The main force of the Mongol vanguard army passed through the wilderness east of Dingzhou City in the early morning of the second day of the third month, treading on the remaining snow. Wang Yuankui, the Military Commissioner of the Chengde Army, had personally led over ten thousand cavalry and infantry troops of the Chengde Army southward one day earlier as the forward camp forces of the vanguard army.

During this period, three thousand Mongol cavalry entered and garrisoned Dingzhou City.

Three thousand troops seemed like not many, but the Mongol cavalry were configured with three horses per man.

Three thousand men and nine thousand warhorses entering Dingzhou City immediately caused chickens and dogs to fly about in chaos throughout the city, disrupting the deployment of the garrison forces and Guanjiang Tower’s citywide manhunt for Liang spies.

The garrison forces in the city had to vacate garrison grounds for this contingent of Mongol cavalry, and overnight they drove out some civilian households to vacate their residences, causing the streets and alleys to become a chaotic jumble.

Han Bao, Wang Zhe, and Huo Li took advantage of the chaos to escape from the city.

The post road and even the fields on both sides had been trampled into muddy chaos by tens of thousands of cavalry. Han Bao and his group had no horses, and after the snow melted, the muddy post road limited their ability to quickly head south. Moreover, Mongol cavalry scouts and patrols were everywhere along the route. After they rendezvoused with Shi Ruhai and others, they found an abandoned hunting shelter in the mountains east of the city to hide.

The Mongol cavalry moved south in batches. The first group of troops headed south on the second day of the third month, and by the sixth day of the third month, large contingents of cavalry were still continuously passing east of Dingzhou City, surging southward like a tide.

At this time, the Dingzhou Administrator Wang Mao, son of Wang Yuankui, had erected a spacious official pavilion in the muddy melted snow beside the post road, specifically arranging for officials to be responsible for reception and army support matters.

On both sides of the post road flanking the official pavilion, there were also several hundred commoners who had been driven over, creating the appearance of lining the road in welcome.

As dusk approached, squadrons of Mongol cavalry, like muddy brown turbid tides, were not deterred by the approaching night and continued surging southward. Han Bao, Wang Zhe, and Huo Li mixed among the crowd, their faces all looking quite grim…

Night quickly fell. Han Bao and his group took advantage of the darkness to follow small paths back to their hiding place.

“How many Mongol cavalry passed through Dingzhou today?” Seeing Han Bao and the others return, Shen Peng struggled to move his body, getting his bound and numb hands and feet to move slightly. He was still most concerned about the Mongol cavalry’s movements and asked with some impatience.

Han Bao walked over and untied the ropes on his feet and those of Zhao Ci and Princess Yunhe, Zhu Xi. Previously, when he went out with Wang Zhe and Huo Li to scout the enemy situation, worried that Shi Ruhai, Zhang Shigui, and others couldn’t keep watch over them, besides binding their hands behind their backs, they would also specifically tie up their feet.

Shen Peng stood up and indicated that Han Bao could also untie their hands that were bound behind their backs.

Han Bao hesitated for a moment but ultimately untied both his and Zhao Ci’s hands. However, he still kept Princess Yunhe Zhu Xi’s hands bound behind her back.

Han Bao did this to make Shen Peng and Zhao Ci understand that if everyone wanted to safely escape southward, they couldn’t do without the full cooperation of these two men. But if they wanted to play any tricks, they would first need to consider whether Princess Yunhe would be able to quickly escape with them.

Not counting subsequent troops, over the past five days, the Mongols had already had about fifty thousand soldiers and one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty thousand warhorses pass through the wilderness on both flanks of Dingzhou City heading south.

Beyond the old impression that Mongol troops were consistently fierce and warlike, the armor and equipment of the Mongol cavalry making this major southward push were all much more sophisticated than they had previously imagined, with even a large number of warhorses wearing armor.

Traditional iron armor, to achieve a considerable degree of protection, was quite cumbersome. For a long time, only the Central Plains region, by virtue of more advanced armor-casting technology, could craft lighter and more protective lamellar armor and scale armor, thus having the capacity to equip small numbers of heavy armored cavalry.

Although the troops of the various steppe tribes were fierce and skilled in battle with even larger cavalry forces, even though they also had some heavy armored cavalry, the numbers were extremely few.

Han Bao and his group saw that the southward-moving Mongol cavalry had armed large numbers of heavy armored cavalry. This not only meant the Mongol cavalry’s combat strength was greater, but also meant that after the Mongols took control of Youyun and other prefectures, with the assistance of the northern refugee aristocratic families, iron smelting and casting technology had achieved unprecedented breakthroughs and development.

