Chương 317: Chapter 324. Departure in the Dark and the First Signs 2

"What is the condition of the Liao central army?" Youngwoo asked. Another scout answered.

"The guard around the emperor's main camp has been reduced. The tents remain standing, and the fires are still lit. From the outside, they have made it look as though the emperor is still there. But there are fewer guard horses, less movement around the imperial banners, and orders are leaving the command center more slowly." Zonghan narrowed his eyes.

"They are trying to conceal the empty space." Youngwoo placed a hand on the sand table. He moved the black marker indicating the Liao main camp slightly backward, then traced with one finger the road leading toward the Supreme Capital.

"The emperor has moved." The command tent fell silent. Youngwoo continued.

"The hoofprints on the road to the Supreme Capital, the imperial guards who slipped away, the reduced security around the central army, the delayed orders, and the testimony from several different people all point to the same conclusion. Yelü Zhangnu caused unrest from within, and the emperor went there himself." Wanyan Zonghan asked,"Can we consider it confirmed?" Youngwoo thought for a moment. He looked again at the markers on the sand table. A rumor could remain nothing more than a rumor.

But these reports had come from different directions and converged on the same conclusion.

"We can consider it confirmed. But do not move yet. Watch the central army's banners and guard deployment one more time. If they are keeping up appearances while the emperor's place is actually empty, there will be clearer signs between tonight and dawn tomorrow." Zonghan immediately gave the order.

"Send the scouts out again. Confirm the central army's banners, the number of guard horses, and the tracks of the column on the road to the Supreme Capital.

"Send the same order to our agents. Find out how the emperor's name is being spoken of inside the Liao camp."

"Loyalty." The officers moved at once. Hoofbeats scattered outside the tent as the scouts rode once more into the darkness. Inside the Jin command tent, the markers on the map were quietly being rearranged. Youngwoo looked toward the vast Liao encampment. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were still there. There were countless banners, countless tents, countless fires. Yet the most important man at its center had departed.

"They are still an enormous army. But without the imperial guards and without the emperor, the center is empty." Zonghan nodded. The other commanders in the tent understood what Youngwoo meant. The moment the Liao emperor left to suppress the rebellion, the weight of the battlefield shifted. Now it was time for Jin to move. Yelü Zhangnu's rebellion was not something that could remain hidden.

After fleeing toward the Supreme Capital, he stirred up Qingzhou, Raozhou, Huaizhou, Zuzhou, and the surrounding regions, drawing even Balhae bandits into his ranks until his following swelled into the tens of thousands. There were even rumors that he had advanced toward Guangpingdian and threatened the imperial traveling palace. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Once events reached that scale, news spread along the roads before official reports ever arrived. A horseman saw something. A wagon driver heard something. A merchant carried the story onward. A deserter talked to save his own life. The same rumors circulated inside the Liao camp. Something had happened in the Supreme Capital. The Temple of the Founder was being mentioned. The name of Prince Chun of Wei was passing from mouth to mouth. The emperor had turned his imperial guards around and gone that way.

The Jin gathered those fragments one by one. Scouts saw the hoofprints on the road to the Supreme Capital. Agents reported that the guards around the Liao central army had been reduced. Balhae troops who had submitted confirmed the rumors from the direction of Guangpingdian. Reports from separate places all pointed the same way. On August 30, the First Route Army of Liao marched toward Changchun Circuit. One hundred thousand Han troops moved first. News soon reached the Jin camp.

It meant that Liao had no intention of ending matters with a few small border engagements. They were gathering a great army to break the momentum of Jin. In September, Zonghan advanced as far as the region near the Yalu River. He sent a letter to Aguda asking him to withdraw. The enemy was numerous, more troops continued to gather, and the Jin army had yet to complete all its preparations. From that point onward, the war ceased to be a simple matter of advance and retreat.

It became a long confrontation over which side would lose its balance first. In November, Emperor Tianzuo moved toward Luotuokou. The emperor's personal movement showed that Liao was staking everything on the campaign. Tribal armies, Khitan troops, and Han troops from every region gathered beneath the imperial banners. As their numbers swelled, the Liao encampment seemed to stretch without end. The Jin advanced and withdrew repeatedly, searching for an opening.

