Chapter 137: Journeying With The Dragon
After Wu Fei led troops to the Gu Shou Pass gate and “returned without success,” on October 12, Yao Capital sent an imperial envoy rushing to Bo Prefecture to head to the Eastern Market Army’s main camp to convey the imperial decree.
Of course, the imperial envoy did not dare to truly convey the “rebuke.” In this military camp where officers and soldiers were on high alert, he could feel the “no trespassing” atmosphere from top to bottom. This was completely different from the capital’s perfunctory forbidden camp that feigned loyalty to the emperor. If he spoke carelessly, he would be treated as a “trespasser” or “nuisance.”
After Wu Fei completed the courtier etiquette, the imperial envoy vaguely mentioned that some in the imperial court said “Wu Fei is raising bandits to strengthen himself.”
Hearing the imperial envoy say this, Wu Fei was first stunned, then aggrievedly called the nine capital non-commissioned officers from next door to testify for him. He had been planning day and night to gnaw away at Gu Shou Pass. “How to cut off Gu Shou Pass’s grain” and “how to lure out Gu Shou Pass’s troops to fight” such contingency plans were being executed every day.
These non-commissioned officers, upon arriving, saw the Marshal being harshly criticized by the imperial court and immediately became anxious.
Although they were often warned by Wu Fei “don’t be hasty,” he understood human relations well; calling them over at this time was precisely to “be hasty.”
Meanwhile, Wu Fei put on a pitiful expression to the imperial envoy and said: The ones he brought were all the Yao Capital’s own flesh and blood! Your Majesty personally entrusted them and they could not afford too many losses. Was today’s imperial envoy conveying the holy intent contrary to what Your Majesty instructed back then?
Li Cunrong took the lead on the spot: Yes, it’s not that we’re afraid to die; if the imperial court really orders us to charge, the brothers will surely repay Your Majesty’s grace. But does His Majesty have any imperial decree?
Hong Qiang: It’s only right for us to wrap our corpses in horse leather, but the imperial court will surely prepare the white cloth for our brothers, right?
Then the non-commissioned officers all started speaking in sarcastic tones.
After this display of pulling the banner to intimidate and invoking the tiger’s might, even the imperial envoy from Yao Capital couldn’t hold up. Faced with the aggressive questioning from these Yao Capital-voiced non-commissioned officers, he had to admit that “raising bandits to strengthen himself” That was just some people’s opinion..
This imperial envoy already felt it was quite a chore: over there was Prince Zhou as regent, and here were the future core backbone of the capital camp.
Those Prince’s Mansion advisors had stuck their hands in to issue orders, wanting to convey both favor and authority, but they didn’t consider who the target was.
Could these men be bought off with a slap followed by a date?
These Eastern Market Army elders, when they return to Yao Capital, would be welcomed with banquets by a large group of top families in the capital.
In the past half year, other Da Yao troops elsewhere still worried about Yao Capital skimping on military supplies in armaments and equipment, but the Eastern Market Army has never lacked equipment up to now. Because there were too many connections and channels.
The imperial envoy inwardly cursed Prince Zhou’s advisor group as fools: such an ironclad Son of Heaven direct lineage troop, instead of secretly communicating to win them over, why fuss about making them subdue dragons and tame tigers?
Moreover, even if you want to take down Wu Fei, you need to pick the right timing; right now Wu Fei is still commanding this large camp.
The imperial envoy recalled the solemn mutual assurances along the Northern road and the killing intent-heavy army, sighing inwardly: “This Wu Fei is something else; Your Majesty has used the right man. Yao Capital hasn’t had such martial virtue in how many years—thousands of troops are easy to get, one general is hard to find.”
The imperial envoy sighed to Prince Zhou: Emperor Shu has firmly grasped Wu Fei, this man of both virtue and talent—how rare it is. How could he offend him for the sake of some woman’s face?” A blue flash suddenly crossed his mind
After a hearty exchange in the military camp, the Imperial Envoy promised the frontline officers and soldiers that he would surely inform Prince Zhou, the Regent in the rear, of the morale.
At the same time, Wu Fei also gave the imperial envoy a guarantee: the Gu Shou Pass battle could be settled within two years. The imperial envoy smiled bitterly: Two years? Prince Zhou has been regent for only half a year; the merit you earn two years from now, Prince Zhou won’t get any of it.
…on the chessboard, unable to move the chess piece…
After Wu Fei analyzed the terrain of that narrow-necked coastline north of Gu Shou Pass on the sand table, he marked Hu City, two hundred li to the south, as a key point. The Transportation Bureau opened up multiple routes leading to Hu City, with wood, iron ingots, and artisans gathering toward here.
At this time, the Hu City area was undergoing large-scale construction. Wu Fei assembled the artisans and began crafting a batch of maritime plunder ships.
