Chapter 559: - Here to Pay My Respects!

“Off the ships! Quick, quick, quick!”

Under the Lieutenant Commander’s shouted orders, Guo Dong and Xu An ran rapidly down the gangway.

This was different from the landing at Jing City’s docks, when everyone had leisurely poured ashore all at once.

Now the navy had already entered Great Chu’s capital region.

For safety, the fleet had chosen to disembark its troops in separate batches.

First, this was more efficient.

Second, it allowed the army to spread its field of vision outward as quickly as possible.

Never mind whether troops scattered out like handfuls of beans might become loose and disorganized. At the very least, they would avoid the worst possible situation of everyone clustering together during the landing and being wrapped up like dumplings in a single stroke.

For Yan soldiers accustomed to cavalry warfare, marching on two legs was awkward and unfamiliar.

But they had been tempered step by step through the earlier sieges.

And in the end, they were elites.

Their ability to adapt to changes in terrain and battlefield conditions was beyond question.

“Quick! Keep up!”

The standard-bearer ran ahead.

Guo Dong, Xu An, and the armored soldiers around them followed at a run.

Truthfully, they did not know exactly where they were.

They only knew roughly that they had already penetrated very deep into Chu territory.

The unfamiliar surroundings did not bring fear or pressure.

Instead, they produced a strange excitement.

In the days before this, the various formations of Great Yan’s hundreds of thousands of troops had all been battering their heads against cities and forts.

They had suffered more than enough from Chu walls and military camps.

Every day, soldiers returned from battle and cursed:

Once your old man smashes open that turtle shell and reaches Chu proper, I’ll burn, kill, loot, and...

Now they had actually done it.

The main Yan army was still outside Zhennan Pass wrestling with those thick walls.

But these men had already reached the heartland of Chu.

How could they not be excited?

Ultimately, they simply had not suffered any serious setbacks yet.

The fight at Jing City had been far too easy.

The great warehouse fire burned for two days and two nights.

Together, those things had pushed everyone’s morale higher.

If they now suffered two consecutive defeats while isolated deep inside enemy territory, morale would inevitably fall with a hiss.

At that point, it would not matter how elite the troops were.

To die in a foreign land, to leave one’s bones in another country... once that kind of pessimism covered the entire army, a collapse would still come when it came.

So throughout history, there had been many examples of armies making deep isolated penetrations.

Many had become famous examples celebrated through the ages.

But that itself was another kind of survivor bias.

The reason a military gamble was called a military gamble was precisely because the overwhelming majority ended with broken halberds buried in sand.

Years ago, Count Pingye had accompanied Li Fusheng south.

Li Fusheng and Li Bao had each led one command of Zhenbei troops.

Li Bao handled the diversion.

Li Fusheng crossed the Bian River directly and rode all the way beneath the walls of Shangjing.

Set aside questions of pure combat strength and every other factor.

One enormous reason the Yan army had been able to endure that deep advance was that the Qian forces constantly coming to block them had helped enormously.

Because the Yan could crush them again and again.

Each victory soothed the fear and unease of being isolated deep in hostile territory.

Each Qian rout replenished the morale they were continuously losing.

So the most important thing was still not to lose.

Count Pingye stepped down from the deck.

His personal guards crowded around him.

The Sword Saint stood at his side.

Ahead lay a reed marsh faintly yellowed by the touch of autumn.

Had some poet come here, he might have written down some inexplicable sorrow.

Unfortunately, although Count Pingye had always enjoyed being sentimental, he did not especially enjoy writing poetry or plagiarizing it.

And as a soldier, the moment his boots stepped into the slightly muddy ground, one particular thought rose naturally in his mind.

Under ordinary circumstances, if he were leading cavalry at full speed, he would absolutely avoid a place like this.

Muddy reed marshes were often killing grounds for a force that relied primarily on cavalry.

“Fourth Lady.”

“Master.”

Fourth Lady wore a black cloak over leather armor she had stitched herself and stood behind her Master.

“I think the armor design for our personal guards is not flashy enough.”

“We’ll replace it when we get back.”

Count Pingye smiled in satisfaction and nodded.

