Second-hand time travel: Liu Bei, the big-eared bandit

Chapter 219 Killing someone with a borrowed knife

"My lord, the Yellow Turbans outside the city are numerous and powerful. If we go out to fight them, we may be caught in the middle of a massive army... My lord, please think it over!"

On the city tower, Wang Lang, the chief administrator of the Xuzhou governor's office, was earnestly persuading Tao Qian.

"If we don't strike now, the Yellow Turbans will only gather larger and larger, and we'll be trapped and die in the city. We must break out while the bandits are cooking at dusk, so we can escape their pursuit under the cover of night!"

Tao Qian had already donned his armor, and although he was already in his fifties, he still looked quite imposing.

However, he had a yellow turban tied around his head...

Then, Tao Qian put on his helmet, covering the yellow turban on his head, and intended to pick up the halberd leaning against the city wall, but he put it down after just picking it up and weighing it in his hand—that thing was too heavy for him to swing.

After all, time waits for no one. If it were twenty years ago... sigh.

It was already dusk, and half of the setting sun had disappeared into the distant mountains.

Tao Qian's idea was actually correct: to launch a surprise attack when visibility was good at dusk, which was when people were at their hungriest.

For the Yellow Turbans, dinner time is indeed the time of day when they are most likely to be careless, and launching an attack at this time has a good chance of confusing the enemy.

Even if they fail to defeat the enemy, they might still be able to break through the encirclement. If they still fail to break through the encirclement, they can at least take off their helmets under cover of darkness, disguise themselves as Yellow Turbans, and escape...

This is actually easier to succeed than a surprise attack at midnight, because the Yellow Turbans have too many people and plenty of manpower. There are also large troops keeping watch at night, so the enemy will be more vigilant at night.

"My lord, it would be better to hold the city and recruit brave warriors within its walls to break through and seek reinforcements."

Wang Lang clearly had little confidence in Tao Qian's martial arts skills...

Who can break through?

Tao Qian looked around.

On the left is Zhao Yu, whose face is indifferent. He is a famous scholar known for his filial piety, known for "praying to his mother with tears of blood." He is Tao Qian's newly appointed Prefectural Attendant.

The appointment was done in a rather mafia-like manner. Zhao Yu was originally unwilling to work for Tao Qian and had been claiming illness to avoid being summoned. However, a few days ago, Tao Qian forced Zhao Yu to take office on the pretext that "disobedience should result in the execution of the entire family." Judging from his expression, it's clear that Zhao Yu is somewhat displeased with Boss Tao.

On the right is Wang Lang, a local scholar from Tancheng and a good friend of Zhao Yu. Fortunately, Wang Lang persuaded him, otherwise Zhao Yu might have been killed by Tao Qian.

Standing further to the right is Cao Bao, a native of Pengcheng, who is Tao Qian's military advisor.

Logically, Cao Bao should be the most suitable person to lead the attack, as he is a commander. However, Cao Bao was unfortunately injured, which is considered a non-combat casualty. He injured his arm a few days ago when he went to Pengcheng to arrest people. He can still command the defense of the city, but he cannot lead the troops into battle for the time being.

The halberd on the city wall is Cao Bao's weapon.

A forced deputy governor, a verbally sparring politician, and a wounded military commander.

That's all.

Right now, there's not a single one who can fight.

What else could Tao Qian do besides take the field himself?
Could they rely on Zhang Zhao, who is in prison, to break out?

That's right, the one who was imprisoned by Cao Bao was Zhang Zhao, a famous scholar from Pengcheng, who was also a good friend of Wang Lang and was introduced by Wang Lang.

Tao Qian originally intended to recommend Zhang Zhao as a talented scholar and even planned to appoint him as his chief clerk, but Zhang Zhao refused—not only did he refuse to serve as chief clerk, but he also refused the recommendation of a talented scholar.

Tao Qian felt that Zhang Zhao clearly looked down on him, so he ordered Cao Bao to arrest him and put him in jail, intending to gradually reform him...

But who would have thought that before the recruitment process was even finished, the Yellow Turban army arrived.

