Water Margin: The Tale of Li Erlang of Guankou

Chapter 158 Wang Jin pleads for mercy to save his disciple; the general releases the enemy in exchan

It could even be analyzed that it was very likely that Fang La took over the Ming Cult's foundation when his uprising failed and the Manicheans were leaderless, and later rose to power based on this.

"Wang Shunchen is truly a master of meticulousness!"

Li Hanxiao had a general understanding of the situation on Shaohua Mountain. There were about 2,700 soldiers on Shaohua Mountain. Even if they fought to the death to defend Shaohua Mountain, the enemy had five times their number, so it was unlikely that they could hold it.

"Brother Shi Jin, what are you really thinking? Do you want to surrender, or what?"

Li Hanxiao turned around and asked Shi Jindao, the "Nine-Dragoned One".

"Chief Li, of course I am unwilling to surrender to the government. Besides, they are going to attack the people of Jiangnan. The people of Jiangnan have been driven to rebellion by the Huashi Gang. How could I allow that? But if I fight them to the death here, I will implicate you two. You two should leave quickly. I will fight them to the death!"

"Nine-Dragoned Shi Jin said."

Li Han laughed heartily, "Brother Shi Jin, if you don't want to join the government, then you must join Liangshan. Since we are brothers, we should be bound by life and death together. None of us Liangshan brothers desert in the face of battle. How about I personally help you guard Shaohua Mountain?"

"Brother, don't act rashly. How can Shi Jin implicate you?"

"Nine-Dragoned Shi Jin said with a face full of shame."

"Brothers, don't be afraid, rest assured, I will definitely lead you back to Liangshan Marsh and make them suffer a crushing defeat!"

After arriving at the mountain, Li Hanxiao had already surveyed the terrain of Shaohua Mountain.

The main peak of Shaohua Mountain consists of three adjacent peaks, which locals call the East Peak, the Middle Peak, and the West Peak.

Except for a narrow connection with the central peak, the East Peak is almost entirely composed of straight rocks, resembling a giant pillar rising from the ground. On the side of the East Peak are the ruins of the Niangniang Temple, and on the southwest side, beneath the silica, there are stone beds and stone wells.

Zhongfeng is the summit of Shaohua Mountain. Zhongfeng is also known as Shaohua Mountain Peak, Duxiu Peak, or Yunu Peak, which is Shaohua Mountain.

Heading north along the East Mountain Ridge from the Middle Peak, like walking on a fish spine, you will reach the North Peak. There is a stone flat area about ten meters in circumference, known as Wang Bodang's Horse Racing Hill. Next to it is a circular stone trough that collects rainwater, which is called the Horse Drinking Pond. A huge stone stands on the stone flat, blocking the way. On its west side, there is only a stone-built hole that can only accommodate one person.

West Peak, also known as Wulong Mountain or Maling Mountain, is slightly lower than Middle Peak. On its summit lies a man-made stone cave, about seven or eight meters long, dark inside, where one can hear the wind. Legend has it that a tiger once lurked there, hence the name Tiger Cave.

The East, Middle, and West peaks of Shaohua Mountain are closely connected, stretching over 2,000 meters in length and only a dozen meters in width at its widest point. To the south lies a bottomless cliff, and to the north, a steep slope that is difficult to climb, making the mountain exceptionally treacherous.

The summit is covered with shrubs, towering pines and cypresses, swirling white clouds, and strangely shaped rocks. Standing atop the mountain and looking around, to the north the Wei River flows like a ribbon, meandering eastward; to the east, Mount Taihua rises majestically into the clouds; to the south, countless mountains rise and fall, reaching to the heavens and the earth; and to the west, the wind and smoke stretch for thousands of miles, boundless and misty.

Dongfeng, also known as Futoufeng, is located south of Zhangqiao Village in Liuzhi Town. In the fifth year of Ningxi in the Northern Song Dynasty, Futoufeng collapsed. The site of the collapsed mountain is now called Banjieshan or Fuchengshan. The soil and rocks that collapsed from Dongfeng were five li from east to west and ten li from north to south, burying hundreds of households. This gave rise to a folk legend of "gold and jade being collected when the mountain collapsed".

Of the three peaks, the central peak is the most precipitous and has the most spectacular scenery. Therefore, when people referred to Shaohua Mountain after the Ming and Qing dynasties, they specifically meant the central peak.

