Chapter 47: White Wolf Mountain Water Interval (14)

  Li Chengzhong stared at the twenty or so war horses brought back by Zhong Silang, his eyes almost popping out.

  "Are you saying that these horses were all snatched from the Khitans?" Even with the facts right in front of him, he still couldn't quite believe it - ten men had taken more than twenty warhorses from several hundred to a thousand Khitans and returned unscathed. This was simply illogical. Oh, not entirely unscathed, two men had knife wounds on their arms, but the cuts were shallow, and after just a short while, they had already scabbed over with a faint scar, not affecting their ability to continue fighting at all.

  After Toki Shirō finished telling everything, he finally accepted the reality in front of him and let Toki Shirō lead his brothers to eat something quickly. He kept this team of ten people as a reserve force by his side. With these ten men as a backup, Li Cheng felt much more secure.

  Turning his head around, looking at that fat man, Li Chengzhong asked with great interest: "How should I address you, brother?"

  The fatty smiled, his round face scrunched up, and bowed: "I'm Wang Quan, second son of the Wang family. You can call me Wang Erlang or some people also call me Wang Xiaolang... because there are only two brothers in my family..."

  Wang Erlang... Wang Xiaolang... Li Chengzhong suddenly remembered the story of the cowherd, and with a strange expression, he stared at the fat man in front of him for a long time, making the fat man feel uneasy and embarrassed, constantly coughing.

  "King Er Xiao..." Li Chengzhong started chatting with the fatty in a very playful tone: "Where are you from? What do you do for a living?"

  "He was from Shanxia Luojia Village, and he made a living by selling goods... He wasn't called Wang Er Xiao..." The fat man looked at him with some confusion.

  "Hmm, Luo Family Village, why isn't anyone surnamed Luo?" Li Chengzhong couldn't help but continue joking as he looked at the chubby kid.

  Everyone laughed and said, "In Luo Family Village, more than half of the households don't even have the surname Luo..."

  After the joke, Li Chengzhong naturally had to praise and encourage this fat man who had won himself ample time. Listening to Li Chengzhong's words full of praise, the fat man was delighted as if his heart had bloomed like a flower, but his face turned serious instead, saying: "Before justice, how dare I be afraid of death? These are all what should be done, and it is not worth boasting!"

  After listening to Wang Quan's introduction of the Khitan army's strength in this invasion of Bailing Mountain, Li Chengzhong slightly calmed down. With more than 400 men, only a hundred or so more than his own troops, his confidence in defending the fort was slightly boosted.

  "Right, you can speak Khitan, can't you? Come on, come up onto the platform and stand beside me, hmm..."

  ……

  When Wuri and Kedan realized they had been fooled by the fat man, they were about to explode with rage. Especially when they led their troops to the outside of the military camp and found that the road leading to the camp was indeed very recognizable, this anger rose to an uncontrollable height. Originally, as long as they followed the main road forward, they could easily reach the military camp, but because they trusted the fat man too much, everyone took a detour, not knowing how many miles of unnecessary road. The detour was one thing, but even their war horses were stolen, which was really too humiliating, just like slapping Wuri and Kedan in the face, making them so angry that they were ashamed to the extreme!

  Especially Kedan, who had been leading troops for half his life and had fought countless battles. How could he have suffered such a loss? Kedan gritted his teeth, his heart burning with hatred, "Don't let me catch you..." In an instant, countless cruel punishments flashed through his mind.

  Kedan's eyes landed on the two people standing on the high platform inside the stone wall, a robust military officer and a fat man who was carefully smiling beside him. Kedan recognized the officer as the one who led a team of broken soldiers under Yu Guan, setting up a formation that looked similar to his own, which had delayed Kedan's attack for several days, causing him to miss the best opportunity to take the city. As for the fat man, even if he turned into ashes, Kedan would never forget him!

  These two scoundrels - Han people are all bad, every single one of them is a swindler!

  Kedan strongly suppressed his anger and began to observe the military camp in front of him. He saw a low stone wall, and he couldn't help but sneer inwardly - did they think this could stop the brave warriors of Kedan? Wasn't that just a joke?! Then he saw the breach on one side of the stone wall... Kedan remembered the open gate at Yu Pass, and his eyes fixed intently on the breach. The flames of anger in his heart flared up again: "Do you think you can play this trick on me again? Do you really think I, Kedan, am so easily deceived?"

  If Ke Dan still had a shred of sanity at this time, the next sentence he heard made him completely lose his mind. The sentence came from the fat man standing on the high platform inside the stone wall. The fat man's face was full of flesh squeezed together, and in a strange tone, he shouted: "My family head said, thank you to the Khitan noble for giving us war horses, when we fight later, we will definitely show mercy!"

  Khitan's brain "buzzed" in response, and something seemed to be surging up from his chest. He forgot to continue observing the entire battlefield situation, including the stone houses on both sides of the mountain wall, and even more so, he forgot that his Khitan warriors had been rushing around in the mountains for several hours! If it weren't for Wuli pulling him back with all his might, Khitan would have charged into the first row of the attacking troops.

  The first batch of Khitan soldiers who attacked the gap were fifty people, divided into two teams. The front team had thirty people, all holding curved knives and leather shields. The leather shields were small circular shields used by cavalrymen, just enough to cover their chests or faces. The rear team had twenty people, all archers, approaching the stone wall gap under the cover of the first team of Khitan soldiers.

