Chapter 106

The land beneath Fangcheng was all plains. At a glance, there was nothing to block the view nor any way to hide. So from the moment the camp was set up, the soldiers on Fangcheng’s walls learned its location.

On the first day, although Xiao Zhong did not send troops for a night assault, he ordered men in the deep night to shoot large crossbows from the walls at the soldiers on guard duty. This nearly startled all the officers awake, from the lowest to the highest ranks. Even Shen Jie emerged from her tent. As the group discussed how to respond, she spoke up, uttering only one line, and calmed the entire camp again.

“There’s no need to worry. While I know little of military matters, I dare boast that I can read minds. Unless Xiao Zhong is an utter idiot, he won’t come out to fight at this moment. That man clearly had chances to send messages out, yet all he thought about was how to make Qi Ban rescue him. Regardless of how shameless it is, this behavior alone proves he values his life extremely.”

Her prediction was spot on. The two or three arrows only wore out the stressed-out commanders for half the night and nothing more came of it. The night passed peacefully.

The crowd’s prediction was correct—the entire battle for Fangcheng, from its very first minor clash, was long and drawn-out.

It was like a centipede that died but didn’t stiffen. Even if it was known to be doomed, counting the days and hours as they awaited its demise, no matter how obvious the outcome, they just had to endure this long passage of time.

Two or three days later, the siege gradually took shape. Liu Mao set up his tent and formally invited several respected figures from the martial world, including Chen Shu, to decide on the siege strategy together.

Fangcheng was surrounded by barbicans on all sides, so no matter which direction you looked from, the defenses were no different.

If they surrounded it from every side, the army, already exhausted from a previous hard battle, perhaps didn’t have the strength left. But if they attacked from only one side, though the forces were concentrated, Fangcheng’s walls were too high and deep. Never mind the many defensive weapons on the walls—just the archers alone wouldn’t allow soldiers to climb the ladders and scale the walls in a short time. If they held out, Xiao Zhong could open another city gate and send out a cavalry unit. Whether it scattered the siege formation or attacked the rear camp, it would be easy.

After all, Fangcheng had multiple walls, but the camp had none. If both sides were to truly fight each other, it went without saying which side would fall first.

Thus, how to fight, and from where, led to endless arguments among the crowd.

In the end, it was Liu Mao, relying on the Liu family’s prestige, who forced the dissent under control and settled on the final strategy. Since attacking just one spot easily meant missing the tail, and encircling it fully didn’t leave enough manpower, they chose to attack two gates: one main and one auxiliary, forming pincer positions. This allowed mutual assistance and also guarded against Xiao Zhong circling around to ambush the camp from the sides.

This plan, proposed by an old general, was moderate—not particularly clever but reliable, with no fault to be found. With Liu Mao presiding, both sides compromised, and the objections eventually quieted down.

Halfway through the discussion, perhaps noticing Chen Shu hadn’t spoken for a long time, Liu Mao turned his attention to her, nudging his chin. “May I ask what insight Hero Chen might have?”

“I don’t have any insight!” Chen Shu replied briskly. “I’m just thinking about those arrows from the past two nights. Why do they only send two or three each night and then nothing more?”

“That was merely a feint,” one person explained to her. “It was meant to stir us up, so we couldn’t sleep well at night and wouldn’t attack as easily by day—that’s all.”

“Well, why can’t we do the same thing?” Chen Shu asked.

“You mean besiege at night?” Liu Mao pondered a moment. “That could indeed catch them off guard. But our forces are actually stronger than theirs—this battle has at least a seventy or eighty percent chance of victory. Attacking at night wagers on the defenders being totally unprepared. For that, we’d sacrifice our daytime advantage of rested energy. If Xiao Zhong is ready, then our tired soldiers at night, against his prepared troops, would mean a loss outweighing any gain.”

“No no no, I didn’t mean besieging at night!” Chen Shu shook her head, raising her voice. “I meant pretending to besiege at night—that’s not the same thing!”

Among them all, Shen Jie was the first to show interest.

“Oh? How do you intend to feign it?”

“Under the moonlight, carrying cloth or clothing, or dragging scarecrows—stakes. In short, we’ll pick nights when the moonlight isn’t too bright and pretend to launch a night raid on Fangcheng,” Chen Shu proposed. “But in reality, it’s merely returning their own tactics. Those few arrows only disturbed our night’s peace without any real effect, yet a night assault is entirely different. As long as they fail to see through it, they’re bound to use their sharp arrows… rolling stones, whatever they have.”

“…And Fangcheng, now besieged by us, stands as a lone city. For every arrow they fire now, they’ll have one less arrow when the real battle arrives,” Liu Mao slowly concluded her plan. With a soft laugh, he affirmed, “It truly is a sound strategy.”

