Thirty-Nine Loyalty to the Country Twenty-Five Xuanhe Gate

  "Kill! Kill......" Under the Xuanhe Gate of the Imperial City of Yanjing, the sound of killing shook the sky. The first to arrive was Guo Yao's thousand cavalrymen, who immediately launched a fierce attack.

  The imperial city is located in the southwest corner of Yanjing City, with four gates. Following the Khitan custom, the east gate, Xuanhe Gate, was considered the main gate and the only one that could be entered or exited. Therefore, when Guo Jing took over Yanjing, he first seized Yingchun Gate, because Yingchun Gate and Xuanhe Gate were at the two ends of a straight line from east to west, with the shortest distance between them. As long as they occupied the eastern gate of Yingchun, they could directly attack Xuanhe Gate in the west, thus advancing into the palace.

  As the Song army was a surprise attack, of course, they could not carry large siege equipment, such as bed crossbows, assault vehicles, and catapults. Even the only ten or so cloud ladders were made up of bamboo ladders searched from the homes of the common people.

  "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu states: The highest form of warfare is to attack the enemy's strategy, next is to disrupt their alliances, after that to attack their army, and the lowest is to besiege their cities. Since ancient times, it has been easy to defend a city but difficult to attack it, with a small force able to resist a large one. According to Mozi's argument, a defending force of over 4,000 people can withstand an attacking force of over 100,000, even if they are besieged.

  In other words, in terms of military strength alone, the 6,000 Song troops were not superior to the 1,000 Liao troops defending the imperial city. The only thing they relied on was a "surprise attack", but this surprise attack also dissipated with the dawn. Moreover, the "moral high ground" they thought they occupied was also shattered by their own evil deeds.

  "Wait for my order!" Little Wu's team was the first to arrive among the "Dare-to-Fight Warriors". He hid behind a corner of a civilian house, peeking out and looking around. Behind him, row after row of soldiers stood in formation, each with an expressionless face, all participating in a siege for the first time.

  "General Yue, how's the situation?" Wang Gui held up his shield with one hand and grasped his wooden sword with the other, cautiously making his way to Xiao Wu's side, his voice trembling slightly.

  A few hundred steps ahead is the Imperial City, with its dark blue city walls appearing stern and hard under the sun. Behind the battlements are the gleaming black armor and fluttering flags, with countless guards standing watch. A silence that makes one's heart palpitate, a silence between battles!

  The troops of Guo, who had just attacked, have retreated to their hiding place, leaving behind over a hundred human and horse corpses in the open area below the imperial city. Each corpse was filled with long arrows, and the armor and shields they wore were all pierced through. At such a distance, archers couldn't shoot that far, even if they did, they wouldn't be able to pierce through...

  "Discard the shields!" Xiao Wu said, throwing away his own shield and turning to look at some bewildered soldiers, adding, "The Liao people have strong crossbows, shields are useless, they'll only become a burden."

  The crossbow is the strongest of bows! With a mechanical trigger to launch, both power and range are far greater than those of the bow, but it's not as flexible as the bow. The earliest single-soldier crossbow was the "horizontal pull", later developed into the "vertical pull" and "waist pull". The "divine arm" crossbow invented by the Song people is the ultimate form of single-soldier crossbow, with a vertical pull that can be triggered by foot, shooting over 340 steps, and can penetrate half of a willow tree.

  The bed crossbow, which combined multiple crossbows into one frame, was the most powerful type of crossbow. Ranging from two to four bows, and from small to large sizes, its power was immense. The three-bow repeating crossbow, also invented by the Song people, could fire twelve arrows at once, and was said to be able to shoot over a thousand paces. It required the strength of a hundred men to draw back the string, and was used for attacking cities, where it would cause walls to collapse and buildings to crumble, its force unstoppable.

