A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Starting from the Village Chief

Chapter 571 Displaying Fame on Huanghualing

In the fifth year of Wude,

The fifth day of the seventh month of autumn, Jia Shen day, is auspicious for travel, moving, marriage, and praying for a child, but inauspicious for digging wells!
A cavalry caravan, having passed through Yanmen Pass and traveled for two days, arrived at Qidao Village on the border of Yunshuo.

Behind the village lies Huanghualing, where the pine trees sway like a sea. Here, the road forks into two paths, one leading to Shahu Pass and the other to Zhangjiakou.

Of course, at this time, the place names Shahu Pass and Zhangjiakou did not exist yet.

Northwest beyond the Great Wall lies the Dingxiang Khanate of Jieli, located at the foot of the Yin Mountains and the Chule River.

Heading northeast, you'll find the Gate of Infinity, leading to the Bashang Grassland, where the headquarters of Tuli Khan is located.

As Xue Wanche, the Eastern Palace General of Chariots and Cavalry and Duke of Wu'an County, approached Qidao Village, he smelled a strong, pungent stench of blood.

"A bloody battle has just taken place here!"

As an experienced general, Xue Wanche immediately sensed that something was wrong here.

"The smell of blood... the battle ended not long ago, and the casualties were heavy."

Beside him, Tang Lin, the military advisor of the Crown Prince's Right Guard, frowned. "Could it be that we're still a step too late?"

This line,

Tang Lin came to read out the Crown Prince's decree, ordering Li Yi to withdraw his troops back to Yanmen Pass, while Xue Wanche brought a hundred light cavalry to escort him to deliver the order.

Xue Wanche also possessed a secret order from the Crown Prince.

"Does the Duke of Wu'an think this outcome is good or bad?"

Xue Wanche surveyed the terrain: Huanghualiang, Jinshatan, dozens of miles of hills and dense forests, the only way for those heading south from Yunzhong to Mayi.

"With a calculated attack on an unsuspecting enemy, this is indeed a good place for an ambush. Li Sikong has gathered 30,000 troops. As long as the news doesn't leak out, if Yun Zhongyuan Junzhang and Bu Lishe only have 40,000 to 50,000 troops rushing south, then their chances of defeat are even greater."

"It seems General Xue also thinks highly of Li Sikong. Is it because both of you have been granted titles and fiefs in Wu'an?" Tang Lin felt much relieved when he heard that Li Yi had a better chance of winning. For both public and private reasons, he did not want to see Li Yi suffer a defeat.

Li Yi is going to lose, and the northern defense line will be destroyed again.

"I can't compare to Li Sikong. He is the Prince of Wu'an, while I am just the Duke of Wu'an County." Xue Wanche was a burly man from a military family. The five Xue brothers were known as the Five Tigers of Youzhou at the end of the Sui Dynasty.

His father, Xue Shixiong, was a famous general of the Sui Dynasty, who attacked Yiwu and garrisoned Beiping. Unfortunately, he died in battle. His five brothers then followed Luo Yi to defend Youzhou. In those years, they defeated many enemies who attacked Youzhou, including Wang Xuba, Lishan Fei, Zhen Zhai'er, Gao Kaidao, Tan Sheng, and Dou Jiande.

In particular, Dou Jiande launched several attacks with more than 100,000 troops.
The Xue brothers, especially Xue Wanjun and Xue Wanche, have repeatedly made great achievements on the battlefield. Although they are from a military family, they have also made a name for themselves through real fighting. They have always been a bit arrogant and defiant. In the past, only Luo Yi could keep them in check.

However, Xue Wanche had a rare admiration for Li Yi, not for his official rank or title, but for his numerous military achievements over the years.

The further they went, the stronger the stench of blood became.
After passing Qidao Village, they found corpses lying everywhere ahead. The battlefield was littered with tattered flags, broken swords and spears, and arrows stuck all over the ground, as if many arrow-bearing grasses had grown on the barren land of Huanghualiang.

The seriously wounded soldier, who was not quite dead yet, was groaning.

The fallen warhorse neighed mournfully.

"It's the Northern Army,"

"And the Turks,"

"And the Sogdians and the Tiele people,"

"My God, they were almost all soldiers from the Turkic Khaganate, yet they suffered such heavy casualties."

Xue Wanche rode his horse slowly through the battlefield, carefully examining the corpses, wounded soldiers and horses, and various broken weapons left behind.

