Under Wen Ruilin’s escort, Xi Ren and her guards traveled by carriage and horse to Daishan Stockade at the northwestern foot of Wuya Mountain, arriving at noon the next day.
By this time, not only had Left Army Commander Lin Haizheng, Vice Commander Feng Xuan, and Army Administrator Gao Shao and others arrived at Daishan Stockade, but Han Qian had also traveled through a safer passage the previous night and, escorted by Han Donghu and other guard cavalry, arrived at Daishan Stockade.
Daishan Stockade had only five hundred stationed troops, but besides the two battalions of six hundred guard cavalry led by Han Donghu and the over four hundred escort troops of Lin Haizheng, Feng Xuan, Gao Shao and others, two thousand soldiers from Shiquan, Yongyang and other places had also been transferred overnight to Daishan Stockade.
Daishan Stockade had originally been a market town at the northwestern foot of the southern section of the Wujian Mountain Range in earlier years. Later it became a defensive fortress where Shou Prefecture forces blocked Tangyi forces from exiting the southern peaks of the Wujian Mountains to launch raids from the northwest. After the Battle of Wujin Ridge, Shou Prefecture forces completely contracted their defensive line, and Daishan Stockade became a forward base for Tangyi Army to control the northwestern foot of the Wujian Mountains and observe Zhaoyi, Huailing, and Mopan Valley.
Daishan Stockade had undergone several repairs in recent years and was currently a fortified city with six hundred paces of depth, walls one zhang high and thick, surrounded by deep moats on all sides.
Before the Battle of Wujin Ridge, Kong Xirong had led his forces to hold the Wujian Mountains for over a year, thoroughly implementing Han Qian’s strategic intent of guerrilla warfare. Besides sending troops to raid Shou Prefecture forces, he had focused on developing the interior of the Wujian Mountains, requisitioning laborers to continuously repair and widen the treacherous mountain paths, making the various stockades in the mountains more closely connected.
After the great victory at Wujin Ridge, Han Qian mobilized over a thousand logistics troops to build a post road outside Mopan Valley that traversed the southern mountain ridges of the Wujian Mountains, connecting Chuzhou City with Daishan Stockade.
Although the Wujian Mountains stretched two hundred li from southwest to northeast, the terrain was much gentler compared to Mount Huaiyang, with the main peak only two to three hundred meters high.
Although the Daichu Post Road was more than ten li longer than the Huazhu Peak Post Road, there were already considerable existing passages connecting through the mountains. Even building to the standard of a ten-chi road, the project scale and difficulty were reduced by a level.
The Daichu Post Road had been completed before the new year. Besides Chuzhou City, the counties of Yongyang to the north of Chuzhou and Shiquan, Wushou, Puyang, and Tangyang to the south could all bypass Mopan Ship and, via the Daichu Post Road, continuously and rapidly pass through the Wujian Mountain Range into Daishan Stockade, without needing to go around through Shiquan County on the western side of the Wujian Mountains.
Feng Liao and the others had mainly worried beforehand that they wouldn’t be able to gain Chen Kun’s trust, resulting in them gaining no benefits and being left with the infamy and stain of colluding with the enemy.
They hadn’t expected that at dawn, not only would the Hejin Army stationed at the western entrance of Mopan Valley and the forward ramparts north of Daishan Stockade successively withdraw, but Chen Kun would even have Wen Ruilin return Xi Ren, who very likely could have been detained. With all worries set aside, they now fully arranged matters for taking over Hao Prefecture.
Hao Prefecture had once, due to prolonged warfare between Liang and Chu as well as serious flooding from the middle reaches of the Huai River and the western shore of Hongze Lake, seen its four counties of Zhaoyi, Huailing, Zhongli, and Hao City have a combined population of only forty to fifty thousand. But after the Peace Palace coerced large numbers of households to flee north, and especially after the Battle of Wujin Ridge when Xu Mingzhen urgently relocated households from southern Huo Prefecture and Shou Prefecture, the household population in Hao Prefecture, located on the inner side of both armies’ defensive lines, had surged to two hundred thousand in just three or four years.
