Chapter 969: War Drums!

At last, the endless rain stopped.

The ground was still muddy and sodden, but that hazy sense that everything before and around them was “half-hidden behind a pipa” had finally disappeared.

Then again, whether *she* was there or not no longer mattered much at this point. They had procrastinated as long as they could. It was time for forced consummation, and there was no getting out of it.

Boom!

A squad of cavalry looped ropes around a palisade. Then all of them pulled in the same direction. The stakes had never been planted particularly deep, and the entire barrier crashed flat.

The rest of the cavalry immediately poured into the camp behind it, full of anticipation. That excitement vanished almost at once. The camp looked enormous from outside, banners fluttering everywhere, but its interior was astonishingly hollow. It was practically an empty shell. The only people inside were scattered groups of Chu laborers huddled together and trembling before the ferocious Yan cavalry; there were pitifully few actual Chu soldiers.

Perhaps only during the first few days after the two sides made contact had there been repeated small-scale clashes. Afterward, the Chu army seemed like a paper man with holes torn through it, soaked through and rotted apart by the rain until there was nothing left to see or pick up.

Liang Cheng sat atop his Pi Beast, with Tian Tian and Chen Xianba riding their own mounts on either side. The fur of Liang Cheng’s beast had already begun turning into black crystalline plates. Beside it, the two ordinary Pi Beasts looked noticeably cautious and restrained.

Much like their riders.

Both Tian Tian and Chen Xianba worshiped the Prince, but anyone who truly served in the army naturally understood Grand General Liang Cheng’s status within it.

Moreover, the Grand General himself was one of the gentlemen of the Residence, though almost no one in the household actually addressed him as “Mister.”

Rumors outside had always claimed Liang Cheng was the Prince’s disciple in military affairs, a great general personally trained by the Prince himself.

That was not something Tian Tian or Chen Xianba needed to concern themselves with.

Whenever Liang Cheng was present, the two of them immediately became exceptionally obedient.

The Chu camp before them had now been taken. Similar scenes were unfolding continuously all along this north-south line. Aside from occasional resistance by small units, most of the camps had simply been entered and occupied just like this.

“Grand General, the Chu really were only putting up a false front,” Chen Xianba said, contributing a statement of breathtaking uselessness.

“Yes. Exactly,” Tian Tian added, contributing another.

Liang Cheng glanced at them. He knew perfectly well what the two were thinking and shook his head directly.

“Forget it.”

“Grand General, I—”

“We don’t have enough troops. I only brought ten thousand cavalry here this time. Between the Yan soldiers under you two and the surrendered Chu troops you scraped together, you actually have considerably more men than I do.”

Chen Xianba immediately said, “But Grand General, we may have more heads, but if we actually fight, all they’ll do is deliver even more heads to the enemy. Xie Zhuyang’s main force is southwest of us right now. If we don’t get onto his tail immediately and that old bastard escapes, what then?”

“That is the Xie Clan Army, and they have not routed. If you cling to their tail, they will turn around and bite you.”

“We still have Marshal Gou’s Savage army to coordinate with us—”

“The Savage army has been run ragged for this long already. How much strength do you think they have left? Xie Zhuyang is indeed a Pillar of State, but if the State of Chu itself disappears, how much will that title still be worth?”

Liang Cheng looked at Chen Xianba, the young man his Master had once praised as the seed of a famous general for the next generation.

In truth, Liang Cheng agreed with that assessment.

And compared with his Master, he had studied Chen Xianba far more closely.

“You two entered Sansuo and Liusha Commanderies early, attacking cities and seizing territory. That was the prelude. I led ten thousand cavalry back and forth across this region for two whole months, deliberately leaving traces that suggested a great army was moving west. That was the setup. What is happening before us now is the development. We have already done everything we needed to do. What remains will happen at the Wei River, with the Prince. Xie Zhuyang himself came here prepared to use his own body as bait and die. For a man like him, continuing to live perfectly well right now would probably be harder to accept than being killed. Besides, my ten thousand cavalry are now scattered across a broad area. It would be difficult to gather many of them quickly. And as you yourselves said, the troops under your command are too uneven in quality to be reliable at the decisive moment. First gather the men. Then move toward the Savage army. You still have some grain and supplies with you. That will relieve their most urgent problem.”

Liang Cheng paused, then, unusually, offered Chen Xianba a few words of comfort.

“Years ago, we were starving wolves. Once we bit into a piece of meat, we would rather die than let go. But now, as the Prince said, this is a rich man’s war built from years of accumulation. We can afford to take our time. Xianba. Tian Tian. Things are different now. The days when we tied our heads to our belts and either lived or died by the next charge are behind us. If you pursue ruthlessness, speed, and total victory in everything, you can still fall into an inferior path.”

