It turned out Player B had made the right move.
His retreat gave the Northwest Governor's aides a way to fool the court.
"Great victory at Sai Gu Pass. The bandits have suffered a crushing rout, corpses piled like mountains. The pass has fallen, and within ten days, fifteen cities have been retaken in succession..."
Yet during the retreat, the army of two hundred thousand descended into internal strife.
The reason was that the court could not produce enough reward silver. Compared to what had been promised, only one-fifth was actually paid, and half of that was made up with rotten cloth and Treasure Notes.
The strongest cavalry also claimed most of the rewards.
Furthermore, the recaptured cities had already been stripped clean before Player B withdrew. There was barely any loot to speak of.
The infantry began rioting over their pay. Under cover of night, they stormed the cavalry camp, led away the expensive horses, and hacked to death the comrades who had once fought beside them.
After the great battle, more than eight thousand elite cavalrymen had remained. But after the pay riot, countless numbers scattered. In the end, barely over three thousand men could be gathered, and only one-tenth of the original horses remained.
It could be said that this cavalry force was finished. It could no longer fight hard battles.
Player B had never expected that the elite cavalry he had failed to destroy despite giving everything he had, even exhausting his ice-and-snow powers, would instead fall to the court's own money problems.
Unfortunately, he had risen too quickly and had too few elites. Even knowing that the enemy had scattered in large numbers, he only managed to round up a little over ten thousand prisoners.
But these ten thousand were regular troops, and many were