Chapter 567: - Keep Fleecing the Same Sheep

A very strange scene had developed beneath Juyang City.

The strangeness no longer lay merely in the fact that a Yan army had appeared in Great Chu’s capital region and surrounded the city where the Regent of Chu was staying.

It was the fact that the situation had lasted far too long.

Count Pingye had been busy preparing to run from the very beginning.

On the first day, he had already decided not to attack the city.

Every day after that, the entire army had worked on how to withdraw safely into the Great Marsh.

And yet, the Chu relief army everyone expected never appeared.

Yan scouts had already detected Chu troops moving along the outer regions several days earlier.

But those troops had not come this way.

They had gone north instead.

Clearly, they intended to enter the battlefield in Shanggu Commandery.

Their “sovereign,” by contrast, had been left here.

Ignored.

Abandoned.

This made Count Pingye extremely uncomfortable.

Originally, his plan had been to use this force to draw hatred onto himself and pull Chu attention toward Juyang City.

Instead, the decisiveness the Chu displayed now almost made it seem as though they had deliberately pinned this surprise force here.

The days passed one after another.

Every day, the Regent of Chu sent people down from Juyang City in a hanging basket to deliver food to Count Pingye.

Pastries.

Mutton soup.

Whatever the Regent ate that day, he sent a portion to his younger sister’s husband as well.

Count Pingye, for his part, occasionally returned some fruits and vegetables.

They were all picked from the fields of nearby farmers anyway.

The farmers themselves had long since fled without a trace.

So Count Pingye would have a one-person portion sent into Juyang City as a return gift to his elder brother-in-law.

Both sides exchanged gifts back and forth.

Both understood propriety.

Both remained extremely courteous.

...

“Counting the days, the Azure Luan Army should be arriving soon, yes?”

The Regent wore a purple robe and sat rather lazily in his chair as he asked Sun Yuan.

“Replying to Your Highness, judging by the timing, they should arrive within these next two days.”

“Heh. That brother-in-law of mine outside is probably getting anxious.”

The Regent lifted his teacup and blew across it.

“Let the Azure Luan Army accompany him for a few circuits. Once he leaves, We should return to the capital as well.”

The Empress Dowager had stepped forward to steady the court.

But with the “emperor” himself absent, instability was inevitable.

Besides, he had remained here long enough.

Not only had he sent away the Dugu Clan’s army, he had also transferred north all five noble private armies that had originally been stationed in southern Chu.

Enough.

It was almost enough now.

“The Qu Clan has never been convinced. Fine. We will give them this opportunity. We would like to see whether, after Qu Tiannan, the Qu Clan still possesses the qualifications to hold another Pillar of State title.”

...

“Where is the Pillar of State?”

“Where is the General-in-Chief?”

“Where are Great Chu’s loyal and righteous men?”

Every day, Count Pingye sat in front of his tent and pondered these questions.

Running away was not something that brought joy to body or mind.

But waiting day after day to run away was actually even more tormenting.

The Chu truly could keep their composure.

In some respects, the quality and performance of the Chu were Heaven knew how much better than the State of Qian from those years.

And this was despite the fact that Chu was still filled with nobles everywhere, while Qian had become a unified centralized dynasty Heaven knew how many years earlier than Yan.

Of course, the only person with enough leisure and enough time to sit around leisurely thinking about such things was Count Pingye himself.

Everyone else, from the Demon Kings down to the ordinary soldiers, had never stopped working.

As an isolated force deep inside enemy territory, they naturally had to be extraordinarily careful.

And the busiest man among them was none other than Gou Moli.

Liang Cheng had remained near Jing City using four thousand cavalry to fight a guerrilla war against the Chu.

The Blind Man had remained behind at Snow Sea Pass.

Count Pingye excelled at cavalry warfare.

But in other areas, and especially in the situation they faced now, he was actually operating in one of his weak spots.

The Regent was inside the city.

He wanted to eat the man but could not.

Outside, fierce tigers kept passing by.

Every so often one would glance over, but none had actually pounced.

The tactical situation of this particular force, even setting aside the larger war, was genuinely poor.

And reversing a disadvantage in precisely this kind of environment was what the Savage King did best.

Back when he first rose in the snowfields, whether facing other Savage tribes, then the Situ Clan’s armies, and finally the Yan army, he had constantly operated under unfavorable circumstances and kept overturning the situation.

So Count Pingye was perfectly happy to hand the nominal “command authority” over this army to the Savage King for the time being.

Even Jin Shuke had to temporarily follow Gou Moli’s deployments.

At that moment, the Savage King strode over quickly.

His hair was disheveled.

His eye sockets had sunk somewhat.

The entire man looked thoroughly exhausted.

Yet his eyes still glittered with spirit.

He had been imprisoned in Snow Sea Pass for so long.

Then he had accompanied the others to Yanjing as a half-prisoner.

Afterward he had incited the Savages under him to go die in order to earn himself status.

Now, beneath Juyang City, the Savage King had finally recovered the feeling he once possessed.

Like a wild wolf, watching, observing his enemy, searching for a flaw.

Then suddenly pouncing, biting down on the throat, suffocating it, bleeding it, and at last killing it.

“Count.”

Count Pingye nodded.

“They’ve arrived?”

“They have.”

Count Pingye nodded with some relief.

“Good. It’s good that they’re here.”

The force that had arrived was the Qu Clan’s Azure Luan Army.

