An hour later, Zhuge Zhan and the others returned from clearing the battlefield, and Xiao Feng had completed the full casualty report for the Great Qin Empire forces in Lincang City. A total of 5,840 Xiongnu soldiers had participated in the battle. Excluding one man captured alive and thirty-two others who were severely wounded but still breathing, the rest were killed in action. Based on the testimony of the thirty-three survivors, it was confirmed that the commander of this force, a ten-thousand-man commander named Khwarizm, was the one who had finally killed Ma Yan and his men. After Zhuge Zhan and the Iron Stone Guards cleared the field, they recovered 283 storage bags, 1,268 Blood-Sweating Steeds that could be rehabilitated, and countless blades, spears, and arrows.
Of course, one must pay a price to inflict damage. Despite holding the absolute advantage of the terrain, the Great Qin Empire forces suffered heavy losses. This was primarily because the average Xiongnu soldier was far superior in archery to the average Great Qin Empire soldier. Thus, of the more than 1,500 soldiers with poor archery skills who had been lying in ambush below the fifty-meter height, only about 600 remained. Among the other troops, approximately 1,200 were left, along with over 300 severely wounded, meaning roughly half the Great Qin Empire force had been lost, the vast majority being garrison troops from Lincang City.
Because the Iron Stone Guards were highly skilled archers, they suffered …
Chapter 88