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(A/N: I hope everyone give my new novel Skyrim a chance and added it to their library!)
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The orders flew from the tent, carried by ashen faced messengers. Across the interior of Tong Pass, reserve units, men who had been resting, tending siege engines, guarding stores, were roused and formed into grim, hurried columns. They were not sent to reinforce the walls, but to march directly into the maw of the beast, towards the roaring chaos emanating from the left flank.
At the breach, the scene was a tableau from a newer, more violent age. Lie Fan and his generals were a island of terrifying efficiency in a sea of swirling combat. His halberd was a constant, lethal brutal arc, cutting down any who came near.
Zhang Liao fought with the disciplined fury of a avalanche, each blow of his halberd breaking formations.
Huang Zhong's glaive was a silver thread of death, precise and unerring. Taishi Ci's twin rod hammer were a whirlwind, Guan Yu's Green Dragon Glaive swept in great, cleaving strokes, and Zhang Fei's roar was as potent a weapon as his serpentine spear.
Yet, even for them, there was a limit. The Wei tactic was no longer one of martial contest, but of sheer, suffocating mass. They did not attack in heroic duels, they came in waves, a relentless press of humanity.
Spearmen thrust from the second rank over the shoulders of the swordsmen. Archers on stable ground behind the chaos lofted arrows in high arcs that fell indiscriminately on both sides. It was messy, brutal, and effective in its single minded goal, which was to halt the advance.
Lie Fan, surrounded by his elite guard, felt the pressure. He could kill ten men with a single sweeping blow, but twenty more would shuffle forward to take their place, their eyes wide with terror but their bodies compelled by the iron discipline of a dying army's last command.
A forest of spear points constantly sought gaps, a hail of arrows clattered against his and his bodyguards' armor. For the first time since his breakthrough, his forward momentum ceased. He was not in danger, his newfound power and the skill and strength of his generals saw to that, but he was contained.
He fought with a cold, calculating mind even amidst the carnage. His eyes, missing nothing, assessed the flow. The Hengyuan regular soldiers were pouring in through the breach behind him, engaging the endless ranks of Wei troops, but the advance was measured in feet, not yards.
The ground was a churning morass of blood, mud, and shattered bodies. Each step forward for his army was paid for with a dozen lives.
'Is this trade worthwhile?' The thought cut through the battle focus. He watched a Hengyuan squad push forward bravely, only to be swallowed and cut apart by a counter surge of Wei troops.
The perimeter around the breach was expanding, but slowly, and at a grotesque cost. The Wei were fighting with the desperate, sacrificial fervor of men who knew they were already dead, their only purpose to make their deaths expensive.
He could stand here all day, a demigod slaughtering mortals, and perhaps by nightfall his army would hold a few more acres of ruined fortress. But the cost in his soldiers' lives would be immense. And for what? To take Tong Pass two or three days earlier that he have planned? He had the ultimate tool for this, and it was not his halberd.
With a final, devastating sweep that cleared a temporary space around him, he caught the eye of Zhang Liao nearby.
"Hold this ground!" Lie Fan's voice, amplified by his inner energy, cut through the din like a clarion call. "Do not push! Consolidate! Turn this breach into a killing field, but do not bleed ourselves dry for their rubble!"
He then began a controlled withdrawal, not away from the fight, but back towards the mouth of the breach, his bodyguards and generals forming a moving, impenetrable shield around him. His message was clear, they would hold the beachhead, but they would not bankrupt the army to expand it today.
From his new position, with a clearer view back to his own lines, he signaled to a nearby captain.
"Captain! Go to Master Sima Yi on the command platform! Tell him the enemy concentrates all reserves at this breach. Their entire force is massing here to delay us. Tell him to recalibrate the siege engines. I want the bombardment to resume at dusk, not on this breach, but on the walls to the right and left of it. They have stripped their defenses to feed this meat grinder. Let us see how they enjoy being pounded while their army is packed into our killing field tomorrow."
He turned back to the seething, bloody stalemate, a cold smile touching his lips. Cao Cao wanted a war of attrition in the breach? Very well. Lie Fan would give him attrition, but not the kind he expected.
He would let the Wei army gather in the open killing zone, then rain hell upon them from the flanks. He would grind them not with his own men's lives, but with their own desperate, crowded mass and the relentless, impersonal fury of his cannons.
The race for time had taken a new, even more merciless turn. Cao Cao was sacrificing soldiers for more time so his western garrisons could enter Chang'An in time.
While Lie Fan was about to demonstrate that he could sacrifice those same soldiers without spending a single extra drop of Hengyuan blood, simply by turning the place of their sacrifice into a carefully designed abattoir.
The fall of Tong Pass was assured. Now, it was a matter of how many of Wei's remaining veterans would be left to retreat to Chang'An, and how broken they would be when they arrived.
