Months earlier, using the ancient knowledge preserved within his armor, Luo He had developed an artificial fiber unlike anything known in the modern world despite all its advancements.
The greatest miracle of Luo He's crossbow was not its steel frame, nor its ingenious loading mechanism. It was this extraordinary string.
To everyone else, it looked like an ordinary bowstring. In reality, it was anything but ordinary.
It was lighter than silk. Stronger than steel. More elastic than any natural fiber known to mankind.
Even the finest craftsmen in the empire could not comprehend how such a material was possible. Nor could modern Earth.
The civilization that had created it had long surpassed humanity's imagination. They healed shattered bodies with cell regeneration.
Restored severed limbs as though replacing broken tools, controlled the weather at will, and traversed the stars in faster-than-light vessels.
Compared to them, even the greatest kingdoms of the present age were little more than children playing with nothing sharpened sticks.
This miraculous fiber was one of the countless technologies they had left behind. Because of it, Luo He achieved what every master bowyer believed impossible.
A traditional war bow capable of drawing four or even four and a half stone had to be enormous. Often well over two meters in length, with massive limbs that demanded years of training to master.
Such bows were as tall as, or taller than, the men who carried them. Luo He's crossbow, by comparison, measured less than a meter across.
It looked almost laughably small beside those towering longbows. Yet it miniature appearances could not have been more deceptive.
The miraculous bowstring allowed the compact weapon to store an astonishing amount of energy within its short draw.
When fully cocked, it produced nearly four and a half stone of draw force. Power that rivaled or even surpassed the largest military longbows despite occupying only a fraction of their size.
Even veteran archers who witnessed it for the first time struggled to believe what they were seeing. "That's impossible..."
"A crossbow that small?" "It shouldn't even come close..."
Luo He merely smiled. The impossible had become possible long before this world learned what the word science truly meant.
Of course, such tremendous power demanded equally formidable high quality ammunition. Ordinary wooden arrows would shatter the instant they were launched.
Instead, Luo He forged every bolt entirely from high-carbon steel. From the razor sharp head to the tail, each projectile was a single piece of finely crafted metal.
Strong enough to survive repeated firing without bending or breaking. Though considerably heavier than ordinary arrows, the crossbow possessed more than enough power to hurl them with lethal force.
Against an unarmored soldier, a single hit was almost always fatal. Against scale armor, the result was scarcely better.
Even when the armor stopped complete penetration, the tremendous impact could crack ribs, rupture blood vessels, and in lucky hits even severely damage the organs beneath.
One well-placed shot was often enough to remove a soldier from the battlefield entirely. It was little wonder Luo He had invested so much into producing them.
Although only around fourteen hundred crossbows could be completed due to the immense cost of their manufacture. Each one possessed the stopping power of a weapon that, by all conventional knowledge, should never have existed.
To the armies marching upon Jin Manor, they would soon learn a harsh lesson. Not every miracle came from the heavens.
Some were forged by the hands of a genius who carried the knowledge of a civilization millions of years ahead of their own.
The weapon was far too powerful to be drawn by human strength alone. Every crossbow was paired with a specially forged steel lever that allowed the string to be cocked quickly and safely.
Even then, each weapon required a crew of two soldiers. One soldier concentrated solely on aiming and firing.
The second stood beside him, drawing the string with the steel lever, loading a fresh bolt, and immediately handing the weapon back for the next shot.
The system sacrificed numbers for efficiency. Only around thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred crossbows had been completed.
So their construction demanded high quality steel, precision craftsmanship, and enormous amounts of labor. There simply wasn't enough time or resources to build thousands.
As a result, only about seven hundred firing teams stood upon the walls. It was a surprisingly small number. Yet Luo He had never believed quantity alone was what decided battles.
When the enemy finally approached the walls, nearly seven hundred crossbows would unleash their terrifying bolts almost simultaneously.
A storm of steel would greet the advancing army. Behind the crossbow formations stood Luo He's greatest siege weapons, the Scorpions.
