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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.
Pang Tong moved among the cannon crews, his unkempt appearance belying the sharp geometry of his instructions. "Not the breach, you dolts! Fifty paces to the left! See that batch of Wei banners clustering? Make them into paste!"
Zang Hong did the same with the trebuchet teams, using flags and shouted measurements to adjust the massive arms.
On the right, Xu Shu oversaw the spanning of hundreds of hwacha racks, the rustle of thousands of arrows being fitted a sinister whisper.
On Sima Yi's signal, a single red lantern was raised on the command platform.
Then, the world exploded once again.
But this time, the fury was focused. The deep throated BOOM of the cannons was slightly off to the left and right of the breach's epicenter.
The trebuchet stones sailed in high, punishing arcs, not towards the churning melee at the breach's mouth, but crashing into the crowded staging areas behind the Wei front lines and onto the wall walks where fresh troops were rushing to join the fray.
The effect was horrific. One moment, there was a dense column of men, the next, there was a crater filled with crimson mist and shattered limbs. Stones slammed into the already weakened walls beside the breach, sending fresh cascades of rubble down onto the packed Wei soldiers below, burying dozens alive.
Simultaneously, with a sound like a million tearing sheets, the hwachas unleashed their swarms. The arrows, darkening the twilight sky, descended not on the breach, but further down the right wall.
They scythed through the ranks of Wei archers, pinning men to the battlements, clearing whole sections in a grisly harvest. The deadly rain of arrows onto the Hengyuan troops in the breach abruptly slackened, then ceased.
For the Hengyuan soldiers fighting at the forefront, the experience was surreal and terrifying. The ground shook with a different, nearby rhythm. The deafening blasts were no longer distant thunder but close enough to feel the heat and pressure wave.
They saw, in flashes of firelight, entire sections of the enemy's formations simply disintegrate into red mist and flying debris. Chunks of stone and wood from the impacted walls rained down around them, a new, deadly element in the combat.
There was no safe direction. The initial reaction was a heart stopping moment of shock, were they being fired upon?
But as the pattern became clear, the destruction hammering the Wei reserves and flanks, not their own front line, the shock turned into a savage, desperate kind of relief.
They ducked and weaved, not just from Wei spears, but from the shrapnel of their own emperor's wrath. They fought on, now with an added layer of frantic caution, knowing that the god of war had stepped onto the battlefield personally, and his methods were indiscriminate in their grand design.
Lie Fan, in the thick of it, felt the shift most acutely. The first nearby cannon blast was a physical shock, a concussive wave that rattled his bones even through his enhanced constitution.
A piece of shattered masonry, launched like a missile, whizzed past his head, close enough to hear the whistle. He saw the terror in the eyes of the Wei soldiers facing him, a terror that was now twofold, the demon before them, and the apocalyptic fury dismantling their world from the sides.
His order had been precise, but the chaos of battle defied perfect control. The cacophony was overwhelming, making shouted commands useless.
He locked eyes with Zhang Liao, then Huang Zhong, then Taishi Ci, and made a sharp, cutting gesture across his throat, disengage.
They began to fight in a new mode, not to kill, but to create space, to push back the press just enough to allow a controlled, fighting withdrawal back through the breach. It was a delicate, deadly dance.
The Wei troops, panicked and pounded from the sides, were both more desperate and more disorganized, making the extraction a brutal slog.
The bombardment was a continuous roar, a backdrop of annihilation. As Lie Fan and his armu finally broke clear of the worst press and reached the relative safety of the breach's outer slope, he allowed himself a moment to survey the nightmare.
It was a vision from a pitiless god, his soldiers, brave but bleeding, pulling back, and the Wei army packed into a hellscape, being systematically pulverized from the flanks by cannon and stone, their cohesion dissolving into sheer, screaming panic.
The retreat was completed under the relentless symphony of siege engines. It was only once he was back at the command tent, the ringing in his ears beginning to subside, that the full report reached him. The adjutant's face was grim.
"Your Majesty… the bombardment was a success. Wei reserves are shattered. But… there were casualties. On our side. Not from enemy action. But from flying debris, from collapses caused by the near impacts… perhaps a few from miscalculation. Several score dead, more wounded."
Lie Fan closed his eyes. The cold calculus of command warred with a very human pang. These men had not fallen to enemy steel in glorious charge, but to the collateral fury of his own strategy. They were the price of the shortcut, the fine print in the contract with total war.
He let out a long, slow sigh, the weight of the day settling on him. "Document their names," he said, his voice quieter now, the resonant power softened by fatigue and regret. "See that their families receive the full death compensation from the imperial treasury. And… ensure their households are marked for the 'Two Generation Protection.' Their children, their grandchildren, will gain stipend for education and wil never face unjust levy."
