Mei Boqian tripped over the mud; there was no time to dodge.
He steeled his resolve, tilted his neck half an inch to the left, and braced himself against the spear with his left shoulder and collarbone.
The iron spearhead pierced the leather armor, scraping along the seams of the collarbone, leaving a trail of blood.
Taking advantage of the moment when the opponent couldn't retract his spear, he pressed himself against the spear shaft, swung his right-hand sword in a wide arc from bottom to top, and chopped the junior officer's chin, shattering his jawbone and half of his tongue.
The junior officer didn't even utter a sound before falling into the mud.
The remaining eight hundred-odd private soldiers from Luoyang, seeing their usually cowardly young master covered in blood yet refusing to retreat, were also driven to desperation.
No one ran into the sea anymore; they all gathered around, howling at the top of their lungs, forming a thick human wall against the stone breakwater by the sea.
Those in the front row picked up shattered pieces of ship planks from the explosion and used them as shields, managing to withstand three volleys of spears fired by the Japanese army that followed.
The next day.
Outside the main tent of the Japanese army in Hanseong.
In a corner of the camp stood several rows of wooden racks for drying salted fish; the stench of the sea was overwhelming.
Xue Huan huddled in the shadows behind the wooden frame, pretending to gnaw on half a dried fish, but his eyes were peering through the gaps in the frame, watching the movements at the entrance of the main tent.
A chaotic cacophony of cries and shouts erupted from the direction of the camp gate. A dozen or so grain transport soldiers, who had lost their swords and even one of their straw sandals, rushed into the camp, covered in soot. When they reached the main tent, their legs gave way, and they scrambled and stumbled inside.
"It's all over! My lord, it's all over!"
The last remaining soldier, who had been running at the front, lay prone on the sandy ground near the tent entrance, sobbing and wailing as he pounded the ground.
" The Great Yan cavalry fell from the sky, throwing Great Yan's Subduing Fire Thunder into the convoy, burning dozens of carts of rice to ashes! Our camp's rice supply is barely enough for the entire army for three days at most!"
His voice was so loud that all the Japanese soldiers resting in the surrounding barracks heard it. They dropped what they were doing and gathered around, and the buzzing discussions in the crowd spread out like a pot boiling over.
The curtain of the main tent was ripped open, Inukami Jusaburo walked out carrying a gleaming Japanese sword. His face was expressionless. He walked up to the defeated soldier who was still crying and shouting, and with both hands gripping the sword, he slashed down.
"Anyone who dares to spread rumors again will die!"
With a snap, the defeated soldier's cry was caught in his throat, his head lolled to one side, and blood splattered onto the trouser legs of several Japanese soldiers watching nearby.
Inukami Jusaburo flicked his wrist, shaking off the bits of flesh and foam clinging to the tip of his blade. He swept the blade across the surrounding low-ranking foot soldiers, his voice hoarse as if sandpaper were grinding iron.
"Don't be fooled, everyone! This is a scheme by Prince Yi Gu Moran! He's trying to demoralize our troops!"
"The army has ample supplies, and the follow-up fleet from Busan will arrive tomorrow! Anyone who dares to mention 'we're out of food' in the camp again will face this fate!"
The Japanese soldiers watching were so frightened by him that they took a large step back, and no one dared to utter a sound.
However, a few low-ranking Japanese soldiers at the back of the crowd exchanged glances. The three corporals from Satsuma quietly retreated to the wooden frame and bent down to fasten the buttons on their bags that they had just unbuttoned.
The warhorses trotted along the official road on the south bank of the Han River, and the river breeze, carrying moisture, blew over, dispelling the smell of sweat from the thousands of men in the vanguard camp.
Gu Moran on his horse, held the reins in his hand, glancing to his left out of the corner of his eye.
Kim Seon-a rode a white horse, following half a horse's length behind him. Because she was running fast, the originally loose Goryeo gauze robe of Goryeo was blown by the wind and clung tightly to her body. Her chest swayed with the swaying of the horse's back, and there was a small gap in the neckline, revealing a dazzling expanse of fair skin below her collarbone.
After running for about twenty li, the woods on both sides of the official road became denser.
Yun Shuyue, who had led the way, rode back at full speed and reined in Gu Moran's horse.
"Your Highness, there's an abandoned post station five miles ahead. They've captured over a dozen Wa soldiers fleeing south. Judging by their clothes, they're from Satsuma. They're very stubborn, and Sister Lin is interrogating them."
"Deserter?"
Gu Moran raised an eyebrow, pulled on the reins to slow the horse down.
" Inukami Jusaburo's military discipline has always been as strict as an iron barrel, and now someone actually dares to run away. It seems that Xue Huan and Pu Yunshan are doing a good job over there."
Let's go take a look.
He spurred his horse and led his personal guards at a brisk pace to the outside of the dilapidated post station.
In the open space in front of the post station, a dozen or so Japanese soldiers, bound hand and foot, were kneeling.
They were all emaciated from hunger, their eyes sunken, and their lips chapped and peeling.
Lin Qingdai stood to the side, her hand on the hilt of a sword, with several unsharpened short knives lying on the ground.
Gu Moran dismounted, and Kim Seon-a followed suit, her thighs aching from riding for so long.
When she landed, her ankle twisted and her body leaned to the side. Gu Moran reached out and wrapped his arm around her slender waist, pulling her closer to him.
Kim Seon-a crashed into his arms, her soft, full breasts pressing against Gu Moran's cold, iron-clad breastplate through the thin gauze dress.
Her ears turned bright red instantly. She placed her hands on Gu Moran's chest, trying to push him away, but when her palms touched his warm neck, her strength gave way. She lowered her head and whispered, "Thank you, Your Highness..."
