Lin'an Never Night

Chapter 899 Wu Ting Takes a Risk
Yang Yuan's appearance on the Huaidong battlefield served primarily to boost morale, stabilize the army, and support the newly appointed Wu Ting.

If Wu Ting personally commands the troops and achieves a great victory, his prestige and authority within the Song army in Huaidong will be solidified.

Therefore, Yang Yuan took the initiative to relinquish his responsibilities and let Wu Ting make all the decisions.

Wu Ting was fully aware of Prime Minister Yang's good intentions and was extremely grateful for the Prime Minister's full cooperation.

After Yang Yuan retreated to Baoying, Wu Ting felt relieved and began to implement his Huaidong strategy.

The terrain of Huaidong is an alluvial plain, with low and flat terrain and a dense network of rivers, making it a typical water town.

Of course, as the weather gets colder, most of the river network has begun to freeze.

However, the ice here is very thin and cannot support the weight of a person, which also hinders the movement of the small boat.

Large ships, on the other hand, can easily break through the thin ice and come and go as they please.

Given the terrain of Huaidong, it is clearly not suitable for large-scale cavalry operations.

The Song army, familiar with the local terrain, could employ ambushes and guerrilla warfare, sometimes gathering and sometimes dispersing, to annihilate the enemy.

Therefore, after Yang Yuan, this precious gem, left, Wu Ting boldly implemented his strategy.

Faced with the Song army's show of weakness, the Jin army did not hesitate for long before launching a decisive attack.

The Jin army may not be unable to guess the Song army's strategic intentions, but the natural terrain is what it is. The Song army adopted the most advantageous tactics based on this terrain. Are you just going to give up?

The Jin army's frontal assault did indeed inflict considerable losses on the Song army responsible for blocking them.

However, during this process, the roads and bridges behind the Jin army's lines began to be frequently damaged.

This greatly affected the Jin army's supply and troop deployment.

The area where they fought was so sparsely populated due to the frequent warfare.

Now that it's winter, it's easy to implement a scorched-earth policy.

Without supplies, they will go hungry.

How can you fight a war on an empty stomach?

It was Xin Qiji who put enormous logistical pressure on the Jin Dynasty.

He was already familiar with the terrain of the Jin Kingdom, and at this moment he was leading the Imperial Guard Cavalry Division.

Among these Imperial Guards Cavalry Commands were more than a thousand soldiers who had spent over a hundred days traversing the Huai River region in support of Yang Yuan, who had ventured deep into the Jin Kingdom to rescue the Shandong rebels.

They knew the terrain of this area so well that they could practically close their eyes and were already familiar with every single tree and blade of grass.

This allowed Xin Qiji, who was so bold as to lead less than two thousand light cavalry deep into enemy territory, to thrive.

The Jin army also dispatched light cavalry to pursue the Song army that was harassing them from the rear, while the main force resolutely continued southward.

If the Huaidong defense line is truly breached, then a feint attack may very well turn into a main attack.

Jin general Wanyan Ang launched a fierce attack on the north gate of Shanyang City.

Xiao Yu commanded the Han infantry to fill in the moat.

Yang Tang then set up stone cannons and cannons that the Jin Dynasty had successfully copied, and bombarded Shanyang County with them.

Wu Ting was also very determined to defend the city, even though he knew that Shanyang City was not an easy-to-defend fortress.

The archers on the city walls inflicted heavy casualties on the Jin army.

However, if you look closely, you will find that most of the dead and wounded were Han soldiers and Bohai soldiers.

The real Jurchen warriors did not suffer many losses.

After the city was breached, Wu Ting continued to carry out tiered blocking attacks, leading heavily armored swordsmen to ambush in the barbican.

This battle was fierce and devastating, with corpses strewn everywhere inside and outside the city walls, and blood flowing freely.

Subsequently, Wu Tingcai led the Song Dynasty soldiers to withdraw from Shanyang City.

However, during their retreat, a Jin cavalry unit suddenly appeared, and a fierce battle ensued in the open field, causing Wu Ting to suffer heavy losses.

