The Battle of Nanjun (1)
Even as he charged forward, brandishing the moon blade he so often boasted of, Yu Jin was elated at the thought of earning merit.
Just a short while ago in the previous engagement he had been disgracefully surrounded and needed Cao Ren’s help, but this time was different. This time he would surely distinguish himself before General Cao Ren!
Yu Jin intended to strike Ling Tong’s flank while the latter faced off against Cao Ren.
“Halt! I shall face you!”
At that moment someone’s voice struck his ear. It was a youthful voice, yet the volume was considerable.
Huh. What is this?
When Yu Jin turned his head, a very young—no, even “young” was insufficient—a childlike general was charging straight at him.
“What are you? Don’t interfere, you brat!”
Having decided to switch opponents, Yu Jin spurred his horse toward the young general.
Where does this little one get off losing all sense of fear? I’ll deal with you first, then take Ling Tong’s head!
Blinded by ambition, Yu Jin failed to properly gauge the opponent before him. With a sneer on his face he swung his moon blade. The young general’s spear came thrusting straight at him.
Clang! A clear ringing sound echoed through the air.
“Huh?”
It was one exchange. In just one exchange the sneer vanished from Yu Jin’s face.
What is this…!
As he blocked the spear, the tingling that shot through his arm told him the opponent before him was no ordinary person. Yu Jin frowned and demanded,
“You’re quite skilled for a brat. Who are you!”
“I am Xiaowei Jin Cheong.”
Looking closer, she was not merely young—she was a woman. He had definitely heard of her. The rumor that at Red Cliffs, Pian-general Sun Guan had been defeated by a young female general. At the time he had thought it exaggerated or false, but facing her directly, far from exaggeration, her martial skill was considerable.
“Damn. Could you be that wench? I’ve heard the rumors, but to think there’s really a girl running around on the battlefield. Fine. This Yu Jin will snuff out your life!”
“As you wish.”
He swung his moon blade with veins bulging in his neck, but it was mere bluster. Having already been pushed back from the first exchange, he could not reverse the momentum.
Yu Jin and Jin Cheong clashed. Their weapons crossed several times, yet no immediate decision was reached.
However, Jin Cheong’s martial arts had improved further over the past year. Little by little Yu Jin was being driven back, breaking into a cold sweat.
Crack!
Yu Jin’s arm trembled as he blocked her spear. His face contorted as he spat out the words.
“This wench. She’s better than I thought….”
Perhaps humiliated at being pushed by a woman, he showed signs of impatience. In contrast, Jin Cheong calmly recovered her spear and delivered several more thrusts.
At first she aimed for the face, then immediately switched to wrist, torso, side—changing attack directions to confuse his defense as she kept thrusting.
Spear. Clash of spears!
“Ugh!”
Driven onto the defensive, he groaned. Continuously blocking the attacks that came from ever-changing angles, sweat poured down his face like rain.
Thud! Once more the spear shafts collided and they entered a contest of strength. Yu Jin gritted his teeth and held on, but he felt his power gradually ebbing.
Seizing on that, Jin Cheong pretended to lower her spear, then swept it upward and knocked Yu Jin’s moon blade away. The blade left his hand and spun through the air.
“Wha—?”
While he was flustered at losing his weapon, she immediately launched the next attack.
“Guh!”
Jin Cheong’s spear aimed for his neck, but before the tip reached him he barely twisted his body aside. He could not fully avoid it, however, and was stabbed through the shoulder.
He clutched his shoulder and tumbled from his horse.
“General Yu Jin!”
“Protect General Yu Jin!”
Jin Cheong tried to rush in and finish him as he lay on the ground clutching his shoulder, but his subordinates charged forward to interfere. While she blocked their spears, Yu Jin remounted his horse.
“Charge as we are, collapse the left flank, and circle to the enemy’s rear!”
“Waaah!”
Because Yu Jin had fallen, the left formation had shrunk, and Jin Cheong drove into that gap.
She charged forward, striking and stabbing enemies down with her spear. Behind her, soldiers whose morale had soared followed hard on her heels.
“Everyone withdraw! Return to the city!”
Until then Cao Ren had not decided the match with Ling Tong. But as one side of his army began to collapse, he had no choice but to order a retreat.
He turned his horse’s head and headed back toward Jiangling. Yet as he retreated, Cao Ren hoped the enemy would rashly pursue all the way to the walls. Then he could fight more advantageously with the fortifications at his back.
That wish was not granted.
“No need to overdo it. Everyone return to the main camp.”
Ling Tong pretended to pursue, then just before entering arrow range he raised his spear and halted the troops.
With that order, Ling Tong’s elite unit first stopped their charge and reformed ranks. The Wu army following them saw the movement and immediately ceased the pursuit. Then, under Ling Tong’s command, they returned in good order to the main camp.
Damn. Sly bastards.
Cao Ren bit his lip hard and directed the withdrawal. Soon their army flowed into Jiangling like the ebbing tide. Why wasn’t anything going as expected….
Cao Ren and Yu Jin had managed to retreat safely, yet they were left with a bitter taste from the poor results.
After treating the wounded shoulder and wrapping it in bandages, Cao Ren asked Yu Jin,
“Yu Jin. How is the wound?”
“It is not deep, so you need not worry.”
“Still, it is fortunate it ended at that.”
“I am ashamed. That the wench was so strong.”
“They say she is the one who brought down Sun Guan at Red Cliffs. I had only heard the rumors, but from what I saw just now she certainly possesses skill to match. I heard she is still a young woman, yet the world holds such people as well.”
Their miscalculation had been assuming that, with most of the enemy’s key generals gone to Yiling, the only notable commander left would be Ling Tong. In trying to break the enemy’s spirit they had instead been the ones broken.
