When Guan Chongsheng led his force on a day-and-night march to Tuoshan County, every face changed. Every pair of eyes went wide. Every heart ached.
The county town was on fire. Pillars of black smoke rose into the sky.
Guan Chongsheng ordered a charge into the city, only to find that the Sang forces had broken through and were slaughtering the civilians in a frenzy.
In that instant, the fury in every man’s blood erupted.
Gone was any thought of the exhaustion from a march of more than ten days. These Yanzhou men roared and surged forward.
They burst into the main street. Corpses everywhere. The Sang soldiers were clearly freshly arrived and were rampaging through the city, hunting down civilians, killing everyone they found.
At the roadside, lashed to a wooden post, Guan Chongsheng saw a body that had been disemboweled. The tattered remnants of clothing were enough to identify the victim — this man, tortured to death, was Tuoshan County’s magistrate, Du Dashan.
There was a massive wound across the abdomen; the internal organs had spilled out and hung there. The chest had been pried open, the heart ripped out and discarded somewhere unknown.
Not far away lay several men in constable’s uniforms — not one of them was intact; most had had their limbs hacked off.
“Kill them!”
Guan Chongsheng bellowed, his eyes red, and led his men into the counterattack.
In an alley, a group of civilians had been cornered by Sang soldiers. Archers were firing into the crowd. A group of women had pressed themselves to the front, using their own bodies to shield against the arrows. They held each other up; even when struck, they held on and refused to fall — because behind them huddled a group of children, sobbing in terror.
Ding Feng led his men racing in, and these men with fury blazing in their eyes brought their long sabers down in a savage flurry.
A heap of Sang bodies fell across the alley entrance. Blood pooled across the ground.
Ding Feng, drenched in blood, looked at the survivors and shouted, “Run north! Don’t look back! Your men are here — no need to be afraid!”
Then he spun on his heel and led his soldiers charging at the Sang forces in the distance.
To the south of the city, the gate had been broken through, and a great mass of Sang naval infantry was pouring inside.
Here, Guan Chongsheng’s border troops met them head-on. The two sides collided in the street with no hesitation, blades swinging forward.
The southern wall had also been seized by the Sang forces. Archers firing from the heights inflicted heavy casualties on Guan Chongsheng’s soldiers.
“Ding Feng!”
Guan Chongsheng bellowed.
“Here!”
Ding Feng drew his saber across the throat of a Sang soldier in front of him and turned to answer.
As he turned, a Sang blade came down on his shoulder. The leather armor absorbed most of the force — otherwise, half his shoulder would have been cleaved off.
Ding Feng seized the Sang soldier’s neck and yanked him down, then drove his long saber into the man’s lower back, once, twice, again.
“Take that wall!”
Guan Chongsheng shouted even as he fought. “Take that wall back for me!”
“Yes!”
Without a moment’s hesitation — blood still flowing from his shoulder — Ding Feng shouted a reply, waved his arm, and led his men charging up the slope.
The Sang forces held the high ground; a dense rain of arrows poured down. Bodies of Yanzhou men rolled back down the slope.
Yet not a single man retreated. Those who fell had bought time for those still advancing. At the cost of countless lives, Ding Feng and his soldiers fought their way up onto the wall.
They split into two groups and continued pushing forward, one left, one right.
The Sang forces had greater numbers — but they found, to their dismay, that these men of the Central Plains who had come to reinforce were as ferocious as tigers.
That was hatred. Boundless hatred.
The bodies strewn across every corner of this small county town had ignited that hatred.
From midday to sunset, the more than ten thousand Sang soldiers already inside the city were ground back, step by step, and some four or five thousand were killed in the process.
Ding Feng led his men and retook the city wall. The Sang forces retreated like a receding tide.
Standing on the wall, that blood-soaked warrior let out a thunderous roar.
That night, the Sang forces attacked again. From the middle of the night until dawn, they came wave after wave — yet those men, forged as if from iron, made the walls of this small city equally unyielding.
At daybreak, the Sang forces withdrew once more.
The walls of this small city were not particularly tall — just over two zhang, not quite three. The bodies piled below them had stacked to half the height of the wall itself.
Some were Sang. Some were our own.
“General.”
An exhausted Ding Feng walked up to Guan Chongsheng. The general was covered in blood; it was impossible to tell whether he was wounded.
Ding Feng said with concern, “Remove your armor and take a look — in case…”
Before he could finish, Guan Chongsheng grabbed him and pressed him down onto the ground.
It was just like that day on the walls of Daisheng Pass. The general undid his leather armor, drew a dagger, and cut away the cloth around Ding Feng’s shoulder wound; then he handed the dagger to Ding Feng. “Hold on.”
Ding Feng made a sound of acknowledgment and bit down on the dagger.
Spirits poured over the wound, the flesh drawn together and stitched… just like the last time, step for step — but this time, Ding Feng did not tremble once.
When the wound was closed, Guan Chongsheng let out a long, heavy breath. As he sat down, he looked as though he had not a shred of strength left.
“Everyone saw it.”
Guan Chongsheng said between ragged breaths. “When our land is overrun by the enemy, our fellow countrymen are slaughtered. The moment we give way, the enemy will treat us as livestock.”
He turned and looked out from the city wall. From a distance, groups of two and three civilians were returning.
The night before, they had retreated north outside the city. Now they were coming back.
“They must be hungry. They held on for so many days — the provisions are probably exhausted.”
Guan Chongsheng said, “Distribute the rations among the villagers.”
