His eyes drifted upward towards the top of the wall.
There, standing atop the battlements in polished gleaming red armour, was Jin Mulan. Even across the battlefield, surrounded by smoke, dust, and the screams of dying men, she stood out effortlessly.
No wonder the Crown Prince covets her. The Duke couldn't help but admit it. She truly is an extraordinary beauty.
For a brief moment, he simply watched her directing the defense with calm confidence, issuing orders as bolts and stones rained upon his army.
She looked less like a noblewoman and more like the guardian spirit of the fortress itself. Then he remembered the Crown Prince's decree.
Should the Jin mansion fall, Jin Mulan was to be captured alive. Her tendons would be severed, ensuring she could never resist or escape.
Then she was to be delivered to the Crown Prince as his personal plaything.
The order had never been rescinded.
Duke Lu's lips curled into a faint smile.
Perhaps... I understand now. If I were in his position, I might have desired such a woman as well. But admiration did nothing to change reality. Capturing her would not be easy.
A fortress defended by merely five thousand soldiers had already bled his army of nearly five thousand men in only two days.
Even with almost thirty thousand soldiers still under his command, he could no longer expect an effortless victory. He turned toward the generals gathered around him.
"The walls have been reached," one said coldly. "Continue the assault." He commanded.
"The casualties are irrelevant. We have the numbers. They do not. The Jin Mansion will fall today." He said.
The order spread across the battlefield.
Fresh assault teams advanced with ladders and shields while engineers prepared new siege equipment.
Replacements for what had just been destroyed. Horns echoed across the plain as another wave surged toward the battered walls.
High above them, Jin Mulan watched in silence. The real battle had only just begun. The battle intensified with every passing moment.
Wave after wave of Wu soldiers rushed the walls, hauling ladders and sacks of sand under a rain of missiles. The defenders answered with everything they had to throw at them.
Rocks crashed down from the battlements, heavy logs smashed into climbing formations, and barrels of fish oil were hurled over the walls.
Some barrels burst on impact, drenching men in burning oil before erupting into flames. Soldiers caught beneath the fiery spray screamed as both their armor and clothing ignited.
While others stumbled into the shallow moat, only to be trampled by those advancing behind them. Like every experienced commander, Duke Lu did not spread his strength evenly across the fortress walls.
Nearly seventy percent of his infantry concentrated on a single section of the wall, determined to overwhelm the defenders through sheer numbers.
The remaining troops launched smaller attacks elsewhere, forcing the Jin soldiers to divide their attention while the main assault attempted to break through.
Using hundreds of sandbags, the attackers quickly built a crude yet strong embankment nearly two meters high against the outer wall.
The shallow moat had slowed them only briefly. Now the sandbags created firm footing, allowing ladders to be raised far more easily than before.
This became the battlefield's focal point.
Jin Mulan immediately noticed. Without hesitation, she raised her spear.
"With me!"
Nearly a hundred elite soldiers followed as she personally rushed to reinforce the threatened section.
Unlike many commanders who directed battles from the rear, Jin Mulan fought at the very front. Every enemy who climbed onto the wall was met by her spear.
One thrust. One corpse. Another thrust. Another body tumbled back into the mass of soldiers below. Duke Lu watched from afar. Now she'll finally be properly overwhelmed.
No one, not even a Grandmaster, could withstand thousands of soldiers forever.
Yet reality proved him wrong. Every fallen enemy only fueled Jin Mulan's relentless determination.
The memory of the Crown Prince's cruel order flashed through her mind. Capture her alive. Sever her tendons. Deliver her as a prize.
Watching from below, Duke Lu narrowed his eyes. "Good... let her exhaust herself. Even a Grandmaster has limits." The wall seemed on the verge of collapse beneath the relentless assault.
Then Jin Mulan remembered. She remembered the humiliation she had once suffered at the hands of Prince Lian Luo of the Flame Kingdom.