  That divine arm crossbow and the three bow mother crossbow, Xiao Wu had only seen them in "Wujing Zongyao" but hadn't personally witnessed them. Now he couldn't rely on books alone, as pictures can't fill one's belly. In fact, these two types of weapons weren't just unseen by Xiao Wu, even among the officers and soldiers, there were hardly a few people who had seen them.

  The Song army was known for its meticulous military preparations, and indeed a group of capable people invented many top-notch weapons. However, after presenting the prototypes to the imperial court, they would often lock up the prototypes along with the blueprints in a warehouse, for two reasons: firstly, the training was too tedious, and the lazy Imperial Guards were not willing to put in the effort; secondly, they feared that the enemy countries would steal the designs and use them against their own country. In the end, the prototypes ended up rusting away into useless scrap metal and paper, leaving later generations to sigh in admiration at what could have been.

  "These Liaodong dogs can really hold on! Let me take a few brothers to test the waters!" Zhang Xian, unaware of the danger, jumped up and down excitedly, his mouth unknowingly biting onto a blade of grass, from then on becoming his habit every time he went into battle.

  "Hold on! Guo's troops are more familiar with the terrain than we are, let him make the first move!" Xiaowu was still young, but his personality had always been calm and composed. After two years of battles in Jianghu, he had long passed the stage of acting impulsively.

  Only then did the pharmacists under Guo's command launch their second wave of attack. They somehow managed to find eight or nine flatbed carts, and on top of each cart they piled layer upon layer of thick quilts. Underneath each cart were five or six soldiers, half squatting and half crouching, pushing two wooden handles as they moved forward in a tilted manner.

  "Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......" The Liao army on the imperial city wall fired their crossbows again, but they couldn't penetrate the cotton-padded carts.

  "Good plan!" Xiao Wu couldn't help but praise, and turned to instruct Wang Gui a few words. Wang Gui nodded, led more than ten team members to retreat backwards.

  At this time, the "Dare to Fight" troops who were acting as vanguards arrived one after another. Seeing that the Liao army's crossbow arrows were pressing in urgently, they also adopted a defensive and observational attitude.

  Xiao Wu's eyes were fixed intently on Master Guo's movements, and in this instant of life and death, learning a little more meant having one more chance to survive.

  Those soldiers pushed the cotton-padded cart steadily forward, one by one picking up the cloud ladders that had been thrown down earlier, getting closer and closer to the city wall, gradually entering the range of the bed crossbow's inner dead angle, the only ones who could threaten them were the Liao army archers.

  Finally, the large vehicle stopped at the foot of the imperial city. After all, there were only a few dozen people who could not deploy to attack the city, but instead formed small strongholds and used bows to suppress the Liao army's bowmen.

  As the Liao army's arrows grew sparse, Guo's troops let out a loud shout and charged towards the imperial city on horseback. Five or six hundred men rushed past, and as they approached the foot of the wall, they dismounted and split into two groups: one joined in with bowfire to suppress the enemy, while the other set up cloud ladders against the city walls. With no battering ram available to smash open the gates, their only option was to climb the walls and launch a fierce assault.

  "General Yue's troops, shall we attack?" Zhang Xian reminded Xiao Wu as he saw the "Dare to Fight" squads on both sides rushing out of their hiding places.

  "Hmm..." Xiao Wu saw that Wang Gui and the others had not returned yet, hesitated for a moment, but the opportunity was fleeting, how could he miss it? He waved his hand immediately, "Attack!"

  In a moment, the Song army that had attacked the foot of the imperial city was nearly two thousand strong, but there were only over a dozen cloud ladders. With many soldiers and few ladders, most of them stood at the foot of the city wall, shouting and shooting arrows upwards in a rain-like manner. As a result, the Liao army's archers were completely suppressed and could only shoot cold arrows, unable to form a formation that would cause massive casualties.

  Xiao Wu's team arrived later, and they couldn't even reach the edge of the Lianyun ladder. Naturally, he couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Unlike the other teams that let their soldiers shoot arrows randomly, he gathered a few good archers like Zhang Mangdang and Zhao Huizi around him, specifically targeting the Liao army's exposed heads for precise shots. The remaining soldiers' arrows were kept as reserves.

