Chapter 516: - Filling the Pits

Liang Cheng rode up before Count Pingye and saluted.

“Master, everything is ready. Please give the order.”

Count Pingye nodded slightly.

“Begin.”

One light, almost casual sentence.

Before a great battle, the Savage King needed to give the Savages a speech, to flood their minds with excitement until, for a short time, they overcame mankind’s instinctive fear of death and became war beasts that feared neither death nor pain.

In earlier years, Zheng Fan had done similar work himself.

If you were the totem, the mascot, then before battle you naturally had to come out, walk around, say a few words, firm up the soldiers’ convictions, and pour a little more killing intent into them.

But now, there was no need.

The troops of Snow Sea Pass had matured.

The Blind Man held assemblies every few days. Liang Cheng trained them with merciless strictness. The rhythm of life at Snow Sea Pass, their sense of belonging, their pride, all of it together had shaped this army into one that no longer needed some last-minute injection of chicken blood before battle.

They knew what they were supposed to do.

They knew what they had to do.

From now on, unless they encountered an extraordinarily desperate situation, Zheng Fan would not need to ride to the front and shout slogans to raise morale.

Scenes where men smashed wine bowls and swore blood oaths at the drop of a hat usually belonged to jianghu drifters or mobs thrown together in haste.

True elites, true iron cavalry, wherever the general’s order pointed, they would naturally sweep all before them!

“This subordinate obeys!”

Liang Cheng would still command the troops.

This battle mattered too much. Armies from every route in Great Yan were holding the field for them. There could be no mistakes.

So leaving command to Liang Cheng was still more reassuring.

Besides, storming a fortified camp was not the same as field battle. At Zheng Fan’s current level, he was not afraid to command a field engagement himself. But when assaulting a camp, one often needed to make rapid, fine adjustments based on changes inside the enemy formation.

So, taking ten thousand steps back, Count Pingye, who would remain in the rear with A’Ming on his left and the Sword Saint on his right unless things became absolutely desperate, was supposed to command what, exactly?

Liang Cheng raised his saber. Three standard-bearers stood on either side of him.

“Raise!”

The flags swept through the air.

For an instant, the only sound was the murderous rustle of reins being tightened and armor rubbing against armor.

“Form up! Open!”

The vanguard began increasing speed.

The central formation followed.

The rear formation accelerated as well.

Several hundred riders peeled away from each wing. Their task was to pressure the eastern and western sides of the military camp. If the defenders ignored them, they could throw ropes over the palisade and pull sections down, or simply dismount and climb over. The Chu could not possibly leave them unattended, which meant the defenders would have to split their strength.

Since ancient times, whether attacking a city or storming a camp, no one truly attacked only a single side.

“Surround three sides and leave one open” was still surrounding three sides and leaving one open, but during the actual assault, several sides would normally be pressured at once. The main effort simply fell more heavily in one direction.

And if a feint discovered negligence or a weakness in the defenders, turning that feint into the real attack was perfectly normal.

Count Pingye remained where he was atop his Pixiu.

Behind him stood two standard-bearers holding the command banner of Count Pingye.

A’Ming and the Sword Saint stood to either side.

Watching the army begin to thunder forward, the Sword Saint said almost unconsciously, “The difference between one army and another really is enormous. If, back beneath Snow Sea Pass, I had faced iron cavalry like this, I...”

“Wouldn’t have been able to kill Gelimu?” Count Pingye asked with a smile.

“I still could have killed him. But I probably wouldn’t have cut down so many Savages, and in the end I wouldn’t have come out alive either.”

When all was said and done, the Savages at that time had already become frightened birds after Snow Sea Pass was taken.

Gelimu’s troops were also a Savage rear formation, whose quality had never been especially good.

The true elites had been kept beside the Savage King on the eastern bank of the Wang River, facing the Yan army.

Count Pingye slowly nodded.

“I have seen true iron cavalry grind a master to death.”

Sha Tuo Queshi had been worn down, blow by blow, by the iron cavalry of the Zhenbei Army.

That incident had taught Zheng Fan one lesson with absolute clarity: the more elite cavalry he had around him, the better!

