It's a good start

By the time Pindalipha had pacified his soldiers once more and set out on the road back to the central command camp, the sky was already beginning to turn a hazy gray.

After being tossed about twice in one night, marching back and forth for nearly twenty miles at a forced pace, the main Toungoo force from top to bottom appeared withered and listless, possessing no spirit to speak of.

Pindalipha was also cursing incessantly in his heart.

"These mud-legged peasants from the countryside are just no good; the elites from our royal capital are still the ones to rely on."

As he spoke, he glanced at the elites dragging their weary feet and couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache, followed quickly by a sense of urgency.

"After being tossed around all night, I doubt we can continue our advance today. Those damnable Han people—with only two cities left to achieve great success, what are they doing coming out now?"

A thought flashed through his mind, but his exhausted brain couldn't grasp it. Pindalipha swayed in his saddle, nearly falling asleep while atop his warhorse.

A five-mile journey would normally take these Toungoo elites just over an hour at a forced march.

But this time, they had been walking for an hour and were only halfway there, which spoke volumes about their level of fatigue and exhaustion.

Within the woods, an officer alerted Liu Rengui.

"Commander, the enemy is here."

"I see them. No rush, stay calm."

Only when nearly half of the Toungoo army below had passed did Liu Rengui's raised hand sweep down heavily.

The silent woods suddenly erupted with the sound of bamboo whistles.

Before the sluggish toungoo people could react, a dense rain of arrows flew out from the forest.

Despite having armor for protection, many unlucky souls were struck and fell, clutching their bodies and screaming in agony.

Pindalipha reacted immediately.

"Ambush! Ambush! Do not panic, do not break ranks! Sword and Shield Soldiers, move forward and block the arrows!"

Liu Rengui hadn't expected the enemy to react so quickly; after only four or five rounds of arrow fire, the Sword and Shield Soldiers began to form a line.

At this moment, the formation was not yet complete, but the basic line had begun to emerge.

Judging that the lethality of the crossbow bolts would drop significantly, Liu Rengui immediately changed his orders.

"Cease fire! All troops, charge! Kill!"

Unlike other armies, the Beiwei Army did not have specialized Sword and Shield Soldiers; every soldier was equipped with a more agile buckler.

Their short-range weapons included broadswords and iron maces. Faced with an enemy with a high rate of armor, the iron maces were more effective than the broadswords.

"Thud! Thud! Thud!"

The sounds of flesh, armor, and shields colliding rose and fell one after another.

The Toungoo soldiers, having been exhausted all night, were at a clear physical disadvantage, and their defensive line soon became precarious.

The disadvantage in weapon choice soon became apparent; the lethality of the Beiwei Army's iron maces and triangular armor-piercing spikes was clearly superior to the toungoo people's ring-pommel sabers and spears.

This army, primarily composed of Toungoo elites, still possessed formidable combat strength.

Faced with multiple disadvantages, they still managed to hold on for about fifteen minutes.

Ultimately, the overall combat strength of the Beiwei Army gained the upper hand, and the Toungoo defensive line collapsed.

In the era of cold weapons, for infantry combat, the role of formation was more important than anything else.

Once the formation disintegrated, it was basically the beginning of a total collapse like a mountain falling.

Soon, the clash between the two sides turned into a one-sided slaughter, and no matter how much Pindalipha shouted until his voice was hoarse, it was to no avail.

"Damnable Han people, I'll fight you to the death!"

Pindalipha shouted, spurring his horse and waving his great sword, intending to fight desperately.

The nearby deputy general and Personal Guards hurriedly pulled back his reins.

"General, the momentum is unstoppable! It's unstoppable! We must retreat quickly!"

Pindalipha looked dazed.

"Retreat? Retreat where? If the army is gone, I'll only be punished by His Highness if I go back."

"The rear army is still there. As long as we hold the cities we currently occupy, His Highness will not blame you."

Seeing Pindalipha hesitate, another deputy general quickly added fuel to the fire.

"Yes, General! If you die here, the Northern Route Army will be leaderless, and Phitsanulok will surely fall back into the hands of the Han. When that happens, your wife and children..."

