Three Kingdoms: The Kingdom Cannot Be Partial

Chapter 259 This plan will be completed soon, and old grudges will be avenged soon; there is no need to ask further questions.
Jiangnan.

The mountain has a hundred thousand people.

Liu Yin, Liu Xiuran, a confidant of Fu Qian and who inherited Fu Qian's title of Commandant of the Expeditionary Army, used his spear as a staff and stood panting in the mud.

Once his breathing had calmed down a bit, he looked around.

The ancient trees reaching for the sky and the vines like pythons remain as they always have, with damp moss covering every piece of rotten wood, rock, and mound of earth.

The same stuffy smell of decaying leaves and damp soil filled the air.

The dense, thick canopy of trees blocks out most of the light, and if you stay here for a while, you can't tell whether it's morning or evening.

Liu Yin wiped his forehead and carefully stepped forward. He sank into the thick layer of decaying leaves, where a deep pit or a poisonous snake might be hidden.

Behind him stood more than 600 Han soldiers from his own unit, their clothes tattered and their bodies covered in mud.

More than six hundred people, or rather, more than six hundred humanoid beings who could barely stand, including Liu Yin himself, were all covered by a thick, dry, and hardened layer of mud.

Even though Liu Yin had spent five or six years with them, he could hardly tell them apart anymore.

When he and General Fu Kuang of Andong split up and took a detour, he had eight hundred men.

We haven't even encountered a single Wu person yet, and we've already lost over a hundred.

The exhausted men helped each other along in silence, each step seemingly exhausting their last bit of strength.

Everyone was wrapped in Gebu from top to bottom.

Gebu was already soaked in blood, turning a dark red and then black.

Many people's wounds had already become infected, and every step they took caused excruciating pain, but they could only grit their teeth and keep up without uttering a sound.

Anyone who stays puts their fate in the hands of mountain demons, venomous insects, and ferocious beasts.

But... some people are always left behind.

Just the day before yesterday, a young man was carrying supplies for a boat when, due to exhaustion from the past few days, his foot slipped and he stepped on a loose stone, causing him to fall down a steep slope with a scream, destroying a red horse boat.

Everyone worked hard to rescue him. When they finally pulled the fallen comrade up, his right leg was twisted at a bizarre angle, with the bone piercing through the flesh, a truly gruesome sight.

Deep within the dense forest, a low, chilling roar could be heard from time to time.

Yesterday, a tiger with piercing eyes and a white forehead quietly followed and pounced on a soldier who had fallen behind the ranks due to a leg injury at dusk.

The shrill screams and the low growls of tigers shattered the silence of the primeval forest. When Liu Yin returned with more than ten personal guards carrying halberds and crossbows, all that remained was a scene of utter devastation, with broken bones and flesh scattered everywhere, and bloodstains left by soldiers who had been dragged into the forest.

They didn't even get to see the beast.

A sleek, green horned serpent emerged silently from an old vine hanging from a giant tree and struck a soldier on the back of the neck.

A fellow soldier caught a glimpse of this out of the corner of his eye. Before he could even shout, he instinctively swung his wood-chopping knife. The blade flashed, the snake's head flew up, and the headless snake's body twisted and fell, wrapping around the soldier's neck.

The Han soldier who was attacked by the venomous snake belatedly touched his neck and felt something cold and slippery. He threw the snake to the ground and his face turned deathly pale.

The army medical officer, who was also the cook who knew a little about poisonous snakes and herbs, examined the severed snake, then looked at the soldier's blackened and swollen wound on the back of his neck, and finally shook his head sadly at Liu Yin.

The young Han soldier was pale and shivering with cold, yet his head was covered in sweat.

“General…” The man looked at Liu Yin, his eyes filled with fear and resentment, but even more so with a desperate understanding.

Liu Yin squatted down beside him, her throat feeling like it was blocked by something. After a long while, she helplessly patted his shoulder hard, then took out the last half of the hard, gritty flatbread from her own pocket and stuffed it into his hand.

"Go!" Liu Yin suddenly stood up, hardening his heart as he growled.

No one spoke.

The team set off in silence, inching forward step by step.

Mud swallowed footsteps, thorns tore clothes, wild beasts lurked in the shadows, and pain tormented the body.

No matter how arduous the road ahead, they walk, silently and tenaciously, overcoming all obstacles, toward the mighty, surging river to the southeast.

This ancient, untouched primeval forest was carved out of its way by Liu Yin and his group of men with their own flesh and blood.

dusk.

The scouts who had gone ahead to explore finally brought back news.

The river is less than five miles ahead.

This place is thirty or forty miles downstream from Wuxian and Tiesuojiang Pass, a place where the Wu people's outposts have disappeared.

However, Liu Yin still dared not be careless. He began to cover himself with temporarily bundled straw and branches, imitating the actions of the Ba people hunters, and completely concealed himself in this vast mountain range.

A young Sima slumped down under the tree roots, mechanically tearing off the leeches clinging to his calves and tossing them into the newly lit fire with a soft "hiss" sound, accompanied by a strange, burnt smell.

He looked at Liu Yin: "General... all our hard work... has it really been of any use?"

