Chapter 2224: Feasting the Army!
Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Roooar!
At this moment, a bestial roar came from the fortress, causing the walls to vibrate.
A hairy and savage head suddenly emerged from behind the towering walls, the eyes even larger than a man.
The King Ape!
All three of the scouts instantly recognized this being.
In that previous battle, the power of the King Ape had branded itself into the minds of the alliance soldiers like a nightmare. Seventy to eighty of the powerful Yeluohe had died to the King Ape’s feet, their bodies crushed into pancakes by the King Ape.
Those Yeluohe had no opportunity to display the abilities of their undying bodies. But at this time, the King Ape was paying no attention to the three alliance scouts outside. Its attention was also drawn to the blazing fires on the walls.
“Take it!”
Hearty laughter rang out, and then a familiar figure seized a roast pig and threw it at the King Ape.
The King Ape opened its bloody maw and swallowed the roast pig in one bite.
“It’s him!”
The three of them were stunned. If that general on the wall wasn’t Wang Chong, who else could it be?
A sharp cry came from the walls. “Your Highness, enemy attack! Alliance scouts have been discovered outside the walls!”
Atop the wall, Wang Chong was seated on the main seat and was gazing at the burning bonfire in front of him. Upon hearing that cry, he glanced over and instantly spotted the three alliance scouts outside.
“Not good! Run!”
The three outside the walls saw Wang Chong’s gaze and shivered, their souls almost fleeing their bodies as they turned their horses around and began to ride back the way they had come.
The King of Foreign Lands was incredibly strong, so strong that not even Genesis Supreme could do anything to him. It would be different if they ran into anyone else, but if it was Wang Chong, so long as he wanted to strike, they had no chance of escaping.
“Heh, let them go. Today is a feast for the troops, a day to celebrate and make merry, not draw blood. When it comes to matters of war, let them be resolved on the battlefield!” Wang Chong lightly said as he drew back his gaze.
At his level, Wang Chong had little interest in lowly soldiers like this.
Everyone exhaled in relief upon hearing Wang Chong’s words.
Wang Chong was the supreme commander of the Great Tang, and his orders were absolute. Since he had spared their lives, they naturally didn’t need to do anything.
Seeing that the three were hesitant to leave, Wang Chong was taken aback, but he quickly understood.
“What? You want to eat this?” Grinning, he glanced at the fire, tore a leg off a roasting lamb, and threw it over.
“Though we are at war, emissaries are not to be executed. This lamb leg is for you!”
After throwing out the lamb leg, Wang Chong withdrew his gaze. He calmly gazed at the fire, smiling as the soldiers drank and ate.
Outside the walls, the three alliance scouts had complicated expressions as a struggle took place in their minds. On one hand, they were enemies at war. But on the other hand, it had been a long time since they had tasted gourmet food, before the first blizzard of the cold wave.
Compared to the whole roast lambs and pigs the Tang were feasting on, the rations the alliance had might as well have been blocks of stone.
If not for this, the three of them would have never been so easily lured over by the food of their enemies.
After a brief moment of hesitation, they came forward.
It was just one lamb leg. So long as none of them mentioned it, nobody would know.
But a moment later, their faces froze.
When Wang Chong had thrown the lamb leg from the wall, it had still been piping hot, yellow and tender. But only a few moments after being thrown from the wall, it had been frozen solid and covered in white frost, becoming as hard as rock.
Their faces shifted between green and white.
On the wall, Wang Chong was completely unperturbed.
With the entire world frozen over, the only reason Wang Chong was able to roast pigs and lambs on the wall was that he had designed the fortress to have many areas with small formations that could draw energy from under the ground to resist the cold. In the range of these small formations, the cold-resisting effect was much stronger, and they could block out the wind and raise the temperature to an almost normal level. Their small range meant that these formations did not affect the large formation.
They also allowed the soldiers of the Great Tang to enjoy piping hot food.
As for the alliance soldiers, granting them a lamb leg was already good enough. Wang Chong naturally wouldn’t take the pains to do anything else for them.
Outside the walls, the three of them finally picked up that stone-cold lamb leg.
