Chapter 604: Garrison

Chapter 604: Chapter 604: Garrison

Leaving Fish Stone Military Station and continuing east, in just a day and a half they reached the front line of their deployment.

Due to the terrain, although the name Jianchuan sounds like a place easy to defend, in reality it’s quite the opposite. There’s no treacherous terrain to hold here, so they could only set up military camps and scattered fortifications along the main routes suitable for large troop movements, while also strengthening round-the-clock patrols to prevent the Barbarian Race army from breaking through.

This was a very passive approach. Not only did they have to clash with the Barbarians in open-field battles where the latter excelled, but it also often meant that, in trying to cover everywhere, some smaller, scattered Barbarian forces slipped through the cracks.

The group of over seven thousand Barbarians that previously raided Fish Stone Military Station had exploited the chance when the frontline main array was engaged in a massive battle with the Barbarian Army—they took a roundabout route, splintered into groups, and slipped through.

This situation was unique to Jianchuan. That’s because both White Head Gorge and Hu Zhu Yuan, which formed a united first line against the Barbarians with Jianchuan, had prominent defensive terrain that could be held. As long as those checkpoints still in the hands of the Jingjiu Dynasty were heavily guarded, it was still very hard for the Barbarians to fight their way through.

This is also why Jianchuan frequently sounds the emergency alarm while Hu Zhu Yuan and White Head Gorge remain as steady as Mount Tai. The Barbarian Race also knows that Jianchuan is their key breakthrough point and, comparatively, the easiest one, so they keep up their ferocious assaults.

As the vanguard left flank scout of the Mixed Army, Wu Kai arrived earlier than the Central Army main force at a frontline outpost and, while resting and waiting, chatted a bit with one of the outpost’s Captains.

But this Captain was from Jingdong, with a thick accent. Even though he spoke in Imperial City Official dialect, Wu Kai still frowned just trying to understand him. What’s more, this Captain’s men were all from his own hometown, so while they could converse just fine among themselves, Wu Kai could only make out the gist of the conversation.

The Captain essentially said things were fierce on Jianchuan’s side—they fought almost every day. A small skirmish every day, with a large battle every three days. Even those manning outpost posts like theirs were often wiped out by Barbarian troops who managed to sneak past. He also said these days more people were coming into Jianchuan than leaving.

Strictly speaking, these words were rather demoralizing. If new recruits overheard, it might bring out fear of battle. But Wu Kai was an old war dog—he was very familiar with the jaded look of the other old hand, and knew the Captain was just teasing, so he didn’t take it seriously.

"Seen any big, tough fighters?"

"Of course I have. Built like a wall, arms thicker than my thighs. But the ones I saw were all dead—dragged off like dead dogs and burned."

"Elephant Race?"

"Yeah, the long-toothed kind!"

"Where did you run into them?"

"Right at the camp gate, dragged back with the others."

The Long-toothed Elephant Race had always been a primary focus in Wu Kai’s mind. These creatures, with their enormous size and terrifying strength, were just too much of a threat on the battlefield. Especially once the Long-toothed Elephants were armored up—saying they could fight ten men single-handedly wasn’t an exaggeration. If anything, that would be modest.

What’s more, the Barbarian Race specialized in Body Refinement, and a race like Long-toothed Elephants, whose physical bodies were superior from birth, were naturally the paragons among Body Cultivators—in the early stages of cultivation, their effectiveness was a good forty to fifty percent higher than other races.

Stack those advantages together, and dealing with them became extremely difficult. Their massive size and weight made them unbelievably tough to hurt. An injury that would kill someone else might just need some bandaging for a Long-toothed Elephant, who could probably keep fighting regardless.

On top of that, the Long-toothed Elephants could run fast... If they ever started to charge...

Wu Kai had always been racking his brain for ways to handle the Long-toothed Elephant Race, but had had no inspiration until he got some ideas from an auxiliary soldier laying roads when he was helping out at Fish Stone Military Station. Whether it would work still needed testing, and when he left Fish Stone he had also taken several hundred one-handed spades with him.

Once the Central Army main force arrived from the rear, Wu Kai shed his temporary vanguard scout post and returned to Assistant General Li’s camp, then marched forward with the army, eventually waiting outside a massive military camp to enter.

This time, Wu Kai’s Mixed Army was relieving a regular army unit, formed by Jingbei Army soldiers who had crossed over from the border. Their numbers were also twenty thousand.

Wu Kai was an old hand at this—in his military career, he had gone through plenty of rotations like this. Usually, front line soldiers got rotated out due to having served too long a stretch in the trenches, from prolonged exhaustion, or because casualties were so high that rotation was essential. But the campaign in the south had barely started—so that first reason could be discounted. The remaining two were nothing good, but Wu Kai had been psychologically prepared along the way.

Sure enough, after verifying the formalities, the handover began. Wu Kai followed the army into the camp and closely observed the regulars they were relieving. Aside from the huge number of wounded, Wu Kai guessed there were fewer than ten thousand men fit to leave the camp...

That day, after completing the rotation, next came Military Marshal Yao Tianning summoning the mid- and high-ranking generals for another strategy meeting.

Yao Tianning had a large, magnified regional map of Jianchuan stretched out in the command tent, with all terrain features and key locations marked in detail. Pointing at the map, Yao addressed all the assembled officers, "From now on, the area from Sector Bing-4 to Ding-7 will be our defense zone. Once the logistics are loaded, the first batch to garrison must move out at once. I’ll go over the strategic plan..."

The area Yao indicated, "Bing-4 to Ding-7," was almost all chaotic rocky flats and scattered wetlands, dotted with low hills—very complex terrain. It wasn’t part of the "main defense zone," but rather an auxiliary defense area.

When Wu Kai saw the map, he subconsciously swallowed—this zone was huge! Could they possibly hold all that?

Defending open ground was nothing like defending a fort. The Mixed Army may have twenty thousand men, but between Bing-4 and Ding-7 was a span of fifty-five li! In terrain like that, it’s nearly impossible to use cavalry’s mobility, so what if the enemy showed up?

According to Yao Tianning’s plan, the twenty thousand would split into three groups and rotate. That meant, at any time, only around twelve thousand would be covering the "Bing-4 to Ding-7" sector—and counting only combatants, subtracting the supply battalion, that would be less than ten thousand actually fighting.

The defensive doctrine did catch Wu Kai’s eye: A few fixed positions would be permanently manned, while the rest formed patrol detachments, who would move laterally to the next fixed position and swap out the men there; those swapped out would then re-form as patrols to the next position—in a continuous cycle.

This would allow the patrols some time to rest, while maintaining unbroken patrol coverage.

Yet Wu Kai knew that if they actually engaged the Barbarians, this defensive setup would be broken with ease, allowing enemy infiltration at the rear. That was probably what happened at Fish Stone Military Station.

Yao Tianning divided the rotations into three groups: the first led by Assistant General Li, the second his own headquarters force, and the third the remaining Assistant General’s men. For the first rotation only, two groups would deploy simultaneously, and after that, they’d rotate in one at a time. At the same time, among the two first-deployed groups, one would have to hold out an extra rotation. That group was Assistant General Li’s force.