War drums thundered as the cavalry units crossed the thick river ice, passing over the Yongfeng Canal. After entering their launching positions, they showed no intention of stopping to organize formations. Instead, they whipped their mounts even more frantically, stimulating the warhorses to neigh and cry out. Their speed suddenly increased further, like surging giant waves charging fiercely toward the Tangyi forces’ defensive line.
Hundreds and thousands of hooves pounding created thunder rolling across the earth, quickly drowning out the army’s drums and gongs.
The soldiers’ bloodthirsty battle cries reverberated between heaven and earth. Sharp blades flashed cold light as they waved through the air. Lances gripped tight under arms were like venomous snakes extending scarlet tongues.
Seeing the front ranks of Tangyi soldiers all wearing armor and holding large shields, standing motionless like rocks, the vast majority of Shouzhou cavalry didn’t retrieve their cavalry bows.
Cavalry bows could only maximize their effectiveness when harassing from the flanks. But at this moment, even exchanging fire with the powerful crossbows in the Tangyi soldiers’ hands—slightly stronger than infantry bows—would put them at great disadvantage.
However, although cavalry should properly be deployed on flanks for flanking and enveloping attacks, ultimately adjustments had to be made based on actual battlefield conditions.
Their current combat mission was to tear open the Tangyi forces’ defensive formation on the right front in one sustained push. To preserve the Yongfeng Canal, even paying some heavy costs was acceptable.
More men even put away their blades and halberds, fastening them back at their waists or hanging them on saddles. They planted their feet firmly in stirrups, arching their bodies on horseback, using one hand to guard their faces against the locust-swarm of arrows flying over, not caring how many arrows struck the armor on their bodies, not caring about companions constantly falling from horses around them, making final preparations before impact.
What made them even more uncomfortable was that despite the distance being only fifty to sixty paces, the vapor and mist seemed to have grown heavier. Masses of fog rolled through the low-lying ground, preventing them from clearly seeing the situation within the Tangyi formations, hindering their subsequent tactical adjustments.
They also didn’t understand why the Tangyi forces would form up in low-lying terrain. They guessed perhaps it was to block communications between Yongfeng Fort and the west bank of the canal, but such terrain undoubtedly favored their charging at greater speed.
As the distance closed further, the Tangyi soldiers moved. Several front rows of each formation now gathered more tightly in squad-sized units, their large shields overlapping more closely like fish scales. The formations’ centers formed thirty to forty gaps like alleyways, allowing the crossbows hidden within to reveal their savage fangs before the enemy formation.
But the mist was too heavy. Even in the afternoon at merely sixty to seventy paces apart, the foremost Shouzhou cavalry still hadn’t detected the anomaly.
With a “clang,” who knew which crossbow fired first—it was like a strange wind reverberating between heaven and earth.
The effective range of crossbows might only be twice that of arm-drawn crossbows, but their killing power was completely incomparable.
The flat shuttle-shaped arrow heads specially made for crossbows in Xuzhou might have some probability of penetrating armor plates head-on at close range, but wouldn’t penetrate deeply. Most arrows would still be blocked by armor plates.
The over two hundred heavily armored cavalry at the forefront of the Shouzhou cavalry now charged into concentrated fire from hundreds and thousands of crossbow bolts. The soldiers and their warhorses’ armor and gaps between plates bristled with at most twenty to thirty crossbow bolts, but those who had fallen at this point numbered only a dozen or so.
At this moment, both the heavily armored cavalry in front and the light cavalry behind had brought their mounts to a terrifyingly swift charging speed.
Heavily armored cavalry—man, horse, and armor together—weighed over a thousand jin. Charging at high speed, if completely heedless of the horses, not to mention ordinary large shields, even war chariots filled with sand and stone weighing three to four thousand jin could be knocked over, thereby opening gaps for subsequent light cavalry to penetrate deeply, pulling both sides’ forces into chaotic bloody combat.
In melee combat with equal numbers on both sides, cavalry striking down from height and slashing left and right always held advantage over infantry.
