Chapter 841: The Road We Took Back Then!

Zhao’s army was admittedly pathetic in a fight, and Great Yan had never exactly regarded the State of Zhao as much of a threat to begin with.

Even so, taking three fortified hills in a single day and then carrying the momentum straight through a strategic pass, shattering the enemy army’s morale in the process, was still a victory worth boasting about.

More importantly, Chen Yang had finally managed to vent some of the gloom that had been smoldering inside him ever since he learned of Li Fusheng’s death.

He was hardly getting carried away. He was a veteran general who had seen too much of the world to lack composure. But there was undeniably more color in his face now, and more life in his eyes.

Then a scout rode in with a report.

Prince Pingxi was approaching from east of Sanshan Pass with the Central Army.

The color that had only just returned to Chen Yang’s face immediately froze.

“This... what the hell is this supposed to be?”

...

Prince Pingxi entered Sanshan Pass.

Prince Pingxi comforted the officers and soldiers.

Prince Pingxi visited the wounded.

Prince Pingxi publicly declared that he had once again witnessed the glory of the Jingnan Army of old, drawing a thunderous cheer from the troops.

Afterward, Prince Pingxi took his seat in the hall inside the pass.

Below him sat Chen Yang, Chen Xiong, Chen Yuan, and the other generals. Xue San and Fan Li sat off to one side as well.

The Prince lifted his tea.

Everyone looked rather awkward.

This should have been a battle record worth bragging about. A victory worth celebrating.

Unfortunately, now that they were all sitting here, nobody could quite bring himself to boast.

They had fought too well.

They had fought too fiercely.

And precisely because they had fought too well and too fiercely, they had somehow frightened off the biggest fish of all.

So was this merit or fault?

Prince Pingxi took a sip of tea, set the cup down, and said:

“This was my fault.”

Seven parts benevolence and three parts apology appeared on Prince Pingxi’s face.

“I should have spoken with Count Yishan beforehand. I was careless. All I can say is that I never expected Count Yishan’s old blade to remain so keen, nor the edge of my Jingnan Army to remain so sharp!”

The moment those words came out, everyone finally breathed an inward sigh of relief.

What had happened before could now be considered settled.

The Prince had given everyone a way down, so everyone naturally took it.

Chen Yang immediately rose and criticized himself for “greedily chasing merit and advancing rashly,” which had ultimately caused them to “miss the opportunity for battle,” and asked the Prince to “punish him for his crime.”

The Prince soothed him with kind words.

In truth, the two sides were simply flattering each other, and the last traces of awkwardness quietly dissolved in perfect mutual understanding.

At the end of the day, it was still Zheng Fan’s fault.

He had made the plan, yet failed to anticipate this change.

Perhaps this was one of the differences between him and Old Tian.

Back when Old Tian had used him, every time Zheng Fan produced some kind of “surprise,” Old Tian had immediately been able to follow up, respond, and coordinate with it, joining one move seamlessly into the next.

Zheng Fan clearly had not yet mastered that kind of feel for timing and opportunity.

That was what he genuinely thought.

And he said it aloud.

Admitting in front of the Jingnan Army veterans that he was inferior to Prince Jingnan did nothing to damage his image. If anything, it only won him more goodwill.

At the same time, it was also an acknowledgment that Chen Yang, in the role he had played in this battle, possessed the same ability Zheng Fan himself once had to create unexpected opportunities on the battlefield.

The military council began in a rather uncomfortable atmosphere.

It ended in perfect harmony.

Even Fan Li, doing his part to help the mood along, spent a long while grinning foolishly with everyone else. By the end he could not resist pinching his own cheeks. The muscles had gone stiff from smiling.

Once all the formalities were finally over, Zheng Fan felt somewhat tired and propped his chin on one hand.

Xue San looked at Fan Li.

Fan Li looked at Xue San.

Then both looked at A’Ming.

A’Ming had his eyes closed.

For a moment, the old awkwardness vanished, only to be replaced by a new one.

The Blind Man was in Zhao’s capital.

Liang Cheng was at Zhennan Pass.

Siniang was back home.

Setting the Demon Child aside, the three brothers currently present somehow could not produce a single person capable of sitting down with their Master and analyzing the situation.

In short, everyone present was the no-brains contingent.

That feeling of wanting to join the conversation but having absolutely no idea what to say was genuinely painful.

Fortunately, Zheng Fan had no intention of discussing his next move with them anyway.

