Chapter Eighty-Six: Stirring the Grass and Alerting the Snake, Part Two

On the hillside, more than a thousand men had gone to reinforce Zhang Xiu’s flank.

Someone beside Cao Cao said, “Master, I saw it too.”

Cao Cao narrowed his eyes slightly and pointed ahead. “Order Shi Huan to attack the left front of Zhang Xiu’s line.”

“Yes, sir.”

A messenger at once hurried off with the command.

The senior commanders of Cao Cao’s thirty-thousand-strong army were chiefly Cao Hong, Cao Ren, and Yu Jin. Below them, in order of status, stood Yue Jin, Han Hao, Shi Huan, Zao Zhi, Li Zheng, and the like, all middling and upper-level officers.

Then came the personal guard, led by Dian Wei, Cao Chun, and Cao Xiu. As for Cao Ang and Cao Anmin, they were merely attendants, with no assigned post.

Now Dian Wei had fallen at Wancheng, Cao Ren at Xinye, and Yue Jin at Nanyang. Yu Jin had taken a detour with his troops, only to be driven back by Gan Ning, and was still hurrying this way. Cao Hong, meanwhile, was commanding the assault against Zhang Xiu at the front.

As for Cao Chun and Cao Xiu, Cao Chun was in truth more of a civil official, with martial skill not even enough to count as third-rate. He would have been of some use later, when commanding the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry, but to send him charging into battle now would be no different from sending him to his death.

Cao Xiu was even too young. Judging from the age of his bones when his tomb was opened in later times, he lived to be fifty; thus he must have been born in 178 AD and was just nineteen this year.

At present he served only as one of Cao Cao’s guards, no more than an ordinary soldier, not even a petty officer, much less a man fit to kill on the battlefield.

So at this moment, Cao Cao in fact had no standout war general at his side. He could only send Han Hao and Shi Huan to mount a flanking attack, while Zao Zhi, Li Zheng, and the others led their own units.

Even so, with no powerful general in hand, Cao Cao showed the slightest concern that the enemy might rout his army.

A mighty warrior is only part of warfare, not the whole of it.

Lu Bu was unmatched under heaven, and yet he never turned that into any great result. Liu Bei, with Guan and Zhang—men worth ten thousand apiece—still suffered defeat after defeat.

So compared with charging generals, Cao Cao cared more about the battle’s immediate handling.

And now he had accurately found the enemy’s weak point.

On the mountaintop, Shen Chen had also seen Cao Cao’s intention, but he had too little battlefield experience. More than that, he was merely an allied host, unable to command Zhang Xiu in the heat of battle, and could only respond to whatever came his way.

When he saw Cao Cao again order Shi Huan into action, Shen Chen immediately sensed danger and said to his father, Shen Zhen, “Father, we have to help them.”

“Say the word,” Shen Zhen replied, still mounted, gripping his steel saber tightly. “Your father will not be found wanting.”

Shen Chen reined his horse and pointed toward the left front of Zhang Xiu’s position. “We must reinforce there.”

“Good. Move out!”

Shen Zhen took up his whistle and blew a sharp call.

The five hundred soldiers around them immediately gathered, well drilled and disciplined. Under the father and son’s lead, they rode down the mountain to aid Zhang Xiu.

By then, in truth, the arrows they had brought were nearly spent.

Arrows were special military supplies to begin with. At the battle of Huangmen Pavilion, they had already emptied their stores in the killing of Cao Ren, and the arrows they later replenished had been obtained from Gan Ning.

Now, after a round of wild shooting, the troops’ quivers were all but bare, and their only choice was to go down and fight hand to hand.

But because the distance was so great, by the time they reached the battlefield, the fighting had already become white-hot.

Far off, Cao Hong was locked in a fierce struggle with Zhang Xiu. In later generations’ ranking of the Twenty-Four Famous Generals of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Hong did not appear, but that did not mean he was inferior to some of those on the list.

He had once braced himself for fifty rounds against the peak Ma Chao, and fought Gan Ning for twenty rounds before feigning defeat and withdrawing.

He might not match Zhang Liao or Zhang He, but among the men of Eastern Wu he could still force his way into the top five.