The shape of Shaohua Mountain is like a "winnowing basket", with its opening facing north. The inside of the "winnowing basket" is called the main peak, and the remaining ridges are connected to form the edge of the "winnowing basket".

The outer edge is almost entirely cliffs, and the inner edge is only a narrow path in Shiyan Gully.

Not far into the mountains, there is an ancient stone wall that connects to the cliffs on the east and west sides. There is a gate in the middle that allows people to pass through, forming a "one man can hold the pass against ten thousand" situation. It was built by the ancient outlaws. There is a local legend that Wang Bodang gathered his followers at Shaohua Mountain at the end of the Sui Dynasty.

Passing through the stone wall, one can see the lush, verdant forest covering the entire mountain. Walking through it leads to the main peak of Shaohua Mountain, which is also where the mountain stronghold is located.

It can be said that this terrain and topography are very suitable for ambushing and striking the enemy.

If Li Hanxiao makes proper arrangements, it's not impossible to fight.

However, the most important thing now is to find a way to bring the others who are still waiting at the bottom of the mountain up. Otherwise, without their help, Shaohua Mountain will not be able to be defended!

Therefore, Li Hanxiao still had to ask Xu Guanzhong, as there was no way to get the others to come up as well.

After much deliberation, Xu Guanzhong finally decided to use the Five Ghosts Transporting Technique to move those people up.

The "Five Ghosts Transporting Wealth" in the talisman means to command five ghosts to bring wealth; simply put, it means to bring someone else's wealth to your own home.

However, moving more than ten people is no small feat, and it's estimated that Xu Guanzhong won't be able to participate in the battle tomorrow after it's all done.

With Xu Guanzhong almost completely exhausted, the rest of the people were transported to Shaohua Mountain by his magic. When everyone learned that Li Hanxiao's goal was to cripple the more than 10,000 government troops who came to attack Shaohua Mountain, everyone knew that this was going to be a tough battle.

Especially Lu Zhishen, the "Flowery Monk," who had served in the Western Army, knew very well that Wang Shunchen was a skilled and courageous warrior. This battle would be difficult!

Meanwhile, Li Hanxiao was surveying the terrain. The mountain wind swept across Tiger Head Rock on the west peak of Shaohua Mountain. Li Hanxiao knelt on one knee on the edge of the cliff, measuring inch by inch along the weathered patterns of the bluestone with his fingertips. Suddenly, he grabbed a handful of pebbles and threw them into the deep ravine, calculating the height by listening to the sound of the stones hitting the cliff. He turned to the twenty-odd leaders behind him and shouted, "Bring the ink line and ruler! The three peaks and five dangers need to be re-surveyed—Zhu Wu brothers' records: the drop from the top of the East Peak cliff to Eagle Sorrow Ravine is 237 steps; the straight-line distance from the Broken Soul Cliff of the West Peak to the Heavenly Gate Plank Road is 481 steps; and the area within 200 steps of the Horse Racing Ridge on the Central Peak can hide 800 heavy armored soldiers!"

As they spoke, soldiers brought over three bundles of hemp rope dyed red, blue, and black. Li Hanxiao personally held the ropes and measured the stone wall pass. The black iron sword sheath carved deep grooves into the stone wall: "The original wall was 32 feet high. Tonight, we will add another 7 feet of mud bricks, and embed three iron spikes every five feet. Chen Da, listen to my order! I order you to lead 600 soldiers in three shifts to dig red clay from the east peak, mix it with glutinous rice paste, and build the wall. Insert poisoned iron spikes into the brick joints. Leave 200 crossbow bolt holes in the parapet on the top of the pass, and coat the holes with arsenic powder!"

Immediately afterwards, Li Hanxiao ordered Yang Chun to lead three hundred veteran soldiers who were hunters to mix five hundred catties of wild boar oil with sulfur and boil it, then pour it into earthenware jars and seal them in the cellar of Guanlou. He also sent people to cut down century-old bamboo on the back mountain and make three thousand three-edged armor-piercing arrowheads, with the shafts wrapped in oil-soaked hemp cloth for later use.

Li Hanxiao climbed to the cliff on the west side of Yingchoujian, with a cowhide rope around his waist, and explored the rock crevices in mid-air. Suddenly, he struck a certain spot with the hilt of his sword and heard a hollow sound. He immediately called the stonemason to start chiseling, and they dug out three natural stone caves, each capable of hiding a hundred people.

"God help me too!"

