The autumn wind howled across the plains east of Guangling, sweeping along with it the acrid smoke that still rose from the contested fortresses. That stretch of land had turned into a merciless chessboard where the pieces never stayed in place—what Luo Wen seized at dawn, Wei Lian would snatch back by dusk. Day after day, the cycle repeated, a grinding rhythm of conquest and loss that tore apart not only the soldiers locked in combat but also the peasants trapped in between.
Wei Lian had uncovered the essence of survival. He knew he could not allow the fortresses, once lost, to solidify under Luo Wen's grip. Each stronghold had to become a recurring battlefield, a bottomless pit of blood and exhaustion that slowly drained the empire's might. So when the first fortress in his western sector fell, he quietly assembled ten thousand of his best—battle-hardened veterans and swift squadrons of light cavalry accustomed to forced marches and lightning raids.
On a moonless night, these men moved like shadows, guided by local peasants who knew every goat trail and hidden pass. When they arrived, they discovered Luo Wen had left no more than five hundred men behind, relying on the aura of fear and the empire's reputation to guard what walls still stood. The assault was swift, bloody, and merciless. Surrounded and overwhelmed, the defenders barely lasted a few hours before the imperial dragon banner was ripped from the ramparts.
Wei Lian did not make the mistake of leaving his veterans behind to hold what they had retaken. He knew Luo Wen's retribution would come swiftly and in overwhelming force. At dawn, only local militia—poorly armed but sufficient to withstand a first strike—remained in the fortress, while Wei Lian's elite melted back into the countryside. The stronghold bore his name once more, but it was little more than bait, ready to be abandoned or sacrificed when the inevitable counterblow came.
News of the loss reached Luo Wen's central camp almost immediately. The Chancellor of the Empire received the report with a face of stone, then ordered a forced march of twenty thousand soldiers toward the wayward fortress. After three grueling days, they arrived to find walls manned by peasants wielding wooden spears, men dragged from their homes and pressed into service, alongside a pitiful handful of wounded veterans.
The fury of the imperial response left no survivors. The makeshift garrison, hopelessly unable to stop the empire's war machine, was crushed within hours. And yet, as Luo Wen stood over the smoldering ruins, he realized what Wei Lian had achieved: the enemy had bought time, bled resources, and forced thousands of his men into exhausting marches for a fortress worth little more than rubble.
And so the pattern repeated itself—again and again, week after week.A fortress would fall under the hammer of imperial might, only to be snatched back by Wei Lian with a precise, surgical strike. Then Luo Wen would return, this time with an avalanche of men and siege engines, sweeping aside the militias and raising his banner once again over the towers… only for the same cycle to begin anew.
Each round of this deadly dance drained Luo Wen's men: long marches across harsh terrain, sudden ambushes, and brief but ferocious sieges that sapped their endurance. And each recapture by Wei Lian strengthened his soldiers' morale, a living proof that even the so-called Invincible Chancellor could not maintain a stable line in these cursed lands.
The battlefield became a vision of hell without end.Villages near the contested fortresses were pillaged again and again, first by one army, then by the other. Peasants were dragged from their homes, pressed into service as militia, handed old spears or wooden staves, and sent to die upon the walls. Corpses piled in trenches, unburied, their stench mingling with the ever-present smoke of fires that never seemed to die out.
Even the disciplined imperial soldiers began to falter. Every time they believed a bastion was finally theirs, Wei Lian returned like a phantom, reclaiming it and forcing them to start from scratch. Luo Wen imposed harsh punishments on officers who failed to hold their posts, but no amount of fear or discipline could erase the creeping exhaustion that spread day by day through his host.
Wei Lian's side fared no better. His elite troops were worn thin by endless marches, ambushes, and nighttime raids, always fighting outnumbered. Each success demanded a price: abandoning the position, leaving poorly trained militias to be slaughtered in their place. The human toll was devastating—but Wei Lian accepted it. To him, what mattered was not possession, but destruction. His goal was not to hold ground but to ruin Luo Wen's advance.
In Luo Wen's command tent, the great map of the region had become a chaotic puzzle. Every day, the red and black banners marking control shifted places, while breathless messengers poured in with conflicting reports:
—"The fortress of Shulin has been retaken by the enemy."—"The fortress of Qiangzhou is back in imperial hands."—"The garrison at Yanshan is under siege yet again."
Luo Wen slammed his fist on the table, livid at the endless back-and-forth."This is not war," he roared. "This is nothing but a rat's game! We will not allow ourselves to be worn down by these cowardly tricks."
But his generals knew the truth, even if their master refused to say it aloud. Every fortress retaken with militia blood meant Wei Lian was succeeding: stretching the imperial lines thin, forcing them to spend men and provisions, and preventing Luo Wen's great march toward Guangling from ever truly consolidating.
Back in Guangling, Wei Lian and Zhao Qing studied the shifting lines with care. They both knew theirs was an uneven game: every victory was temporary, every garrison of peasants doomed. But that did not matter.
"The essence," Wei Lian murmured, drawing circles over the map, "is that Luo Wen must never feel secure. If he holds a fortress, let it only be because he left an entire division behind. And every division tied down here is one fewer he can bring against us at Guangling."
Zhao Qing gave a sharp nod."He strikes with the weight of a hammer. We will make him stumble over a thousand thorns."
And so, the frontier degenerated into a whirlwind of sieges and counterattacks. No fortress was safe, no banner flew for more than a few weeks before being torn down. It was a brutal cycle—conquest, recapture, massacre, abandonment, and conquest again.
Among Luo Wen's weary soldiers, it came to be called "the Endless War."Among Wei Lian's men, it earned another name: "the Resistance of a Thousand Walls." Neither side could yet claim victory, but both understood that in this war of attrition, time itself had become a weapon.
And as the fields grew heavy with corpses and ash, one question haunted every soldier, whispered around dying campfires and muttered in the silence of long marches:
Who would break first?