When he finished issuing that order, the words that followed would not come out.
He saw it.
A woman handed the infant in her arms to a white-haired elder, then bent down and picked up a sword lying beside a corpse. She walked toward the city wall.
As she walked, she called back over her shoulder: “If I don’t come back, tell my child what his father’s name was, what his mother’s name was. Tell him what his father and mother died for. Tell him to eat well, to grow strong…”
Then she climbed the wall with resolute steps.
He saw it.
A boy of thirteen or fourteen, kneeling on the ground, wailing over two bodies — weeping with every fiber of his being, a sound that could shatter the heart.
A girl slightly older than him pulled him to his feet and handed him a spear. They must have been sister and brother. The bodies must have been their parents.
The two of them, gripping the wooden-shafted spear, set out. Perhaps the long cotton skirt impeded her movement — the young woman picked up a knife and cut the skirt away below the knee, then tore off a strip of cloth and tied her hair back. She took her brother’s hand and followed in the footsteps of the woman ahead.
He saw it.
An old man leaning on a crutch, his back too bent to fully straighten, yet bending over again and again, picking up weapons from the ground. Not one arrow was abandoned.
He could not carry it all. He tied the weapons he had gathered into a bundle with cloth, then, leaning on his crutch, dragged that heavy load toward the city wall.
They were not hungry.
They were filled with rage.
“Do you all see this!”
Guan Chongsheng pushed himself up, supporting himself on the wall, and shouted to the soldiers around him: “How can we be anything less than willing to die fighting!”
“HU——!”
Every man let out a shout that shook heaven and earth — a breath exhaled in defiance, contending with the world itself for life.
The second day. The third day. The fourth day…
The Sang army launched more attacks on this small city than anyone could count. The crumbling, battered walls seemed to be reinforced by flesh and blood — every inch hard as steel.
The Black Wu Prince Kuokedi Wulianliang had been watching from a distance the entire time. At last he understood: it was not that the Sang forces were incompetent — nor were the Black Wu generals who had led armies south time and again.
These Central Plains people, rumored to be as meek as sheep, were in truth a pack of fierce tigers. When they took up weapons, the tiger grew wings — and far sharper fangs.
“Your Highness…”
The Sang naval commander Chunbian Chili walked over with an expression of poorly concealed discomfort, called out to him, and bowed his head low.
Wulianliang waved a hand, signaling Chunbian Chili not to launch into another round of self-reproach. There was no point.
“This is not your fault.”
Wulianliang said, “I also did not anticipate it. They are nothing but ordinary villagers, yet they have managed to hold on this long.”
Chunbian Chili hastened to say, “Please give us a little more time, Your Highness. We will certainly take this place.”
“Do not be so hasty.”
Wulianliang said, “What your forces lack are siege weapons. Halt the attacks for now. Send men to build the siege equipment needed. Once everything is in order, we storm the place in a single determined push.”
Chunbian Chili acknowledged the order at once. He knew the morale of his troops had been deeply shaken. If he kept forcing them to attack continuously, they would suffer even heavier casualties — and still achieve nothing against that small city.
It was nothing but a small city without imposing walls, yet at this moment, both the Sang and the Black Wu understood: walls are not the true walls. People are.
The Sang naval forces had come a great distance across the sea. They could not carry large quantities of siege equipment on their ships, nor did they have much experience in siege warfare.
After all, in Sang’s homeland, there were no fortified city-strongholds like those found throughout the Central Plains.
With the Black Wu Prince’s permission, the Sang forces finally had a chance to catch their breath. Chunbian Chili handed the task of building siege weapons to Duye Zhenhou, then walked alone to the shoreline and stared blankly at the sea.
Before coming, he had believed this would not be difficult. According to intelligence gathered by the Sang forces, the Central Plains people were arrogant and fractious, and the so-called nobles cared nothing for the lives of commoners — so why would the common people defend the ruling court?
The reports had also said that these Central Plains people possessed no real courage to resist. In most cases they would passively accept whoever became their new master.
But now, Chunbian Chili finally understood: all of that intelligence was wrong.
His army had suffered the loss of over ten thousand men outside this small city. Ten thousand men — enough to conquer dozens of places in Sang’s homeland.
Over the next ten-odd days, the Sang forces felled trees and built great quantities of siege ladders, and once again prepared for an assault on Tuoshan County.
Up on the wall, noticing the Sang forces were preparing to attack again, Guan Chongsheng turned to glance at Ding Feng’s shoulder. “Don’t get hurt again.”
Ding Feng smiled. “It’s fine — doesn’t even hurt.”
Guan Chongsheng’s gaze shifted to the distance. The Sang formations were assembling, hauling great numbers of siege ladders.
He looked back at the soldiers. Every man had already tightened his grip on his saber.
“Your armor is no good.”
Guan Chongsheng said, “If… I fall today, give my iron armor to you. Lead the brothers and keep fighting. If you fall too, pass the armor to the next man.”
He took a deep breath. “While the iron armor stands, not one inch of ground is yielded.”
“Yes!”
This time, Ding Feng gave a firm and deliberate nod.
Guan Chongsheng looked sideways at the blazing crimson battle flag on the wall, and suddenly smiled. “If in the world to come, every city flies a flag of this color, our blood will be part of it.”
Ding Feng pointed toward the land beyond the walls. “If this flag one day flies over Sang’s own soil as well, our red will be in that color too.”
“To battle!”
Guan Chongsheng raised his saber.
“HU——!”
—