Wuxia: Drinking with Spring Breeze

The battle raged for nearly three hours until dawn when the Tatar army finally retreated completely, leaving behind twenty to thirty thousand corpses outside Jizhou City, the stench of blood reaching to the heavens.

On the third evening, the Tatar cavalry once again organized their forces and attacked.

Although the Tatars high-level officers had spent an entire day investigating, they hadn’t been able to figure out exactly how the artillery positions were bombed, but through the previous night’s battle, they had probed the actual strength of the Jizhou garrison, which made them believe their strategy of deception had been effective.

So even without artillery cover, they had to take Jizhou Town before reinforcements arrived, to sever the Wei’s nine-border defense system in two!

A strategic shift?

There was no room for maneuvering anymore!

From the moment the battle for Jizhou had erupted, their strategic intent had been exposed, and now shifting the focus of the attack would be ineffective, not to mention it would turn the situation from being proactive to reactive.

Wei could afford the war of attrition, but they could not!

So even though they knew that the siege would cause heavy casualties, they had to grit their teeth and grind through the defenses of Jizhou Town, no matter what it took!

This time, the Tatar central army commander and chieftain of the Tatar Tribe, Bo Bai, sent a large number of martial arts experts mixed into the vanguard, hoping that these experts could breach the defenses of Jizhou Town as quickly as possible, minimizing casualties.

With high hopes, Bo Bai watched as the battle began, with the vanguard of twenty thousand troops, under cover of a hail of arrows, climbing successively up the siege ladders toward the city walls.

As soon as the battle commenced, it escalated to a climax, with soldiers from both sides engaged in a bloody battle for survival along the defensive line.

There were Tatar braves, covered in blood from crushing stones, or looking like porcupines from arrows, climbing the walls and howling angrily as they brandished their sabers and fought fiercely against the city’s Jizhou garrison.

And there were also stout warriors from the Jizhou garrison, roaring as they grappled with and rolled off the city walls, alongside the Tatars who had jumped up there...

Arrows rained down like locusts.

Rolling stones and logs fell like rain.

The cruelty of cold-weapon warfare was vividly demonstrated between the thin barriers of the city walls.

Even the air was filled with the scent of blood.

In such an environment, every man’s heart was magnified by only one thought: ’Even in death, do not let the enemy get the better of us!’

The excessively brutal melee rendered both attackers and defenders staggering on their feet.

Both sides kept sending reinforcements to the city walls...

Faced with such a fierce battle, Zhou Fu, who commanded the combat, could not even entertain the thought of sending troops out of the city to disrupt the enemy’s attack rhythm, to win a moment’s respite for the brothers on the city walls. He could only tightly clutch the limited forces in his hands, constantly replacing the troops defending the walls, to ensure the defense line didn’t break.

The ferocious battle continued from the third day’s evening, while the day had not yet fully darkened, and went on until the dawn of the fourth day.

The Tatars once again left twenty to thirty thousand corpses outside Jizhou City.

Zhou Fu, who only had slightly more than forty thousand troops of the Jizhou Garrison under his command, reached their limit after two rotations, with reserves of arrows, stones, and logs, and other supplies for city defense already nearly exhausted.

With no other choice, Zhou Fu ordered the reserve stocks of fierce fire oil to be taken to the city walls and poured down along the fortifications.

"Boom..."

Raging flames surged over the mountain of corpses at the base of the city walls, and the consecutive waves of the Tatar army finally receded like the tide.

But this time, the Jizhou Garrison troops on the walls didn’t have the strength left to cheer for victory...

And the morale of the Tatars plummeted to rock bottom... After two sieges, they had left nearly a quarter of their brothers on the city walls. Continuing the fight, it was unknown how many more bodies would be left in Jizhou Town.

As for the Tatar commander, Bo Bai, who had pinned great hopes on the martial arts experts in the vanguard, he was now incensed. Several hundred martial arts experts had charged the city walls, even his own personal guard leader Bartel among them, yet they couldn’t lift even a ripple in the defense of the city...not a bubble after hundreds of stones were thrown into the great river?

This made him realize that there must also be top martial artists from the Central Plains inside Jizhou Town, and it was very likely that there were Grandmasters among them... Because his personal guard leader Bartel was comparable to any of the top experts of the Central Plains!

Bo Bai, in a rage, overturned the table laden with beef and mutton: "The martial artists of the Central Plains, have no martial arts virtue at all!"