Regardless of how the situation developed subsequently, being able to take over the four counties of Zhaoyi, Huailing, Zhongli, and Hao City and their two hundred thousand people without losing a single soldier—Feng Liao felt that no matter what, when news spread and the court and public condemned Tangyi Army for colluding with the enemy and betraying their own side, it was worth it.
Think about it—to compete for control of over two hundred thousand people in Mount Huaiyang, how much risk had they taken, how many elite officers and soldiers had they sacrificed, and in just one year afterward, how much grain and money had they invested in managing the heartland of Mount Huaiyang and stabilizing the Wujin Ridge defensive line?
Once they controlled southern Huo Prefecture, the strategic value of the Huazhu Peak trestle road would drastically decrease. But to ensure they held strategic superiority in the heartland of Mount Huaiyang, how much manpower and resources had they invested in building that trestle road?
Thousands of able-bodied laborers, in freezing weather, clinging to cliffs to quarry stone and cut through mountains—almost every day laborers lost their footing and fell to their deaths from the mountain cliffs.
Seeing the people of Tangyi, although Wen Ruilin didn’t have much worry about being detained himself, his heart was still bitter. Even if Great Liang could survive this crisis, the fruits of His Majesty’s four to five years of campaigns north and south after ascending the throne would most likely all turn to nothing.
Wen Ruilin suppressed his complex emotions and came forward to meet Han Qian, Feng Liao, Lin Haizheng and the others. He had come mainly to show goodwill, hoping that Hao Prefecture could change hands in an orderly manner so that Hejin Army’s elite forces could calmly cross the Huai and go north.
From a long-term perspective, even if His Majesty could turn the tide, for quite a long time in the future, Great Liang could only adopt a defensive posture on the southern front and would need to ease the situation between Liang and Chu in recent years, giving everyone a chance to recuperate.
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Chen Kun led two thousand cavalry to cross the Huai and go north first. The remaining seventeen thousand armored soldiers of the other Hejin Army units all withdrew from the southern bank at Tongkou Ferry by dusk on the third day of the third month, entering Tongkou City on the northern bank of the Huai River, which belonged to Si Prefecture.
Meanwhile, six thousand elite troops of Tangyi’s Left Army System, led by Commander Lin Hai, Vice Commander Feng Xuan, and Army Supervisor Zhao Qi, combined with two thousand guard cavalry led by Zhao Wuji and Han Donghu as well as over four thousand logistics and garrison troops, separately stationed in Hao City, Zhaoyi, Huailing, Zhongli and other places, fully taking over Hao Prefecture.
All this happened in just three days.
Not only Shou Prefecture forces to the west, not only the households within Hao Prefecture territory, but even Huaidong Army, whose forward troops had already stationed in Shiliang County south of Hongze Lake and east of the northern section of the Wujian Mountains, were dumbfounded by everything that had happened in Hao Prefecture over these two days, completely unaware of what had occurred.
On the fifth day of the third month, Yin Peng accompanied State Minister Ruan Yan, bearing orders from Prince of Xin Yang Yuanyan, urgently rushing to Hao City to see Han Qian and inquire about the details.
Hao City, also called Canfu or Linhuai, was the old administrative seat of Hao Prefecture, with terrain that was high in the south and low in the north.
The Jiu Mountain in the south was a remnant range of Mount Huaiyang, stretching over thirty li from east to west, with the main peak less than a hundred zhang high—the overall terrain even smaller than the Wujian Mountain Range. The northern part was the Huai River alluvial plain, with low-lying terrain.
Within Linhuai County territory, most of the land, especially the Huai River alluvial plain in the north, was quite fertile, but like Zhongli County to the east, it suffered flooding almost every year. Even in the past two or three years, despite large-scale population migrations from Huo Prefecture and Shou Prefecture, the utilization of this most fertile alluvial plain had been extremely limited.
Climbing the Linhuai city wall built of rammed earth and now sprouting new grass, looking far and near at mostly desolate marshlands with some broken walls and ruins in between—these were villages and stockades abandoned either due to war or flooding. Everywhere were swamps and lakes formed by floodwaters that couldn’t drain away after flooding.
