The Jiangdong army's assault on Jiangling's northern gates carried the distinct stench of a death wish.
Watching from the battlements, Zhou Qun could only offer one grim evaluation.
"Lu Meng has lost his damn mind."
Sure, Zhou Qun was a scholar, not a military man. But even he could see that chaining your best warships together with iron links to form a floating siege bridge was the kind of move you made when you had officially run out of sane options.
Those Mengchong warships? The ones stripped down to flat wooden platforms? Never sailing again.
And the smaller assault boats packed with fire-oil? Charred splinters now.
Nothing left but ash floating on the current.
Here was the math, plain and simple. If Lu Meng somehow pulled this off and took Jiangling, he would be hailed as a genius. The kind people write poems about.
But if he failed? His army would not even have ships to retreat on. He had literally burned his own exit.
Historically, much of Jiangdong's military strength rested on those warships. Control of the rivers was the foundation of their power, and Lu Meng had just torched his own fleet to buy his infantry a few dozen yards of ground against the wall.
He had slit his own throat and dared fate to watch him bleed.
Jiang Wan, however, was remarkably calm. Despite days of grueling labor, not a trace of pessimism touched his face. The man even found the leisure to crack a joke at the enemy commander's expense.
"During the Battle of Red Cliffs, this Lu Meng was nothing more than a frontline brawler with a rank," Jiang Wan said, his voice carrying easily over the roar of battle. "Now it seems he is trying to imitate Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Chu, by breaking his cauldrons and sinking his boats! I heard rumors Sun Quan recently persuaded him to start reading books, and looking at this spectacle today, I finally believe it!"
Jiang Wan let out a booming laugh. "Just a pity he has not been studying for very long! He wants to replicate the desperate valor of Xiang Yu, but his generals lack the Overlord's monstrous might, and his soldiers lack the furious courage of the men of Chu!"
He drew his sword and leveled it toward the burning river. "And he clearly forgot to read the end of the story! Because in the end, Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Chu, was crushed by the Han!"
His voice rang out like struck iron. His personal guards raised their weapons and led the defenders in a deafening roar.
Zhou Qun understood the layers beneath the speech. Three parts of those words were Jiang Wan reassuring himself. The other seven parts were pure strategy, injecting iron straight into the spines of the defenders.
Because Jiangdong's offensive really was horrifying. The sight of thousands of men throwing their lives away in a frenzied charge against the north gate was enough to make any defender's heart pound.
Of course, Zhou Qun remembered his history perfectly well. When Xiang Yu the Overlord of Chu broke his cauldrons and sank his boats at Julu, he annihilated the Qin army.
Wisely, he kept that little historical footnote to himself.
---
Deep within the city, little Zhuge Guo had forced her older brother, Zhuge Qiao, to set up a wooden ladder against the courtyard wall so she could peek her head over the edge.
The bustling streets she was used to? Gone. The thoroughfares were chillingly empty.
The only people out there were armored soldiers with grim faces and sweating militiamen pushing wooden oxen loaded with supplies.
Zhuge Guo puffed out her cheeks in frustration.
Administrator Jiang had issued strict martial law.
No civilians on the streets during the siege.
Which meant she had been trapped inside the estate, bored out of her tiny mind, reduced to clinging to the top of a wall just to see something other than the same courtyard tiles for the hundredth time.
And to make it worse, her mother was not even home.
A few days ago, enemy fire had scorched a section of the heavy ballistae on the north gate.
Administrator Jiang ordered several repeating crossbows relocated from the western walls to reinforce the north.
Delicate work. Machinery got damaged.
Suddenly there was a critical shortage of master siege-engineers.
So Lady Huang Yueying had registered under the guise of an artisan and marched off to the walls. Now only Zhuge Guo and her brother were left to hold down the fort.
Staring at the grim, suffocating atmosphere of the military patrols below, Zhuge Guo decided she did not like the view one bit. She slid down the ladder and sighed mournfully.