Merely strengthening himself and then relying on his own improvement to drag the Demon Kings upward carried far too much uncertainty.

But if he possessed enough troops, then those so-called masters no longer seemed so terrifying.

Of course, with the Sword Saint accompanying him on battlefields and living next door once they returned home, the sense of security was incomparable.

Inside Central Mountain Camp, the Rattan-Armored Troops were already waiting in formation.

The Chu valued heavy infantry.

The Bai Clan’s Rattan-Armored Troops had spent years suppressing water bandits along the edge of the Great Marsh and were long accustomed to fighting on Changxi Commandery’s terrain.

Heavy rain had fallen only a few days earlier, and the sky had cleared just today.

The muddy low ground before the camp was, in fact, exactly the sort of battlefield they preferred.

Their armor was made from a kind of vine that grew near the Great Marsh in Changxi Commandery. After treatment, it became extraordinarily light while retaining excellent toughness. Beneath it they wore a single layer of cloth armor.

Its defensive ability was genuinely not weak.

More importantly, the light weight allowed them to move, shift, and maneuver through mud with far less effort.

“Shields!”

“Thud! Thud!”

Shield soldiers raised their shields and formed ranks.

In truth, the real foundation, the backbone, of any infantry formation was the shield line.

Once the shield soldiers established the root, every other type of infantry could attach itself before, behind, or around them.

Without a solid shield formation to serve as support, the entire infantry line became rootless duckweed.

It simply could not stand.

“Spears, advance!”

“Thud-thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud!”

Spearmen moved forward.

The first row crouched and braced their spears.

The second row raised theirs above them.

“Sabers and axes, ready!”

“Thud-thud-thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud!”

Sabermen and axemen formed behind the shield line, positioned between the shields and the archers.

Their role was to rush forward and kill once the spearmen stopped the cavalry charge.

In truth, the most heavily armored and most courageous men in an infantry formation were often the sabermen and axemen.

Spearmen were more commonly expendables.

They stood in the front rank and met cavalry head-on.

Even if their spears found their mark, the charging horses would probably smash into them anyway, sending them flying. Death or crippling injury was often the result.

Then the sabermen and axemen would rush up to harvest the enemy.

And if no second rank of spearmen moved forward to fill the gap, those sabermen and axemen would become the first line against the next charge.

That was why, in the overwhelming majority of armies, spearmen were drawn from auxiliaries.

Sometimes they were even laborers.

There was no other reason.

They were cheap.

Of course, nothing in warfare was absolute.

It was said that the Zu Clan Army in southeastern Qian assigned far more functions to its spearmen.

But no matter how one put it, against an opponent like Yan, whose armies were dominated by cavalry, the fate of the first rank of spearmen was usually doomed to be tragic.

Chi Mingyi’s Rattan-Armored Troops formed inside the camp.

Central Mountain Camp had originally been designed as a logistical and troop-transfer hub.

That meant it could not rely, as the western side did, on the rammed-earth walls of the unfinished fort.

Nor could it arrange endless layers of palisades and trenches like the eastern side.

Grain, equipment, and even whole bodies of troops needed to enter and leave this place quickly.

So the front gate was actually the weakest point in the camp’s defenses.

There was no helping it.

This was a military camp.

It was not a fortress.

Besides, the Yan had indeed arrived before dusk yesterday.

But from the moment they came, the harassment had never stopped.

Chi Mingyi understood that this was probably intended to exhaust his men.

But he did not dare gamble.

What if one attack turned out to be real?

On a battlefield, were there ever too few things that were true one moment and false the next?

So the defenders of Central Mountain Camp had barely closed their eyes throughout the night.

Fortunately, it had only been one night.

There were problems, certainly, but nothing they could not overcome.

And the Yan had launched their attack early in the morning.

That was admittedly when soldiers were sleepiest and most exhausted, but it could still be endured.

If the Yan had kept tormenting them day and night for several more days, then the men truly would have broken down.

In fact, Liang Cheng would have preferred exactly that.

Snow Sea Pass had always followed the principle of winning with the smallest possible cost, a habit born from years of operating on a small household budget.