The idea Chen Shu had casually suggested was actually put into action the very next day.

Not only was it steady (if drawn-out), but it was precisely suited to this ill-assorted army.

In conventional siege warfare, those Members of the Wulin Community were not only useless in the ranks but also likely to get themselves killed. How could martial skills manifest within such a mass? The icy rain of arrows and rolling stones targeted the entire crowd, indifferent to individual prowess.

Yet, these special nightly feigned assaults happened to perfectly suit the martial world figures with their remarkable agility.

Therefore, after enduring two nights of disrupted sleep caused by arrows from Fangcheng, they began their counter-attack.

First, they tasked their most skilled fighters to test the waters with initial night raids on Fangcheng. Exactly as agreed upon earlier, these involved coordinated strikes from both sides.

Xiao Zhong, true to form, loosed some arrows but then swiftly stopped, perhaps sensing something amiss. But by the second and third nights, under the persistent simulated assaults, more and more of the allied forces participated.

Chen Shu enthusiastically joined every single raid, with Li Chou and He Yu accompanying her, placing them in the thick of the immediate action.

By the third assault, Xiao Zhong lost patience entirely. He dispatched troops to unleash a flood of rolling stones, “forcing” the raiding force to retreat. His cowardly, self-preserving nature showed through genuinely. After easily repelling the perceived threat posed by these imperial troops, he seemed to savor the taste of victory. From then on, for every disruption, he commanded his forces atop the city walls to fight at full strength. Several times, he didn’t even wait for any challenge outside the gates before personally ordering the city gates opened and dispatching large numbers of troops to chase the attacking army back to their base.

After all, Xiao Zhong himself had fled the Valley of Villains only the night before.

Not even he knew the extent of the allied losses during the fierce battles on those first two days. Observing the pattern of these small bands dispatched daily just to harass his defenses, however, gradually eased his mind. He truly believed the trap had been sprung and that Liu Mao must have lost over half his forces. He pursued deeper with every sortie from the city walls, clashing intensely several times and escalating to genuine skirmishes.

The imperial forces strictly followed Liu Mao’s orders: engage only when necessary, prioritize survival, retreat while fighting, steadily drawing Xiao Zhong out of the city time and again.

Consequently, despite engaging Xiao Zhong several times and “retreating defeated” each instance, the allied forces hadn’t suffered the devastating losses he so eagerly sought.

After each clash, they would intentionally drop pieces of their discarded armor and equipment onto the open field, pretending they were fallen bodies. Then, exploiting Xiao Zhong’s predictable unwillingness to mount sudden assaults, they would quietly retrieve their gear during lulls in the fighting.

Finally, after more than ten days of repeated engagements, Xiao Zhong himself acknowledged that this attrition was unsustainable for future battles. He drastically reduced the use of arrows and stones. Almost as soon as a challenge appeared, he abandoned any pretense of a defense, not even bothering with token resistance on the walls. Instead, he ordered his troops out immediately to pursue deep into the field.

It was at that point Liu Mao resolved to act. During an assembly, he finally sounded the command for the decisive siege.

This attack wouldn’t involve a single diversionary force alone. From their military camp, a large contingent lay in ambush, poised to circle around and strike the city from the rear.

True, the open terrain below Fangcheng offered no cover for an ambush, seemingly thwarting any complex tactic. During prior discussions, everyone had overlooked one possibility—

—That newly erected military camp.

The camp lay far outside the city walls. Even in broad daylight, Xiao Zhong standing atop the ramparts might not make out details clearly. When armies clashed in the field, who paid any attention to potential concealment within the camp itself? Who imagined hiding troops within their own stronghold? That defied the very essence of an ambush!

The camp walls had been steadily fortified. Though still far below the height of the city walls, they had grown tall enough to conceal the ranks of troops, armed and ready, gathered behind them.

At the front, Xiao Zhong stood atop the city wall, personally beating the war drums to urge his army of Mountain Bandits to charge out. Meanwhile, the soldiers waited silently within the camp. Covered in dusty, pale yellow outer cloaks mimicking the earth tones around them, they became nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding plain.

They watched as the small decoy force ahead was encircled. They witnessed the battle’s descent into chaos and vicious entanglement.

Xiao Zhong, too, had likely exhausted his patience during these repetitive clashes. This time, attacking in broad daylight, the Vicious Bandits emerged not only brimming with fury but carrying a desperate, savage air, as if venting their pent-up rage on the foe at hand. The crash of frontlines erupted; the relentless din of clashing swords, battle cries, and agonizing roars filled the air.

