Leading nearly three thousand warriors, Tang Qingyuan and his men had cut their way into the Sang encampment — a resolve to fight to the death, because they understood: if they simply kept defending, the city would eventually fall and everyone would die.
Their enemy was a professional army. The only way to defeat them was to wear down their will, to break their spirit.
The purpose of those nightly sorties out of the city gates had been to set up exactly this moment — to strike a blow where it was least expected.
“Find out where the grain and supply stores are!”
Tang Qingyuan shouted as he fought through the camp.
There were few Sang soldiers left in the encampment — nowhere near enough to hold them off — and before long, fires were breaking out all across the grounds.
They found the location of the Sang grain and supplies, and put that to the torch as well. The fires within the camp merged into a sea of flame in an alarmingly short time.
The Sang prided themselves on having conquered the sea — it remained to be seen whether they could conquer this sea of fire.
“Withdraw toward the eastern gate!”
After cutting down the garrison troops left behind in the camp and killing several hundred, they pulled out immediately and sprinted toward the eastern gate.
The fire on the western side had been lit first — so the Sang forces at both the northern and southern gates would rush to support the west. That meant Tang Qingyuan’s people would exit through the eastern gate, circling the city walls to give those Sang soldiers the run-around. But a maneuver like this — who with any timidity could dare attempt it?
They ran at full speed, and many men couldn’t help it — they laughed, great loud laughs that came bursting out of them, impossible to contain.
Racing to the eastern gate, they had expected resistance — after all, the Sang camp to the east held five thousand soldiers.
Tang Qingyuan had calculated that those eastern Sang troops would be redeployed elsewhere — but he hadn’t been able to confirm it.
As it turned out, luck was with them: the eastern Sang camp was barely manned.
Well then — might as well set that one on fire too.
The five hundred Sang soldiers left to garrison the eastern camp didn’t even try to fight — they turned and fled. Tang Qingyuan’s people torched the eastern camp as well.
Three fires in a single night, and dawn hadn’t even broken yet.
They reentered the city through the eastern gate, where Tang Qingyuan had pre-positioned a waiting force already assembled at the gate.
After the gate opened and the men who had been lighting fires all night poured back inside, howling and shouting, every one of them vibrating with excitement.
“Don’t let your guard down!”
Tang Qingyuan called out in command: “Everyone back to your posts. Stay on alert.”
The men dispersed swiftly back to their stations.
These fires had not actually killed all that many Sang soldiers — but they had incinerated the Sang food and supply stores.
With that done, Sang withdrawal was a certainty.
Without food, how many more days could they hold out? Did they really think they could go on attacking the city on an empty stomach?
At daybreak, Tang Qingyuan raised his field telescope and looked out. To the south, what remained of the Sang main camp was a landscape of ash and ruin — and in the midst of it, the Sang forces were forming up.
Several figures stood before the troops, apparently speaking — from this distance there was no way to hear, but Tang Qingyuan and his companions could imagine well enough just how furious those Sang commanders must be.
“Worthless idiots.”
Du Guang spat from the wall: “Now then, that ought to make those bastards choke with rage.”
Everyone laughed — exhausted, bone-weary, but deeply, wholly happy. Elated. Wanting to throw their heads back and roar with laughter.
The Sang encampment.
Standing amid a landscape of black and ash, Chunbian Chili surveyed what remained of the supply depot. The incinerated grain felt like blades driven into his chest — the loss was unbearable.
Without food, their plan to seize Liaocheng and use it as a base to march on Jizhou had become a puddle of urine — it had gushed out with force, but in the end would leave behind nothing more than a few yellowing stains.
“Withdraw.”
Aluokedi Wulianliang had no interest even in rage. He felt not a shred of anger — and even he himself had not expected it: looking at this scene, he found himself entirely calm.
“Return to Bohai.”
Aluokedi Wulianliang said: “Prepare sufficient water. As for food — find a way.”
With that he turned and walked away, unwilling to look at it a moment longer.
The Sang forces began withdrawing in the direction of the sea. Their formation, while still maintaining some order in appearance, looked from any angle like men with their heads bowed in defeat.
