Endless Winter: My Camp Upgrades Infinitely

Chapter 1772: Chapter 564: Unrest at Guangning Mountain, Hou Bing’s Unauthorized Action (2)

With this group of prisoners alone, the Xia Army needs to expend a large amount of manpower. What my uncle meant by lack of ability is probably this.

It’s been over a day since the great battle, and Cai Yunzhou has sent scouts to constantly monitor Bone-Eroding Path. Besides small-scale personnel movements, there are no signs of reinforcements from Great Xia, leading Cai Yunzhou to the early conclusion that Great Xia truly does not plan to continue advancing north.

Cai Yunzhou is a cautious person. Even though he is seventy to eighty percent sure that the Xia Army won’t come over, he still set up numerous scouts and hidden posts throughout the Guangning Mountain area, including the River Valley Village, to constantly watch the movements of the Xia Army.

Soon, reports came back from the scouts.

The Xia Army has a total of ninety thousand men, with close to sixty-five thousand soldiers stationed in River Valley Village. Other than deploying small-scale troops to clear the surrounding area, they have made no other moves, which aligns with his previous predictions.

Additionally, in the past day or so, while Cai Yunzhou was trying to gather up the remnants of Cai Qiu’s defeated soldiers, he received information that a general named Yuwen Yong is leading a force of about twenty thousand Xia Army soldiers to hunt them down south of River Valley Village.

Aside from these two groups, there is another Xia Army force, also numbering twenty thousand, led by the general Hou Bing, who is the focus of Cai Yunzhou’s attention.

The reason for focusing on Hou Bing’s force is that this group is specially responsible for escorting the war prisoners from Cai Qiu.

In the battle at Northern Valley Entrance, more than fifty thousand soldiers from Cai Qiu were captured, and Cai Yunzhou is closely watching how Great Xia will treat these people.

On one hand, these soldiers are the basic foundation of Cai Qiu, and Cai Yunzhou understands their importance, genuinely concerned; on the other hand, Great Xia will likely use these over fifty thousand prisoners to make a move, whether to demand ransom or to force them to defect, or even in the worst scenario, if Great Xia were to execute them all, he must come up with a counter-strategy in advance, regardless of the circumstances.

His uncle Cai Qiuhu’s scolding yesterday indeed caused Cai Yunzhou to lose face, but it also effectively woke him up.

Great Xia is definitely not a minor character.

If they continue to be underestimated, losing Evergreen Valley might become more than just an isolated incident. Moreover, Chen Cang in the west is closing in step by step, and the situation with Great Xia must be handled well.

Responding with such cautious mentality naturally brought good results.

Just as night fell, Cai Yunzhou received news from the scouts: Hou Bing has also divided off ten thousand troops, under the guise of clearing the areas around the prisoner camp, and started operating around River Valley Village.

There is actually nothing wrong with this explanation.

In the battle at Northern Valley Entrance, Cai Qiu’s army was defeated so severely that the area south of Guangning Mountain was filled with their remnants everywhere, the only difference being the scale. The smallest group might have fewer than ten people, while the largest had several hundred.

After the Xia Army’s main force stationed in River Valley Village, they immediately set up seven or eight posts around Guangning Mountain, each guarded by over a thousand men, making it difficult for the remaining defeated soldiers to cross the posts, except for the earliest escapees. For returning to Guangning Mountain Camp, they would either need to take a longer route or break into smaller units to find a gap in the Xia Army’s posts to sneak through.

The Xia Army led by Yuwen Yong, with twenty thousand men, only concerned themselves with larger groups of defeated soldiers, ignoring the smaller ones.

Therefore, Hou Bing divided off ten thousand troops to search the surrounding areas for remnants of Cai Qiu’s defeated soldiers in order to ensure the safety of the prisoner camp, which is absolutely reasonable.

Upon receiving this news, Cai Yunzhou initially didn’t see it as a big deal.

However, as Hou Bing’s ten thousand troops began intentionally or unintentionally approaching the Guangning Mountain area, and also sent numerous spies for close observation, he immediately sensed something was amiss.

After capturing and questioning a few tongues, he realized that Hou Bing somehow rallied nearly forty thousand rebels around Guangning Mountain, planning to use these rebels in coordination with his ten thousand Xia Army troops to attack Guangning Mountain Camp.

Ten thousand Xia Army troops, with fourty thousand rebels, attacking Guangning Mountain Camp where seventy thousand Cai Qiu soldiers are stationed?

If it wasn’t for seeing the scene to the east of the camp for himself, as the intelligence described, Cai Yunzhou would still have thought Hou Bing was merely a decoy created by Great Xia to divert their attention, believing the main force certainly had other plans.

The scout just reported that the Xia Army’s main force has remained stationed at River Valley Village without moving, and Yuwen Yong’s twenty thousand troops are still in the middle region of Green Jade Valley, more than thirty kilometers from Guangning Mountain.

Therefore, Hou Bing is truly planning to attack Guangning Mountain with this amount of troops.

Great Xia, could they have lost their mind!

The battle at Northern Valley Entrance certainly gave Great Xia a surge of confidence……

Just now the anger in Cai Yunzhou’s heart has disappeared, as he slowly pieced things together from the calmness of the Xia Army’s main force at River Valley Village, he can roughly infer.

This attack is very likely Hou Bing’s decision on his own initiative.

He did not communicate with the Xia Army’s main force.

The battlefield changes moment-to-moment, constantly evolving, and situations where generals take the initiative to attack without the command of the main leader are present in Cai Qiu as well. But Cai Yunzhou is very clear, these situations generally fall into two categories:

The first is to seize an opportunity, out of a sense of duty;

The second is to capture glory, out of personal interests of the generals and soldiers.

What his uncle said, confirmed by the Xia Army’s actions over the past two days, was true. Great Xia neither has the ability nor the will to continue fighting; hence, Hou Bing’s situation is clearly the latter.