With the wall-walk’s cover gone, the Shu garrison fell under that storm of arrows, and the casualties were devastating.

For this campaign into Shu, the Ning army had readied everything within reach — including these siege crossbow arrays that had rarely been deployed before.

Li Chi had started commissioning them from the Yuzhou weapons workshops roughly two years ago. Crossbows, in a way, were the most specialized of all ranged weapons. He’d chosen Yuzhou precisely because the greatest weapons workshop in the old Chu empire had been there. The young Marquis Cao Lie had spent the past two years barely leaving Yuzhou, personally overseeing the project for Li Chi.

Compared to the repeating crossbow, these siege crossbows served a broader range of battlefield roles — in open-field engagements, in siege assaults, in mopping-up actions, they were highly effective.

Like the four-man crossbow now being used to suppress the Shu garrison. In terms of sheer power, only the bed crossbow exceeded it — and the bed crossbow fired far more slowly. Once the four-man crossbows were ranged in, each volley cut across the wall-walk like a scythe. A row loosed — a row fell. Without the battlements for cover, whatever armor the defenders wore meant nothing against this.

The Shu soldiers were among the better-equipped forces in the land — their leather armor thicker than most. It didn’t matter. The casualties were still horrific.

Gao Guangxiao, nearly seventy years old, stood unmoving on the wall. He knew he was the timber bracing the dam. If he stepped down, the dam would break.

“Marshal!” General Han Zai shouted. “Please, come down!”

Gao Guangxiao glanced at Han Zai and didn’t answer. He reached back into his quiver and kept shooting.

The Ning arrow screen held the wall-walk under suppression while the assault column moved steadily closer behind a wall of shields. Without heavy crossbows on the walls, the shield wall had no natural predator. Ordinary arrows trying to break through it were like bees trying to sting a tortoise through its shell.

Yet Gao Guangxiao refused to stop. He had to lead by example.

His years had cost him stamina, but not by much compared to ordinary soldiers — and what remained was still far above average. And his aim, after a lifetime of battle, was still razor-sharp. He’d fought more battles than these soldiers had heard of. Through the brief gaps that opened in the moving shield wall, his arrows found their way into the men within — one of the few sources of meaningful casualties the shield column sustained.

“Marshal!” Han Zai called out, red-eyed, one more time.

At this density of Ning arrow cover, the fact that the old marshal hadn’t been hit yet was already a miracle. Miracles didn’t last forever.

Han Zai and the others were frantic. They wanted to physically drag him away — but they feared his wrath.

“Go back to your post,” Gao Guangxiao said, loosing another arrow without looking up. “You are a general. A general is the anchor of his men, the certainty in their hearts. The way you look right now — you’re rattled. What does that do to your soldiers? If you’re rattled, they panic worse.”

“Marshal!” Han Zai pressed desperately. “The moment you step down, I swear I’ll go straight back and hold the line.”

Gao Guangxiao glanced at him. “I am the commander. How can a commander retreat? You are their steady heart; I am yours.”

He loosed another arrow that seemed to have eyes — threading itself through a gap in the shield wall with uncanny precision. But a handful of arrows slipping through couldn’t stop the shield wall’s steady advance toward the base of the wall.

“They didn’t bring a battering ram,” Gao Guangxiao called out loudly. “They’ll use scaling ladders. The Ning King Li Chi is too careful with lives — moving a battering ram is slow, and he’s afraid of the men pushing it dying. So it’ll be ladders.”

“But the moment their ladders go up, the arrow screen will stop — and that’s when we strike back.”

He looked at Han Zai again. “You’re telling me to come down now — do you want to hamper me, or do you want to lose Tiger Wall Pass?”

Han Zai and the others knew further argument was pointless and returned to their positions.

Gao Guangxiao waited. Waited for the Ning shield wall to reach the base and open — that moment, when Ning soldiers came rushing out carrying scaling ladders, would be the best opportunity to inflict real damage. If they could hammer the Ning troops hard enough in that instant, the attackers would fall back.

The moment he’d been waiting for arrived. The Ning shield wall — like a column of immense centipedes — crawled to the base of the wall.

The front of the shield wall opened, just as he’d predicted. But he didn’t see soldiers rushing out with ladders.

He saw archers. Just archers.

Different from before — these archers from inside the shield wall were quickly lighting their arrows. Each arrow had an oil-soaked cloth strip bound to it. The moment the flame caught, fire leapt high.

And in that moment, Gao Guangxiao finally understood — but it was too late.

The Ning shield wall hadn’t escorted assault troops to the walls. It had escorted incendiaries — men here to set fire to the straw matting and timber hanging on the outer face of the wall.

For three or four days, under the Ning trebuchets’ relentless barrage, the Shu soldiers had found no opportunity, no means, to douse the matting with water.

Two days earlier, when Xiahou Zhuo had grown slightly impatient and asked Li Chi if they could begin the assault, Li Chi had said: wait two more days.

What he was waiting for wasn’t just the defenders to run out of standing room on the wall-walk. He was waiting for that straw matting and timber to dry out.