The Fan Clan had rebelled.

In fact, once the Great Yan Navy entered the Wei River from Fan Clan territory and began sailing east, there had been no way for the Fan Clan to conceal its position any longer.

Fan Zhengwen took the entire Fan household, together with the troops belonging to the Fan Clan’s sphere of influence, and withdrew from the city early.

They entered Mount Meng to avoid the Qu Clan’s purge.

The Qu Clan truly did not have time to play hide-and-seek with the Fan Clan inside Mount Meng.

They had more important matters to handle.

So after slaughtering the small city where the Fan Clan had previously been based, they immediately reorganized the Azure Luan Army and joined the Chu navy in sailing east after the Yan fleet.

Halfway through the pursuit, an imperial decree and military intelligence arrived together.

Their mission changed.

Protect the sovereign.

The Regent of Great Chu had been surrounded by the Yan inside Juyang City.

So the Qu Clan and Chu navy did not stop at Jing City.

After helping one Chu force cross the Wei River, they immediately continued along the river, chasing the Yan army that had dared offend Great Chu’s sovereign dignity.

As for Count Pingye’s force?

An isolated army was still an isolated army.

No matter how hard the scouts worked, no matter how tirelessly San’er and his men probed the surrounding region, they could not change the fact that, in the larger strategic picture, this force was still almost completely blind.

Across this entire stretch of battlefield, only Juyang City could be considered illuminated.

Everything else lay beneath the fog of war.

But there was one other point of light.

It moved.

It advanced.

Where it was now, where it would be next, and when it would arrive there, Count Pingye could calculate all of it.

That point of light was the Azure Luan Army.

Money could make ghosts turn millstones.

If the previous generations of the Fan Clan had built their network merely out of the instinctive need of a merchant family to survive and reproduce, then from the day Fan Zhengwen married a woman of the Min Clan, Little Sixth’s maternal aunt, or perhaps even earlier, Fan Zhengwen had already begun preparing for this day of rebellion against Great Chu.

After seeing the Yan army sweep through Jin like broken bamboo and annex the Three Jin lands, Fan Zhengwen practically went mad.

He threw every piece of capital in his hands onto this enormous gambling table.

The Fan Clan was not merely the Fan Clan.

For a century it had served as the Qu Clan’s money purse.

Its tentacles had long since spread throughout the Qu Clan from top to bottom.

The small county city destroyed by the Qu Clan had not touched the Fan Clan’s true network at all.

And one could not forget that the main strength of the Azure Luan Army had once been annihilated beneath Yupan City.

The newly rebuilt Azure Luan Army certainly possessed some remnants of the old foundation.

But newly incorporated soldiers and newly promoted officers were simply far too easy to infiltrate.

The Azure Luan Army sailed after them like some beast suffering from a skin disease.

Flakes kept falling from its body.

Those flakes then flew voluntarily to Count Pingye and reported the army’s movements.

Sometimes the exact same piece of intelligence arrived from three separate groups.

From the smallest Centurion, to commanders of thousand-man units, to deputy generals in the navy, even one commander within the Azure Luan Army itself had already sent someone ashore to report information.

How many of these people sincerely wanted to defect to Great Yan?

No one knew.

But barring some accident, every single one of them probably had some form of leverage in the Fan Clan’s hands.

“Heh.”

Count Pingye laughed.

He lit a rolled cigarette.

Then continued:

“Perhaps that elder brother-in-law of mine still thinks the Azure Luan Army can serve as the club that drives me away. He doesn’t know that club was hollowed out by worms long ago.”

The Savage King said:

“Count, families like the Fan Clan cannot be allowed to remain in our territory in the future. Back when this subordinate first rose in rebellion, many merchant families from the Jin lands had already been flirting with me in secret. They even smuggled enormous amounts of armor and weapons to help me establish my foundation.”

“No problem. Little Sixth rose through commerce. If he takes the throne one day, no one will suppress those merchants more ruthlessly than he will.”

Only now did Count Pingye deeply understand why Zhu Yuanzhang had dealt with Shen Wansan.

“You’re confident?” Count Pingye asked. “They have more than three times our numbers.”

“Count can rest easy. We are all elites.”

“Mm.”

Count Pingye nodded.

Then he pointed toward Juyang City ahead.

“Once our troops move over there, that elder brother-in-law of mine will probably run.”

No matter how thoroughly the Azure Luan Army had been eaten hollow from within, if Count Pingye wanted to intercept it, he would still need to commit everything he had.

The encirclement around Juyang City could only be released.

The Regent could not possibly fail to seize that opportunity and return to the capital.

What a pity.

What a pity.

Liqing missed her elder brother so much, yet he had still failed to invite that elder brother home as a guest.

“Forget it. First we swallow this Azure Luan Army!”

“Yes, Count.”

Count Pingye stretched and laughed.

“Thinking about it carefully, always grabbing the Qu Clan and shearing wool from the same sheep really does feel a little unprincipled.”

“Count means...?”

“Forget it. Forget it. That brat is probably coming here full of confidence, planning to take my dog life. He asked for it.”

...

Among a stretch of reed marshes, the Chu navy’s great ships came ashore.

Formation after formation of Azure Luan Army soldiers disembarked in orderly ranks.

A young general in red armor sat astride a white horse and gazed toward the distant setting sun.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

His voice sank low.

“Zheng Fan, I’ve come to take your dog life.”

[End of Chapter 567]