The city's garrison was actually sufficient, with Tao Qian commanding a full five thousand men. Food supplies within the city were also plentiful, so holding out for several months should not have been a problem.

The problem is that four thousand of them were Danyang soldiers—basically mercenaries.

As the saying goes, "bad people come from poor mountains and bad waters, and mercenaries come from chaotic places." Danyang is both a poor and bad place and a chaotic place. Its only local specialty is the Danyang soldier.

In fact, the main characteristic of the Danyang soldiers was not their strong fighting ability, but their fearlessness... or rather, the generals on both sides believed that the Danyang soldiers were fearless...

During the reign of Emperor Wu, Li Ling's 5,000 elite soldiers were from Danyang.

When attacking the Xiongnu, Li Ling led 5,000 Danyang soldiers against 80,000 elite Xiongnu cavalry. Surrounded and without reinforcements, they fought desperately. They killed more than 10,000 Xiongnu soldiers and fought until they ran out of arrows and food. Only 400 men returned home, but the organization still did not collapse.

Although the commander-in-chief Li Ling was forced to surrender and ultimately met a bad end, the reputation of the Danyang soldiers for their bravery and fearlessness was established and has remained strong for hundreds of years.

Once a name becomes well-known, it will naturally attract many bosses to recruit.

But generation after generation of young and strong men were taken away, and no one was engaged in local development. Most of the soldiers from Danyang who were taken away could not live to retire and go home to enjoy their retirement, so Danyang became poorer and poorer.

In poor places, there's not much to sell, so people have to sell their lives. And to sell your life, you have to be fearless—so you have no choice but to be fearless.

Previously, Danyang soldiers were known for their high cost-performance ratio, being cheap and of good quality, and were widely praised.

However, the cost-effectiveness of Danyang soldiers is not high nowadays, because Danyang has now developed a mercenary industry.

As we all know, once capital enters and a local specialty business is industrialized, it becomes quite a rip-off.

In particular, this industry has a reputation and stereotypes that have lasted for hundreds of years.

Tao Qian was from Danyang, so he wasn't easily fooled; he was well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the Danyang soldiers.

Their main advantage is that they are indeed not afraid of death, but to make them not afraid of death, they must be allowed to plunder and make extra money after the war.

The main drawback is that the Danyang soldiers are not good at defending cities... Actually, it's not so much that they are not good at it, but that they don't like defending cities—because you can't earn extra money by defending cities unless the boss is willing to give you a daily allowance...

If you get money every day, you can keep it up every day, and you can keep it up for as long as the money is given.

The more money the boss has, the more valiant the Danyang soldiers will be.

There's no way around it; that's how mercenaries are after they've become an industry. They have to keep paying you. If the money stops, the city will fall.

Will the Danyang soldiers also die after the city falls?

No, they're mercenaries. Any enemy with a brain would recruit them... What difference does it make who you work for? If the boss goes bankrupt, of course they'll switch jobs...

If the enemy is truly foolish enough to pursue and annihilate everyone, then it's hard to say who will win or lose.

Therefore, Tao Qian had to leave the city to fight, otherwise he would easily go bankrupt...

"My lord, my lord, reinforcements have arrived outside the city!"

Cao Bao suddenly shouted, pointing to several plumes of dust rushing towards them in the distance.

The dust was caused by the cavalry's rapid advance; the dry summer ground caused the dust to rise extremely high.

The reinforcements raised many flags, the two largest of which read "General Liu, Left of the Central Army" and "Military Commander Zhang".

There were more than a dozen flags, which usually meant more than a dozen bands. Just by looking at the flags and the dust, there must have been at least several thousand cavalry charging towards them.

"Liu Xuande?!"

Tao Qian was overjoyed and quickly ordered his soldiers, "Open the city gates! Follow me out of the city and attack from both sides!"

……

In fact, Liu Bei is currently still in Langya Kaiyang.

After Liu Bei left, he first met with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei near Dongpingling.

At that time, Dongpingling appeared to be occupied by the Yellow Turbans, and there was even a "Taiping" flag planted on the city wall.

