As for the troops deployed by the Nawa Armed Forces, they were, of course, Wang Yue's own troops. Neither the Nawa Defense Forces nor Old Xu's soldiers had been mobilized.
To support Wang Yue's operation, when he moved his own troops east, Old Xu automatically moved his own troops southwest. The two men directly traded large sections of their respective defense zones.
A troop movement on such a massive scale could hardly be kept secret. Everyone understood that the Nawa Armed Forces weren't joking this time.
The DD Armed Forces had been sitting at home when disaster fell from the sky. With their cause so clearly justified, they had no way to find reinforcements.
Worse, the attacked merchant ships included not only Burmese vessels but also ships from the north. If the DD Armed Forces couldn't give an explanation, they might as well cease to exist.
So they dispatched two battalions to the rescue almost without hesitation. With 2,000 men, the operation should have been a sure thing.
But what they hadn't expected was that the attackers had been planning this for a long time, and that one of the people involved was a cancer within the TG Armed Forces.
The DD Armed Forces' arrival had been part of the attackers' calculations all along. They launched a counter-ambush, and the two battalions sent to reinforce the area were badly mauled almost as soon as they arrived.
The DD Armed Forces had only five battalions in total, so a third of their force had just been wiped out. They still had plenty of militia, but their fighting ability was poor. The losses had already left the DD Armed Forces gravely weakened.
That was what finally enraged the Eastern Shan Army. They were no longer just trying to rescue the Nawa Guards;