Wang Chong first had Yuwen Xuandu take five thousand Tailwind Army troops to the various prefectures to distribute the short essays he had personally written in a style suited to the times. Only then did he let the ox carts carrying the severed heads slowly depart. Once they delivered to the next prefectural seat, the Tailwind Army troops making the "delivery" were to withdraw at once, lest anyone vent their anger on his soldiers.
After all, he really had killed quite a few members of the Jiang Family. They were an imperial house; all the land under heaven bore the Jiang surname. What if someone wanted revenge?
His own people's lives had to count as lives!
They must never be thrown away lightly.
Once that was done, Wang Chong began readying his army for war. He had never expected that, after taking advantage of his participation in the Heroes' Assembly to become one of the Eighteen Tribes of the Grasslands himself, he would face not a counterattack from the grassland armies, but his own Mother Empress's army.
Wang Chong first wrote a letter and had someone deliver it to the White Camel Tribe, asking his master Gao Gun for help and requesting that the old man send more troops. Then he wrote to Su Luoyan, summoning Yueliduo, Sun Mingke, Dong Qing, Mo Zhenxing
and the others to bring their own troops to Tongzhou. He also wrote to Gan Ci, Xuangang, and Qin Gao, drawing another contingent of elite troops from them.
Taking this opportunity, Wang Chong expanded his Wind-Treading Cavalry to eight thousand and prepared seven or eight contingencies.
Wang Chong did not believe the Empress would send out troops under her direct command. After all, his mother controlled no more than seventy or eighty thousand such troops, and they