“Ahh!”
A young man on the city wall let out a cheer from the bottom of his lungs, his voice going hoarse and cracking.
That shout was all it took. Every single person on the wall joined in, and the sound swelled wave upon wave.
“What a pity…”
Tang Qingyuan, amid the roar of celebration all around him, let out a sigh that sounded almost mournful.
If only…
If only he had a few thousand Ning combat soldiers right now — he would certainly have given chase, right on the heels of those retreating Sang. The Sang had lost all will to fight at this point, and in truth it would not take many men at all to make them pay an even more devastating price.
Never mind a few thousand — even five hundred cavalry right now, and Tang Qingyuan would ride out after them without hesitation.
For these foreign invaders who had thrust themselves onto Central Plains soil — kill as many as you could, and if you had the chance to let not a single one go home, you took it.
“Maintain alert.”
Tang Qingyuan gave the order in a carrying voice, then turned and sat back against the wall. The taut, straining energy inside him eased, just a little — and with it, strength seemed to drain from his body.
There against the wall, deeply tired, he found he didn’t want to sleep.
The feeling was something truly exquisite — for Tang Qingyuan, commanding troops in battle for the very first time, that exquisite feeling was something he savored with exceptional intensity.
“You shouldn’t be in the scout brigade.”
Wang Senmao sat down beside him: “You ought to be a great general — a general like Great General Tang.”
Tang Qingyuan smiled and shook his head. A path is walked one step at a time. His elder brother Tang Pidi hadn’t become Great General in a single leap either.
“You still seem a little unsatisfied?”
Du Guang asked with a grin.
Tang Qingyuan nodded: “Honestly, there’s some regret. If only we’d had cavalry — those Sang people couldn’t have just walked away in comfort. Even if we couldn’t have destroyed them entirely, we could have peeled the flesh from them layer by layer.”
Just then, someone on the city wall suddenly cried out: “What is that!”
“Is that our Ning soldiers?!”
In that voice was an excitement even more intense than the joy of watching the Sang retreat.
The three of them sprang to their feet immediately, gripping the parapet and looking out.
Across the plain, a cavalry force swept like a wave crashing across the retreating Sang forces. It was clearly visible: the Sang, who had kept their formation more or less intact as they withdrew, were now scattering in all directions, like a flock of frightened sheep.
“It’s our people!”
Du Guang’s eyes blazed. He pointed toward the crimson battle flags streaming from the cavalry force in the distance and shouted: “Our flags! Our cavalry!”
Every man on the walls was jumping, waving, shouting toward those riders.
And then they watched as that cavalry force drove savagely into the Sang formation — like a keen blade splitting it clean in two.
This cavalry force wasn’t enormous in number — perhaps around two thousand, by the look of it — but they moved like a meteor shower skimming just above the ground.
They cut through the Sang line, came out the other side, swept an arc, and drove back in for a second pass — splitting the Sang formation open a second time.
Everyone cheered — voices cracking, raw, hoarse.
But Tang Qingyuan was thinking: where had this cavalry come from?
The scouts who had ridden south and north to seek aid — neither group could have made the round trip this fast. By the most optimistic calculation, neither should have reached their destination yet.
But those were plainly their cavalry, unmistakably so.
The riders plowed back and forth through the Sang formation like a blade tilling a field — pass after pass — and the Sang rear guard was cut to pieces.
The Sang vanguard fled in a frenzy toward the sea, not even daring to look back, let alone turn to rescue their companions.
Fate had still allowed those Sang forces a trace of luck: the Ning army that had come to support them numbered only two thousand cavalry, and after a long, hard march, they didn’t dare throw themselves into the midst of the Sang infantry formations. Once driven to desperation, the Sang would form a defensive square, and light cavalry alone could not charge and break a formed square.
But they could give chase. Not pursuing the Sang soldiers already fleeing in front — just clinging to the rear guard, hunting.
They chased and killed all the way from outside the city to the sea, and the corpses the Sang left behind along that road were enough to make one’s scalp crawl.
Of the Sang who managed to get onto the ships, it was probably about half — and even that was only because the sea was so close.
