Three Battles to Settle the Realm

Nearly four hundred years had passed since the Sage King's time.

The barbarians were no less intelligent than All Xia; their culture was simply less advanced. After so many years, they were completely different from when he had first established the order.

Their Wenming had advanced considerably since those early days, and they had even begun building cities.

In particular, the barbarians who lived intermingled with the feudal states of the Central Plains had gradually become agricultural peoples.

But this was not good news for the Luo Clan. Barbarians were easy to conquer; another Wenming was not.

Since the Sage King's time, the Wenming of All Xia had been clearly distinguished from that of the Four Barbarians on all four frontiers. Its wealth of classical texts had created a gulf between the cultural foundations of All Xia and those barbarians.

The Luo Clan, in particular, possessed firsthand records of the Sage King. They understood better than anyone how great he had been and how far-reaching his wisdom was.

As the vessel of his wisdom, All Xia had to remain prosperous forever.

Therefore, these barbarians who represented another Wenming had to perish!

Ji Zhao cared deeply about the development of All Xia.

Even setting aside his own simple affection for them, tangible benefits alone meant he could not abandon them. Every campaign All Xia waged against the barbarians earned him fortune.

The more prosperous All Xia became, the faster his fortune points increased.

If the Luo Clan played a major role in the process, the increase in fortune points would be considerable.

Lü Xiao Bai and Guan Zhong, ruler and minister, had both been profoundly influenced by the Luo Clan.

Thus, their great historical undertaking of venerating the king and repelling the barbarians could earn Ji Zhao a substantial sum of fortune points.

The Qi State and the Lai Yi State had been locked in conflict for three hundred years. In the early days, the Lai Yi State had beaten Qi back; later, both sides had their share of victories and defeats.

But Qi held advantageous terrain, so the balance had gradually tipped in its favor. Even the victories Lai Yi had won during Lü Wu Jiu's reign had not changed the overall situation.

Now, under Guan Zhong's administration, Qi was stronger than ever. The Lai Yi State still had no idea that it faced destruction.

Faced with Qi's furious offensive, Lai Yi responded swiftly. These were old adversaries, after all. It quickly assembled a great army and marched out to meet them as usual.

Then, in the crisp autumn weather of the tenth month, Lai Yi suffered a crushing defeat!

Zhang Qi led the Qi army to smash the overconfident Lai Yi forces in open battle. The peculiar terrain left the Lai Yi people nowhere to flee, and their casualties reached nearly thirty thousand.

It was a victory greater than any Qi had seen in years. When the news reached home, the entire state erupted with excitement.

Guan Zhong had accompanied Zhang Qi and witnessed the entire victory. He smiled and said, "Minister Zhang, Lai Yi suffered this disastrous defeat because they underestimated our army. We should continue the offensive and finish the task in one campaign, giving them no opportunity to regroup."

Guan Zhong was accomplished in both civil and military affairs. His grasp of military strategy was actually quite good, though it could not compare with his political talents.

At the very least, the professional general Zhang Qi and Guan Zhong held exactly the same assessment of Lai Yi's situation.

Before the first battle had even ended, Zhang Qi had realized that Lai Yi knew nothing of the changes within Qi. They still judged the Qi Army by the standards of the past, which explained their complacency.

Hearing Guan Zhong's words, Zhang Qi immediately smiled. "You are absolutely right, Chancellor. I was thinking the same thing.

"We brought out One Hundred Thousand Troops this time. If we cannot end the war quickly, we may disrupt the farming.

"Now we must choose suitable ground, drive the Lai Yi soldiers there, and make them fight another hard battle against us.

"Our military strength is far beyond anything these Lai Yi people can match.

"As long as we fight one more battle of annihilation, Lai Yi's available troops will be severely depleted.

"Then we can advance straight on their capital. We need not fear a siege either."

Once Guan Zhong and Zhang Qi had settled their strategy, they struck decisively, using a series of small engagements to funnel the Lai Yi forces together.

They marched for another half month and more, continually pushing eastward. This exposed another weakness of the Lai Yi State.

In effect, Qi, Ju, and the other states of All Xia had hemmed them onto the peninsula. They had nowhere to flee; only by defeating Qi could they escape this cage.