The battlefield hasn't even been cleaned up yet.
"It seems this battle only took place a few hours ago. There are very few of our soldiers dead on the battlefield, and even fewer wounded," Xue Wanche concluded. "The battle is not over yet. Li Sikong successfully ambushed the Turkic army here, and the enemy fled. Li Sikong is still in pursuit!"

The battlefield was littered with countless corpses, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Everyone who had come from Taiyuan gasped in surprise.

Xue Wanche's prediction was correct.
The battle began this afternoon, with Li Yi leading over 30,000 troops to successfully ambush Yuan Junzhang and Bu Lishe's 50,000-strong allied army.

This combined force consisted of the Daibei Army, the Sui Army after Dingxiang, the Turkic tribes under the command of Bu Lishe, the Sogdian tribes, the Tiele tribes, and even a Xi army.
They never expected Li Yi to appear in Yunshuo, which was already considered Yuan Junzhang's heartland.

Both men were eager to rush to Mayi to avenge their sons, kill Gao Manzheng, and reclaim Mayi City, where they encountered an ambush from all sides.

Li Daoxuan, the Prince of Huaiyang, who was determined to avenge his previous humiliation, and Gao Manzheng, who wanted to pledge their loyalty, took the lead.

Gao Manzheng led his five thousand Shuozhou infantry and cavalry, and was the first to charge out.

Enemies meeting are bound to be furious. When Yuan Junzhang saw that Gao Manzheng still dared to ambush him, he immediately led his troops in a fierce charge with bloodshot eyes.

Gao Manzheng led 5,000 men to the front, and a great battle ensued.
Not long after the battle began, Gao Manzheng's five thousand men could not hold out. After all, they were outnumbered, and two thousand of his five thousand soldiers were newly recruited.

Gao Manzheng's army was defeated and retreated. Yuan Junzhang gave chase on horseback. Both families had once been powerful clansmen in Mayi, and both men were chivalrous figures from the border regions. They shared similar ideals and later joined Liu Wuzhou's uprising together.
But somehow, a rift developed between them, and now they are even at each other's throats.

The hatred for killing one's son is irreconcilable.

Gao Manzheng fled in a great panic, not as an act, but because his five thousand soldiers were no match for Yuan Junzhang. Moreover, Yuan Junzhang had more than twenty thousand troops behind him, along with a coalition of more than twenty thousand Turkic tribes.

If you don't run fast enough, you'll get surrounded and surrounded.

Gao Manzheng led Yuan Junzhang in a relentless pursuit, luring them to the front of Li Daoxuan's Youzhou cavalry formation.

Seeing the enemy approaching, Li Daoxuan led over four thousand Youzhou cavalrymen in a swooping charge down from Huanghualiang, accelerating their advance.
They directly cut Yuan Junzhang's troops, who had been stretched into a long, single-line formation during the pursuit, into seven or eight sections.

At this moment, Gao Manzheng led the Mayi army, who were running out of breath, and launched a counterattack.

Nine thousand men joined forces in battle.

Bu Lishe, who was marching behind, heard that Gao Manzheng and Li Daoxuan had joined forces to ambush them from the front, but instead of retreating, he did not back down.
Instead, they immediately led their troops to attack.

The grief of losing his son blinded Bulishe to hatred, and the previous battle in the clouds...
In the past few days, they have basically figured it out: Li Yi really only brought about 10,000 men to help that day, and Wang Junkuo really did run hundreds of miles in one go back to Beiyan Prefecture.

That night, Li Yi retreated south overnight, eventually returning to Yingzhou.

However, their cleverness backfired. They overestimated Li Yi's strategic brilliance, believing that Li Daoxuan's underestimation of the enemy and subsequent encirclement was a deliberate act of sacrificing himself. They also mistook Wang Junkuo's abandonment of his allies and desertion for a planned flanking maneuver.

They were further misled by Li Yi's bluff, believing that a large Tang army was coming to their aid, and that all of this had been planned in advance.
So their 50,000-strong army retreated to Yunzhong City, and no one dared to pursue them. As a result, they were unable to return to defend Mayi in time.

This led to Gao Manzheng's rebellion, in which he killed Yuan Junzhang and his son, seized the city, and surrendered to the Tang Dynasty.

Now, facing the ambush by Gao Manzheng and Li Daoxuan's forces of less than ten thousand, Bu Lishe no longer bothered to guess what was going on.
Just do it and that's it.

But this time, he made a mistake again.

