Chapter 21: The Focus of the World (Part 3)

Li Xiao and his five riders trod across the accumulated snow, the soft "swish" of their horses' hooves sounding like six leopards poised to strike, silently closing in on the twenty-odd scattered Jurchen scouts.

The white mist from his breath dissipated the moment it left his lips. His recurve bow was already strung, the arrowheads catching the cold light of the dying sun.

Lu Feng-Hu’s hand, gripping his sword hilt, was slick with sweat. The Shi brothers rode side-by-side, their eyes locked on a Jurchen soldier ahead who was busy organizing his quiver.

The distance closed—fifty paces, forty paces... The silhouettes of the Jurchen scouts became increasingly distinct. The fur hats on their heads, the smiles on their faces, and even the way some were shoving dried meat into their mouths—their movements were as lazy as if they were in their own pastures.

"Zaye Anban! Huru! Huru!" (Urgent report! Quick! Quick!)

Li Xiao shouted the phrase he had learned from captured Yisheng Army prisoners, deliberately lowering his voice to mimic the rough, guttural tone of a Jurchen scout delivering an urgent message.

The six riders accelerated in unison, the sound of their galloping hooves suddenly intensifying.

The scouts ahead reacted. A few sentries turned their heads, wariness flickering across their faces. A Jurchen with a single braid frowned, seemingly trying to decipher the odd accent, but most simply tightened their bowstrings out of habit; urgent reports were a common occurrence on the battlefield.

"Closer!" Li Xiao urged in a low voice.

Just then, the scout Boke Alubu, standing at the front of the line, scanned the tops of Li Xiao and his men’s heads like a hawk. He suddenly raised a hand and pointed: "No! They are Southerners! Their hair..."

The signature shaven foreheads of the Jurchen were hidden beneath their hat brims, but while Li Xiao and his party wore similar helmets, the temples exposed beneath them showed the bundled hair of the Han people—the neat black strands standing out starkly against the snowy landscape.

"Enemy attack!" Alubu’s roar sounded like a thunderclap. His scimitar flashed from its scabbard. "Loose arrows!"

But it was already too late.

Using the momentum of their final sprint, Li Xiao and his men had closed the distance to twenty paces—the optimal range for their recurve bows. Six arrows left their strings, flying like black lightning toward the faces of the Jurchen.

*Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!*

Three muffled impacts sounded almost simultaneously.

A Jurchen scout, just raising his bow, was pierced through the throat by an arrow from Shi Yong, blood gushing from the wound. Another, turning to shout to his comrades, was pinned through the eye socket by Li Xiao’s arrow, the fletching still vibrating. Lu Feng-Hu’s shot was even more brutal, punching straight through a soldier’s chest and trailing a spray of blood from his back.

The three Jurchen fell from their horses like chopped logs, thudding into the snow and creating three blood-stained craters.

"Kill!" Li Xiao drew his scimitar, the blade gleaming coldly in the twilight.

Alubu was incensed, his eyes splitting with rage. He had not expected the Southerners to dare use the Jurchen tongue for a deceptive ambush. "Kill them all!" he bellowed, charging forward and swinging his short blade toward Shi Meng.

Shi Meng was prepared. With a sharp *clang*, sparks flew, and Shi Meng felt his arm go numb from the impact.

The two sides were now locked in melee. Li Xiao and his five men were clad in iron armor, giving them the advantage in the clash, and the Jurchen formation was scattered, leaving them unable to regroup.

Lu Feng-Hu fought with ferocious intensity, every strike aimed at a vital point. He split a Jurchen helmet, splattering himself with red and white gore, yet he simply grinned and struck again.

*Squelch!* Shi Yong’s blade drove into a Jurchen’s ribs; as he withdrew it, the soldier's entrails caught on the steel. The soldier struggled on his horse until Shi Yong kicked him off, and the hooves of the horses instantly trampled him into a pulp of flesh and mud.

The Jurchen were stunned by the sudden ambush and, entangled by the armored Li Xiao and his men, quickly found themselves on the defensive.

However, they were seasoned veterans who had survived countless battles. They soon stabilized their formation. The remaining fifteen men split into two groups—one to engage Li Xiao, the other attempting to flee. Their mission was reconnaissance; there was no need to die here.

"Trying to run?" Li Xiao saw through their intent and shouted to the west, "General Sun! Surround and kill them!"