  The moment of close combat had arrived, with two soldiers holding the foot of each cloud ladder, and those climbing the ladder in a single file, one hand holding a shield, the other hand holding a horizontal sword, using both hands and feet to climb straight up.

  Xiao Wu watched as the soldiers climbed up to the three-zhang-high city wall like a centipede, but instead of the expected rolling stones and wooden beams falling down, all he saw were flying arrows, and he couldn't shake off the feeling that something was off.

  It was slow to speak, but soon the city wall suddenly extended a long pole, with a horizontal blade that was frighteningly large, and pushed down along the cloud ladder. A ruthless scene appeared, the Song army on the cloud ladder seemed to be cut off their hands and feet like a sickle, one by one losing their attached bodies, along with countless severed hands and feet falling from the air, wailing in unison...

  Immediately afterwards, the drums on the city wall sounded loudly, and countless boulders and logs fell down, crushing the Song army's defensive formation at the foot of the city. The Liao army archers took advantage of this opportunity to shoot wave after wave, while the counter-attacked Song army could only raise their shields for self-protection.

  Even Xiao Wu was experiencing such a brutal siege for the first time. In comparison, the siege of the 36 counties by the Three Kingdoms was like child's play. This is what real ferocious resistance looks like, this is what a desperate battle to the death truly is!

  Due to the uncontrolled shooting just now, the Song army's arrows have been almost exhausted and it is difficult to organize a decent counterattack. The situation in Xiao Wu's team was slightly better, with a considerable number of arrows left under his control, but the soldiers were also shouting and panicked because they had heard his order to abandon their shields and had nowhere to hide. Even someone as meticulous as Xiao Wu had miscalculated this time.

  "Take cover!" Little Five reacted extremely quickly, rolling into the corpses of his comrades who were attacking the city, picking up the shields they left behind and tossing them to his own soldiers.

  Zhang Xian and Xu Qing followed closely behind, wielding their swords to deflect arrows while picking up shields to throw to their teammates. As for the comrades who were still lying on the ground but not yet dead, they couldn't care less.

  "Ah?" Some of the soldiers saw that the shields thrown over still had severed hands and arms on them, and they were all frightened out of their wits. They could only grit their teeth and raise them up, naturally prioritizing survival.

  The Liao army on the city wall suddenly shouted loudly, and a group of armored warriors rushed out from a high corner tower, guarding a female general with golden helmet and armor. She held a purple bow in her hand and had a yellow silk umbrella above her head, showing her noble status.

  "Empress Dowager Xiao! Empress Dowager Xiao!" The soldiers under Guo's command began to stir, all recognizing the female general as none other than the regent of Liao, Empress Dowager Xiao.

  Xiao Hou, although noble as the ruler of a country and a woman, at this critical moment when the nation is in danger, personally went to the dangerous place, led the soldiers forward, it can be seen that although the Khitan have declined, but the blood nature of the bone remains. Xiao Hou's chariot assisted the army, causing the Liao army's prestige to greatly recover, and the rolling stones and wooden clubs were again smashed in a chaotic manner.

  The Song army's shield wall was no longer tenable, and several teams were born with fear, retreating first. As soon as they retreated to the open area, they saw a hail of crossbow arrows, pinning this hundred or so Song soldiers to death on the spot. It turned out that they had entered the range of the Liao army's strong crossbows, forming a death zone, and the reinforcements behind could not come up, while the vanguard could not retreat.

  Thus, the Song army under the city was in a dilemma, and under the attack of the Liao army's light and heavy weapons, they fled in disarray, only seeking to save their lives. The only safe place was those eight or nine large carts covered with felt, but originally, each cart could only hold five or six people, and at most, it could only squeeze in twice as many people, how could it shelter thousands of people?