"Brother, let's just go look at the glass greenhouse instead."
Zhuge Qiao offered a gentle smile and nodded. But after soothing his little sister, a heavy melancholy crept into his own eyes.
His father was fighting campaigns far away in Hanzhong. His mother was on the front lines helping defend the city.
And him? A son of the Zhuge clan, stuck at home. Unable to mount the walls. Unable to defend the state. Unable to repay his lord. The regret ached deep in his chest.
Before he could spiral, Zhuge Guo came sprinting out of the house. Tucked under her arm was a small leather-bound journal, and her hands were full of rulers, measuring tapes, and charcoal pencils.
She made a beeline for the greenhouse.
Zhuge Qiao could only shake his head with a helpless smile.
Their mother had built the glass greenhouse to study the subtle differences between herbs and crops. But Lady Huang was simply too busy these days. So the meticulous task of recording daily growth data had been eagerly snatched up by his little sister, who treated it like the most exciting game in the world.
Glancing one last time toward the smoke in the north, Zhuge Qiao steeled himself. Since I am not old enough to pacify the realm, I will start by taking care of this household. Especially my little sister.
Between chores and minding Zhuge Guo, Zhuge Qiao would periodically climb the ladder to check the streets.
First two days, stable. Soldiers and militiamen rushing north. No laughter, no idle chatter. Just grim, disciplined focus.
By the third day, the siege started bleeding into the city.
Zhuge Qiao spotted scattered groups of wounded soldiers limping back from the northern front. He breathed a small sigh of relief. Despite their injuries, the men did not look broken or despairing.
But two days later, the stream of casualties swelled. Zhuge Qiao felt his stomach tighten.. Is the defense failing?
The Jingzhou heat was already getting brutal, even though it was only spring. Exhausted, some wounded soldiers rested in the shade near the Zhuge estate walls, letting Zhuge Qiao catch snippets of their hushed voices.
"...How do these Wu dogs still have reinforcements coming?"
"Did not the Administrator tell us? As long as Jiangling is in danger, Southern Jingzhou is safe. All the Wu dogs that were supposed to hit the south have converged here."
"So what if they have reinforcements? They still have not set foot inside the city, have they?"
"But you have to admit, those bastards truly aren't afraid of dying. We still have not been able to retake the outer water gate..."
As the wounded men limped away, Zhuge Qiao's anxiety hit a boiling point.
That night, when his mother finally returned home smelling of sawdust, grease, and smoke, he could not hold back his questions.
Huang Yueying let out a long, exhausted sigh.
"The battle in the north is locked in a brutal stalemate. Every single day, more than a thousand men of Wu die against our walls. You can barely see the water beneath the blood."
Zhuge Qiao was struck dumb. He could not truly fathom the apocalyptic slaughter happening just a few miles away.
After a long pause, Huang Yueying rubbed her soot-stained hands against her cup of hot water and spoke softly.
"The men of Wu are attacking with zero regard for their own survival, and Administrator Jiang is defending with equal fanaticism. At this rate, this battle will have a winner within ten days."
"Ten days?" Zhuge Qiao blinked. He had read military texts. He knew how agonizingly slow a proper siege was supposed to be.
He had seen the northern defenses. Even though the outer water gate was breached, Administrator Jiang was no fool. He had undoubtedly built a lethal secondary line inside.
Huang Yueying nodded slowly. This timeline was the conclusion she and Jiang Wan had reached together.
At the insane speed Lu Meng was feeding human lives into the grinder, At this insane rate of attrition, Jiangdong would be completely broken within half a month.
But there was no need to burden her son with grand strategy. She took a slow sip of her hot tea. Reflecting on the chaotic defense, she suddenly realized something ironic. The safest people in the entire city right now were the crossbow engineers standing behind fortified battlements.