At the rear of the camp, Chen Shu stood amongst the soldiers. They waited until that isolated group was fully encircled—until the Fangcheng troops formed an impenetrable, roaring human barrier around them, crushing them in, a tightening circle of brutal combat where even those inside seemed intoxicated by slaughter. The mass pressed tighter, the clamor crescendoed.

Chen Shu clenched both fists, watching for a moment. As the scene became unbearable, she turned as though to speak, perhaps to protest, to ask… at that precise second, Li Chou tapped her shoulder from behind. Simultaneously, a drumbeat rolled out, shaking the camp—

“Thud!”

—It was Shen Jie!

She finally unleashed the fury pent-up over the past two weeks. After that single, booming strike, she vaulted onto her horse. Chen Shu spun around. Shen Jie was already charging out of the camp, leading the vanguard alongside those master swordsmen from Qin Xin Bluff. They surged forward within the massed ranks, speeding directly towards Fangcheng with lethal resolve!

Chen Shu naturally refused to lag behind. Mounting her horse alongside Li Chou, she joined another wave of riders, charging alongside He Yu and the swordswomen of the Feiyun Sect, encircling Fangcheng from the opposite flank!

Such a massive commotion—how could the two forces locked in fierce combat beneath the city walls fail to notice?

Especially Xiao Zhong’s men.

Those he dispatched as his vanguard were hardly mediocre fighters. The lead general, his face smeared with both blood and sweat, gripped his lance firmly as he faced the onrushing cavalry from two directions, bracing himself for the imminent collision.

For him, today was destined to be a grueling battle!

Amidst this perilous crisis, he managed to barely quell the chaos across the battlefield, rallying his troops to reform their ranks and brace for the impact of these two cavalry forces charging from the main camp.

His grim expression revealed his conviction that these riders would surge forward, throwing the hard-won advantage into utter disarray.

Yes, and no.

Just as this leader faced the imminent threat, and even Xiao Zhong on the city walls clenched his fists, gazing down intently, the two cavalry forces did not charge headlong at the troops outside the city. Nor did they rush to aid the small contingent of troops being torn apart by the Valley of Villains’ vanguard.

—They galloped past both sides who had just disengaged from the skirmish. Then, converging from both flanks, they raced straight for the wide-open city gates!

It wasn’t until the two groups finally merged into one that someone realized: this meticulously planned ambush and assault wasn’t solely aimed at annihilating the soldiers Xiao Zhong had sent out to confront the enemy. Their wide detour was merely a feint to encircle this force; their true target was far greater—a small contingent versus an entire city. Of course, they chose the latter!

And because the Imperial troops had been given strict orders by Liu Mao not to retreat, the fierce battle earlier had placed them perilously close to the city walls—some even fought right beside the wide-open gates!

Xiao Zhong’s strategy, meant to preserve his vanguard’s strength for a swift return and later deployment, had backfired spectacularly. This yawning gateway presented Liu Mao’s forces with an effortless path straight into the city, tolling the very first knell of Fangcheng’s downfall.

The distance from the battlefield to the city gates was traversed in an instant. By the time the massive cavalry force thundered into the city, Xiao Zhong atop the walls finally reacted. “Close the gates!” he screamed frantically. “Close the gates now!!”

However, whether his panicked command could even be relayed down the walls through the makeshift ranks of the Valley of Villains’ army was doubtful at best. Even if it were successfully transmitted, it was already far too late to shut those immense gates—

The deeper the walls, the thicker the gates, and the slower they moved.

For days, growing increasingly complacent, Xiao Zhong had deliberately taken his position on the highest point of the city walls. He intended to crush the Imperial ‘arrogance’ and witness the annihilation of their troops firsthand.

Yet this spontaneous decision only provided him a clearer, more horrifying view. He watched rider after rider pour through the gates. He saw his own bandits, Mountain Bandits now fleeing in terror and panic. He saw Li Chou, lips pressed thin, shoot down the lead gate guard with a single arrow. He saw He Yu spur his horse into the entrance, wedging the massive gates permanently open with crude stone axes. He saw Xu Qiong leap nimbly, her sword flashing as she struck down guards preparing to unleash deadly boulders from the ramparts…

And he saw Chen Shu, under the strangely warm late-autumn sun, raise the crude fake sword—the very one he himself had daubed with vermilion to deceive—pointing it skyward before sweeping it down to gesture at the city, already trembling under the thunder of hooves. Behind her, a dark tide of soldiers roared, wave upon wave of battle cries crashing against the walls.

The earth shook, mountains and rivers seemed to roar, yet Chen Shu’s eyes remained strangely clear and innocent. She met Xiao Zhong’s gaze calmly for an instant before urging her horse forward and leaping through the gates.

These were not her troops. But in that moment, she was undeniably their general.