In truth, Ju Shou held absolutely no hope of catching up to Yuan Shao.
From the moment the scouts sprinted back with the news to the layered chain of command reporting it up, and finally to General Geng Wu mobilizing the troops for a pursuit, at least an hour would pass. In a single hour, a small squad traveling light and fast could put an immense amount of distance between themselves and Ye City.
Worse, it was pitch black, and the Black Mountain range was a chaotic labyrinth of jagged trails. Unless someone had magically predicted their exact route and set an ambush beforehand, finding them was like looking for a needle in a midnight ocean.
But there is a vast political difference between *failing* to catch someone and *choosing* not to chase them. Since Han Fu had made the executive decision to surrender his entire province to Zhang Xin, he needed to put on a spectacular show of loyalty. He had to prove he was trying.
"It's good if we can catch him... it's very good if we can catch him," Han Fu muttered to himself, leaning heavily on Ju Shou's comforting words to soothe his frayed nerves.
General Geng Wu didn't dare waste a single second. The moment he burst out of the State Prefecture, he sprinted straight to the military encampments. He ordered Yufuro's auxiliary Xiongnu Cavalry to immediately saddle up and hunt down the runaways in the mountains, while he personally organized the main infantry blocks to assault the leaderless Yuan camp outside the gates.
Boom!
Before long, the thunderous sounds of war once again echoed through the fields of Ye City. Only this time, it wasn't a battle—it was a slaughter.
General Geng Wu breached the wooden palisades of the Yuan camp with laughable ease. With Yuan Shao, Chunyu Qiong, and the entire high command having ghosted them in the middle of the night, the twenty thousand abandoned soldiers were struck by sudden panic. They couldn't form a cohesive defensive line, let alone mount a counterattack.
Within minutes, the standard-bearers threw down their flags, and the Yuan army knelt in the mud, surrendering en masse.
General Geng Wu marched his horse into the center of the camp, dragging a captured mid-level officer by the collar for a swift interrogation. The rumors were true: Yuan Shao had abandoned his own legions and bolted into the dark.
"Hmph!" Geng Wu glared toward the jagged, black silhouettes of the mountain peaks, his face twisted in disgust. "Consider yourself lucky you ran fast, you cowardly peacock..."
---
"Achoo!"
Deep in the mountain trails, Yuan Shao suddenly sneezed violently, nearly dropping his reins.
"Is the Lord feeling unwell?" Pang Ji, sitting snugly in the rear of the vehicle, asked with immediate concern. "The mountain air is freezing. Why don't you rest inside, Lord, and let me handle the driving?"
As an elite member of the gentry, Pang Ji was well-versed in the *Six Arts of a Gentleman*—Rites, Music, Archery, Charioteering, Calligraphy, and Mathematics. Driving a cart or riding a warhorse was second nature to him.
"No need," Yuan Shao sniffed, rubbing his nose with a silk sleeve. "The wind in these canyons is just kicking up dust. My nose is fine."
Hearing this, Pang Ji wisely shut his mouth and dropped the subject. Ever since that harrowing, chaotic night in Nangpi where they had escaped certain death, Yuan Shao had developed a bizarre, deeply sentimental attachment to this broken down peasant donkey cart. Despite having access to the most luxurious, gold-trimmed carriages in the entire northern administration, the proud warlord preferred to personally crack the whip and drive this wooden crate himself. He was, for lack of a better term, utterly addicted to it.
"My Lord!"
Suddenly, a personal guard pointed a trembling finger back toward the eastern horizon. "Look!"
Yuan Shao reined in the donkey and spun around. Far in the distance, the sky above Ye City was painted a violent, angry crimson.
"Han Fu has realized we're gone," Pang Ji deduced coldly, his face hardening under the torchlight. "Lord, we need to push the pace. Right now."
That distant red glow was unmistakably the massive campfires sparked by the Han army as they put the abandoned Yuan camp to the torch. If they didn't put some serious distance between themselves and the valley, Han Fu's tracking cavalry would be on their heels within the hour.