Liu Yin didn't turn around, his voice resolute and unquestionable: "This plan will be completed soon, and the hatred of Yiling will be avenged soon. There's no need to ask any more questions!"

Upon hearing this, Sima's previously lifeless eyes lit up once more.

Upon seeing this, Liu Yin paused for a moment, then softened his voice slightly:

"Same as always, ten people per group!"
"Spread out ten paces and find a sheltered, dry spot to dig a stove! Quickly!"

The command invigorated the previously lifeless team.

The soldiers struggled to their feet and quickly dispersed.

Two soldiers carefully used their ring-pommel swords to scrape away a patch of turf on the ground, trying to keep the turf intact, and gently placed it aside.

Another person used a short halberd to dig downwards, digging with great care. Instead of digging straight up and down, he first dug down a foot deep to form a main stove, and then dug out a long and narrow channel at an angle to the side. At the end of the channel, he gently dug out a smoke outlet that was only big enough for a bamboo tube to pass through.

The entire stove pit presents a strange "L" shape.

Soon, an old soldier took out a hollow bamboo tube that had been prepared beforehand from his backpack and carefully inserted it into the side passage, with the bamboo opening fitting perfectly into the smoke outlet.

The other person carefully covered the turf that had just been shoveled back over the stove, leaving only a firewood inlet slightly larger than the earthenware pot.

The other end of the hollow bamboo tube was led a few steps away, beneath a dense clump of ferns.

The opening of the pipe was slightly concealed with sparse branches.

Someone gathered relatively dry branches and carefully placed them into the stove through the firewood inlet to start a fire.

Flames rose quietly, producing smoke, but instead of shooting straight up, it was constrained by the strange structure of the earthen stove, forced to bend, and slowly flowed out along the bamboo pipe buried underground.

The bamboo tube is several steps long and mostly buried in damp soil. As the smoke passes through, the heat is absorbed by the soil, and particulate matter adheres to the inner wall of the bamboo tube. When it reaches the exit under the fern at the other end, only a few wisps of faint, pale bluish-gray smoke remain.

The thin wisp of smoke was immediately dispersed by the low bushes, and with a gust of mountain wind, it disappeared without a trace in the damp and hazy mountain mist.

The Han army was already very familiar with this technique. It was a secret military skill brought by Long Xianglang before the expedition, called "smokeless stove".

These past few hundred people have survived in this ghostly place entirely thanks to it, without freezing to death in the spring chill, without starving to death, and without being detected by any potential Wu army scouts. The cook placed the earthenware pot on the firewood spout, poured in the spring water collected in a leather bag, sprinkled in a small handful of coarse salt, and finally carefully added the broken pieces of hard bread and a little bit of dried meat.

No one spoke loudly; the only sounds were the soft crackling of firewood burning in the stove and the bubbling of water in the earthenware pot, just about to boil.

The soldiers sat silently around the stove, stretching out their hands, red from the cold and cracked, to warm themselves by the fire through the grass.

Someone carefully passed hot water to him, and he sipped it slowly. The warmth slid down his throat, and his internal organs, which had been frozen and almost numb, finally came back to life little by little.

Once the food was cooked and the piping hot porridge was eaten, many soldiers even broke out in a fine sweat, dispelling some of the bone-chilling cold of the approaching night.

Liu Yin also held a pot of hot porridge, slowly drinking it. His eyes were unfocused and listless, but his thoughts drifted over deep valleys and dense forests to the rushing river.

Lai Xi was able to lead two thousand elite troops, traversing hundreds of miles of mountains and valleys, directly into the heart of Kui Xiao's territory, Lueyang, and turn the tide of the Longxi war in one fell swoop.

Now, he and his six hundred remaining soldiers are to do the same thing.

What sustained him and his soldiers to this place was both national and personal vendettas, as well as a burning desire for unparalleled glory.

Just then, several rhythmic bird calls came from the woods behind them.

It was a signal sent by the scouts.

Upon hearing the sound, Liu Yin abruptly put down the pottery jar and disappeared into the dense forest in an instant.

A moment later, several men, also dressed in disguise, emerged from the depths of the dense forest and bumped into Liu Yin, who was heading back into the woods.

The leader, though covered in dust and his clothes were torn and tattered by thorns, was the first to be seen.

But Liu Yin recognized him at a glance—it was Fa Miao, a close minister of the emperor and the Imperial Carriage Commandant!

"Commander Fa!" Liu Yin was both delighted and surprised, and rushed forward. "Why is it you?"

Fa Miao waved his hand, signaling him to be quiet, and then took out a bamboo tube wrapped tightly in oilcloth from his bosom and handed it forward.

Liu Yin took it and quickly opened it.

The contents of the tube were a topographical map and a note.

Fa Miao lowered his voice and explained:

"More than ten river defense posts along the sixty li downstream of Wuxian County are all on the map."

"The notes on the paper are the patrol passwords and shift change times... all of which were spoken by Deng Xuanzhi and other surrendered generals of Sun Wu, and have been verified."

"But His Majesty has repeatedly warned that although this place is downstream of Wu County, Deng Xuanzhi and others have been defeated and surrendered to the Han, and Pan Jun may change the sentry command. We must act according to the situation and be extremely careful!"