“Good.”

The Sword Saint beside them remained completely expressionless.

He had already grown accustomed to Count Pingye’s habit of letting his mind drift toward strange places whenever something major was about to happen.

Perhaps it was simply a difference in how people viewed life.

To Zheng Fan and the Demon Kings, pursuing refinement was itself one of the greatest forms of respect for living.

Originally, the command led by Gao Yi had effectively served as Count Pingye’s personal guard force.

But Zheng Fan felt that once this war ended and his territory and authority both grew, that arrangement ought to change.

Exactly how to change it was not something he needed to consider right now.

The battlefield situation had already begun unfolding.

Juyang City was part of Great Chu’s capital region.

There was no doubt it was prosperous.

Of course, that prosperity might not have much to do with the people at the bottom.

But there should be plenty of wealthy households here.

Stored grain.

Treasures.

Silks.

Beautiful servant girls.

None of those could possibly be lacking.

San’er had gone ahead with Dai Li and the others to scout Juyang City.

Jin Shuke, Gou Moli, and Fan Li each led one force and were already moving toward Juyang City from three directions.

If Juyang City could fall in a single stroke the way Jing City had, that would naturally be wonderful.

An isolated army deep in enemy territory having a place to plant its feet?

Mm.

Very good.

If they could not take it, that did not matter either.

The Yan would not stupidly prepare for a formal siege.

Instead, they would unleash the troops to plunder the countryside and use blood to nourish the soldiers’ murderous aura.

Of course, one could also describe the same thing with dignified official language:

“live off the enemy,” “reduce Chu’s war potential,” “manufacture panic.”

“Mm.”

Count Pingye sighed.

The Sword Saint asked:

“Hungry?”

Count Pingye nodded.

“I skipped breakfast on purpose. Kept my stomach empty because I wanted sliced-mutton soup.”

...

“Tsk.”

Behind a slope, Xue San raised his head and looked toward Juyang City.

Juyang was not a large city.

Nor was it some strategic strongpoint armies had always fought over.

It was merely a county city within the capital region.

News that Jing City had fallen should already have reached here.

But news that the Yan army had followed the waterways all the way south probably had not traveled nearly so quickly.

Even so, Juyang City’s gates were tightly shut.

The place looked fully prepared for battle.

Xue San clicked his tongue.

If they had merely closed the gates for appearances, that would have been one thing.

But there were also two camps outside the city.

One to the north.

One to the south.

Neither camp was large.

Only a dozen or so tents.

Each probably held little more than a hundred men.

But the interesting thing was that every one of them was cavalry.

At a rough glance, there actually seemed to be more horses than men.

And the armor worn by those cavalrymen was far too bright and handsome.

Put it this way.

Unless his own Master had planted the command banner and personally entered a desperate battle to drive his men forward, he would never wear armor like that.

In short, it was fancy but useless.

Made purely to look good.

Cavalry were precious to the Chu.

Someone capable of using cavalry purely as ceremonial guards could not possibly be an ordinary person.

More than that, without absolutely clear intelligence about an enemy, the gates of a county city had been shut at a word, completely disregarding the daily work and lives of the common people inside and outside.

Why did this feel so much like some great leader’s motorcade passing through in a later age and clearing the entire street beforehand?

Xue San rubbed his chin.

He had originally come as part of the first wave to see whether there was any opportunity to rush the gates.

Now it looked as though that was impossible.

Soldiers stood all along the walls.

The walls themselves might not be tall, but under this level of alertness, trying to take the city with simple assault equipment was unrealistic.

Yet establishing a camp here, constructing siege equipment, probing for weaknesses, and attacking by conventional methods would be even more dangerous.

They might not have breached the city before Chu reinforcements arrived from every direction and surrounded them completely.

“Go back and tell the Count that Juyang City is heavily guarded, the gates are shut, and it cannot be taken by force. Tell him my suggestion is for the three advancing forces to conceal themselves where they are and not reveal their presence.”

“Yes!”

Dai Li immediately ran back.

Xue San lowered himself and began stretching his legs.

The men around him squatted down and started warming up too.

