The moment Zhimocan saw his tall, powerfully built subordinate Qike being seized by one hand at the ankle, swung overhead, and hurled from the wall, a sudden impulse to retreat rose within him.
Qike’s martial prowess was well known throughout the Southern Court camp. Everyone knew just how formidable that man was.
When the thousand-li scope showed Qike getting one foot over the wall, Zhimocan had thought the moment had finally come — in that instant he had been so exhilarated he almost shouted aloud.
But only one foot had made it up. Then Qike had come flying off the wall as a corpse with his head beaten to pulp.
Zhimocan watched helplessly as that massive body spun through the air and plummeted, disappearing into the crowd below.
Qike was dead — but without the sound of the withdraw horn, the Black Martial assault would continue.
And Gao Xining, still standing at the highest point, continued in her own way to direct the reserves toward wherever they were needed most.
Zhimocan raised his thousand-li scope and found the girl standing atop the gatehouse tower. Even he was shaken in this moment.
She did not seem like an ordinary young girl — she seemed like a divine maiden bathed in celestial light.
Before he had come south, the most common thing he heard from Black Martial aristocrats was their contempt for central plains people.
In the eyes of most Black Martial aristocrats, the reason their armies had not yet marched into the central plains came down entirely to the incompetence of the military commanders.
Those high-born nobles believed the central plains people were nothing more than feeble two-legged sheep — a lesser breed that could be slaughtered at will.
If truth were told, before arriving here, Zhimocan had believed the same.
The Black Martial nation’s hierarchy was rigid. Different peoples occupied different stations. In the Black Martial view, central plains people ranked just above the Bohai people.
The Bohai people found this deeply puzzling, since they were the Black Martial forces’ loyal dogs. Surely a master’s obedient dog ranked higher than the master’s enemies?
But the Bohai people would never understand: only self-strengthening leads to self-determination.
In the Black Martial view, the highest rank belonged to the Ghost Moon Eight Clans. Below them came the various Black Martial tribes. Then the steppe peoples. Then the central plains people. And at the bottom, the Bohai people.
The Bohai people reasoned that at worst, the Black Martial forces treated them as loyal hounds — how bad could that be?
What they did not know was that the Black Martial people considered dogs more noble than the Bohai — the Bohai were worth no more than slaves, and slaves were less noble than a Black Martial man’s dog.
“One of the ramps has gone down!”
Just then, Zhimocan heard a burst of cheers erupt from the central plains defenders on the wall.
One of the siege ramps, after burning for so long, had finally collapsed. As the fallen timbers hit the ground, the surging flames drove back the Black Martial soldiers nearby.
Numerous Black Martial soldiers were pinned beneath the wreckage of the collapsed ramp, unable to free themselves, and were burned alive.
The fall of one siege ramp gave the Ning army soldiers boundless hope.
Sparing no cost, they threw everything that could burn onto the remaining ramps, hauling up their stored fire oil without pause and shattering the ceramic jars against them. The cracking sound of the jars breaking apart sounded almost like music.
Half an hour later, the second ramp came crashing down with a roar. Another hour after that, the third ramp toppled as well.
But it was at this moment that the Ning army’s stored fire oil ran out.
Li Chi’s preparations of bows, arrows, and other weapons and armor had been thorough and extensive — but fire oil was inherently scarce, and what Beishan Pass had already consumed was every drop Li Chi had been able to gather over the past several years.
The two remaining ramps still appeared solid. Though charred black from the fire, the Black Martial forces knew they were their last hope and fought desperately to extinguish the flames, throwing their soldiers’ lives at it, using the soil they carried to smother the fire.
As long as those two ramps survived without being destroyed by the Ning army, even if this assault was ultimately beaten back, the Black Martial forces could always come again.
“Don’t let the Ning forces catch their breath!”
Zhimocan called out loudly.
Qike’s death had genuinely shaken him, for Qike had truly been a rare warrior among the Black Martial people.
Yet within an army of eight hundred thousand, what did it say about Black Martial strength if there was only one such warrior?
If those siege ramps were the behemoths of the battlefield, then the Black Martial empire was the behemoth of all under heaven.
In territory, population, and every other measure, the Black Martial far surpassed the central plains.
This southern campaign had been long prepared by Chizhu Liuli — even Chizhu Liuli’s death had not stopped the Black Martial advance. How much less would the loss of Qike, who was in the end not that crucial a figure?
Losing Qike had shaken Zhimocan somewhat, and he felt a pang — but the Black Martial forces had many more generals like Qike.
“The first general to lead troops onto the city wall, I will personally appeal to the Khagan to reward him. I will request the Khagan grant him a noble title of the first rank!”
At Zhimocan’s declaration, the Black Martial generals who had not yet mounted an assault let out a roar of excitement.
Very soon, like a tide sweeping the earth, the Black Martial fresh forces surged once more toward the walls.
No one could have anticipated that this contest over the siege ramps would last seven or eight days in total.
For those seven or eight days, whether by day or night, the fighting never stopped for a single moment.
Zhimocan understood clearly that the Black Martial forces’ greatest advantage lay in numbers, so he rotated his attacking waves without pause, intent on grinding down the Ning army’s combat strength and eroding their will to resist.
He used hundreds of thousands of troops in rotating assaults, while Li Chi’s side rotated their own units in the defense.
Eight days later, of an original force of over thirty thousand, more than half had been killed in battle. And among those still alive, there was virtually not a single person who had not been wounded.
At this moment, everyone on the wall knew that their time defending this national gateway was drawing close to its end.
The Ning army and Dachu frontier forces combined had lost more than half of their thirty-thousand-plus soldiers — a blow severe enough to rock the Ning army to its core.