In a flash, her motherly instincts overpowered her fatigue. She set the cup down. Her eyes locked onto Zhuge Qiao with a sharp, calculating gleam.
"Bosong," she asked sweetly. "How are your arithmetic studies coming along these days?"
Zhuge Qiao felt an entire mountain land on his shoulders.
---
Outside the city, the Wu camp was freezing cold.
I sat alone in my command tent. No lamp. Just darkness and tired.
The interrogation was still ringing in my ears.
"You old general. Taking thirty thousand men to assault Hanshou, failing to take the city, and getting your co-commander Pan Zhang killed? If this is not a defeat, then what is?"
Lu Meng's voice. Lu Meng's sneer. Lu Meng's finger jabbing the air like I was some green recruit caught stealing rice.
Fine. You are right. You are the commander here. What was the point of arguing? Pan Zhang, that fool, was Sun Quan's man. The boy was dead now.
Better to wait until I return to Jiangdong and explain the disaster to Lord Sun directly. Face to face. Like a man. Not barked at in a tent by a commander twelve years my junior who still has baby fat under his cheekbones.
But I knew the stain of failure meant consequences.
The troops I had commanded, aside from my own personal retainers, were stripped away and handed directly to Lu Meng. Just like that. Decades of loyalty, decades of drilling those men into shape, and Lu Meng peeled them off my command as casually as if he were reassigning livestock. It hurt.
And then came the worst part.. I was forced to watch.
Day one. My men. The ones I had trained. The ones whose fathers I had served beside. Marched up to Jiangling's walls. Hundreds dead by sundown. Not a single one came back.
And Lu Meng, he dared to say it plainly to my face. Actually bragged about it afterward. Stood in front of me with that flushed, feverish grin and claimed the front line was "steadily advancing."
Steadily advancing. Sure. Advancing your ass. Fine, I am old, but I am not blind. One step forward cost a hundred lives. Ten feet required a thousand men throwing themselves onto spears. This was not an advance. This was a slow-motion suicide with extra paperwork.
But there was no convincing Lu Meng to stop. The battle had raged for days. The river ran red. If they retreated now, all those dead soldiers would have drowned for nothing. I could see it in Lu Meng's eyes. The man was trapped in a suffocating loop of sunk blood and wasted lives, dragging the entire army down with him.
He had turned his own fleet into a floating funeral pyre and called it strategy.
Watching the young men march off to die in a fire, I felt something hollow out in my chest.
How the hell did Jiangdong turn into this?
The next day, I stood numbly beside Lu Meng, watching him act like supreme commander, screaming orders at the vanguard. Push forward. At all costs. Lu Meng had even dispatched military enforcers to the rear of the assault with a simple mandate: anyone who stepped backward died.
I kept my mouth shut. I knew better than to argue. Lu Meng was past reasoning. The man had lost his damn mind. The chain of command was broken, hijacked by a man who had forgotten how to retreat. Arguing would only get me arrested for insubordination, and my men would be thrown into the grinder anyway. Probably in the very first wave. Just to make a point.
So when I saw a scout gallop up to the command platform, frantically reporting an enemy force approaching from the direction of Lexiang, a small county west of Jiangling further upstream, I did not hesitate.
I stepped forward and volunteered.
If I could not stop the slaughter at the walls, I would at least take my own men somewhere their deaths might actually mean something. Out in the open field, against a real enemy, I could at least look my soldiers in the eye. Tell them what to do. Give them a fighting chance.
Not this meat grinder madness. Not marching them into a wall and calling it progress.
Thank heaven, Lu Meng had no objections. In fact, he looked thrilled to have the old man out of his hair. He warmly grabbed my hands and offered an earnest, loaded farewell.
"Yigong, I trust that this time, you will not return in defeat!"
Oh boy. The words were spoken with a smile. They turned half of my heart to ice. I knew this was just a threat wrapped in silk. Just another way of saying, fail again, and you are dead. Also, for your lesson, if you see someone smile more when they talk nice to you, just go as far as you can. That man is sinister, or he intends to scam you, boy.
