Chapter 522: - Bloody Battle (II)

The Yan trebuchets began inching forward.

Volley after volley followed. The firing rate was not especially fast, but the rhythm was excellent.

Liang Cheng had once made an analogy for Count Pingye: when two armies faced one another, it was like a pianist playing. Either way, you needed a score.

Whatever situation arose, so long as you had the score in your head, you might not produce some stroke of divine inspiration, but at least you could answer soldiers with generals and water with earth.

Once the score fell apart, though, the rhythm fell apart with it. Then it became all too easy to lose your footing and make mistake after mistake.

Later, Count Pingye turned that passage into homework and handed it to Tian Wujing, except he changed the piano into a guzheng.

And now, as the Yan attacked the fort, each movement unfolded to the beat of the drums. One measure followed another, every force advancing in sequence. Everything truly was orderly.

The Chu trebuchets inside East Mountain Fort, however, still had not moved.

They certainly had trebuchets. There was no question of that.

But for the Chu to endure this long without firing made people feel somewhat... uneasy.

It was not that Zheng Fan believed the Chu trebuchets would somehow outperform his own. With Xue San's designs and the Tianji Pavilion craftsmen handling construction, Count Pingye trusted that his trebuchets ranked among the finest of the age.

But the Chu were holding back so stubbornly that he kept glancing toward the sky every now and then.

After once receiving a trebuchet's intimate greeting in person, Count Pingye had developed a slight psychological shadow toward the damned things.

At that moment, the siege towers began rolling forward.

There was no avoiding it.

Every commander knew the Chu trebuchets might be waiting specifically to smash those towers, but you could not stop eating for fear of choking. The siege still had to be fought.

Guo Dong, Xu An, and the other auxiliaries moved up.

They carried no weapons. They advanced in formation with shields raised.

To Guo Dong's and Xu An's relief, their hundred-man unit had been assigned around one siege tower, guarding its front and rear while occasionally lending a hand to the strongmen pushing it forward.

With such a massive structure to rely upon, one entire direction was blocked from enemy arrows. They only needed to cover the other side with their shields, and that gave them at least some sense of security.

Even so, arrows kept hammering into their shields.

The repeated impacts numbed their arms and made their hearts tremble.

After all, this was the first real battlefield either Guo Dong or Xu An had ever experienced.

The Chu on the walls were nothing like the Savages they had once used as practice targets on the snowfields.

Their weapons were better too.

“Dongzi, move this way a little! Closer to me! Hurry!”

Xu An shouted toward Guo Dong in front of him.

Because the siege tower kept advancing, the men clustered around it had to keep shifting as well. Some inevitably fell behind. Some tripped. Some were simply unlucky and got hit by arrows.

Gaps that had not existed at first gradually appeared.

Hearing him, Guo Dong immediately stepped back twice and pressed close against Xu An.

All the watermelon blood that had filled Guo Dong earlier had cooled somewhat now that he was standing inside a real battlefield.

It was not that the enthusiasm had come quickly and vanished just as quickly.

The problem was that their only task right now was to protect the advancing siege tower and cover the strongmen pushing it from behind.

They had no means of fighting back.

When a man could only take blows and never return them, the pressure on his mind could become enormous.

Thrum!

A giant crossbow bolt shot from the wall.

It struck a comrade directly in front of Guo Dong.

The man's shield could not withstand a single hit. It shattered instantly.

The bolt then punched through his chest and nailed his entire body to the side of the siege tower.

The auxiliaries had the tower to protect them, but that also meant the Chu defenders tended to give them special attention.

Fortune and disaster truly did depend on one another.

“Form shields! Pull it out!”

The Squad Leader shouted.

At the same time, he led several men a little farther outward and raised their shields.

Normally, one crossbow bolt lodged elsewhere in the siege tower would not matter much.

Even one corpse pinned to it would not matter much.

There were archers inside the tower already.

But this corpse hung too close to one of the wheels. If the body became tangled in the wheel, the strongmen behind would have a much harder time pushing.

Xu An gave a low roar, threw his shield onto the ground, seized the giant bolt with both hands, and pulled with everything he had.

Perhaps because the bolt had already punched through a shield and then through a man's body, and because of the angle at which it had entered, it had penetrated deeply but its tip was already protruding from the other side.

Xu An heaved outward and twisted.

The giant bolt came free.

The corpse fell with it.

Pulling the bolt out ripped the dead man's wound open all over again, practically gutting him a second time.

