Chapter 856: Xun Shen's Scheme

Xin Pi’s army at Cenbi and Yinkai was swiftly eliminated by Wei Yan and Guan Ping. If not for Zhu Ling’s concern that Xin Pi couldn’t handle Xu Shu, leading him to rush reinforcements, Xin Pi might have already joined his brother in the afterlife. And young Xin Xianying would have grown up fatherless—speaking of which, she’s already five years old now...

In short, the current situation was that Xu Shu seemed unstoppable, relentlessly battering his senior, Xin Pi, to the brink of destruction. Even more humiliating was that Xu Shu, with a much smaller force, managed to encircle a numerically superior army within their city walls, nearly driving Xin Pi insane. Despite his rage, Xin Pi still couldn’t find a way to win.

At the same time, the coordination between Wei Yan and Xu Shu grew increasingly seamless. Even Xu Shu’s seemingly unreasonable commands were now being accepted without question. According to Xin Pi, “That Xu Shu fellow is just too strange!”

With less than 10,000 troops, Xu Shu encircled the administrative city of Qinghe, Ganling. However, he had no better way to take the well-fortified city. On one hand, his elite troops numbered only 5,000, and on the other, he was reluctant to waste his limited forces in a costly siege.

After two days of frustration, Xu Shu began to change his approach. He decided to reach out to the prominent clans of Qinghe. While Liu Bei’s rule placed some restrictions on the aristocracy, those who followed the laws enjoyed a relatively good life. All the major families had to acknowledge this reality.

This opened the door for negotiations. Xu Shu quickly established contact with the Cui family of Qinghe, one of the elite families in Hebei. However, this wasn’t the Cui family of Boling, from which Cui Zhouping hailed. It was the Cui family of Qinghe.

In fact, the Cui family of Qinghe had recently been suffering, largely due to Cui Zhouping’s actions. Seeing this, Xu Shu recognized an opportunity. He had already formed his own theories about Cui Zhouping’s intentions, or rather, he was certain about them.

In this situation, Xu Shu now had a solid grasp of how to wrest Qinghe from Jizhou. The aristocrats' focus on their families was a weak point to exploit, especially since Cui Yan, a highly capable individual from the Cui family of Qinghe, was involved. Such talent often led to greater foresight.

Of course, part of the Cui family’s current predicament could be attributed to Cui Zhouping’s actions. To push a family to this extent, Cui Zhouping’s capabilities were certainly not to be underestimated. It was even possible that the Cui family’s eventual decisions were within Cui Zhouping’s calculations.

While this was happening, Yu Jin led 2,000 elite crossbowmen across the Yellow River. But before they could reach the opposite shore, a barrage of ballista bolts rained down on their ships. In response, Xu Sheng expertly maneuvered the fleet downstream, quickly moving out of range of the ballistae.

"Where are we heading now?" Xu Sheng asked Yu Jin.

"Keep drawing them out," Yu Jin replied calmly. Xu Sheng chuckled and steered the boats back toward the enemy shore, once again drawing another rain of arrows. The ships retreated slowly, suffering minimal losses.

After several cycles of this back-and-forth, even the slowest among Yuan Shao’s troops realized they were being toyed with. As long as Yu Jin’s forces didn’t get too close, the Yuan forces stopped reacting with the same intensity.

"They really think we don’t have ballistae and crossbows. How naive!" Mi Fang laughed. "They’re treating these large ships like simple transport vessels. Xu Sheng, let's show them what we’ve got. Let the navy prepare as well."

"The crossbows, fire arrows, and fire jars are all ready. Let’s show them our strength," Xu Sheng said, guiding the boats to within 100 paces of the opposite shore. While Yuan Shao’s troops were wary, they didn’t attack, having already wasted plenty of arrows on earlier feints. They weren’t going to make the same mistake again.

Xu Sheng’s ships floated to within 50 paces. Although some of Yuan Shao’s soldiers took notice, most of them still watched indifferently as the ships drifted closer. After earlier failed attempts to sink the boats with ballistae, the Yuan troops had largely given up on that strategy.

Unbeknownst to them, Liu Bei’s forces had deliberately closed the distance. In land battles, Yuan Shao’s soldiers were used to thinking that if they could engage the enemy at close range, the fight was even. But as the arrows rained down on them, they soon realized their mistake.

A hail of arrows fell upon the Yuan forces, sending many to the ground. The spearmen and shield-bearers, typically deployed for close combat, found themselves unable to engage the enemy. Meanwhile, Yuan Shao’s archers were cut down by the dense arrow fire from the boats.

As soon as the arrows struck, Liu Bei’s ships accelerated and swiftly landed. Before the Yuan forces could react, many of the waterborne soldiers had already disembarked and cut down even more of their opponents.

More than 2,000 elite crossbowmen, along with 500 navy troops, quickly captured the two Yuan garrisons that Xun Shen had positioned on the Yellow River to block Liu Ye from building a pontoon bridge.

It’s likely Xun Shen never anticipated that after deploying his navy, Liu Ye wouldn’t choose a less-guarded crossing point, but would instead audaciously force a crossing at the most dangerous location. Even more unexpected was the fact that Xun Shen’s defenses, relying primarily on ballistae with some archers and infantry, would fall so miserably.

In fact, Xun Shen’s strategy had no real flaws. His arrangement was the best possible way to prevent Liu Ye from building the pontoon bridge, and his defenses served as a constant threat to the construction efforts.

If Liu Bei’s forces had crossed elsewhere, their first priority would have been to double back and eliminate these two garrisons.

Xun Shen had even set up a series of small signal towers along the river, ready to alert the Bingzhou cavalry to obliterate any force that crossed. He didn’t need to kill many; the goal was to destroy the morale of Liu Bei’s army.

This was also why the two garrisons were equipped primarily with archers and crossbows. After all, Xun Shen had personally witnessed Hua Xiong receiving several thousand Xiliang Cavalry from Li Jue, and he was more than happy to cause trouble for Liu Ye.

After clearing out the remaining Yuan forces, Mi Fang disembarked. However, after walking only about 200 paces, something unexpected happened.

"What the…!" Mi Fang suddenly stepped into a hole and nearly faceplanted. Regaining his footing, he looked down at the hole, about as wide as a bowl and half a foot deep. Confused, he scanned the area ahead and realized that the ground was riddled with small, camouflaged horse traps.

If Mi Fang didn’t realize what this was by now, he would be a fool.

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