In just half an hour, Wang Chong slaughtered all the grassland light cavalry who had entered the city, opened the gates of the fortified pass, and charged out to fight again. This time, he assigned a contingent to each of his subordinate generals and sent them off in separate pursuit. They chased down the enemy for more than half a day before slowly withdrawing. The battle had been an exceedingly easy victory, yielding countless warhorses, weapons, suits of armor, provisions, and prisoners.
Only after the battle did Wang Chong learn that these troops had been escorting provisions for the Eight Tribes Allied Army. He had been worrying about how to gather supplies. After all, transporting provisions from the ten prefectures under his control was rather impractical. Even with the Tailwind Army, he would struggle to bring supplies across several prefectures, none of which he actually controlled, to Copper Pass. The spoils of this victory, however, had resolved the greater part of that problem.
But this battle also made Wang Chong reach a decision. He could no longer remain at Copper Pass. He needed to hurry off and assassinate An Dushan.
Although he had cut off communications, how could something this significant remain concealed for long? Once An Dushan and the Eight Tribes Allied Army discovered that their retreat had been cut off and hurled their full strength against Copper Pass, even his ten thousand or so soldiers and the defenses of the greatest fortified pass under heaven might not necessarily hold. But if he killed An Dushan first and threw the rebel army into chaos, he could at least reduce the pressure by half.
This time, Wang Chong left Yuwen Xuandu, Wen Chan'er, and the others at Copper Pass, but took Li Hujie, Flower Fox, and Cheng Huang with him.