Zhao Mingting crouched on one knee among the reeds, gazing at the forest of masts and sails that blotted out the sky on the southern lake surface. His gaunt face resembled ancient weathered rock in the cold wind. As the wind blew past, reed flowers drifted and floated up like heavy snowfall.
Although he had been appointed Governor of Haozhou after fleeing north across the river, making him one of the few northern escapees—besides Wen Bo—to receive significant trust from Xu Mingzhen, his position was hardly enviable.
Wen Bo excelled at defense and currently led remnant forces in holding Chaozhou City against the main Chu army forces commanded by Li Zhigao. The situation was precarious. But Zhao Mingting, with only seven to eight thousand defeated and demoralized troops under his command, found life in Haozhou equally difficult.
Whether he could catch his breath depended entirely on the upcoming battle. How could he not feel the crushing weight of bearing a thousand-pound burden on his shoulders?
“Two hundred sixty-seven warships of various sizes—the Left Five-Tooth Army’s forces have all sailed into Nidun Lake! The Right Five-Tooth Army has already been lured to the north. My lord, if we don’t seal the openings soon, the Left Five-Tooth Army’s warships might break into the Blue Reed Marsh by dawn tomorrow. Liu Zhi and his men have only sixty or seventy small boats and just over two thousand troops there—I fear they won’t be able to hold!” A military officer in armor crouched low, using the reed cover to approach Zhao Mingting’s side as he spoke.
“Good! Send word to Wu Jin to scuttle the ships and seal off the Fanqiu River and Poshatang opening!” Zhao Mingting said through gritted teeth.
Hongze Basin consisted of a series of large and small shallow-bottomed lake marshes and wetlands, with streams, rivers, ponds and other water passages of varying lengths and sizes connecting the different marshes to form an integrated whole.
The southwestern edge of Hongze Basin pressed against the Wujian Mountain Range, and the lake bed on the southwestern side was noticeably higher than the eastern section.
However, Hongze Basin’s water mainly flowed in from the Qian Mountain and Wujian Mountain streams to the southwest and the Huai River to the west. Combined with how accumulated sand and mud marshes blocked water flow between the lake marshes, causing slow circulation, the southwestern lakes of Hongze Basin normally appeared similarly deep to the eastern lakes with no obvious difference.
But after entering winter, the flow from the Qian Mountain and Wujian Mountain streams dropped dramatically, and the southwestern and western lakes relied mainly on water from the upper Huai River to replenish them.
Zhao Mingting’s plan was to scuttle oar-and-pole boats loaded with sand and stones, sinking them into the several tributary streams on the northern side of Nidun Lake that fed water from the Huai River, blocking the waterways.
Although this method might not lower Nidun Lake’s water level by even a foot overnight, for the deep-drafted pointed-bottom warships of the Left Five-Tooth Army, the impact would already be severe.
Of course, Zhao Mingting and his men had prepared several contingency plans.
If they could lure the Left Five-Tooth Army’s main warships into Caowei Lake further south, the effect would be even better.
The lake bed there was shallower—once they sealed the water passages, they could strand a considerable portion of the Left Five-Tooth Army’s main warships directly in the middle of the lake, rendering them immobile.
However, doing so would risk the complete annihilation of the two thousand-plus Tower Ship Army remnants who had retreated into Caowei Lake earlier as bait.
Shouzhou’s remaining naval forces were already extremely limited. Zhao Mingting was reluctant to sacrifice those two thousand-plus Tower Ship Army troops currently in Caowei Lake, so he decided to make Nidun Lake the battlefield for severely damaging or even completely annihilating the Left Five-Tooth Army’s main naval forces, fully activating the battle plan.
To prevent falling into a trap, the vanguard commander Gao Chengyuan had deliberately concentrated all the Left Five-Tooth Army’s main warships before nightfall in the middle of Nidun Lake, where the water surface was nearly twenty li wide. He also dispatched small squadrons to form defensive formations at the three main lake entrances, guarding against the possibility of enemy forces attacking into Nidun Lake during the night.
