Day Eight: The Sneak Attack
The six Grandmasters Elder Zhong had brought with him had been separated from the main fleet during the fighting.
One of them had already died when a ballista bolt tore through his chest.
Another had lost a foot but somehow survived. The remaining five Grandmasters left behind were still capable of fighting, and Elder Zhong had given them a final task.
They were to return secretly to the Pirate Island. Once Jin Sang departed with the main fleet, the five Grandmasters were to infiltrate the island, capture Jin Su and Jin Yang.
Then seize several of the Jin family's closest people as hostages. With those hostages in their hands, Elder Zhong believed the Jin family could be forced into submission.
The plan was simple. The execution was not. On the morning of the eighth day, the five Grandmasters secretly abandoned their larger vessel far from the island.
They transferred themselves into a small boat and waited until nightfall. Under the cover of darkness, they rowed slowly toward the distant edge of the Pirate Island without notice.
They avoided the patrols carefully, using the darkness and the distance between the patrol routes to conceal themselves.
After reaching the shore, they quickly disappeared into the island and waited.
They would not strike until Jin Sang's fleet had departed.
Only then would the island's defenses be sufficiently weakened. When night finally came, the five Grandmasters moved.
They slipped toward the fortress, silently eliminating the guards positioned along the outer defenses. Their movements were cautious and deliberate.
They had come expecting resistance, but they had also come with the absolute confidence of people who believed themselves overwhelmingly stronger than ordinary soldiers.
They reached the inner fortress. Their targets were close. Jin Su. Jin Yan. The people closest to the Jin family. The five Grandmasters prepared to strike. Then everything went black.
None of them even understood what had happened. There was no prolonged battle. No desperate exchange of blows. Literally no opportunity to summon any reinforcements.
One moment they were moving through the fortress. The next, all five were fully unconscious.
When they eventually regained their consciousness, they discovered that they had been separated.
Each man was bound tightly to a wooden board and confined inside an iron prison cell. Their restraints were so thorough that even the slightest movement was impossible.
More importantly, none of them could see the others. Each Grandmaster had no idea whether his companions had survived.
They had silently entered the Pirate Island believing themselves to be hunters. Instead, they had become prisoners before they had even realized they even were being hunted.
The one responsible was Fei. He was a pinnacle Transcendent. To someone of Fei's level, ordinary Grandmasters were little more than insects beneath his feet.
The five Grandmasters had spent days believing that their greatest danger was the Jin family's soldiers.
They had never realized that something far more terrifying was already waiting inside the fortress.
Their carefully prepared assassination had ended before it had truly begun.
Day Eight: The Fall of Wu's Offensive
While the five confused Grandmasters disappeared into captivity on the Pirate Island, the Crown Prince of Wu was facing an entirely different disaster.
The seventh day had already cost him dearly. His attempts to break Princess Ning Luo's defenses had repeatedly miserable failed.
And thousands upon thousands of Wu soldiers had died without even reaching the walls. Yet the Crown Prince refused to abandon the siege.
On the morning of the eighth day, he yet again launched another assault. This continued throughout the day.
Once again, the Human Sovereign Banner stood like an immovable wall. At the beginning of the battle, something that had already surprised Princess Ning Luo happened once again.
The twenty thousand infantrymen took up bows. They joined the fifteen thousand dedicated archers and began firing upon the advancing Wu formations.
The infantrymen were not as accurate as the professional archers, but their skill was still astonishing. Their volleys were disciplined. Their timing was excellent.
And there were simply too many arrows.
The Wu formations advanced beneath an almost continuous rain of incoming missiles from above.
When Ning Luo questioned how mere infantrymen could possess such skill with bows, Wu Shan gave her a simple explanation. "They were elite infantry."
That did not mean they had only been trained to fight with infantry weapons.
All one hundred thousand soldiers of the Human Sovereign's elite troops had been trained in the fundamental forms of ancient warfare; The spear. The bow. The sword. And horsemanship.
Their individual specialization merely determined which battlefield role they were best suited for. Wu Shan's fifty thousand men specialized in infantry warfare.
That did not make them poor archers.
In fact, many of them were better with a bow than ordinary soldiers who had been trained specifically as archers.
Ning Luo was genuinely surprised. She had known that the Human Sovereign Banner was extraordinary. She had not realized just how extraordinary.
In the current age, armies possessing this level of training were exceedingly rare. The Wu army learned that lesson through blood.
Thirty-five thousand Human Sovereign Banner soldiers stood against them, and the Crown Prince's army simply could not break through.
By the end of the eighth day, another forty thousand Wu soldiers had been lost. The Crown Prince's total casualties had become catastrophic.
His army had originally numbered roughly three hundred thousand. But numbers alone always never meant assured victory.
Of those three hundred thousand, approximately one hundred thousand had been genuine frontline troops. The remaining two hundred thousand were largely new recruits.
Young men and poorly trained soldiers with little experience of actual warfare.
Now even the elite portion had been devastated.
Only around twenty thousand genuinely capable elite warriors remained. The Crown Prince finally understood that another direct assault was impossible.
His elite soldiers had already suffered losses approaching four-fifths of their original strength.
The remaining recruits could not be expected to endure even close to the same amount of punishment. A veteran army might continue fighting even after losing half its strength.
These recruits were different. A loss of merely ten or twenty percent could be enough to shatter their discipline and send entire formations running.
The Crown Prince therefore abandoned the idea of storming the walls with his remaining army. Instead, he decided to wait. The capital was crowded with a million civilians.
Food would eventually become scarce.
Water and other supplies would decline.
The longer the siege continued, the more pressure would fall upon the defenders.
Eventually, he reasoned, hunger would accomplish what his soldiers could not.
The gates would open from within. The Crown Prince only needed patience.
But he still had one weapon he had not yet fully used. His Grandmasters.
Day Nine: Cutting Off the Snakes' Head
By the ninth day, the Crown Prince of Wu had abandoned the idea of another conventional assault. Instead, he studied the fortress. He had watched Princess Ning Luo command from the walls.
He had watched the Human Sovereign Banner commanders move their troops.
Over the previous days, he had identified the people who truly held the defense together. There were four.
Princess Ning Luo herself. The woman commanding the archers. The elderly veteran commanding the infantry. And the middle-aged commander who is also responsible for another major portion of the defense.
They were the heart of the fortress. The Crown Prince reached a simple yet effective conclusion. He did not need to kill thirty thousand soldiers.
He only needed to remove the people commanding them. If the leadership disappeared, the morale and proper coordination of the defenders would collapse.
The castle might surrender without another major battle. It was the classic strategy of cutting off the head of the snake. So, during the night of the eighth day, preparations began.
The Crown Prince gathered every remaining Grandmaster under his command. Approximately eighteen Grandmasters assembled.
Their orders were simple. Enter the fortress under cover of darkness. Find Princess Ning Luo. Kill the three guard commanders.
Then let the chaos do the rest. The Wu Grandmasters did not need to capture the walls. They did not need to fight the entire army. They only needed to reach the people who gave the orders.
That night, eighteen Grandmasters disappeared into the darkness and moved toward the capital.
None of them knew that elsewhere, five Grandmasters had already fallen into an enemy's hands.
And none of them knew that the fortress they were about to infiltrate was waiting for them. The uncertainty remained.