Then I stared into Lu Meng's manic eyes for a long moment. I hardened my expression and cupped my fists in a crisp salute.
"I will not fail the General's expectations."
I left with clean, immediate efficiency. Did not even ask for extra soldiers. Simply gathered my four thousand personal retainers and marched straight west. At this point, I preferred my odds against a Wuxi horde over another conversation with Lu Meng.
I did not look back. Did not need to. I already knew Lu Meng was not watching. The man's bloodshot eyes would be fixed on Jiangling's walls, counting the dead and calling it momentum.
The one silver lining was a detailed topographical map of the region. One of the few genuinely useful things Lu Meng had accomplished since arriving, mapping every hidden valley and stream with obsessive precision. A shame the man used that brainpower to burn boats instead of thinking of more options to take down this damn city.
Deploying scouts forward and dividing my force into vanguard and rearguard, I marched with seasoned caution. Old habits, drilled into me after forty years of war. You do not rush into unknown terrain. You send eyes first ahead and keep your shield hand loose.
So I was not surprised at all when I finally came face-to-face with Shamoke's grinning face.
I had never expected the single battalion I left at Zuotang to stop the Wuxi chief from marching north. Delay him slightly, maybe. Buy a day. Shamoke was a native of these lands. The man knew exactly how to bypass the major roads and slip through the mountains like water through cracked stone. Seeing him here was simply a matter of course.
Lexiang was barely a settlement. Did not even have half a proper wall left. Being so close to Jiangling, standard wartime protocol was for locals to evacuate into the fortress city. No tactical advantage here. No geographical chokepoint. Just flat, bloody earth.
I studied the terrain and the result was not good. No cover. No high ground. Just two armies staring at each other across a killing field. Fine. I had fought worse. I had fought with less. Better than siege war.
Yet I saw Shamoke was in high spirits. Clad in his thick, oil-hardened rattan armor, the Wuxi chief stepped to the front of his army and shouted across the plains.
"Old General! Back in Hanshou, you had the numbers and you still got your ass kicked! Right now, you have got fewer men than I do. Why not just step aside and save us the trouble of butchering you?"
I slowly shook my head. I knew he was trying to provoke me. I drew my blade. Stepped into the center of my heavy infantry and ordered the shield wall forward with methodical, crushing discipline.
"Han Dang stands here. You shall not advance a single step."
I meant it. Not as a boast. Not as a challenge. As a statement of fact. Like saying the sun rises in the east. Like saying the dead stay buried. Han Dang stands here. That is the whole conversation.
"Since you are so damn eager to die, do not blame me for helping you along!"
With a thunderous roar, Shamoke led the charge himself. Moving in eerie, wordless coordination, Zhang Ni and Ma Zhong flanked him, anchoring his wings as the armies collided.
The math was brutal, and I had done it a hundred times already in my head during the march. Shamoke and Zhang Ni had consolidated their forces into a cohesive strike force of eight thousand.
I had four thousand men.
But my four thousand were my personal retainers. My men. Men who had fought beside me since the days of Lord Sun Jian. Men whose fathers had bled under my command. Hardened, fearless, and utterly loyal. These veterans had been doing this since before most of Shamoke's warriors were born. It showed in the way they locked their shields without being told. In the way they braced their feet. In the way they did not flinch when eight thousand screaming tribesmen came thundering toward them.
When the two armies slammed into each other, it was not like rivers colliding. It was like a landslide hitting a bedrock cliff. The Wuxi warriors crashed against the shield wall with overwhelming force, but my old veterans did not give an inch. They absorbed the shock, locked their shields, and began the grim, mechanical work of butchering the men in front of them.
I stood in the center of it all, blade in hand, barking adjustments. Left flank, hold. Right flank, step. Center, push. My voice was hoarse. My arms ached. My knees screamed at me the way they always did when the weather turned cold.