They sent scouts forward, inserted agents, encouraged defections, and tried to use Song and Goryeo to pull Liao's attention in different directions. Yet from the outside, the Liao army appeared largely unchanged. The massive force continued to advance slowly. When one part was shaken, another supported it. Even when troubling news arrived from the south and east, the emperor's main camp appeared to stand firm. The Jin commanders grew frustrated. The enemy was simply too large.

Its very size seemed capable of absorbing every blow. On December 3, Aguda held council with his commanders. It was less a meeting to devise some entirely new stratagem than one meant to restore their willingness to fight. Their path of retreat was narrowing, and the time in which they could avoid battle was passing. Aguda told his commanders that if they did not fight now, an even greater enemy force would gather and the pressure would only deepen. The battle would be difficult.

But this was still the best moment they were likely to receive. Even so, the commanders remained heavy-hearted. The Liao army was overwhelming. Conditions did not favor breaking such an enormous encampment through the mobility and surprise attacks in which the Jin excelled. Youngwoo's methods—breakthrough attacks, simultaneous volleys, and the commitment of heavy cavalry—would all become truly effective only when some part of the enemy began to waver.

As long as no such weakness appeared, every plan remained trapped on the sand table. Then, on December 9, Yelü Zhangnu rebelled. The Deputy Commander of the Liao imperial guards disappeared, and suddenly the Supreme Capital, the Temple of the Founder, and the name of Yelü Chun, Prince Chun of Wei, were being spoken of together. This was not merely the defection of a single general. Something had happened inside the emperor's own army that threatened the emperor's very place on the throne.

The fracture Jin had spent months trying to create had opened inside Liao by itself. On December 11, Emperor Tianzuo withdrew thirty li. From the outside, it could have looked like a routine military adjustment. But the Jin saw something else. The emperor's main camp had moved. The deployment of the imperial guards had changed. The flow of Liao orders had slowed. Hoofprints and wagon ruts marked the road leading toward the Supreme Capital.

Deserters, merchants, prisoners, and agents all carried reports pointing in the same direction. On December 12, the Jin confirmed that the Liao army was wavering. The situation inside Liao also began to emerge more clearly. Yelü Zhangnu's rebellion. The plot to depose the emperor and enthrone Prince Chun of Wei. The emperor turning his imperial guards away from the front. The empty space at the center of the main camp. The slowing of command. All of it connected into a single picture.

Only then did the commanders begin to propose pursuit. The Liao army was still vast. But numbers alone no longer made it the same army it had been before. The emperor had left the main camp. Part of the imperial guard had gone with him. The tribal forces were watching one another. The command staff had turned its attention toward internal rebellion. Outwardly, it was still an army of seven hundred thousand. Within, it had already begun to split apart. This was the moment Jin saw.

To pit twenty thousand Jin troops directly against seven hundred thousand Liao soldiers would have been madness. But once the emperor's imperial guards were shaken, the orders from the main camp slowed, and the hearts of the tribal forces began to drift, the situation changed. Twenty thousand men no longer had to fight the entire enemy army. They could become a blade driven into its wavering center. Youngwoo saw that point. At last, the opening they had been waiting for had appeared.

The movements of Song and Goryeo had pressed from the outside. Yelü Zhangnu's rebellion had cracked Liao from within. Tianzuo's withdrawal had brought that fracture into view. The battlefield had changed. It was no longer a contest of numbers. It had become a contest of speed. The side that moved first would win. They had to strike before the shaken enemy recovered its formation. Before the emperor's main camp hardened again. Before the tribal armies received new orders.

Before the great Liao host once more began moving in a single direction. Jin had to enter the opening now. That was why the commanders spoke of pursuit. And this time, the proposal no longer sounded like a reckless gamble. A road that had been invisible only days before had finally appeared across the battlefield after Yelü Zhangnu's rebellion and Emperor Tianzuo's withdrawal