Chapter 503: - Use an Ox-Cleaver to Kill a Chicken

Li Fusheng’s head felt a little dizzy. What Zheng Fan had just said was taking him a moment to digest.

To be fair, Li Fusheng was not a good man, and he had never claimed to be one either. By his own description, he had committed too much slaughter in this life to expect a peaceful death in bed.

He liked killing people. He liked the feeling of layer upon layer of warm blood covering his body. It gave him an enormous sense of satisfaction deep inside.

Long ago, the Blind Man had said that Li Fusheng had a psychological disorder. Li Fusheng knew it too. The first time he met Zheng Fan, he had even specifically told Zheng Fan to remind him to restrain that impulse whenever necessary.

And yet, Li Fusheng had always thought he was operating on the second level.

Only now did he discover that the little brother he had once promoted and looked favorably upon had somehow, without making a sound, climbed all the way to the fifth.

Li Fusheng had to tilt his head back to look at him.

He still remembered Yupan City. When Zheng Fan had relayed the order to slaughter the prisoners there, he had clearly been forcing himself through it. That meant some part of Zheng Fan had strongly resisted the order.

Li Fusheng did not know words like “rationality” and “emotion,” but he could tell that Zheng Fan had not wanted to give that order.

And how much time had passed since then? That same little brother could now calmly tell him to use the lives of tens of thousands of Savages as practice for siege warfare.

And it had not even been some idea he had been brooding over for days. The plan had formed the moment Zheng Fan saw Li Fusheng and learned how many troops he had brought.

There had been no rehearsal and no long calculation. Snow Sea Pass’s troops were fine in encounters and surprise attacks, but even if Zheng Fan emptied Snow Sea Pass completely and brought out every soldier he had, he would still have been unable to herd tens of thousands of Savages like sheep into one area and then into those two forts.

So this really had been a spur-of-the-moment idea.

What did spur-of-the-moment mean? It meant your mouth suddenly felt idle, so you decided to chew two mint leaves, or deciding at dinner that you wanted another plate of pig’s-head meat.

And in the eyes of this little brother of his, the lives of tens of thousands of Savages were nothing more than two mint leaves or a plate of pig’s-head meat.

Li Fusheng himself possessed a hunger for slaughter and took pleasure in it. What Zheng Fan now displayed was something different: indifference toward life itself.

Perhaps it was simply because Li Fusheng had not seen Zheng Fan very often over the last few years. The people around Zheng Fan every day might not feel the change nearly as strongly. Even Zheng Fan himself had probably never noticed how much his state of mind had shifted.

Count Pingye looked at Li Fusheng and waved a hand in front of his face.

Only then did Li Fusheng come back to himself.

He gave an embarrassed laugh at having zoned out.

At that moment, He Chunlai arrived with several men carrying a table and a reclining chair. Fresh fruit and melons were arranged on the table, while the Great Yan Black Dragon Banner and Zheng Fan’s personal banner were planted on either side of the chair.

Chen Daole set up an easel at an angle across from it. Paper had already been stretched into place and the pigments mixed and ready.

“This is...”

Li Fusheng clearly could not make sense of the scene.

Were they fighting a war or going on an outing?

Count Pingye walked over to the reclining chair and sat down, put both legs on the table, then picked up a melon and began eating.

Off to the side, Chen Daole started painting.

Li Fusheng came over. He might have been a crude military man, but even he understood that this was not the moment to accidentally walk into the “painting.” Still, he could not stop himself from asking:

“Little Brother Zheng, what are you doing?”

“Keeping a souvenir.”

Count Pingye smiled and beckoned Li Fusheng over to eat melon with him.

Li Fusheng shook his head.

He could understand the habit of having portraits made. Back when they had all served as Garrison Commanders under the Marquis of Zhenbei Residence, the Marquis had once hired painters to make two portraits of each of them. One showed them in armor and one in ordinary clothes, but every pose had been formal and dignified. Nothing remotely like Zheng Fan’s current posture.

Count Pingye had no time to explain a word like “propaganda” to Li Fusheng.