Thus, at this moment, he was battling the most unremarkable of the Twenty-Four Famous Generals, Zhang Xiu, with great intensity. The two sides fought for dozens of rounds, and Zhang Xiu was already faintly at a disadvantage.

Though Zhang Xiu had made the list, he in truth had no striking feats to speak of. He had only been included among the twenty-four because he had led troops to kill Dian Wei and Cao Ang. His own martial ability was merely second-rate, and he found Cao Hong a hard man to handle.

Still, Zhang Xiu knew that matters had reached the critical point of life and death, and he had to give it everything he had to turn the tide. So he was fighting Cao Hong with all the strength he could muster.

While the two were locked in combat, Han Hao’s troops had already reached the right flank of the Western Liang forces. Those forces had not adjusted at all, and in their haste they met Han Hao, who had struck their flank with deliberate expectation; their formation instantly fell into chaos.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

“Send two more squads over there. The enemy is breaking through!”

“Hold the line. Our reinforcements will be here any moment!”

The Western Liang troops were a step slower in response and execution, but the soldiers were exceptionally fierce and full of spirit.

After all, these were the hardened men who had followed Zhang Ji out of the Guanzhong cauldron of slaughter. To call them veterans of a hundred battles would not be an exaggeration. Naturally they could not collapse with a single charge.

Yet because their formation itself was flawed, the enemy found an opening, and after a round of fierce killing they were already in retreat, the situation on the verge of collapse.

Fortunately, Deng Zhao arrived at last. Just as the Western Liang army on Zhang Xiu’s left rear was about to give way, he reached the field and helped steady the line.

“Do not panic, everyone. First hold firm. Reinforcements are here!”

Deng Zhao rode his horse, slashing left and right. He cut down a Cao soldier who had turned his back to him, but his second strike was blocked, and another Cao soldier nearly speared him from the saddle.

The discipline and coordination of the Cao troops surprised him greatly. Luckily, the men from Huangmen Pavilion had also trained for two or three years and worked closely together. At the crucial moment, tribesmen nearby helped block for one another, and so he escaped death.

After joining with more than a dozen kinsmen and killing five Cao soldiers to clear the area, Deng Zhao remained on horseback and shouted, “The Cao army is beaten! The Cao army is beaten! Everyone, shout it together!”

“The Cao army is beaten! The Cao army is beaten! The Cao army is beaten!”

First the dozen or so around him shouted. Then the cry spread outward, becoming the roar of dozens. At last all one thousand men from Huangmen Pavilion were raising their voices in uproar.

There were in truth countless chaotic sounds on the battlefield: cries of battle, roars, shrieks, moans, the clash of blades, even the sound of distant waters and the wind, all of which could assail the senses.

So unless one had a voice as thunderous as Zhang Fei’s, it was very hard for an ordinary commander to rouse the soldiers’ morale by shouting alone.

But when many people shouted together, the sound gathered into a mass and shook the attention of friend and foe alike.

Thus, when “The Cao army is beaten!” rang across the battlefield, though it did not unsettle Cao Cao’s troops, it did temporarily steady the Western Liang army, which had been close to collapse.

Many Western Liang soldiers who had been falling back at once turned around and rejoined the fight.

For a time, the Western Liang line was stabilized.

Yet the Cao troops were scarcely affected. While shouting “Zhang Xiu is beaten!” they pressed their assault ever harder against the Western Liang flank, and the two sides entered a stalemate.

The reason both sides kept shouting that the other had been defeated was simple: since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras, this had been the best way to raise morale.

Later, to prevent such tactics from working, the great command banner was introduced.

Once the enemy shouted that the army had been beaten, the soldiers would instinctively glance at the banner. If the banner still stood, it meant the commander still lived, and their resolve would not waver; they would continue fighting.

But there were also cautionary tales in the opposite direction.

At the battle of Feishui, Fu Jian intended to retreat slightly and wait until the Jin troops were crossing the river, then strike them halfway across.

But Zhu Xu shouted, “The Qin army is defeated!”

Because Fu Jian’s forces were too numerous and too unwieldy, many soldiers could not even see where the great banner was. The two sides had not even fully engaged when the Jin troops were already crying out, “The Qin army is defeated!”

