Chen Huai, seething with rage, led his troops in a swift sweep across the grasslands and soon encountered a wandering Oirat contingent. Though it was only a small force of barely a thousand men, Chen Huai wiped them out all the same. Only after interrogating the prisoners did he learn that they had received orders to withdraw north. Had Chen Huai arrived even a quarter-hour later, they would have missed each other perfectly.
As for where the rest of their original unit had gone, the prisoners claimed not to know.
Chen Huai could tell that it was not that they did not know, but that they did not want to talk, so he resorted to every torture he could think of.
A bunch of rough soldiers had no sense of restraint. They got nothing out of the prisoners and ended up killing them instead.
Chen Huai was furious, so he led the great army onward to find more Oirats to interrogate.
The great army had won several battles in a row and its morale was soaring, especially after witnessing the horrors along the way.
The Oirats had brought no provisions. Not only had they cruelly mistreated Ming soldiers, but they had also wrought immense destruction upon every village they passed.
Villages were slaughtered and plundered, then burned to the ground. Everywhere the Oirat army passed, misery followed.
Whenever the soldiers met the villagers' grief-stricken, furious, hate-filled gazes, they guiltily looked away.
Pan Yun stared blankly, committing those gazes to heart as she listened to the sound of her merit points being deducted without end.
It was precisely because the Oirat army had been so conspicuous that Chen Huai found them easily.
Like an autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves, the great army began a northward sweep from north of Huailai