The captain after receiving the order, run fast as his lungs burning and tunic soaked with sweat that was both his own and the spray of others, fought against the human tide. He was like a salmon swimming upstream in a river of steel and determination.
All around him, Hengyuan soldiers poured through the monstrous breach, their faces set in the grim focus of men entering a butcher's shop. He had to dodge around shield walls, slide past lumbering siege engineers carrying bundles of stakes, and dart under the leveled spears of advancing columns.
The roar from the breach was a constant, physical pressure, a symphony of clashing metal, dying screams, and bestial shouts.
Finally, he burst free from the press and into the relative order of the rear lines. He didn't slow. His legs, fueled by duty and the terrifying authority in the Emperor's eyes, carried him in a dead sprint across the churned earth towards the command platform. It stood like a skeletal hand against the darkening sky, draped in the banners of Hengyuan.
Taking the wooden stairs two at a time, his boots pounding a frantic rhythm, he reached the top and nearly collapsed. Gasping for air, he dropped to one knee before Sima Yi, his head bowed. "Master Sima Yi! A message… from His Majesty… at the breach!"
Sima Yi turned from his contemplation of the battlefield map. His expression, usually one of detached calculation, was etched with a deep seriousness.
The other strategists, Chen Deng, Zang Hong, Pang Tong, and Xu Shu, clustered around, their own faces mirrors of grave concentration. The festive confidence of the new year feast was a distant memory, this was the raw, unvarnished mathematics of survival and slaughter.
The captain relayed the order, his words coming in ragged bursts. "The enemy… masses all reserves at the breach… a meat grinder… His Majesty commands… bombardment at dusk… not on the breach… but on the walls to either side… they have stripped their defenses…"
Silence followed the report, broken only by the distant, muffled thunder of the ongoing melee. Xu Shu was the first to break it, his pragmatic mind immediately seizing on the most terrifying variable.
"Bombardment at dusk? With our own Emperor and vanguard still engaged in that chaos? The margin for error is a razor's edge. A miscalculated shot, a shifting wind… we could be killing His Majesty and our own."
Pang Tong, ever the contrarian, scratched his scruffy chin, his eyes alight with a dangerous kind of excitement. "Risky, yes. But also… brilliantly vicious. Cao Cao crams his men into a killing zone, thinking he's trading lives for time. His Majesty proposes to collect the debt without spending our own currency. It could shatter their will completely."
He then nodded, adding a crucial caveat. "But Xu Shu is right about precision. No hwachas. Their arrows fall like rain, impossible to direct with the accuracy we need. They could blanket the entire area, friend and foe alike."
Chen Deng, always thinking of systemic efficiency, saw an opportunity. "Then we use the hwachas elsewhere. Target the right flank wall, where their archers are still stationed and firing volleys into the breach. Suppress them. Clear the skies for our men while the cannons handle the structure and the… crowd control."
Zang Hong, running mental logistics, nodded. "A split bombardment. Cannons and trebuchets on the flanking walls adjacent to the breach, structural and psychological terror. Hwachas on the distant archer positions, tactical suppression. It maximizes terror and minimizes immediate risk to our front line."
All eyes turned to Sima Yi. The chief strategist had remained silent, absorbing the analysis, his gaze fixed on the map where the breach was now a jagged tear. He could visualize it, the packed masses of Wei soldiers, the narrowing funnel of death, and the calculated arcs of incoming fire from the flanks.
"The plan has merit," Sima Yi said finally, his voice low and precise. "We acknowledge your caution, Xu Shu. It is the bedrock of this operation, precision. The cannons and trebuchets will target the wall sections immediately adjacent to the breach. By the engineers' calculations, the fall of shot will be concentrated on the Wei reserves marshaling behind the front line of melee, and on the defenders still on those wall sections. His Majesty and our champions, fighting at the very mouth of the breach, should be outside the primary impact zone."
He paused, the 'should' hanging in the air, a silent admission of the risk. "Pang Tong and Zang Hong, you will oversee the cannon and trebuchet batteries. Double check every elevation, every powder charge. I want surgical strikes, not area saturation."
He turned to Xu Shu. "as for you Xu Shu, you will command the hwacha batteries. Your target is the right flank archer towers and battlements. Silence their bows. Give our men in the breach one less thing to fear from above."
Sima Yi then looked at each of them, his gaze unwavering. "I will give the order to fire. The timing is everything. Dusk provides shadow and confusion, but also limits our vision. We must be perfect."
As the sun bled out in the west, staining the sky the color of a deep bruise, the order was passed. A strange, anticipatory hush fell over the Hengyuan siege engines lines, a stark contrast to the roaring inferno at the breach.
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 36 (203 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 1,010 (+20)
VIT: 659 (+20)
AGI: 653 (+10)
INT: 691
CHR: 98
WIS: 569
WILL: 436
ATR Points: 0