Mythical Three Kingdoms

Thus, after Zhang Xiu led his troops to break out, the two armies emerging from both wings of the Miscellaneous Hun were like open arms, ready to encircle Zhang Xiu’s army just like they did Zang Ba previously.

Zhang Xiu sneered repeatedly, immediately turning his horse slightly and charging toward the left. Without waiting for the cavalry of the Miscellaneous Hun’s left wing to extend outward, he charged head-on with the momentum of a comet hitting the earth, cavalry against cavalry!

A hundred paces apart, the Miscellaneous Hun instinctively employed mounted archery, while the Xiliang Iron Cavalry grabbed their single bolt crossbows hanging on their horsebacks, a configuration the Xiliang Iron Cavalry had never changed.

Relying on their strong defense to negate most of the arrows, they pulled the trigger the moment they felt they were at the right distance. The powerful force of the single bolt crossbows was enough to penetrate most armors, and the leather armor of the Miscellaneous Hun offered no defense against these powerful crossbow mechanisms.

As the Miscellaneous Hun were mowed down like wheat, the soldiers of the Iron Cavalry hung their crossbows back on their horsebacks and charged at their enemies fearlessly with long spears in their hands, fully aware that at this moment, their momentum had already overwhelmed the opposing side!

Without the extension of that foot of purple radiance, the length of the long spears on both sides was almost the same. Still, in the moment of head-on charge and collision, the disparity between the two became apparent, as the soldiers of the Xiliang Iron Cavalry had an ingrained expertise in charge warfare.

In the moment the warhorses crossed paths, both the Miscellaneous Hun and the Iron Cavalry had riders falling off their horses. However, the difference was that the number of Xiliang Iron Cavalry falling was far less than the Miscellaneous Hun. This cavalry clash lasted only a few dozen seconds, and the Xiliang Iron Cavalry were left facing the extended, remaining cavalry of the Miscellaneous Hun’s left wing with their backs.

Reining in their horses and turning around, Zhang Xiu’s side armor already bore a scratch; the soldiers behind him were panting, and in the mere few dozen seconds, over a thousand had fallen. But this was insignificant, as Zhang Xiu had broken out of the encirclement, and the Miscellaneous Hun had no possibility of surrounding him again.

Likewise, Zang Ba and others were all pulled out by Zhang Xiu. Although Zhang Xiu knew they were all Liu Bei’s men, on the one hand, he remembered his uncle’s dying instructions, and on the other, he did truly feel that in national warfare, it was unnecessary to harm one’s own people.

So, in a situation where rescue was possible, Zhang Xiu gathered everyone up, leaving nothing for the Miscellaneous Hun.

”You withdraw first, leave this to me.” Zhang Xiu turned his head and said to Zang Ba and others.

”No, we’ll stay and help you, the Miscellaneous Hun are getting increasingly stronger, they are almost in their transformation period,” Xu Shu shook his head and said, ”and besides, our reinforcements are about to arrive.”

”Although you still have more than two thousand people, everyone is wounded and can’t hold on for long. Frankly speaking, I’ve never seen so many Miscellaneous Hun except during the Northern battle,” Zhang Xiu said helplessly.

Actually, Zhang Xiu wanted to say that something was odd about the Miscellaneous Hun now; if it were like what he saw in Jincheng back then, even with combined forces, they might not be able to handle these five or six thousand Miscellaneous Hun. After all, Miscellaneous Hun with weak willpower, if suddenly hit hard, will collapse entirely, but this time it was very different.

”At first, there were only more than thirty thousand, now it’s almost over fifty thousand. We must know there are around 130,000 to 140,000 Miscellaneous Hun behind us, although a lot of them are infantry. They are also moving in this direction,” Xu Shu said with a bitter smile, ”Our role is actually bait.”

”Strategist Xun also told me, so there are still two routes of reinforcements behind me, plus your one route, at least 15,000 troops. Even if now the Miscellaneous Hun have changed...” Zhang Xiu couldn’t continue, 15,000 against 150,000 was indeed a joke.

Although the elite Han army could indeed fight one against ten, that was mostly thousands against tens of thousands, routing the Miscellaneous Hun. Such a record wasn’t achieved by either the White Horse or the Iron Cavalry, but 15,000 against 150,000 was truly a different level of difficulty.

”Whatever, let’s fight first!” Seeing the Miscellaneous Hun soldiers organized again, Zhang Xiu’s eyes slightly turned serious. Obviously, even a fool understood that this group of Miscellaneous Hun was different from the previous inferior quality.

The biggest gap between the Miscellaneous Hun and the Han army in this era was not in quality but in mentality and organizational power. The emergence of the Northern Huns at this time did not unify the northern Miscellaneous Hun but instead gave them the qualification to covet the divine position.

This is also the reason why all the knowledgeable people in the world are keen to teach the Northern Huns and the Miscellaneous Hun to behave. Because the methods of the Northern Huns shook the foundations of the Han Empire, 400,000 sheep were nothing but a dish of meat, but 400,000 wolves were indeed a substantial threat.

Thus, it was necessary to thoroughly incapacitate the Miscellaneous Hun before they awakened. Although the Miscellaneous Hun respected the Han Empire, there hasn’t been any large-scale war between them for many years, which can be considered a good thing, but everything has two sides, advantages, and disadvantages.

The lack of large-scale wars over the years led to a continuous increase in population, and the Han Empire did not carry out Sinicization education on these seemingly subdued Miscellaneous Hun, resulting in a situation where the Miscellaneous Hun, though subdued, were constantly increasing in number.

This is how millions of Qiang people came to be, millions of Xianbei also were similarly bred due to the lack of large-scale wars, and close to one million Wuhuan were nurtured in the same way. If it were like during the Martial Emperor’s time when the Great Prairie was blood-washed, even if the Miscellaneous Hun wanted to rebel, they would struggle to muster 100,000 troops!

Under the current massive population base, although the young and strong of the Miscellaneous Hun received a huge loss in the previous battle south, the Huns disregarded the future and forcibly extracted population to form an army. Frankly, tens of thousands are really not much.

Just like the Han Dynasty, if they didn’t care about future consequences, with more than 40 million people now, they could pull out over 7 million young and strong. Fully armed, they wouldn’t even need to fake declarations to claim a 10 million strong army, but doing so would lead to the country’s demise and extinction.

The Northern Huns naturally don’t need to be polite to other Hu people; they’re just pulling in cannon fodder. Apart from cherishing their main base, for Huyan Chu, it doesn’t matter how many Miscellaneous Hun die, and as for the future, what future do the Miscellaneous Hun have?

It could be said that after this battle, if the Han Dynasty left the northern Miscellaneous Hun to their own devices, they wouldn’t recover in less than fifty years. With the young and strong dead, only women and children would be left. As for the elderly, the Hu people don’t have the tradition of respecting the elderly, they simply abandon them on the icefield to their fate.

This is also the reason why the top sage on both Cao Cao’s and Liu Bei’s sides strongly supported this battle. From their perspective, it’s clear that this is the best opportunity to solve the Hu people problem.

On the battlefield, wiping out the Miscellaneous Hun’s young and strong, then relocating all the women and children of the northern Miscellaneous Hun to the Central Plains. As for the young and strong who went to the battlefield, whether eliminated on the battlefield or captured as prisoners, it can be said that the biggest problem is solved.