Zhang Qi began feeding meat to his core Soldiers and giving all the horses the finest fodder, preparing for a second major engagement with the regrouped Lai Yi survivors.

On the Banks of the Jiao River, Zhang Qi finally encountered those regrouped Lai Yi troops and the reinforcements sent from within their state.

Most cities in this era were built beside waterways.

Thus, major battles invariably took place not far from water. After smashing the Lai Yi army, Zhang Qi had taken five cities in succession before reaching this place.

The season was gradually turning to late autumn. Fierce winds swept up fallen grass and leaves, and a grim, murderous air hung over the field.

Zhang Qi commanded the fifty thousand finest troops in the center, while his two deputy commanders each led twenty thousand men guarding the flanks.

Guan Zhong surveyed the orderly ranks of their army and asked calmly, "Minister Zhang, are you confident of winning this battle?"

Zhang Qi cupped his hands. "Chancellor, your learning encompasses heaven and humanity, and you have trained such a powerful army for Qi.

"If we can still lose with ranks like these, I will take my own life here. I would have no face to meet either you or the ruler."

These were Zhang Qi's heartfelt words. During his thirty years in the Yan State, when had he ever imagined that he would command such a powerful army?

If Yan had possessed an army like this, what would it have had to fear from the mere Mountain Rong and Eastern Hu?

Zhang Qi had expressed his resolve to win.

Guan Zhong patted his arm. "Minister Zhang, the ruler asks only that you win. The lady also hopes you will return with news of victory."

A far greater proportion of Qi's soldiers wore armor than five years earlier.

Qi had not merely forged armor itself; it had also purchased a great deal from the Luo State.

By contrast, the Lai Yi people's technological capabilities were utterly incomparable to Qi's.

They were bloody and savage, steeped in primitive ways. Had these barbarians not been brave and numerous, Qi would have eradicated them long ago.

Standing on his chariot, Zhang Qi began rousing the soldiers. Fighting barbarians was entirely different from their earlier war against the Qu State.

These barbarians would not observe the Rites of Zhou and stop pursuing enemies once they had fled fifty or a hundred paces. This would be a true struggle of life and death.

"Men of Qi, before you stand the Lai Yi people.

"These homeless curs whom you defeated just days ago now dream of continuing their war against our state.

"I ask you: are you afraid?"

"Victory upon victory for Qi!"

Every Qi soldier shouted. Nothing inspired morale more than victory.

"Beat the drums! Advance!"

At Zhang Qi's command, the drummers began pounding out their booming rhythm, and all the Qi soldiers advanced to the beat.

The shield bearers in the foremost ranks, in particular, shouldered the heavy responsibility of protecting the men behind them from arrows.

The sky was blue as though washed clean, the stream murmured, the drums beat urgently, chariots thundered forward, and metal rang sharply against metal.

Together with the bodies falling one after another and the scarlet blood spilling across the earth, they formed a brutal tableau.

Zhang Qi led Qi's finest armored warriors into the charge.

These armored warriors fought on an entirely different level from peasant levies. They tore straight through the Lai Yi formation.

As this force thrust left and right, the Lai Yi army, divided into several fighting contingents, soon lost the ability to receive accurate orders. They fell into a desperate scramble, saving one side only to lose another.

An hour into the fierce battle, the Lai Yi troops were retreating steadily, while Qi's offensive grew ever stronger.

Fortunately for Lai Yi, they had not fielded slave soldiers this time, but troops from their own tribes. Otherwise, under such conditions, their ranks would already have collapsed into panic.

Even now, it was only a matter of time. Zhang Qi had keenly sensed that the Huai Yi people were close to breaking. All he needed was a single opening, and the entire Lai Yi army would shatter.

He climbed to higher ground, swept his gaze across the battlefield, and fixed on the eastern side of the right flank.

The Lai Yi troops there relied on the river for protection and had posted fewer men. It was an opening he could assault with overwhelming force.

An opportunity missed would never return.

Zhang Qi immediately summoned a man. "I will give you a thousand elite chariot soldiers. Charge straight through that point, three chariots abreast.

