In the northern lands of Liuzhou, the Northern Mang forces, with their numerical superiority, naturally stretched their front lines longer, densely packed like locusts sweeping across the land.
Huang Songpu’s nearly twenty thousand elite cavalry gradually distanced themselves from the flanking riders by two hundred paces.
These twenty thousand riders skillfully formed ten large horizontal ranks, with considerable gaps between each rank. Roughly four ranks of heavy cavalry took the front, five ranks of light cavalry followed behind, and one rank of light cavalry closely trailed the first rank of heavy cavalry.
The so-called heavy cavalry under Huang Songpu were the elite cavalry of the Northern Mang steppes in the general sense—not the royal heavy cavalry that the old matriarch of Northern Mang regarded as national treasures, nor the true heavy cavalry like Beiliang’s Zhi Hu and Wei Xiong. Instead, they wore simple leather armor, layered with scale mail over oxhide, imitating the attire of the self-proclaimed “peerless armored cavalry” of the Dafeng Dynasty. The interconnected scales were heavier than chainmail, generally impervious to ordinary horse bows. Occasionally, their warhorses also bore light leather armor. The riders wielded long spears, carried sabers at their waists, and some even had maces strapped to their saddles.
The war between Liang and Mang cavalry had raged for over twenty years. Northern Mang was ill-suited for the hit-and-run tactics of cavalry against infantry. Against the well-understood Beiliang border troops, feigned retreats would only backfire.
Just as the foremost rank of Huang Songpu’s light cavalry prepared to accelerate and charge forward, slipping through the gaps of the heavy cavalry, an anomaly arose.
What should have followed was Huang Songpu leading that rank of light cavalry to sacrifice themselves to blunt the Beiliang cavalry’s charge, then letting the four ranks of heavy cavalry behind them pierce through the enemy formation in one go!
But the Liuzhou Longxiang cavalry, which had been advancing in unison, suddenly shifted formation—and in a baffling manner. The ten thousand riders in the center deliberately or inadvertently slowed their charge, while the left and right flanks instantly began to contract their front lines outward, rapidly thickening their formation. Then, no longer conserving their horses’ stamina, they abruptly accelerated, almost bypassing Huang Songpu’s central forces and thrusting into the vulnerable seams between the three loosely connected camps. It was as if they intended to sever the two “arms” of Huang Songpu’s main force on the spot!
Too fast.
Premeditated!
Faced with this sudden change, Huang Songpu showed no hesitation. He continued leading his troops forward with fierce determination. Even if the two Longxiang forces successfully pierced through the gaps in his formation, his central camp alone still held ten thousand elite infantry, eliminating any risk of collapse. Once both sides wheeled their horses around for another charge, the several hundred heavy cavalry hidden in the left camp—the closest in strength to the royal iron cavalry—could seize the opportunity to strike and potentially crush one of the Longxiang forces outright!
If the flanking charges of the Beiliang cavalry were marked by cunning, the clash between the central forces was a straightforward, brutal collision.
First, Huang Songpu’s rank of light cavalry accelerated through the gaps, hurling javelins. These light riders were all exceptional in strength among the Southern Dynasty border troops. Within fifty paces, the force of their javelins far surpassed that of horse bows!
In almost a single encounter, three hundred Longxiang cavalry were instantly unhorsed and killed.
Yet the first line of Beiliang cavalry continued advancing in unison, their faces cold and indifferent. Those who feared death would die first!
Regardless of how other armies in the world operated, this principle had been ingrained in the Xu family’s soldiers for over forty years, from the Central Plains’ Spring and Autumn era to the northwestern frontier!
After the javelins, this rank of Northern Mang light cavalry either drew their sabers or cast lassos, facing the forest of leveled spears with equal fearlessness.
For twenty years, the Southern Dynasty border troops of Northern Mang had also learned how to survive against the Beiliang border army—by fighting for their lives!
In just a passing clash, nearly a thousand Northern Mang light cavalry were impaled and killed on their saddles.
Those light cavalry then had to face the iron spears of the following Longxiang ranks.
The outcome was inevitably brutal—fewer than one in ten would survive.