But even Zhang Fei realized that most of the "Yellow Turban rebels" guarding the city were actually the private soldiers of local powerful families.

After all, Liu Bei and his group were very familiar with the true Way of Peace.

Zhang Fei also understood why Cao Cao had never been able to rescue Xiahou Yuan—the gentry in Jinan were clearly capable of switching between the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the rebel army at any time.

Seeing this situation, Liu Bei stopped Guan Yu and Zhang Fei from attacking Qingzhou and instead led a team to Kaiyang with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei.

Dealing with the gentry of Qingzhou is a task that Tao Qian should handle.

Traveling with a large force would be too slow, so Liu Bei sent Zhang Fei ahead to deliver a message to Tao Qian, intending to meet with Tao Qian and Zhang Yu together in Kaiyang to avoid repeating the same message twice. Zhang Fei was sent primarily because Tao Qian had seen him in Huaili.

However, when Zhang Fei arrived outside Tancheng, he found that Tancheng had been surrounded and he could not enter.

If it were an ordinary messenger, they would probably just let it go if they couldn't get in, and would definitely go back to inform Liu Bei first.

But Zhang Fei was clearly no ordinary man...

He felt that although delivering a letter to Tao Qian was just a small task, it was still a military order. Once he received a military order, he had to complete it, otherwise he would lose face.

So far, Zhang Yide has never failed to complete a single task...

Back then, Zhang Fei could go and burn down other people's cities all by himself. Now, with fifty riders, Zhang Fei would naturally dare to charge against 100,000 Yellow Turbans.

Yes, that's right. The "reinforcements" that Tao Qian saw actually numbered only fifty cavalry.

After all, it's for delivering mail; too many people would slow things down, and it's unnecessary anyway.

However, Zhang Fei didn't charge blindly; he used some fancy tricks.

With only fifty cavalrymen, they displayed more than a dozen flags, not only to intimidate people, but also to tie tree branches to the horses' rumps.

Once they started running, branches and leaves kicked up dust on the ground.

The cavalry were divided into five groups, each separated by several dozen feet, creating a cloud of dust everywhere.

From a distance, it certainly looked like a massive, dusty, and imposing force, as if thousands of riders were charging towards them.

……

The Yellow Turbans outside the city were indeed panicked when they saw this situation. The Yellow Turbans here were actually just a bunch of rebels, including the old, weak, women and children. Their numbers were indeed large, but they were not a regular army and did not have crossbow formations or other means to counter cavalry.

That being said, even a regular army would panic when faced with a charge of several thousand cavalry.

The Yellow Turbans on the periphery began to retreat instinctively, and a few bandits even tried to set up barricades.

However, not many barricades could be found in time. As Zhang Fei's cavalry drew closer, many elderly, weak, women, and children began to panic and run around in all directions, which threw the Yellow Turbans into chaos.

Having more people isn't necessarily a good thing, because the more people there are, the easier it is for things to get chaotic, and when chaos breaks out in a large crowd, it takes much longer to calm things down.

Meanwhile, Tao Qian's morale soared upon seeing Liu Bei's troops arrive to reinforce him. He opened the city gates and rushed out, intending to launch a pincer attack on the besieging enemy forces.

The chaos on the outskirts of the Yellow Turban Rebellion drew attention and made the young and strong troops besieging the city in the inner circle somewhat hesitant.

At this moment, Tao Qian's troops rushed out of the city, which had a similar effect to a surprise attack.

However, Tao Qian truly did not expect that Zhang Fei's cavalry would be attacked before they even reached the enemy...

It turned a corner.

That definitely required a turn, and Zhang Fei wasn't going to just crash into the crowd, so he made a right turn several hundred paces away.

With this turn, the billowing dust formed a wall, concealing everything behind it.

It was dusk, and only by the light of the setting sun could one vaguely see warhorses galloping behind the smoke and dust.

The Yellow Turbans outside the city seemed even more panicked—the fear of the unknown was actually more terrifying than the galloping cavalry. What was behind that cloud of dust? Was there another large-scale army?

Despite the panic, the Yellow Turbans, being a large force, did not descend into complete chaos. They simply began to retreat in another direction, and the besieging troops also began to retreat.

