Chapter 132: The Battle of the Hillside (Conclusion)

"Fifth Brother! Fifth Brother! They've fled, they've fled!" Outside the makeshift barrier of carts on the slope, Zhang Wu's routed subordinates were regrouping. One of Zhang Wu's shield-bearers cautiously surveyed the surroundings. Fully confirming there was no danger, he pushed aside the iron shield guarding his front and shouted at Zhang Wu with a delighted expression, while using his sword-wielding arm to point at the cargo carts forming the barricade: "Fifth Brother! These are ours now, all ours!"

Prompted by this loud shout, the others quickly shifted their attention, completely pushing to the back of their minds how they had just been routed and nearly lost their lives. Their eyes flashed with excitement and joy as they gazed at the cart barrier.

"Idiots! They haven't fled!" Zhang Wu kicked the shouting subordinate in the buttocks with extreme fury. The sudden strike sent the unprepared lackey sprawling directly onto the ground, his face making intimate contact with the iron shield. When he scrambled back up with a miserable shriek, his nose and mouth were bleeding, and the look he gave Zhang Wu was filled with terror and bewilderment.

"Quick! Mount your horses! Charge down and save my eldest brother!" Zhang Wu cast a sympathetic glance at the injured subordinate, frowned, and strode up the slope. He untethered the mount of a wagon and leaped directly onto its back. Looking at his men, who still had not figured out what was happening, he roared angrily: "What in the world are you bastards standing around for? Get on your horses this instant! If you want to keep your lives, move your asses!"

The effect of this command was immediate. Even though quite a few men still failed to grasp what was happening, they hurriedly found their mounts according to Zhang Wu's orders. However, after Zhang Wu had hastily rallied his men, looking at the sparse group of forty or fifty people around him, and then turning his gaze down the slope toward his elder brother, Zhang Scarface, his expression suddenly turned hesitant.

"Fifth Brother, the brothers are all waiting for your orders!" A trusted aide rode close to Zhang Wu and lowered his voice to a whisper. He took in every nuance of Zhang Wu's expression, hesitated briefly, and then continued in a low tone, adding: "Fifth Brother, why don't we... why don't we take some cargo and retreat first...?"

"Horseshit!" Zhang Wu suddenly turned his head and glared at the aide, roaring fiercely. Yet this was merely his reflex reaction—or perhaps a deliberately calculated one. Immediately afterward, he locked his brows in a scowl, his tone resolute yet revealing a trace of wavering and indecision: "That is my own eldest brother down there! Along with so many of our brothers! How can we abandon them to their fate?"

Despite these words, Zhang Wu showed no intention of immediately charging down to the rescue. Down the slope, Zhang Scarface had already lost the numerical advantage, and his combat effectiveness fell vastly short. Foot archers against cavalry—and attacked from three directions at that—Zhang Scarface's defeat was a foregone conclusion. Moreover, among them was Qin Mo, who wished nothing more than to tear him limb from limb.

"Fifth Brother! You're right, we can't just abandon our brothers like this!" The aide who had just advised him hurriedly raised his voice to echo his master's words. Yet now he understood Zhang Wu's true intent even better, so he instantly shifted his tone, deliberately raising his voice a notch as he continued: "However, Fifth Brother, think about it: the men below are brothers, but are the brothers behind Fifth Brother not men, too? What the situation is like down there, Fifth Brother knows clearly in his heart. If we charge down blindly right now, it will accomplish nothing at all! It will only throw away the lives of the brothers behind us for nothing!"

"But... but my eldest brother is still down there! And so many other brothers are down there too!" Hearing this, Zhang Wu grew anxious, though this time he did not curse his aide, and the hesitation in his tone was noticeably heavier than before.

"Heaven preserve them! Scarface and the others will surely break through successfully!" The aide closely scrutinized the changes in Zhang Wu's expression, offering sympathetic and considerate counsel: "Fifth Brother, the men behind us are our own brothers too; both palms and the backs of our hands are made of flesh! We cannot let the back of our hand take a slash just to protect the palm!"