Wu Ting formed a battle formation on the spot and fought a fierce battle against the Jin soldiers.

The Jin army caught up from behind, and Wu Ting was completely surrounded.

The news reached Baoying City through scouts, and Yang Yuan briefly considered personally leading troops to relieve Wu Ting's siege.

However, he eventually abandoned the idea.

Although Wu Ting was not very old, he had been working his way up in the Western Army since he was old enough to understand things.

When he withdrew his troops from Shanyang City, he would not have failed to consider the composition of the Jin army's troop types.

Especially when Wanyan Liang personally led the expedition, the Iron Pagoda was bound to make an appearance.

Since Wu Ting has taken this into consideration, he must have his own plans.

If Yang Yuan had led his main force, especially the firearms soldiers who had already traveled eastward along the Yangtze River by boat, to his side to provide timely assistance, it would have indeed relieved Wu Ting's predicament.

However, it will likely take a long time for Wu Ting to establish his authority over the Song army in Huaidong.

Wu Ting couldn't possibly be incapable of even breaking through and rescuing someone, but he hadn't received a single distress call while he was here...

Ultimately, Yang Yuan chose to remain inactive.

This was both a risk and a high-profile opportunity, and Yang Yuan entrusted them all to Wu Ting with complete trust.

Sure enough, Yu Yunwen appeared at the critical moment.

Even if Yang Yuan were to lead troops to the rescue at this moment, it would be impossible for him to arrive before Yu Yunwen.

This was clearly a team of backup arranged by Wu Ting beforehand.

Before Yu Yunwen arrived, the flood came first.

Two nearby rivers have been blocked by Yu Yunwen's troops, and the water has been stored for three days.

Although the river water is lower in winter, the scene of the dike breaching after three days of water storage is still very spectacular.

The place where Wu Ting was trapped "happened" to be a low-lying and flat area. Of course, with the water volume of these two rivers, it was not enough to destroy anything, and... not a single person drowned.

After all, when the water spread, the deepest part was only waist-deep, and the shallowest part was just past a horse's hoof.

The problem is that because of this pitifully weak flood, the ground is covered in mud.

The Iron Pagoda suddenly became a toothless tiger.

The Ironclad Cavalry has poor mobility, relies heavily on terrain, and is vulnerable to attrition warfare and long-range armor-piercing weapons.

Although the Song army did not possess the "kite-flying" tactics of the later Mongol soldiers, they had their own methods of countering these tactics.

After the great flood that had not killed a single person spread, Yu Yunwen led the Tiger Crouching Cannon Battalion, the Grenade Throwing Battalion, and the Divine Arm Bow Battalion, which had not appeared in the previous defense of Shanyang.

The Jin army learned from the lessons of the Western Xia army and, after obtaining the gunpowder formula from the Song Dynasty, trained their warhorses to prevent them from being frightened.

The loud explosions and the shockwaves from the flames and smoke had greatly diminished the fright of the Jin army's warhorses.

The problem was that the heavily armored cavalry were trudging through the wet, muddy ground with great difficulty, making every step incredibly arduous.

In this situation, whether it's the Tiger Crouching Cannon, the Divine Arm Bow, or the thrown bombs, they can all penetrate heavy armor.

Those heavily armored Jin cavalrymen became easy targets!
In order to establish his prestige as soon as possible and thus gain absolute control over the Song army in Huaidong, Wu Ting did not hesitate to use himself as bait and defend Shanyang City to the death.

Seeing the banner of Wu Ting, the commander of the imperial armies of Huaidong, on the city wall, this bait forced Wanyan Liang to mobilize a large army and send out his most treasured Iron Pagoda.

Wu Ting held firm in Shanyang City, giving the Jin army ample time to redeploy their troops. He then used himself as bait to lure the pursuers step by step into the pre-arranged battle position.

This is not an ambush site. In such a flat and unobstructed place, if troops were to be laid in ambush early on, they would definitely be discovered by the Jin scouts.

But this is indeed an ambush site.

