Chapter 53: Wearing Out the Enemy

Under the cover of night, Zhao Mang and his men played a game of cat-and-mouse with the pursuing Tibetan main force. He split his four hundred cavalrymen into three groups and hid them within a dense, rolling patch of woods.

Visibility was extremely low at this hour, and without torches, the cavalry concealed within the forest were completely invisible. Zhao Mang capitalized precisely on this advantage.

After leading his hundred-plus men to the designated location, Zhao Mang extinguished his torches and went into hiding, while the second group of cavalry kept their torches lit and continued to lead the Tibetan army around the perimeter of the woods.

Gar Dorje, leading the charge at the front, saw the torches ahead of him slowly pulling away in the distance. Impatient and anxious, he immediately shouted, "Faster, faster! We're about to catch them! Rain arrows down on the torches!"

Hearing their commander's orders, the Tibetans drew their bows and fired as they gave chase. Yet just as they were about to close the distance, that troop of torch-bearing cavalry suddenly vanished, only to reappear moments later on the road a dozen yards ahead!

This bizarre spectacle left the frantic Gar Dorje with no time to ponder the cause; he could only blindly press the pursuit!

"Hurry, hurry! They've run ahead again!"

The Tibetan cavalrymen trailing behind had no choice but to pursue blindly, lashing their mounts desperately in a desperate bid to squeeze more speed from the horses.

And so it went.

They chased.

They fled.

To Gar Dorje, it felt as though these Han soldiers had sprouted wings and were impossible to catch!

The forest around which they circled was a spot Zhao Mang had carefully chosen beforehand, perfectly dimensioned so that the Tibetan army could circle the entire woods without ever catching up to them.

Once the second wave of decoy cavalry reached their designated spot and went into hiding, the third wave of decoys set out. By the time the third wave returned, the first wave had already rested and recovered their stamina.

Every time the Tibetans were on the verge of catching up, the torches ahead would slow their pace just enough to string them along. This cycle repeated itself so many times that the Tibetan soldiers even began to wonder if the Han cavalry harassing them were even human!

Constrained by Gar Dorje's relentless demands, they seemed to have discarded their wits, reduced to mindless pursuit.

At first, their cavalry could still see the horses' hindquarters of the troublemakers ahead, and their mounts' stamina could still keep up. But gradually, the pace dragged them down.

All the horses were breathing heavily, heaving with ragged gasps. A few even collapsed to the ground foaming at the mouth, yet the chase remained out of reach. They could only watch helplessly as the flickering torches danced tauntingly ahead.

While this side played their game with great merriment...

Over on the other side...

The moment scouts observed the troops streaming out of the Tibetan main camp in a steady column, Liu Can and Zhao Wuji led all their remaining cavalry in a fierce, overwhelming charge.

They easily breached the Tibetan camp, killing everyone in sight and setting fire to every tent they encountered. The meager garrison left behind in the Tibetan camp was utterly incapable of halting their advance.

In less than an hour, Liu Can and Zhao Wuji effortlessly razed the Tibetan camp to the ground, consuming the entire encampment in a massive blaze and slaughtering every single Tibetan soldier left behind.

The towering inferno illuminated the surrounding woodlands. Zhao Mang observed this development from afar. Seeing that the Tibetan horses had reached their physical limits, he quickly extinguished the torches and retreated into the darkness.

Deprived of their target, Gar Dorje ordered a halt to the pursuit, finally granting the exhausted horses a moment to draw breath.

The flames from the Tibetan camp spread steadily, casting a ruddy glow that illuminated a portion of the Tibetan army. Noticing this, a Tibetan soldier hurriedly rushed to Gar Dorje to report the news.

Gar Dorje felt his heart sink by half. He slowly turned his head to look in the direction of the Tibetan camp.

A vast expanse of red stained the distant horizon, turning half the night sky crimson.

Gar Dorje’s eyes darted rapidly as he calculated his next move. "Halt and rest in place! Then gather the troops and fall back to Guazhou!"

He could push no further; this rash offensive had resulted in catastrophic losses! The more than ten thousand soldiers he had brought with him were now reduced to barely six thousand.

All four of his top-tier generals had perished here, even Gar Dongzhu. He had no idea how to explain this to Nomo Gar Nima—that was his own flesh and blood. Having simply accompanied him on an expedition to the Shazhou battlefield, the young man had vanished forever.

This was the greatest defeat of his military career. Furthermore, the elite detachment he had sent to scavenge for treasures in Shah City had sent back no news whatsoever.

What annoyed him most, however, was that the grain supplies still hadn't been delivered to his camp. He intended to return and thoroughly investigate what had gone wrong. He had been fighting bravely on the frontline, yet they denied him even the most basic provisions—it was entirely unreasonable.

Right now, preserving what remained of his strength and crawling back to Guazhou was his only chance to save his own skin.

About a quarter of an hour later, Gar Dorje led his regrouped men toward Guazhou.

By now, the sky was growing faintly pale with dawn.

The Tibetan army retreated westward, while Zhao Mang and his men hauled their newly acquired grain toward Dunzi Peak.

With the immediate crisis averted, he needed to firmly secure his own foundation. He could no longer afford to react as he did today, where the arrival of a moderately sized enemy army forced him to evacuate the local populace just to stay alive.

......

Meanwhile, back at the Tibetan camp, Liu Can and Zhao Wuji led their victorious soldiers laden with spoils of war back to the frontier garrison camp.

Most of the garrison soldiers were just waking up when they spotted Zhao Wuji, Liu Can, and their returning troops approaching the camp.

Every single soldier had two to three enemy heads dangling from his waist, their faces beaming with broad smiles.

A curious soldier nearby called out, "Where on earth did you fellows scavenge all those heads?"

"Why are there so many? Did you lot raid the Tibetan main camp or something?"

"Seriously! You rarely see this many merit badges awarded in an entire year!"

The cavalrymen in the saddle puffed out their chests with pride. "Envious, aren't you?"

"This is all thanks to our Commander!"

"I'm still half-dazed myself—woken up in the middle of the night and sent tearing over to raise hell at the Tibetan camp."

"God knows what got into those Tibetan bastards; they went completely mad and chased us all over the place!"

"And guess what? We led the whole lot straight into an ambush!"

"I've never had such a satisfying slaughter in my life. We torched that entire Tibetan camp to cinders!"

Listening to the nonchalant boasts of the mounted soldiers, the rest of the frontier garrison looked on with intense yearning and envy.

Li Huai'an, who had just shaken off his sleepiness, took in the scene. He stroked his beard as a sudden realization dawned on him. He hurried away to Zhang Chao's tent, though his exact purpose remained unknown.

Mere moments later, he burst out of the tent with an ecstatic grin on his face. He immediately ordered his subordinates to assemble and deploy without delay, setting off at a run in the direction of Shazhou.

Commander Liu Can watched all this unfold without attempting to stop him or offering any unsolicited advice. He figured Li Huai'an possessed a remarkably sharp eye; from just a few fragments of conversation, the man had instantly deduced that there were easy pickings to be had at the Tibetan camp.

With that kind of decisive execution and judgment, Li Huai'an was truly a man of substance.

Liu Can dismissed his own men, granting them a well-deserved rest. He had no intention of participating in whatever opportunistic scraps remained.

It was an unwritten rule of the military: if you get to eat the meat, you have to leave the others a sip of the broth.

Just at that moment, coming from the west of the camp, a lone rider spurred his horse furiously toward the frontier garrison.