Nogi's work did not begin until the battle had been well developed on every front. His was to take up the work begun against the Russian right flank by Oku and with a fresh army carry it to a conclusion. As has been shown, Oku prepared the way in a splendid manner. He broke the Russian lines and rolled back the flank from the plains east and west of the Hun River. When this had been accomplished Nogi's army got under way. Leaving their positions west of Liao-yang, the veterans sped northwards. They crossed the Hun at a point a few miles above the junction of the Hun and Liao Rivers where two days before Oku had begun forcing back the Russians. His army after the crossing, was divided, one small detachment, amply supplied with artillery moving swiftly northeastward to the Liao; thence northward to Sinmintin, thirty-five miles due west of Mukden. This city was outside the limits of the war zone as laid down by the Powers in their agreement to preserve the neutrality of China. Nevertheless it had been a veritable supply depot for the Russians, caravans of foodstuffs of all kinds and even of ammunition coming from Chinese points on the Siberian border and from southern coast cities to deliver contraband here to waiting bands of Cossacks. As a result of this use of the city by the Russians the Japanese did not hesitate to enter there. They found a few Cossacks and a great horde of Russian civil officials together with great stores of supplies most of it in carts as it had reached the city ready to start westward for the Russian base at Mukden. Some prisoners were taken but no goods that were not actually in the possession of Russian civil and military officials were seized. [Sidenote: Kuropatkin Ignores Danger] The detachment then began the dash westward along the Sinmintin-Mukden road toward Mukden. On the morning of January 5, they formed a junction with the main force that had marched northward on a line parallel with the railroad, twenty miles west of the Russians and, of course, had met no opposition, so effectively had Oku prepared the way. The news of the arrival of the Japanese at Sinmintin, March 5, was the first intimation of this movement and General Kuropatkin ignored the news imagining that the force had only been a handful of Japanese cavalry raiders. They were raiders, in fact, but there were 80,000 of them and they were under orders from Marshal Oyama to enter Mukden as conquerors on March 10. [Sidenote: Center Positions Abandoned]