Chapter Sixteen: Ambush in Black Dragon Gorge!
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“That is Black Dragon Gorge.”
Bai Ying knew the area so well that she recognized the place Zhao Zheng was pointing toward at a glance.
“Come on. Let’s take a look.”
Zhao Zheng was the first to run toward Black Dragon Gorge, with Bai Ying and Meng Yun hurrying after him.
The three of them struggled up to the summit of Black Dragon Gorge and looked down over the entire ravine.
The gorge stretched for fifteen miles, narrowing to barely thirty meters at its tightest point.
Its northwestern entrance resembled the mouth of a gourd, with the towering Eagle-Beak Rock hanging precariously overhead. At the southeastern exit, heaps of rubble from a landslide a thousand years earlier half-blocked the way, leaving only a narrow path beside the river.
The Qinling Mountains were dominated by pine trees, and the slopes beneath Black Dragon Gorge were no different. Pine needles carpeted the ground, while the late-autumn decline of the Danyang River had left the riverbed choked with dry reeds.
With a single spark, and the wind at their backs, the entire gorge could be transformed into a valley of flames...
In the later Battle of Yique, Bai Qi had likewise taken advantage of the high ground to annihilate two hundred and forty thousand men.
The same had been true of the Battle of Changping. Before an absolute advantage in terrain, all other efforts were futile.
“This is the place.”
Zhao Zheng nodded with satisfaction.
At last, he understood why the Six Kingdoms had battered themselves against Qin for so many years without ever bringing it down.
Qin possessed far too many natural strongholds.
Hangu Pass, Wu Pass, Tong Pass... the Danyang River, the Zhe River, and the Yellow River.
With such defenses, unless Qin collapsed from within or was too weak to defend itself, not only the Six Kingdoms—even all six together—would be unable to break in.
After a brief rest, the Qin soldiers began making their preparations for battle. They smeared pine trees with beef fat and boiling oil.
Dry, cracked firewood had been hidden in advance among the pines, pressed close against the surrounding cliffs.
The guiding principle was simple: waste nothing and make use of everything. This arrangement also ensured that the Wei army would not discover the preparations.
The most precious weapon—the petroleum—was reserved for lighting the blaze.
There was very little of it. Even after searching throughout Qin, they had managed to gather only a single gourdful.
Once everything had been prepared, the Qin army withdrew swiftly.
Studying the map Bai Ying had drawn, Zhao Zheng divided the twenty thousand Qin soldiers into two groups: one of five thousand and another of fifteen thousand.
The five thousand men were stationed atop Black Dragon Gorge to carry out the fire attack.
The remaining fifteen thousand, led by Meng Yun, circled around to the northwestern entrance and lay in ambush, ready to cut down any Wei soldiers who escaped.
Ying Queliang’s pre-battle speech had driven the warriors’ bloodlust to its peak. Every soldier’s eyes were bloodshot, and they rubbed their fists together in anticipation.
“It truly takes a man like you, sir! If the Qin soldiers had possessed such fighting spirit during the Battle of Shaoliang, we would never have won by such a narrow margin.”
Meng Yun repeatedly praised Zhao Zheng’s ability to command the hearts of men.
Zhao Zheng merely smiled without replying.
This was nothing yet. Once Shang Yang’s reforms were enacted and the system of merit-based military ranks became the law of the land...
Every Qin soldier would then become a bloodthirsty tiger or wolf.
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To kill and be granted a noble title in return—who would not want that?
“General, Lord Vice Chancellor, there is a group of Wei soldiers ahead pursuing several civilians.”
A soldier came hurrying over.
What? Pursuing civilians?
Bai Ying’s heart jolted, and she drew in a sharp breath.
Wei vanguard troops had suddenly appeared in these desolate mountains...
The Sage of Ghost Valley’s calculations had been accurate down to the last detail. Pang Juan’s army had indeed come along the Danyang River.
“Civilians...”
Zhao Zheng wrestled with the thought. Could Pang Juan be slaughtering civilians along the route without restraint in order to prevent any information from leaking?
If they rescued those people, the ambush might be exposed. But if they did not...
“Sir, I’ll take some men and rescue those civilians.”
As Meng Yun spoke, he moved to descend Black Dragon Gorge.