  The Khitan soldiers cautiously observed the scene outside the Hu Kou for a moment, seeing that there were dense long guns on both sides inside. They didn't dare to rush in and retreated to the side, avoiding the front. The Khitan archers then drew their bows and shot arrows at the Lulong army's gunners inside the Hu Kou.

  Because the standing position of Lulong Army's gunners was sideways to the Khitan archers, and the first row of soldiers were all wearing leather armor, many arrows bounced off due to the angle, some of which hit but got stuck in the leather armor, causing little harm to the Lulong Army gunners. After shooting two rounds, several leading archers figured out the trick and shouted a few sentences in Khitan language, and the Khitan archers changed their direction of shooting, focusing on the faces and legs of the Lulong Army gunners. Suddenly, several Lulong soldiers were shot down to the ground.

  As the miserable cries of several soldiers in the Lu Long army who were hit by arrows rose, the gun array immediately showed signs of instability. Zhang Xing rushed up and used the butt of his gun to heavily strike several disorderly speaking and moving soldiers. Only then did those soldiers dare not move again. He also ordered people to drag the fallen soldiers to one side, remove the leather armor from their bodies, and have the replacement soldiers put it on. Those soldiers immediately took over the vacated positions.

  Li Chengzhong stood on the high platform, his hand holding a small flag, which was the orange-yellow command flag used by the Lulong Army, in a triangular shape. He carefully watched as the Khitan soldiers outside the stone wall gradually gathered together, and then raised the command flag high and swung it down with force. Meng Xuzhong and Jiao Chengqiao on either side of the mountain wall had been waiting for Li Chengzhong's order, and when they saw the command flag swing down, they commanded their archers to emerge from behind the stone house, draw their bows and shoot at the open space in front of the marked No. 1 area in a covering fire.

  Meng Xuxing and Jiao Chengqiao's archers achieved significant results, as the Khitan soldiers were standing very concentrated, so the first round of arrows knocked down more than a dozen, almost achieving the effect of every arrow hitting its target. The archers emerging from the stone house on the mountain side made Kedan realize that he had made a serious mistake. After being stunned for a moment, he hastily ordered a retreat, but in the moment he was stunned, Meng Xuxing and Jiao Chengqiao's archers each shot out at least three arrows, with some quick-moving ones shooting out four arrows. Under such casualties, only eleven of the first batch of Khitan people finally retreated safely, with thirty-nine lying on the ground in front of the stone wall.

  The battlefield was quiet, with only the cries of wounded Khitan soldiers echoing through the valley.

  Ke Dan closed his eyes, his heart aching endlessly. The first wave of attack had already lost thirty-nine men, which made him somewhat unacceptable, let alone the five who were his personally trained warriors! He understood that he had been blinded by anger earlier and had committed the mistake of being impatient. Without observing the entire battlefield situation clearly, he had rashly launched an attack. This error was a bit low-level, making him feel ashamed and forcing himself to calm down.

  Ke Dan calmly recalled the scenes from earlier and made a rough assessment of the current situation. The biggest threat now came from the archers on both sides above, but their marksmanship was not accurate, they must have been using some kind of suppressive fire method. As for the height at which the archers were located, Ke Dan admitted that he didn't have a good way to deal with it, in other words, they could shoot him, but he couldn't shoot them back. The gun array at the stone wall opening looked like it wasn't just for show, and indeed was a bit tricky, if they tried to charge up hard, the casualties would likely be quite high.

  He thought for a moment and shifted his gaze to the stone wall. The stone wall was not high, only about one zhang (a unit of length), and it didn't look thick either. With a flip of the body, they could easily get over it. So why bother charging through the gun array at the breach? Thinking this way, he redeployed his troops, preparing to commit fifty men in one go, with five men forming a line with ten attack points along the stone wall. This way, ten people could flip into the stone wall at once, and thirty people could enter the stone wall in no time. He thought that no matter what, thirty Khitan warriors guarding the lower jump point inside the stone wall would be able to hold on for a while, as long as they had time and space, the Khitan warriors would keep pouring into the stone wall. Moreover, under this circumstance, he didn't think the enemy's archers could achieve the same attacking effect as before.

  Fifty Khitan people, in groups of five, quickly rushed to the bottom of the stone wall and formed ten attack points along it. Two of them bent down as supports, with their four hands overlapping at one point. The attacker first stepped on one person's thigh, then on the two people's crossed arms, and the two supporting people exerted force to throw upwards. The attacker borrowed the momentum to flip over in mid-air and directly jumped over the stone wall into the enclosure. This method of flipping over was commonly used by the Khitan people and had a very good effect when attacking those low walls that were not high enough.

  The first attacker was thrown into the stone wall, followed by the second one being thrown into the stone wall by his own companion, then the third one...

  The stone wall was over ten feet high, and the moat inside the wall was several people deep. The height and depth added together, and a tragedy occurred... The first wave of Khitan soldiers who climbed over the stone wall were thrown into a mess, so they didn't have time to warn those who came later because they were all stunned, some even fainted on the spot. The second wave was the same, until the third wave jumped in, and the miserable cries finally spread from the bottom of the moat, which was the Lulong army's gunner guarding the edge of the moat, stabbing the fallen Khitan soldiers with wooden guns in their hands. Li Chengzhong himself on the high platform couldn't bear to watch, it felt like using a fish spear to stab fish in a pond that had been drained of water.