Liu Shan Gang is where the Yao Army can’t advance, so send out a detachment from there to make an eastward flanking maneuver to the rear and harass, which can also choke their throat.
Amid the numerous non-commissioned officers taking notes, Wu Fei assigned strategic priorities. From Gu Shou Pass to the inland Yan Tu, there is a 150-li area that must follow the coastline. Inland are mountains, similar to Chile’s terrain. In this width of less than twenty kilometers, it’s just a matter of pinching it off casually.
According to the calculations, the food and grass shortfall at Gu Shou Pass is at least four thousand shi per month. Nowadays, it is all transported from outside the pass, and Wu Fei decides to add a little cost to them.
Wu Fei carefully calculated: As long as two hundred people are dispatched every month, infiltrating to the area behind Gu Shou Pass via waterways, it would force the Great Hao Army to keep a thousand troops long-term just to transport food and grass.
Moreover, the rations for one thousand troops and horses, and entering this hundred-li grain transport area, also requires consuming eight thousand shi every month, which is twice that of Gu Shou Pass.
Wu Fei pointed at these terrains and casually indicated at least four points most suitable for ambushing the grain transport route.
The raiding troop doesn’t even need two hundred people; fifty elite cavalry can achieve it. Setting fires to destroy will always be much simpler in difficulty coefficient than defending. If this continues to be consumed, the False Hao at the Gu Shou Pass frontline will be chronically fatigued.
Inside the military tent, Wu Fei asked the numerous non-commissioned officers: For the maritime ship operations, is there anyone among you willing to take this order?
The non-commissioned officers looked at each other in dismay. Regarding the boats, they had tried them in the past few days, drifting on the boats for two days and vomiting and having diarrhea nonstop,
Wu Fei: Then I’ll decide on the personnel.
…carrying the named Bamboo Token, it had long been placed in Wu Fei’s sleeve…
Zhao Xian Zhong sat on the boat. At this time, the boat rocked back and forth. His entire body of killing intent overflowed from the shaking, as if he wanted to chop someone at any moment to relieve his boredom. Behind him were the soldiers he had trained for two months.
Wu Fei gave him two hundred troops, including fifty cavalry and two ballistae, as well as a full set of cotton-iron composite armor, and then began the exciting behind enemy lines harassment.
The Hao Army’s logistics supply team was very easy to find. Zhao Xian Zhong rode the griffin to the coastline and landed on the road, inspecting the horse dung left on the wheel tracks. The dryness of the horse dung could indicate how many hours the enemy convoy had been gone, and then by inferring, he could roughly understand where they were.
On October 23, Zhao Xian Zhong quickly blocked a Hao Army grain transport convoy of three hundred people.
The Hao Army grain transport caravan leader initially put on a show trying to bluff his way through, but the Hao Person who called himself “East Sea’s Number One Blade” Liu Zheng had just finished saying “give me some face” when he was killed within three moves, his fine head flying off.
Zhao Xian Zhong shook the blood off his blade; damn it, what Liu family Blade Technique? Bullshit, who’s next?
The huge head died with eyes wide open, evidently reporting his name was merely hoping the bandits would know better and retreat, little did he know that Zhao Xian Zhong precisely wanted to behead generals.
And those Hao Army soldiers escorting the food and grass had already come to regard Liu Zheng as the pillar of the family in their daily interactions. Along the way, Liu Zheng had shown off his blade technique plenty of times, such as chopping down small trees as thick as a bowl’s rim with one slash and then smoothly sheathing his blade. Or killing a wild boar with one stroke, things like that.
These second-line Hao Army troops regard the Liu family Blade Technique as a divine skill, yet now on the battlefield they can’t last three rounds.
The Hao Army soldiers who had previously cheered for the Liu family’s Blade Technique naturally hated that their parents had given them two fewer legs to escape when facing off against Zhao Xian Zhong’s ferocious killing intent
Zhao Xian Zhong did not pursue the fleeing enemies. He loaded all the food and grass as well as the ox carts entirely onto ships and brought them back to the dock in Hu City in the southern region.
…Wu Fei warned him: As a sinner, you must earn merit…
In Gu Shou Pass, Pu E remained silent after learning that her troops on the rear line had been intercepted and killed by Wu Fei’s pirate system.
Wu Fei chose to stubbornly endure without fighting in the Southern Region, which made her very uncomfortable. Closing the pass, the Hao Army could not withdraw, and they also dared not engage in field battle.
Now she also had the same impulse as Zhao Qi, that is, to use a thousand strong laborer troops from within Yan territory to replace the elite soldiers at Liu Shan Gang. At the same time, conduct a count of the troops stationed at Gu Shou Pass, assemble a formation of three thousand army battle soldiers, then head south to infiltrate, raid, and plunder.