"Do not bother fighting or killing, and do not stop. Drive straight through with the force of the chariots and horses!"

This unexpected move proved effective. The Lai Yi people had never imagined that Qi would forgo its chariot soldiers' fighting power and simply send the horses charging with their chariots.

The losses among the horses were tremendous. Within moments, dozens of chariots were wrecked, their broken remains tumbling into the water.

The horses suffered even worse, flesh and blood flying everywhere. Some charged straight onto spear points and died instantly.

But the effect was astonishing. This corner of the Lai Yi formation had few men to begin with, and they could not withstand Qi's death-defying charge. A single rush trampled them into bloody pulp.

The battlefield changed so swiftly that the Lai Yi commander had no time even to react.

Immediately afterward, Zhang Qi sent his true elite troops charging into their formation.

Like a sharp knife, they met scarcely any resistance worth mentioning. The general at their head stood on his chariot and knocked down the Grand Banner with a single blow.

The Lai Yi commander was about to flee when an arrow struck him down.

The arrow carried tremendous force. At such close range, even if he survived, he would certainly suffer terribly.

More importantly, whether he lived or died no longer mattered. On the battlefield, the Grand Banner and the standards of each camp were far more important than the commanding general.

Seeing that the strike had succeeded, Zhang Qi immediately shouted, "All troops, pursue and cut them down!"

The influence of the Grand Banner and the commander on an army's morale was immeasurable.

Only a handful of armies possessed a will of their own, such as the Luo State Dare-to-Fight Warriors, and could continue fighting after losing both.

The Lai Yi people, a disorganized rabble whose Wenming was hardly advanced to begin with, naturally did not qualify.

As though the scene were repeating itself, the entire Lai Yi formation broke apart. The events of the previous month unfolded before Zhang Qi once more.

The whole army fled. Those without armor ran fastest, so the first thing men did when escaping was throw their armor away. Then they became food for the archers.

Wave after wave of arrows rained onto them, and chariot after chariot rolled over their bodies. Many were crushed directly into pulp.

It was far too difficult to leave an intact corpse on a battlefield. No one could tell whom the organs scattered across the ground and the severed limbs flying through the air had belonged to.

In the end, to prevent an epidemic, all these corpses would simply be burned.

"General, after this victory, I fear the Lai Yi State will truly fight for its life."

Watching the Qi soldiers pursue and slaughter the Lai Yi troops, Guan Zhong could not help saying this to Zhang Qi.

Zhang Qi knew that, of course. Once this battle of annihilation was over, Lai Yi would have lost nearly half its elite troops.

This already heralded the destruction of their state. Even when a state of All Xia fell, other feudal lords would help restore it. If Lai Yi fell, the other barbarian tribes would laugh aloud.

Thus, the king of Lai Yi could not possibly sit and await his death. He would certainly conscript people from every tribe to defend his royal capital.

But Zhang Qi remained utterly fearless. "Do not worry, Chancellor Zhong.

"The ruler ordered me to destroy the Lai Yi State. Therefore, it must be destroyed.

"Even if the king of Lai Yi conscripts every male over fifteen in his entire state, they will merely become dead souls on the battlefield.

"With caution at every step and a steady advance, it will simply be one victory after another."

Seeing that Zhang Qi had not grown arrogant after two great victories, Guan Zhong felt reassured.

Qi's army had also suffered considerable casualties in this battle. After all, annihilating an enemy was entirely different from merely routing one.

Still, the losses were well within what Zhang Qi could accept. Normally, they should have rested and reorganized where they were.

But Zhang Qi considered this the Land of Four Fronts, vulnerable to attack from every direction and difficult to defend. Thus, the Qi army brought its wounded to a position that was easy to defend and hard to assault, and made camp there. Guan Zhong was very pleased with his decision.

"You are truly cautious, General. The ruler was right to entrust you with this." For a great state, gambling on clever tricks and dangerous risks was the road to disaster.

Zhang Qi sighed. "The ruler placed the finest troops of the entire state in my hands. No amount of caution could be excessive.

"The decisive battle ahead will certainly be brutal. Chancellor, when the time comes, please remain in the center. I will leave soldiers to protect you.