Fire arrow after fire arrow arced in. The tinder-dry straw matting ignited instantly. The straw lit the hanging timber beside it. In less than half a quarter-hour, the fire along the wall had become a river of flame suspended in the air.

The roaring fire and billowing black smoke drove the Shu garrison back, step after step. No one could hold their position in that heat for long.

Li Chi raised his spyglass and watched the fire take hold. Then he turned to Shen Shanhu. “They can go up now.”

Shen Shanhu immediately answered, turned, and ran down the slope.

Shortly after, to the sound of horns, the second wave of the Ning assault moved in force toward Tiger Wall Pass.

This time, the Ning army brought siege equipment. Soldiers pushed great battering rams forward, and tower wagons rolled alongside them. Even at their unhurried pace, with the flames’ assistance, the defenders couldn’t inflict serious casualties on the column.

Once the siege towers entered range, Ning archers on the platforms began shooting down into the smoke and fire at the Shu soldiers.

Gao Guangxiao, who had fought for half a century, let out a long sigh in that moment — because the fire and smoke had driven even him back.

For the first time, he felt with absolute clarity how old he was. Old enough that this battlefield had left him behind.

His thinking could no longer keep pace with these young people.

This man, who had once been undefeated, felt only boundless desolation.

“Escort the Marshal down from the wall!” General Han Zai bellowed, surging forward and grabbing Gao Guangxiao by the arm, pulling him toward the steps.

But the wall-walk was buried in sacks — the way down was anything but clear. They stumbled and lurched forward; some men, in their panic, went down rolling and tumbling.

Tower wagon after tower wagon pressed up to the outer face of the wall. The Ning archers’ fire raked the retreating Shu soldiers, making their withdrawal even more desperate.

*Thwack.* An arrow struck Gao Guangxiao in the shoulder — fortunately the armor stopped it from going deep. But it badly frightened his men. They formed a tight ring around him, shielding him with their bodies as they withdrew.

Gao Guangxiao looked back. Through the raging fire and smoke, his soldiers were falling one by one.

“Is this my failure…”

The words left him with the same desolation as his heart.

It truly wasn’t his failure. Every conventional defense measure he could have taken, he had taken. But he’d spent so many years away from active service, so many years without commanding an army.

And the Ning army he was facing didn’t fight by conventional rules.

The battering ram reached the gate. Soldiers swung the great timber back and released. The heavy log slammed into the gates with a thunderous crash. The wooden crossbars braced behind shuddered in unison.

In the chaos, Han Zai and the others guided Gao Guangxiao down the ramp. The moment they reached the bottom, a deep boom sounded from the gate tunnel — the gate had already been hammered out of shape.

“Marshal, quickly!”

Han Zai shouted and waved to his personal guard, escorting Gao Guangxiao toward the rear gate. Tiger Wall Pass sat in a mountain gorge; beyond the pass was a canyon stretching over ten li. Already, many Shu soldiers were streaming toward the rear gate, and the passage became choked and disorderly.

Han Zai grabbed a whip and began lashing out frantically, trying to clear a path for the old marshal.

“Stop hitting them! Stop!”

Gao Guangxiao called out, his face hollow.

“I am already abandoning my post and fleeing. What right do I have to punish them? What right do I have to ask them to make way for me?”

As he spoke those words, perhaps something inside that old marshal was cutting like a knife.

In the end, under Han Zai’s protection, Gao Guangxiao retreated out of Tiger Wall Pass. Barely a moment after he passed through, the gates were broken. With no defenders willing to hold the wall any longer, the fall of the walls was only a matter of time. The Ning main force poured in through the broken gate; fleeing Shu soldiers were still surging outward through the rear. The close-quarters fighting inside the city began — the style of battle the Shu soldiers least wanted, fighting in the very place they’d tried so hard to hold.

Outside, on high ground.

Li Chi lowered his spyglass and let out a slow, long breath. With Tiger Wall Pass broken, there would be no truly hard battle for the next several hundred li. After Tiger Wall Pass fell, the Ning army would be able to threaten Meicheng itself, the seat of the Shu regional administration. This victory would leave Pei Qi with an enormous headache.

Li Chi stepped down from the high ground at a measured pace and gestured toward Tiger Wall Pass. “We go in.”

Behind him, the Ning forces moved forward — a great column, cavalry in the rear looking like a long dragon, unhurried.

At Xiushan, the Ning army had won without fighting. At Tiger Wall Pass, they had won with overwhelming pressure and minimal casualties. These two victories would deal a devastating blow to the Shu army’s morale. Not just the soldiers — even the generals would be shaken. Because the most senior, most venerable commander Shu could put in the field, Gao Guangxiao, had been beaten in a single engagement.

If even Gao Guangxiao couldn’t beat the Ning King, what did that mean for the rest of them?

Inside the city, the Ning soldiers were sweeping up those who hadn’t managed to escape.

Xiahou Zhuo rode at the front, swept his gaze around, and called out in a great voice: “Throw down your weapons and live!”

The words spread from soldier to soldier throughout the city, echoing through every lane. *Throw down your weapons and live.* More and more Shu soldiers chose to surrender.

Old Marshal Gao Guangxiao looked back at the pass, still billowing with smoke and flame, and sighed.

—