The floods came not only from upstream on the Huai River. Within Hao Prefecture territory there were also multiple streams and rivers, the farthest originating from the northern slope of the Wujian Mountains and flowing into the Huai River. The embankments of these streams and rivers had long been in disrepair, and together with Hongze Lake to the east, every summer and autumn they flooded disastrously.
Xu Mingzhen, defending Huai West and managing the defensive line centered on Shou Prefecture, focused on the upper reaches of the Huai River and even deliberately allowed the areas of northern Hao Prefecture near the Huai River to flood disastrously, so as to form swamps and lakes of various sizes to serve as terrain obstacles restricting Liang forces from advancing south.
Of course, when Ruan Yan, accompanied by Yin Peng, rushed to Linhuai City to see Han Qian, they weren’t concerned about these matters. What they more urgently wanted to understand was what exactly had happened.
Not only had Hejin Army stationed in Hao Prefecture suddenly withdrawn north, but Liang forces in Xu and Si—east of Hongze Lake and north of the Huai River—had also suddenly abandoned the defensive stockades built along the northern bank of the Huai River starting the night of the second day of the third month, rapidly contracting toward several major cities like Si Prefecture and Hai Prefecture.
Liang State had sixty thousand elite troops in Xu Prefecture. Although they were mainly Xu Prefecture troops that Lady Sima had managed for many years, there were also fifteen thousand direct subordinate infantry and cavalry that Han Yuanqi had commanded over from Cai Prefecture, as well as over ten thousand newly organized Right Fleet troops.
Although Huaidong’s scouts and secret agents weren’t as powerful as Tangyi’s, they constantly monitored movements in Xu and Si north of the Huai River.
However, news transmitted from enemy territory was inconvenient. Yang Yuanyan and the others only learned by dusk on the fourth day of the third month that besides troops on the defensive line along the northern bank of the Huai River contracting northward, Han Yuanqi had already led six thousand cavalry north before nightfall on the first day of the third month. After that, nine thousand elite armored soldiers of Cai Prefecture Army successively went north in several groups from their respective defensive zones on the second and third days of the third month.
Currently, defense duties in Xu and Si were taken over by Xu Prefecture Vice Military Commissioner Sima Tan.
By the fourth day of the third month, Liang forces even showed signs of abandoning the naval base at Hai Prefecture where they had invested large amounts of money and grain to build. Part of the Right Fleet’s warships and soldiers went upstream on the Huai River to Tongkou to join with Chen Kun’s Hejin Army, looking ready to follow the main Cai Prefecture Army force led by Han Yuanqi north at any time. Another part took the sea route, withdrawing into Mi Prefecture to the north.
Yang Yuanyan, Wang Wenqian, Ruan Yan and others could guess at this time that something serious had likely happened in Liang State. However, on one hand they had no definite intelligence—merely speculation—and couldn’t rule out the possibility that all this might be a Liang military stratagem to lure the enemy. On the other hand, any military force transitioning from defense to offense required a process.
At this time, they had only dispatched small groups of scout vanguard troops to enter the northern bank of the Huai River to reconnoiter enemy conditions. The main forces didn’t dare easily cross the Huai and go north.
Even if it wasn’t a stratagem to lure the enemy, between Xu and Si there were still over thirty thousand Xu Prefecture troops under Lady Sima’s control garrisoning the area.
For Huaidong to launch a large-scale offensive and recapture the land they had previously lost north of the Huai River would require careful planning and preparation.
But before all that, they first needed to figure out what exactly had happened.
Various Tangyi Army units had made large-scale movements toward southern Hao Prefecture from the Shiquan, Chuzhou City, and Puyang line starting the night of the thirty-first. This obviously couldn’t be hidden from the eyes and ears that Huaidong had planted within Tangyi territory.
The large-scale unusual movements of Liang forces occurred earliest on the first day of the third month in Hao Prefecture, and on the second day of the third month between Xu and Si.
This undoubtedly indicated that Han Qian had already known what happened in Liang State before Liang forces made large-scale unusual movements…