Unfortunately, the Yan army did not possess enough time.

“Boys! Let the Yan dogs taste the strength of the men of Changxi!”

“Thud!”

“Hah!”

“Thud!”

“Hah!”

Roars rose through the formation in time with the drums.

Chi Mingyi was satisfied with the morale of his troops.

He was glad the Yan had attacked so early.

At the same time, however, he was confused.

When Jing Renli visited several days earlier, he had brought the General-in-Chief’s military order and oral instructions.

Chi Mingyi had already prepared himself mentally to be surrounded by a hundred thousand Yan soldiers, perhaps even more.

Yet the Yan force before him now numbered only a little over ten thousand.

The pressure was far less than he had imagined.

And besides...

Heh.

From the watchtower, Chi Mingyi looked toward the muddy low ground in front of the camp.

Once horse hooves sank into that muck, legs could easily twist and break.

No matter how sharp Yan cavalry might be, once trapped in this mud they could no longer display much brilliance.

Then

Chi Mingyi looked toward the eastern and western camp sections.

Yan cavalry were harassing both.

A soft sigh escaped inside his heart.

He simply did not have enough troops.

To be safe, he had no intention of gambling by sending the Rattan-Armored Troops out to attack the Yan while they bogged down in the mud.

Holding the camp mattered more.

But in his imagination, once the Yan lost the edge of their horses and were forced to trudge forward through mud like old farmers while still trying to attack, they would gain a deep understanding of just how formidable Great Chu’s infantry formations truly were.

As the Yan came closer, the Chu drums beat faster and faster.

Inside the camp, even the defenders’ breathing seemed to fall into one rhythm.

Some tightened their grip around spears.

Some around sabers and axes.

Some around shields.

All waited for the Yan impact.

One had to admit that ever since the Yan shattered Qian’s northern expeditionary army a century ago, the iron cavalry of Great Yan had become a shadow hanging over the heads of every other state in the East.

Chi Mingyi silently gritted his teeth.

His arm rose.

He was ready to give the order at any moment.

And then, just as the Chu formation had fully prepared itself, the charging Yan cavalry suddenly turned away.

The vanguard split into two columns and wheeled back.

The Chu, who had adjusted every breath and every ounce of spirit for the impact, suddenly felt as though they had thrown a full-strength punch into cotton.

Even Chi Mingyi swayed slightly atop the watchtower.

The Yan... were feinting?

But his own side stood fully prepared while the Yan were wasting horseflesh and stamina.

What exactly was the point of a feint like this?

Very soon, Chi Mingyi understood.

As the Yan riders wheeled away, they tipped the mouths of the sacks they carried and poured the earth inside directly into the muddy hollows beneath them.

Once the earth was emptied, they immediately turned back.

The next wave of Yan riders came forward.

More earth.

More filling.

Their own horses even trampled the fresh soil down as they passed before they too wheeled away.

The distance between the two sides still lay well outside bow and crossbow range.

Unless the Chu inside Central Mountain Camp deliberately came out to close the distance, there was no way to harm the Yan cavalry.

So the riders filling the pits worked with remarkable seriousness.

No one cut corners.

They tried to empty every last handful from each sack and spread it evenly, careful not to leave one patch too deep and another too shallow.

Mm.

Everyone was very responsible.

No one was trying to muddle through his assignment.

After all, every rider understood perfectly well that if these muddy hollows were not filled properly, his own horse might break a leg during the real charge later.

Good heavens.

Who understood the speed of a cavalry charge better than cavalrymen themselves?

If the horse twisted a leg, rider and mount might crash down together.

Or the rider might be thrown.

Being hurled farther away would actually be the lucky outcome. If one was not especially unlucky, perhaps it would only mean a few broken bones.

But this would be a mass charge.

Fall directly in front of the formation and the horses of your own comrades would trample straight over you.

There would be no possibility of survival.

That was also why Liang Cheng had chosen to begin the attack early in the morning.

First, they had indeed arrived yesterday, but they still needed time to dig earth.

Second, they needed time to fill the ground.

The riders who wheeled back collected fresh sacks packed with soil and went forward again.

The pit-filling operation continued.