However, the Tangyi forces had deployed a total of ninety light war chariots across the three formations facing forward, mounting over ninety crossbows. Each crossbow bolt was like a spear with gleaming death-dealing cold light at its tip. At the close distance of sixty to seventy paces, after firing, never mind armor—even warhorses clad in heavy armor could be shot straight through.
Shoot the horse before the man—the crossbows also concentrated fire on the warhorses, whose targets were much larger than men. Almost instantaneously, forty to fifty warhorses rolled over in pain-filled neighing.
The greatest effect the crossbow formations achieved at this moment wasn’t shooting down forty to fifty warhorses simultaneously.
Crossbows loaded slowly—organizing one volley during a single charge was already the limit.
However, shooting down the foremost forty to fifty warhorses simultaneously, plus more bolts missing their targets and scattering into the enemy formation or striking frozen earth and sending frozen soil blocks flying—hard as stone—had an unimaginable halting effect on the enemy cavalry formation at full charging speed.
Organizing more arm-drawn crossbows might also shoot down forty to fifty men during the enemy cavalry’s charge, but this gradual process, even with men constantly falling, would have very limited disruption to the entire enemy cavalry formation.
Ninety crossbows firing together immediately brought down a swath of over forty heavily armored cavalry at the forefront.
The damage crossbows inflicted on warhorses was a completely different concept from ordinary crossbow bolts. Ordinary horses struck by crossbow bolts might ultimately die from blood loss, but the shock to the horses themselves wasn’t that great. Well-trained warhorses under cavalry control could continue advancing forward. But warhorses struck by crossbow bolts had breastbones shattered, flanks pierced through, blood gushing from gaping wounds. Very few died on the spot—most horses, after falling, struggled with anguished neighing, or stood up maddened and scattered in panicked flight…
The entire charging cavalry formation hadn’t detected the anomaly before being struck by concentrated crossbow fire, so had no preparation to slow in advance. The cavalry behind couldn’t control their speed, rapidly colliding forward. The entire cavalry formation descended into chaos almost instantaneously.
Countless men were thrown from horseback, suffering horrific trampling and crushing, unable to avoid each other.
The light cavalry further back were forced to scatter toward both flanks in their panic, but without heavy armor protection, their formations dispersed and speed reduced, they panicked as they faced even denser concentrated crossbow fire. Men and horses fell in swaths like autumn crops being cut…
“Beat drums and advance!” Han Qian grimly watched the movements on the battlefield, ordering.
The enemy’s momentum at its peak had been beaten into confusion by a single blow. The entire vanguard cavalry formation would now unavoidably descend into chaos.
According to the formulated battle plan, aside from the two infantry battalions on the left flank continuing to monitor the Yongfeng Fort garrison, with one infantry battalion as reserve, the other three infantry battalions should immediately advance toward the east bank of the Yongfeng Canal.
If the enemy formation descended into further chaos, two cavalry battalions would decisively envelop from both flanks, maximizing casualties and routing the enemy to expand their victory.
Obscured by masses of vapor and mist, Xu Mingzhen initially didn’t know why the front formation had suddenly fallen into such great chaos. It was also too chaotic at first—the vanguard cavalry were too busy evading the arrow rain to have anyone immediately rush over to report the front formation’s situation.
Xu Mingzhen thought the Tangyi forces had set some trap before their formation. He ordered the cavalry on the east bank to withdraw, but also to disperse as much as possible and reassemble on the west bank. When he saw hundreds and thousands of Tangyi infantry emerging from the low-lying ground to advance on the east bank of the Yongfeng Canal, he nearly groaned aloud—watching with shock and trembling as within the Tangyi formations, over a hundred war chariots pulled by military horses slowly but steadily advanced, crossbows crouching atop the war chariots like fierce beasts.
Now the crossbows no longer fired in volleys, but rather those that finished loading advanced more quickly to fire.
