“Tibetan cavalry?”
Jin Feng thought for a moment, then turned to Zhang Liang. “Liang, you handle this!”
Since he had decided to groom Zhang Liang, Jin Feng was prepared to let him take command of the team.
This was a perfect opportunity to see just how capable Zhang Liang really was.
Zhang Liang understood Jin Feng’s intention and did not decline. He stepped forward and asked, “How many of them are there? Which direction are they heading? Have they discovered us?”
“There are about thirty men, coming towards us. They are carrying all sorts of miscellaneous supplies, and their marching speed is not fast. They probably have not discovered us, but are plundering nearby and just happen to be passing through here,” the scout replied.
“Thirty men…” Zhang Liang rubbed his chin, falling into thought.
The enemy only had thirty men. They could easily be wiped out.
But doing so would certainly attract the attention of the Tibetans. If they sent a main force to hunt them down, their plan would be ruined.
Yet if they did not kill them, the two sides would soon encounter each other, and the outcome would be the same.
“Monkey, take two men and lure them away!”
After pondering for a moment, Zhang Liang made his decision.
“Yes!” Monkey, who had been recuperating at home for several months, asked with a gleam in his eyes, “Liang, can I kill them?”
“As long as you do not let them follow your trail back to us, do whatever you want.”
“Understood!” Monkey waved his hand and shouted, “Dog and Donkey, change clothes and come with me!”
“Yes!” The two escorts agreed and followed Monkey as he ran towards the threshing ground at the village entrance.
“Folks, we are going to kill Tibetans and avenge you. Please forgive the offence.”
The three men bowed to the murdered villagers, then stripped clothes from the corpses.
They did not ride horses. They replaced their swords with ordinary machetes and, carrying them, slipped into the woods.
“Pass the order: everyone enter the village and take cover. We will move out again after Monkey has lured the Tibetans away.”
Zhang Liang then shouted to his deputy, Niu Ben.
“Yes!” Niu Ben agreed and galloped towards the rear.
The escorts immediately entered the empty village in an orderly fashion.
Jin Feng and the Ninth Princess exchanged a glance, both very satisfied with Zhang Liang’s arrangements.
In the current situation, avoiding the Tibetans was already impossible, and killing them would bring endless trouble.
Luring them away was indeed the best solution.
Monkey and his men ran two li forward through the woods and, sure enough, spotted a Tibetan cavalry unit.
Thirty men, thirty horses, every man covered in dried bloodstains.
Their horses carried all sorts of random items.
There were sacks of grain, as well as chickens and ducks.
One man even had a half-grown piglet strapped to his horse.
Clearly, these were things looted from common people.
The Tibetans were in no hurry to march, just ambling along casually.
As they passed a small grove, the Tibetan cavalryman at the very rear suddenly noticed movement in the roadside grass and quickly reined in his horse.
“What’s wrong?” a companion ahead turned and asked.
“Nothing, the grass moved. Probably a hare hiding there.”
The last Tibetan cavalryman smiled, took down his bow and arrow, and said, “You go ahead. I’ll shoot the hare and catch up.”
His companion glanced at the grass, seeing it was less than half a metre high and could not possibly hide a person, so he paid no attention and continued with the group.
The Tibetan cavalryman dismounted, nocked an arrow, and walked towards the grass.
When he reached the edge, he was puzzled why the hare had not been startled yet. Suddenly, he saw a grass rope tied to the base of some weeds.
The Tibetan cavalryman immediately realised he had been tricked. Just as he prepared to aim his bow elsewhere, Monkey suddenly charged out from bushes on the other side of the path.
Hearing movement behind him, the Tibetan turned, only to see a machete flash past.
A cool sensation crossed his neck, and then the world plunged into darkness.
Monkey grabbed the reins and turned the horse around.
He picked up the Tibetan’s bow and arrow, fired a shot towards the rear.
A Tibetan cavalryman ahead fell from his horse, clutched his neck, struggled a few times, and died.
“Pah!”
Monkey spat on the corpse, mounted the horse, and galloped away.
“It’s a Da Kang hunter!”
The Tibetan leader saw Monkey wearing tattered clothes and immediately took him for a local hunter.
The Tibetans were still in the tribal era, worshipping martial prowess and even more barbaric than the Dangxiang or Khitan.
After invading Da Kang, they left no survivors wherever they passed.
Many hunters went into the mountains in the morning, only to return at night and find their entire village slaughtered. Naturally, they hated the invaders.
This was not the first time they had encountered such a situation.
“Chase him down!” the Tibetan squad leader roared, raising his curved sword. “I will skin him and hang it here!”
The path was too narrow. By the time the Tibetan cavalry manoeuvred and turned their horses, Monkey was already several hundred metres away.
The squad leader lashed his whip hard on his horse’s rump, and the warhorse bolted forward.
Many Tibetans chased while shooting arrows.
Unfortunately, with several hundred metres between them and shooting from horseback, even their best archers could not hit Monkey.
The two sides chased and fled into the distance.
Only after they were far away did Dog and Donkey emerge from the woods.
“That’s it?”
Donkey, holding a rope made of grass, sounded a little disappointed.
The movement in the grass had been caused by him pulling it.
According to their plan, Monkey was to lure away the Tibetan squad.
If anyone stayed behind to collect the body, the two of them would deal with those left behind.
But who would have thought the Tibetans would completely ignore their comrade’s corpse and all chase after Monkey.
With Dog and Donkey left behind, there was nothing for them to do.
“Donkey, go back and inform the gentleman that the Tibetans have left. I’ll stay here a bit longer in case they come back,” Dog said.
“Alright!” Donkey agreed and turned back into the woods.
In the village, Jin Feng, the Ninth Princess, Zhang Liang, and Qing Mulan gathered around an old wooden table missing a leg. A map lay on the table.
“This place is more than thirty li from Xichuan. Why have the Tibetans come so far?” Jin Feng asked.
Normally, with the Tibetans besieging Xichuan prefecture, they would plunder at most within a twenty-li radius. After all, venturing too far from their main camp, even on horseback, would take most of a day to go and return.
It also made them vulnerable to ambush.
“Brother Xinyao was worried about Tibetan plundering. Before I left, he arranged to evacuate the surrounding people and prepare to fortify defences and clear the fields,” the Ninth Princess said. “Probably all the people around Xichuan have been evacuated, so the Tibetans have had to expand their plundering range.”
“Then we need to move faster, or we might run into more Tibetans,” Jin Feng said with a frown.
“Sir, Donkey is back,” Da Liu came to report.
“Let him in.”
“Sir, Captain!”
Donkey was a local villager. He only greeted Jin Feng and Zhang Liang, not daring even to glance at the Ninth Princess or Qing Mulan.
Jin Feng could not be bothered with such minor details and asked, “How is the situation?”