This was the true essence of cavalry collision.
No horse bows exchanged, no flashy maneuvers.
Thanks to the sacrifice of this rank of light cavalry, the first spear clash between Liang and Mang gave Huang Songpu’s rank of heavy cavalry an inherent advantage.
Huang Songpu and his hundred or so personal guards, lined up beside him, almost all unhorsed their enemies with a single spear thrust without fail.
In cavalry collisions, falling from one’s horse meant certain death—an ironclad rule of the frontier.
In a cavalry charge, spears were the vanguard. It was taboo to skewer an enemy and fail to withdraw the spear quickly, as even a slight delay could be fatal. Moreover, the mutual piercing of formations wasn’t limited to a single front line—otherwise, how could the term “piercing” apply?
Striking lethally while conserving the maximum force was the key to survival.
After all, the elite cavalry personally trained by General Huang Songpu were among the finest in the Southern Dynasty border troops. Aside from the devastating losses suffered by the first rank of light cavalry, the subsequent three ranks of heavy cavalry and the Liuzhou Longxiang forces exchanged casualties with only a slight disadvantage.
Quietly, the last rank of heavy cavalry now held the rear, while four ranks of light cavalry surged past the front lines.
Because Huang Songpu knew that on the battlefield, the final breath must not falter!
Among the ten thousand Longxiang cavalry on the left flank, a scholarly-looking middle-aged officer led the charge as the vanguard. Those at the forefront of such formations were invariably daredevils of the vanguard battalion—the first to die, and the fastest.
The Northern Mang western forces were no strangers to this man. After their encounter ten days prior, they loathed him even more.
Perhaps in the entire Beiliang border army, only this man could be so unconventional—wielding an iron spear, with swords and sabers hanging at his waist, and halberd quivers strapped to both sides of his saddle.
This was Li Mopan, the infamous deputy commander of the Longxiang cavalry, renowned for his valor yet notorious for his conduct!
The breakthrough point for these ten thousand riders was the junction between Huang Songpu’s central forces and the elite cavalry of the Longguan’s A-rank noble families. Likely because no one anticipated the Beiliang border cavalry avoiding a frontal assault, the ten thousand riders’ piercing charge seemed unstoppable—like a knife slicing through tofu, effortless and smooth.
The insertion of the other Longxiang light cavalry was even smoother. Several cavalry units assembled from the Southern Dynasty’s B-rank noble families hastily emerged from camp, already disjointed from the central formation. In an instant, the ten thousand riders carved a massive swath through their flank, slaughtering over a thousand riders. Had this been a head-on clash of ten thousand versus ten thousand, killing a thousand enemies wouldn’t have seemed remarkable—even on the Liang-Mang battlefield, where fights were to the death, it wouldn’t have been considered particularly brutal. But in this scenario, where the charge was merely a glancing blow, for the side with numerical superiority to lose a thousand riders was absurd. It starkly revealed that even the Southern Dynasty’s second-tier elites, when facing the Longxiang cavalry—once hailed as the finest light cavalry of Liangzhou—were utterly outmatched, no matter how fiercely they fought or how fearless they were.
If the Longxiang cavalry’s flanking maneuvers were already baffling enough, their next move left the Northern Mang western forces utterly bewildered.
After mutually piercing each other’s formations, the usual protocol was for both sides to wheel around and launch a second charge—this had been the norm in the twenty years of Liang-Mang cavalry battles. But what happened next left the Northern Mang flanking forces gaping in shock. Under the command of Li Mopan and another Longxiang deputy commander, the twenty thousand riders charged straight for the Northern Mang camp!
The Beiliang iron cavalry easily breached the Northern Mang camp’s crude defensive barriers. Once inside, they moved with familiarity, as if strolling through their own courtyard. The light cavalry advanced unhindered, without pause, the two torrents gradually merging as they stormed toward the weakly defended supply camp at the rear!
In contrast, the central Longxiang forces clashing with Huang Songpu’s central army suffered the heaviest losses and advanced the slowest. Both sides left over two thousand corpses on the battlefield—the Longxiang slightly over two thousand, the Northern Mang nearing three thousand. Such an exchange was already profoundly tragic.