Clearly, the Yellow Turbans did not want to be attacked from both sides.

Although the number of people is large, the vast majority of them are untrained rioters. If they are attacked from both sides and completely disrupted, it is easy for a major collapse to occur.

If chaos ensues and a rout ensues, there is no fundamental difference between tens of thousands and a few thousand people.

Tao Qian was overjoyed to see the Yellow Turbans retreating and quickly led his troops to charge towards the cavalry.

Although Tao Qian's troops were mostly mercenaries, they were at least regular troops, and their combat effectiveness was much stronger than that of the Yellow Turban rebels who could not be considered soldiers.

Furthermore, with most of the Yellow Turbans retreating, and Tao Qian determined to charge, he actually managed to disperse many of the Yellow Turbans and break through the encirclement.

Of course, the losses were also significant, so significant that even Tao Qian felt a pang of heartache.

The Yellow Turbans did not collapse, but were merely in disarray.

At this moment, the last part of the setting sun also disappeared below the mountains, outlining the distant mountains with gold edges, while the view outside the city suddenly became extremely dark.

Liu Bei's banner was still faintly visible, and Tao Qian continued to move towards that banner.

Perhaps due to the obstruction of the smoke and dust, or perhaps out of vigilance against the unknown cavalry, the main force of the Yellow Turbans did not continue to pursue Tao Qian.

As they drove far from Tancheng, and Tao Qian's troops were panting and exhausted from eating dust, and night had completely fallen, he saw torches being lit.

The torches illuminated Liu Bei's banner.

But under that flag, there was only a small group of people.

Tao Qian rode forward to meet him: "Is it Lord Liu who has come to our aid?"

Zhang Fei pulled a bamboo slip from his robes: "Zhang Yide, the Sima under the Left General of the Household, has come to deliver a message to Prefect Tao..."

"Send...send a message?"

Tao Qian looked back at his own troops. Although he couldn't see them clearly, judging from their size, they had lost at least a thousand men...

Is this guy just here to deliver a message?
Tao Qian was furious; he had initially thought Liu Bei had sent a large army...

But then he thought that Zhang Fei hadn't done anything wrong by coming to deliver the message. If Zhang Fei hadn't scared the Yellow Turbans, he might not have been able to break through smoothly.
This is considered a favor.

Tao Qian sighed: "Where is Magistrate Liu?"

……

In any case, Zhang Fei completed this small task and even led Tao Qian's troops directly to Kaiyang.

Liu Bei hadn't expected Tao Qian's situation to be so bad, but that was perfect. Since Tao Qian was homeless, it would be much easier to partner with him.

Since Tao Qian's troops are still there, it won't affect the plan.

Zhang Yu has also followed Zhao Yun to Kaiyang, but he has changed his name again... He is now called Zhang Rao.

These days, many big thieves do this; it's a normal phenomenon. They change their names when they commit crimes in a different location.

This actually means that this notorious thief still had a sense of awe for the imperial court.

Those who don't change their names or surnames are the ones who don't respect the imperial court.

"Is Xuande sending me to Qingzhou to become a thief?"

Tao Qian was somewhat surprised upon hearing Liu Bei's statement: "But Tancheng is currently under siege..."

"There are still some inside stories behind the siege of Tancheng."

Liu Bei pointed at Zhang Rao: "Brother Zhang just said that the Yellow Turbans in Tancheng were brought here by the powerful clans of Pengcheng. Has Lord Tao offended anyone?"

"They were brought here by powerful families from Pengcheng? How did they do it?"

Tao Qian was even more surprised.

"When I passed through Pengcheng, everyone there was saying that the newly appointed governor of Xuzhou, Tao Gongzu, had stored a large amount of grain in Tancheng... People in places like Taishan and Pengcheng who had no food were all running around looking for food; wherever there was grain, they would go..."

Zhang Rao explained.

“…Zhang Zibu! No wonder I was surrounded by bandits right after I captured him; this is a case of using someone else to do the dirty work…his mother and maid!”

Tao Qian immediately understood and cursed through gritted teeth.

(End of this chapter)