I raised my blade.
"KILL THEM ALL".
And around me, four thousand veterans stood with me, answering my command.
"KILL THEM ALL".
The plains of Lexiang vanished beneath a churning sea of steel and blood.
---
The sudden eruption of battle at Lexiang was immediately spotted by the defenders atop Jiangling's walls. News rushed to Jiang Wan.
After days of horrific siege warfare, Jiang Wan no longer looked like an elegant gentleman. His lips were cracked and bleeding. His robes were stained with dried blood in multiple places. But his eyes burned brighter than ever.
He listened to the messenger's report and nodded slightly.
"Let me know when the victor is decided."
Standing at the center of the board, Jiang Wan saw the situation clearly. Whether the reinforcements at Lexiang were the Wuxi tribes or someone else did not matter right now.
What mattered was that Jiangdong was desperately committing forces to stop them. As long as those reinforcements did not instantly rout and collapse, Jiang Wan could accept the outcome.
What he truly feared was something else entirely.
"Administrator Jiang!" A sentry screamed from the eastern watchtower. "Dust clouds! From the direction of Huarong! Reinforcements coming!"
Jiang Wan's brow twisted into a vicious knot. His calm demeanor vanished. He sprinted across the battlements toward the eastern gate, eyes locked onto the billowing clouds of dust on the horizon.
Zhou Qun hurried behind him, squinting into the distance.
Moments later, a heavy sigh escaped Zhou Qun's lips. A low, grim hum of dread swept down the length of the walls.
Because as the army drew closer, the war banners cutting through the dust became agonizingly clear.
A single character. Cao.
Zhou Qun cast a worried glance at Jiang Wan. The Administrator Jiang Wan said nothing. His brows stayed locked. His fists gripped the stone parapet so tight his knuckles went white.
"Even with Cao's army arriving, it should not dictate our fall," Zhou Qun offered softly. "We still have six months of grain. Over two thousand heavy crossbows. More than five hundred heavy ballistae. As long as we hold the walls, they cannot break us."
This arsenal was the true fruit of their labor in Gong'an County. Years of leveraging water power and heavy investment in mechanical engineering had built a forge capacity that far exceeded anything Jiangdong could dream of.
Jiang Wan simply nodded. His eyes never left the Cao army.
---
Outside the city, Lu Meng was laughing like a man who had just won the lottery.
This was the real reason he had not cared about Han Dang's departure.
Cao Cao's reinforcements were already on the way! Let the old man march off to die in some pointless skirmish. The real war was right here.
Maybe Liu Bei's heavy investments in Jingzhou's engineering had produced terrifying results, but Cao Cao had explicitly stated in his dispatch that his reinforcements would bring the legendary Thunder Carriages. The devastating trebuchets that had won the Battle of Guandu. Specifically to help Lu Meng shatter Jiangling.
With this addition, Lu Meng felt like the keys to the city were already hovering in front of his face.
Then, a few moments later, the blood drained from Lu Meng's face.
The arriving Cao forces were all elite heavy cavalry. Riding at the front was a man with a face as flawless as carved jade, radiating an undeniable, suffocating aura of majestic violence.
When the commander reached Lu Meng, he did not even bother to dismount. He simply sat atop his great warhorse, staring down at the Jiangdong commander with a look of mild, predatory amusement. The kind of look a cat gives a mouse it has not decided to kill yet.
Under the crushing weight of that stare, Lu Meng swallowed his pride and stepped forward, cupping his fists.
"General Wenyuan has traveled far..."
Zhang Liao swung his leg over his saddle and dropped lightly to the earth. Not entirely neglecting his manners, he returned the salute with a casual gesture.
"Do not call me Wenyuan. We are not that close. You call me General Zhengdong, General Who Conquers the East."
Lu Meng's heart stopped. A wave of humiliation washed over him.