Thinking of his beautiful wife and concubines at home, Pindalipha's hot blood cooled down.

After quickly assessing the situation in his mind, Pindalipha finally gritted his teeth and ordered.

"Retreat! The entire army is to retreat to the rear command camp!"

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly surrounded Pindalipha to begin the retreat.

The moment the commander fled, it was like opening a sluice gate holding back a flood; the defeat spread for a thousand miles.

The one-sided slaughter turned into a widespread hunt for captives across the hills and fields.

The soldiers all knew that every captive would turn into military merit and tangible profit.

Gao Yuan's profits from the slave trade were all in people, but they would be converted into money and grain to reward the army; naturally, every soldier would get a share.

In Gao Yuan's view, spiritual encouragement was necessary; otherwise, they would be no different from mercenaries.

However, spiritual encouragement alone was not enough; material incentives were also very important.

Therefore, on the basis of spiritual encouragement, he also adopted the Tang Dynasty's 'three-way split' distribution method.

That is, the spoils of war were divided into three: one share for the government office, one for the commander and officers, and one for the soldiers.

Under this double incentive, the soldiers' combat effectiveness and desire to fight reached their peak.

By the time the sun was fully up, the battle was over. Except for the thousand or so people led by Pindalipha who broke through and escaped, the rest were all annihilated.

"Reporting to the Commander, the statistics are complete. In this battle, a total of over 2,200 heads were taken, and over 11,900 captives were taken."

"Not bad. Pass down the order to quickly clean up the battlefield; do not leave behind even a single needle or thread."

"Then, the Third Division will escort the captives back to Guchang County immediately. The First Division will follow me to take over the enemy's camp and annihilate the enemy's vanguard."

The three hundred-odd soldiers guarding the camp saw the large force of enemy troops and didn't even resist; they simply scattered and fled.

Liu Rengui was relentless in his pursuit and captured another hundred or so prisoners.

The Toungoo central command camp didn't have many supplies, but there were plenty of good things.

Some spare armor, dozens of spare warhorses, and so on all became Liu Rengui's spoils of war.

Subsequently, the two thousand Toungoo vanguards learned that their main force had been destroyed and fled upon hearing the news.

Liu Rengui arrived a step too late and only captured over two hundred prisoners.

Having gathered his routed troops and retreated all the way back to the city, Pindalipha's heart finally settled a bit.

Calming his emotions, he began to deploy troops to guard the city passes on one hand, while sending someone to report to Bayinnaung on the other.

If it weren't for the fact that he needed people right now, Bayinnaung would have truly liked to chop off Pindalipha's head with a single stroke.

Before the great war had even officially begun, he had lost over ten thousand men, and they were over ten thousand elites at that.

This loss made Bayinnaung's military situation truly worse.

Because he had forcibly conscripted able-bodied men in the old lands of Ayutthaya to supplement his army's losses, that land was no longer very stable.

Although it was only sporadic, small-scale resistance, it allowed him to see the crisis.

"If we cannot succeed in one stroke this time and intimidate those petty scoundrels, I fear..."

At the thought of the situation after a failure, Bayinnaung stood at the entrance of the commander's tent and let out a long sigh toward the sky.

"Pass the order: Pindalipha is to take a defensive stance for now. There is no need to attack for the time being; wait until the main army has finished assembling."

In Guchang County, the news of the Jiannan Circuit's main army and the Region troops assembling and watching like tigers could not be hidden after all.

After Zhao Xi Yao learned the news, her beautiful face turned flushed with anger.

"What on earth is Third Brother thinking? Right now we are resisting foreign tribes; if he won't help, that's one thing, but he even... even..."

The girl stood there huffing with her hands on her hips, but her delicate voice always felt lacking in momentum.

Gao Yuan hurriedly pulled the girl into his arms, stroking her back while comforting her.

"Don't be angry, don't be angry. The Emperor still understands some of the implications; for now, he is only on standby."

"As long as we work hard ourselves and win against the Toungoo and Western Kang attacks, they won't dare to act up."