The first to discover the dropping water level were the warships responsible for guarding the western lake entrance.
One warship had dropped anchor before nightfall, clearly confirming some distance remained between the ship’s bottom and the riverbed. But at dawn, they discovered the ship’s bottom was resting directly on the riverbed, with the vessel noticeably tilted.
When Gao Chengyuan received the report, he sensed something amiss. Just as he was about to dispatch soldiers in small boats to scout in all directions, the outlying sentry boats began sending warning signals.
Two incense sticks’ time later, his expression grave, Gao Chengyuan watched hundreds upon thousands of small enemy boats surround them from the lake entrances in all directions like a sky-blotting swarm. Though he forcefully maintained his composure on the surface, commanding the troops around him to link ships into formations to meet the enemy assault, his heart groaned in anguish: Duke Changguo has doomed me!
As one of Great Chu’s two chief naval commanders, Gao Chengyuan had served as a guard beside Emperor Tianyou in his early years. The Emperor had assigned him to protect Yang Yuanpu’s safety, after which he served as a general in the Dragon Sparrow Army. From start to finish, he could be said to be Yang Yuanpu’s most trusted commander.
After the feudal reduction wars, he was appointed Governor of Yuezhou, responsible for establishing the Yueyang Navy, thereby becoming one of Great Chu’s principal naval commanders.
Gao Chengyuan was not a renowned naval commander in the traditional sense, but he clearly understood that without thoroughly investigating Hongze Basin’s water conditions, and with the Five-Tooth Army’s main warships being primarily pointed-bottom vessels built in Xuzhou that drew deep water, conditions were unfavorable for combat operations in the shallow lake regions of Hongze Basin.
He had firmly opposed Duke Changguo’s plan to have the naval main force conduct a flanking raid on Hongze Basin. But the Emperor and most of the court officials eagerly hoped the court could achieve more brilliant military achievements in Jiangbei before year’s end. They believed the Tower Ship Army remnants were extremely weakened, and Liang Army had virtually no decent naval forces, so the Five-Tooth Navy could certainly overcome Hongze Basin’s unfavorable factors. Even if they merely frightened the Tower Ship Army remnants out of Hongze Basin, as long as it facilitated the Right Divine Martial Army’s overland assault on Zhongli City, the objective would be achieved.
But where was even half a sign of fright among these Tower Ship Army remnants before his eyes?
Gao Chengyuan watched everything before him in anguish…
***
In the pale white mist, Li Chong reined in his horse atop a low hill at Songlin Pass.
Blocked by the thin fog, scenery beyond a hundred paces became blurred, yet Li Chong still made a show of gazing into the distance from the cliff edge.
After a moment, Xu Jing, dressed in official robes and accompanied by two burly men disguised as woodcutters, climbed up the hill and said to Li Chong: “Haozhou’s garrison received word late last night and hastily dispatched two thousand foot soldiers from the city at dawn, heading to reinforce Zhongli! We just don’t know if we’ll manage to take Zhao Mingting’s head this time?”
Before the Jinling Incident, Zhao Mingting had directed the Bureau of Operations in the Privy Council. Xu Jing didn’t seek to distinguish himself in the military now, but to take Zhao Mingting’s head in this chaos would carry symbolic meaning of a certain kind.
Haozhou City lay seventy to eighty li west of Hongze Basin. The key fortress city controlling the western entrance where the Huai River entered Hongze Basin was actually Zhongli City.
The first objective of their raid plan was to severely damage the Tower Ship Army remnants and capture Zhongli City. This way, the Right Divine Martial Army could establish itself on the western shore of Hongze Basin, with naval and land forces mutually supporting each other like the horns of a beast.
Seeing the rebel forces in Haozhou City hastily reinforcing Zhongli City, Li Chong believed everything was developing according to their expectations. His spirits greatly lifted, and he declared heroically:
“Excellent! Then let us go and take Zhao Mingting’s head to use as a chamber pot!”