Yet what even the Black Martial forces could not believe was that to take this single small central plains frontier pass, they had already lost one hundred thousand men.
Ten to one in casualties — this ratio, at last, showed the Black Martial forces what central plains men truly were.
Every Black Martial soldier who had fought in this battle would probably never again look down on central plains people for as long as they lived.
Those high-born Black Martial aristocrats who had arrived with the same arrogance as Zhimocan now understood at last why it was the central plains that had always stood in opposition to the Black Martial empire rather than any other people.
Why the Iron Crane cavalry, acclaimed as the sharpest force under heaven, had submitted to them. Why the Bohai people, known as the most ferocious fighters and killers, had submitted to them. While the central plains people whom they had dismissed as two-legged sheep had stood tall and unbowed this entire time.
That was not a strength cultivated by any one nation. That was an indomitable spirit running in the very bones of an entire people.
War had never been the thing that broke central plains people. No one could use war to make central plains people submit.
“They’ve reached their limit.”
Zhimocan looked with some unease at the man before him — a man wearing a white-gold long robe whose attire alone declared his identity — and chose his words with care.
Within the Black Martial empire, only members of the imperial family could wear garments in that combination of colors.
This man was called Kuokedi Liancheng, the youngest uncle of the current Black Martial Khagan, Kuokedi Yijilu, and a prince of the Black Martial empire.
Because the tiny border pass of Beishan Pass had held out for months, the Black Martial Khagan had erupted in fury.
That fury was compounded by the fact that the Southern Campaign’s commander, Chizhu Liuli, had died before a single real battle had been fought — a humiliation the Khagan found intolerable.
And so he had sent Prince Kuokedi Liancheng with two thousand imperial guards to the southern frontier battlefield.
He wanted to know whether Beishan Pass truly could not be taken, or whether someone simply wasn’t trying their hardest for the empire.
Kuokedi Liancheng had arrived at the southern campaign army’s position on the very day before Qike was hurled from the wall.
He had arrived in the night but had not announced his presence to avoid disrupting the fighting. He had watched the entire night of battle unfold with complete clarity.
And so in that moment, Kuokedi Liancheng too understood — it was not that no one was trying. It was that trying their hardest was still not enough.
The absolute resolve that the central plains people had shown moved even this Black Martial imperial prince, accustomed as he was to looking down on all beneath him.
By seniority, he was the Khagan’s uncle — yet in truth he was only four years older than Kuokedi Yijilu.
Standing at the front of the army, thousand-li scope raised to watch the fighting on the walls, Kuokedi Liancheng agreed with Zhimocan’s assessment.
Zhimocan had arrived as the most arrogant of the group. His unique status meant he could afford to disregard even the commander Chizhu Liuli.
But before this prince, his so-called nobility counted for nothing.
Because this Royal Highness, beyond his imperial title, was also one of the master sword practitioners of the Sword Gate.
“You are not wrong. The central plains people have reached their limit.”
After lowering his thousand-li scope, Kuokedi Liancheng said: “They no longer have any fresh reinforcements to send in. As you can see, their reserves now consist entirely of wounded men. When a defender falls in battle, a lightly wounded man fills his place.”
Zhimocan bent his head in deference and said: “Your Highness, my assessment is therefore that, barring any unforeseen development, Beishan Pass should fall within one more day at most. All of Prince Ning Li Chi’s available forces are concentrated here. Breaking Beishan Pass is equivalent to taking the better part of Jizhou — this conclusion does not appear to contradict the late Commander Chizhu Liuli’s prior judgment.”
Kuokedi Liancheng gave a slight nod: “Order a full assault. I am answering in the Khagan’s name for the promise you made to the soldiers — the first general to lead troops onto Beishan Pass’s walls will receive a first-rank noble title.”
Word spread quickly. A promise from the prince carried an entirely different weight from a promise by Zhimocan.
The Black Martial forces went into a frenzy. They could see victory on the horizon — perhaps the Ning army, pushed to its very limit, would collapse completely in the next moment.
The great dark mass of the Black Martial army surged forward once more, as if the earth itself were being swallowed layer by layer by storm clouds.
“Diudiu…”
Xiahou Zuo walked to Li Chi’s side and let out a slow breath: “The reserves are gone.”
Li Chi made a sound of acknowledgment and tightened his grip on the black blade.
Xiahou Zuo breathed deeply, then forced a faint smile: “Shouldn’t you be leaving? As long as you’re still alive, there’s still hope for the future…”
Li Chi looked at him once, then returned his gaze to the enemy pouring toward them from outside the walls.
“Do you think I would go?”
Li Chi pointed outside the walls with his black blade: “As long as there is still one central plains man standing upright here, not one foreign invader takes a single step into my homeland!”
“HU!”
Along the entire wall, all the Ning army soldiers — every last one of them wounded — gave one unified shout.
They were still not afraid.
The Black Martial forces charged up the ramps once more. Those two ramps that they had preserved at the cost of uncountable lives were their path to victory — a fitting tribute to the name Zhimocan had given them:
Heaven’s Ladders.
“Kill the enemy!”
Li Chi let out one roaring cry, then cut down a Black Martial soldier who had rushed within reach.
It seemed the Black Martial forces could no longer be stopped from breaching the wall. Then let them come to the wall — and let them learn that every inch of this ground is held by the pride of central plains people.
The dark enemy tide pressed in with terrifying speed. This battle felt as if it were drawing near its end.
“General Dantai Yajing, arriving!”
From below the walls, a Ning army relief force came charging up like madmen. They swept onto the walls like a river of fire.
“Officer Lian Xiwu, arriving!”
On the other side, a red battle standard rose and unfurled. People came like a surging wave, their momentum like a flooding torrent.
—