Chapter 2: The Stormy Weather of Yan and Zhao Section 11

  The princess pointed at the distant big camp of the Hu people and asked Li Hong: "I don't know if they will fight again or not?"

  "It's bound to be a fight. Although Wu Yan lost more than 2,000 soldiers, he didn't suffer any crippling losses. He still has time and will find reinforcements. Once they catch their breath and recover their morale, the attack will come. But our numbers are really too few. Now there are only over a thousand who can move around freely. If we line up shoulder to shoulder on this city wall, we won't even reach the end. If no reinforcements arrive, our situation is indeed extremely dangerous."

  Ji Ming let out a sigh and remained silent.

  "Gong Yi (Ji Ming's courtesy name), we will survive. You must be able to return home and see your wife." Li Hong hurriedly comforted him. Ji Ming took out a sachet from his bosom, looked at it again and again, with deep emotions in his eyes.

  "Xiao Yu's life is very bitter." Ji Ming said suddenly, "She's an orphan, her parents were killed by the Hu people. Later she was adopted by Master Gu. After Master Gu passed away, she was alone and struggling to make a living by helping people with sewing and laundry. Do you know how I met her?"

  Li Hong shook his head. He saw that Ji Ming was very enthusiastic, and it wasn't good to interrupt him, so he accompanied him in walking slowly on the city wall, listening silently.

  The cold wind of the deep night blew on his body, icy and chilling. The smell of burnt wood wafted through the air. The giant banner above Ludong Pass fluttered in the darkness, making a loud "slapping" sound. Tomorrow, would tomorrow still be calm? Li Hong gazed out at the enemy camp visible in the distance outside the city, lost in thought.

  Li Hong has been promoted to Tunzhang. Because there were no soldiers, he and Ji Ming, two empty commanders, were responsible for patrolling the city walls at night.

  Xiong Ba returned in the dead of night. Wu Yan and Que Ji hastily escorted him into the main tent. Since the defeat of Su Li's army, the relationship between the two had clearly improved. War is not a game, it cannot tolerate even a hint of personal feelings. At this time, unity was the most important thing.

  "Can the Han people have reinforcements?" Xiong Ba asked.

  "What is currently seen on the city wall is still Tian Jing's flag, and no other battle flags have appeared." Wu Yan replied.

  "Now I'm worried about the Han reinforcements. If they arrive at Lülong Pass in time, our plan will fail." said Xiong Ba with concern.

  "Where is our reinforcement?" This was what Queji was most concerned about.

  "It will arrive in three days. The reinforcements arranged by General Dai in Baideng City are already on their way at the fastest speed possible. Because the supplies need to be transported together, it's slightly delayed."

  "Should we wait for reinforcements to arrive before attacking, or start attacking from tomorrow?" Wu Yan's mood immediately improved upon hearing that reinforcements were coming.

  "Let's start fighting tomorrow. The soldiers have regained their morale over the past few days, and they are all filled with anger, wanting to take revenge on the Suliu army at Lulong Pass." Qiao Ji took over, saying viciously.

  "The soldiers' morale is indeed high. In the past few days, several chiliarchs and centurions have come to request battle. I think we can launch an immediate attack, continuous attacks, and capture Lulong Pass in three days. When the reinforcements arrive, it will be just in time to take advantage of the momentum." Wu Yan's face was filled with excitement, his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke.

  Xiong Ba laughed and said, "Everything will be decided by Your Majesty."

  "What do you have to say?" Wu Yan knew that Xiong Ba was trying his best to maintain his authority, so he always spoke in a pleasant tone. However, Xiong Ba did have a way of fighting, and some details still needed to be clarified.

  "Although we unexpectedly lost more than 2,000 troops of Su Li, it was not a loss in vain. The troops of Su Li completed the task we had scheduled and thoroughly completed it. Now I estimate that Tian Jing no longer has any reserve troops on hand. In the first two days, we saw with our own eyes that his losses on Mei Lou would not be less than 3 or 4 hundred people. So now we launch a fierce attack on Lulong Pass with our current army of 5,000, and after several days of fighting, his defensive troops will probably be almost exhausted, not enough for our reinforcements to eat."

  "We must hurry. It's been six days since we set out for Lulong Pass. Logically, Xu Wenchang should have sent reinforcements by now." Qu Fei added from the side.