Liu Yin nodded heavily: "This subordinate understands."

Fa Miao looked at Liu Yin, who was barely recognizable as human, with an extremely solemn expression:

"His Majesty has already decided on a general plan. On the 20th of the first month, when the morning fog on the river is at its thickest, that will be the day when our Great Han breaks through the Iron Chain River Pass in one fell swoop."

"At that time, at the Iron Chain Pass in Wu County, our Han army will be deployed in full force, advancing by both land and water, and will surely leave the main force of the Wu people in Wu County!"

"But... the battle in Wuxian is no longer a big deal."

"Our position here is the key to this battle."

"Whether we can seize Zigui in one fell swoop... whether we can catch the Wu people off guard and advance straight to Yiling, all our hopes rest on this place, on you all, on each and every one of us... we must ensure that no mistakes are made!"

Liu Yin gripped the blueprints tightly in his hand, his voice resolute: "Please report to His Majesty, Commandant: Liu Yin and his six hundred soldiers will not fail in their mission, even if it means their own destruction!"

Fa Miao shook his head: "I'm not going back. His Majesty has decreed that I can stay and act with you."

Liu Yin was taken aback and blurted out, "Commander? This place is extremely dangerous..."

Fa Miao shook his head, interrupting him: "It is precisely because of the danger that I must stay."

He lacked his father's wisdom and strategy, but... whether this campaign against Wu could proceed swiftly and decisively, striking Sun Wu unexpectedly, depended entirely on this, entirely on this move.

He felt he should do something, that he was capable of doing something.

Liu Yin snapped out of his daze, looked at Fa Miao's tattered clothes, at his body covered in wounds, and then at those unwavering eyes. Finally, he nodded emphatically and uttered only one word: "Good."

...

at the same time.

Two hundred and fifty li downstream from Wuxian County is Zigui.

inside and outside the small town, banners fluttered and swords and spears stood in a forest.

Zhou Fang, the leader of the Yixing Zhou clan, a powerful and virtuous family with many members, stood with his hands behind his back, calmly observing the great river outside the city.

After learning from the messenger upstream that Pan Jun had lost several passes at Yanyu and eventually abandoned his army to flee and be trapped in Wuxian, an extremely ominous premonition lingered like a bone-deep boil.

He couldn't understand why so many veteran generals who had made great contributions to the Wu Kingdom, such as Pan Jun, Sun Shao, Xu Zhong, Sun Gui, and Xianyu Dan, would suffer such a crushing defeat in less than ten days, with no way to stop it.

Although Wuxian had the iron cone that sank into the river, although Wuxian had the iron chain fortifications along the river, although Wuxian had Pan Jun, Sun Shao and their 14,000 to 15,000 men.

But could these forces truly withstand the Shu army, which was riding high on a great victory and led by the emperor himself?
"Wuxian is in dire straits, and Zigui is also on the verge of collapse. We cannot sit idly by and wait for our demise!"

With this thought in mind, he beckoned behind him and gave a stern order to the guards standing beside him:

"Issue my order to immediately conscript all laborers within a 30-mile radius of Zigui!"
"Continue to strengthen the city's defenses!"
"All the weapons, arrows, logs, and stones in the armory were moved to the city wall!"
"Raise each section of the city wall by three feet!"

"Dig the moat another ten feet wide and three feet deep!"

In fact, as soon as news of Pan Jun's crushing defeat reached Zigui, Zhou Fang was already reinforcing the city's defenses.

At this moment, throughout Zigui City, inside and out, commands, reprimands, whippings, and complaints arose all at once, the sounds mingling together like a boiling cauldron, and the entire city was filled with an atmosphere of urgency as a great battle was about to begin.

Zhou Fang descended from the corner tower of the city wall and personally surveyed the surrounding area, occasionally stopping to draw his dagger and stab at the newly built rammed earth city wall.

However, if anyone manages to pierce even half an inch, the person in charge of the construction will be arrested and brought in for questioning.

As night fell, he finally stopped and beckoned to his silent and composed deputy general, Zhou Ji, who had been following behind him: "Ziheng."

“General.” Deputy General Zhou Ji stepped forward, clasped his hands in greeting, and awaited orders.

Zhou Fang's gaze remained fixed upstream, his voice low, as if afraid of being overheard:

“Pan Chengming and Sun Gongli are in a precarious situation. If Wuxian is still there, everything will be fine, but what if… what if Wuxian is lost, and the Shu people sail down the river to the east, their troops could reach Zigui in no time. At that time, people will be in a state of panic, and relying solely on this city will not be enough to hold out for long.”

If Wuxian were to fall, allowing the Shu army to besiege Zigui, that would be the worst-case scenario.

At that time, morale will be greatly boosted, and the city of Zigui alone will certainly not be able to stop the Shu people.

When Liu Bei launched the Battle of Yiling, it was the same situation; Wuxian and Zigui were captured in quick succession within a month.

He looked at his deputy Zhou Ji: "While it's still early, take three thousand troops and come with me to the upper reaches of the river to reinforce the defenses."

(End of this chapter)