Chapter 738: Crushing Defeat

Even a normal retreat could quickly devolve into a disordered scramble backwards. This was the belief of the General of the Left Dugu Xian, and Gu Shenwei had always kept it in mind.

He barely knew the 500 soldiers behind him. There was even some distrust between them, so under this circumstance, “fighting while retreating” was a stupid move.

Instead, his plan was to “retreat while fighting.”

Gu Shenwei sent five cavalrymen to get reinforcements and ordered the rest of his army to advance forward towards the left, take a small hill, reorganize themselves, and get ready to fight.

The soldiers followed the orders, but Gu Shenwei could sense the palpably intense atmosphere.

Patches of torches were quickly approaching from far away, and the sound of horse hooves could be heard rumbling. Mo Lin watched for a while before declaring, “At least 3,000 men.”

Old Man Mu chuckled. “Freedom means coming and leaving whenever we want. Your Majesty, we don’t need to stay here and wait for our death. Let’s fight our way out before the enemies surround us.” Then he lowered his voice. “We can also leave these 500 cavalrymen behind to distract the enemy and buy us some time.”

Hearing this, Dog Butcher shook his head repeatedly. “That is not right. It’ll ruin the reputation of His Majesty.”

“Idiot. Do you think that His Majesty is a Jianghu hero who cares about reputation? Every lord should consider his survival as the utmost priority. And don’t think that I haven’t read any books. Throughout the history of the Central Plains, didn’t the first emperor of every dynasty consistently abandon their army and flee while they were vying for supremacy? So Your Majesty, don’t feel ashamed and don’t listen to that old dog. I can guarantee that even if the white, fat man were here, he would give you the same advice.”

Fang Wenshi would definitely advise the Dragon King to not take risks, but this time Gu Shenwei wasn’t taking risks on purpose. He didn’t have any other choice. It was impossible to lose thousands of enemies on the spacious grassland.

While Old Man Mu was nagging, the torches had stretched out sideways, surrounding their targets. Old Man Mu sighed repeatedly, feeling that his “harsh yet sensible advice” hadn’t been taken to heart.

With the advantage in numbers, the first round of the enemy’s attack was simple and direct. Clearly, their leader wanted to finish it quickly.

Courage usually came with a flash of inspiration. This was exactly the case that Gu Shenwei was in. He suddenly made the decision to push his “retreat while fighting” tactic a step further and strike first.

He ordered Mo Lin to keep the soldiers where they were. “Don’t let the enemy get too close. Shoot if any enemy gets closer than a hundred steps, and find me another ten elite archers with the longest range.”

Mo Lin said a few words in Norland dialect and more than thirty cavalrymen stepped out from the army, most of whom were from the Court Attendants Army.

“I’ll take them all,” Gu Shenwei said. He then took a hard bow and a bag of arrows from the soldier behind him and rode out, closely followed by the thirty to forty elite archers.

After the Dragon King was more than a dozen steps away, Dog Butcher asked in confusion, “I’m not good at archery, so I don’t need to go, right?”

Old Man Mu nodded in satisfaction. “Dragon King only wants the best archers, and our archery can barely be qualified as average, so it’s better if we stay here. We’ll wait for the opportunity to fight in close quarters. That’s when we can show our skills.”

Gu Shenwei moved around seventy steps out, then turned and started circling around his own army.

It wasn’t easy to shoot from a moving horse’s back and Gu Shenwei was not very experienced at it, but he soon learned the technique. There was a brief moment of stability between the crests and troughs of the horse’s movements that was the best window of opportunity to shoot.

The torches were getting closer and closer. While the darkness made it difficult to gauge the exact distance of the light, it made it easier to identify a target.

Gu Shenwei shot the first arrow, and the top archers followed his actions at almost the same time.

Although their targets were still a little far and normal cavalrymen wouldn’t be able to hit from this distance, it wasn’t a problem for Gu Shenwei and his archers.

As screeches rippled out into the darkness, a small patch of torches went out.

The thirty or forty top archers all yelled out at the same time.

The enemies also started shooting arrows, most of which hit the ground before even getting close to Gu Shenwei and his archers, only a few shooting over their targets. Gu Shenwei and his men then bent over and spurred their horses to speed up, shooting an arrow and killing a target every few steps.

After about half a circle, the enemies began to slow down considerably. Eventually they stopped and started yelling and challenging them. Gu Shenwei led the archers back to their army.

“Well done, Your Majesty. Nice shooting!” Old Man Mu cheered loudly, signaling Dog Butcher to flatter alongside him.

In contrast, the cavalrymen’s praises were very simple. They yelled out the same words, ‘quick and neat,’ an ‘short and powerful,’ but Gu Shenwei couldn’t make out a single syllable.

Mo Lin was just about to explain when Old Man Mu beat him to it. “They were yelling ‘hero’, which is praise reserved for brave archers of the grassland. Your Majesty, I think that they’re beginning to like you.”

Over incredible swordsmanship, the cavalrymen in the Norland always preferred superb archery and fearless valor.

Gu Shenwei raised his short bow, basking in the cheers.

After a brief lull, the enemy launched another attack. Mo Lin volunteered this time and led more than seventy cavalrymen into battle. He repulsed the attack successfully, even forced them tens of steps back.

Gu Shenwei ordered the rest of his men to preemptively shoot arrows and block the progress of the enemy behind them.

The cavalrymen of the Norland were good at long-range shooting, not fighting in close quarters. Their most common tactics were following-up a successful attack or luring the enemy into pursuit, and then killing targets during the fast chase; they never got into a dogfight if the enemy resisted stoutly.