A huge mass of intestines spilled out and smeared directly across Xu An's face.

Hoo...

Xu An did not dare waste time.

He did not even pause to wipe his face.

Instead, he immediately dropped to the ground, groped for the shield he had thrown away, raised it again, and held it high in front of himself exactly as training had taught him.

Guo Dong moved over of his own accord, giving his brother a little more room to breathe.

“Next time we pull it out together!”

When Xu An moved earlier, Guo Dong had not reacted in time.

The instant he saw Xu An toss away his shield and boldly start yanking out the bolt, Guo Dong's heart had jumped into his throat.

Fortunately, the bolt had come free quickly and Xu An was unharmed.

Otherwise, Guo Dong truly did not know what he would have done.

“I've got snakes in my chest!”

Pfft!

Xu An's face was covered in blood and filth, and bits of blood and intestine were nearly falling into his mouth as he spoke, making his words almost impossible to distinguish.

He also sprayed bloody foam straight into Guo Dong's face.

Hoo...

Good heavens.

What a smell.

Perhaps it was psychological, but Guo Dong felt that even when his father slaughtered the New Year's pig at home, the stink had never been this violent.

By now, the distance had closed enough.

Small shutters on every level of the siege towers dropped open, and the archers and crossbowmen inside began firing back.

Those shutters served the same purpose as battlements.

The firing angles had to be preserved while still protecting the archers behind them.

Opening everything wide would certainly make it easier to shoot people.

It would also make it easier for people to shoot you.

Perhaps because their own archers had finally begun returning fire, Guo Dong and Xu An both felt much steadier inside.

The Chu arrows falling around them had not actually decreased.

But at least they were no longer simply standing there and taking it!

Boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom!

More auxiliaries advanced from the rear with shields raised.

They were covering massed formations of archers.

The siege towers had gone first. The instant they reached positions where they could return fire, the next echelon immediately followed.

The Yan fire from beneath the walls intensified sharply.

The fighting troops from Snow Sea Pass had a foundation in mounted archery. There were many men among them capable of drawing heavy bows and shooting accurately.

Even from below the walls, they inflicted heavy casualties on the Chu defenders above.

Boom! Boom-boom! Boom! Boom-boom!

The Savage slave soldiers, bamboo baskets strapped to their backs, began swarming forward.

Guo Dong and Xu An saw Savages continuously rushing past them.

Most wore almost no protection.

Some were barely clothed at all.

One could imagine just how little sense of security they possessed on a battlefield like this.

But the trenches and defensive ditches still had to be filled.

And that job required them.

Many Savage slaves were hit by arrows before they even reached the works.

The moment they appeared, the Chu defenders on the walls discovered how vulnerable these slave soldiers were.

Compared with shooting at siege towers or Yan archers protected by shield soldiers, shooting the Savages carrying earth was clearly more efficient.

“Ah!”

Ahead, one Savage took an arrow through the throat.

Blood sprayed across the ground.

The basket on his back toppled and spilled.

Guo Dong and Xu An showed no reaction.

They kept moving the siege tower forward.

Another Savage had already dumped his earth into a trench and was running back.

An arrow struck his right arm.

He stumbled, rolled across the ground, and landed almost directly at Guo Dong's and Xu An's feet.

Guo Dong instinctively shifted his shield and covered the Savage as well.

The man looked up at Guo Dong, immediately clutched his wounded arm, and forced himself to stand.

He was clearly in agony.

But he kept enduring it.

Then, instead of simply continuing to run toward the rear, he turned back.

He went forward and picked up the bamboo basket he had dropped.

He knew that only by carrying the basket back could he receive a bamboo tally.

And only with that tally could he receive enough food today.

He had two younger brothers among the slave soldiers in camp.

One bamboo tally was enough to exchange for a full meal that evening for himself and both brothers.

“Hey!”

Guo Dong shouted anxiously.

As a Yan man, he did not normally care in the slightest about these lowly Savages.

But this was a battlefield.

Once people entered a battlefield, prejudices of race and region seemed to disappear in an instant.

Regardless of status, everyone here was a comrade.

Because everyone was risking his life for the same thing: taking the wall in front of them.

The Savage picked up his basket.

He had barely taken a few steps back when an arrow struck him in the back.

Pfft!

The basket he had just recovered rolled away again.

The Savage pitched forward, face-first.

He seemed to struggle.

But there was clearly no strength left in him to rise.

In the instant before death, he was thinking not only that his two younger brothers would have no food tonight.

