Chapter 875: Chapter 371 Difficult Escape_2
At that moment, self-doubt and fear deeply filled his heart.
Therefore, when he saw Shen Qiu standing out in the face of danger, taking over his own responsibilities, and beginning to lead the army to escape the crisis,
he chose to retreat.
It seemed in doing so, he would no longer have to bear guilt, bear infamy, bear the responsibility that had been pressing on him, making him nearly unable to breathe.
Everything in the world seemed far away.
All he needed to do was to shrink within the small space of his carriage, and he wouldn’t need to worry or feel anxious anymore; someone would handle everything for him.
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Shen Qiu was like an ostrich burying its head, blinding himself from everything and no longer thinking.
However, such escapism was ultimately an illusion.
He knew that.
As the Chu forces kept pressing and the situation in Ning Country continued to deteriorate, he couldn’t possibly keep running away forever.
One day, he would have to stand up.
Either to perish along with Ning Country or to see it through the crisis together.
That day wouldn’t be far off.
“With the Wuan Marquis here, I can indeed rest easy,”
Snapping out of his lengthy inner thoughts, Shen Qiu let out a long sigh, feeling lost and empty.
Compared to the other escapers, the Wuan Marquis, who stood out during the crisis, indeed had the capability and responsibility, living up to the title of the Wuan Marquis.
In the past few days, since leaving the main camp in Jiangxia, the Ning Army’s return journey had been filled with hardship and turmoil.
First, there were the vultures-like Chu cavalry, sniffing around and chasing after them like carrion-eaters.
These elite cavalry, selected from the captives of Zhou People and Snow Plains Nomads, were far superior in equestrian skills compared to the people of Yangzhou who dwelled in the water towns of Jiangnan and used boats for travel.
The Ning Army from the main camp in Jiangxia, too, had a sizable number of cavalry at its disposal, also numbering in the thousands.
But when Ning cavalry clashed with Chu cavalry, even with the same numbers, our side often found itself at a disadvantage.
Even when the number of combatants increased, due to their more skilled horsemanship and their ability to use a wider range of tactics, the disadvantage of the Ning Army was even greater.
To protect the safety of the main army’s retreat, the Ning cavalry sent to rout the Chu Army’s mounted harassers paid a heavy price, and the effect they achieved was dismal.
Under the harassment of the Chu Army’s light cavalry, the Ning Army, after a day’s march, had only managed to cover a mere twenty miles.
In such circumstances, not to mention safely returning to their own territory,
it was questionable whether they could even leave the Jiangxia area before being surrounded by Chu forces from all sides.
At the critical moment, it was the Wuan Marquis who made the decisive call, pulling elites from various units within the army to form a squad composed entirely of Martial artists with Inner Strength.
By rallying over a thousand elites and leading them personally, through several ambushes, they fiercely cleared a path through the Chu cavalry, decapitating thousands, which caused the enemy’s light cavalry to flee in fright and no longer dare to approach.
Without the harassment of the Chu Army’s light cavalry, the pace of the Ning Army’s escape undeniably quickened.
In one day, they covered over eighty miles, effectively leaving the battlefield of Jiangxia.
However, not long after leaving Jiangxia, the fleeing Ning Army encountered Chu forces from the direction of Luo Kou Du, rushing to intercept them.
At Luo Kou Du, Chu State had forty thousand of the Forbidden army and twenty thousand navy troops, a force that could be described as formidable.
Upon receiving Lu Yuan’s orders, after a short period of time, Han Hua made a decisive decision, leaving twenty thousand navy troops to defend the ferry and personally leading forty thousand of the Forbidden army to a crossroads on the government road southeast of Luo Kou Du to set up the interception.
By that time, the Ning Army had been marching day and night, emotionally and physically exhausted to the extreme, their combat power nowhere near its peak state, maintaining a mere thirty to fifty percent would be considered good.
No matter how you looked at it, facing the Chu forces who were rested and waiting, the ultimate outcome for this group of Ning troops could only be one: to be intercepted and ultimately be besieged to death.
But in times of dire crisis, miracles always seem to emerge.
At the last moment, it was the Wuan Marquis who stood out again.
Because he knew that the main army was weary and their combat ability weak, not fit for heavy use.
To break through the Chu forces’ blockade ahead, it was necessary to strike like thunder, concentrating force at one point, to be effective in defeating the enemy.
So Bai Yian, when facing the blockade, did not use the larger main force to attack forcefully, relying on numerical superiority to wear down and breakthrough.
Instead, he recruited daredevil elites from each unit within the army, selecting those still with reserves of strength and more powerful in martial prowess, to form an elite vanguard of about five thousand soldiers.
In the end, he donned his armor, led these five thousand chosen vanguards to break the enemy lines first, and fought bravely.
After fighting fiercely for several hours, with this reckless fighting style and sustaining serious injuries in the process, they managed to injure the Chu army’s general Han Hua severely, forcing him to flee with heavy injuries.
After sustaining casualties of over three thousand of the elite vanguard and leaving nearly ten thousand corpses of the Ning Army, the remaining main force finally broke through the Chu forces’ blockade.
Then, the equally devastated Chu forces and the nearly slain Han Hua ultimately did not dare to continue the chase or interception.
They merely gathered with the Chu cavalry, who were also frightened by the fight, trailing ten miles behind, following and watching from a distance.
The Ning Army, after these successive bloody battles and continuous breakthroughs and marches, led the remaining fifty thousand or so surviving soldiers through extreme hardship to arrive at the territory of Yongxing County as seen now.
This area was the border of Dongting in Chu State, directly opposite Ning Country Yuzhang Ruichang County, just needing to cross this place to enter Yuzhang Xunyang Prefecture.
In Xunyang Prefecture, there was the largest lake of Yuzhang, Pengli Lake, whose waters connected to the Yangtze River, spreading through several prefectures in northern Yuzhang and irrigating countless fertile fields.
Therefore, with the convenience of water transport, this place was wealthy and plentiful in money and grain.
As long as the Ning Army managed to flee back to Xunyang Prefecture, relying on the reserved supplies of the prefecture, their current lack of food could immediately be relieved.