Chapter 1266 - 313: Truly a Dog_3

Chapter 1266: Chapter 313: Truly a Dog_3

At this moment,

Li Fusheng, having finished pulling the troops back, walked over, his face dark.

He was really angry, so angry he was about to explode.

Disgraceful,

truly disgraceful!

Soldiers, in fact, care most about saving face; even if they don’t say it out loud, they’re always competing in the open and in the dark.

This time Li Fusheng had completely turned the Yan Army’s earlier Snow Sea siege drill under Zheng Fan’s command into a textbook negative example from the opposite side.

When Li Fusheng came up to Zheng Fan,

Zheng Fan spoke directly:

"Big Bro, when you’d already climbed up onto that section of wall just now, you shouldn’t have been hung up on the proper form—you should’ve ordered the front ranks to push forward and butcher their way through right then and there..."

Li Fusheng patiently listened to Zheng Fan, and his expression slowly calmed down.

Standing beside them, Liang Cheng nodded slightly; in terms of dealing with people, he found the gap between himself and my lord’s level was growing wider and wider.

In the eyes of ordinary folk, analyzing someone’s mistake to their face right after they’ve made it is very rude, even highly offensive.

But for someone like Li Fusheng, the last thing he needs is fake comfort.

He’s a very pragmatic commander, so my lord directly helping him dissect what went wrong just now is actually the best way to ease the awkwardness.

Craft, this is craft.

Liang Cheng sighed inwardly.

As for the fact that what my lord was saying to Li Fusheng now was ninety-nine percent identical to what he himself had said earlier, that kind of minor issue, he didn’t care.

After listening to Zheng Fan,

Li Fusheng nodded heavily

and said:

"Yes, from top to bottom with me, there really were a lot of problems. Luckily this time we weren’t attacking a Chu city; otherwise, the way we fought just now, our losses would’ve multiplied who knows how many times."

"Think of it as paying tuition—no, more like a token of thanks for instruction."

"Right, right, that’s well put, very true. Sigh, Brother Zheng, I really find that I’m genuinely not worth having been born so many years earlier than you."

"Big Bro, you and I are brothers; no need to keep saying that kind of thing. Give the order to set up cooking pots, then gather your officers and make a brief summary."

"All right, I’ll listen to you. Here, I can’t get you to come teach in person, so assign me one of your men, the one you think is most at home with siege warfare, let him lecture us a bit, and I’ll listen too."

Zheng Fan pointed at Liang Cheng standing at his side

and said:

"Let him do it. He’s inherited quite a few of my tricks."

...

After nightfall,

Lord Zheng went to the tent where the wild people’s king was kept.

Lord Zheng didn’t rush in; he sent He Chunlai in first to take a look. After learning that Sang Hu wasn’t inside, Lord Zheng stepped in.

Immediately,

dozens of personal guards took up positions outside the tent with blades drawn.

The wild king was still sitting there, but the chain in his hand had been undone; he was eating.

It was a stew Fanli had cooked, a big hodgepodge.

Seeing Zheng Fan come in, the wild king grinned and asked, "Lord Zheng, have you eaten?"

"I have."

Zheng Fan sat down on the ground.

"Lord Zheng has worked hard today," Gou Moli said with a smile. "But this subordinate has a small suggestion: could you give Sang Hu a chance, let him and his men have a go at taking a city in practice?"

"You know this, Lord Zheng: most of us snowfield folk in our entire lives only ever see three cities;

Anhuh City, Tadie City, and Snow Sea Pass."

The wild king understood very well what Zheng Fan had been doing today—using wild people’s lives to hone the Yan Army’s blade.

But the wild king wasn’t angry at all; he even wanted to join in eagerly.

"That’s not urgent. There’ll be plenty of chances later," Zheng Fan said.

"Lord Zheng is right, there really will be plenty of chances later," Gou Moli said with a smile.

When it comes to siege warfare, you can lack anything except corpses.

And even the dead—those corpses—are useful.

Corpses can be rendered into fat for fire oil, or simply catapulted into the city to spark a plague inside.

"Lord Zheng, you and this Commander-in-Chief Li Fusheng are on very good terms?"

"Gou Moli."

"This subordinate is here."

"Do you know what’s struck me the deepest, having served in the Yan Army this long?"

"I beg Lord Zheng to enlighten me."

"It’s that in the Yan Army, even though we have our own factions and hilltops, once the fighting starts, you can trust your fellow soldiers with your back."

"That is indeed hard to come by, but, Lord Zheng..."

"Go on."

"That’s also because you happened to meet benefactors right from the beginning, so you never had to worry about all that dogshit nonsense. Later you were valued by Lord Jingnan, so naturally nobody dared to trip you up in that regard.

When water is too clear there are no fish; under the sun, there’s nothing new."

Hearing that, Zheng Fan frowned slightly.

After thinking it over carefully,

Lord Zheng did indeed recall one incident in the Yan Army where he personally experienced friendly forces standing by as others died.

That was when General Deng, Deng Ziliang, had his camp overrun in a nocturnal raid by Qian State’s Zhong Tianlang, and was beheaded.

Only, in that incident, the friendly force that watched them die and deliberately preserved its own strength was Lord Zheng’s Green Willow Fortress.

For that matter, Lord Zheng had even been taken to task by Lord Jingnan.

So,

it wasn’t that Lord Zheng had never encountered fellow soldiers stabbing each other in the back; it was that the one wielding the knife had been him.

When you look around and all you see is white, very likely, that black dot is you.

But that particular example, that bit of black history, Lord Zheng had no intention of bringing up himself; no point.

"Lord Zheng, this time the army has come beyond the pass, and the gains will surely be substantial. But I imagine the army can’t stay here too long, so this subordinate thinks: after we wipe out a few tribes’ pastures and drive off their livestock and people, we can seize this moment of heaven’s wrath to impose levies on the other tribes, make them voluntarily deliver up cattle, sheep, and able-bodied men.

They’re used to bullying the soft and fearing the hard; bang a gong and their legs go weak right away. This subordinate can draw up a list for Lord Zheng."

"Fine, handle it as you see fit."

"Thank you, Lord Zheng. This subordinate will not disappoint you."

"Once the real campaign against Chu begins, I’ll take every chain off you."

"For Lord Zheng’s great kindness, this subordinate will in the next life be a beast of burden..."

"Then wouldn’t it be simpler if I just send you on to your next life now?"

"..." Gou Moli.

...

The next day,

the Yan Army attacked the city again in the morning and withdrew at noon; they attacked again in the afternoon and withdrew at dusk.

On the third day, the Jin Camp troops assaulted the walls;

On the fourth day, they continued the siege;

On the fifth day,

there was no way to keep attacking,

because there was no grain left inside the city,

and the Yan Army’s way of playing at war had tormented the wild people inside so badly that it was terrifying—pure demons!

The Yan people seized the walls again and again, then pulled back again and again, only to storm up again and again; it was simply not something human beings could do!

In the end,

the wild people in Anhuh City mutinied, killed all their chiefs and nobles, then voluntarily came out of the city to kneel in the open fields, giving up resistance entirely.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, no more fun to be had."

Li Fusheng said somewhat regretfully; he’d just gotten a feel for directing sieges.

Then,

Li Fusheng turned to Lord Zheng at his side

and said:

"Let’s swap to the next city then—Tadie City, right?"

"Mm, but no rush."

"No rush? What for?"

Lord Zheng smiled

and said:

"First send Tadie City some grain, let them eat a bit so they’ll have the strength to hold the walls, no?"