The night before last, he had personally led over a thousand elite cavalry in a covert infiltration through Mopan Ridge. Last night, they entered the northern foothills of Cangwu Hill southeast of Haozhou City, tasked with intercepting reinforcements heading to Zhongli City.
Even if they couldn’t severely damage or annihilate the enemy reinforcements in the field, he would use the cavalry’s mobility advantage to delay them until Chen Mingsheng and Gao Long led the Right Divine Martial Army’s main infantry and cavalry forces from Mopan Ridge to surround and annihilate them, then press the attack toward Zhongli City.
Li Chong ordered the signal fires stacked in the hills to be lit, sending messages toward Mopan Ridge. He assembled the cavalry hidden in the pine forest and rode across the field ridges, galloping northward.
The cavalry’s superiority over infantry lay in their ability to move rapidly through shallow hills, low ridges and open fields even without roads. They would need only a little over an hour to intercept the two thousand-plus enemy reinforcements rushing out from Haozhou City.
***
The morning sun rising above the treetops appeared so gentle through the thin mist—not at all glaring to the eye.
Several signal fires lit successively in the direction of Cangwu Hill were more than thirty li from Haozhou City.
Wen Muqiao and Niu Gengru stood atop Haozhou’s city walls. Naturally blocked by the thin mist, they couldn’t see those signal fires rising from Cangwu Hill, but after hearing the scouts’ reports, they seemed to faintly hear the thunder of war horses galloping across the earth.
“Are we truly abandoning those two thousand men who just left the city without rescue?” Niu Gengru asked Wen Muqiao with considerable difficulty.
“When one must sever yet hesitates, one will surely suffer the consequences. Shouzhou no longer has the luxury of hesitation,” Wen Muqiao opened his turbid old eyes, gazing at the rolling masses of white fog on the moat surface outside the city walls.
“…” Niu Gengru sighed.
At this stage, they had two choices.
The first choice: have the twenty thousand elite Shouzhou cavalry assembled at Haozhou’s southwestern edge advance eastward in full force now, completely annihilating the Right Divine Martial Army main forces lured north of the Wujian Mountain Range.
This would not only force Li Zhigao to lift the siege of Chaozhou City with the Left and Right Martial Guard Armies, Left Dragon Sparrow Army and other elite Chu forces, more securely preserving Chaozhou City and its garrison, but also allow them to recapture Chuzhou City and seal off the court’s naval remnants’ southern escape route.
Having reached this point, there would be no need for the Liang Army elite main forces assembled at Yingzhou and Xuzhou to march south. Shouzhou could largely maintain its independent status without fully entering Liang Kingdom’s embrace.
However, even if they severely damaged the court’s main naval forces and the Right Divine Martial Army’s main strength, for the Great Chu court, such setbacks would only require three to five years to recover from. Moreover, they would thoroughly enrage Liang Army.
When the next time came, how would they face the court forces surging against them?
The second choice was to abandon the two thousand miscellaneous troops already outside the city, making Yang Yuanpu and that fool Duke Changguo Li Pu believe that even though the naval main forces fell into a trap and ambush in Hongze Basin and suffered heavy damage, this wouldn’t prevent them from having ample time to capture Chaozhou City.
They would keep Li Zhigao, Guo Liang, Zhou Dan and the others commanding the Left and Right Martial Guard Armies and Left Dragon Sparrow Army pinned down beneath Chaozhou, even if it meant the complete annihilation of Chaozhou’s garrison. As long as they waited for Liang’s elite cavalry to cross the Huai River and march south together with Shouzhou Army’s main forces, they could effectively destroy the court’s military power in Huaixi in one stroke.
Afterward, Liang Army could press the offensive to capture Jingxiang and Huaidong.
Of course, doing this meant whether Wen Bo could hold Chaozhou City and survive was another matter entirely, and Shouzhou Army and they themselves could only fully align with Liang Kingdom, unable to maintain independence.
In truth, without Wen Muqiao’s reminder, Niu Gengru clearly understood they could only choose the second path. He simply felt somewhat unwilling in his heart…