"But... but..." With a troubled expression, Zhang Wu turned to survey the crowd, lingering particularly on the expression of the advising aide. It seemed as though Zhang Wu found it impossible to refuse the suggestion. After sweeping his gaze over his numerous subordinates, Zhang Wu finally let out a long sigh. Wearing a helpless expression as he looked at Zhang Scarface down the slope, he lowered his voice and made his decision: "Eldest brother, brothers, look out for yourselves!"

***

Just as the words fell, the advising aide seized the opportune moment to turn and shout instructions to the crowd: "Quick! Brothers, be quick about it! Grab things of value to take with us, don't be too greedy. We'll have to retreat shortly, and don't forget the enemy has mounts! Pay attention, don't lose your lives later by being greedy and getting run down!"

Down the slope, Zhang Scarface was currently burning with anxiety. Although the simultaneous attacks from three directions involved few men, Zhang Scarface's remaining forces were completely incapable of withstanding them. Even Qin Mo's small cavalry detachment—the smallest of the three—was far beyond what Zhang Scarface could fight against at this moment.

Perhaps plagued by a guilty conscience for having stabbed others in the back, even though Zhang Scarface continuously shouted and urged his men to launch a fierce attack on Qin Mo's inferior force, the volleys of arrows shot out failed entirely to hit their marks. Meanwhile, the two cavalry detachments led respectively by Ding Li and Li Shan were like a pair of sharp blades, making it seem as though Zhang Scarface had thoroughly exposed his flanks directly to their points.

"Retreat! Brothers, fall back!" Seeing that the arrows shot from the short bows of his men grew increasingly feeble, fluttering aimlessly in mid-air, Zhang Scarface's will to resist vanished entirely. In particular, when he noticed that Zhang Wu and the others up the slope showed no intention of coming to his rescue, more than half his heart turned cold. He whipped his horse around, urged his mount forward, and shouted for everyone to pull back.

Yet the battle had progressed to a point where even retreat was far too late. The two blades pressed against his flanks thrust forward mercilessly. Qin Mo's side, meanwhile, struck like a razor-sharp dagger, stabbing in at an extremely tricky angle that instantly fractured the freshly regrouped band of bandits into several small fragments. Amidst flashing blades and flying sword-arcs, sprays of blood cut through the air, shrieks rose one after another, and cries for mercy and wails echoed endlessly.

The three cavalry units were like three starving tigers plunging into a defenseless flock of sheep, mercilessly extending their cold, ruthless claws toward the nearby lambs. There was no pity whatsoever; even if a bandit dropped his weapons and knelt to beg for mercy, passing cavalrymen would casually slash his throat or violently run him through from chest to back with a long spear before flinging his carcass ruthlessly aside.

It seemed that only such slaughter could purge the hatred in everyone's hearts. In particular, Qin Mo's tiny band of slightly over a dozen men had no intention of sparing a single soul. Not long ago, the forty-or-so brothers he had led out of the eastern battlefield, wandering all the way to this place, had seen two-thirds of their number ambushed and killed by the very weapons held by the wretches now kneeling and crying for mercy before his horse.

"A-Li! That gang of bandits has seized our cargo! It looks like they have no intention of coming down and plan to flee directly with the loot!" Neither Li Shan nor Ding Li showed much interest in the slaughter. Once they had thoroughly routed and scattered Zhang Scarface's forces, the two men retreated to the side, ceding the entire battlefield to Qin Mo and his men, whose fury demanded urgent release. Li Shan then cast his gaze toward the cart train on the slope and anxiously sought Ding Li's opinion: "That batch of cargo was personally designated by the Second Master of the Zhang family as having to arrive without any loss! A-Li, we must pursue them at once!"