As the “god” at the center of a god-making campaign, this was simply one of the responsibilities Zheng Fan had to bear.

Chen Daole would paint one version first. That copy would remain in Count Pingye’s private collection, and a few replicas might be made later and given away as gifts.

After that, Chen Daole would design and carve a block for printing. Naturally, the printed versions could not preserve fine detail, but they would still clearly show Count Pingye eating melon in the foreground while a battle raged in the distance.

At New Year, shops in Snow Sea Pass sold New Year prints of Count Pingye. Soldiers and civilians bought them and took them home. Some used them as Door Gods; others placed them in the main hall and worshiped them.

Fortunately, Chen Daole only needed Zheng Fan to hold the pose long enough to establish the composition and basic outline.

After that, Count Pingye could move freely.

Li Fusheng did not have to wait long before he and Zheng Fan went together to the front.

Ahead stood a fortress that had changed names many times over the course of history. Every time a new patriarch took over the Situ Clan, he renamed it; the practice had become almost a rule.

Building a fortress on the snowfields had itself once been considered glorious. It signified that the people of Jin had not merely driven the Savages completely out of the Three Jin lands; they could even move onto the snowfields and push the Savages around there as they pleased.

After these two forts fell, the Savage King had renamed them Anhu and Tadie. In the Savage tongue, the names meant “Beginning” and “End.”

The Savage King’s intent had probably been to announce that the history of Savages being oppressed by the people of Jin had ended, and the bright future of the Savages had begun.

The dream had certainly been full and beautiful. Reality, unfortunately, was skinny enough to jab you in the ribs.

The fortress now standing before Count Pingye and Li Fusheng was Anhu City.

Its walls were not especially towering. Compared with Zhennan Pass, they were nothing; compared with Snow Sea Pass, even less.

But a sparrow might be small and still possess every organ.

If the Yan talent lay in smelting and forging weapons, then the Jin talent lay in building cities and fortresses.

Tiannan Pass, Zhennan Pass, Snow Sea Pass: strongholds like these were all benchmark works of Jin craftsmanship.

Unfortunately:

The mighty passes still stand,
but no Jin emperor comes.

According to Count Pingye’s orders, the Yan forces had been divided into three parts. The main central force stood beneath Anhu City. Another force, led by Jin Shuke and Keyan Dongge, had already begun raiding the home pastures and settlements of the tribes gathered here. Most of the fighting-age warriors from those tribes had already been driven here and trapped, so their home camps would be nearly empty. Breaking into those pastures and settlements would not be difficult.

The final portion of the army continued watching Tadie City. If the Savage troops inside made any attempt to break out, they were to be driven back in immediately. Having enough troops beneath your hand made everything much easier.

“Big Brother, please.”

Count Pingye invited Li Fusheng to climb an arrow tower with him.

If they were truly fighting Chu, Count Pingye would never have climbed something like this.

Once a serious siege began, both sides’ trebuchets would be throwing stones back and forth constantly.

The defending trebuchets inside the city, along with the heavy crossbows mounted on the walls, would treat the attacker’s arrow towers as priority targets.

But the Savages had only just been herded into these forts. There was no possibility they possessed anything like that. The view improved dramatically once they reached the top.

Li Fusheng ran a hand over the iron sheathing on the side of the tower facing the enemy.

“Little Brother Zheng, I’ve watched craftsmen in Yingdu and Fengxin build siege equipment too. Yours is obviously more refined and more carefully thought out.”

Zheng Fan answered:

“Their people were originally trained by mine.”

During the Second Battle of Wang River, when the Marquis of Jingnan took supreme command and marched out, Zheng Fan had still been General of Shengle and led his troops over to receive orders. At the time, everyone expected to attack Yupan City, so Xue San had taken a group of craftsmen and built several kinds of siege equipment. Tian Wujing had noticed them then, which was also one of the reasons he later handed the people of Tianji Pavilion over to Zheng Fan.

“Little Brother Zheng, I don’t even know what to say about you anymore. I knew years ago that you were talented, but I truly never imagined there could be a man like you in this world. Fortunately, you were born a Yan man. If you’d been born in Qian or Chu, Great Yan would have had a real headache on its hands.”