However, after Pu E inquired with Zhao Cheng through the Swimming Dragon messenger about the situation, Zhao Cheng replied that it was impossible, and gave a prophecy: on this journey out of closed-door cultivation, it would be very smooth at the beginning, grabbing food and grass and military supplies along the way, and hearing that more food and grass were coming from the rear, but after going deeper, she would be annihilated.
Zhao Cheng in military attire in the mirror: Maintaining three thousand elites at Gu Shou Pass is something that must be done, even if people starve to death within Yan Prefecture, it must be maintained.
Pu E finally couldn’t hold back: I’m starving here, but where are you?
Zhao Cheng fell silent and said: The breakout in the North is imminent, please hold on.
Pu E couldn’t hold back and said with some anger: So you’re planning to abandon the east.
Zhao Cheng gave a definite answer: After Bo Prefecture was recaptured, it has already become irretrievable. Holding on one more day is one more day.
For Zhao Cheng, as long as it was confirmed that the opponent capable of fighting “large corps mobile warfare” was pinned down in a certain direction, that was enough.
After the communication ended, Pu E looked at the System and fell silent, because if she rejected it again, her loyalty would drop to a very dangerous level.
Thus, Pu E ordered the entire army to reduce rations on one hand, while acting freely and without restraint in the mountains on the other, then scattered some high-yield seeds from other realms in the mountains for planting, including some special crops with golden stalks as thick as large sticks.
This crop came from a “knight culture” nation in the Haotian Realm, where the nation boasted “ninety percent tax, who dares not to rejoice,” but the reason Pu E hadn’t used it before was that this crop was too hegemonic, demanding too much from the soil. In the knight nation, heavy taxes ensured most farmers didn’t live past thirty, so it could give back to the mountains and rivers, but scattering these crops in the Xi Ren Realm, where Dragon Descendants were already few, would their “heaven and earth recognition” be greatly reduced?
Pu E couldn’t worry about that anymore.
…War will bring hardship to everyone…
After capturing the main cities of Bo Prefecture, Wu Fei was busy with internal reorganization, rewards and punishments to stabilize loyalty, pulling in those who should be pulled in, controlling all who should be controlled. But now looking back at the warehouses, he also began to have a headache over food and grass.
Now his total troop strength in Bo Prefecture was twenty thousand army, as for the recruited laborers, he had already sent them back to their hometowns, as he really couldn’t afford to keep them.
Wu Fei had already overdrawn the local wealthy households’ donated food and grass in September. Although the grain from capturing Huangyu City could provide a breather, he borrowed even more grain from the wealthy households.
It was worth mentioning that people were now starving to death in Bo Prefecture, but most of those who starved were the ones turned into slaves in this war; after capture, they had always been starved, sallow-faced and skinny, never full.
It was also thanks to this group of people who starved being demoted to the slave class; these past few months, they had been tacitly accepted by the village elders as the “group that can be sacrificed during the disaster year,” so the common people in Bo Prefecture could still endure it, convincing themselves with “the ones who deserved to die have died” to continue supporting the war.
From another angle, if Wu Fei hadn’t done the “captives turned into slaves” work, but “benevolently” directly released this group back to their hometowns, now the ones starving to death would be the local ordinary self-farming farmers.
When “the ones who shouldn’t die have died,” the countryside would feel grief, and the common people might uprising now.
As for why the slaves didn’t uprising? Because now the captives had been dispersed to become minorities in various places; when the locality lacked that ten percent of rations, these designated “minority” people became the sacrificial victims of “sorry, please go die.”
But even so, for the Bo Prefecture people, watching fellow villagers starve to death right before their eyes still stirred pity.
This was the loyalty that Wu Fei was currently overdrawing in the war.
Wu Fei knew well: If there was a “military failure” next, the Eastern Market Army, which had already overdrawn local expectations, would slip and die miserably. So he must stabilize the current winning streak.
War involves bleeding and death without mercy, and he must ensure the enemy dies more than his own side.
Only if the enemy collapses faster than his own side could his side persist.
The battle Wu Fei was leading in Bo Prefecture was different from the “military exercise” nature of the campaign in the Southern Border; now the Eastern Market Army soldiers lacked strategic leeway. It seemed like successive victories, but actually they were walking a tightrope toward the shore of victory.
One general succeeds while ten thousand bones wither; when Wu Fei realized this, he found he had already reached this point.
By late October, the graves in the chaotic burial mounds outside Huangyu City had many new mounds of earth. The burial teams wailed with suona horns, weighing on Wu Fei’s heart.
However, just as Wu Fei was feeling sentimental, he received a messenger from Gu Shou Pass coming to visit.
Wu Fei looked at the messenger and asked back: Is it too late for your household’s Grand Tutor to now talk about both sides ceasing war?
The Haotian messenger hurriedly said: General, you have already conquered the entire Bo Prefecture, but our army occupies the pass checkpoints with thick city walls and abundant food and grass reserves. Your large army wanting to capture our checkpoints is no easy task; continuing hostility would only bring suffering to the people.
