When it came to a small war, there was no such thing as destiny, so there was no such thing as an opportune moment. However, Mount Fuyao held the geographical advantage, so there was no need to doubt it. With more than twenty military scouts thrown into the mountain, it was very difficult to capture military intelligence that would be beneficial to the war situation and successfully transmit it back to the army at the first possible moment. Mount Fuyao had six beacon towers that were hard to detect. Because the Wei and Jin Dynasties, who had been military officers, pursued a policy of being loose on the outside and tight on the inside, there was only one outside the mountain. Originally, there were only eight beacon towers, but eight more were added at the last moment. Half of them were stationed on the mountain, while the other half were roaming about. The latter were assisted by the chirping of birds, making them even more secretive and difficult to detect.
The one hundred and eight bandits of Mount Fuyao were divided into three groups of troops. The Third Mountain Lord, Nan Baoyu, was the leader. He was an eight-foot-tall burly man who wielded a pair of gilded sledgehammers. He had the fewest men under his command, only thirty. Every one of them was nimble and strong, armed with short sabers and bows and arrows. They truly had the air of a dismounted crossbowman. They formed a fan shape and swiftly advanced forward. Several cautious military scouts quickly came into contact with these bandits. Because there was no such thing as who was in the open and who was in the dark, it was a close combat battle. The scout's saber technique carried the distinct style of Beiliang's army — concise, practical, and most importantly, desperate.
The burly bandit, whose martial arts were superior to the scout's by a level, was clearly not used to this kind of life-for-life fighting style. However, he relied on his superior technique and agilely moved around like an ape in the forest. He opened up a distance and waited for an opportunity to attack again. The scout was unable to get close and did not blindly attack. After a Mount Fuyao bandit found an opportunity to slash his shoulder with a saber, he gritted his teeth and forcefully fired his short crossbow. The bolt brushed past the man's cheek and nailed into a tree. This arrow scared the man so much that he broke out in a cold sweat. As he ran, he took out a throwing knife from his waist and threw a series of extremely familiar throwing knives at the heavily injured scout. The scout, whose shoulder had a wound of an inch or so, couldn't dodge in time. Several throwing knives were nailed into his chest and thighs, leaving him on the verge of death.
The man moved forward like a mountain snake, drawing an arc in the air as he carefully closed in on the enemy, not giving the scout a chance to fire his crossbow. After he dodged the last crossbow with a somersault in the air, the man standing behind the scout let out a sinister smile, bent his waist, and ran forward. With a raise of his hand, he chopped off the scout's head and kicked the headless corpse over. The man snapped his fingers and received fifty taels of silver, as well as a promise from the Mountain Chieftain that after he killed this man, he would be able to spend the night with a few beautiful maidservants from the big houses on the mountain. Just as the man was about to raise his saber and leave the scene, he felt a jolt in his heart and his head sway forward. He fell to the ground, dead on the spot. It turned out that two crossbow bolts had pierced his chest and the back of his head at almost the same time. A Grassland bandit who had rushed over after hearing the commotion had only just seen this frightening scene and was about to find a place to hide when two crossbow bolts came flying at him. The man instinctively dodged one of the bolts, but the other one still pierced through his neck. He slumped against a tree trunk and abandoned his saber, covering his bleeding neck with both hands. The two scouts, one on the ground and one under the tree, made a hand signal to each other. After confirming that there were no fish in the vicinity, they continued to move forward stealthily.
This was the Beiliang scouts' "three men make a tiger" that was even more adept than the dead man's flying dagger. In the beginning, most of the Xu family's soldiers were born as bumpkins. Not to mention military books, they hadn't even touched the three hundred or so books on basic knowledge. Their overuse of idioms had always been widely criticized. However, only those who had died under the cold saber during the Spring and Autumn Period understood the ruthlessness and fierceness of their enemies on the battlefield.
After the twenty-some scouts came into contact with the first wave of bandits on Mount Fuyao, eight of them died. Using their cooperation, they easily killed the other nine. It seemed like they were evenly matched, but if the three scouts that Nan Baoyu personally slaughtered with his overwhelming brute force were removed, then in reality, even if the Jianghu experts had the advantage in individual combat strength, against the veteran soldiers who used battle formations to find loopholes and fill in the gaps, it was easy to see who had the upper hand in the battle. What's more, four of them had successfully circled to the back of Nan Baoyu's fan-shaped defensive line. Finally, two of them returned to Bishan County's Wei Bai Shangque and successfully reported the battle situation to Yanzhi Commandery's Yu Shui Commandery's Su Zhen. This time, Su Zhen personally led nearly 100 armored soldiers into the mountain to exterminate the bandits, including half of his scouts. Hearing the approximate number of casualties, this Commandery Commandery, who had real power in bright armor, tightly pursed his lips with a gloomy look in his eyes. He waved his hand to indicate that the scouts could bypass the first battlefield and enter the hinterland of Mount Fuyao until they encountered the second group of bandits. Su Zhen's unit was an ordinary No.5 Army in Yanzhi Commandery, which was ranked in the middle of Youzhou. However, the scouts trained by Su Zhen, who used to be White Horse Scouts of Northern Liang, were very famous in Youzhou and he was proud of it. Some of his old comrades who had returned to the border with him always liked to bet with him. If they lost the bet, they would shamelessly ask for the scouts under Su Zhen's command. As a result, after entering the mountain, nearly half of his scouts died. This Commandery Commandery Su Zhen didn't do anything in exasperation; instead, he just took off his new Horse War Cold Saber and lightly licked the blade with his tongue with a bloodthirsty look. Being able to become a White Horse Scout, Su Zhen was naturally a senior cavalry soldier. Therefore, even though the local commandant should follow the law of wearing a White Horse Cold Saber, he still secretly gave a way to the commandant above him. Of course, for this reason, Su Zhen also cut off two pieces of meat to show his filial piety. Looking ahead, Su Zhen grinned. After knowing that the commandant who had known him for ten years knew that the two brats were fledglings who had only been scouts for less than half a year, it was said that he was so angry that he threatened to kick Su Zhen out of the mountain. His mother even dared to cheat an old sergeant. Besides Bai Shangque, Su Zhen also had Feng Guan, the county magistrate of Bishan County, who insisted on joining in the fun. Su Zhen didn't like him, so he didn't care about his limp after dismounting. After entering the mountain, he moved as fast as he should. This weak scholar probably had quite a few blisters on the soles of his feet. However, Su Zhen didn't care whether he lived or died. For the sake of County Magistrate Bai, he didn't mind sharing some military merits with him. The two deputy commandants each led a light armored infantry soldier. Taking the lead, they watched covetously, waiting for their leader, Su Zhen, to give the order. Because Su Zhen was worried about the four hundred patrolmen in Qingan County and Tuozhi County, he needed to personally oversee the situation. He trusted Bai Shangque, the county magistrate, and Song Yu, the descendant of a large clan, who he knew well. However, although these two young men had the ability, it was a pity that they didn't have enough reputation to convince the wily old fox leaders of the two counties. Marching and fighting an army wasn't a child's play on paper. If word got out that he, Su Zhen, had brought five hundred men and was still struggling to suppress two to three hundred bandits, he, Su Zhen, couldn't afford to lose face!
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