  "The adults are right. But Xu Wucheng's reinforcements are not enough to worry about, a small county town can send out how many people. Two hundred people are already unbearable, and they are all garrison infantry with no combat effectiveness." Xiong Ba said casually.

  "This morning, we still split into two routes. The adults sent a hundred soldiers, with three hundred people, to insert flags on Yunshan Mountain, pretending to be two thousand people attacking Yunlou. Just make a show of it, the main thing is to hold down the Han army on Yunlou, don't let them join the battlefield of the main city wall, and at the same time give them some pressure, let them know that our reinforcements have arrived."

  "Now Meishan's temperature is high like a furnace, and Meilou is the same. So the left wing of Lulong Pass has been completely abandoned. The Han people's frontal defense lost the support of the left wing, but for us, it was completely getting rid of the worry of being hit on the flank. We can let go of our hands and feet, strongly attack the left city wall of Lulong Pass, and keep hitting it until it collapses."

  On the seventh day, Wu Yan led his army to arrive at the foot of Lulong City. On the seventh day, Wu Yan began another siege war. The soldiers on both sides killed each other in the city and outside the city, making it difficult to distinguish between them.

  The Wuwan and Xianbei people, after their past of fear and sorrow, the ferocity and belligerence flowing in their blood soon ignited an even more intense hatred for the Han people.

  For decades, even hundreds of years, the Han people's policy towards the Hu people has been either conquest or intermarriage, while the time spent killing each other far exceeds the friendly periods. Who can say what is right and wrong? Killing is just killing. The great king of the Xianbei people, Tan Shi Huai, refused to intermarry during his heyday. He wanted to kill Han people and invade the Great Han State. This is the inherent idea and attitude of every foreign tribe towards the Great Han State. Even if they temporarily intermarried, it was because they were not strong enough and needed time to accumulate strength for the next attack. No leader of a foreign tribe would think of being at peace with the Great Han State forever. Because the Great Han State has never stopped expanding its territory. As long as there is an opportunity, the Great Han State will invade the desert and the grasslands. The Hu people have been hostile to the Han people for generations.

  Li Hong raised a large stone with both hands and smashed it down at the enemy soldiers who were climbing up quickly. Today, he had been repeating this action of throwing stones, shooting arrows, and lifting huge logs to throw onto the cloud ladder along with other soldiers for an unknown number of times. Soldiers from both sides had lost their minds a bit. From morning till afternoon, they didn't even have time to eat properly, having to run while shoving food into their mouths. The enemy had successfully breached several points and climbed up onto the city wall. Although they were quickly beaten back down, it was still a considerable blow to the morale of the defending soldiers.

  The soldiers on the cloud building drew their swords and were extremely tense, confronting the enemy outside the auxiliary wall. Both sides occasionally shot arrows at each other, and the enemy was digging soil and filling bags on a distant mountain, as if preparing for a major battle. After hearing the report, Tian Jing suspected that it might be an enemy's diversionary action, but he couldn't confirm it either, so he asked the soldiers defending the cloud building to be careful and not to worry about other battlefields.

  When the enemy's retreat horn sounded, the Han army soldiers on the city wall let out a long sigh. The hard and bloody day had finally come to an end. The Han army suffered heavy losses, and the weakness of the defending side's thin forces was exposed in the face of the frenzied enemy. Although it wasn't immediately critical, if the enemy continued to launch such fierce attacks every day, it wouldn't take long for the defenders to lose half their men and the main city wall would certainly fall.

  The Han army suffered nearly a hundred casualties, including one general.

  Tian Jing gazed in the direction of Xin Yue Lou, muttering to himself nonstop. He was praying for the Han army's reinforcements to arrive soon. According to his calculations, if everything went smoothly, Governor Liu Zheng's reinforcements should have arrived three or four days ago. But why hadn't any reinforcements from Xu Wucheng, which was closest to him, arrived yet?

  On the eighth day, as before, Wu Yan and Qiao Zhi led the soldiers in a tidal wave of attacks, with a determination to take the city or die trying. More enemies climbed up onto the city walls that day. Wang Jin, the military commander, led fifty skilled soldiers, like firefighters, wherever there was danger, they were there fighting.

