A few days after the middle of the twelfth month, the snow around Nanyang gradually stopped, but the wind did not, and the ground remained frozen three feet deep.
Since the battle on the fifteenth, both the Exorcising the Dragon Army and the Western Pass Army had noticeably reined in their movements... they had no choice. The casualties had been too frightening. Everyone shuddered in hindsight!
The only problem was that there was so much room to maneuver, so many cities and strongpoints, such long supply lines, and countless laborers and soldiers who had left home before the New Year to come here, all accompanied by the consumption of vast amounts of money, grain, and supplies. Meanwhile, Nanyang's heartland lay right before their eyes. Were they all supposed to huddle motionless inside their cities? And would huddling inside cities even spare them from battle?
And so, over the following days, the two armies gradually entered a very lively standoff.
Specifically, both main forces were inside Yuyang Commandery, confronting each other roughly across the Yushui. Both sides' strongest fighters and command centers were also here, though none remained in fixed locations, making continual adjustments instead. Beyond these concentrations of troops and far from their strongest fighters, limited-scale military clashes occurred frequently.
Today, the Exorcising the Dragon Army painstakingly laid an ambush; tomorrow, the Western Pass Army suddenly raided a village garrison.
Yet even with these limited engagements, the senior commanders on both sides could not help feeling their hearts pound. The reason remained the same: the current weather enormously increased their losses, producing far too many casualties that both sides felt "should never have happened."
Whose heart ached any less than anyone else's?
Thus, alongside the standoff and military clashes, both sides independently intensified their attempts to induce the thirty thousand