Gu Moran gently stroked the smooth, soft flesh on her side with his fingers before letting go. He turned to look at the Satsuma Domain corporals kneeling on the ground, his previously cold expression vanishing, replaced by a friendly demeanor as if they were neighbors chatting casually.
"Take the rags out of their mouths."
Gu Moran walked up to the squad leader at the front, squatted down, and took a freshly baked white flour pancake from the soldier next to him. The pancake was still steaming, and the aroma of wheat mixed with the fragrance of scallion oil wafted into the nostrils of the Japanese soldiers.
The eyes of several Japanese soldiers were immediately fixed on the large pancake, their Adam's apples bobbing up and down, the sound of them swallowing saliva clearly audible in the open space.
"You're from Satsuma, aren't you? I've heard that your place is a good one, but there's not much land, so you can't grow much food."
Gu Moran slowly tore off a piece of the flatbread, chewed it a couple of times, and then offered the remaining half to the sergeant. "Eat up. We can talk after you're full. I don't chop off the heads of starving ghosts."
The sergeant, who knew Da Great Yan, stared at the flatbread for a long time before finally succumbing to his craving. He opened his mouth and took a bite, swallowing it whole without even chewing. He choked so badly that his eyes rolled back in his head. Gu Moran considerately handed him a water pouch.
Standing behind Gu Moran, Kim Seon-a frowned as she watched his demeanor and said in a voice only the two of them could hear:
"These Japanese pirates killed so many of our people in Busan, what are you going to do with feeding them biscuits? Just kill them with a single blow."
Gu Moran reached back and patted Kim Seon-a's soft hand; the touch was as smooth as touching a piece of fine mutton-fat jade.
Kim Seon-a withdrew her hand as if burned, and then heard Gu Moran continue to persuade the sergeant who had just finished eating the pancake.
"Brother, to tell you the truth, your Lord Inukami Jusaburo never intended to bring you back to Kyushu Island alive."
Gu Moran sighed, squatted down, and drew a circle in the mud with a twig, his tone as sincere as a fortune teller.
"Think about it, your hometown was hit by a huge tsunami a while ago. The port was completely destroyed, and the granaries collapsed. Those bigwigs in the shogunate didn't even have rice to cook themselves. Why did they cram 18,000 of you into a wrecked ship and send you to Goryeo? Was it really to help you seize food?"
The corporal paused for a moment, crumbs of bread still clinging to the corner of his mouth, and replied in broken Great Yan Central Plains:
" Inukami said... once we take Hanseong, we'll have an endless supply of white rice..."
"White rice? If Hanseong had white rice, would Inukami Jusaburo have had brown rice porridge mixed with sand this morning?"
Gu Moran chuckled, tossed aside the branch in his hand, leaned closer to the squad leader, and lowered his voice.
"I just received confirmation that Inukami Jusaburo has made contact with the remnants of the Goryeo army and plans to leave all of you Satsuma and Hizen Domain's low-ranking infantrymen in Hanseong as scapegoats to draw the firepower of my Great Yan force."
He himself, along with several thousand noble warriors, loaded the looted gold, silver, and valuables onto a ship and fled off to the East Sea to enjoy a life of luxury!
Upon hearing this, the expressions of the dozen or so Japanese soldiers kneeling on the ground all changed.
The corporal's eyes widened, and he turned to look at his comrades behind him. They mumbled something in Japanese, their faces filled with anger and panic at being betrayed.
"You don't believe me? Think about it, why are all the messengers carrying grain supplies killed?"
Because he's afraid the news will leak to you!
Gu Moran stood up, patted the crumbs off his hands, and waved his hands behind his back in front of them.
"You all have wives and children at home, right? You're here taking bullets for these noblemen, and if you die in a foreign land, no one will even be there to collect your bodies."
"Inukami Jusaburo, take the gold you got from the trade, go back to sleep with your wives, live in your houses, and you're just going to be content with that?"
The Satsuma Domain colonel, hearing this, began to breathe heavily, his chest heaving violently. He then suddenly kowtowed, his forehead slamming against the stone with a thud.
"My lord! If the Great Yan Army spares our lives and gives us a full meal, we are willing to lead the way!"
Our three thousand brothers from Satsuma are stationed at the west gate of Hanseong, and we've always been at odds with the noble samurai!
"Why didn't you think of this sooner? All poor people are one family."
I have come here to act on behalf of Heaven.
"We'll only punish Inukami Jusaburo; we won't make things difficult for you honest people who were forced into being cannon fodder."
Gu Moran smiled and bent down, personally untying the rope binding the sergeant. He then had someone give each of them two steamed buns.
"Go back to the west gate of Hanseong now and tell your fellow villagers that Inukami Jusaburo is planning to abandon the army and run away."
Tomorrow at noon, when I attack the city, all you need to do is lower the drawbridge at the west gate.
After the war, I will reward each of you with twenty taels of gold, four hundred catties of rice, and a large ship to safely transport you back to your hometowns!
The dozen or so Japanese soldiers scrambled to their feet, thanking the insolence profusely. Clutching their steamed buns, they scrambled and crawled along the mountain path toward Hanseong.
[I went to the hospital yesterday and took a day off. Don't worry everyone, I will definitely write this book to its finale.]
[Thanks to: Evues for the inspiration capsule, Guo Ming for 5 flowers and 2 likes, Feng Qing for the bubble tea, Chuan Ye for 2 flowers, Mo Ying for the update reminder, Tang Wen for 2 flowers, Mo Yu for the inspiration capsule, Huang Chao for the razor blade, Long Cheng for the likes, Bai Xiong for the update reminder, Huang Liu for the flowers, Ru Yue for the update reminder, Tian Liang for 10 flowers, Qing Qian for the likes, and everyone else for their love and support! Thank you!]