Everyone worked with tremendous enthusiasm.

And watching it from the tower, Chi Mingyi felt flames nearly burst from his eyes!

He was not angry because the Yan dared fill the pits right in front of him.

He was angry because this much earth obviously could not have been hauled all the way from their distant military camp.

They had to have dug it after arriving yesterday.

Which meant that this Yan force, which had driven alone this deep into the defensive zone, and at least for now truly did appear to be isolated, had arrived here and then calmly spent half the night digging dirt?

Damn their ancestors!

Who the hell was inside the camp here and who was outside?

You arrived at my front door, did not build a camp of your own, were too lazy even to pitch proper tents, and instead spent your time digging earth so you could fill my mud pits the next morning?

How little contempt could an enemy possibly possess for Chi Mingyi and the Rattan-Armored Troops inside Central Mountain Camp?

Aaaaaargh!

Chi Mingyi might have been a son-in-law married into the Bai Clan, but if he had not been outstanding, there was no way the Bai family would have accepted him, much less placed Bai clansmen beneath his command and allowed him to lead this Rattan-Armored force.

He had always been proud and ambitious.

Now he was forced to stand there and watch riders who did not even look like Yan men, yet undeniably belonged to the Yan army, carefully and conscientiously... fill pits.

He could barely endure it.

And in truth, the contempt was real.

Count Pingye’s record was astonishingly brilliant.

The Snow Sea Iron Cavalry beneath him were genuinely proud, fierce veterans.

Cavalry already possessed a natural sense of superiority over infantry.

And contempt.

Fortunately for Chu, they were not Qian.

If this campaign had been against Qian instead, Yan soldiers facing Qian troops would have behaved even more brazenly and without restraint.

An excessively arrogant army could certainly suffer for it.

But the spiritual advantage produced by that arrogance was also very real.

The First Prince in Yinlang Commandery commanded only regional troops.

Yet he could still fight Qian soldiers back and forth along the frontier, even though his opponents were the elite armies of Qian’s Three Frontiers.

A great part of that came from spirit and momentum.

We look down on you.

We fight you.

We know we will win.

The moment we see you, we see military merit lying there waiting to be picked up.

How could we not be delighted?

The enemy, meanwhile, saw Yan banners and lost three parts of his courage before the battle even began.

With one side rising and the other falling, the scales of war had already started tipping before steel met steel.

The Blind Man had once joked with Zheng Fan that it was like facing “curry” in another timeline.

Rationally, you kept telling yourself to take the opponent seriously, absolutely had to take the opponent seriously.

Emotionally... it was damned difficult.

The Sword Saint did not truly understand military affairs either.

So watching an army filling pits right before battle surprised him as well.

War... could actually be fought in such a down-to-earth fashion.

A’Ming pulled out his waterskin again.

“Master, the weather is hot. Wash your face again.”

“Good.”

A’Ming poured.

Count Pingye caught the water in his hands and wiped his face.

Once the waterskin was empty, A’Ming nodded in satisfaction.

Now it was ready to hold “wine.”

After washing, Count Pingye felt refreshed.

He pointed toward the watchtower inside Central Mountain Camp.

“I heard that a true Sword Immortal can rise into the heavens with a single sword, then call down thunder from the sky. Could you deal with the fellow in that tower first? If the man up there is gone, this battle becomes much easier.”

He was obviously making things difficult for the Sword Saint.

But watching the still-unfinished earthwork ahead was rather boring.

So he needed something to talk about.

Facing Count Pingye’s teasing, the Sword Saint merely smiled.

“No need for a Sword Immortal. Count Pingye only needs Tian Wujing’s strength. Charge straight over. Unless the man in that tower is protected by enough masters, he can do nothing but leap down in terror and hide among the troops.”

Count Pingye shrugged.

A’Ming gave a soft “heh.”

He stretched lazily.

“If Master possessed peak Third Grade strength, why bother with anything so troublesome?”

The Sword Saint corrected him.

“Peak Third Grade is certainly powerful, but it is not a god.”

The corner of A’Ming’s mouth lifted.

One peak Third Grade was not a god.

Then what about seven?

[End of Chapter 516]