Li Hanxiao clapped his hands and laughed, ordering "Flowery Monk" Lu Zhishen to lead eight hundred strongmen to move the giant stone and store half a month's worth of food for ten thousand people in the cave. He also ordered people to disassemble and transport a hundred crossbows into the cave. The entrance to the cave was covered with vines for disguise, and a winch mechanism was set up inside so that crossbow bolts could be fired from the inside out during wartime.

Hidden beneath the ravine lay a deadly trap: twenty water ghosts, carrying iron spikes, infiltrated the pool and drove three hundred barbed iron stakes into the bottom, covering them with fishing nets to disguise them as aquatic plants, specifically to trip enemy soldiers attempting to swim across.

The terrain of Shaohua Mountain must be fully utilized, otherwise Li Hanxiao and the others will have no way to defend it.

As the night passed and the sun rose, the clanging of chisels echoed from the top of Broken Soul Cliff. Li Hanxiao, holding a compass, stood at the seventh bend of the zigzagging mountain path, directing five hundred soldiers to carve honeycomb-like holes in the cliff face. Each hole was three feet deep and six inches in diameter, filled with gunpowder packets and iron shot, and connected with oil-soaked cotton thread.

"This is the 'Earth Dragon Turns Over Formation'."

Li Han smiled and pointed to the mountain path, explaining to "Nine-Dragon" Shi Jin, "Once half of the government troops have passed, lighting the fuse will cause a series of explosions, and the rubble will cover the entire mountain path."

In addition, twelve improved crossbows were set up on the cliff top. The crossbow bodies were reinforced with iron birch wood, the bowstrings were made of rhinoceros sinew, and they were equipped with specially made hook-locked arrows. The arrow tails were tied with thick iron chains, which could be shot three hundred paces away and driven into the opposite mountain rocks, forming an iron chain across the river to block the enemy.

Thirty large cauldrons on the cliffside boiled golden liquid day and night, the stench permeating three miles. In addition, five hundred barrels of lime powder were hidden in the pine forest, waiting for the southeast wind to rise to spread dust and confuse the enemy.

As for the narrow sections of Tianmen Plank Road, Li Hanxiao personally used an ink line to mark lines on the plank road's wooden planks, and ordered craftsmen to saw the key load-bearing beams down to seven-tenths of their original length, repaint them to look brand new, and support them with movable wooden wedges underneath.

"Thirty-six broken wooden wedges remain here, each with two hundred bells attached." He picked up a piece of broken wood to demonstrate, "When the enemy crosses the plank road, the defenders only need to remove the wooden wedges—"

The broken piece of wood in Li Hanxiao's hand fell to the ground with a crash, plunging into the abyss.

Hidden within the sheer cliff on the east side of the plank road is a deadly trap: a hundred skilled rock climbers, secured by rope ladders, have carved out arrow nests on a protruding rock five zhang (approximately 10 meters) above the plank road. Inside each nest are a hundred poisoned bows, with the bowstrings connected to hidden stakes on the plank road below. If a pedestrian touches one of these stakes, all the arrows will be released simultaneously.

Throughout the night, people on and off Shaohua Mountain worked tirelessly, and the mountain had become an impregnable fortress: the stone wall at the foot of the mountain was reinforced to four zhang (approximately 10 meters), and twelve layers of iron caltrops were buried in front of the wall, each layer spaced seven steps apart in a staggered, plum blossom pattern; forty-eight rope ladders were hidden on both sides of Yingchou Ravine, each ladder with nine bells attached to its base, and an iron net stretched for half a li (approximately 2.5 kilometers) along the bottom of the ravine; eight catapults were set up on the top of Duanhun Cliff, each equipped with fifty stone projectiles, and holes were drilled in the stone surface to be filled with lead for weight; all thirty-six "Dragon-Severing Buckles" at Tianmen Plank Road were in place, and a hundred gunpowder barrels were hung below the plank road; three trenches were dug around the outer perimeter of the Zhongfeng Great Fortress, with ten thousand bamboo sticks inserted at the bottom of the trenches, and movable floating bridges were erected over the trenches; eighteen communication channels were set up between the peaks, using copper pipes for sound transmission, and carrier pigeons were prepared to carry messages at key points.