"If anything happened to you, even grinding the king of Lai Yi's bones to dust and scattering his ashes would not absolve me, though I died ten thousand times."

There was not a trace of falsehood in his words. As long as Guan Zhong remained, even if this campaign failed, Qi could return in force five or ten years later.

But if anything happened to Guan Zhong, even victory over Lai Yi would not compensate for the loss.

Although Guan Zhong trusted in his own martial prowess, he understood that he was no general and had no need to charge into battle. Thus, he accepted Zhang Qi's arrangements.

Once the Qi army had finished resting, Zhang Qi led it straight toward Lai Yi's capital.

Lai Yi could no longer afford to disperse its forces to intercept the Qi army. As the routed troops returned, every tribe brought its people and fled toward the royal capital.

At last, outside Laiyang City, the Qi army encountered the Lai Yi forces drawn up to await them.

Or perhaps they were drawn up to await them. Zhang Qi was somewhat dumbfounded.

"Minister Zhang, there are rather a lot of Lai Yi troops. Surely they number more than two hundred thousand?"

There were far too many people to count. Guan Zhong could only make a rough estimate based on the number of tents in the Lai Yi camp.

When Zhang Qi saw the sheer number of Lai Yi troops, he felt not a trace of fear. Instead, excitement appeared on his face.

"Chancellor, I truly never imagined the king of Lai Yi could be so foolish. He actually dares bring out two hundred thousand men to confront our army.

"You have governed Qi for five years. It is a great state with a million people, yet raising One Hundred Thousand Troops has already pushed it to its limit.

"Even setting aside the consumption of provisions and fodder, this war must end before the spring plowing, or farming at home will be delayed.

"If even a great state like Qi has such concerns, could backward barbarians like Lai Yi possibly be exempt?

"This does not add up.

"After the previous two battles, fewer than twenty thousand of this so-called army of over two hundred thousand can truly stand against ours.

"Twenty thousand fierce tigers mixed among two hundred thousand pigs are like a drop of water dissolving into the ocean.

"Even the tigers will be led astray by the pigs.

"As long as our army attacks fiercely and smashes their weak points with an unstoppable blade, their ranks will collapse into panic at once!"

Hearing Zhang Qi's words, Guan Zhong looked again at the Lai Yi camp.

Sure enough, although their numbers were vast, they had nothing resembling orderly ranks. Even their banners differed.

They were merely a newly assembled rabble whose only strength was its numbers.

Against such an opponent, Zhang Qi could barely wait. He ordered the Qi army to rest and had the soldiers eat all the rich, fatty food they had left.

This would be a bitter battle of tremendous intensity. Many Qi Army soldiers might die in an instant, but it would not become a prolonged struggle. Victory would come swiftly.

Boom, boom, boom!

Qi's war drums sounded. The Lai Yi army also began assembling, but it was noticeably slower and somewhat chaotic.

The commanders lost in the previous two great battles could not be replaced in so short a time either.

In a war against barbarians, Zhang Qi would not trouble himself with ceremonial courtesies.

He simply ordered the soldiers forward after three rounds of drumming, without indulging in elaborate stratagems. Those were only useful when the two sides were deadlocked.

This time, apart from the shield bearers and archers at the very front, Zhang Qi placed Qi's ten thousand finest armored warriors at the leading edge, all concentrated together. He was determined to shatter the entire Lai Yi formation.

With this deployment, the Qi Army fighting in other directions without elite support would certainly suffer somewhat greater casualties during the initial clash. But once the main assault succeeded, the gains would be unimaginably vast.

A war that would decide possession of the entire peninsula began, and the soldiers of Qi and the Lai Yi people fought savagely upon this land.

The Lai Yi people did, after all, have greater numbers, so their morale remained quite high. The Qi soldiers without elite support did indeed suffer considerable losses early on.

But Zhang Qi had anticipated this. By alternating the use of the army's enforcement officers and its reserves, he could keep Qi's battle line intact and prevent it from collapsing.

For Lai Yi, however, the situation was entirely different. Ten thousand elites among elites were an irresistible force in this world. The resources spent on these ten thousand men exceeded those spent on the other ninety thousand.