In truth, both the Yan army and the Qian-Chu coalition were fighting away from home. When fighting on someone else’s ground, there was no need to care too much about the gain or loss of “territory.” None of it was anyone’s true foundation to begin with.

What they were really contesting was manpower: whose effective forces could be worn down, and whose could be preserved.

Yet Zheng Fan’s side had gone so smoothly, again and again, that the attrition battle in which he should have held the initiative had become nothing but empty talk.

His original intention had been to wait for the other side to place its pieces, then answer move for move.

In practice, he had kept placing his own pieces too early and alarming the enemy before they committed.

The fall of Zhao’s capital should already have pushed the Qian-Chu coalition strongly toward withdrawal.

At Sanshan Pass, Zheng Fan had hoped to catch a rabbit while raking the grass, only for the Qian army to be frightened away ahead of time yet again.

The commander of that Qian force had naturally discovered that Zheng Fan’s Central Army was trying to loop around behind him and complete an encirclement. Even if he had not understood it beforehand, the moment both sides’ scouts made contact during the withdrawal, everything would have become clear.

One could easily imagine how badly rattled that commander must be now.

And that lingering fear would only make him even less willing to take risks from here on, causing him to withdraw still farther into his shell.

If events continued along their current course, this grand battle in which several hundred thousand troops of Yan, Qian, and Chu had marched out and formed their lines would turn into nothing more than a massive field exercise.

Each side would march through its formation drill, then, with perfect courtesy and mutual understanding, dismiss the ranks and go home.

Time to settle the accounts.

The State of Yan had lost.

Li Fusheng and almost his entire force had been annihilated.

Although Zheng Fan had adopted the barbaric method of living off the land to sustain the army after mobilization, the preparations and expenditures before the campaign had still been very real.

As for taking Zhao, unless Yan intended to station a major army here permanently, there was not much difference between taking Zhao and not taking it. South Gate Pass already served as both a strategic barrier and a temporary boundary of influence, allowing Yan to guard its frontier at the lowest possible cost. Extending control beyond it merely gave Yan another detached piece of territory.

More land was not automatically better.

What mattered was whether you had the strength to cover and govern it.

Otherwise, it became nothing more than an open wound bleeding you dry.

Qian and Chu, meanwhile, had profited.

They had won a great victory, rallied military morale, lifted spirits at home, and shattered the myth that Great Yan could not be defeated.

And even after the main Yan armies took the field, the coalition had still managed to withdraw intact.

Their profit could hardly have been more obvious.

Then what about Zheng Fan himself?

The foundations of eastern Jin had not been touched.

Through this great mobilization, he had commanded this many troops for the first time and maxed out both his personal prestige and popular standing in one stroke.

Before, he had been a Prince.

Now, he had become someone who could genuinely receive the same political and military treatment once accorded to Prince Jingnan.

He had driven away the Qian-Chu coalition as well.

With a little public embellishment, everyone could simply say they had been frightened off by his “dreaded reputation.”

In truth, Zheng Fan had profited.

Even if he simply accepted the unspoken understanding and stopped here, he would still be one of the greatest winners of the entire affair.

It was the State of Yan that had taken the loss.

What did that have to do with him, Great Yan’s Prince Pingxi?

Quit while he was ahead?

Quit while he was ahead?

The thought kept echoing through Zheng Fan’s mind.

If Zheng Fan had been a politician...

If Zheng Fan had been a warlord...

If those identities had been just a little purer... then that would have been the end of it.

Unfortunately, the damned sentimentality buried in his bones would not let him sit there and accept the result with a clear conscience.

Li Fusheng was dead.

How could Zheng Fan use Li Fusheng’s death as an excuse to come all the way out here, stroll around once, and earn nothing more than this so-called “popular prestige”?

That was not decent.

And it was far too small-minded.

Xue San, Fan Li, and A’Ming watched their Master sink deeper and deeper into thought.

Sometimes he nodded.

Sometimes he shook his head.

Sometimes his expression grew grave.

Sometimes his brow relaxed.

Since none of them had any idea how to help their Master think through the situation, the three reached an unspoken agreement.

They simply changed their own expressions along with his.

When the Master nodded, all three nodded too, looking as though enlightenment had dawned upon them.

When the Master shook his head, all three put on expressions of regret and sighed.

When the Master’s brow relaxed, all three shaped their mouths into an “ah.”

Fan Li failed to control it properly.

He actually made the sound.

“Aah~”

“...”

Everyone in the room fell silent.