  The Liao army, however, was determined to wipe them out and switched to using fire arrows. The cotton bedding on the carts was highly flammable, and in an instant it turned into balls of fire, burning the Song soldiers below and causing them to scatter and flee, becoming live targets.

  Everyone is waiting for me to be slaughtered, my subordinates are dying and injured one by one, Xiao Wu has no way out, with only his martial arts skills, he wants to kill the enemy but there's no one to fight, anxious like a caged beast, unwilling to die at someone else's hands, even in death he wants to die gloriously, suddenly bursting into anger, he let out a loud shout: "Kill!"

  He said with his mouth biting the knife, with both hands alone supporting a cloud ladder that had been pushed down, regardless of everything, he was about to climb up. In this situation, it was no different from sending himself to death. Suddenly, he heard a shout behind him: "Captain Yue, be careful!"

  A gust of wind suddenly rose, Xiao Wu instinctively knew there was danger and jumped away to dodge, but forgot that one foot was on the ladder. The foot slipped, stepped into the empty space, and got stuck. He couldn't help but think: "I'm done for!"

  Just as Xiao Wu closed his eyes and waited for death, he felt himself being enveloped by someone and flown out horizontally. A loud "boom" sound came from just a few feet away. He opened his eyes to find that he was still alive. A huge boulder had smashed into the spot where he had been standing just moments before, creating a massive crater. If it hadn't been for the person who saved him, he would have gone to meet King Yanluo (the god of death). Looking up at his savior, he saw that it was Zhang Xian!

  "Form a circular array!" Little Five, who had been circling in front of the Ghost Gate Pass, regained his composure. He still bore the lives and deaths of dozens of comrades on his shoulders; how could he lightly give up? A flash of inspiration struck him, and he issued the command.

  The circular formation is to surround the troops in a dense circle, with half of the troops holding shields overlapping each other, and the other half of the troops putting away their shields for backup, thereby increasing the defensive density. Once someone is injured or killed, one person will be replenished to come up. This circular formation is one of the "Eight Arrays of Our Dynasty" recorded in the "Wujing Zongyao", also known as the "Chē Lún Zhèn" (Wheel Formation), a ring-shaped defensive formation, originally used as a supplement to the long spear battle array for field battles, but was cleverly applied under the city by Xiao Wugu.

  Inspired by the small five, he instructed his subordinates to hold up their shields and form a giant fish-scale shield on top of a team's head, greatly increasing their resistance. Even if some shields were shattered, they would be replenished with spare ones, as long as there were enough shields, self-protection was no problem. No matter how many rocks or logs came crashing down, this circular formation could withstand them for the time being.

  The remaining "Dare to Fight" teams had all practiced the circular formation, and unexpectedly, it had such an effect, and they all imitated the formation to protect themselves. It was Guo Yao's subordinates who had returned to Song not long ago that were unfamiliar with this formation method and could only stare blankly.

  "General Yue's troops are here! Brother Wang, Brother Wang, they've arrived!" Xu Qing shouted excitedly from the outer circle.

  Also in the outer circle, Xiao Wu heard the sound and looked over to see a dozen or so square objects slowly passing through the open space. The Liao army's crossbow arrows were unable to penetrate them. From the angle of the ground, it was clear that each object had a soldier at its bottom, with Wang Gui leading the way.

  "Wang Gui, come this way!" Xiao Wu also shouted with great joy. It turned out that those square objects were ordinary people's square tables, covered with several layers of thick quilts soaked in water, not only to resist the enemy's sharp blades but also to prevent fire attacks. This was an idea inspired by Xiao Wu's experience with cotton-padded carts, and the materials were easier to obtain.

  The Guo medicine teacher who was pressing the back of the array also saw it, and with a slap on the forehead, he quickly ordered his troops to do several hundred. Before long, under the imperial city of Liao's strong and cruel army, the open space was filled with wet blankets like tortoiseshell tables, each table topped with three or four people. At the same time, Gao Shi-xuan's troops, who had already looted enough, also arrived one after another, but they came to seize credit.

