Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely

Chapter 1771: Chapter 564: Guangning Mountain’s Intent Stirred, Hou Bing Acting on His Own

Thirteenth year of Great Xia, fifth day of the first month, night.

Bang!

“Brothers, the Guangning Mountain Camp has been breached, follow this general and kill the enemy!”

Fifteen kilometers north of River Valley Village, on the western side of Cai Qiu’s Guangning Mountain Camp, the sounds of slaughter shook the heavens. As the heavy western stockade gate crashed down, Hou Bing’s high, piercing command rang through the air.

Then, a mass of Xia Army soldiers surged forward, trampling over the fallen gate like a tide as they charged in to kill.

“Wasn’t the Xia Army stationed at River Valley Village? Where did these ones come from?”

“They must have circled around from somewhere else to raid the camp.”

“No, no, the main body of the Xia Army is at River Valley Village, I saw it with my own eyes. At River Valley Village, wearing Great Xia standard War Armor, there were at least fifty to sixty thousand men. This isn’t the Xia Army’s main force.”

“You pig-brain, look at the golden armor on those soldiers—this isn’t the Xia Army’s main force?”

………

The sudden assault by the Xia Army clearly caught all the Cai Qiu soldiers in the Guangning Mountain Camp completely off guard. Everyone’s voices were full of shock and terror; some, too agitated, even started quarreling.

“What are you panicking for? It’s only a small Xia Army detachment. Behind them it’s all Cai Qiu rebel conscripts. Entire army prepare for battle, hold the eastern gate!”

Cai Qiu’s response came quickly.

“It’s the City Lord!”

“With the City Lord here, everyone don’t panic.”

“It really is only a small Xia Army force; those people outside the gate aren’t even wearing armor.”

……

As Cai Yunzhou’s order came down from above, the Cai Qiu soldiers seemed to instantly find their backbone; their panic halted at once.

With the panic gone, many Cai Qiu soldiers began to notice the details.

The Xia Army raiding from the east made a great show of force, but on closer look, only the front rank of more than ten thousand were clad in armor; the thirty to forty thousand trailing behind were all dressed in coarse hemp and cloth—one glance and you could tell they were Evergreen Valley rebel conscripts.

So, just as Cai Yunzhou had said, the raiders were only a small Xia Army detachment; the rest were all Cai Qiu rebel conscripts.

What was there to be afraid of?

“Entire army cease advance, loose arrows!”

Just then, Cai Yunzhou in midair also gave the order.

The first batch of Cai Qiu soldiers to form up numbered about thirty to forty thousand. At his voice they immediately drew bows and nocked arrows; a great wave of silver arrow-rain tore through the night sky and poured down outside the eastern gate.

“Ten thousand Xia troops, dragging thirty to forty thousand rebel conscripts, think they can raid our camp? Those two battles at Bone-Eroding Path really gave Great Xia some confidence. Today I’ll let you see the true edge of Cai Qiu’s troops!”

Having given his order from midair, Cai Yunzhou gazed down at the Xia Army on the ground, his face full of ferocity, the killing intent in his pupils nearly spilling from his eyes.

In the two battles at Bone-Eroding Path, they were defeated both times; of Cai Qiu’s two hundred thousand troops, more than half were buried there. Now more than half of Lin Chu County had been lost, and the whole territory was about to fall into Chen Cang’s hands.

Cai Qiu had held its fief for hundreds of years—when had it ever swallowed such a loss?

The key thing was, after the defeat on the northern side, the Little Landgrave who barely escaped with his life—his uncle Cai Qiuhu—intercepted this army, which had originally planned to march south in support, and practically in front of all seventy thousand men, he gave Cai Yunzhou a vicious tongue-lashing.

“Great Xia quietly whipped up tens of thousands of rebel conscripts in Evergreen Valley, and you, the City Lord of Qinghua City, actually didn’t sense a thing?

Tens of thousands of laborers colluding in revolt, and the Subordinate Bureau Qinghua City sent to manage them all acted blind as well. The rebel army was already upon you, and only then did you lead your troops out. If you weren’t surnamed Cai, I’d have really taken you for a Great Xia spy!

Trash, trash, trash. Where is this seventy-thousand-strong army of yours going now? Station all of them at Guangning Mountain. Great Xia doesn’t have the capability, and very likely doesn’t have the will, to keep pressing north. You’ll sit on them at Guangning Mountain and wait for the Goverment’s orders!

I’m returning to the Goverment to look in on the Landgrave and discuss our next move.”

His uncle had called him trash three times in a row. Even though Cai Yunzhou was nearly a century old, he still flushed red with shame, and his hatred for Great Xia climbed sharply.

If it were only his uncle’s scolding, he wouldn’t be this furious. The problem was that Cai Qiu’s losses this time truly were far too great.

When Cai Qiuhu fled back from the Bone-Eroding Path gorge mouth, news of Lin Chu County’s defeat had already arrived ahead of him.

The County City had fallen; after the Landgrave arrived, not only was he unable to turn the tide, he was ambushed by Chu Longteng and Chen Liwu together with several Tribulation Body experts from Chen Cang. If not for Wei Bo’s Li Gangfeng arriving with men at the critical thousand jun moment, the Landgrave would very likely have died in Lin Chu County’s County City.

“The reason Li Gangfeng was able to arrive so quickly was because Great Xia sent word to Wei Bo. So first, Great Xia’s cooperative relationship with Chen Cang isn’t that solid; second, seeing that Chen Cang had taken Lin Chu County’s County City, Great Xia also doesn’t want Chen Cang to keep growing too big…”

Following this line of thought, Cai Yunzhou quickly understood his uncle’s final sentence: Great Xia had neither the capability nor the desire to keep pressing north.

No desire—because they didn’t want to see Chen Cang grow any bigger;

No capability—because in the two battles at the gorge mouths of Bone-Eroding Path, although the Xia Army had won both, their own casualties were heavy. According to his uncle, in the battle at the northern gorge mouth, the Xia Army had committed a hundred thousand men; by the time the battle ended, they had at most a little over eighty thousand left.

In the northern gorge mouth defeat, of Cai Qiu’s one hundred and fifty thousand troops, at least half were buried there. Though there was no precise casualty tally, based on the intelligence from the scattered troops they had taken in and the reports from scouts, Cai Yunzhou could roughly infer that the Xia Army now held at least fifty thousand prisoners.