Tomorrow, they would probably be sent forward to carry earth as well.

“Stars...”

“Dongzi, move!”

Xu An suddenly lunged forward and slammed into Guo Dong, knocking him down.

The two rolled together toward the side.

Crash!

Inside the Chu walls, the trebuchets had finally fired.

Their targets were clearly the towering siege towers.

The tower Guo Dong and Xu An had been escorting was struck by two boulders almost at the same instant.

Its defenses had been reinforced, but no matter how much strengthening had been done, it could not possibly withstand an impact like that.

The siege tower snapped through the middle.

Its upper half crashed down exactly where Guo Dong and Xu An had been standing.

If Xu An had not spotted the boulders rising from behind the Chu walls and reacted in advance, the two of them might already have been crushed beneath the collapsing tower.

Many archers inside the structure were injured.

Some unhurt men crawled out immediately and began searching for cover.

Others picked up whatever lay nearby: shields, crossbows, longbows.

Then they continued fighting.

Unless the rear sounded the gong to withdraw, they were forbidden to retreat no matter what happened.

Otherwise, military law would deal with them.

The Chu trebuchets had endured for a very long time before finally firing.

When they did, they inflicted a heavy blow on the Yan.

But the Yan had prepared for exactly this.

From the trajectories of the boulders flying out of the fort, they immediately calculated the approximate positions of the Chu trebuchets inside.

The next Yan volley was clearly aimed farther beyond the wall.

The effect was obvious.

When the Chu trebuchets fired a second round, noticeably fewer boulders came over than in the first.

Once the battle began, Count Pingye stopped eating watermelon.

He watched the battlefield carefully.

Gong Wang and Gongsun Zhi beside him were equally focused.

To tell the truth, they found this kind of orderly siege, where each side struck and answered the other, extraordinarily satisfying to watch.

At the very least, it was far more effective than they had imagined.

That also meant taking East Mountain Fort would probably cost fewer lives than they had expected.

There was only one point they found somewhat strange.

The man directing this entire siege... did not appear to be the Count sitting beside them.

This...

Such an important siege, and he actually handed command over to a subordinate?

Of course, neither man would ever conclude that Count Pingye did not know how to fight.

What kind of joke was that?

Count Pingye's military achievements were brilliant. How could he not know warfare?

Besides, both men currently possessed two books.

One was Count Pingye's *Master Zheng's Art of War*.

The other was also Count Pingye's *Essential Principles of Siege Warfare*.

All they could do was admire him.

Count Pingye was apparently just as formidable at training his subordinates.

As expected of the Prince of Jingnan's personal disciple!

At that moment, two columns of cavalry from the Yan rear formation began pressing forward along the flanks.

“Count, what is the meaning of this?” Gong Wang immediately asked.

He had come here to observe and learn.

Naturally, the moment he had a question, he asked it.

The siege was currently blazing at full intensity.

Why suddenly send cavalry forward?

Count Pingye's gaze sharpened.

He knew perfectly well that the man mobilizing those two cavalry forces had to be Liang Cheng.

Truthfully, he himself did not yet understand why Liang Cheng was sending cavalry up at this moment.

But he trusted that Liang Cheng would never act without purpose.

So Count Pingye's mind began rapidly working backward from the movement.

Very soon, he spoke.

“The Chu are preparing to sortie.”

“Hm?” Gong Wang blinked.

Gongsun Zhi stood and began peering toward the battlefield.

In front of East Mountain Fort there was not only a trench and defensive ditch.

There was also a low wall standing directly before the gate.

Years earlier, when Count Pingye led troops in the defense of Snow Sea Pass, Liang Cheng had used a similar design.

That wall, combined with the trench beneath it, existed largely to block the attackers' line of sight.

The besieging army could not easily tell whether the gate had opened, or whether troops were slipping out from behind it.

That allowed the defenders to launch sudden attacks.

And because the defenders possessed trebuchets of their own, the commander directing the siege could not stand too close to the fort.

Count Pingye was a perfect example.

His command carriage had remained far in the rear from beginning to end.

Even after Gong Wang and Gongsun Zhi hinted several times that they could not see clearly from here, Count Pingye refused to move.

Liang Cheng, however, was directing the attack from much farther forward.

He clearly did not fear being smashed to death quite as much.

More importantly, judging by the rhythm of movement atop the Chu wall and the present state of the battle, he had probably already inferred what the defenders were planning.

