Free Web NovelChapter 409: Chapter 344: The Food Is Gone, the Formation Is Broken. Don’t We Still Have People?
Guo Xin stared at the tightly shut city gates, then glanced at Meng Hao beside him. His expression seemed to say, ’So, where’s Xiao Mo’s promise to open the gates at the appointed hour?’
Meng Hao looked a little awkward. He stepped forward and, empowering his voice with Spiritual Power, shouted up at the top of the wall, "Frost King! The time we agreed upon has come. Why don’t you come out and meet us?"
Meng Hao’s voice echoed across the fields below the city wall.
After a short while, Li Jing walked up to the battlements. He addressed Meng Hao and the others, saying, "My general suddenly came down with a chill yesterday. He asked me to inform General Guo that it would be rude to receive a guest in such a weakened state. Please, wait another two days. Once my general has recovered, he will personally open the gates to receive the general and atone for this discourtesy."
Hearing Li Jing’s words, Guo Xin’s brow furrowed. He gripped the reins tightly, his chest heaving with rage.
’A Golden Core Realm Cultivator catching a chill?’
’What kind of nonsense is Xiao Mo spouting?!’
’And he wants me to wait another two days!’
’I might be able to wait two days, but can Bishui City?’
At this point, how could Guo Xin not know? It was all just a ploy by Xiao Mo.
From the very beginning, Yanmen Pass had never intended to surrender.
He was just using every trick in the book to stall for time!
Furious to the extreme, Guo Xin said no more. He stared at Yanmen Pass like a wolf, then swept his hand forward. "All troops, attack the city! We will not rest until either we or Yanmen Pass are destroyed!"
The siege resumed.
With less than eight days remaining and enraged at being played for a fool by Xiao Mo, the Wei Army’s commanders were furious. They launched their assault with even more reckless abandon than before.
But on Xiao Mo’s side, with only eight days left until the thirty-day mark, dawn was in sight. This sliver of hope was all that sustained the last vestiges of the soldiers’ will. How could their determination to defend the city be any weaker than before?
Before long, the "sickly" Xiao Mo once again appeared on the battlements, continuing to command the battle and fight against the Wei Army.
Seeing Xiao Mo, Guo Xin was so enraged he wished he could scale the walls himself and personally chop off Xiao Mo’s head.
In the days that followed, Guo Xin no longer cared about casualties.
’If Yanmen Pass doesn’t fall and the remaining eleven cities in the Southern Realm are lost, the Wei Kingdom will be completely on the back foot. What are these casualties in comparison?’
Guo Xin divided his five-hundred-thousand-strong army into five groups, taking turns to assault the city and giving Yanmen Pass no chance to breathe.
The terrain around Yanmen Pass was the only thing preventing him from deploying even more troops for the assault.
Otherwise, Guo Xin would have even requested another half a million reinforcements to simply drown Xiao Mo with an army of a million men!
Under the relentless assault of the Wei Army, Xiao Mo supervised the battle day and night. He didn’t eat a single meal, constantly deploying troops and coordinating rotations.
Fortunately, Xiao Mo had also managed to conscript over ten thousand men from within Yanmen Pass.
Although these ten thousand-plus men were citizens of the Wei Kingdom, their lives had been made miserable by a succession of inhumane City Lords and the exorbitant taxes levied by the Sovereign of Wei. Xiao Mo’s actions these past days—distributing congee daily and forbidding his soldiers from harassing the populace—stood in stark contrast to their former rulers.
They felt that rather than letting Yanmen Pass return to the Wei Kingdom and go back to living like animals...
...it was better to throw their lot in with General Xiao and fight!
Besides, if they actually managed to help General Xiao defend the city, wouldn’t the rewards from the Qin Kingdom be generous?
In addition, to motivate the soldiers...
...Xiao Mo had someone draw tally marks on the city wall each day.
These marks recorded the number of days they had held the city, with a new line added for each day that passed.
Seeing the tally marks nearly reaching the thirty-day goal, many soldiers felt that if they could just hold on a little longer, they would make it through.
「With five days left until the thirty-day mark.」
The city’s food supply had nearly run out.
The soldiers had already been fighting on half-empty stomachs, which was difficult enough.
But now, the daily rations weren’t even enough for that, to say nothing of the Wei Army’s nonstop, round-the-clock assault.
There were several barren mountains within Yanmen Pass. Every wild fruit, animal, and Fierce Beast on them had been hunted to extinction; you couldn’t even find a single rat.
Many of the trees and grasses on the mountains had been stripped bare, their leaves and roots boiled until soft and eaten to fill stomachs.
Because of the food shortage, Xiao Mo would often look for opportune moments to lead the Snow-Trampling Dragon Cavalry out of the city. They would clash with the enemy briefly, providing cover for soldiers to drag the carcasses of fallen warhorses from both sides back into the city.
Some soldiers of the Snow-Trampling Dragon Cavalry wept as they ate the flesh of their own Snow-Trampling Horses that had died on the battlefield. But even so, they had to force themselves to chew and swallow quickly.
The congee given to the city’s civilians grew thinner by the day, any hint of oil or substance long gone.
But they didn’t complain. They all knew how hard things were for the Northern Wilderness Army; the fact they still had anything to eat at all was a blessing.
In fact, in similarly brutal sieges of the past, some generals at this stage would stop seeing the city’s inhabitants as people, but as food...
Yet this General Xiao still provided them with food every day. They were starving, but at least they weren’t dying.
Even Li Jing, a veteran of many great battles, felt despair creeping into his heart as he watched this unfold.
’Only five days left.’
’But these five days feel so long...’
’Can we really survive these last five days?’
「Two more days passed.」
Only three days remained until the thirty-day mark.
By now, the food was completely gone.
Most critically, under the enemy’s intense assault, the Yanmen Pass City Defense Array was only a step away from shattering.
Once the Yanmen Pass array fell, it meant the enemy’s Cultivators could launch an attack from the sky.
If Xiao Mo continued to hold his ground within the city now, it would be tantamount to sitting and waiting for death.
...
「Late on the night of the twenty-ninth day of the siege.」
In the death row cells of Yanmen Pass, Xiao Mo stopped before a cage.
Covered in dust and stained with grime and blood, Xiao Mo sat cross-legged on the ground, taking swigs of strong liquor.
Lian Li watched him. Though Xiao Mo looked utterly exhausted, his eyes remained as clear as lake water. frёewebηovel.cѳm
"Is the liquor that good?" Lian Li asked.
"It’s alright." Xiao Mo nodded, his voice calm. "There probably won’t be any liquor to drink in the Underworld."
Hearing Xiao Mo’s words, Lian Li, the former City Lord of Mati City, was taken aback. "Yanmen Pass... can’t hold out any longer?"
"The food ran out long ago, and the City Defense Array is at its limit. There’s no point in holding our ground any longer." Xiao Mo finished off a sweet potato, stood up, took out a key, and unlocked the cell.
But even with the cell door open, Lian Li remained inside, watching Xiao Mo without a trace of joy.
"You can go."
Xiao Mo tossed the key to the ground and turned to walk out of the dungeon.
"Xiao Mo!" Lian Li clenched his fists and shouted at Xiao Mo’s back. "As you said, the food is gone, the array is broken, and the soldiers are exhausted! The city is bound to fall today. How will you defend it?"
"The food is gone, the array is broken. But aren’t there still people?"
Xiao Mo’s words drifted back from behind him.
Xiao Mo walked out of the dungeon.
The morning sun of the thirtieth day was already dyeing the horizon red, like the blood-soaked soil of the endless fields below the city.
