The two armies charged into each other, with the generals of both sides leading the assault. Yet when they collided, Xiang Tuo, hailed as the Tiger of the Xiang Clan, was routed at the very first clash!
The sight struck the Chu Army like a bolt from a clear blue sky!
Xiang Tuo had always led from the front, charging forward without hesitation, sharp and unstoppable.
Now, after a single clash of halberds, he had been frightened by that golden-armored young general into fleeing in disarray, panicked like a stray dog.
The Chu Army's morale plummeted, while the Qin Army's soared ever higher!
As the two forces collided, the Chu Army's front ranks were instantly thrown into chaos.
The Qin Army's Assault Cavalry Battalion followed close behind Zhao Cheng, thrusting into the Chu formation like a blade and carving a bloody path inward.
"Stop him!"
Xiang Tuo fled backward. He even tried to slip into the woods and escape alone while his men held Zhao Cheng off.
If he had still been capable of fighting, he would never have acted this way.
But that clash had made him realize at once that they were on entirely different levels. Charging straight at his opponent had been the height of folly!
The personal martial prowess he had always taken pride in was worth less than a fart in front of that young general.
He even felt that if he took another blow, he would die.
The aura of death was so thick that it prickled his skin. As he fled, he kept glancing back.
He saw Zhao Cheng kill any man who stood in his way, and cut down any horse that blocked him.
The tall warhorses ridden by the Death Warriors looked like little wild rabbits before his Great Halberd. One swing could cleave them in two!
What kind of Divine Weapon was this, anyway? He had spent a fortune on his great spear, commissioning a renowned smith to forge it through a thousand hammerings and a hundred refinings, yet that one blow had nearly broken it!
This battle could no longer be fought. The situation on the field and the strength of the troops had both fallen to the brink.
But with a fierce general like this in the Qin Army, he was a grave threat to the Six States!
He was still so young, yet already this brave. Given time, who could stand against him?
Even if he died, he had to get this news to Chu. All the states would have to join forces and assassinate this rising Qin general!
Otherwise, given time, he would become another Lord Wu'an of Qin!
He fled with all his might. Though the Chu Army's morale had waned, its soldiers were still fierce and brave. Shouting that they would protect their general, they rushed forward to intercept Zhao Cheng.
But who was Zhao Cheng? How could men like them hope to stop him?
One swing of his halberd swept away both men and horses.
The only thing that slowed him was the corpses strewn across his path, which got somewhat in the way.
But with his Spirit Communion Realm horsemanship, even the slight loss of speed was negligible.
Still as nimble as a butterfly among flowers, he swept back and forth like the wind, slicing through the formation like a knife's edge and pressing straight toward Xiang Tuo.
"Weren't you the Tiger of the Xiang Clan? How can you flee in panic like a stray dog?"
As he charged through the enemy ranks and pursued Xiang Tuo, he roared like a tiger and laughed wildly.
"Come, take another blow from my halberd!"
"Don't run!"
His voice rang across both armies. The Tiger of the Xiang Clan had become a stray dog, and the Chu soldiers, who had once taken pride in that title, could barely hold their heads up, burning with shame.
The Qin soldiers, meanwhile, laughed heartily. Proud of their general, they kept taunting the enemy and tearing at their morale.
"So this is the Tiger of the Xiang Clan? Are there no men left in the Xiang Clan? No men left in Chu?"
"You can't even take one blow from our general, yet you dare call yourself a general!"
"You barely touched weapons before fleeing like a frightened bride. Are the people of Chu all this soft?"
"You're nothing but defeated foes. Why did Chu send you here as reinforcements? You're practically handing us military merit!"
"Don't run! Let me borrow your head!"
"Our general is here. This road is closed. Turn back and await your death!"
"..."
The Chu Army's morale sank lower and lower.
Xiang Tuo gritted his teeth, his face flushing as red as blood.
He had always been fierce and resolute, whether training his troops or fighting in battle.
His soldiers shared his temperament. They were fierce and unyielding, and their army had always charged forward without hesitation. How had they ever fought such a humiliating battle?
After thinking it over, Xiang Tuo let out a long sigh and suddenly turned his horse around.