He knew exactly what that title meant.
Last year, Cao Cao had officially bestowed the title of Zhengdong General, the General Who Conquers the East, upon Zhang Liao as a reward for his supreme military achievements.
What achievements?
The beating senseless of the Wu army at Hefei.
Zhang Liao had just shoved Lu Meng's face into the mud by flatly rejecting the friendly use of his courtesy name. Wenyuan? Bah. We are not friends, little man. Call me by the title I earned killing your people.
Lu Meng forced a stiff nod, gritting his teeth. "With the General Zhengdong arriving in person, capturing Jiangling is surely a foregone conclusion."
Afterward, Lu Meng invited Zhang Liao to inspect the battlefield. Staring at the monstrous bridge of chained ships burning against the gates, Zhang Liao offered a single dry comment.
"Jiangdong truly spares no expense."
It sounded like a compliment. Lu Meng could see the utter lack of respect in the man's eyes.
Without waiting for Lu Meng to ask, Zhang Liao began issuing his own orders. "Construct the Thunder Carriages. We will assist this... Lieutenant General of Jiangdong in breaking Jiangling."
The pause before "Lieutenant General" was deliberate. A calculated insult wrapped in protocol.
Lu Meng's expression twisted with fury and humiliation.
Eventually, he forced out a strained, accommodating smile.
What else could he do? The man had slaughtered thousands of Wu soldiers and been rewarded with a title for it. Now he was here, technically an ally, and Lu Meng had to smile and nod while Zhang Liao measured how much of this victory Jiangdong would actually be allowed to keep.
Seeing Zhang Liao turn to leave, Lu Meng felt a spike of urgency. "General, you have brought such magnificent cavalry! If we launch a combined assault against the walls..."
Zhang Liao did not even turn his head. "My strong men? Waste their lives dying against a wall for you? In your dreams."
Before leaving, Cao Cao had given Zhang Liao explicit instructions.
If Jiangdong was capable of bleeding themselves dry to take Jiangling on their own, let them.
But now that Zhang Liao's forces had the opportunity to insert themselves directly into the siege, exactly who Jiangling belonged to when the dust settled was going to require some very careful maneuvering.
By that very afternoon, the great Thunder Carriages had been fully assembled. But they were only capable of hurling relatively small stone projectiles. Zhang Liao was visibly disappointed.
Lu Meng, on the other hand, was ecstatic. If these towering machines could consistently lob payloads over the city walls, using them merely to throw rocks was a waste. You men of the north, not creative enough. Dead livestock to spread disease. Jars of oil with burning wicks. Beehives wrapped in thin clay. Human heads from this morning's prisoners. Rotting grain to spoil their stores. Loose stones the size of fists, a whole net of them scattering across a wide arc. The possibilities were endless, and these northerners really weren't creative enough. What a waste.
Lu Meng did not just talk. His engineers got to work. This was his talent. Not grand strategy, not inspiring speeches. Finding ugly, effective solutions to ugly problems.
The fire-oil bombs were brutally simple. Brittle shell packed with raw pitch and oil, fitted with a slow-burning fuse. Hurl it over the walls, the shell shatters, and a raging fire detonates among the defenders. Jiangdong had practically infinite oil. The only bottleneck was the fuses, so less than half actually detonated on impact.
But even fifty percent was enough.
Zhang Liao watched the first volley arc over the walls and vanish into Jiangling's streets. The distant screams reached them a few seconds later. He turned to Lu Meng with something that almost looked like approval.
"Lieutenant General. Perhaps you are not entirely useless after all."
Lu Meng decided to take that as a compliment.
He was just preparing to once again request a joint infantry assault under the cover of the bombardment when a scout from Zhang Liao's camp came galloping into the command center, face pale as a ghost.
"Report! A detachment of cavalry is rapidly approaching from the north!" The scout could barely get the words out. "They fly a war banner bearing the character Zhao!"