Just as Wang Yan had expected, after leading his men south, he found that although the Japanese there had taken precautions based on their previous experiences, those precautions were still insufficient. Wang Yan struck them hard at little cost and seized a considerable amount of military supplies.
While the furious Japanese were redeploying their forces, Wang Yan circled back north and laid an ambush in a mountain hollow, wiping out a battalion-sized force that had been sent over as reinforcements.
Then he headed south again, moving southeast. Soon after, he switched routes and went southwest, before racing northeast once more.
He moved like a phantom within a two-hundred-kilometer radius, circling back and forth. Most of the time, he fought with superior numbers against smaller forces; the largest enemy force he faced was no more than a battalion, and more often than not, he picked off scattered small units.
Wang Yan's instincts and sharpness on the battlefield had reached an almost absurd level. Even when the Japanese set bait, laid ambushes, studied jungle warfare from Wang Yan, or planted minefields in the mountains and forests, it made little difference.
That was because virtually every response they could make fell within Wang Yan's calculations. At the same time, through their clashes, he familiarized himself with the Japanese commanders' way of thinking. After fighting them back and forth a few times, combining all the information he had, he could roughly grasp what the enemy was planning. His movements north, then south, then north again, then south again, were all part of a psychological contest with them.
And once Wang Yan felt the time was right, he would flee far away in a single push, covering more than a hundred kilometers. Any ambushes or traps became pointless. He simply refused to take the bait.