Li Hanxiao stepped onto the platform and issued the orders: "Light three hundred green lanterns on the East Peak as a feint, light fifty bonfires on the West Peak to show weakness, and extinguish all the lanterns on the Central Peak to conceal our presence. Starting tonight, add medicine to the wells in each village for purification, and guard them closely to prevent poisoning. Sprinkle sulfur powder around the granaries to repel rats, and relocate the wounded soldiers' camp to a sheltered spot on Broken Soul Cliff. All warhorses in the stables should wear hoof covers and be fed calming herbs."

Finally, he secretly instructed Duan Jingzhu, the "Golden-haired Dog": "Brother, take fifty men disguised as woodcutters and mix all the croton powder on this mountain into the stream where the government troops draw water at the foot of the mountain. Also, scatter a thousand round pebbles on the enemy's path—when their horses slip, our crossbows will fire!"

All of these arrangements were hidden among the misty green mountains and valleys, waiting for the enemy to step into the net of death.

During the Northern Song Dynasty, Zheng County belonged to Huazhou under Yongxing Army Circuit. The seat of Huazhou Prefecture was still located in Zheng County. It governed Zheng County, Xiagui, Huayin, Pucheng, and Weinan. It was a large prefecture in Shaanxi with a large population. Even in the original novel, when Song Jiang caused trouble in Huazhou, it was Wu Yong who devised a plan to borrow the golden bell of Grand Commandant Su Yuanjing. Song Jiang led three groups of people to Shaohua Mountain and tricked Grand Commandant Su Yuanjing into coming up the mountain. He also sent someone to impersonate the Grand Commandant, kill Prefect He, and rescue Shi Jin, the Nine-Tattooed Dragon, and Lu Zhishen, the Flower Monk. It was a clever strategy rather than a direct attack.

As for Prefect He of Huazhou, he was a tyrannical and cruel man who harmed the people. In the original story, he forcibly took the daughter of the painter Wang Yi and framed Wang Yi, exiling him to the army.

Shi Jin, nicknamed "Nine-Tattooed Dragon," was captured while attempting to assassinate Prefect He in Huazhou. Lu Zhishen also went to Huazhou to assassinate Prefect He, but was captured as well. In the end, Song Jiang and Wu Yong devised a plan to capture Huazhou, and Prefect He was eventually killed by Xie Zhen and Xie Bao with a hidden weapon.

This person was actually a subordinate of the treacherous minister Tong Guan, the Privy Councilor, and was a spy that Tong Guan had planted in the Western Army's stronghold.

As for why Wang Shunchen, who was a member of the Western Army, would help Prefect He to attack Shaohua Mountain, it was actually to preserve the strength of the Western Army.

A rebellion by Manichaean followers in the southeast led the imperial court to conscript the Western Army to quell the uprising. Wang Shunchen did not want his Western Army brothers to go, so he planned to attack Shaohua Mountain instead.

If Shi Jin, the "Nine-Tattooed Dragon," is willing to surrender, then let him lead the people of Shaohua Mountain to fight in his place. If Shi Jin, the "Nine-Tattooed Dragon," is unwilling to surrender and remains stubborn, then after he wipes out the bandits of Shaohua Mountain, he should directly report to the imperial court that his troops have just finished suppressing the bandits and have not had time to rest, and that the wounded soldiers have not yet recovered.

Therefore, the imperial court refused to let him go.

In short, Wang Shunchen's previous battles in the Western Army mainly involved the Qiang and Western Xia peoples. The Tuoba Dangxiang, who had occupied the Xia and Yin prefectures since the late Tang Dynasty, openly rebelled against the Song Dynasty under the leadership of Li Jiqian. From then on, the Western Xia remained the primary target of the Western Army. Northern Shaanxi, as the core area of ​​the conflict, was always the focus of attack and defense in the Song-Xia War.

He was somewhat reluctant to go to fight the people of Jiangnan this time because he knew that the people of Jiangnan had been tormented too terribly by the tyranny of the Flower Stone Gang. Even if there were no Manichaean heretics to bewitch people today, sooner or later other people would rise up in rebellion.

If the imperial court doesn't change its policy toward the south, it's just treating the symptoms, not the root cause, and it's completely useless.

In fact, this was also a scheme by treacherous officials to use someone else to kill, hoping to weaken the generals of the Western Army by letting them be worn down by the rebels in the southeast. Wang Shunchen understood this clearly.

He was a newly famous general in the Western Army. The treacherous officials in the court could not touch the high-ranking figures in the Zhong, Liu, Zhe, and Yao families, so they targeted people of his rank.