Now was the time for them to prove their worth.

Unless they encountered Lai Yi's elite troops, no enemy could withstand even a single exchange.

Whether chariot soldiers or the other troops supporting the chariots, they scarcely paused. They charged through and left a field of corpses behind.

The gulf in strength was that vast: one side consisted of warriors who killed for a living, while the other was merely farmers who tilled the soil.

The two had actually met on the same battlefield: warriors gripped swords and sabers, clad in armor, while farmers held rust-covered weapons, wrapped in hemp clothing.

Despair was a terrifying emotion. When the Lai Yi men discovered that they could not hurt these men at all, and that they had slaughtered hundreds of them without suffering even a single casualty, they broke down completely.

The first man dropped his sword, and then weapons clattered down in a wave as everyone fled backward.

The soldiers behind them had no idea what had happened. All they saw was their own men suddenly charging toward them.

Use your elites, or lose them!

Once the routed troops swept them up, what good would holding the elites in reserve do? That was precisely the situation the Lai Yi State now faced.

Then the Qi State's chariots rolled over those men, and every Qi soldier seemed like a god of war.

They tried shooting arrows at these men, but even their faces were covered in bronze armor.

Only powerful men wielding heavy bows could penetrate their defenses. How many heavy bows did these tribesmen have?

They finally understood why those soldiers had fled.

The Lai Yi nobles tried to restore order, only to be picked off one by one by the archers aboard the chariots. These elite troops had been modeled after the Luo State Dare-to-Fight Warriors, and every one of them could draw a heavy bow.

Zhang Qi's tactics had been highly successful. An army's collapse could only be stopped at the very beginning; once it spread at this speed, no one could control it.

How terrifying was it when an army of two hundred thousand collapsed and swept through its own camp?

Zhang Qi did not even dare let the Qi army continue fighting the Lai Yi men in a melee. He issued strict orders for every unit to pursue only along the edges, absolutely forbidding them from becoming entangled with the Lai Yi troops.

Such chaos could very well sweep the Qi army into it too. If that happened, they would want to cry but have no tears left.

The Qi army terrorized the Lai Yi men into scattering through one another's ranks, and countless people were trampled to death in the process.

With ferocious Qi soldiers on three sides, everyone rushed toward the central army.

The elites in the central army still tried to hold them back, but no sooner had they impaled one man on a long halberd than ten more came lunging at them.

As the Grand Banner fell, the Lai Yi casualties had already become impossible to count. The Qi soldiers no longer thought of swinging their blades to kill these men, because they could not even take all the nobles prisoner.

Especially with the Lai Yi State's Royal City right before their eyes-who knew how many kings, queens, and nobles were inside? Wasn't every one of them more important than these common soldiers?

"Ten thousand victories for the Qi State!"

The Qi Army raised the cry and charged into Laiyang City.

[The Lai Yi State has fallen. Luo Xiu, Child of the Mandate of Heaven, assisted Lü Xiao Bai, Marquis of Qi. The power of All Xia has advanced considerably. You have gained Fortune Points.]

Ji Zhao narrowed his eyes slightly as he felt countless Fortune Points surge toward him.

Qin dwelt on the western frontier and annexed the Dog Rong; Chu State dwelt in Hanyang and absorbed the Southern Barbarians; Wu-Yue dwelt along the Great River and subdued the Mountain Yue; Qi dwelt beside the eastern sea and destroyed the Lai Yi; Jin dwelt in the Taihang Mountains and annihilated the Northern Di.

Thus did All Xia flourish, and thus was the foundation of kingship laid. -Preface to Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou States

A war that destroyed a state, finished in one chapter-was that a little rushed?

Feel free to leave comments. I'm gradually getting better at writing battle scenes now, so if you'd like more detail, I can expand on them later. But that would definitely slow the plot down. There are pros and cons either way.

I pushed the plot forward quickly because the main cast had too little page time in these chapters, and I don't really enjoy that sort of thing when I'm reading.

But these are Guan Zhong and Xiao Bai we're talking about. The whole book is about All Xia and the Barbarians. If I skipped these two great figures, I'd make a laughingstock of myself.