  The reinforcements arrived, and the morale of the Song army, which had been suppressed under the city, was revived. Especially among Guo's soldiers, they were extremely brave, shouting loudly, setting up cloud ladders, and attacking the city in waves. The city head where the two armies met became a slaughterhouse, with flesh and blood flying everywhere.

  It was a fierce battle, fighting until the sunset was like blood, bloody people and bloody city. The Song army paid more than one-third of the casualties to finally tear through the Liao army's defense, occupying a corner of the city head, building fortifications, and letting subsequent troops enter the city to prepare for a deep attack.

  As the situation was already hopeless, many Liao soldiers had given up resistance in despair. Suddenly, the drums sounded loudly, and the Xuanhe Gate, which had been tightly closed, suddenly opened wide. A team of Liao iron cavalry rushed out, waving their swords and spears, and charged towards the Song army that was climbing the ladder to the city wall.

  The Song army, caught off guard, had no idea that the enemy had secretly deployed such a large force, and immediately fell into disarray. At first, they were still able to resist, but later, seeing the Liao army pouring out of the city gate in increasing numbers, far exceeding the original estimated 1,000 troops, with bright armor and a fierce momentum, it was clear that this was an elite force, yet they couldn't figure out where the enemy had come from.

  Xiao Hou immediately sent someone to the front line to order Xiao Gan's troops, who were facing the main force of the Song army, to return and support him. Xiao Gan led several thousand soldiers back to reinforce, entering the imperial city from Danfeng Gate, which was the only gate not occupied by the Song army, and suddenly launched a surprise attack, using the same tactic against them!

  The first to retreat were the Imperial Guards, these Song dynasty officials who had been like wolves preying on the people, but when faced with the ferocious Liao army, they became like sheep seeing a wolf and turned tail without regard for the divided forces of Guo Wei's troops and the "Dare-to-Fight" soldiers, causing the nearly successful Song army to collapse!

  The first to taste the bitter fruit was also the Forbidden Army. How could the people of Bianjing, who had just been killed and looted, let them off? They rose up and attacked, beating the fallen dog, coordinating with the Liao army to launch a siege in the streets and alleys.

  Kuo Yao-shih's troops and the "Dare-to-Fight" units were also dispersed, but holding onto the hope that Liu Kuang-shih's reinforcements would arrive soon, they stubbornly defended the city and engaged in a fierce battle with the Liao army.

  "Whoosh!" Xiaowu, covered in blood, leapt into the air and caught a thrown javelin. He hurled it back, pinning a lone Liao soldier under his horse. Landing on his feet, he notched another arrow and scanned his surroundings cautiously before signaling to Wang Gui, hiding nearby, to bring over the horses.

  Suddenly, a gust of wind came from behind, Xiao Wu turned his head to the side, and a brick flew past his shoulder. The arrow in his hand was about to be shot towards the source of the sound, but he stopped abruptly. He saw a tender face, and the "enemy" was just a child.

  The child, seeing the little fifth arrow pointing at him, was first startled. When he saw that he put down his bow, he let out a sigh of relief but didn't show any gratitude. The hatred in his eyes didn't weaken in the slightest. Suddenly, he shouted loudly: "Quickly come and catch this Song Dynasty dog!"

  In the clear and crisp Mandarin accent of children, Xiao Wu ran wildly with his short legs, met up with Wang Gui and several others, and led the horses to disappear into a secluded alley.

  This is the third day of entering Yanjing, and Xiaowu's team has only a dozen or so people left. What makes him most angry is that nearly half of his men were killed by the people of Yanjing who came to rescue them. Xiaowu couldn't understand no matter what, until he saw the corpse of Gao Shiyan lying on the street and exposed to the public. He finally understood a truth: be kind to the people and never be an enemy of the common people!