The God of War Who Protects the Nation: Starting with Saving a Mother and Daughter in Distress

Xue Ju was drinking water from his water pouch when he heard Li Jing utter the words "burn the camp," and he choked on his drink, coughing several times before recovering.

"Young General, are you crazy? We only have a little over two thousand men left, and you're going to attack a camp of seventy thousand?"

Han Quan, standing to the side, didn't say anything, but his brows were furrowed so deeply they could trap a fly.

He tapped his knee with his fingers and remained silent for a long while before speaking.

"Young general, we've been fighting well lately because we've been attacking the supply lines quickly. But those are supply lines, and the supply convoys only have a few hundred men at most. Now you're going to storm their main camp, which has 70,000 men, all armed with weapons."

Clearly, none of them expected that Li Jing, despite his young age, would be so bold.

Sending just over two thousand men to attack the camp of an army of seventy thousand is simply too reckless.

This is something they wouldn't even dare to dream of.

"I know." Li Jing's gaze lingered on each of their faces for a moment. "I don't intend to fight them head-on."

Xue Ju put down the water bag: "So what do you want to do?"

"Create chaos." Li Jing casually piled up a few small stones to serve as a map of the rebel camp, and then drew a circle on the map.

Clearly, after spending so much time with the rebel professor, Li Jing had thoroughly investigated his situation.

"Although the rebels were a combined force of three groups, their camps were set up separately."

"Wang Chong's men are in the east, Cao Deren's men are in the west, and Xu Mao's men are in the middle. Think about it, with two camps in between, if something happens at night, who will move first, who will move later, and who will be able to see clearly whose men are on the other side?"

Li Jing became more and more excited as he spoke.

He had had this idea for a while, but he still had some reservations before.

But Qin An's letter, with its message of "go bold and do it," immediately gave him immense confidence.

In his view, perhaps his brother-in-law had also noticed this and was encouraging him.

With Qin An's support, he had no more worries and felt it was worth the risk.

Seeing that Li Jing's words were so reasonable and well-founded, and not just a whim, Han Quan narrowed his eyes.

Li Jing, you've completely immersed yourself in your own world, revealing your entire plan without a second thought.

"We had more than two thousand people, divided into three teams, each carrying a different flag. One team carried Wang Chong's flag and went to the edge of Cao Deren's camp."

"One team, carrying Cao Deren's flag, went to attack Wang Chong's territory."

"The remaining men went through the middle and set fire at the junction of Xu Mao and Wang Chong."

He paused, then added, "They'll make this mess of things for us themselves."

Xue Ju and Han Quan exchanged a glance, both seeing hesitation and a hint of agitation in each other's eyes.

"The risk is too great." Han Quan finally shook his head. "Two thousand men moving around in a camp of seventy thousand men, one wrong move and they're in big trouble."

"So we'll only fight on the periphery." Li Jing's tone was more composed than he had expected. "We won't enter the central camp, we won't be greedy for spoils, we'll just set off three fires and run. The gap when the main camp is in chaos will be enough for us to withdraw."

Xue Ju remained silent for a while, then suddenly laughed: "Your brother-in-law has been recuperating for half a month, and you've gotten quite bold."

Li Jing didn't laugh, he just looked at them and said, "I only have one question: are you coming with me or not?"

The tent was quiet for a moment.

Han Quan was the first to stand up, brushing the dust off his knees: "Go."

Xue Ju stood up, hung the water pouch on his waist, and grinned, "If you lose, it's yours; if you win, it's on me."

Seeing that they had both agreed, Li Jing smiled slightly.

Without further hesitation, he immediately issued the battle order.

He divided the two thousand men into three teams, each with around eight hundred men.

He led his squadron of 800 men to the front.

Han Quan was on the left and Xue Ju on the right, and they agreed to use torches as a signal.

The first fire was lit at the camp gate three miles away, and the left and right teams started simultaneously.

After the tactics were finalized, the teams quickly sprang into action, changing into different colors of their armor.

After a series of major battles, they didn't gain much else, but the rebels still managed to collect a considerable amount of equipment.

Disguising their small force is no problem at all.

Once everything was ready, Li Jing looked up at the sky.

The night was overcast, the clouds hung low, and the moonlight couldn't penetrate.

"What perfect weather for murder and arson!"

……

Before setting off, Li Jing took out a box of flags, selected five flags each from Wang Chong and Cao Deren, and distributed them to the left and right teams. Each person carried one flag and hid it under their armor.

"Raise the flag when we get there." After saying this to Xue Ju and Han Quan, he mounted his horse, turned it around, and galloped towards the rebel camp.

The horse's hooves were wrapped in cloth, making a dull, muffled sound when it ran.

The two thousand people were like an undercurrent running close to the ground, silently passing through the countryside.

On the way, they encountered two groups of rebel scouts on patrol, who spotted them a hundred paces away.

Li Jing led his men around two bends to avoid them, without even disturbing the enemy's torches.

When the camp gate came into view three miles away, Li Jing reined in his horse.

The torches on the camp wall were arranged in two rows, illuminating the open space in front of the gate as bright as day.

The figures on the sentry post moved back and forth in the firelight, about seven or eight people. From the camp behind them, one could faintly hear voices and laughter, mixed with the sounds of pots and pans clattering.