Granted, Zhang Xin had completely vaporized the legendary White Horse Volunteers, forcing a humiliated Gongsun Zan to scurry back to Youzhou with his tail between his legs. But Yufuro's mercenary Xiongnu Cavalry were still very much alive and kicking. Even though Zhang Xin's devastating night raid had incinerated a massive chunk of their mounts, the Xiongnu had managed to scrape together over two thousand fresh warhorses by scavenging the battlefield.
Yuan Shao's entourage consisted of barely a hundred elite guards. If two thousand bloodthirsty steppe riders caught them in a narrow ravine, they would be torn to pieces.
Dread spiking through his veins, Yuan Shao didn't dare hesitate. He violently unleashed his whip. "Hyah! Move, you stubborn beast!"
"Ah-um... Ah-um!"
The donkey brayed in sudden pain, its hooves clattering wildly against the loose rocks as it accelerated. The loud, echoing brays shattered the eerie silence of the mountain forest, vibrating through the trees.
*CRACK!*
A sickening, splintering boom echoed from the undercarriage. Yuan Shao felt a violent jolt toss him forward as the rear of the cart suddenly sagged into the dirt, grinding to a dead halt.
"What happened?! What broke?!" Yuan Shao screamed, frantically scrambling out of the driver's seat. He snatched a torch from a guard and rushed to inspect his beloved vehicle.
Upon closer inspection, his heart sank. The main wooden shaft had completely snapped in half. This cart was never meant for tactical military maneuvers; it was a cheap, ordinary piece of pine wood put together by a local peasant. Between Yuan Shao's daily high-speed drifting around mountain bends and the rugged, unforgiving terrain, the wood had long since reached its structural breaking point.
Standing up, Yuan Shao felt a wave of icy apprehension wash over him. A snapped axle on an escape route? This was a catastrophic, ominous omen from the heavens.
"Could it be..."
Yuan Shao looked around anxiously. The towering, pitch-black trees pressed in from all sides like a wall of living shadows. In the darkness, every rustling leaf sounded like a man-eating beast waiting to pounce.
"Father," Yuan Tan rode up, leading a spare warhorse. Seeing the sheer terror painted across his father's face, he frowned. "What's wrong? Why are we stopping?"
"Xiansi..." Yuan Shao whispered, his voice trembling as he gripped his son's stirrup. "Do you think... do you think we are going to die tonight?"
"Father, it's just a piece of wood," Yuan Tan sighed, thoroughly nonchalant. "This cart is old, rusted, and practically garbage. It was bound to fall apart sooner or later. Don't read cosmic omens into a bad axle. Just mount a horse so we can leave."
Soothed by his son's blunt rationality, Yuan Shao exhaled a shaky breath. He walked over to the front of the wreckage and unhitched the animal. "No. I am riding the donkey."
Yuan Tan was temporarily struck speechless. *He genuinely loves that stupid donkey.*
But with the clock ticking, he didn't waste time arguing. Donkeys actually possessed phenomenal stamina and sure-footedness in rugged terrain; for a grueling mountain trek, it wasn't the worst choice.
Yuan Shao cast one final, heartbroken glance at the shattered remains of his beloved cart, making a mental vow: *The second I set foot in the prosperous south, I am going to commission the grandest, most durable, diamond-encrusted donkey cart this realm has ever seen.*
---
### The Trap at the Stream
The small elite squad set off once more, plunging deeper into the unforgiving gut of the Black Mountain range. The paths rapidly devolved from narrow dirt roads to treacherous, vertical goat tracks. The terrain became so hostile that the riders were forced to dismount, carefully leading their skittish warhorses by the reins over loose shale.
In the crushing dark, guards occasionally lost their footing, their boots slipping into the abyss. Muffled screams echoed through the canyons as men plunged silently down the sheer cliffs into the black void below.
Yet, Yuan Shao pushed them onward, desperate to survive. After agonizingly crawling through another ten li of treacherous rock faces, the faint, melodic sound of rushing water echoed through the trees. They had reached a mountain stream.
Hearing the water, Yuan Shao raised his hand. "Halt. Short rest. Rehydrate the mounts."