The day she had been overpowered, helpless, and forced to endure a terrible nightmare she had sworn never to experience again in her life.
Her grip around the spear tightened until her knuckles turned white. "Never again..." She had survived once. She would never allow herself to become that helpless woman ever again.
"I will never become the Crown Prince's slave. I would rather die on this wall." The thought ignited a fury unlike anything she had ever known.
Then another memory surfaced. Luo He. His calm smile. His promise that he would soon return.
And the promise she had made in return. She would hold this fortress until he came back. Her blood surged with renewed strength.
The spear in her hands became a blur.
Every soldier who reached the loosing battlements fell before her.
Again.
Again.
Again.
From below, many soldiers genuinely believed she might leap from the walls just to continue killing them. She looked like a demon bathed in blood.
Fortunately for them, and fortunately for the defenders, Jin Mulan was driven by determination, not recklessness. She never abandoned the advantage of the walls and jumped down just to kill more.
Hours passed.
Every breakthrough Duke Lu believed he had achieved was crushed by Jin Mulan herself.Inspired by their commander's example, the Jin defenders fought with astonishing resolve.
Their crossbows continued firing round after round relentlessly while swords, spears, stones, and burning oil turned every ladder into a death sentence.
By late afternoon, the attackers had suffered nearly eight thousand casualties. Still, Duke Lu refused to retreat. "Keep pushing!" He roared.
"They're exhausted! The wall is ours!"
But Jin Mulan seized the moment. She gathered her defenders into the now threatened sector and launched one final counterattack.
She swept off every surviving attacker from the battlements. The moment the walls were secured, dozens of barrels of fish oil were rolled forward.
Without hesitation, they were poured over the massive sandbag embankment the Wu soldiers had spent the entire day constructing.
Jin Mulan followed. Personally setting the structure on fire. The entire structure erupted into flames.
The carefully built assault ramp became an inferno, collapsing into burning sandbags and thick black smoke.
Any soldier attempting to use it was immediately consumed by fire or driven back. The attackers tried once more with siege ladders.
The ballistas shattered many of them before they even reached the walls. The few ladders that survived became killing grounds beneath concentrated repetitive crossbow fire.
When casualties finally approached ten thousand men, Duke Lu's confidence broke. The horn to retreat sounded across the battlefield. One by one, the exhausted Wu soldiers withdrew.
Even their retreat was not without bloodshed, as bolts from the walls continued to strike the fleeing formations until they moved beyond effective range.
Silence gradually returned to the battlefield. By the end of the second day of the siege, the Wu army had lost nearly twelve thousand soldiers.
Nearly ten thousand of those had fallen during today's assault alone. And despite paying such a terrible price, they had still failed to breach the walls.
Duke Lu looked once more toward the battlements. Jin Mulan stood there, her armor no longer red but crimson. Blood covered her from head to toe.
She looked less like a general and more like a war goddess who refused to let her home fall. By the Duke's estimate alone, she had personally slain four to five hundred men during the day's fighting.
Had she not stood upon those walls. The Jin Mansion would mostlikely have fallen before sunset. The third day of the war came to an end with the assault on the Jin mansion failing once again.
But where was Luo He during this time?
He was not with Jin Mulan, offering comfort or strategic counsel to his wife as she stood on the castle walls defending their home.
He was not rallying troops, coordinating defenses. Instead, at the morning of the third day, after departing from his visit with Gin Xuexin, he had traveled far past the Jin mansion entirely.
He had journeyed all the way to the Northern Isles to visit Su Kim. Not out of strategic necessity, but out of his rather deliberate plan to spend different nights with different women during the course of this war.
To many, Luo He would have appeared to be a terrible husband. While Jin Mulan stood atop the walls, sleepless and drenched in blood after days of relentless fighting, he was elsewhere. Spending his time with another woman.
Few people would understand such a decision, and fewer still would approve of it. Yet Luo He's intentions were not born from indifference.