Hearing this, Zheng Fan laughed.

“If I’d been born in Qian, why would I join the army? I’d have taken the imperial examinations long ago. A true good man of Qian gets his name proclaimed at Donghua Gate, doesn’t he?”

“Hahahaha! That’s right. That’s exactly right.”

The battlefield was already taking shape. The main army pressed forward, and the arrow towers and trebuchets had been assembled.

But the true assault was still some time away.

First, laborers and auxiliary troops began working.

They dug trenches and established the siege camp.

Defenders normally prepared traps in advance, cleared their moats, and made other defensive arrangements.

Attackers also had to make complete preparations in case the defenders suddenly sallied out and counterattacked.

For now, most of the actual preparation work was still being handled by the troops of Snow Sea Pass, while Li Fusheng’s soldiers watched from the side.

Seeing this, Li Fusheng immediately issued an order.

“Every officer in my force of Lieutenant Commander rank or above who isn’t assigned to outer security is to gather here and observe.”

After giving the order, Li Fusheng subconsciously rubbed a hand along the arrow tower railing and sighed.

“Little Brother Zheng, look at the orderly way everything below is moving. You truly inherited His Highness’s methods.”

Tian Wujing placed extraordinary emphasis on detail and rigor in warfare. The most visible expression of that was the orderly coordination among different branches and formations. In Li Fusheng’s eyes, Zheng Fan was Tian Wujing’s personally instructed disciple, so naturally it made sense that their methods of command resembled one another.

What Li Fusheng did not know was that Liang Cheng had personally handled the training of these troops from beginning to end. All one could really say was that Liang Cheng and Tian Wujing shared the same principle; or perhaps any truly powerful army inevitably placed enormous value on tactical discipline.

Count Pingye had long since grown accustomed to claiming the Demon Kings’ achievements as his own.

So for now, he merely nodded and pointed forward.

“Big Brother, look. The first volley is about to begin.”

The trebuchets launched. The results of the first volley were not particularly impressive. A small number of stones struck the wall, more than half landed outside it, and another small portion flew over and fell behind the walls. Overall, the effect was poor.

“This is a ranging volley,” Zheng Fan explained.

Li Fusheng nodded.

There had been few cities for him to attack back when he fought in the desert, but as a Garrison Commander, even if he had never eaten pork, he had certainly seen pigs run.

From Zheng Fan and Li Fusheng’s perspective, the first ranging volley had achieved little.

But the Savages inside Anhu City were terrified by the crashing stones.

Anhu City was only a fortress.

Once a huge number of Savages had been crammed inside, it became extremely crowded.

That meant the stones that did land behind the walls caused tremendous casualties.

The targets were packed too densely.

If a stone made it inside, it was very likely to hit something.

The first volley had barely ended when four or five Savage riders emerged from Anhu City waving white cloth they had found somewhere as surrender flags and rode toward the Yan army.

The Savages were surrendering because, from their perspective, there was no battle to fight at all.

From the moment they had broken under the Yan cavalry encirclement and been herded here, they had already lost any ability to resist effectively.

Even now that they had been driven inside cities, Anhu and Tadie had stood abandoned for a long time.

Apart from the occasional herder sheltering against a wall during wind and snow, almost no one came here anymore.

They were simply too close to Snow Sea Pass.

There was no food inside and no real siege-defense equipment. How were they supposed to defend these walls?

Most importantly, unless the Savage King suddenly came back from the dead and decided to forgive everything and save them, there would be no reinforcements.

The tribes that had not participated in this affair were too far away.

And none of them would send warriors to fight the Yan to the death just to save these people.

The Savage riders asking to surrender never even reached the Yan lines.

The archers and crossbowmen in the front ranks had already drawn and aimed.

One coordinated volley later, the envoys and their mounts were shot into hedgehogs.

The real siege had not even begun yet. How could Count Pingye possibly allow the enemy to surrender early?

The Savages inside the city naturally saw what happened. At last, groups of Savage warriors began appearing on the walls. Once surrender had been rejected outright, the tribal chiefs inside had no choice but to prepare resistance, even if that resistance was doomed to be powerless.