Seeing the Jurchen bogged down, Sun Yi pulled his sword upon hearing the shout: "Brothers, kill the Jurchen dogs!"

The cavalry emerged like a bursting dam, the sound of their hooves shaking the snow-covered ground as they fanned out to surround the enemy.

The Jurchen were now truly panicked.

With Li Xiao’s group pinning them from the front and the main force of the Song army charging from the rear, being caught in a pincer movement caused them to collapse instantly.

"Retreat!" Seeing that continued fighting would lead to total annihilation, Alubu gritted his teeth and gave the order to withdraw.

He forced Lu Feng-Hu back with a slash and spurred his horse to flee. The remaining Jurchen, as if granted a reprieve, followed him in a desperate escape.

"Shoot the horses!" Li Xiao shouted, aiming at a Jurchen’s mount. As the bowstring twanged, the horse collapsed, throwing its rider into the snow where he was instantly hacked to death by the advancing Song troops. The Shi brothers followed suit, downing two more horses. But the Jurchen were skilled riders; they fled for their lives, leaving only a few corpses twitching in the snow.

Alubu looked back at the plain. The snow was carpeted with bodies—both Jurchen and Song—the blood staining the white expanse like eerie, blooming flowers.

Clutching his arm, which had been slashed by Shi Meng, his eyes burned with hatred. He roared toward the rear: "Southerners, I, Alubu, will return for revenge!"

His voice echoed far into the distance.

The sounds of slaughter slowly faded.

Li Xiao stood in the snow, leaning on his sword, his chest heaving. His iron armor was splattered with blood, and it was impossible to tell if the liquid dripping from his chin onto the snow—where it instantly froze—was sweat or blood.

Lu Feng-Hu sat slumped on the ground, gasping for air, still clutching half a piece of dried meat scavenged from a Jurchen soldier. The Shi brothers leaned against each other, checking their wounds; Shi Meng had a gash on his arm, blood still seeping out. Li Quanwu silently wiped the blood from his short blade with a cloth, the steel reflecting his weathered, wrinkled face.

Sun Yi rode over, his eyes moistening at the sight. He dismounted and bowed deeply to Li Xiao: "Brother Li, if not for your rescue today, we would surely..."

Li Xiao waved him off, gesturing to the Jurchen corpses on the ground: "They were elite scouts. Eight escaped; the consequences are endless. Our position has been compromised!"

With scouts of this caliber roaming in every direction, if they encountered a larger force next time, they would have no hope of survival.

Dusk deepened, and the wind and snow grew heavier.

The surviving Song soldiers began to clear the battlefield, gathering usable weapons, armor, and arrows.

Li Xiao stood in the snow, gazing in the direction of the Jurchen retreat, his heart filled with mixed emotions.

Though they had won this battle, it made the terrifying nature of the Jurchen even clearer. Their individual combat prowess was astonishing, and their adaptability under surprise attacks and their iron will in adversity were far beyond that of ordinary men.

"Clear the battlefield, tend to the wounded, and send them back to Tianmen Pass," Sun Yi stood up, his voice hoarse but filled with resolve. "The rest of you, come with me!"

In one engagement, they had killed 16 Jurchen, while the Song casualties numbered over 60. If not for the successful ambush, the casualty ratio would likely have been even more despairing.

At the very least, they had won this day.

...

Three miles north of Taiyuan, in the Jurchen camp, bonfires flickered like the red eyes of starving wolves, licking at the frozen earth in the snowy night.

When Alubu and his seven survivors stumbled into the camp gates, the patrolling Jurchen nearly mistook them for Song spies. These eight blood-soaked scouts had their leather armor shredded; three of their mounts were crippled, and some still had arrows embedded in their shoulders, the shafts quivering with their ragged breathing.

"General! It’s me! Alubu!" He ripped off his blood-matted otter-fur hat, revealing his bare forehead.

Wanyan Xieli emerged from the main tent at the sound. The Jurchen Meng'an, sporting two braids, furrowed his brow and lashed his whip against the snow: "Where are your men? Didn't I order you to take twenty cavalry to scout Tianmen Pass?"

Alubu fell to his knees with a thud: "We were ambushed! Hundreds of Southerners acted as bait, and dozens more were disguised in our armor. My brothers..."

His throat choked up, his knuckles digging into the frozen earth. "Their iron armor was too thick; we couldn't match them. Sixteen brothers didn't come back!"

The Jurchen soldiers outside the tent stirred in agitation.

