Chapter Ninety: A Beautiful Vision (Second Update)

Every time a line of soldiers beside her collapsed, one rank after another, like grain cut down at harvest, Yixue'er felt a jolt of panic. Yet the immense losses on her own side only served to fan the fighting spirit of the Han troops ahead. Qin Cheng's sharply paced commands rang out again and again, and each time she heard them, a fresh surge of hatred coursed through her, because each cry meant another band of living Xiongnu horsemen would be sent to their deaths. To the Xiongnu cavalry, Qin Cheng's voice was the trumpet of the grave; to the Han soldiers, it was nothing less than music from heaven.

"Bows!"

"Loose!"

Qin Cheng raised his blade and shouted.

A volley from the Han army flew and struck home.

"Close in on them!" Yixue'er, guarded by dozens of personal escorts, screamed like a madwoman, trying to drive the Xiongnu cavalry up against the Han line.

So long as they could catch the Han troops, the advantage the Han had in dealing with arrows would turn into a disadvantage against long blades. Once more than a thousand Xiongnu riders swept in with drawn sabers and pressed close to the Han army, the Han would face the cold edge of Xiongnu steel. Then the Han bows would no longer hold an overwhelming edge, and the Xiongnu sabers would become the Han army's nightmare.

For the Han cavalry were fighting with their backs turned to the Xiongnu riders.

Hearing Yixue'er's order, Qin Cheng glanced back. The corner of his mouth lifted, revealing a smile both smug and merciless.

Trying to catch us, are you?

"Bows!"

"Loose!"

Having shouted that command several times already, Qin Cheng gave the order again at the top of his lungs.

After another storm of arrows, the Xiongnu riders who had just closed to within fifty paces of the Han rear line toppled backward in unison, more than a hundred of them falling at once. Many horses went down together with their riders. When the front ranks collapsed, those behind were inevitably thrown into disorder, so this single volley inflicted nearly two hundred casualties on the Xiongnu.

With every volley, the distance between the Xiongnu cavalry and the Han army was forced open a little more, and each time, the Xiongnu had to expend great effort to close it again.

By all logic, the Han cavalry, already rested and all mounted on light horses, should never have been catchable. Yet the scene before them told a different story: so long as the Xiongnu were willing to chase with reckless desperation, they could always seem to catch up.

"Kill them! Keep after them and hack this Han rabble to pieces!" The enraged Xiongnu did not yet grasp the trap. Their minds were fixed on nothing but catching the Han army, so they could butcher the enemy before them and claim victory for themselves.

"Ha! These Xiongnu are really clinging to us," Qin Qingzhi said as he turned to shoot an arrow. Seeing that the Xiongnu were still racing after them, and now having just loosed one shot with a brief lull to spare, he was practically beaming with delight.

The way he said it, one might think he actually enjoyed being chased by Xiongnu cavalry.

"Isn't that perfect?" Ji Zhu lowered his voice on purpose. "Damn it all, the foul anger we've been holding in since the campaign began has finally found somewhere to go. This is truly satisfying!"

"No kidding. I never would have dared imagine a situation like this before. We're slaughtering them to our heart's content, and the Xiongnu can't do a thing about it! Yet they keep hanging on, refusing to let go, as if they were the ones chasing us down so we could kill them. Ha!"

Qin Qingzhi should have worn a broad, carefree grin as he spoke, but at the moment he could only keep his head down and his body bent forward, suppressing any large movement. His face had darkened to the color of liver, his eyes darting back and forth, and his shoulders trembled with the effort of holding in his laughter.

"Following General Qin, we'll never have to worry about running out of battles to fight!" Ji Zhu looked exactly the same as Qin Qingzhi. Perhaps remembering his earlier misunderstanding of Qin Cheng, he said as much.

Listening to the two of them, Qin Cheng merely smiled faintly, looking profound and inscrutable.

"There are clever ones among the Xiongnu too. What do you think? When will they realize we're only leading them along?" Qin Cheng gave a cold, sinister laugh.

After the Xiongnu cavalry had suffered more than half their losses, the furious look on Yixue'er's face slowly drained to pallor. A fleeting warning deep in her mind made her start. She gathered her thoughts, watched her own riders desperately trying to close on the Han army only to be cut down by another volley of arrows, then falling behind again, and surging forward once more...

Suddenly, something felt wrong. Well versed in the culture of the Central Plains, she abruptly remembered one of the Han sayings: to indulge and shelter evil until it grows worse.

Wasn't that exactly what was happening here?

In that instant, the truth struck her all at once.

The Han army was not unable to shake them off. They simply did not want to.

Each time a volley opened the gap between the two sides, it seemed as though the Xiongnu cavalry had caught up to the Han troops. In truth, was it not the Han army allowing the Xiongnu to close in?

Because the distance between them had always been kept within a range that was absolutely favorable to the Han.

Yixue'er was so furious she nearly spat blood. Her vision went dark, and she almost pitched from the saddle.

Qin Cheng, what a vicious stratagem!

She cried out inwardly in misery.

"General, the Xiongnu are slowing down!" Qin Qingzhi, sharp-eyed as ever, noticed the change and called to Qin Cheng.

"Most likely they've realized we're only drawing them in to shoot them down. Since they know they can't catch us, they want to break away now," Ji Zhu said.

"They don't want to break away. They want to widen the distance between us, then wait until our men and horses are exhausted before latching on again and striking us a fatal blow," Qin Cheng said evenly. "You must remember: Xiongnu warhorses have far greater endurance than the mounts of our Great Han."

"So that's how it is." Ji Zhu finally understood. "Then what should we do?"

"They slow, we slow. They speed up, we speed up. We cannot let them run off, and we cannot let them draw near." Qin Cheng smiled. "Since they've boarded the thief's ship, do they think they'll be able to step off so easily?"

At the commands of both commanders, the front and rear formations alternately slowed, then quickened again, back and forth. Yet no matter how the pace changed on either side, two things never changed. First, the distance between the two forces was kept neither too near nor too far. Second, the rain of Han arrows continued to take a heavy toll on the Xiongnu riders behind them.

The Xiongnu losses kept mounting. The nearly thousand-strong force from earlier was now reduced by half.

If this continued, the Xiongnu cavalry would sooner or later be annihilated to the last man.

Yixue'er stared at Qin Cheng's back. It was as though countless concealed blades had flown from her eyes, tearing him to pieces. She bit through her lip and, at last, abandoned the tempting prize that had come to her lips but could not be swallowed. She ordered the remaining several hundred Xiongnu riders to turn back.

"Qin Cheng, wait for me. I will return."

Yixue'er said it.

I will return, she said. Though the words carried a certain ambiguity.

And so the Xiongnu cavalry, after clinging to the rear of the Han formation all this time and paying a price of more than a thousand riders, turned back in sullen frustration.

A few hundred Xiongnu horsemen could no longer pose any threat to nearly two thousand Han cavalry.

In this theatrical clash, the Han army ultimately relied on the speed of their light cavalry, skillfully controlling their pace so that the Xiongnu neither caught them nor managed to fall behind. At the cost of some casualties from the five hundred mounted drillmasters, they won, almost flawlessly, the second battle fought on Xiongnu soil.

Leading a light cavalry force that had been formed for only four months, Qin Cheng used the victories in these first two battles to proclaim to the court and the realm that Han cavalry could indeed plunge deep into the desert, strike at the Xiongnu's very lair, and achieve results unimaginable under the old defensive methods.

In this battle, Qin Cheng was destined to become famous in a single stroke.