If it had been thirty li farther away, those two thousand Ning cavalry alone could have reduced this Sang force to near-total annihilation.
The casualties the Sang took in this pursuit far, far exceeded everything they had suffered in all the days of assaulting the city combined.
That cavalry was devastatingly fierce — calling them slaughterers was no exaggeration. They killed fast and killed hard, and every saber stroke was a descent into the underworld.
About an hour and more later, the cavalry had killed enough. They turned and rode toward Liaocheng — partly because they didn’t know whether there were still Sang forces on the ships, and if Sang reinforcements were still out there, continuing the chase would be dangerous.
This sight had left every person on the walls utterly struck with awe.
Tang Qingyuan quickly issued orders to open the city gate and welcome them. He led the men down to the gate — and found that the commanding officer was a woman.
In that moment, Tang Qingyuan knew immediately who it was.
Among the Ning army, to have such commanding presence, to lead troops in such a manner — who else could it be but the young woman Shen, who had single-handedly taken both Yanzhou and Qingzhou?
But why had Lady Shen suddenly come here — and with only two thousand light cavalry?
Because she traveled fast.
After receiving the order from Prince Ning, she had immediately led her army toward Yanzhou in support, but she had not come by the same route as Tang Qingyuan’s group.
Shen Shanhu had not returned to Suzhou City — she had been on her way to Hangcheng when she turned around directly, taking a different road. She led her forces into Jizhou heading for Dragon Head Pass, and it was there that she was intercepted by the comrades of Tang Qingyuan’s group.
Upon receiving the news, Shen Shanhu ordered her hundred thousand troops to split: thirty thousand heading to support Liaocheng, seventy thousand continuing toward Yanzhou.
She herself had only two thousand light cavalry around her. She outpaced her own troops, and with these two thousand rode day and night to get here.
She had barely arrived when she discovered that the Sang forces were actually withdrawing.
Though she didn’t know why the Sang had retreated, how could she pass up such a perfect opportunity to cut them down?
After being welcomed into Liaocheng by Tang Qingyuan, Shen Shanhu walked and listened as Tang Qingyuan and the others briefed her on everything that had happened.
When the account was finished, Shen Shanhu stopped walking and looked at Tang Qingyuan: “This battle — was it commanded by the three of you scouts?”
Tang Qingyuan bowed: “To report to General Shen — it was. But the three of us would have been utterly useless without the people of Liaocheng standing together against the enemy.”
Shen Shanhu looked the three young men up and down: “You are all scouts under the Great General’s command?”
Tang Qingyuan answered: “We are.”
Shen Shanhu thought for a moment, then gave a nod, and pointed to Du Guang and Wang Senmao: “You two — starting today, you are transferred to my personal guard. Both of you are promoted to Captain. You’ll serve at my side.”
These words left both Du Guang and Wang Senmao utterly bewildered. They looked first at Shen Shanhu, then at Tang Qingyuan.
They were silently wondering: why just the two of them?
Shen Shanhu said: “I still need to get to Dragon Head Pass. Now that the crisis here has been resolved, I’ll rest one night and be back on the road first thing tomorrow morning.”
She looked at Tang Qingyuan: “As of this moment, you hold the rank of a fourth-rank General. And remember — this fourth-rank commission comes from me. From here on out, you belong to me. You cannot serve under any other army — even if the Great General summons you, you may not go. Do you understand? No, wait — even if Prince Ning himself summons you, you may not go. Do you hear me?”
Tang Qingyuan was somewhat stunned as well.
Shen Shanhu said: “Shortly, troops of ours will arrive here. I’m leaving you eight thousand men to garrison Liaocheng and patrol the coastal defenses. If the Sang don’t dare return within one month, you bring your troops north to link up with me.”
Shen Shanhu tapped Tang Qingyuan on the chest with her riding crop: “If you dare go serve in anyone else’s army, I will chop you into eight pieces. From now on, whenever anyone asks — tell them you belong to Shen Shanhu.”
Tang Qingyuan looked at this domineering woman standing in front of him, and found himself with only one thought.
This… was his sister-in-law?
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