeared to have any immediate intention of launching a large-scale westward crossing.

Second, winter was approaching.

Because the snowfields had been “visited” by the Marquis of Jingnan earlier that year, many tribes would not be able to survive the coming winter.

That was forcing large numbers of tribes to voluntarily submit to the Savage King simply to survive.

At the moment, the Savage King was busy receiving those savage warriors as they passed through Snow Sea Pass into Dacheng territory.

Third, Chu’s Azure Luan Army had indeed not withdrawn.

But Chu appeared to have dispatched only this one elite force of roughly fifty thousand men.

Domestic consolidation and suppression of internal disorder still required its attention, so Chu did not seem to have any plan to send further reinforcements and expand the war.

Most importantly, although the First Prince’s Eastern Expedition Army had lost the main body of its left wing, the Zhenbei Army itself had not truly suffered crippling losses.

And even while carrying the name of a defeated commander, the First Prince had continued reorganizing the defensive situation.

On one side, he handled the affairs of Dacheng’s small court.

On the other, he continued drilling and reorganizing the army.

The situation had at least been stabilized.

Forty thousand Zhenbei Army troops remained encamped outside Yingdu.

Add the tens of thousands from Yan’s remaining right-wing army, then combine them with Dacheng’s own troops and truthfully, if you asked the Chu–savage coalition simply to cross the river and attack, they would feel nervous too.

They were afraid of suffering another reversal like the one Situ Lei had inflicted before his death.

And so, after the Battle of the Wang River, both sides settled into a remarkably tacit “calm.”

But both sides also understood that this shared calm was only temporary.

Once the turmoil inside Chu was completely or mostly suppressed, the new Emperor of Chu would inevitably reinforce this battlefield.

Ah.

The same old reason again.

Nothing helped a new sovereign consolidate his rule more effectively than victory in an external war.

Especially when Chu had already tasted profit.

They had genuinely defeated the Yan army that had seemed invincible for years.

As for the Savage King, while continuing to absorb the various tribes of the snowfields, he was also incorporating batch after batch of savage warriors directly into his own forces.

More importantly, the greatest gain from Yan’s defeat in the previous battle was not merely the men killed.

The lost warhorses, armor, and military equipment were far more critical.

The savages might have abducted plenty of Dacheng craftsmen already, but suddenly obtaining such a vast quantity of finished military equipment would unquestionably cause their combat strength to surge.

In the history Zheng Fan knew, the Jurchen tribes that emerged from the black waters and white lands were a similar example.

They first broke the Liao Dynasty, then destroyed Northern Song.

By seizing and absorbing equipment all the way through those campaigns, the regular Jin armies eventually wore gear even more luxurious than that of the Song troops they fought.

As for Yan, things were much simpler.

The First Prince waited.

Zheng Fan waited.

Chen Yang waited.

Everyone waited.

They were all waiting for news from one man.

And with all that waiting, winter nearly arrived.

Yet the news still did not come.

Which meant the awkward situation had no choice but to continue.

Zheng Fan’s ten thousand men and Chen Yang’s ten thousand men maintained the same posture toward the First Prince in Yingdu: they could coordinate with him.

But they absolutely would not proactively obey his commands.

The First Prince also understood the proper boundaries.

He never issued either force any explicit military orders.

He merely sent a military officer every three days as a matter of routine to go through the motions.

“Master, how long are we going to keep waiting?”

A’Ming was becoming impatient.

He missed Shengle City’s wine cellar and the private stock he had stored there.

Zheng Fan first shook his head.

Then, while carefully shaving his beard with a razor, he said, “No idea.

“The Marquis of Jingnan still hasn’t moved.

“So there’s nothing we can really do here.”

More importantly, unless the main force of the Jingnan Army came over, the Yan simply did not have enough confidence to launch another war of revenge.

Lose once, and you could still blame carelessness.

Blame Chu’s treachery.

Blame the First Prince’s youth.

Lose twice and the excellent strategic situation Great Yan had worked so hard to build would genuinely begin to shake.

“So the Marquis of Jingnan is still holed up at home refusing to deal with anyone?” Xue San asked, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he smoked.

“Who knows?”

After shaving his beard, Zheng Fan began trimming his nose hair.

He really had become so idle his balls hurt.

In the old days, when you went out on campaign, would you even have cared about something like this?

But now, there truly was nothing else to do.

There was one benefit, at least.

The army had been brought outside Shengle.

All their food and drink were now supplied by Dacheng’s local authorities.

And military pay while on campaign would only be issued once they returned after the war.

Which meant they could postpone it.

As a result, a massive burden had suddenly been lifted from Shengle City.

That much was obvious from Siniang’s letters.

Her fiscal pressure had eased enormously.

As for the burden on Dacheng’s people well.

It was acceptable.

The Yan still knew some restraint.

Heavy taxes and levies were unfortunate, but they were still preferable to having the savages come over and turn everyone directly into two-legged sheep.

So the kindhearted General Zheng felt absolutely no psychological burden about squeezing Dacheng’s local population.

“Master, I’ve already trained all the craftsmen we brought with us.

“They’re teaching the laborers who joined this expedition too.

“But there’s still no battle to fight.”

“Keep a close watch on the craftsmen and laborers who’ve learned your techniques.”

“I understand, Master.”

“What are we eating tonight?

“No hotpot.

“I’m getting tired of it.”

“Wild-vegetable wontons?”

“That works.”

Zheng Fan nodded in satisfaction.

“Make plenty.

“Send some to Chief Commander Chen too.”

“Still, Master,” Xue San said, unwilling to let the question go, “winter is almost here.

“Is the Marquis of Jingnan coming or not?”

A’Ming leaned backward slightly and reclined on the blanket.

“Maybe he’s still locked in a tug-of-war with the imperial court.”

Xue San said, “If that tug-of-war keeps going, won’t something eventually break?

“I’m genuinely worried that in the end, instead of running over to fight the savages, the Marquis of Jingnan will call us back to help fight a civil war.”

Zheng Fan placed a hot towel over his face.

Comfortably, he began humming:

“On the days without you,
I’ll cherish myself even more...”

A’Ming laughed.

“Master is in good spirits.

“You’ve even started singing.”

Xue San immediately said, “Are you stupid?

“Master means the Marquis of Jingnan is almost here.”

“What?”

A’Ming did not understand.

But he knew perfectly well that Xue San was definitely engaging in some new, deeply elaborate method of flattery again.

“*Around Winter.*

“Isn’t winter almost here?

“That means the Marquis of Jingnan should be coming.”

“That works too?”

A’Ming paused.

Then he added, “Though I *am* curious.

“How will the Marquis of Jingnan deal with Chu’s river fleet?”

For Yan to build a proper navy in a short period of time was basically impossible.

“Haaah...”

Zheng Fan pulled the towel from his face and let out a long, comfortable breath.

Then he said:

“There’s no need to deal with it anymore.”

“No need?” A’Ming asked.

“Mm.

“Because the Wang River is about to freeze.”

[End of Chapter 312]