They had all been trained personally by Xue San.

Naturally, none of these exercises were unfamiliar to them.

Xue San saw them and cursed with a grin:

“You bunch of fucking idiots. What are you waiting for, a fart to eat?”

The others looked confused.

“Scram. Scatter out and check the surrounding area again. Leave two men here waiting for me. In a moment, I’m going to personally feel my way inside and take a look. You lot want to come with me? Trying to get me killed?”

An excellent assassin necessarily possessed enormous confidence in his movement arts.

But if he dragged a group of deadweight beside him, he would be blind too.

These men could certainly be considered survivors who had crawled out of piles of corpses.

The problem was that the gap between their level and Xue San’s remained far too large.

“There’s definitely something strange inside this city.”

Xue San continued warming up as he muttered to himself.

Under ordinary circumstances, or with an ordinary officer, completing one’s assigned duty would have been enough.

San’er was different.

Outsiders might not be able to see it clearly, but everyone in the true inner circle understood that the Misters under Count Pingye possessed enormous freedom in how they handled their work.

At the same time, Xue San had always possessed the attributes of a lucky mascot.

Back then, he had been the one to bring back Prince Fu’s head.

An assassin often possessed an instinctive intuition for targets of genuine value.

But just as Xue San finished warming up and prepared to feel his way toward the corner of the city, one of the Count’s personal guards came running up from behind.

“Mr. San! The Count has ordered you to remain where you are!”

Xue San looked suspicious.

“What happened?”

...

“This can happen too?”

Count Pingye genuinely did not know what to say.

Several of his large ships had remained moored here after unloading troops.

Then a Chu force of roughly two hundred men approached openly in small boats.

Not secretly.

Not cautiously.

They rowed straight over while shouting greetings.

Standing in their boats, they even called up and asked the men aboard the larger vessels to throw down the rope ladders.

So the Yan soldiers aboard did exactly that.

Then the Chu soldiers began climbing onto the ships.

One came up.

He was tied.

The next came up.

He was tied too.

And the next.

And the next.

Faced with this wave after wave of men voluntarily delivering their own heads, even the Yan soldiers on deck began to feel that reality had become a little unreal.

In truth, this Chu force had simply misjudged the identity of the ships.

The Qu Clan banners were still hanging above them.

And to Chu eyes, a large ship, a navy vessel, inside Chu territory... what else could it possibly be besides one of their own?

So they came aboard.

After the first group climbed up, the men who remained in the smaller boats finally sensed something was wrong when none of their comrades leaned back over the rail to call to them.

But when row after row of bows and crossbows appeared above the bulwark and aimed downward, they obediently dropped their weapons and surrendered.

Soon they too were hauled aboard and bound.

Count Pingye, who had been standing on the bank, heard the report and found the whole thing absurd.

Then again, battlefields often produced muddled situations like this.

He returned to the ship to look at things himself.

He had barely stepped aboard when a subordinate reported:

“Count, another ship is coming from that direction.”

“Oh?”

Count Pingye walked to the rail.

There really was another vessel approaching.

It seemed heavily loaded, so it moved fairly slowly.

Most likely it belonged to the same group as the earlier small boats.

Count Pingye looked around.

“Take these men below.”

“Yes!”

The deck was quickly cleared.

A little later, the ship loaded with chests finally came alongside.

The Yan soldiers on deck courteously opened the boarding point and threw down ropes.

One might say the welcome was exceptionally thorough.

A’Ming carried over a chair so Count Pingye could sit while he waited.

Before long, a group of people climbed aboard.

The man at their head was unexpectedly a white-haired elder.

The old fellow’s body was still reasonably sturdy.

He needed no one’s help and actually climbed the rope ladder himself, gripping the ropes as he came up.

Several armored men followed him.

But clearly, these people did not ordinarily wear armor.

Now that they had suddenly put it on, everything hung loose and awkward.

They looked nothing like proper soldiers.

The entire group gave off an extremely greasy impression.

Even the old man, who had seemed energetic enough at first, immediately blossomed into a fawning smile the moment he saw Count Pingye sitting there.

The army certainly had people who loved building connections and mixing into circles.