When he led his troops up the rampage, he gritted his teeth and roared that he would encircle and annihilate Gao Manzheng and Li Daoxuan's less than ten thousand men, leaving no one alive.

Li Gaoqian and Liu Shirang led 15,000 troops from the Xin-Dai coalition, who appeared behind them and cut off their retreat.

Both the front and rear armies were ambushed.

The beginning and the end cannot be considered together.

Wang Xingmin and Yun Shiduan led the Dingzhou infantry to attack the central army again.
Liu Heita, Su Dingfang, and Li Cunxiao, three cavalry generals, led their light cavalry into the battlefield.

Yuan Junzhang's allied forces of over 50,000 were ambushed by Li Yi, Liu Shirang, and over 30,000 Tang troops, and were outnumbered.

The ambush was sudden.

The Turkic and Daibei armies mostly marched without armor.

It was then cut into several pieces by the Tang army.
Meanwhile, Li Yi's troops continued to charge out, and in the pine forest of Huanghualing, they even planted many flags in a feigned manner.

The neighing of men and the neighing of horses

It seems there are still thousands of troops behind them.

A small Xi tribe was the first to be defeated; they couldn't withstand the fierce charge of the cavalry led by Liu Heita and Su Dingfang, the two heroes of Hebei.
They accepted the Turkic summons to follow Jieli in raiding the southern border. After Jieli withdrew his troops, he assigned them to Bulishe to assist in the aid of Yunzhong. Now they are going to aid Mayi. They were already very dissatisfied. They came to plunder, not to fight the Tang people to the death.

When they were suddenly ambushed, their casualties increased greatly, and they saw that Tang troops seemed to be everywhere around them.
Especially upon seeing Li Yi's great banner appear,

The leader of this small Xi tribe finally couldn't resist and fled.

On the yellow flower beam,

Li Yi stood under the banner.

He even wore a magnificent set of gilded armor, which was extremely eye-catching.

On either side of the large banner were twelve cowhide war drums.

Twelve burly men, shirtless, beat the war drums with all their might. The drumbeats were thunderous, incredibly stirring, and resounded throughout the battlefield.

The Tang soldiers were filled with fervor and fought bravely to the sound of the war drums.

50,000-strong allied forces

Complex composition,

When things go wrong, they become a mob.

After the small Xi tribe fled first, other Xi tribes and Sogdian tribes also began to flee.
Soon, even some of Yuan Junzhang's soldiers from Daibei deserted, and some even defected on the spot.

Fear spread rapidly.
Countless people began to flee in a panic.

The rout was rampant, and the army collapsed like a house of cards.

The Tang army launched a massive attack, relentlessly pursuing and killing the enemy.

They chased each other for thirty miles.
Enemy corpses lay scattered for thirty miles.
Blood stained the setting sun red.

When Tang Lin and Xue Wanche found Li Yi on horseback at dusk, Li Yi had already changed out of his flashy, conspicuous gilded armor.
I changed into a lighter rhinoceros leather armor.

A group of generals were reporting the battle results to Li Yi, while a group of soldiers were writing notes furiously.

“Bu Lishe and Yuan Junzhang escaped; they were not captured or executed.”

"However, we still captured more than 30,000, a very fruitful haul."

"The number of people killed in battle has not yet been counted. The battlefield is still being cleaned up. The results should be available later. It is estimated that no fewer than three thousand people have been beheaded."

"At most 15,000 enemy soldiers fled the battlefield. If we hadn't been limited to pursuing them for only 30 li, we could have chased them all the way to the city of Yunzhong and captured even more."

"A considerable amount of warhorses, weapons, and armor were also captured..."

The bloodstains on Gao Manzheng's armor had congealed and he didn't have time to wipe them away. Hearing these numbers of prisoners killed, he was so excited that his face turned red. "Lord Minister, this humble general is willing to lead my troops as the vanguard to capture Yunzhong City for you."

Liu Shirang, Wang Xingmin, Yun Shiduan, and others were not to be outdone and volunteered for battle. Even Li Gaoqian shouted that they should seize Yunzhong in one fell swoop.

At this moment,

A light cavalryman on patrol reported that an envoy from the Eastern Palace had arrived.

"The visitors identified themselves as Tang Lin, the Right Guardian of the Crown Prince, and Xue Wanche, the Left Guardian of the Crown Prince, who have come to read the Crown Prince's decree to the Minister of Works!"

Upon hearing this, Li Yi frowned.

(End of this chapter)