In the Jurchen army, a scout’s life was more precious than gold. These men were elite hunters plucked from thousands, capable of navigating in blizzards and piercing a hare’s eye from a hundred paces.

Yet now, sixteen elite scouts had fallen at the hands of a group of Southerners?

"Trash!" Wanyan Xieli kicked Alubu in the chest. "You couldn't even distinguish the Southerners' hair! They bundle their hair under their hats, and the black strands show at the temples—are you blind?"

He shouted to the camp, "Pass the order! Send fifty more scouts to search a fifty-mile radius! Anyone found with suspicious tracks is to be killed on sight!"

The sound of clashing armor soon filled the camp. Fifty Jurchen soldiers fully equipped themselves, each carrying a bow and a quiver packed with a hundred arrows.

They mounted their strongest steeds, their hooves shattering the thin ice as they vanished into the night like black lightning. This was the rule of the Jurchen: if scouts were lost, they must recover their honor with ten times the force—not just for revenge, but to preserve the dignity of the "eyes and ears of the battlefield."

"Hmph, let's go. Come with me to see the Commander!"

Wanyan Xieli lifted the tent flap and stepped inside. Alubu followed, seeing a dark-complexioned Jurchen general sitting at the head: the Vanguard Commander, Wanyan Yinsuke.

This was a fierce general who had once followed Wanyan Loushi in a charge against fifty thousand Liao troops, diving into enemy lines nine times and fighting his way out each time until the Liao army was soundly defeated. He was currently using the tip of his dagger to prod at a sheepskin map.

That battle was the Battle of Darugu, followed closely by the Battle of Hubudagang—the turning point where the Jurchen devastated the Liao army.

"Has the Zhe family army moved?" Yinsuke did not lift his head.

The only opponents he considered worthy were the Zhe family, who occupied the three prefectures of Lin, Fu, and Feng. They were sinicized Tangut people who understood both Han city defenses and nomadic cavalry tactics.

Alubu frowned. "Their sword techniques were sharp, their archery ruthless, and they wore our own iron armor. I cannot be certain of their origins."

"Then it seems likely, doesn't it?" Yinsuke stabbed his dagger into the location of Tianmen Pass. "Anyone capable of killing sixteen of my scouts is no ordinary person. Xieli, how many days until the Marshal's main force arrives?"

Wanyan Xieli bowed. "The grain and siege engines are still behind. Two days at the earliest."

Yinsuke narrowed his eyes. Their three-thousand-man vanguard was deep in enemy territory. If the Zhe army were to strike from Tianmen Pass, their rear would be severed; no matter how well the Jurchen cavalry fought, they would be trapped to die beneath the walls of Taiyuan.

But he immediately recalled the campaign against the Western Xia two years prior. When Yelü Yanxi tried to flee to the Xia, the Xia sent a massive army to receive him. The 'Iron Harriers' had been ferocious, and a great battle had erupted on the grasslands (between present-day Bayannur, Inner Mongolia, and Shizuishan, Ningxia). Hadn't the aggressive Prince of Jin, Li Chage, been left with corpses covering the fields by the Jurchen warriors?

If the Zhe army was so formidable, were they truly harder to deal with than the Western Xia?

"No need to wait for the main force." He slapped the table, causing the mare's milk wine to spill. "Continue the siege! Let the Yisheng Army fill the trenches with their bodies! If the Zhe army dares to come, I will slaughter them beneath Taiyuan's walls as a gift for the Marshal!"

Xieli hesitated. "But the Yisheng Army has already suffered over fifty percent casualties..."

"Better that they suffer over fifty percent." Yinsuke curled his lip in a cruel smile. "The Han troops are meant to fill the trenches. Their lives are like grass; they are not worth mourning. Only when they are all dead will they stop dreaming of rebellion."

The number of Jurchen was too small, and to govern many with few, one had to employ strategy. Wanyan Aguda had strived to win over the Balhae people, preaching that Jurchen and Balhae were one family, and that Balhae people with the same surnames as the Jurchen were to be treated as equals.

He had established the "Balhae Military Commission" in the former Balhae lands (present-day Ning'an, Heilongjiang) for self-governance. Thus, in the current Jin Dynasty, the hierarchy was roughly: the Jurchen as the first class, followed by the Balhae, then the Khitan and Xi people, and finally, the vast number of Han people. Only through such hierarchical stratification could the Great Jin maintain its rule.