Every profession did.

But the prisoners hauled aboard earlier had at least looked like they had trained a little.

Their armor had been somewhat disorderly, but at least they seemed capable of cutting someone with a blade.

This second group, by contrast, looked as though none of them had seriously held a saber in their lives.

The old man dropped to his knees.

Everyone behind him knelt as well.

“This slave pays respects to the Qu Clan’s honored lord. This slave dares ask... you are...?”

The old man, the people with him, and even the guards who had come first in the smaller boats had genuinely mistaken them for someone else.

They had eagerly rowed over, thinking they had encountered a Qu Clan fleet.

True, the Qu Clan had lost the main strength of the Azure Luan Army beneath Yupan City years ago.

They had also lost their Pillar of State, Qu Tiannan.

And on the day of the Princess’s wedding, their bride had been stolen away, turning the clan into a joke among the nobility.

But a centipede dies and still does not fall.

The Qu Clan alone had enough strength to press the State of Liang so hard it could barely breathe while still retaining power to spare.

That was enough to show how deep the clan’s foundation truly ran.

Mocking them behind their backs was one thing.

Facing them in person, people still had to bow their heads.

Count Pingye smiled.

The people in front of him really were somewhat... blind to the situation.

Still, one could hardly blame them.

This was already inside Great Chu’s capital region.

What normal person would imagine that they might encounter a Yan fleet here?

Count Pingye answered:

“I am Qu Peiluo.”

“Ah! So it is the Prince Con... so it is the Left General.”

“Greetings, Left General!”

“Greetings, Left General!”

Left General was Qu Peiluo’s military title.

In truth, it was almost useless.

The court could bestow that title, but it would not give Qu Peiluo a single soldier with it.

He could still command only the forces belonging to the Qu Clan itself.

The title was simply compensation from the court after the position of imperial son-in-law slipped away from him.

“Who are you people?” Count Pingye asked.

“Replying to the Left General, this old man is from the Zhang Clan of Yue County.”

“The Zhang Clan?”

Count Pingye swept his gaze around.

For a moment, He Chunlai, Fourth Lady, and the others all searched their memories, trying to recall which Great Chu noble house this Zhang Clan might be.

Even A’Ming, after taking a sip of wine, looked around and frowned faintly, pretending he too was thinking hard about it.

The old man did not feel humiliated.

A petty family like his could not even enter the recognized noble ranks.

How could the young master of the Qu Clan possibly know of them?

“Left General, the Zhang Clan’s gate is low. Naturally, we could never enter the Left General’s eyes. But Eunuch Zhang beside His Highness, Controller Zhang, is this old man’s clan nephew.”

“Oh... you are from Eunuch Zhang’s family?”

The old man immediately smiled.

A faint pride could even be seen on his face.

“Exactly. Exactly.”

“Eunuch Zhang and this Coun... cough. This general have an excellent relationship.”

“Naturally. Naturally. The Left General is a true nobleman and a hero of the younger generation. My clan nephew often mentions the Left General in his letters and says he greatly admires the Left General’s bearing.”

In officialdom, everyone helped carry everyone else’s flowered sedan chair.

One did not casually offend people.

Especially eunuchs of the inner court.

Count Pingye sank into thought.

This Zhang Clan in front of him...

Oh.

The Zhang Clan of Yue County.

No wonder they looked so unreliable.

Count Pingye had no interest in agreeing that nobles were inherently noble, but there was one thing he had to admit.

Families wealthy for three generations or inherited across centuries, after living so long as men above men, really did acquire a certain “immortal air.”

Or perhaps one should call it... aristocratic bearing.

Controller Zhang was probably some Chu eunuch rank.

If the Zhang Clan had been desperate enough to send someone to become a eunuch ten or twenty years earlier, their circumstances back then must have been truly miserable.

Unless a man had been driven into a corner, who would voluntarily take a knife to that particular piece of himself?

Later, as this Eunuch Zhang gradually rose, the Yue County Zhang Clan naturally gained a little status as well.

The old man before Zheng Fan bowed and scraped because Zheng Fan was displaying the Qu Clan banner.