Wu Fei nodded and then let the messenger go back and wait for news.
Speaking of ceasing war? Wu Fei: What a joke, when we can beat you, why sign a treaty with you.
After the messenger left, Wu Fei immediately instructed his non-commissioned officers to prepare, because the opponent, after unfavorable negotiations, would definitely proactively create contradictions. (Note: Xuan Chong: Women are like this, and right, the Rice Empire is too.)
…Plot loading divider…
On October 24, the Eastern Market Army ambushed the troops from Gu Shou Pass coming to stir trouble. As this force of about five hundred prepared to set fire to the millet fields in southern Bo Prefecture, they indeed encountered batches of Eastern Market firearm soldiers wearing breastplates midway.
As the troublemaking Hao Army was caught red-handed, they were a bit panicked now.
The Hao Army iron cavalry wanted to find an opportunity to charge and break through the Eastern Market Army’s blocking troops. They targeted the weak band of carefully selected square formation laborers padding the numbers, trying to force a rout.
The result was that upon charging in, they discovered that under the hemp cloth clothes of these Da Yao laborers without armor, who looked extremely ragged, they were wearing iron armor. At this, the Hao Army cursed the Yao People for being treacherous again.
The Zhao Qi in command specially gave the charging cavalry “harmony collection” to boost their courage. The Hao Army hooves thundered on the ground, forming a light cavalry march rhythm.
The scene the Hao Army cavalry squad leaders imagined—where the Yao Army square formation, upon facing gun cavalry charge, would have a dozen people sent flying by the impact force—did not occur. The Yao Army soldiers, facing the impact force, merely retreated a few steps collectively.
This situation was very strange, as if all the soldiers were one body; the impact force wasn’t on the first row, but borne jointly by the following several rows, so the first row wasn’t smashed open, turning into several rows as one, advancing in step like tug-of-war under drag upon impact.
As for this? This batch of soldiers were all wearing red cloths, taken from a battle flag. The battle flag’s effect was “advance together retreat together,” increasing resistance to charges and anti-large types; not just cavalry, even charges from those giant beasts and war chariots could be withstood.
This item was offered by the common people in Hu City, said to be dyed by the blood of two loyal civil and military officials who died for their country after Bo Prefecture fell, hence possessing such a magical effect.
After the Hao Army cavalry charge failed to break the formation, the Yao Army, with the red cloths on their chests, stepped forward. If someone was stabbed down by cavalry, others immediately filled in, and the formation became even tighter; every spear thrust was not by one person’s hand, but gripped and pushed forward together by all.
Just like that, the horses were toppled like fences pushed by floodwaters. The Hao Army knights suffered heavy losses, and at this time the rest of the square formations advanced to encircle, while within the formations, small one-inch caliber cannons were pushed out, loaded with shotgun. The Eastern Market Army gunners began assaulting these cavalry.
After the grapeshot iron hoops burst from the barrel, they shattered into swarms of tiny black dots sweeping over the Hao Army cavalry cluster. Their casualties were heavy, and the cavalry retreated in panic.
The Zhao Qi who came to raid, after escaping back this time, changed from the opportunistic quick-victory faction to a defensive faction; he no longer wanted to go out.
After the war ended, Wu Fei looked at the war horses dead all over the ground, shook his head and said: Did I meowingly just help them solve part of their food and grass problem?
However, Wu Fei soon focused on how to handle the horse meat. The farmers took knives and cut the meat right on the battlefield. Hot steam rose from the horse carcasses. The horse meat needed to be salted for preservation. They ate the easily spoiling organs first. Horse liver is poisonous (excess vitamin A), so it had to be chopped up and mixed into the porridge.
Meanwhile in Gu Shou Pass, after Pu E learned that the troop she sent for a sneak attack had been completely blocked, instead of reflecting on the situation of “not listening to Zhao Cheng’s words,” she broke down.
As a transmigrator, Pu E had not felt this “being calculated against” sensation for a long time, which made her break down.
Pu E was so angry that her expression changed. She opened the system and said: System, check the person’s lifespan.
The system flickered for a bit: The person’s lifespan is 120 years, with 94 years remaining now.
Pu E: Oh, so he’s a long-lived one. System, add attribute to the target: die young.
System: Currently calculating, will require consumption of unknown information enthalpy.
Pu E: Try adding it.
…The system’s hourglass started turning…
Xuan Chong was interrogating the captives when he saw the system pop up.
Xuan Chong temporarily handed the captives over to others.
Xuan Chong: What’s wrong?
The system said: New task, destroy a nation. Please erase the nation established on this planet by the Dragon Descendant of the Haotian Realm before age fifty. No academic credit reward. Afterward, you can obtain a “novel” from the library.