Sure enough, behind the trench, a mass of heavily armored Chu soldiers suddenly climbed out.

They wore thick scale armor and charged madly toward the siege towers ahead.

Their true objective, however, was probably the Yan trebuchets.

To strike the Chu trebuchets inside the fort, the Yan machines had already been pushed dangerously close.

The battlefield looked enormous.

But once you broke it down, it could also be very small.

One inspired move, launched at precisely the moment the enemy's formations fell out of step, could produce miraculous results.

Yet the instant those heavily armored Chu warriors appeared, they heard hoofbeats.

Yan cavalry came racing from both east and west.

These riders also wore fine armor.

The weapons in their hands were not cavalry sabers.

They carried long cavalry lances and heavy hammers.

The Chu soldiers atop the walls spotted the two cavalry formations first and immediately loosed arrows at them.

But arrows had little effect on cavalry in such fine armor.

Unless a rider was truly unlucky, or his horse was hit, the volleys could not stop them.

The Chu heavy infantry had barely emerged when two Yan cavalry forces slammed into them in a crossing charge.

What difference did heavy armor make?

A blunt weapon backed by the speed of a charging horse came down once and simply hammered a man senseless.

After that single round of killing, the Chu heavy infantry, who had been intended as a surprise force, suffered catastrophic losses.

For a moment, they were trapped in an awkward situation where they could neither advance nor retreat.

They had slipped out secretly.

If they failed to achieve enough to force the Yan assault to halt, then they could not even return.

The gate could not be opened for them under these conditions.

Otherwise the Yan might reverse the pressure, charge through with them, and seize the entrance.

“Hoo...”

Gong Wang and Gongsun Zhi let out breaths almost simultaneously.

Gongsun Zhi sighed.

“Count, after watching this battle, I truly submit.”

They had anticipated the enemy's anticipation in advance.

The Yan were the attackers. By all rights, they should have been reacting passively at every step.

Yet the battle had somehow been fought on equal terms.

No.

In momentum and method alike, the Yan were actually suppressing the Chu.

Count Pingye shook his head modestly and smiled.

“Today, flattening the trenches and that low wall should be enough.”

A meal had to be eaten one bite at a time.

The siege towers had been pushed forward, but neither Count Pingye nor Liang Cheng intended to complete the wall assault today as well.

They would proceed step by step.

Just as they had at Central Mountain Camp.

First prepare the outer field.

Clear the obstacles.

Gongsun Zhi immediately slapped his chest.

“Count, tomorrow I ask permission to personally lead my own personal-guard Battalion up the wall!”

As Li Bao's son-in-law, Gongsun Zhi naturally possessed some of Li Bao's tigerish ferocity.

Otherwise, Li Bao would never have taken a liking to him in the first place.

As for splitting from Li Bao's son later... well.

That was a separate matter.

“Good. General Gongsun possesses such courage. This Count admires it.”

...

“Come, take a tally. Take a tally.”

Every Savage who returned carrying his bamboo basket received from the Savage King one bamboo slip representing a full meal.

But at that moment, one Savage did not hurry over to the Savage King for his tally.

Instead, he went directly around the distribution point.

His body suddenly shot forward with the speed of a hunting leopard.

At the same time, the bamboo basket in his hands split apart.

A purple longbow appeared inside.

His body leapt into the air.

Dazzling white light burst from him.

While still airborne, he drew the bow and nocked an arrow.

The arrowhead pointed directly toward the command carriage far in the rear.

Thrum!

The arrow shot out with terrifying force!

Count Pingye, who had already behaved with extreme cowardice and planted himself absurdly far back, suddenly felt his heart jump.

At that instant, the Sword Saint, who had been responsible for cutting watermelon on the command carriage earlier, appeared directly in front of him.

Longyuan, still stained with watermelon juice, flew into the air and collided with the arrow.

Bang!

The arrow shattered.

Longyuan flew back and landed in the Sword Saint's hand.

The next moment, the assassin who had disguised himself as a Savage and secretly infiltrated the returning slaves was surrounded by Yan armored soldiers.

That one arrow had probably condensed nearly all the qi and blood in his body.

He no longer had the strength to fight.

In an instant, a forest of spears pierced through him.

The Sword Saint turned and looked at Zheng Fan standing behind him.

Count Pingye, having received quite a fright, let out a long breath.

Then he shrugged.

“See? I told you I wasn't deliberately humiliating you by making you come here and cut watermelon for me. I was right, wasn't I?”

[End of Chapter 522]