The Yan army, meanwhile, continued its “drill.” The Savages inside were probably brittle enough to crack with one strike, but the Yan treasured this rare training opportunity too much to waste it.

If they were killing a chicken, they were absolutely going to use the ox-cleaver.

At last, every preparation was complete and the second trebuchet volley began.

This time, stones smashed hard into Anhu City’s western wall.

Savages stationed there were pulped by falling rock.

Flesh and blood flew and screams rose everywhere. Below, shield-bearers advanced in formation at the front, arrow towers rolled behind them, and the battering ram came last.

“I have to say, Jin craftsmanship in city-building really is excellent,” Li Fusheng praised.

The second volley had landed accurately, yet the structure of Anhu City’s walls still showed no obvious damage. This meant the place was no shoddy project.

And one had to remember what the fortress had originally been built to defend against: Savages.

In the old understanding of the world, when did Savages know how to attack a city?

Where would they even get trebuchets?

And yet the Jin had still rigidly built the walls strong.

It was easy to imagine what would have happened if the Savage King had successfully retreated to the snowfields back then.

Even these two little forts would have cost the pursuing armies a considerable price to take.

Savages began shooting arrows down from the walls.

The fire was scattered and sparse. Clearly, the first batch stationed there had died too quickly, and the second had not yet been fully arranged.

Besides, bows were basically the only defensive equipment the Savages possessed.

Once the distance closed enough, Yan archers in the arrow towers began shooting.

The towers removed the height disadvantage, so their arrows were far more lethal and effective than those fired upward from the ground. Below, ground archers also hid behind the shield line and provided supporting fire.

For a time, the Yan arrows completely suppressed the Savage shooting from the wall.

The battering ram rolled forward. Even the Savages understood what that thing was meant to do, but they had no way to stop it. They could only watch the giant machine reach the city gate.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

After three impacts, the gate flew open.

The soldiers operating the battering ram froze for a moment. It felt almost unreal.

From the distant arrow tower, Li Fusheng’s Adam’s apple moved.

“Little Brother Zheng, don’t tell me the men pushing that ram are all experts from your army?”

Zheng Fan replied:

“Those Savages who came out to surrender earlier used this same gate. They probably didn’t barricade it from behind.”

“Oh. That explains it.”

There was actually one detail Count Pingye did not know. When the Savage King’s army first captured Anhu and Tadie, the Savages had not yet entered the passes. They had been poor beyond imagining, so after taking the forts, they looted absolutely everything the Jin had left behind. They even dismantled the city gates and carried them away because the wood contained iron nails and iron sheathing.

When the Savage King discovered what had happened, he flew into a rage and immediately cursed them out.

Everything else, he said, could be taken.

But put the damned city gates back!

Under the Savage King’s prestige, the Savages obediently returned and reinstalled the gates. Yet after being taken apart once and crudely put back together, the city gate had long since become a gate in name only.

At that moment, the third trebuchet volley began.

This time, the projectiles had been drenched in grease.

What flew through the air were fireballs.

The range had also been deliberately extended slightly so that the stones would land behind the city wall, and agonized screams immediately rose from inside the city again.

Only then did the shield line open a path. Yan soldiers carrying scaling ladders rushed forward, planted the ladders against the wall, and began climbing.

The arrow towers had already been pushed close enough. Because resistance from the wall was simply too weak, there was no need to remove the lower joints and topple the whole tower forward. Instead, the troops detached a long plank from the top and used it as a bridge, and the archers inside immediately drew melee weapons and crossed onto the wall.

The scattered Savages still standing there were quickly cleared away, and the Yan army took the western wall with almost ridiculous ease.

Li Fusheng smacked his lips in disappointment.

“It’s good. Very good. Just too fast. I haven’t even had time to savor it.”

Zheng Fan laughed.

“That’s easy enough.”

Then Count Pingye turned to a personal guard behind him and ordered:

“Sound the gong and withdraw. We’ll attack another wall.”

[End of Chapter 503]