"Brother Li, no need to rush!" Before Ding Li could speak, Heizi urged his horse forward with a smile. Casting a look of contempt toward the slope, he sneered and curled his lip dismissively: "Short-sighted fools! They didn't even scout the terrain properly before making a decision! The back of the slope is completely impassable; sooner or later, they'll have to come back down!"

Heizi had been dispatched by Ding Li to reconnoiter the terrain before the battle began. Since he said so, there was naturally no problem. Thus, neither Ding Li nor Li Shan pressed the matter further. Instead, the two men exchanged a sudden glance, and when they looked back up at the cart train on the slope, the amusement in their eyes grew even richer.

The back of the slope was impassable, and Zhang Scarface down below had been thoroughly dealt with. Ding Li and his men only needed to hold their ground here, and they had nothing to fear regarding the bandits on the slope escaping with a single piece of cargo. Although their crossbow bolts were running low, it was more than enough to blockade the slope and deal with Zhang Wu's remaining handful of subordinates—not to mention that right beside them was Qin Mo, who was dying to skin Zhang Wu alive.

Zhang Scarface was a veteran ruffian of the roads. If truth be told, he did possess some genuine skill, but having long grown accustomed to exploiting loopholes, he had long since lost his initial grit. Coupled with a guilty conscience regarding the sneak attack on Qin Mo, he dared not face Qin Mo's men head-on. Instead, under the protection of a dozen close guards, he hacked and slashed wildly, trying to break through the encirclement. Yet to his despair, Qin Mo's men clung to him like a shadow.

***

Moreover, what mattered most was that Ding Li and Heizi were intermittently loosing cold arrows from the side. With every sharp whistle through the air, another of Zhang Scarface's guards would tumble from his saddle. At first, Qin Mo's men had been startled, fearing they had once again encountered allies shooting cold arrows and stabbing them in the back. But when two of Zhang Scarface's guards dropped consecutively in the blink of an eye, Qin Mo and his men gradually grew emboldened, pursuing Zhang Scarface with relentless tenacity.

In the space of a few heartbeats, Zhang Scarface ran out of room to dodge. His personal guards had all fallen on the battlefield without a single survivor, while he himself was surrounded by Qin Mo and his men. As they slowly closed in, Zhang Scarface suddenly tumbled backward out of his saddle. Scrambling up shakily, he kowtowed repeatedly toward Qin Mo and the others mounted on their horses, weeping and pleading for mercy: "Brother Qin—ah, no! Brother Qin! Elder Qin! Good brothers! I beg you, do, don't kill me! It was my fault, I was in the wrong! My mistake, I will compensate you all! As long as you don't kill me, I'll compensate you for everything!"

To this, Qin Mo, reining in his warhorse, merely let out a cold grunt. Yet this ambiguous, chilling grunt seemed to offer Zhang Scarface a glimmer of hope. He hurriedly accelerated the frequency of his kowtows, anxiously adding: "Old Wu has already succeeded! That batch of cargo is definitely valuable, I'll compensate it to you all! Furthermore, I have another cache of grain, I'll bring that out to compensate you as well! I only ask that you spare my life and not kill me!"

"Brother Scarface, your kind intentions are acknowledged by this Qin!" Qin Mo's icy voice cut off Zhang Scarface's pleas for mercy. His angry gaze was filled with pity, yet it was utterly impossible for Qin Mo to let the man go: "Whether Old Wu succeeded or not no longer matters. As for the grain you've hidden, our brothers have hands of our own—we will take it ourselves! And Old Wu—before long, he'll be joining you down below!"

"No, no-no! No!!" What Zhang Scarface heard was not a sentence of negotiation, but absolute despair. Raising a face twisted in terror, he was met by the sight of raised sabers and cavalry lances gleaming all around him. Yet Zhang Scarface still refused to give up, shaking his head like a rattle-drum, unwilling to believe everything before his eyes.

"Brothers, avenge yourselves now!"

Roaring upward toward the heavens, Qin Mo thrust the cavalry lance in his hands viciously toward Zhang Scarface. At the same instant, a dozen surrounding blades flashed down in unison...