The moment the vanguards clashed ahead, Liu Cheng realized there was a problem-or rather, a disadvantage for the Jingzhou Imperial Army.
Both sides had deployed in proper battle formations, but because of its earlier marching strategy, the Jingzhou army could not readily adjust its formation. Whatever Deng Xia's three thousand men did, the broad arrangement was fixed: the left, right, and center advanced abreast, with the wings converging to strike. By contrast, the Di people had first seized and assembled at Lantian County before marching out to deploy, allowing them to make targeted arrangements.
They naturally had a countermove available in their formation.
"My lord." Liu Cheng practically blurted it out from horseback. "Fu Xiong is a screen. They must be organizing their Cavalry Army behind him!"
"You mean Fu Xiong is personally serving as bait?" Huan Wen showed no surprise atop his tall carriage, merely knitting his brows slightly.
"Not bait. In a battle like this, how could personally leading several thousand men to fight at the front count as bait?" Liu Cheng corrected himself. "A screen... they want to use that layer of infantry and the melee ahead to keep us from seeing how they distribute their cavalry behind it to obstruct our wings!"
Huan Wen nodded in agreement. This was almost self-evident battlefield logic.
In truth, however, the General Who Attacks the West was not quite so composed inside. There was still something he struggled to understand-the Di people had entered the passes two years ago, and all the basic intelligence that ought to be available was available. Was Fu Xiong not their commander in practice? Was he not the second most important figure in the entire Di regime, whose authority in the army even faintly surpassed that of their emperor? Yet he was personally leading infantry