Chapter 38: Dissolving Inner Demons within the Array

As more and more arrogant Tibetan cavalry charged into Peshawar, the entire city began to seethe like a boiling cauldron, filled with the sounds of violent clashes and shrill battle cries.

However, the Tibetans quickly realized something was amiss.

It was chaotic.

Far too chaotic.

It felt as though the city was swarming with headless flies.

Logically speaking, when an overwhelmingly superior force poured into the main thoroughfares and swept through the alleys, it should have been like autumn leaves scattered by a fierce wind; their ferocious grins should have echoed in the air, accompanied by the despairing wails of the Tang people.

It should not have been this chaotic.

The mere chaos of running battle-steeds alone could not explain this.

The command and control of their generals seemed to have plummeted.

Some of the high-ranking generals outside the city had acutely sensed this anomaly, but as messenger after messenger galloped into the city, the situation refused to improve.

What on earth were those generals doing?

Yet, the messengers who had entered the city were just as bewildered.

They were disoriented and half-choked by the dense smoke.

And no matter how loudly they shouted, the generals who would normally appear at the first call were nowhere to be found.

The thick smoke was rolling in from the direction of the granary—the cunning Tang people had actually set fire to the granary directly!

That granary was a massive trouble, perpetually spewing smoke!

The Tibetan generals outside the city soon received the report.

When it came to arson, the Tibetans were quite skilled; they were the epitome of a nation in arms. When not at war, the children of the Tibetan tribes would catch sparrows, and during wartime, they would tie slow-match fuses to the birds' legs, set them ablaze, and drive the sparrows into enemy camps.

If an entire city could be thoroughly ignited, the firelight would be intense enough that even thick smoke would struggle to obscure vision.

Yet, this tactic was proving ineffective now.

Most of the houses in Peshawar had stone-paved roofs, and the enemy clearly had not lost their composure.

The vanguard troops at the very front had already witnessed people everywhere starting fires and raising smoke, while simultaneously pouring water over areas vulnerable to burning!

What on earth was this?

They had launched a surprise attack; with such a massive force appearing before this small town, how could the people inside possibly mount such an orderly response?

Especially upon confirming that the thickest billows of smoke were erupting from the granary, every Tibetan general outside the city felt a trace of panic.

In a normal major battle with an overwhelming numerical advantage, even if the enemy didn't actively burn their own granary, the Tibetans would have wanted to burn it for them.

If the enemy used the cover of night and smoke to obscure vision, the Tibetans could simply refrain from attacking, withdrawing from the city to wait for dawn.

Trapping a small town like this for ten-odd days would force the people inside to consume their own provisions, reducing them to weaklings by the end of ten days, making the task of going in to harvest heads effortless.

But this was winter!

Who knew when the next blizzard would strike.

Their men and horses were already utterly exhausted from a long-distance raid; if they lingered here for ten days or so, none of them could hope to return alive.

According to all their prior calculations and strategies, they could not afford to wait a single extra day!

Meanwhile, the Tibetan vanguard forces inside the city were even more bewildered.

Not only were they fragmented and isolated by countless running horses, but even though it seemed they were surrounded by their own comrades, the chaos only intensified, and men around them kept dying.

Furthermore, why were there no generals coming forward in so many sectors to take charge of the overall situation and direct their actions?

***

Amidst their entanglements, the Tibetans rapidly fell into Gu Liubai's rhythm.

After a brief deliberation, several senior generals reached a remarkably unanimous conclusion.

Secure the granary first.

The internal smoke was too thick, seemingly hindering the generals' command. They decided to send several more generals inward, accompanied by an elite cavalry detachment with orders to ignore everything else and race directly to the granary at top speed.

The only thing puzzling the Tibetan generals outside the city at this moment was: why was that fat man in the west still alive?

Li Xizhi and the two officials from the Bureau of Historiography, who had been closely following Gu Liubai and observing his mobilization of the city's troops, were acutely aware of why that fat man remained alive.

It was because Gu Liubai had thrown the vast majority of the city's battle-hardened veterans into the western sector.

From the very beginning, his strategy was to leave the main thoroughfares open in the city, but to spare no effort in keeping Xu Tuibei alive.

Not only had Gu Liubai funneled the city's most elite, organized Tang regular troops into the west, but formidable figures like Feng Shuqing, along with the experts from their Pei family within this city, had mostly been dispatched there as well.

At present, while most of Peshawar's alleys seemed devoid of Tang soldiers—as if they had vanished entirely—the alleys in the west, especially around the city gate, likely held a Tibetan force that was actually outnumbered.

The obstruction of dense smoke and the continuous assassination of Tibetan generals entering the city had prevented the Tibetans from realizing they needed to urgently reinforce the western sector with massive troop numbers.

The two officials from the Bureau of Historiography were still miraculously alive.

Because they had Gu Liubai and Pei Yuqun guarding their front, and Li Xizhi alongside several Pei family cultivators guarding their rear.

At this moment, Li Xizhi also began killing continuously.

He acutely sensed that the Tibetan forces outside the city had made new deployments, with cavalry rapidly pouring in through the east gate.

New generals seemed to have entered the city, shouting incessantly to rally the headless-fly-like Tibetan soldiers around them.

Listening to the commotion of that cavalry unit, he realized that all of this seemed to have been anticipated by Gu Liubai long ago.

"Should we dispatch more men to the granary?" he glided to Gu Liubai's side and asked softly.

"Unnecessary," Gu Liubai shook his head. "There are at most a few thousand Tibetans in the city now. They don't dare disperse; at most, a few hundred elites will go to raid the granary."

"But..." Li Xizhi wanted to say that no forces had been stationed near the granary in the first place.