As always, he roared, "I am no stray dog, and you are no defeated army!"
"All troops, heed my command! Charge with me!"
Summoning his courage and embracing death, he charged toward the approaching Zhao Cheng.
Zhao Cheng had been pursuing him without pause. They were not far apart, and now Xiang Tuo was charging toward him instead of retreating.
In an instant, the distance between them closed completely.
The great spear thrust like a dragon toward Zhao Cheng's brow.
Zhao Cheng neither dodged nor retreated. His left hand seized the spear while his right swung his halberd at Xiang Tuo's neck!
Before Xiang Tuo's spear could reach him, Zhao Cheng's hand clamped around it. In an instant, the spear went from moving at full speed to dead still. All the force Xiang Tuo had poured into that strike sank into the sea and vanished, leaving it unable to move.
Zhao Cheng's halberd was already upon him. Xiang Tuo had no choice but to abandon his weapon and lean backward to evade.
But the massive halberd was astonishingly nimble in Zhao Cheng's hands. At the very moment it reached the height of its force, he abruptly changed his move, turning it in a sweeping arc.
A sharp hiss cut through the air!
Xiang Tuo's head flew from his shoulders.
Zhao Cheng lifted his halberd and caught Xiang Tuo's head on its blade.
"General!"
"Avenging the general!"
"Kill!"
After a moment of silence, the Chu soldiers around them suddenly went mad. They unleashed several times the strength they had shown before and charged at the Qin Army and Zhao Cheng.
One after another, they threw themselves into the fight without regard for their lives.
Zhao Cheng swung his halberd to fight back. Wave after wave of enemy soldiers fell, yet those behind them kept charging. No one retreated, and no one showed fear. They only grew more frenzied.
He looked at Xiang Tuo's head in his hand.
"So this was the final formation you laid?"
With his last reserves of courage and his willingness to die, Xiang Tuo had driven his soldiers to face death and emerge alive, pushing them to fight on in their desperate situation.
In a way, he had upheld the Tiger of the Xiang Clan's approach to command right to the end.
But that was all.
Zhao Cheng raised an eyebrow, and his killing intent sharpened.
"Kill! Wipe out the Chu Army here!"
"Kill!" The Qin Army's fervor was no less than the Chu Army's. Led by Zhao Cheng and the charging Assault Cavalry Battalion, they soon split apart the leaderless Chu forces, who had nothing left but their courage, and gradually surrounded and destroyed them.
The Chu front ranks were trapped deep in the enemy formation, the center was caught between attacks on both flanks, and the rear's escape route had been cut off. Their situation was completely hopeless.
The Qin Army's encirclement tightened, but Meng Wu grew all the steadier. He waved his command flags more often and in quick succession, rapidly shifting the formation.
The Chu Army's room to maneuver shrank steadily until its tens of thousands of soldiers could bring to bear only the strength of a few thousand.
And with no leader to rally them, the courage roused by Xiang Tuo's death had already gone through its first and second decline. Now it was spent.
Enemy soldiers died in droves, until only scattered remnants remained.
Throughout it all, the Qin Army's losses were light.
By dusk, corpses covered the battlefield. Only a few scattered bands remained, and they had broken through to the hills and wilderness amid the chaos. Meng Wu sent troops to hunt them down; it would not be long before they were wiped out as well.
The Chu Army had lost sixty thousand soldiers and a valiant general. The Qin Army had won a great victory.
On the battlefield outside the city, the Qin Army cleared the field, severed heads, gathered weapons, armor, and other spoils, and verified military merit.
As Zhao Cheng rode back to camp with his troops, he noticed that a thumb-sized piece of the halberd's blade had curled. He couldn't help feeling a little pained.
Xiang Tuo's great spear might not have been Precision Cast, but it had certainly been hammered and refined a thousand times.
His own halberd cut through the weapons of ordinary soldiers like a knife through melons.
But when it cleaved that great spear, it neither broke it nor escaped with its edge intact.
It seemed he would have to forge a Treasure Halberd, or save up his lifespan and forge a Divine Weapon—the Painted Halberd—directly.
