Chapter 176: Chapter 133: Xichuan Wumeng
Translator: 549690339
Regarding being regarded as a savior by others.
There’s even a self-proclaimed Bo Le, a county magistrate, who decided to appeal to the court to grant him an official title. Unbeknownst to Lu Yuan, he was soon to become a valiant general, in charge of commanding the soldiers of the entire prefecture, responsible for suppressing the rebellion.
At this moment, he was feeling extremely vexed because of the inexplicable victory he had just achieved.
Yes, this victory was indeed baffling.
Just five days ago, Lu Yuan saw that his army had been training for a month and had become somewhat familiar with the military formations. They had begun to take shape.
So, he planned to take them out to practice marching and formations.
Actually, the march wasn’t very far – they set off from the Fu City, walked along the official road for twenty miles, then camped in the wasteland nearby, and returned to the Fu City the next day.
The whole process was very simple. They didn’t even leave the scope of the Fu City, let alone going out to suppress the rebellion.
But even such a simple march resulted in a problem.
This is how it happened.
Isn’t Shaoyang Prefecture a mountainous area?
There are many mountains in the area, and there is a continuous mountain range five miles outside the prefecture city.
So when Lu Yuan led his troops along the official road, there were actually several routes that would pass through the foot of the group of mountains.
Knowing that marching through the mountainous area would be the easiest for an ambush, even if he wasn’t well-versed in military matters, Lu Yuan arranged scouts to enter the mountains and check the situation in advance.
And when the scouts investigated, they found a problem.
As everyone knows, Commander Lu likes to recruit hunter and mountain people. The scouts in the army were naturally the most elite soldiers.
Therefore, these scouts were often the best hunters.
When they were sent into the mountains for reconnaissance, their performance was naturally excellent.
Shortly after entering the mountain ridge, the scouts discovered traces of human activity in the mountains. As they probed further, they found Miao people’s spies lurking around. And unsurprisingly, the two sides engaged in combat.
Then, news of a large force of Miao troops marching through the mountain forest was quickly relayed back to the army.
The subsequent results were straightforward.
After discovering that a large force of Miao people was trying to use the mountains to conceal their march and prepare for a surprise attack on Shaoyang Prefecture City, Lu Yuan, as the commander of the prefecture city, naturally couldn’t just sit back and watch.
So, before the Miao people could react, he led the army deep into the mountains and caught the advancing Miao troops off guard.
The soldiers under Lu Yuan were mostly from mountain people and were no less familiar with the mountains than the Miao people.
With preparedness versus unpreparedness and more people fighting fewer people, and with a top-class expert like him leading the charge, the situation was self-evident: The Miao vanguard of about a thousand men was directly crushed.
After interrogating the prisoners, it was learned that a larger Miao army was approaching, and they had already set their sights on Shaoyang Prefecture City.
Knowing that there was no way to avoid it any longer, Lu Yuan had no choice but to continue leading his troops on a campaign.
The subsequent events were similar to the report sent by Cui Changqing.
Two battles and two victories, with 8,000 beheaded and over 10,000 captured.
However, the small discrepancy in the details was that the Miao people who were beheaded were basically all their adult men. And those captured prisoners were their families.
Indeed.
Lu Yuan still maintained his good habits from his time in Wugang County.
He adopted the Manly Elimination strategy for these rebellious Miao people and, more thorough than before, killed 8,000 in one fell swoop.
With just this battle, the entire Miao population of Shaoyang Prefecture can be considered wasted.
Because the entire Miao population in the prefecture was no more than 100,000. Taking into account the more than 2,000 Miao people killed in Wugang County before, Lu Yuan alone had killed more than 10,000.
Even now, troops are being divided and deployed to attack the remaining Miao people’s villages.
It can be foreseen that there will be more killings to come.
After all this killing, apart from the elderly, women, and children, there probably won’t be many men left among the Miao people in the prefecture.
“Doing this may be simple, but I guess I’ll become even more loathsome in the eyes of those Miao people.”
Standing on horseback in front of a Miao village, watching the soldiers in front of him break through the village gate, followed by the screams and cries from inside, Lu Yuan’s expression was slightly cold.
He didn’t care much about the Miao people’s resentment.
In the chaos of war, those who choose to rebel should know the consequences of failing.
As for the killings,
Throughout Dongting Prefecture, after the Miao people attacked the Yue people’s villages and towns, they killed many more people than him, and there had been more than one massacre.
Neither side was clean. There was no point in laughing at each other.
“But while I may not care about ordinary Miao people, I’m afraid the Poison Sect will hold a grudge against me, the Miao people’s butcher, even more.” As soon as he thought of the Poison Sect, Lu Yuan became worried. These days, he had been watching and waiting for his opportunity.
But the longer he waited, the colder his heart grew.
Because in just one short month, the momentum of the Poison Sect had grown tremendously.
According to the scattered messages received, over eighty counties in Dongting were plagued by rebellion, and the number of Miao people participating in the rebellion was close to 200,000.
More than half of the county towns in the prefecture were captured, two Fu cities were lost, and four more were under siege, looking like they were on the verge of being captured at any moment..