Tian Tian and Chen Xianba cupped their fists together.

“This general has been instructed.”

The two young generals departed, one to gather the scattered troops and the other to organize the transport of grain.

In truth, their earlier idea had not been wrong, nor was it unworkable.

They could have sent a cavalry force on a forced march to get onto Xie Zhuyang’s tail, then waited for the main body of the Savage army to swing around. There was indeed a chance to stop Xie Zhuyang before his troops returned to Guyue City.

There were many uncertainties in such a plan, but any real commander was long accustomed to uncertainty.

Taking a certain degree of risk to claim Xie Zhuyang’s head and attempt the total destruction of the Xie Clan Army would have been an excellent bargain.

With Chen Xianba and Tian Tian’s ability, giving them a small body of elite cavalry would have been enough to restrain the enemy. Liang Cheng had no doubt of that.

Especially when the Xie Clan Army was still split into northern and southern sections. It was the perfect moment to defeat them one by one.

But there was one thing Liang Cheng could not say aloud. Barring some accident, the Savage army’s morale should be extraordinarily low right now.

It was not because the endless rain had soaked them, nor because being “surrounded” had frightened them into panic, nor because hunger from their supply shortage had broken them. The true reason was that the commander of the Savage army, that former Savage King, had deliberately stood aside and watched his own troops cool, even personally helping to bleed the spirit out of them.

If the Savage army had truly been an isolated force fighting desperately for survival, then the sudden appearance of reinforcements, followed by the discovery that the supposed “encirclement” had been fake, would certainly have sent their blood courage soaring again. They would have howled and chased the Chu army without hesitation.

But now?

Liang Cheng knew Gou Moli was not a god.

He could not deliberately grind an army’s morale into the mud and then pull it back to its absolute peak in a single instant.

So at this moment, preserving what they had was actually the best bargain.

It was simply a little regrettable...

Liang Cheng’s gaze drifted eastward almost involuntarily.

He was not there.

...

Reinforcements had arrived.

There were not many of them, but they brought the grain the Savage army desperately needed.

Cheers immediately erupted throughout the Savage camp.

Yet even the cheering carried a deep layer of exhaustion.

Gou Moli stood outside the command tent and watched the scene.

All he could do was laugh at himself, then reach up and rub his face hard with both hands.

“Ai. Difficult.”

No answer came from beside him.

Gou Moli peered through his fingers at the Sword Saint sitting nearby.

“Mm-mm-mm~”

The Sword Saint ignored him.

“Mm-mm~ mm-mm~”

Gou Moli wiggled his backside and stamped one foot.

The Sword Saint turned his face away.

He could not bear to look.

But he still asked:

“What is difficult?”

“Heh-heh.”

The instant Gou Moli got the response he wanted, his whole face lit up.

“The first difficulty is that I had to forcibly suppress all the generals under me and keep them from choosing either wing for a breakout. Because I was afraid. Afraid Xie Zhuyang simply did not have enough troops, that his so-called encirclement and so-called Chu reinforcements were nothing but an empty frame inside an empty frame. What if one of my forces accidentally broke out in that direction and punched straight through the whole damned thing? What would I do then? Wouldn’t *I* be embarrassed? Wouldn’t Xie Zhuyang be embarrassed too? Would I be breaking out or not breaking out? So I had to invent all kinds of proper, convincing reasons and use my prestige to suppress the proposals by force. And the worst part is... they were right.”

“And the second?” the Sword Saint asked.

“The second difficulty is that the Chu force to the north is obviously part of the Xie Clan Army. We kept failing to break through them, yes, but every one of those attacks was organized by the generals under me themselves. I deliberately refused to go command them in person. And I deliberately staggered their attack times, trying to give the enemy as much breathing room as possible without the people below noticing. I was terrified they might actually smash through the Chu line by accident. I couldn’t personally take the field. I couldn’t inspire my own troops. I had to keep easing off, holding back, deliberately pretending I was helpless too, so the soldiers’ morale would sink lower. And lower. And lower. Aiya. Difficult. Some people think winning battles is difficult. But for me... losing one convincingly was pretty damned difficult too.”

“Anything else?”