The elite guards immediately dispersed, holding their torches low as they followed the sound of the stream to find a deep pool to fill their master's canteens.
*Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp...*
Yuan Shao threw his head back, draining a water skin in massive gulps. Wiping his mouth, he let out a long, ragged breath and turned to his general. "Zhongjian, where the hell are we on the map?"
"I... have no absolute idea, Lord." Chunyu Qiong squinted at a piece of crinkled parchment under the flickering light of a torch, shaking his head in sheer frustration. "The night is too thick, and these canyons aren't properly mapped. It is impossible to pinpoint our exact coordinates."
He looked up, tracking the pale white orb cutting through the canopy. "However, do not panic, Lord. The moonlight is incredibly bright tonight. We can easily navigate our cardinal directions using the stars. Even if I don't know the name of this specific rock, our general trajectory is perfectly aligned. Based on the distance we've covered, we should be right on the cusp of the Henan border."
Yuan Shao's shoulders visibly relaxed. "Good. That is very good."
"Actually, this specific place is called **Luoyuan Stream (The Stream where the Yuan Falls)**," a crisp, astonishingly young voice suddenly echoed from the darkness. "It was named so because the cliffs are so brutally steep and treacherous, even the local monkeys fail to cross it alive."
"WHO'S THERE?!"
Yuan Shao's entire body went rigid.
In an instant, the hundred elite guards snapped into formation, swords hissing out of their scabbles and archers instantly drawing their bows to full extension, aiming into the brush.
"May I ask if I am addressing the grand and illustrious Lord of the Yuan clan, Yuan Benchu, in person?"
From around a jagged boulder, a young man—barely eighteen or nineteen years old—stepped into the light. He wore the simple, unadorned robes of a common scholar, holding a single torch in his left hand. He looked upon the bristling wall of blades and arrows with a serene, wildly amused smile.
Yuan Shao blinked. Seeing that the intruder was just a solitary, fresh-faced kid who looked like he belonged in a university library rather than a battlefield, his panic subsided, replaced by deep suspicion. "Who are you? Why are you lurking in the deep wilderness in the middle of the night?"
To have a random teenager pop out of a desolate man-eating forest at 2:00 AM was deeply unnatural.
"I am **Wang Meng of Yuyang**, courtesy name **Jinglue**," the young man said smoothly. His eyes flicked down to the lone donkey in the group, his smile widening into a smirk as he bowed with flawless courtly etiquette. "I have traveled quite a long way tonight, Lord Yuan... specifically to send you on your final journey."
---
> ### The Tactical Analysis
>
>
> * **Identity:** Wang Meng (Wang Jinglue)—one of the most brilliant strategic minds newly deployed under Zhang Xin's banner.
> * **Location Name:** *Luoyuan Stream* (落鸢/袁) — A homophone for "The Fall of Yuan."
> * **The Realization:** It wasn't a coincidence. The trap was sprung.
>
>
---
*Luoyuan Stream... The Stream where Yuan Falls...*
The chilling realization struck Yuan Shao like a lightning bolt. His face turned a ghostly, translucent white as absolute horror gripped his throat.
"SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM DEAD!" Yuan Shao shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the teenager. "QUICKly! RIDDLE HIM WITH ARROWS!"
Wang Meng's reflexes were inhumanly fast. The exact millisecond the word *'Shoot'* left Yuan Shao's lips, the young strategist violently hurled his blazing torch directly into the faces of the front-line guards, blinding them, before twisting his body and vanishing back behind the massive boulder like a ghost.
To show up, deliver a devastating psychological taunt, and instantly dip—it was pure tactical cinema.
*Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!*
The Yuan army's hurried volley of arrows slammed uselessly into the solid rock face, sparks flying off the granite.
Before the guards could even reload, Wang Meng's calm, echoing voice resonated from the dark canopy above them.
"Fire!"
*Swish-swish-swish-swish-swish!*
From the pitch-black ridges surrounding the stream, a blinding storm of thousands of glowing, lethal arrows erupted from the darkness, raining down upon the trapped warlord.