Chapter 324 The Battle of Xuzhou Begins

The pirates were dumbfounded; they had never seen such a method of attack and immediately fled in panic.

Fortunately, they were accustomed to fighting and were quite agile, so most managed to dodge the stones.

Only a few unlucky souls were struck directly because they dazed out, dying on the spot.

By the time these pirates finally managed to reorganize their formation, the second wave of attacks arrived.

Another bout of chaos ensued; after three rounds of catapult attacks, many pirates on the beach were already panting for breath.

What followed was the true killing blow: a sky-blotting barrage of crossbow bolts shot toward them.

Since the goal this time was to inflict casualties, the bolts had been replaced with ones as long as spears.

A single ballista could fire three bolts at once, with a range exceeding two thousand paces.

These pirates, who hadn't even caught their breath, were caught completely off guard.

Hundreds of bolts instantly claimed three to four hundred lives; some unlucky ones standing too close together were skewered like candied haws on a stick.

The beach descended into utter chaos; some fled in panic while others were so terrified they prostrated themselves on the ground.

No matter how much the pirate leaders shouted themselves hoarse, it was to no avail.

After two rounds of ballista attacks, the cover mission of the fast Treasure Ships was essentially over.

Three hundred and twenty small boats reached the shallows, and three thousand two hundred Xuanjia Army soldiers leapt off, wading through knee-deep seawater as they advanced toward the beach.

Seeing these soldiers clad in leather armor and wielding sabers, shields, and spears, many people were stunned.

At this moment, the pirates finally realized they were no longer facing a ragtag mob of fellow pirates, but a regular army.

Against other pirates, because everyone was equally unskilled, they could easily win through superior numbers.

But against a regular army, how were they supposed to fight?

Armored troops against unarmored ones was already a crushing disparity, let alone a regular army against bandits.

Before the second wave of the Xuanjia Army could even land on the island, the pirates on the beach had already been routed and slaughtered.

What followed was the clearing of remnants across the entire island, which cost Cao Xing a significant amount of time.

Although the area of Weng Prefecture's main island was not even a fraction of Taiwan's, it was still not small.

Trying to capture those pirates who were familiar with the terrain took Cao Xing quite a bit of effort.

Moreover, the first thing the army had to do after establishing a foothold on the island was to maintain their weapons and armor.

Otherwise, after being soaked in seawater, the equipment would quickly rust and rot.

Fortunately, Cao Xing had enough troops and manpower; he could build docks and towns while simultaneously arranging for his forces to suppress the bandits.

For these Xuanjia Army soldiers from South of the Ranges, suppressing bandits in the mountains was second nature.

It wasn't until October of the second year of Qiande that the pirates on the main island of Weng Prefecture were completely wiped out.

By December, all the pirates across the Weng Prefecture islands had basically been purged.

The Yue State Navy annihilated a total of over thirteen thousand pirates, took over two thousand prisoners, and rescued nearly eighty thousand civilians.

Most of these eighty thousand civilians had lost their families and homes, so they chose to stay.

These people became the first citizens and fishermen of Weng Prefecture.

Shifting back to June of the second year of Qiande, the Huai River entered its flood season, and the water level surged.

Although no levees breached this time, the floods blocked Jiang Huaizhen's attempt to cross the river and head north.

At this time, the Pengcheng battlefield had entered the stage of the final decisive battle.

Knowing there was no hope in continuing the defense and that the retreat route to the south was blocked by floods, Zhu Song and General Ma Zhiyuan decided after consultation to simply march out and engage Gao Hu in a field battle.

At the same time, they notified Meng Zhenshan in the city to have the garrison sally out as soon as the battle began.

This way, even if they couldn't break through the Northern Liang Army's lines, they could at least pin down en own reason to prevent the main force from being attacked from both sides.

For this decisive battle, Zhu Song burned his bridges, deploying all the garrison troops from Si State and Hai State.

In other words, if they couldn't defeat Gao Hu, Si State and Hai State would essentially be handed over to Northern Liang for free.

What they didn't know was that a Yan Army force had quietly moved south and reached Mizhou, which was just a stone's throw away.

Leading the troops was none other than Lu Heng's trusted general, Zhang Su.

With Lu Heng facing a stalemate in Hebei, the direction he chose to break the deadlock was to the south.

By his estimation, the Qian Army would have to go all out to oppose Gao Hu.

Thus, Si State and Hai State would inevitably be empty, allowing Zhang Su to take advantage of the opening.

However, what Lu Heng and Zhang Su didn't expect was that the areas would be this empty.

Each county seat had only a few dozen bailiffs and old soldiers maintaining order.

Wherever Zhang Su's army of ten thousand went, the county magistrates would immediately open the gates and surrender, achieving a completely bloodless conquest.

Consequently, by the time the real decisive battle began in Xu Prefecture, more than half of Si State and Hai State had already been lost, and Lu Heng in Zhao Prefecture had long since moved his troops south in batches, leaving only ten thousand men in Zhao Prefecture as a feint.

If Gao Hu knew that after all his hard work, he was ultimately paving the way for his old rival, he would probably cough up blood on the spot.

But at this moment, even if Gao Hu knew, he had no mind to worry about it, as the great battle that had been brewing for so long was finally about to begin.

The Huai River's surge and Jiang Huaizhen's frantic state on the opposite bank made Gao Hu feel not only the pressure but also an opportunity to completely annihilate the Qian Army.

Outside Pengcheng, on the vast plains, both sides had already drawn up their formations.

Under the gloomy sky, the black armor made the two armies look like two endless stretches of dark clouds; seeing the high-spirited Northern Liang Army opposite them, General Ma Zhiyuan couldn't help but frown.

Cavalry—the insurmountable mountain of the cold weapon era. Unfortunately, since the demise of the Valiant Cavalry Guard, Great Qian no longer had any Cavalry in its hands.

Those majestic warhorses had either become playthings for the scions of Powerful Families or had been dispersed among the various armies to be used by Scouts and messengers; they could no longer be gathered together.

For today's decisive battle, he had gathered all the warhorses from Scouts, messengers, and even postal stations, barely scraping together a few hundred cavalrymen, but the Northern Liang opposite them currently possessed over five thousand.

When the troop numbers and the command levels of the generals were roughly equal, the gap in combat power brought by those thousands of Cavalry was like the difference between heaven and earth.

He suddenly thought of Gao Yuan in the south; he heard he had sacrificed everything to raise three thousand Cavalry. That was a man of vision, truly a pity!

The dull blast of horns and the sound of war drums tore through the gloomy sky, letting a sliver of sunlight through as Gao Hu made the first move.

General Ma Zhiyuan quickly pulled his thoughts together, exercising all his talent to command the troop movements and formation changes to counter Gao Hu's opening.

For the first time, Zhu Song saw the massive gap between himself and a famous general; he might be able to handle marching, camping, and setting up formations well, and he could calmly command a defensive battle.

But he had never encountered this kind of large-scale field battle that required total mental immersion; at this moment, he watched the moves and counters on the battlefield, absorbing knowledge like a sponge.

Throughout the morning, General Ma Zhiyuan handled everything extremely well, not allowing Gao Hu to find a single opening.

However, by the afternoon, the disadvantages of these raw recruits in the Qian Army quickly became apparent; perhaps due to declining physical strength or a lack of mutual coordination, the Qian Army's formation began to show slight delays.

In the movement of a large army, a moment's delay can easily lead to a chain reaction; if this square formation is a few breaths slow, it might result in a delay of a quarter-hour or more further down the line.

And at that very moment, Gao Hu seized the opportunity; with a wave of his banner, the Cavalry that had long been eager to strike charged forth.