A Treasure Halberd would do, but the Painted Halberd was better. He would have to forge a Divine Weapon sooner or later, so why waste ten thousand years of lifespan on a Treasure Halberd?
Nearby,
Meng Tian looked at the head hanging from Zhao Cheng's saddle and sighed. "This army truly fought with valor. In an ordinary battle, when casualties reach a third, deserters start appearing. When half the army is lost, the whole force breaks and surrenders in droves."
"But even when this force was on the verge of being wiped out, not a single man surrendered. Those who escaped into the woods still fought back with everything they had."
"By contrast, the Han Army acted quickly. Of its thirty thousand soldiers, twenty thousand surrendered."
"It seems the reinforcements sent to Wan City weren't elite troops at all. Most were old, weak, sick, or injured."
"They must be trying to preserve their forces for the coming Qin assault on the city."
Zhao Cheng asked, "When will we capture Wan City?"
Meng Tian shook his head. "Not yet. Wan City won't be easy to take. We have to isolate it first, so we need to capture Chou City and cut off its connection with Luyang and Wuyang."
"Chou City, however, should be easy to take. It lies southwest of Ye County, and the two cities are only thirty or forty li apart, with nothing but plains between them."
"If the Assault Cavalry Battalion rides at full speed, it'll arrive in half a day. The Light Cavalry can reach it in less than a day."
"Chou City's defenses are weaker than Ye County's. If we send our cavalry to raid Chou City at night, we might finish the battle quickly."
"I just don't know what Father will decide."
Zhao Cheng said, "You said earlier that this battle was a classic example, with a lot to learn from. When are you going to review it? I'd like to learn from you too."
Meng Tian smiled. "We can do it now. Let's go to the tent and review the battle."
"Father seized on the enemy's weakness and deployed the Triple-Layer Formation to counter Xiang Tuo's aggressive style of command. Combined with the information advantage from your surprise assault on the city, it proved even more effective."
"I suspect that as soon as Father learned Xiang Tuo was leading the enemy, he had already planned it all out. Then he followed that plan step by step, forcing Xiang Tuo into a dead end."
"Finally, he used you as the killing blow, cutting off Xiang Tuo's last escape route. That decided the battle and brought the campaign to a close!"
"Father fought with caution, yet the battle was clean and decisive. So many of the details were crucial. I couldn't have fought it that way, but that doesn't stop us from learning from it."
In the main tent, Meng Wu sat before his desk. A silk document lay spread across it, his brush poised above it without moving.
He scratched his head, feeling a headache coming on.
The two armies had fielded nearly two hundred thousand soldiers in total. This already counted as a major campaign.
After such a great victory, the entire army had earned a great deal of military merit.
Besides his own deployments, the most crucial contribution had of course been Zhao Cheng's blockade of the retreat and his slaying of the enemy's valiant general.
Without Zhao Cheng and his more than ten thousand cavalry sealing off the escape route, someone else might have let Xiang Tuo use the morale of a desperate last stand and his own martial prowess to lead nearly thirty thousand Chu soldiers in a forced breakout.
Even if they still won, it would only count as a minor victory, nowhere near as great as wiping out the enemy.
And Xiang Tuo was, by any measure, a renowned Chu general, famous for his fierceness and resolve.
Zhao Cheng had slain him on the battlefield. That achievement was weighty enough to make his name known throughout Qin and Chu.
It would also prove within Qin that Zhao Cheng was indeed brave, and that his earlier claims had not been empty words.
Reporting the battle was simple enough. Qin Law required a military report to be sent after every battle, large or small.
But one letter after another kept going out, every one about Zhao Cheng. Would His Majesty not grow tired of receiving them?
After thinking it over, Meng Wu glanced at Chou City on the map.
Then he suddenly made up his mind.
"In that case, why not have Zhao Cheng lead the troops in a surprise raid on Chou City tonight? We'll finish quickly, then send His Majesty a report tomorrow covering both the victory here and the victory at Chou City."
Once he had decided, Meng Wu thought it over carefully. The more he considered it, the better the plan seemed.
He immediately called out, "Guards! Call Zhao Cheng and Meng Tian to see me!"
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