So the Qin soldiers at the front thought they had truly been beaten and fled backward, while those behind did not know what was happening and kept advancing.

Thus the front and rear collided and crushed one another, and in an instant it became a massive stampede—hundreds of thousands of men together, more lively than a superstar’s concert. Once panic took hold, fear spread from person to person, and disaster followed.

And so Fu Jian lost to the Jin army in utter confusion.

For this reason, shouting that the other side has been defeated is, in a sense, a traditional skill spanning thousands of years of Chinese warfare.

Only here, Deng Zhao used it to hearten the Western Liang soldiers already near collapse, while Han Hao used it to shatter their morale.

The only pity was that this battle lacked Guan Yu.

Had Guan Yu charged in and cut down Han Hao first, the moment the commander’s banner fell, the Cao soldiers would certainly have broken and retreated. Just like Yan Liang at the battle of Baima: once Yan Liang died, the Yuan army, which had held the numerical advantage, collapsed at once.

And while Han Hao was leading troops in a blow against the Western Liang rear-left formation, only to be rescued at the last moment by Deng Zhao’s timely arrival, Shi Huan also began driving his cavalry against Zhang Xiu’s left-front line.

In truth, there was no obvious flaw here. But Cao Cao’s battlefield command was far superior to Shen Chen’s half-baked instincts. His purpose was not merely to break through the Western Liang army, but to shake its entire formation from the side.

Among the Thirty-Six Stratagems, one is called stirring the grass to startle the snake; in another classic tale there is the saying, “throw a stone to test the road.” From the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods all the way to the War of Liberation, such tactics had appeared again and again without number.

Cao Cao sent Han Hao to attack the already exposed flank of the Western Liang army. Even if the enemy managed to hold on, it could only count as desperate resistance. Then he sent Shi Huan to strike the other side of Zhang Xiu’s line, placing immense pressure on the wings.

The result was that Zhang Xiu’s front was pinned down by Cao Hong, while the left-front and left-rear flanks were both engulfed in battle. The entire formation had already fallen into grave disorder from the left end inward, and even with Shen Chen rushing everywhere to put out fires, he was stretched to the brink.

Soon, while Shi Huan was fighting fiercely with the Western Liang left-front, the reinforcements led by Shen Zhen and Shen Chen had reached the rear. Shen Chen had originally intended to aid Zhang Xiu’s vanguard, but he suddenly realized that if he did so, he would be drawn into a highly disadvantageous position.

He would be led by the nose by Cao Cao.

So he simply abandoned the attempt to reinforce the front and instead joined Deng Zhao in launching a fierce assault toward Han Hao’s command banner.

In truth, Han Hao did not have many men under him. Once the Western Liang forces had steadied themselves, and with Deng Zhao’s aid added on top, his numbers were at a disadvantage. At present he could only hold the line in a stalemate and could no longer advance.

As soon as Shen Chen and his father arrived, they posed a severe threat to the banner directing his rear. With no choice, Han Hao had to pull back a little for the moment. The Cao soldiers in front, seeing their commander withdraw, also fell back with him.

The danger at the rear was thus temporarily relieved.

From afar, Cao Cao stood on a high slope by the riverbank and saw this scene. He gave a cold laugh. “A clever choice. But that is all it is. Send Zao Zhi to me.”

The messenger immediately went to find Zao Zhi.

Zao Zhi was stationed at the front-left of the Cao army, opposite the front-right of Zhang Xiu’s force.

Upon receiving Cao Cao’s summons, he rode over at once.

“Master.”

“Take your own troops and immediately strike Zhang Xiu’s right wing.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zao Zhi took the order and departed.

Cao Cao swept his gaze across the battlefield. By now, Zhang Xiu’s army had been fully drawn out by him, and openings were everywhere. When Zao Zhi on the far side began striking the enemy’s right wing, Cao Cao raised the sword in his hand and shouted, “All troops, attack!”

Boom, boom, boom, boom!

Thunderous war drums sounded, and all of Cao Cao’s soldiers began their charge against Zhang Xiu.