After the floodwaters receded and the area became muddy, Yu Yunwen's infantry commanders, carrying small cannons and bombs, ran to the pre-arranged encirclement point.

This battle lasted for a day and a half.

The Song army achieved a great victory.

Of the 16,000 Jin troops who besieged Wu Ting, the Song general in Huaidong, only about 5,000 remained after a final count of the dead, wounded, captured, and those who fled in defeat.

Most importantly, the entire 3,000-strong Iron Pagoda army was wiped out.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that a few Ironclad soldiers removed their armor and escaped lightly equipped.

However, this Iron Pagoda, which was clearly the main force of the Jin army, was essentially wiped out.

Moreover, this 3,000-strong Iron Pagoda was composed entirely of Jurchen soldiers.

This incident dealt a severe blow to the morale of the Jin Dynasty.

However, when Wu Ting was rescued, he had not only been shot by an arrow, but also had fewer than 1,800 soldiers left to defend the city. This battle was a Pyrrhic victory.

However, this was a battle of great significance on the Huaidong battlefield.

The complete annihilation of the three thousand Iron Pagoda soldiers caused the morale of the Jin army, which had gradually stopped underestimating the Song army in recent years, to plummet to an all-time low.

The morale of the Jin army was declining, their spirits were wavering, and a sense of pessimism was beginning to spread.

Correspondingly, this battle also solidified Wu Ting's prestige and status among the armies of Huaidong.

It's not surprising at all that Wu Ting could do something like this.

This is how the Western Army always behaves; if you don't have real skills, those arrogant and fierce soldiers of the Western Army won't respect you.

Even if you are a protégé personally promoted by their highly respected commander, it won't work.

Therefore, even though Yang Zheng was like a local tyrant in Lizhou Central Road, he was helpless because his sons and grandsons were not capable.

So in the end, he had no choice but to reluctantly acknowledge Yang Yuan, who might have been a cousin from eight hundred years ago.

For this reason, Wu Lin was the only one who could make decisions in Lizhou West Road, and he could only assess the situation and cultivate his most promising son, the fifth son, Wu Ting.

Wu Ting had four older brothers who were indeed beyond his ability to support, so Wu Lin had no choice but to give up.

Not long after Yang Yuan received news of the great victory at Shanyang, Wu Ting personally came to Baoying City to apologize.

Yang Yuan was completely unaware of the entire risky plan.

Logically speaking, since Wu Ting's idea wasn't a sudden whim or a tactic decided on the spot, and Yang Yuan was at the front line, he should have consulted Yang Yuan beforehand, or at least informed Yang Yuan.

But he didn't.

For Wu Ting, this was a risky move.

Because he used himself, the commander-in-chief of Huaidong, as bait.

Perhaps what he was worried about was that Yang Yuan would prevent him from quickly gaining the approval of the Huaidong armies through this risky approach.

Before he could finish speaking, Yang Yuan quoted a saying that one great man had once said to another:

"The victors are not subject to trial, and the victors cannot be condemned. However..."

Yang Yuan patted Wu Ting on the shoulder: "Don't do that again in the future. You are the commander-in-chief of the three armies!"

Wu Ting grinned: "It is precisely because the Prime Minister is here that I know that even if the plan fails, the Huaidong army will not be leaderless because of my incompetence. That is why I took the risk."

"It won't happen again!"

Yang Yuan laughed loudly: "Very well, I will immediately submit a memorial to the court to request commendations for you and all the soldiers in this battle!"

When Wanyan Liang received news of the crushing defeat at Shanyang, it felt like a blow to the head.

If he hadn't known that Wu Ting himself was the one guarding Shanyang City, he wouldn't have deployed his elite Iron Pagoda troops.

The complete annihilation of the three thousand Ironclad Cavalry was even more painful for him than the loss of thirty thousand soldiers.

Wanyan Liang was furious and nearly lost his mind several times. He wanted to personally lead the main force to avenge his three thousand Iron Pagoda soldiers.

At this moment, two more pieces of news arrived in quick succession.

One piece of good news, one piece of bad news; for a moment, Wanyan Liang didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

(End of this chapter)