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Gu Shenwei and Mo Lin took turns leading their men into fights, keeping their army out of the enemies’ archers’ range. Mo Lin realized that the situation was not so bad, so he took Dog Butcher with him and rode around half of their army, but didn’t accomplish much other than yelling and cheering.

After they repulsed the fifth attack, dawn broke. Mo Lin reminded the Dragon King of a lethal issue: their arrows were running out.

This was the precise reason why the enemies had surrounded them but had yet to launch an all-out attack – they were waiting for the Dragon King to run out of soldiers.

Only a united army could execute an effective retreat. Gu Shenwei glanced at his men, believing that they were ready.

“Half in the front, and half in the back. Get ready to retreat.”

Mo Lin issued a quick order and led the way in the front with 200 common cavalrymen. Gu Shenwei and the Court Attendants Army were to defend the rear. The distance between the two groups was not far, and at a moderate speed, they headed towards a gap in the northeast.

This was also another common tactic of Norland cavalrymen. Instead of surrounding the enemy seamlessly, they’d always leave a gap, and lure the target into escaping.

During a retreat, there is a constant desire to speed up blindly, which would stretch the combat lines and eventually cause it to fall apart and with it, the army’s ability to fight back until every soldier just becomes a target for the enemy.

So Gu Shenwei rigidly controlled the marching speed, ensuring that the two groups could support each other at any given point in time.

More than half of their arrows were gone by now, and long-distance shooting had become wasteful, so Gu Shenwei ordered the archers to shoot only when the enemies were within range. The enemy had retreated with more than ten bodies left behind, but several cavalrymen besides him were also downed.

When dawn finally broke. Old Man Mu stood on his horse’s back, and suddenly pointed at the flags in the distance. “Eek, that’s not the bird king’s army.”

When the enemy had ambushed them, everybody instinctively concluded that this was King Shengri’s retinue without any discussion, including Gu Shenwei.

“That’s… King Rizhu’s flag,” Old Man Mu said, astonished.

King Rizhu had died in the Royal Court, and his generals had taken their surviving troops and retreated home in the west. Why was an army numbering in the thousands still here, and how had they evaded the extensive patrols of the many scouts?

Gu Shenwei was also confused, but now was not the time to seek an answer.

After retreating around five or six miles, Gu Shenwei’s army suffered a considerable setback. All five messengers that he had sent to get reinforcements had been killed and their bodies impaled on stakes as a clear warning sign.

There’s no backup that they could count on. Shulitu’s army was the closest but there was still tens of miles between them. And their arrows were even closer to running out now.

Mo Lin came back from the front and brought a request of the soldiers. “Your Majesty, we’d like you to leave first. We can still handle another round of attacks.”

Old Man Mu showed an expression that wordlessly indicated ‘What took you so long.’ Then he said, “I’ll protect His Majesty. Once we get a bit further away, we won’t even need horses. Just jump into the grass and hide. Who will be able to find us? Old dog, you’re out. Your lightness skills are too lame and you’d make a giant target with your funny crutch that’s taller than a man. Spare us from this burden.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gu Shenwei agreed.

The Dragon King gave his consent so willingly that Old Man Mu suspected that this might not actually be a good thing.

King Rizhu’s army attacked again. They had realized that their enemies were running out of arrows, so they pushed forward faster.

“The Dragon King’s running away!” someone yelled.

As expected, two men on horses darted out from of the retreating army. One was dressed in the Dragon King’s attire, and the other was short, undoubtedly the Dragon King’s bodyguard Old Man Mu.

The pursuers split into two groups. One group continued to attack, and the other began to chase after the Dragon King quickly.

Mo Lin assumed command and ordered the whole army to turn around and charge towards the northwest, where Shulitu’s main armies were deployed.

“I shot the Dragon King!” someone yelled excitedly in the distance and a large batch of the encircling army was pulled away. Mo Lin and his men broke through the blockade and accelerated their retreat. Their arrows had run out and they no longer had the power to resist their enemies.

A soldier had volunteered to swap clothes with the Dragon King, and accompanied by Old Man Mu, they had distracted a large number of their enemies.

Initially, Mo Lin was worried about whether this little trick would work, but the results went better than he expected and King Rizhu’s army was fooled easily. But they quickly realized the truth because the disguised Dragon King wasn’t able to ride far before being shot and exposing the truth.

Gu Shenwei had tried his best to avoid fleeing, but what was done was done. Other than fleeing at full speed, they had no other options now.

King Rizhu’s army resumed their pursuit with one group following them closely and the other trying to outflank and intercept them, which was a tactic that he couldn’t be more familiar with. When pursuing a powerless target, there’s no need to fight at close quarters; just shoot continuously from a safe distance and wear the target down.

Arrows fell down onto their heads like a downpour of cold rain, each salvo killing another batch of soldiers.

Gu Shenwei had witnessed wars between Norland armies before, but back then the gap between the two parties had been far smaller than it was now. This was his first time experiencing the formidable strength of the grassland archers. Sabers and swords became useless against those hard bows. He parried several arrows with his saber, but was unable to save most of his men.

The soldiers put the Dragon King in the center and intercepted most of the arrows for him with their own mortal bodies.

Gu Shenwei had suffered a crushing defeat and was starting to question his former decision . Perhaps Old Man Mu’s suggestion of ‘fighting while retreating’ had really been the right thing to do.

More than half of his 500-men army was downed when an unexpected reinforcement finally appeared.