These enormous ballistae had been personally designed to eliminate enemy siege equipment long before they could threaten the walls.
Like the crossbows, they used several types of ammunition depending upon the target. The most feared were the incendiary explosive bolts.
Each bolt consisted of three layers. The hardened steel head struck first, burying itself deep inside wooden siege engines.
Behind it lay an incendiary charge. Upon impact, it ignited and burned fiercely for six to eight seconds, spreading flames throughout the dry timber.
Even if the structure survived the coming explosion, the fire alone could rapidly engulf the tower, trapping and burning the soldiers stationed upon it.
The final section contained a powerful explosive charge. Once triggered, the explosion blasted forward into the structure itself, tearing apart the wooden framework from within.
If the projectile struck a supporting section near the base, nearly a quarter of the siege tower could be destroyed in a single blast.
The weakened structure would collapse under its own weight while the remaining timbers continued to burn, ensuring the tower could never be repaired or used again after a single bolt did it's thing.
The Scorpions also fired simpler solid steel bolts. Though lacking explosive power, these massive projectiles were devastating against battering rams, shield walls, and dense infantry.
They were cheaper to produce and formed the majority of the arsenal, while the specialized incendiary rounds were manufactured only in limited numbers.
Because of the rare materials and painstaking work required to create them. Even with such formidable defenses, Luo He prepared one final contingency.
Deep beneath the manor's central courtyard, hidden beneath layers of earth and stone, lay an enormous reserve of explosives.
If every wall fell... If every defense failed...
If the enemy reached the heart of the estate... The remaining Jin soldiers and Luo He's family would retreat into a reinforced underground bunker constructed beneath the mansion.
Only after the invaders filled the courtyard would the fuse be lit. The resulting explosion would obliterate the courtyard and everyone standing upon it.
It was a desperate measure, one Luo He prayed would never become necessary.
Destroying the manor would be a tremendous loss, but an even greater concern was exposing the existence of such powerful explosives.
Those weapons were intended to remain Luo He's greatest secret, reserved for future wars. Revealing them now would give every rival kingdom reason to study and counter his inventions.
For that reason, only one person knew the complete plan. His wife, Mulan. He trusted her than most others.
He revealed the hidden bunker and the buried explosives to her alone and made her promise never to use them unless absolutely every other hope had vanished.
His greatest concern, however, was not the fortress. It was the people. While the defenses rose, Jin Sang's fleet sailed day and night across the surrounding seas with refugees.
Families were loaded onto ships and carried away from the coming battlefield. Some found refuge upon Pirate Island.
Others settled temporarily upon Golden Island, while thousands more were transported to the Northern Isles. For nearly ten consecutive days, the fleet scarcely rested.
By the time the enemy arrived, every civilian within Jin County had been evacuated. The operation cost Luo He a miniature fortune.
Merchant vessels abandoned profitable trade routes to carry refugees instead. Commerce slowed to a crawl, supplies dwindled, and the treasury lost gold, enormous sums of it in every passing day. Yet Luo He never hesitated.
Money could always be earned again.
The lives of his people could not. Unlike many nobles who locked themselves behind fortress walls while peasants suffered outside.
Luo He refused to treat commoners as expendable. Every man, woman, and child under his protection deserved to survive the upcoming war.
Only after the final large refugee ship disappeared beyond the horizon did he turn his complete attention to the army.
Every day, the Scorpion crews practiced relentlessly.
Ordinary steel bolts flew across carefully measured ranges while wooden posts, markers, and distant trees served as reference points.
The crews memorized firing angles until they could strike designated targets almost by instinct. The crossbowmen trained no less intensely.
They fired their steel bolts, collected them, reloaded, and repeated the process countless times until every movement became second nature.
The precious incendiary and explosive ammunition remained untouched, locked safely away for the day battle finally came.
When the enemy banners eventually appeared upon the horizon, Luo He's defenders were no longer ordinary guards defending a noble's residence.
They were disciplined crews wielding weapons the world had never seen before, commanded by a woman who intended to win the siege long before the first soldier ever reached the walls.