It was better to have than not have. The ability to eat this sort of delicious lamb leg was already an enormous luxury.
“Hyah!”
The three turned their horses around and departed with the lamb leg into the snowstorm.
None of them noticed that Wang Chong was watching them leave.
Zhang Que watched them leave and then spoke, putting down the piece of lamb he was eating. “Your Highness, will this really work on them? Isn’t this too intentional?”
The three alliance scouts had not run into a Tang feast by coincidence. Everything had been part of the plan.
Though the alliance was somewhat weaker than the Great Tang, it was not lacking for intelligent strategists. It would be difficult for their motives behind all this to remain hidden.
“In strategy, there are hidden schemes and open schemes, frontal soldiers and surprise soldiers. We are currently employing an open scheme. It doesn’t matter if they realize our motives. What is important is what they see and what they think.”
Wang Chong casually chuckled.
“While the alliance, with Genesis Supreme’s help, doesn’t need to worry about the cold for now, neither the Eastern Turks, the Xi, nor the Khitans have a practice of storing food. As for Goguryeo, its lands are barren, and this cold wave came very suddenly. Even if they stored food, it wouldn’t be much. With Youzhou, their supplies were provided by the Imperial Court, so there is no way they could have much extra food. Rationing of food is inevitable.
“It’s already good enough that the alliance can feed all of its troops. There’s no way it can freely hold a feast.
“The Great Tang has abundant resources. It’s enough for them to see this.”
Wang Chong had a face of supreme confidence, acting as if he had seen through everything.
“But this will mean that our supplies are exhausted ahead of time, which will disadvantage us in the future,” Zhang Que hesitantly said.
The amount of food consumed by the army each day, and how long the supplies would last, had all been calculated ahead of time.
While they had suffered heavy losses in the last battle, there were still seven to eight hundred thousand soldiers in the fortress. With this many soldiers, food was no small problem.
Moreover, for this feast, the amount of meat and food being consumed was ten times more than usual, which was no small number.
With the cold wave around them, Zhang Que couldn’t help but be worried.
“Your Highness, why don’t we do it in rounds? Once today’s feast is done, we can return to normal for a few days. In any case, the effect has already been achieved,” Zhang Que probed.
Usually, feasts would only be held if the army was victorious, but Wang Chong had arranged for there to be a feast not just today, but tomorrow, the day after that, and for the next ten-some days.
The food consumed by seven to eight hundred thousand people was no small amount.
Zhang Que’s words did not represent his own stance, but the stance of others as well. After all, with ice and snow covering the land, there was almost no place on the continent that could produce food.
Wang Chong waved his hands and indifferently said, “There’s no need. Continue as I have ordered. With regards to the food for the feast, not only are we not decreasing it, we must increase the amount with each passing day.”
“Ah?” Zhang Que called out in alarm, his eyes flying open. The surrounding soldiers also looked over, and the quartermasters found it difficult to conceal their shock.
They were responsible for arranging the food for the feast, but Wang Chong had never mentioned increasing the scale of the feast.
As if understanding what they all thought, Wang Chong sternly said, “War is the art of deception. All you need to remember is that our goal in this war is not to defeat the cold, nor is it to withstand the cold wave, but to defeat An Lushan and the alliance army. When we defeat our foe is when we can return to the capital. This is what is most important!”
Seeing the stern expression on his face, all of them instantly lowered their heads.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Wang Chong’s words had made all of them realize that they had been going down the wrong path.
It was true. The goal of this war was not to save food, but to defeat the alliance army as quickly as possible.
“Come—a toast!”
Putting them aside, Wang Chong raised his cup filled with high-class wine from the capital and spoke to the numerous soldiers within the fortress.
The soldiers raised their cups and loudly replied, “To His Highness!”
The cheers resounded through the city, shaking the heavens.
One group of scouts came after another, and the news that the Tang were feasting in the fortress rapidly spread through the alliance ranks. Moreover, the scouting teams had brought back roast lamb legs, roast pig, leather bags filled with wine, and even various pastries the Tang liked to eat. The news about what their foes were up to spread through the alliance soldiers like the plague.
The cheerful laughter and sounds of celebration left all the alliance soldiers with very mixed feelings.