Chapter 20: The Cost of Desperation
The Count's camp was no longer a place of noble order; it was a pit of simmering rage and the stench of charred canvas. Li Wei'an had turned the march into a grueling trek through a bureaucratic hellscape. Bridges were not just burned—they were rigged to collapse exactly when the heavy supply wagons reached the midpoint. Scouts didn't just disappear; they were found tied to trees with "invoices" pinned to their chests for the arrows used to kill them.
The final straw wasn't the rotting carcasses or the smoke. It was the Bank Raid.
Under the cover of a moonless night, Wei'an had led forty of his most desperate men through a drainage tunnel he'd mapped out weeks prior. They didn't go for the armory; they went for the auxiliary war chest. They escaped with 500 silver taels—the very silver meant to pay the Count's mercenaries.
When the Count found his chest empty and a note left in its place—"Advanced payment for your funeral services – L.W."—the last thread of his noble restraint snapped.
"I will not be bled dry by a common merchant!" the Count roared, his face purple with fury. "Ignore the formation! Ignore the scouts! We march on the Shen Fortress now! Every man who brings me a Shen head gets a double promotion and a share of the silver mine! Burn it all to the ground!"
He mobilized everything. He promised gold he didn't have and lands he hadn't conquered. His army, driven by greed and the fear of their commander's madness, began a blind, brutal sprint toward the Shen castle.
Inside the Shen Fortress, the atmosphere was thick enough to choke a horse. Men were sharpening blades in silence, and the scholarly Shen Mu was currently having a full-scale existential crisis.
"We're going to die!" Mu shouted, pacing the small strategy room. "They have three thousand men riled up into a blood-frenzy! We have wall-traps and rotting cows! We are going to be a footnote in a history book titled 'Idiots Who Thought Pulleys Could Stop an Army'!"
"Calm down, Mu. Stress is bad for the complexion," Wei'an said, lounging in a chair and tossing a grape into the air.
"How are you so calm?!"
"Because," Wei'an sighed, looking mournfully at the ceiling. "If I die today, I'm dying as a virgin. Do you know how hard that is? I'm a high-tier merchant, a strategist, and a husband, yet I haven't even cleared the 'First Base' hurdle. Your cousin won't even let me hold her hand without a legal contract."
WHACK.
A heavy leather-bound ledger slammed into the back of Wei'an's head. Shen Yao stood in the doorway, her face a terrifying shade of crimson, her hand already reaching for a second book.
"You... you absolute BASTARD!" she shrieked. "We are facing a siege, and you are complaining about your... your 'purity' to my cousin?!"
"It's a valid grievance, Yao'er! My ROI on this marriage is currently zero!"
Another book flew through the air. Wei'an ducked, and it hit Shen Mu instead.
"I am not interested in your marriage life!" Mu screamed, throwing his hands up. "Remove that word from the strategy room! No love life! No marriage! Just death!"
"No marriage, no love life," Yao'er hissed, her eyes flashing. "He is an ivory-tower scoundrel who dreams of courtesans while I'm prepping pitch-bombs!"
"That hurts, you know!" Wei'an yelled as she stormed out. "I spent the 'Jade Fund' on your boots!"
He waited until her footsteps faded, then looked at the Patriarch, who was watching from the corner. Wei'an's face instantly shifted from a goof to a shark. "Father, bring everyone inside. Abandon the outer walls. Ready the archers. We make it look like a desperate last stand. If the Count thinks we're dying with honor, he'll commit every last man to the breach."
The Patriarch walked over and gave Wei'an a "slap" on the back that nearly dislocated his shoulder. "You're misusing my authority again to bait a trap, aren't you?"
"We're winning the war, Father. Just let me handle the paperwork."
The siege was a chaotic nightmare. The Count's men threw themselves at the walls, dying in pits of spikes and choking on pepper-smoke. But there were too many of them. The Shen guards were taking losses; wounded men were being dragged from the ramparts as the Count's archers poured fire into the courtyard.
"They're breaking the gate!" Sang roared, his armor covered in soot.
The Count, standing on a hill, laughed as he saw the Shen banners faltering. "Push! One more charge and the mine is ours!"
Suddenly, a horn blast echoed from the western ridge. It wasn't the Count's horn.
Over a thousand fresh, heavy infantry emerged from the treeline, bearing the banners of the Lord of Blue-Stone City. They slammed into the Count's exposed flank like a tidal wave.
The Count's jaw dropped. "Blue-Stone? Why would they interfere in a border dispute?!"
"Because," Wei'an shouted from the ramparts, his voice amplified by a brass horn. "I promised them exclusive trading rights to the mine! I promised them grain at 20% below market value for a decade! And I gave them a 5% stake in every trade route the Shen family opens!"
He looked down at the battered, surrounded Count. The merchant's goofy persona was gone, replaced by the cold, hard stare of a man who had just closed a hostile takeover.
"Count!" Wei'an called out. "Your army is broken, your chest is empty, and your reputation is currently a pile of rotting pig entrails. Shall we discuss a settlement... or would you like to meet the priest I've pre-paid for your last rites?"
The Count looked at his crumbling lines, then at the Blue-Stone army, and finally at the "Useless Son-in-Law" who had just bought his soul. He fell to his knees as the realization hit:
He hadn't been beaten by a General. He had been liquidated by a Merchant.