Before he could finish two words, Gu Liubai interrupted him, "The ones at the granary are a few of Xu Tuibei's old subordinates, along with the desperadoes of the Yin Mountains. If they can't even handle those people, we might as well just commit suicide right now."

Watching Gu Liubai, who had killed at least thirty-odd men consecutively without even taking a heavy breath, Li Xizhi slowly nodded.

Peng Qingshan's previous secret reports had described Gu Liubai as exceptionally brilliant, but at this moment, he could be certain that Peng Qingshan had still vastly underestimated this man.

When Pei Yunqun halted, she coughed repeatedly, choking on the smoke. Coughing and gasping for breath, she caught her breath and glared at Gu Liubai, cursing viciously, "Scoundrel, you lied to me!"

Gu Liubai: "?"

"Scoundrel!" Pei Yunqun could not resist cursing again before demanding, "To preserve the granary and keep the smoke rising, what are our odds of winning?"

Following closely behind Gu Liubai, she had personally cut down no fewer than ten men.

Her confidence had been forged in bloodshed.

Gu Liubai replied, "The granary doesn't matter."

Pei Yunqun: "?"

He had just been talking about protecting the granary, and now it didn't matter?

Was this scoundrel lying to her again?

Before she could work herself into a rage, Gu Liubai's voice reached her ears, "The granary's purpose was merely to lure two batches of elites in to be slaughtered, killing them until they are paralyzed by suspicion. As for the smoke—even if the granary's fire goes out, smoke will billow from elsewhere."

Pei Yunqun frowned, and Li Xizhi softly explained, "I have already instructed Zhou Luer to tell the archers who have exhausted their arrows to retreat into the city and generate smoke. They are far more capable than the untrained townsfolk; this smoke will only grow denser for a while."

The two heavy-breathing officials from the Bureau of Historiography could now see that while the earlier thick smoke had drifted mainly from the granary and the city's central avenue, smoke was now rising from all four directions.

***

Provided they did not lose their composure, the Tang border troops possessed basic judgment.

They stood no chance in a head-on collision, so they could only strive to create localized numerical superiority, while muddying the waters to prevent the Tibetans from easily surrounding and annihilating their living forces.

By now, the vast majority of the city's generals felt boundless admiration for Xu Tuibei and the young man commanding Peshawar tonight.

"We have no chance of winning."

In the eyes of the two Bureau officials, the young man Gu Liubai was icy calm to the extreme.

His words instantly deflated Pei Yunqun's rising confidence, yet they inspired no despair—instead, they made one want to fight alongside him to the death.

"But as long as we can drag this out long enough, we will survive."

Gu Liubai smiled amidst the thick smoke. "You are the most crucial link. You must stay close to me; absolutely no accidents can happen."

"You aren't lying to me?" Pei Yunqun said through clenched teeth.

Seeing her still obsessed with this matter, Gu Liubai decided to dispel her inner demon first.

"How did I lie to you?"

The two Bureau officials could not help thinking that this young man still had the leisure to coax a young lady at a time like this.

Pei Yunqun angrily retorted, "Didn't you say you only 'slightly understood' swordsmanship? You killed those Tibetan soldiers like chickens—is that what you call 'slightly understanding' swordsmanship?"

"I really didn't lie to you. Those Tibetans aren't even strong," Gu Liubai said earnestly. "Compared to the desperadoes of the Yin Mountains, isn't my level just 'slightly understanding' swordsmanship? That Qiu Baiyun, the swordsman who lost to Yin Niangniang at Mingbo Slope, hasn't even entered the threshold in Yin Niangniang's eyes; he hasn't even built his foundation properly. She is by my side all day long, so for me to claim I only 'slightly understand' is already quite modest."

"That's true too!"

Pei Yunqun's anger vanished in an instant, her eyes curving like two lovely crescent moons. "Gu Shiwu, take me to slaughter more of these Tibetan chickens!"

The two officials from the Bureau of Historiography looked at Gu Liubai with profound admiration.

His swordsmanship was formidable, his tactical deployment was brilliant, and this skill at coaxing the Second Miss Pei was probably unrivaled under heaven.

***

Mangbuzhi, a high-ranking general of the Tibetan vanguard, had barely stepped through the east city gate when he was choked by the smoke into a fit of coughing. At the same time, he received an unbelievable piece of news.

The granary in Peshawar was still smoking.

His fierce general Huawuer and four hundred elite troops were gone.

That the granary was still smoking was true enough—it could be seen from outside the city—but what did it mean for Huawuer and four hundred elites to be gone?

Even if the roles were completely reversed, and Huawuer and four hundred elites were the ones besieged by the Tang army at the granary, shouldn't it take the Tang army half a day to chew through such a hard bone?

How could they simply vanish just like that?

Yet Muzan, who stood before him now to deliver the urgent military report, was his most trusted subordinate, and Muzan swore on his own head that he had seen the corpses of those men not far outside the granary.

The corpses were strewn haphazardly, a horrifying sight.

Simultaneously, Muzan brought another piece of intelligence.

The officers of their vanguard force who had charged into the city earlier were indeed missing in large numbers. It wasn't that they had merely scattered; the majority of them had genuinely been assassinated.

Summing up their current observations, they suspected there were two high-level experts from Chang'an operating within this city.

"High-level experts from Chang'an?" Mangbuzhi furrowed his brow deeply. Any involvement with Chang'an always filled him with an ominous foreboding.

"Yes. Both of them appear to be in their forties or fifties, wearing Chang'an official robes. Their official ranks are likely not low, and they fought bare-handed, moving through our ranks as if entering an uninhabited realm." Muzan still felt a lingering palpitation as he spoke.

After all, according to the gathered information, at least three of the fallen generals possessed martial arts superior to his own.