They did not need to destroy the entire Wu army. They only needed to break its morale. One properly executed encirclement could accomplish what countless assaults against the walls had failed to achieve.
If the Wu soldiers found themselves surrounded from every direction and saw their commanders losing control, they would surrender.
If the first men surrendered without being killed, the others would follow. Luo He understood human behavior as well as he understood warfare. He intended to make surrender contagious.
The tenth day of war was almost entirely movement. The allied armies continued marching toward the capital. The soldiers traveled through the day, maintaining their formations and preparing themselves.
The battle that everyone knew was coming. The Wu army remained unaware of how close the end had become. The Crown Prince of Wu still believed that his greatest threat was the capital itself.
He was wrong. The real army was coming from behind. On the night of the eleventh day, the final battle began. The Emperor of Yue personally marched out.
Approximately 80,000 soldiers. His forces were divided into several formations. Jin Quan commanded approximately 10,000 elite men, moving from one side of the Wu camp to encircling them.
Duke Bian commanded all of the Emperor's cavalry. The Emperor himself led another major force consisting of archers and infantry. Meanwhile, Jun, Jin Mulan, and Ning Jia led approximately 25,000 cavalry.
They travelled from another side of the enemy position. The cavalry was divided into two major groups. The 10,000 Shia Clan mercenaries attacked from one direction of the city.
The remaining roughly 15,000 cavalry struck from another. The Wu camp was enormous. With hundreds of thousands of men inside it.
So the Crown Prince of Wu had never considered it necessary to construct a massive defensive wall surrounding the entire camp.
Why waste time building fortifications when there were enough soldiers to protect every direction? That decision would now be one of his greatest mistakes.
The camp stretched across the open field, covered by countless tents. There was nowhere to hide. And suddenly, reports began arriving from the darkness.
"Enemy forces approaching!"
"From the eastern side!"
"Another force is coming from the rear!"
"There are cavalry to the south!"
The reports were contradictory. The scouts had failed to detect the entire movement. Only a handful had managed to return. The Crown Prince of Wu immediately ordered his soldiers toward one direction.
Then another assault struck from the opposite side. He redirected his troops. Another report arrived. Another enemy formation. Another direction.
For a moment, he could not understand what was happening. Then he realized the truth. They were surrounded. His first instinct was that the Emperor's army must be the main force.
The other formations had to be distractions. And, in a sense, he was correct. Luo He had deliberately made the Emperor's force appear to be the primary attack.
The Emperor's archers and infantry struck hard enough to convince the Crown Prince of Wu that they were the decisive force. But the real blade was elsewhere.
Jun's elite cavalry force crashed into the Wu formations. Jin Mulan led her cavalry forward. Ning Jia followed.
The Shia Clan mercenaries attacked with terrifying speed following behind their two fierce female commanders.
The second cavalry formation struck from another direction. The Wu soldiers tried to reorganize. But there was nowhere to reorganize toward.
Every direction was becoming an enemy direction. Then the gates of the Yue capital opened. Princess Ning Luo had been waiting for the signal.
Her 20,000 infantry and 15,000 archers poured out of the city. The trap was now complete.
The Wu army was surrounded. For the first time, hundreds of thousands of Wu soldiers looked around and realized that they had nowhere to go.
The Crown Prince of Wu knew that he could not remain trapped. He gathered roughly 20,000 of his best remaining troops. These were the soldiers he trusted most. They formed a spear formation.
Concentrating their strength at one point in the encirclement. The Crown Prince of Wu personally led the breakout. The formation smashed into the surrounding troops. The Wu elite fought desperately.
They forced their way through. Twenty thousand men escaped the battlefield with the Crown Prince of Wu, fleeing toward the territory of the Wu Kingdom.
But the remaining army was trapped. And then something unexpected happened. The defenders stopped killing.
The emperor had issued a very specific order. Anyone who threw down his weapon and knelt was to be spared. Luo He had predicted exactly what would happen.
One soldier dropped his weapon. He knelt. Nothing happened. Another soldier saw him. He threw down his weapon. He knelt as well. Then another. And another. The surrender spread through the battlefield.
Thousands of Wu soldiers who had been terrified only moments earlier suddenly realized that surrender meant survival. Entire groups began dropping their weapons simultaneously.
The cavalry received the order to ride past those who had surrendered. No need of unnecessary killing. No slaughter of men who had already abandoned the fight.
In the end, approximately 50,000 Wu soldiers were killed during the battle. Nearly 150,000 surrendered. And roughly 20,000 elite soldiers escaped with the Crown Prince of Wu.
The great Wu army had all of a sudden ceased to exist as a fighting force. The siege of the Yue capital was over. The war had effectively been decided.
The morning of the twelfth day was unlike anything the people of the capital had seen in years. The gates opened. The Emperor of Yue entered the capital at the head of his victorious army.
The streets erupted in cheers. Flags flew from the walls. People poured into the streets to see the army that had saved their kingdom form the siege.
The Crown Prince of Wu had escaped. But he had left something behind. The Crown Prince of Yue. Most of the Emperor's commanders wanted the prisoner executed immediately.
They wanted his head placed upon a spear and carried through the capital as proof that the enemy had been defeated.
The Emperor refused. He had made a promise to the Crown Prince's mother, Consort Shia. More importantly, Luo He had advised him to spare the prince.
Luo He had already told the emperor that the way he fought wars was fundamentally different from the way other generals fought them in the current age.
"Other people might kill a prince, put his head on a spike, and call that a victory."
"They repel an invasion, capture a few commanders, and declare the war is now officially over."
Luo He added another point, his tone still casual but his meaning much sharper.
"And I don't fight wars by only counting corpses." He glanced at the emperor.
"I don't kill twenty thousand enemy soldiers and then slaughter thirty thousand civilians just to make the numbers look impressive."
He said sharply.
"Then the general returns to court, proudly announcing that he has slain fifty thousand enemies, and sends riders into every village to spread the story of his glorious victory against the invaders."
He shook his head. "I don't fight like that."
"If I say I defeated fifty thousand, then I defeated fifty thousand. If I killed twenty thousand, I'll say twenty thousand."
"I don't need to turn farmers, merchants, women, and children into numbers just so some general can look more impressive in the history books."
His expression remained relaxed. "A war should have a purpose. If killing someone doesn't help me achieve that purpose, then I have no reason to kill them."
"But if someone is my enemy, I will never pretend otherwise either. I destroy their ability to fight, and I will make sure they cannot threaten me ever again."
He smiled faintly. "That is the difference between winning a battle and actually winning a war." He smiled casually, as though discussing something completely ordinary.