The Shouzhou forces on the east bank couldn’t organize proper counterattacks, nor could they form defensive positions on the spot. They could only be continuously pressed by the Tangyi forces into retreating backward. That they didn’t immediately scatter in panicked flight showed these Shouzhou elite troops were extraordinarily valiant. Zhao Wuji and Han Donghu now also led cavalry enveloping from the flanks, gradually closing in, using bows and crossbows for concentrated fire, compressing and striking the enemy from both wings as much as possible.
The forces that had arrived first under Xu Mingzhen’s command to reinforce Yongfeng Fort were absolutely the elite of Shouzhou’s elite. Whether in terms of the soldiers’ elite quality or the excellence of their weapons and armor, they absolutely surpassed other Shouzhou forces.
When Xu Mingzhen learned two days ago that Tangyi forces had infiltrated through the Chaozhou defense line in multiple routes, within two days he had assembled the first wave of reinforcements. In the frigid weather, they had rushed one hundred seventy to eighty li, arriving at Yongfeng Fort’s outskirts merely half a day late and directly attacking. Their reaction speed could be called extremely fast.
However, the problem was that the over six thousand troops assembled on both banks of Yongfeng Fort, moving out so quickly, truly hadn’t brought crossbows and other cumbersome medium-to-large siege equipment, much less war chariots that could be temporarily assembled for impact-resistant protective walls to suppress enemy charges.
Although the post and arterial roads north of Yongfeng Fort were all under their control, they couldn’t immediately confirm that the Tangyi forces’ surprise attack target was definitely Yongfeng Fort. Moreover, believing the Tangyi forces must be traveling light with simple equipment, they also guaranteed their cavalry units’ mobility by not bringing war chariots.
The over six thousand Shouzhou soldiers, besides carrying only three days’ rations, even severely lacked arrows. The superiority and inferiority in weapons and siege equipment between the two sides became even more obvious.
And because agriculture around Yongfeng Fort was quite developed, with leveled farmland on both sides of the Yongfeng Canal, this provided tremendous convenience for the Tangyi forces’ war chariot advance.
Under such circumstances, no matter how elite or valiant the Shouzhou soldiers, they had no way to stabilize their footing on both banks of the Yongfeng Canal.
After seeing that part of the Tangyi vanguard had successfully crossed the Yongfeng Canal, bringing over a dozen war chariots mounted with crossbows and scorpion catapults onto the west bank, while more war chariots assembled two crossbow formations on both flanks of the east bank of the Yongfeng Canal—watching blood flowing like rivers everywhere, countless valiant soldiers sacrificing themselves in vain—Xu Mingzhen’s bell-sized pupils filled with blood vessels. At this moment, he could only painfully choose to cut off the arm to save the body, ordering the remaining forces to retreat northwest toward Gaocheng.
Besides ordering Zhao Wuji and Han Donghu to continue leading cavalry to pursue the enemy and expand their victory, Han Qian gathered the infantry. Part rested on both banks of the Yongfeng Canal, while other troops launched an offensive against Yongfeng Fort at dusk.
Before the sky darkened, a pale crescent moon already hung in the firmament, signifying tonight would be a clear night.
War chariots were pushed forward to the front of the formation. In the centers of formations, pits were dug, tung oil poured in and ignited.
They hadn’t brought heavy siege equipment like whirlwind catapults. After all, when disassembled, the catapult arms extending five to six zhang were too cumbersome, unsuitable for rapid long-distance transport.
However, for Yongfeng Fort protected only by three chi thick rammed earth walls, heavy whirlwind catapults weren’t needed. They didn’t even need soldiers to risk arrow rain and poured fire oil to push siege rams to strike the fort walls.
Over thirty crossbows were concentrated to the front. Each volley tore countless holes in the thin protective wall, soon ripping gaps over a zhang wide.
Perhaps having witnessed the miserable sight of the main reinforcement forces being beaten into panicked retreat, or perhaps under the concentrated fire of crossbows and the scorpion catapults continuously hurling fire oil projectiles, the military and civilians in the fort didn’t dare force their way forward, only watching helplessly as the gaps gradually widened…