Huang Songpu, his iron armor splattered with blood, reined in his horse at the rear, shaking the gore from his spearhead. The old general turned his horse, his eyes widening as he instantly grasped the Longxiang’s true intent. He roared, “Wanyan Yinjiang! Ignore the enemy’s flanks! Fight to the death to pin down this central force—don’t let them scatter into the camp!”
The Northern Mang flanking forces, already frustrated, had initially continued their charge after bypassing the two Longxiang light cavalry units, intending to regroup with Huang Songpu’s main force. At the old general’s roar, from Wanyan Yinjiang—a scion of the Longguan aristocracy—to the myriad commanders under him, they all realized that today’s battle would be unlike any before! Without regard for formation, the vanguard of the two flanking forces swiftly turned around, while the trailing riders, not yet fully disengaged from the central Longxiang forces, began slanting inward, attempting to slice them apart segment by segment—like chopping a long snake! Once a cavalry unit lost formation, it largely lost speed. Trapped in the mire, it could only await slaughter.
The Longxiang cavalry’s valor was undeniable, but they were no invincible deities. In such circumstances, they couldn’t possibly remain unstoppable.
Faced with this dire situation, the central Longxiang forces resolutely made a sacrificial decision. The thousand riders on the flanks immediately fanned outward, creating a significant gap from the main force in the center, buying time to delay the Northern Mang cavalry’s desperate charges.
This thousand riders, deliberately diverging from the formation, were trading their lives for the stability of the main force.
The outer thousand riders, increasingly distanced from the main force, galloped desperately, their spiritually attuned warhorses driven beyond exhaustion by the Longxiang riders.
It was a magnificent, moth-to-flame spectacle.
One by one, Longxiang light cavalry were unhorsed by Northern Mang spears, then beheaded with a casual flick of a saber by the barbarians behind them.
Some were yanked from their saddles by lassos and dragged until their bodies were mangled.
This thousand riders, fighting disjointedly and independently, faced an endless tide of Northern Mang enemies—their fate was sealed.
One rider, skewered through the shoulder by a Northern Mang spear, wobbled but still managed to impale the throat of an oncoming enemy. Yet he was quickly knocked from his horse by the next Northern Mang rider, and before his body even hit the ground, a third Northern Mang horseman, with expert horsemanship, leaned down and cleaved his head off.
They couldn’t be stopped.
Huang Songpu, leading the main force in its turn to re-engage, heaved a heavy sigh.
The old general hadn’t anticipated that the Longxiang’s true target would be the supply camp—the lifeline of their provisions. Nor had he expected them to be so intimately familiar with his camp’s internal layout.
Thus, everything happened far too quickly.
The Longxiang’s flanking charges, the central force’s piercing assault, and the sacrifice of that thousand riders—all of it.
It left this battle-hardened Northern Mang veteran utterly unprepared!
Huang Songpu suddenly turned his head.
The thunder of hooves, the billowing dust.
Huang Songpu said gravely to an aide beside him, “Pass the order: all infantry in camp are to form up south of the camp! The left camp forces are to join our central army in pursuing the Longxiang cavalry, skirting the camp to intercept the enemy as swiftly as possible! No need for overreach—if the Longxiang attempt to split and retreat to Qingcang City, focus on pinning down one of their cavalry units! Also, have Wanyan Yinjiang lead his troops to block the ten thousand riders at the rear—likely Kou Jianghuai’s forces, mostly refugee conscripts with a smattering of Liangzhou border troops. Their combat prowess is negligible.”
Huang Songpu suddenly added, “Oh, and tell Wanyan Yinjiang to beware—Xu Longxiang himself might be hiding among Kou Jianghuai’s troops. Nothing else matters!”
At the same time, a middle-aged man in ordinary chainmail beside Huang Songpu smiled and said, “If the general is uneasy, I’ll join Wanyan Yinjiang and take the opportunity to test the mettle of that ‘one-man army,’ Xu Longxiang.”
Huang Songpu glanced at this second-in-command of the Zhong family and nodded.
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