“Next time I will most certainly take that wench’s head!”
Yu Jin still seethed, unable to let go of his anger.
“First calm yourself and tend to the wound properly. Rather than fixating on that one girl, we must first think of holding Jiangling.”
“Yes. Of course I will defend Jiangling and also deal with that wench.”
“Start by tempering that temper of yours.”
“Yes, General….”
In the previous engagement as well, Yu Jin had been unable to control his temper, charged deep into the enemy lines, and been surrounded—only for Cao Ren to rescue him.
Yu Jin fell silent, yet Cao Ren felt a strange bitterness well up inside him.
They are such young generals; they will only grow stronger from here. Is the age of the old soldiers ending, and the age of the young beginning?
Cao Cao, with whom he had raised troops in their youth, along with Xiahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Hong—all of them had weathered the storms of the years and, like himself, now showed streaks of white in their hair. Yet those young ones still had many chances ahead to distinguish themselves.
After a moment’s reflection, Cao Ren focused once more on the military situation.
They had been pushed back in this fight, yet thanks to the swift retreat their forces had not suffered heavy losses. Still, Yu Jin’s injury and the blow to the soldiers’ morale weighed on him.
“If we hold out a little longer, reinforcements will come. We must endure somehow until then.”
Yet the northern road by which those reinforcements would arrive had already been cut by Guan Yu. A deepening gloom settled over Jiangling.
After the battle, Ling Tong and I returned to the tent and rested for a while.
“Xiaowei Jin, you have worked hard. Your martial skill has improved even further in the meantime. That Yu Jin in particular seems to suffer humiliation every time he appears.”
“Yes. And for General Ling Tong to stand against Cao Ren himself—that is truly impressive.”
“Ahem. You flatter me.”
It had been a short fight, yet there had been results. In particular, my wounding and toppling of Yu Jin had helped raise our troops’ spirits.
Yu Jin—not the famous Yu Jin of the Five Elite Generals, but the other Yu Jin.
Even in modern times his name recognition fell short of the other Yu Jin’s, and he carried the humiliating nicknames “Fake Yu Jin” or “Yu Jin the Second,” yet he had long served Wei and risen as high as Rear General.
Though he had lost to me, he was a brave man in his own right. If we continued to defeat such generals one by one, we could gradually close the gap in strength, could we not?
In this battle we had held the upper hand. Yet if things went as expected, the enemy’s reinforcements would certainly arrive. In my memory it was Li Tong who joined the fight, broke through the northern encirclement, and rescued Cao Ren.
And Cao Ren of Jiangling—the same man who would later cling so tenaciously to Guan Yu during the Battle of Fancheng. Xu Huang, too, would appear in this campaign.
That night, when I could not find Ling Tong, I asked a nearby soldier and was directed to where he was.
He was said to be in a corner of the camp. Approaching, I found him seated neatly before a small fire he had kindled. I sat beside him and asked,
“What are you doing here?”
“Ah, you have come.”
Ling Tong glanced at me briefly, then turned his gaze back to the fire crackling before him.
“I was simply recalling the subordinates who fell in today’s fighting.”
As he spoke he poured wine into a cup and set it before the flames.
“Training together, eating and sleeping together—those memories keep drifting past. Even when it feels as though we will always be side by side, one or two inevitably leave us like this.”
The firelight cast flickering shadows across his face.
“At times like these I always think: it is because of their deaths that I am still alive. That I must keep living so I can continue to remember them.”
I see. Come to think of it, he had always cherished his men deeply. That was why he was holding this quiet memorial.
I too felt sorrow every time I saw soldiers fall in battle, yet not knowing how to mourn them properly in the midst of camp life, I had often simply kept the regret inside.
So there was a way like this as well. Formal rites were difficult in the field, yet precisely because of that, his sincerity came through all the more clearly.
“May I join you?”
“Of course. Here.”
Ling Tong held out the cup he had been using. I carefully poured wine and set it beside the one he had placed.
It was a night when embers rose into the air like fireflies.
Meanwhile the situation at Yiling also turned in favor of the Eastern Wu forces.
The ones who had surrounded Gan Ning, trapped inside Yiling, were Xu Huang and Cao Hong. They launched fierce assaults on the city, yet Gan Ning’s desperate defense kept them from taking it; then Zhou Yu, Lü Meng, and the others arrived as a relief force, caught them in a pincer, and finally forced them to retreat in defeat.
Yiling fell completely into Wu hands, and Xu Huang, Cao Hong, and the rest fled in disarray with their remaining troops all the way to Jiangling, where they shut themselves inside the walls.
Zhou Yu, Lü Meng, Gan Ning, and the others likewise returned to Jiangling and laid siege to the city.
“Well if it isn’t Duwei Jin! Oh my—you’ve been promoted to Xiaowei, have you? Congratulations! You seem to have grown taller in the meantime as well. Hahaha! I heard you came as reinforcements. To fight side by side again like this—isn’t that fate? Hahaha!”
“Yes. I am glad you are safe.”
“All thanks to your help! Hahahaha!”
I reunited with Gan Ning and exchanged greetings, while Ling Tong stood behind with arms crossed and a sour expression, though he said nothing.
Jiangling was now completely isolated, a lonely outpost waiting only for the day it would fall. Even so, Cao Ren continued to hold the city with stubborn resolve.
“In that case, since things are stable here, I think it would be best if I joined General Guan Yu in the north.”
With Wu’s formidable generals now present, I judged it better to support Guan Yu, who was originally our ally.
Gan Ning and the others voiced a little regret, but I parted from them and joined Guan Yu, intending to further strengthen the northern encirclement.