"The state will be their guardian. Not to make them rich," he added, his gaze sharpening, "but to ensure that the price their father or grandfather or brother paid tonight is not followed by a life of hardship. Their sacrifice buys stability for their line. That is the least an empire can do for those caught in the gears of its destiny."
The order was given, a small measure of humanity in the vast, dehumanizing machine of war.
The adjutant bowed deeply, moved despite himself. Word of such mercy would travel farther than any proclamation.
Sima Yi and the others entered soon after, faces full of expression. Sima Yi Calm, Pang Tong looked exhilarated, Xu Shu exhausted, Chen Deng thoughtful, and Zang Hong serious.
"The walls beside the breach have suffered grievously, Your Majesty," Sima Yi reported. "Another day of such treatment and entire sections will peel away like rotten bark. The Wei concentrated too many men forward, their own crowd became the anvil to our hammer."
Xu Shu added, "Their archers on the right wall are nearly gone. Our Hwachas devoured them."
Lie Fan nodded, though his gaze lingered on the casualty scroll. "Victory that costs too much becomes another form of defeat. We must finish this swiftly."
Outside, the bombardment finally ceased as full night fell. The silence that followed was absolute, profound, and terrifying.
That night the camp did not sleep. Engineers repaired the guns, priests walked among the tents burning incense for the fallen. In the medical rows physicians and nurses worked by lantern light, sawing arrows from flesh and sewing men back into something resembling life.
Lie Fan walked those rows in plain cloak, speaking softly to the wounded. Some tried to rise at his presence, he pressed them down with gentle hands.
The sight of their emperor kneeling beside common soldiers spread a warmth stronger than wine.
One young spearman, face pale as paper, whispered, "Your Majesty… did we win?"
Lie Fan thought of the ruined walls, of the hedgehog that still waited at Chang'an, of Cao Cao gathering his final strength.
He squeezed the boy's hand. "Today we learned how to win without drowning in our own blood. That is a greater victory."
Meanwhile, in the darkness, Tong Pass was no longer a fortress, but a charnel house, its left side a smoldering, blood drenched ruin. The race for time had been advanced, at a cost.
Cao Cao's western garrisons might still be racing for Chang'an, but the army that was to have been their main armu was now broken, its survivors more ghost than soldier.
After that, slowly dawn came gray and cold. From the command platform the damage to Tong Pass was undeniable, great wounds gaped on either side of the breach, towers leaning like broken teeth. Wei banners hung tattered, and fewer men showed themselves along the ramparts.
Sima Yi approached Lie Fan with a bow. "The next phase, Your Majesty?"
Lie Fan studied the pass as a craftsman studies a flawed vessel. "Continue the pressure. Rotate assaults to keep them guessing, but no more reckless pushes. Let the guns speak first, always."
He turned to his advisors. "Cao Cao wished to trade lives for time. We shall refuse the bargain. Every stone we break is one less veteran he brings to Chang'an. We will deny them rest, and that rest is only another crack in his hedgehog's spine."
Receiving his orders, the advisors and generals saluted, renewed purpose in their eyes.
The dawn of the new day at Tong Pass was not heralded by a sun, but by fire. Following Lie Fan's orders, the rhythm of destruction resumed with a chilling familiarity.
The great wounds on either side of the catastrophic breach were no longer just targets, they were vulnerabilities to be exploited, fissures to be widened into canyons.
The cannons and trebuchets, now seasoned veterans of this brutal work, resumed their symphony. Their thunder was no longer the shocking announcement of a new age, but the methodical, grim tolling of a bell for a dying fortress.
The hwachas joined in, their swarms of arrows now focused on the left side as well, adding a deadly, hissing rain to the percussive impacts of stone and iron.
They were not just killing men, they were systematically dismantling the idea of safety, proving that no inch of wall, no shadow of a parapet, was beyond the reach of Hengyuan's wrath.
Inside Tong Pass, the reality was a waking nightmare. The defenders, those who hadn't broken the night before, were now ghosts haunting a ruin. They flinched at every distant whoosh, every deep throated boom.
They no longer watched the skies for arrows, they watched the walls themselves, waiting for the section they stood upon to shudder, crack, and vomit them into the abyss.
The relentless, focused bombardment was a form of torture, eroding not just stone, but the last vestiges of unit cohesion and martial spirit. Each impact was a reminder, you are not defending a fortress. You are waiting to be buried in its tomb.
Hundreds of miles to the west, beneath the same indifferent sky, the siege of Tianshui had reached its own, quieter crescendo. Here, there was no world shattering cannonade, but the pressure applied by Fa Zheng and Meng Da was no less effective. It was the pressure of a python, deliberate, patient, and inescapable.
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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