“Anything else? Not much, really. Mainly, Xie Zhuyang knew I was deliberately letting him surround me. And I knew Xie Zhuyang knew I was deliberately letting him surround me. Fortunately, Xie Zhuyang was acting in the same play with me. Don’t you find that interesting? This entire performance was actually put on by enemy and friendly commanders together, both understanding perfectly well what was happening. If something went wrong somewhere, if a scene went off-script, both sides had to find a way to patch it up so the show could keep going. What a pity. What a pity. The Chu people’s greatest tragedy is not really that they lack elite soldiers. They lack powerful commanders. In the past few years, too many men with the talent to command whole armies have died. Now there is a gap between generations in Chu. Heh. They can’t get back up. Put simply, for a battle like this, for a play like this, what matters is who arranged the production. My side was not the hardest. Xie Zhuyang wholeheartedly wanted to use himself as bait, so his side was not especially difficult either. Both he and I hold our armies by the throat. If we tell them to live, they live. If we tell them to die, they die. The truly difficult part was arranging the final grand act on the outer ring. Using only a small number of troops to create the appearance of cavalry trampling through camp after camp, then borrowing this magnificent rainstorm to manufacture the grandeur of an army more than two hundred thousand strong. That is real expertise. Real expertise! No one who had not brought the art of commanding troops close to perfection could do it. If my guess is correct, our Grand General Liang came personally. Only he has that level of ability with troops. And what do you call that? That is what you call *presence*. When the Prince talked about fighting a rich man’s war, he did not merely mean having enough grain and equipment. It means... I can lie here quietly and watch you place your stones. I don’t need to do anything extra. You place one. I trade one. You keep placing them. I’ll keep trading as I please. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Forget our Prince. Even this dog has never fought such a rich man’s war in his entire life.”

“So this is where you finally return to the chapter title?” the Sword Saint asked. “Everything ultimately circles back to flattering him. If you want this included in a memorial, write it yourself. I will not carry those words back for you.”

“This genuinely isn’t flattery. Tell me, what kind of person do you think our Prince actually is?”

“That... really is difficult to say.”

“Viewed from the side, a ridge; from the front, a peak. Heh-heh. Truthfully, this entire arrangement came from the Prince. He never said it plainly, but I understood what he meant.”

Gou Moli’s gaze fell upon the set of nested porcelain dolls.

“What do you think a true genius is? From the perspective of you cultivators, a Spirit Child? A Sword Embryo? Those count, right?”

The Sword Saint shook his head.

“It is not that absolute.”

“Do you think you are a genius? Don’t compare yourself with anyone else. Compare yourself only with your past self.”

“No.”

“You’re being modest.”

“I simply no longer want to cooperate with you.”

“Hahahahaha!”

Gou Moli opened his mouth and laughed.

In the distance, he had already spotted the two young generals riding Pi Beasts toward them.

So he hurried to finish before they arrived.

“What is genius? Think about this. In my view, a true genius is someone like our Prince. He works hard at one thing... and keeps improving at it.”

...

A large reclining chair had been set atop the wall of a military stockade. Zheng Fan leaned sideways in it, wrapped in a black python robe personally woven by Siniang. The fabric was smooth beneath the fingers and extraordinarily warm, and charcoal burned continuously in the brazier before him.

The darkness of night seemed unable to reach this place. No—it had been driven back.

Zheng Fan was dozing.

Within that short dream, he seemed to taste the past again for a fleeting moment.

Everyone beneath Heaven said Great Yan’s Regent Prince was the disciple of Prince Jingnan.

Everyone believed it completely.

Only Zheng Fan himself knew that, for a very long time, it had been a joke.

A joke born from how stunned he had been the first time he killed a man in the desert.

A joke born from how he had memorized the answer from Liang Cheng in advance, then returned to Tian Wujing and recited it back to him.

That was why Zheng Fan had always been timid.

Why, at certain moments, he still tended to hesitate and look ahead and behind.

One move on a battlefield could decide the lives and deaths of thousands upon thousands.

He did not fear charging into battle.

What he feared more... was carrying responsibility.

During the Three-State War, he had been driven onto the stage like a duck forced onto a perch.

He had acted because he had no choice if he wanted to overturn the situation.

But this time?

If the people of the world could hear the true thought passing through the Regent Prince’s mind at this moment, they might cough up blood on the spot.

The famous generals and heroes who had died beneath his hand might even claw their way out of their graves in outrage.

Because the Regent Prince of Great Yan was thinking:

*I think... I finally learned how to fight a war.*

Unfortunately, the nap did not last long.

A Brocade-Clad personal guard hurried up the wall, dropped to one knee, and reported:

“Your Highness! The Chu army opposite us has moved!”

The Prince slowly opened his eyes.

He yawned.

Then answered:

“Oh.”

[End of Chapter 969]