Zhao Zheng drew a deep breath and gave his order in a voice of absolute firmness.
“Hold him back.”
Mercy had no place in the command of armies. This battle concerned the fate of the state. They could not allow a moment of righteous impulse to ruin everything.
“Sir?”
Meng Yun stared at Zhao Zheng in disbelief.
Bai Ying patted him on the shoulder and said, “The sir is right. This is the Wei army’s vanguard. If you attack them, won’t you be alerting the enemy?”
“But...”
Meng Yun knew Bai Ying was right. Yet he could not bring himself to stand by and watch unarmed civilians be slaughtered before his eyes.
“Pang Juan is truly ruthless... He must have killed countless civilians along the way for this operation.”
“And they are all citizens of Wei.”
Zhao Zheng could not help drawing in a sharp breath. The direct route from Wu Pass to the Danyang River was fifty kilometers; even by a detour, it would be at least eighty.
There must be several thousand civilians living along the road, at the very least.
Pang Juan had truly paid a terrible price.
Without interference from the Qin army, those civilians naturally fell victim to the Wei soldiers.
Afterward, several men from the Wei unit withdrew from Black Dragon Gorge, presumably to report back, while the rest continued deeper into the gorge.
“Kill those remaining Wei soldiers.”
Seeing that the messengers had already departed, Zhao Zheng immediately ordered the remaining Wei soldiers eliminated.
If they discovered the incendiary weapons hidden inside Black Dragon Gorge, everything would be over.
Meng Yun, who had long been seething with anger, eagerly accepted the order. Before long, he had the remaining Wei soldiers flayed alive.
Less than three hours after the messenger soldiers had left, the Wei army finally arrived.
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Just as he had done before Wu Pass, Pang Juan rode at the very front, with tens of thousands of Wei soldiers following behind him.
“Eighty thousand Wei soldiers... Can we really swallow them?”
Bai Ying felt uneasy. Although Black Dragon Gorge was large enough to accommodate eighty thousand men, surely Pang Juan was not foolish enough to send the entire army inside.
By now, dusk was settling in, yet Pang Juan ordered every soldier to enter Black Dragon Gorge.
“Hahaha! Heaven itself is helping me!”
Pang Juan threw back his head and laughed as he surveyed the surrounding gorge. “This is the perfect place for an ambush! If I were Qin, I would have stationed troops here in advance and caught us completely off guard.”
“It is late autumn. If someone were to set a fire here...”
“What a pity, what a pity. Qin truly has no man of extraordinary talent capable of such a thing!”
“Eighty thousand Wei soldiers against twenty thousand Qin! Victory is ours!”
Pang Juan’s voice echoed throughout Black Dragon Gorge, and Zhao Zheng, Bai Ying, and Meng Yun heard every word of his grand proclamation.
What?
What kind of bizarre demand was this?
Had Pang Juan suffered so many defeats at his own hands that it had finally driven him mad?
“Sir, he is insufferably arrogant...”
Even Bai Ying could no longer bear listening. Did that wretch truly have no idea what was about to happen to him?
Still, he was right about one thing. Eighty thousand against twenty thousand—that was a meal too large to swallow in one bite.
“Then let it be a meal too large to swallow. We shall satisfy his unreasonable demand.”
Zhao Zheng saw the sun slowly sinking toward the horizon and immediately ordered the attack to begin.
Meng Yun raced down from the cliff and led the Qin soldiers who had been lying in wait five kilometers away toward the northwestern entrance of Black Dragon Gorge.
“Cuckoo—cuckoo!”
The clear cry of a cuckoo rang through Black Dragon Gorge. It was the signal that Meng Yun had reached his assigned position.
“Now!”
Zhao Zheng hurled the petroleum in his hand and gave the order.
The Qin soldiers, who had been waiting in ambush for a long time, threw down all the boiling oil and other flammable materials gathered through the efforts of the entire kingdom. At the same time, flaming arrows shot toward the dry firewood buried in advance.
Whoosh!
The burning arrows tore through the twilight.
Boom!
A fireball erupted without warning. Flames raced wildly along the trunks drenched in beef fat, while the dry pine resin crackled and exploded. In an instant, the entire gorge burst into flames.