But within Yue County, the man probably already walked sideways.

If he learned Zheng Fan’s real identity in a moment, however... his terror would probably be a hundred times greater than if he had merely met the Qu Clan’s young master.

That thought brought a faint smile to Count Pingye’s lips.

The old man saw him smile and misunderstood completely.

“Left General, have you also come to protect His Highness?”

Count Pingye’s breathing suddenly tightened.

His body stiffened.

Inside him, towering waves had already risen.

But

Count Pingye forcibly suppressed the surge of emotion.

He gave an easy “Mm.”

Then asked:

“You too?”

“Let the Left General know that although my Zhang Clan does not even rank among the nobility, our loyalty to sovereign and country can be witnessed by Heaven and Earth. This time my clan nephew sent word asking this old man to scatter the family fortune, recruit brave men, and come protect His Highness. Hehehe. There is also one tiny selfish hope. If His Highness sees our loyalty, perhaps he might help raise the standing of our Zhang Clan by one rank. The lowest rank. The very lowest will do.”

The old man clearly believed his clan nephew truly enjoyed an excellent relationship with the Qu Clan’s young master.

Otherwise, he would never have dared speak such embarrassingly honest words aloud.

Count Pingye swallowed.

His hands had already started trembling slightly.

But he still said:

“This general, naturally, has also come to protect His Majesty.”

“Then may the Left General please allow us to accompany you when you go to pay audience. My clan nephew will surely be endlessly grateful to the Left General, and in the future the Zhang Clan of Yue County will follow the Qu Clan’s lead in all things.”

Count Pingye nodded.

“Easy enough. Easy enough. It is only what this general ought to do. This general still has some goods to unload here, however, so there may be a slight delay.”

“Same here. Same here. That ship of mine is loaded with tribute for His Highness. Naturally, there is a portion for the Left General too.”

“If Elder Zhang wishes to travel with this general, then you will need to wait a little longer. But we can certainly send the tribute ahead first.”

“Exactly. Exactly. Juyang City is not far from here anyway. We can have the men below take... aaaagh!”

The old man’s neck was seized in Count Pingye’s hand.

Zheng Fan lifted him bodily from the deck.

The old man stared at Count Pingye with a face twisted in pain and terror.

Earlier, the reason Count Pingye had continued circling around instead of immediately using force was that he did not want to take unnecessary risks.

The people before him certainly did not look like it, but who knew whether they might turn out to be some band of Chu roughnecks who looked greasy on the outside yet were genuinely patriotic deep down and perfectly willing to die for it?

So Count Pingye had patiently let the conversation continue.

He had slowly drawn the words out.

And now, he had what he wanted.

One surprise.

One enormous, heaven-sized surprise!

At that moment, Count Pingye even felt as though every stray arrow and flying stone he had ever endured on past battlefields had merely been accumulating good karma for the explosion of luck he was enjoying now.

“The Regent of Chu is in Juyang City?”

The old man plainly was not someone capable of holding himself together under real pressure.

Terrified by the killing aura around Count Pingye, he actually wet himself.

In the end, this was still a petty family forcibly raised by one eunuch relative.

It could not be brought onto a real stage.

Count Pingye frowned slightly and tossed him to the deck.

He Chunlai immediately drew his saber and laid the blade across the old man’s neck.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! His Highness’s imperial procession is in Juyang City. My clan nephew... my clan nephew wrote and told me.”

The Zhang clansmen kneeling behind the old man immediately nodded as well, confirming his words.

“Heh... hehehe... hahahahahahaha...”

At first, Count Pingye merely chuckled.

Then he burst into loud laughter.

A moment later, the laughter stopped instantly.

His slightly narrowed gaze swept around him.

Then he issued the order.

“Pass down this Count’s military command. Jin Shuke, Gou Moli, Fan Li: their three forces are to surround Juyang City for me. Raise the Black Dragon Banner and the ‘Zheng’ banner. Let my elder brother-in-law know I am here. Tell him to wait a little, and perhaps make a few preparations while he is at it. His sister’s husband has come to pay his respects!”

[End of Chapter 559]