By the time the sun was three poles high, the roaring flames outside Jizhou City had been extinguished. Bo Bai, in order not to give the Jizhou Garrison on the city walls any chance to breathe, was organizing his troops to charge once more... with the advantage of the city walls, the defending troops were hard to defeat without inside help. To break the city, he could only rely on the superior number of troops, constantly attacking in shifts to completely wear down the defenders.

But just when he was about to issue the order to attack, he suddenly heard a distant cheer.

His heart suddenly sank, and he hurriedly stepped out of the commander’s tent to look up. On the right side of the Great Wall, a batch of flags that tapered higher than the parapet swiftly approached in the direction of the Jizhou garrison, with the leading flag clearly emblazoned with a large "Lan" character.

"Merciful Eternal Heaven..."

Bo Bai lamented in despair, "Have you already forsaken the children of the steppe?"

The reinforcements had arrived, quickly reaching Jizhou Town, severing the Nine Borders defense line at its waist, and shattering the grand strategy of using Yan Yun as a bridgehead for cavalry to trample the Central Plains.

Their remaining provisions were now insufficient to support their transitioning to other major forts, seeking opportunities to breach the Nine Borders in the lingering standoff.

The problem they now faced was no longer how to break through the Nine Borders and rush into the affluent lands of the Central Plains for looting and pillaging...

But rather, how to withdraw without loss!

Based on his understanding of his old foe Lan Ying, Yang Ge knew that the bastard would definitely not miss this perfect opportunity to kick him when he was down!

...

Atop the ramparts of Jizhou Town.

Dressed in military attire, Lan Ying stood on the battlements, his gaze firm as he looked out at the vast Tatar encampments beyond the pass. After receiving Zhou Fu’s battle report, he decisively announced, "Bo Bai is planning to flee!"

Suddenly, Yang Ge, reeking of bloodshed, spoke softly, "General Lan, is there a chance to engineer a decisive battle?"

Lan Ying turned to look at Yang Ge and said with a fist clasped, "Marquis Luting, what do you mean by this?"

Yang Ge, gazing into the distance beyond the pass, said slowly, "I need an opportunity for a decisive battle, to force out the masterminds behind the Tatars and deal with them alongside the Tatar main force, once and for all!"

Frowning in thought for a long while, Lan Ying replied, "Before I left the capital, His Majesty had repeatedly instructed me to follow Marquis Luting’s commands if you personally came to the northern frontier. It’s just that... a counterattack on the steppe is of great importance, and I need some time to plan and deploy."

Yang Ge: "How long?"

Lan Ying pondered briefly: "Half a month..."

Yang Ge shook his head: "Too long!"

Lan Ying immediately changed his response: "Seven days?"

Yang Ge shook his head again: "Still too long!"

Lan Ying stole a glance at Yang Ge and cautiously asked, "Then, Marquis Luting, in your opinion, how much time would be appropriate?"

Yang Ge pondered for a long time before raising his hand to point at the endless encampments outside the pass: "Whenever they retreat, that’s when we bite down on them."

Lan Ying quickly calculated the military strength of both sides in his mind, and the result made him sigh softly... this pig, it seems, would be difficult to keep alive!

He respectfully replied, "I defer to Marquis Luting for all decisions!"

Yang Ge gave him a look and said blandly, "You better think through the battle situation carefully and find a way to force the Tatars from Datong and Liaodong, those two hundred thousand soldiers, to join with the one hundred fifty thousand outside the pass... We need the momentum of nation-crushing, that’s the confidence I need to force out the person behind the Tatars."

After a pause, he continued, "If you don’t have the authority to dispatch troops beyond the pass, I can go to the capital and request a decree from the Emperor for you."

Lan Ying: ...

If it were someone else, he might have retorted with something like ’an officer on campaign has the right to ignore orders’.

But when dealing with this sir, he had no doubt that if he dared to utter that phrase, his head could fall to the ground in the next breath!

This sir was getting too accustomed to beheading officials...

So, once again, he could only repeat, "I defer to Marquis Luting for all decisions!"

Yang Ge waved his hand: "Then hurry and make preparations for supplies and heavy transports. If the provisions are insufficient, we can first send a detachment of light troops to engage the Tatar main force, with the main army to follow."

Lan Ying quickly replied, "Before I left the capital, the court had already allocated six hundred thousand stones of provisions to be sent northward, and now with the canals in a period of high water, the supplies should arrive in Jizhou soon."

Yang Ge nodded noncommittally: "You are the Great General in charge of suppressing the enemy. I won’t interfere with your military affairs. After all, if there’s any mishap, I’ll only hold you accountable..."