And with the current confirmation that Guanjiang Tower was a vassal of the Mongols, one could imagine that the dual-furnace iron smelting method had long ago passed through Wanhong Tower’s hands and been transmitted to Youji and other prefectures, right?

Over the past few days, besides exchanging intelligence with Shen Peng and his group, Han Bao had tried every means to capture two isolated Guanjiang Tower spies for interrogation. He learned that after the Mongols occupied Youyun and other prefectures, over the past thirteen or fourteen years they had not launched large-scale offensives against Heshuo and other prefectures—not simply to rest and recover, nor to honor peace treaties with the Jin army. More importantly, they had focused their energy on the conquest and absorption of the Bohai Kingdom to the northeast of Youyun.

Youyun and other prefectures occupied the vast territories south and north of Yan Mountain. As war-torn and bitter cold lands, population growth had never been particularly prosperous. Before being ceded by Jin, Youyun and other prefectures had a population of about two million five to six hundred thousand.

However, after the Mongols conquered the Bohai Kingdom, they forcibly relocated over a million Haidong remnant people from even more vast and bitter cold regions to settle in Youji and other places, expanding the population of Youji and other areas to nearly four million, with the scale of agriculture also expanding by nearly double compared to before.

The Mongols even formed new infantry units composed mainly of Han people and Haidong remnant people outside the traditional cavalry forces, serving as supplementary combat strength for city defense and offensive operations.

After spring, the roads were muddy. The Mongol infantry units had limited military strength and moved slowly, but it was estimated that in two to three days, infantry soldiers of the Youji Han Army and Haidong Army numbering forty to sixty thousand would successively pass through Dingzhou territory heading south.

On this very day, Han Bao also confirmed that after seeing the Mongol cavalry entering in great numbers, the Jin army in Qizhou, Zhaozhou, and other places had successively chosen to surrender with over ten thousand troops.

This meant that, not counting the Wei Prefecture rebel army led by Liang’s Prince of He Zhu Rang and Liang Shixiong, the Mongols would be able to mobilize as many as one hundred fifty to sixty thousand troops in Heshuo and other regions in spring and summer.

Although it could be anticipated that in the early stages the Mongols would focus their main objectives on occupying and absorbing Jin territory, perhaps only dispatching some troops to assist the Wei Prefecture rebel army in attacking or pursuing the main Liang forces, the Liang army with their rear route cut off and grain supplies unable to arrive would definitely not have an easy time.

This was still under the circumstances where Chen Kun and Han Yuanqi could expel Liang Shixiong from Kaifeng in time and seize control of Kaifeng and the regions west of Kaifeng one step ahead.

“If we head south from east of Kaifeng, we absolutely won’t cause you half a bit of trouble along the way and will obediently follow you all the way sneaking to Tangyi. I believe you must particularly want to know who will win the deer at Kaifeng right now…” Shen Peng rubbed his swollen wrists and negotiated with Han Bao.

Han Bao consulted with Huo Li and Wang Zhe for a moment before finally agreeing to Shen Peng and his group’s conditions.

Although heading south from the eastern coastal prefectures, which were farther from the core of the war, would be much safer, considering that the situation in Kaifeng had suddenly become utterly chaotic, the two contacts that the Military Intelligence Staff Office had arranged in Kaifeng had no advance preparation and might not be able to transmit accurate intelligence in time, they needed to personally make a trip to Kaifeng.

At the same time, they also needed to make a preliminary assessment of how the situation was developing in the central and southern Heshuo regions controlled by the Mongols and rebel army. These regions would become core areas controlled by the Mongols and rebel army in the future and would also require arranging for people to remain undercover long-term. All this meant they had to take the inland route closer to the eastern foothills of Taihang Mountain, which carried greater risk.

Of course, along this route, disguising themselves would require the full cooperation of Shen Peng and his group. Otherwise, it would be absolutely impossible to withstand the manhunts and inspections of patrolling soldiers and scouts along the way.

Aside from leaving one person to continue hiding and maintaining contact with the two young servants who had infiltrated Guanjiang Tower, Han Bao and his group set out on their southward journey seven days later in disguise.

Because large numbers of Mongols had dispersed to forcibly requisition grain and civilian laborers, large numbers of civilian households in Qizhou, Zhaozhou, and other places were hiding everywhere, fleeing the chaos of war.

Such a chaotic situation was most advantageous for Han Bao to fish in troubled waters.

