The Song Dynasty on the Sand Table

Chapter 289 Brothers, Come to Live

The Jin cavalry, defeated at the walls of Yizhou, had lost their commander and even their mid-level officers. Led by a group of palanquin bearers, they could only slink away and search for a way out.

Pu Lian, a junior officer who could only manage fifty men, had little strategic awareness and lacked the ability to grasp the overall situation; they were also not well-informed.

They usually just go wherever their superiors tell them to go, and they seriously lack the ability to make independent decisions.

During the march, several of the palanquin bearers got into a fight, and as a result, the column split into two groups.

A group of about three hundred people decided to head north directly back to Hebei.

Another group of over three hundred people decided to return to Xiapi, the capital of the Huaiyang Army.

These three hundred-plus cavalrymen, having marched for a very long time, were exhausted and hungry, and finally returned to the outskirts of Xiapi. Pu Lian, the leader, shouted, "We're finally back at our camp! We'll have a good meal soon, then get some rest. I'll write to the higher-ups and ask what to do next..."

Before he could finish speaking, one of his subordinates pointed to Xiapi ahead and said quickly, "Something seems off about this city."

Pu Lian: "What's wrong?"

Subordinate: "It seems... the flag has been changed..."

He could only say "seems" because he was illiterate and couldn't understand what was written on the flag. He only knew that the characters looked different from the ones he had written before leaving the city.

Pu Nian also quickly took a closer look. Well, he was also illiterate, and he felt that the characters seemed a little different.

When they left, the flag on the city wall had the character "齐" written on it.

Now, the flag has been changed to display the character "Song".

This was certainly not a flag hastily made by the city garrison; they had been hiding the "Song" character flag all along.

Pu Lian: "The characters seem to be different now."

One of his subordinates said, "Why do I feel like they're the same? They both have a little bit at the very top..."

"The bottom is different from the middle."

"What's different? I can't quite remember."

"Anyway, I think they're the same."

When it comes to words, if you have two different words in front of you, you can tell the difference at a glance. But if one of the words is not in front of you, you may not be able to remember what it looks like. Take the four words 魑魅魍魉 for example. If they are placed in front of you together, you can definitely tell them apart. But if you take one of them out and ask it to tell you how it is different from the other three, nine out of ten people will go crazy.

The illiteracy rate among the Jin soldiers was even higher than that among the Song soldiers; they were all completely clueless.

Just as they were bewildered, the city gates opened... seemingly to welcome them back.

One of the Jin soldiers laughed and said, "It seems the flag hasn't been changed; we were mistaken."

Another said, "Yes! They've opened the door to welcome us."

Just as they were joking around, the city gate opened, and out stepped a man in black armor and helmet, with a pair of cricket antennae on his head...

Jin soldiers: "?"

After only two seconds of stunned silence, the cricket warrior charged forward, wielding his halberd, causing chaos and defeat among those around him.

The Jin soldiers were furious: "They're the enemy!"

"Damn it, he stole our city while we were reinforcing Yizhou."

"What kind of jerk is this?"

"Holy crap, that's a strong guy."

"We can't beat them, we can't beat them at all..."

"Pu Nian is dead, Pu Nian has been killed again." The Jin soldiers were really unlucky. Meng An, Mou Ke, Pu Nian, their leaders died one after another. Looking around, they realized that they didn't even have a leader left. The remaining Jin soldiers screamed and could only scatter and flee in panic.

Lu Bu snorted and said, "Bingzhou wolf cavalry, split up and chase them down. Kill them all, wipe out all the Xiongnu, Qiang and Xianbei people. Anyway, kill any non-Han people you catch. I don't want any survivors."

"Ouch!"

The Bingzhou wolf cavalry scattered and pursued, killing the fleeing soldiers indiscriminately.
-
Just as the three hundred Jin cavalrymen who had withdrawn from Huaiyang were being pursued and killed by Lü Bu.

Another group of over three hundred Jin cavalrymen, after leaving Yizhou, began heading north, intending to rest in Jinan first, and then return to Yanjing.

After traveling north for several days, they ran out of the rations they had brought with them.

Lacking logistical support, the cavalrymen began to plot against the common people.

In any case, the Jin cavalry were used to looting as they went, taking whatever they could get their hands on as they fought.

"There's a small lake ahead!" a cavalryman reported to Pu Lian. "There are several villages by the lake, with what looks like a hundred households. We can go and grab some food to take with us, so we won't have to worry about food and drink when we cross the Yimeng Mountains."

The leader of the palanquins nodded: "Okay."

Three hundred cavalrymen marched towards the small village...

I thought it would be no different from raiding a village as usual, but I didn't expect that when I was still far away from the village, the sentries in the village suddenly rang their bamboo tubes. The hollow sound of the bamboo tubes being knocked rang out, and I could see many villagers running out of the village, dragging their children along, and running towards the tall grass by the lake.

The Jin cavalry were still several hundred meters away from the village when all the villagers hid in the tall grass by the lake, and not a single person could be seen.

Pu Nian: "Damn, the people here run so fast."

Isn't this nonsense?
These past few years have been filled with war and chaos, with regimes changing hands constantly. Those ordinary people who were slow to escape have already perished.

"Go search their houses, just find the food."

At Pu Nian's command, the Jin soldiers rushed into the villager's hut, but after searching, they were disappointed to find that there wasn't a single grain of food inside.

They immediately realized that the villagers had hidden the grain in the grass by the lake, so they had no worries when they fled.

Pu Lian: "Go into the grass and find them to get some food."

The Jin soldiers chuckled, dismounted, and crept into the tall grass...

Unbeknownst to them, in the tall grass by the lake, a group of rebels quietly gripped their weapons, ready for battle at any moment.

The leader of this rebel army was named Li Bao, a native of Chengshi (present-day Heze, Shandong).

He led a rebellion against the Jin dynasty in Chengshi, but it was not very successful. After all, he was not a time traveler and did not have any cheat codes. It was normal that he could not defeat the Jin soldiers. He suffered a crushing defeat in several battles against the Jin army.

After a difficult year or two of resisting the Jin, the Northern Qi state was established. In order to make a good impression on his Jin father, Liu Yu became even more active in "suppressing bandits".

Li Bao could no longer stay in the Cheng clan and originally planned to go south to Jiangnan to seek refuge with the Song Dynasty.

But they hadn't gone far when they heard that on the Jiaodong Peninsula, a prince had established a new Great Song Dynasty, calling it the Northern Song and referring to the Song Dynasty to the south as the Southern Song. This prince was a very powerful man; he had once single-handedly fought his way through 500,000 Jin troops, charging in and out five times, and killing eighty Jin generals with his spear.

Most importantly, the prince was not as cowardly as the emperor; he was determined to resist the Jin.

Therefore, Li Bao decided not to surrender to the Southern Song Dynasty, but instead to surrender to the Northern Song Dynasty, heading towards the Jiaodong Peninsula.

Halfway there, we came to a place called Gaohu.

After calming the local people, Li Bao's troops were resting by the lake when they saw the Jin soldiers arrive. The people all hid in the tall grass.

Li Bao gave the order: "Brothers, let's get some work done!"

(End of this chapter)