Li Jing observed carefully and found that the camp on the east side belonged to Wang Chong's men, with the densest concentration of torches and the most sentries at the entrance.

Cao Deren's camp was next on the west side, with two rows of barricades at the entrance.

Xu Mao's men were positioned in the middle, making the area near the entrance more relaxed.

There were people on both sides, so they felt there was no need to be too nervous.

"Go around to the left," Li Jing said in a low voice. "Go along the section of the camp wall where Xu Mao and Wang Chong meet; there are the fewest torches there."

The troops moved slowly, hugging the shadows outside the camp wall.

When they reached the intersection, Li Jing raised his hand to signal them to stop.

By the dim light, he counted that there were only three torches and two sentries on that section of the camp wall, one of whom was dozing off against the wall.

"Flag." Li Jing only uttered this one word.

Two bodyguards behind him pulled out a flag from under his armor and raised it high.

A flag bearing the character "Cao" and a flag bearing the character "Wang" fluttered in the night wind.

Li Jing took a deep breath, drew his sword from his waist, and slashed forward.

"kill!"

Seven hundred people suddenly rose up.

The silence of the night was shattered by the hoofbeats of horses. The cavalryman at the forefront threw a torch onto the camp wall, and the straw wall was instantly set ablaze, with flames shooting up more than ten feet high.

The dozing sentry was startled awake by the firelight. He opened his mouth to shout, but an arrow had already pierced his throat.

The other sentry turned and ran, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Enemy attack! The Wang family and the Chang Le army are attacking!"

When Li Jing rode his horse into the camp, he heard it clearly.

He twitched his lips and flicked the torch in his hand, setting the tent flaps of the two tents beside him ablaze.

Flames leaped up the fabric, and barefoot men who had been sleeping in the tents ran out, their eyes filled with confusion, and bumped into his cavalry, several of them being knocked unconscious by the back of their swords.

"Head south!" Li Jing led his team along the passage between the tents, rushing more than two hundred steps in.

He didn't set fire to the tents he passed along the way, but he specifically targeted piles of grain and hay, throwing torches at them and setting large areas ablaze.

The firelight formed a winding red line behind him, illuminating half of the camp as bright as day.

A much bigger commotion soon came from the east side.

Li Jing saw flames rising in the distance, followed by shouts of battle, even louder than those on their side.

Faintly, someone was shouting, "Wang Chong's men are attacking!", mixed with the sounds of clashing weapons.

Then there's the west side.

Xue Ju's men acted a little later, but the commotion was still significant, with someone shouting, "Xu Mao's men are coming!"

Li Jing glanced back at the horse.

Three fires lit up in the rebel camp from three directions, separated by Xu Mao's camp, and were nearly two miles apart.

But from a distance, it looks like three groups of people tearing each other apart in the camp at the same time.

Chaos spread like a plague.

Some people panicked and ran towards the neighboring camp, only to be mistaken for enemies and slashed by the people on the other side.

Someone was holding a torch in an attempt to see who was on the other side, but ended up setting the tent on fire instead.

Many soldiers, unable to distinguish friend from foe in the darkness, would slash at anyone rushing towards them, only to realize afterward that it was one of their own.

Li Jing knew all too well that his small force was no match for the rebel army.

He didn't try to do too much. He led his men across half a mile at the border between Xu Mao and Wang Chong, burned seven or eight piles of hay and three granaries, and then rode off at full speed along the retreat route he had scouted out in advance outside the camp wall.

Han Quan and Xue Ju withdrew almost simultaneously.

When the three teams met at the designated location, a headcount revealed that dozens of brothers had been lost and about a hundred were injured.

The rebel camp behind them was in complete chaos.

The firelight illuminated half the sky, and the shouts of battle, the sound of horses' hooves, and the muffled thuds of collapsing tents blended together, like a hornet's nest that had been poked open.

Li Jing reined in his horse and stopped on a hillside, looking back for a long time. The firelight cast flickering shadows on his young face.

He slowly loosened his grip on the reins, and the smile that had been suppressed for so long finally surfaced on his lips.

To avoid getting trapped, they basically just touch it and leave, without even having time to check themselves.

But Li Jing could easily imagine that the already disunited rebel army would suffer heavy losses after their camp was bombed.

In this way, my goal has been achieved!

"Let's go." He turned his horse around and led two thousand men into the night.

……

After Li Jing led his men away happily, the chaos in the rebel camp lasted for nearly two hours before gradually subsiding.

Xu Mao was the first to react.

The moment the flames rose, he donned his armor and left his tent, witnessing firsthand the burning piles of hay on the north side of his camp.

Seeing the firelight and shouts of battle simultaneously illuminating the east and west sides, a taut string tightened in his mind.

"The simultaneous attack on three camps and the almost instantaneous burst of flames are no coincidence!"

Although shouts were heard everywhere that the Wang family and the Chang Le Army had attacked.

However, Xu Mao remained calm and made a rational decision immediately.

"Give the order that no one is to move without permission, but to hold the main position and not move no matter how the fighting outside goes."

It can only be said that Xu Mao truly deserves to be called a renowned coach of our time; even in such a chaotic situation, he still made the right choice.

But the other two companies clearly lack his decisiveness.

In the ensuing chaos, the two commanders, Wang Chong and Cao Deren, panicked first, and the more they did, the more mistakes they made!