Even though they obtained several mules and horses, they didn’t need to worry that their tracks would be discovered by enemy scouts. Traveling by day and hiding by night along the way, on the eleventh day they reached Chanzhou territory on the north bank of the Yellow River.

At this time, they also learned with certainty that Liang’s Prince of He Zhu Rang had led the Wei Prefecture troops in rebellion on the third day, sending troops to seize the fortified pass cities on the Wei Prefecture and Chanzhou sides of the two strategic passes of Fukou Pass and Bai Pass. By the night of the fourth day, the first batch of Mongol vanguard cavalry had already entered Wei Prefecture territory. Up until the seventh day, a total of about twenty thousand Mongol cavalry had headed together with the Wei Prefecture rebel army toward Weizhou, located on the north bank of the Yellow River at the southern foot of Taihang Mountain, across the river from Kaifeng.

At the same time, over the seventh and eighth days, about twenty thousand Mongol cavalry and ten thousand elite Chengde Army troops led by Wang Yuankui advanced westward from Bai Pass.

Although because the narrow Bai Pass corridor was completely controlled by the rebel army and Mongol cavalry, it was temporarily impossible for merchants to bring news from west of Taihang Mountain, Han Bao and his group could completely deduce that the main Liang forces might not have learned of Zhu Rang and Liang Shixiong’s betrayal until the fourth or even fifth day. Time-wise, they only had time to blockade the western passage of Fukou Pass to the north but had no way to withdraw troops to Zezhou in the south in time. This was what allowed the Mongols to see that Zezhou’s defenses were weak and vulnerable, deciding to directly take the Bai Pass corridor to directly enter Zezhou in the southern part of Jin…

The ferry crossings and boats on the north bank of the Yellow River were all controlled by the rebel army. Han Bao and his group had no choice but to find a fishing boat in the eastern part of Chanzhou, which was farther from the rebel army’s core focus area, to cross the Yellow River. On the thirteenth day, after entering Caozhou east of Bianzhou (Kaifeng), they learned of how the situation had developed since Liang Shixiong raised troops in rebellion in Kaifeng on the second day.

Zhu Yu had personally led the imperial expedition to besiege Luzhou, but he still left trusted generals and officials like Lei Jiuyuan and Jing Hao to guard Kaifeng. Under Liang Shixiong’s instigation, the Southern Bureau Imperial Guards, together with over twenty thousand Wei Prefecture rebel troops and Jin army prisoners who had infiltrated, rebelled but failed to immediately capture the Imperial City defended by the Imperial Guard.

Han Yuanqi and Chen Kun led eight thousand elite vanguard troops to reach Kaifeng on the fifth day. Afterward, nearly thirty thousand infantry troops successively traveled north along the Bian River and entered Kaifeng City. After several days of bloody battle, finally on the eleventh day—the very day they reached the north bank of the Yellow River—at an extremely tragic cost they drove the rebel army out of Kaifeng City.

Currently, besides occupying Wanting, Qiliu, and other cities east of Kaifeng, the main rebel forces had taken advantage of the weak defenses in the region west of Bian to seize major towns on the south bank of the Yellow River including Rongyang, Yanshi, and Luoyang. Meanwhile, Mengjin, Qinyang, and other cities on the north bank of the Yellow River were occupied by the Chengde Army along with Jin troops from Qi, Zhao, and other places who had been coerced into surrendering, blocking the passage for Guanzhong troops to emerge eastward through Hangu Pass.

The Mongols had only over ten thousand cavalry cross the Yellow River to coordinate operations with the rebel army. In total, approximately forty thousand cavalry and thirty thousand infantry had passed through Jingxing Pass, Fukou Pass, and Bai Pass to enter the two prefectures of Ze and Lu west of Taihang Mountain—the Shangdang region, which since ancient times has been known as “residing at the summit of Taihang Mountain, the highest terrain forms a fortress.”

Shangdang could look south toward the Central Plains, face east toward Hedong (the Fen River valley in southern Jin), lean west against Heshuo, and extend north to Taiyuan. It was a focal point region that former dynasty warlord forces, extending to the standoff and struggle between Liang and Jin over many years, had contested.

The main Mongol forces entering the two prefectures of Ze and Lu, besides strongly attacking the main Liang forces, more importantly valued this strategic location. Occupying it, they could seize control of remnant Jin to the north, manage Heshuo, and also gaze southward toward the Central Plains.

Due to the extreme险峻 of the mountain terrain and severed routes, when Han Bao and his group headed south again on the sixteenth day returning to Tangyi, they had absolutely no knowledge of how the war in the two prefectures of Ze and Lu was developing, much less any clarity about the fate of the main Liang forces…