“What is it?”

Dragged out of his thoughts, Zheng Fan looked at Fan Li.

Fan Li blinked.

“Ah?”

“Heh.”

Zheng Fan drew in a breath, then slowly let it out.

He turned to Xue San.

“Bring Count Yishan back here.”

“Yes, Master.”

“A’Ming, spread out the map for me.”

“Yes.”

“A’Li.”

“Here.”

“Keep doing that. It wakes me up.”

“Aah~ Aah~”

Chen Yang, who had only just left, was called back almost immediately.

His foot had barely crossed the threshold when he heard Fan Li’s noises. Gooseflesh rose over his entire body, as though someone had suddenly dumped a basin of cold water over him in the middle of summer.

“Stop.”

Fan Li stopped.

“Your Highness!”

Chen Yang saluted Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan rose and walked down from his chair.

“Count Yishan, I’m not satisfied. I’m still not satisfied. We dragged all these troops out here, raided the countryside for supplies, and in the end accomplished nothing. If I go home now and have to listen to the common people boast that the Qian-Chu armies were frightened away by my reputation alone, my face will burn with shame.”

Chen Yang immediately shook his head.

“Whichever blind son of a bitch dares say something like that, if I hear him, I’ll be the first to cut off his head!”

Fan Li silently raised his axe.

Then shouted:

“Got it!”

“...”

Chen Yang stared at him.

Zheng Fan looked over.

Fan Li silently lowered the axe again.

“Your Highness, before this, I had too much anger pent up inside me and my head wasn’t clear. These past two days, my mind has finally settled down. Looking at the whole board again, only then did I understand Your Highness’s difficulty. Liang is like a low-lying pond. It happens to sit right between our Great Yan and Qian-Chu. The Qian-Chu coalition inside Liang are the fish and turtles in that pond. We’re standing beside the water, waiting to scoop them out and boil them into soup. But the problem is that inside South Gate Pass, there are no reinforcements left and the defenses are extremely hollow. We may be standing beside the pond, but if we bend all the way over with our minds fixed only on scooping out fish, the Qian or the Chu might kick us in the back and send us tumbling in ourselves. Even if we don’t drown, breaking an arm or a leg would still be a disastrous loss for us. Their families have deep foundations. They can afford to nurse themselves back to health. But Great Yan, as it stands now...”

Zheng Fan glanced at Chen Yang.

“If only you’d possessed this kind of view of the greater situation earlier.”

Chen Yang sighed when he heard that, then nodded.

“If a man hasn’t lived through something, how can he see it clearly? We were spoiled rotten by the old Prince. Back when he was here, wherever his royal banner pointed, all we had to do was charge and kill. We never needed to bother with any of those twists, turns, schemes, or calculations.”

Zheng Fan nodded faintly.

Had he himself not been exactly the same back then?

The Qian-Chu coalition was inside Liang.

The Yan were outside it.

The two sides were like fencers probing each other.

The Yan army wanted a swift, decisive battle and a concrete victory.

The Qian-Chu coalition wanted to play things safe while waiting for the Yan to overextend. The instant they caught such an opening, they would certainly seize it and cling to the Yan army in turn.

Once the fighting in Liang became deadlocked, a decisive battle would become unavoidable, because neither Qian nor Chu would willingly watch its elite forces be buried in Liang.

At that point, more reinforcements and supplies from both Qian and Chu would pour into Liang without end.

The Yan army would effectively be caught in a pincer.

A campaign meant to be swift and decisive would turn into a dull, grinding war of attrition: an enlarged version of the battle that had killed Li Fusheng.

If Old Tian were here...

If Old Tian were commanding this campaign... what would he do?

“Your Highness?”

Seeing Zheng Fan sink into thought again, Chen Yang could not help prompting him.

Zheng Fan asked:

“Old Chen, are you satisfied with this?”

“All we did was beat up some Zhao troops. How could I possibly be satisfied?”

“Exactly.”

Zheng Fan licked his lips.

He pointed at the map spread across the floor and said to Chen Yang:

“Back then, I was with Li Fusheng’s army. I followed him south all the way to the walls of Shangjing. Another route was led by Li Bao. You, meanwhile... should have been with the old Prince. You borrowed passage through the State of Qian, turned east, and finally entered through South Gate Pass to open the road into Jin.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Come. On this map, draw out for me the route the old Prince took back then when he borrowed passage through Qian. Draw it again for me.”

[End of Chapter 841]