  Li Hong saw Wu Fei die. Wu Fei was his particularly beloved superior, he liked to see that smiling face, treating people with warmth and kindness. Wu Fei also liked Li Hong, whenever he saw Li Hong, he would smile and always talk to him for half a day.

  Wu Fei was cut down by an enemy sword and flew out horizontally. Li Hong couldn't save him. He watched helplessly as Wu Fei was killed. Li Hong let out a weak cry. Although he exerted his divine power to kill four people in a row and rushed to the side of the enemy who had killed Wu Fei, ready to avenge him, more soldiers arrived before him and chopped the enemy into several large pieces. Li Hong knelt beside Wu Fei's body, unable to shed tears.

  On the ninth day, the fighting reached an appalling level. The enemy was truly mad. They set up even more cloud ladders, and more soldiers were thrown into the battlefield, without rest, attacking in shifts.

  Wu Yan and Que Ji seemed to have lost control as well, holding their war knives and standing a hundred steps away from the city wall to direct the troops. The last bit of strength was squeezed out of the soldiers by their respective leaders. They no longer thought about life or death, only glory, only Lulong Pass.

  Tian Jing's body was covered in blood, his black steel spear roaring as he charged back and forth among the enemy, rolling and leaping, desperately devouring the enemy's life. On the left side of the main city wall, Wang Jin and his men led all the soldiers into a fierce battle. The enemy swarmed up, too many, already no one had time to throw stones or roll logs, only hand-to-hand combat with the enemy on the city wall. On the right side of the main city wall, Chai Ting commanded the troops, barely able to cope with the situation, because this side was not the enemy's main attack direction. But even so, he didn't have a single soldier to support the left battlefield.

  Night fell, and the enemy slowly retreated back to their main camp.

  On the city wall, under the city wall, everywhere was a corpse. The Han army soldiers were exhausted and sat on the blood-stained city wall, enjoying the rare rest.

  Tian Jing gazed at Wang Jin, Chai Ting, the three of them silent. The troops' losses had already reached a point where they could no longer maintain the defense of the entire city wall. Now, there were only over 500 soldiers who could still stand on the city wall and continue fighting, including the 200 soldiers on Yun Lou. The defending soldiers on the left side of the city wall had been reduced to just over 80 after three days of intense attacks by the enemy. Tomorrow, the fortress might be breached by the enemy.

  "Sir, the enemy's losses are also extremely heavy. Looking at the troops they withdrew, there won't be more than two thousand people left. We lost half of our men, and they lost more than half, so we're still basically even in terms of numbers." Chai Ting said slowly. He was comforting Tian Jing, but also comforting himself.

  "Yes, sir. Wu Yan's troops have suffered heavy losses. Tomorrow he won't be able to launch a full-scale attack again, and he can only choose to focus on key points of attack. If that's the case, we can concentrate our defenses on those areas. We should be able to hold out tomorrow." Wang Jin said in a hoarse voice.

  "The enemy's reinforcements will arrive soon." Tian Jing said softly.

  Chai Teng and Wang Jin were dumbfounded.

  "Sir, what evidence do you have?" Chai Ting asked hesitantly.

  "Urging on without considering the consequences, attacking without regard for casualties, precisely reveals that he has support behind him. If he continues to fight like this, his troops will be depleted soon. He's not an idiot, sacrificing all his men without gaining any advantage, would he do such a foolish thing?"

  "What shall we do?" Wang Jin looked at the soldiers lying all over the ground and asked helplessly.

  Tian Jing was speechless. What could he do? Without support and soldiers, this war couldn't go on any longer and would soon be over.

  "We will be the sinners of the great Han dynasty," Tian Jing said sorrowfully. "Our descendants will have to bear this eternal shame for us."

  At this moment, dense drumbeats came from the direction of New Moon Building.

  The soldiers on the city wall were stunned at first, and then burst into thunderous cheers. Reinforcements, the reinforcements that had been eagerly awaited with eyes wide open had finally arrived. The soldiers suddenly became excited, cheering loudly, swarming to the inner side of the city wall, looking towards the direction of Lulong Tower.

  A knight in full armor, holding a large sword, suddenly appeared on the square of Lulong Fortress. The soldiers cheered again, and the joy from the heart was extremely released from one shout after another.

  Tian Jing's face suddenly changed from extreme joy to extreme sorrow, a kind of desperate sorrow.