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Fa Zheng and Meng Da exchanged a look. This was the synthesis they needed. The grand strategy from the palace was being tempered and improved by the grit and local knowledge of the men who would execute it.
Fa Zheng made swift decisions. "Li Yan, you will command the triple trebuchet bombardment. Make that platform your sole focus. Wu Lan, take two engineering battalions tonight. Be silent, be swift. Zhang Ni, select your best two hundred men. You have the goat path. Your signal to attack will be the collapse of the western platform."
He turned to Meng Huo. "King Meng Huo. The mountains are yours. When the drums sound for the main assault, your tribesmen become the avalanche from above. Strike their mountain patrols, seize the high overlooks, and rain terror down on their rear lines."
Finally, he looked to Zhang Ren and Yan Yan. "Generals. The main assault will be yours. A hammer of one hundred thousand men. You strike the moment Li Yan's stones find their mark and the western platform falls."
The plan was set, a multi pronged, synchronized attack of terrifying complexity. On that first day, however, they did nothing.
The Hengyuan camp buzzed with preparation, but no soldiers formed for assault, no engines loosed their deadly payloads. The only sounds were the distant clang of forges and the disciplined murmur of a vast army waiting.
From the walls of Jianmen Pass, the Wei defenders watched in confused anxiety. What were they waiting for? Was this a trick? The tension was a physical weight, worse than an immediate attack.
Men jumped at shadows, strained their eyes against the dusk for signs of movement that never came. Their commander, a competent but conventional officer, already sent frantic riders back toward Hongnong pleading for the promised reinforcements, unaware that in Hongnong, every man was fighting for his life against Lie Fan's renewed pressure and had none to spare.
Dawn of the second day arrived with a sky the color of cold iron. Then, the silence shattered.
Not with a war cry, but with a deep, groaning thwump that seemed to come from the earth itself. Then another. And another.
The triple trebuchet barrage began. Three massive stones, hurled with engineering precision, traced high, arcing paths against the grey sky.
The first smashed into the parapet beside the western platform, sending stone shrapnel scything through the defenders. The second was a direct hit on the platform's roof, collapsing it in a cloud of dust and splinters. The third, the masterpiece, struck the base of the platform's supporting wall where it joined the older masonry.
A sound like a giant's fist striking stone echoed across the valley. A web of cracks appeared. Then, with a grinding roar, a whole section of the battlements, platform, defenders, and all, sheared away and tumbled down the mountainside in a cascade of rubble and broken bodies.
Before the dust had even settled, the deep, rhythmic BOOM BOOM BOOM of war drums erupted from the Hengyuan lines. It was the sound of a heart beginning to beat with furious purpose.
From the command post, Fa Zheng watched, his face a mask of cold satisfaction. Zhang Ren and Yan Yan were already mounted, barking orders. The main host, a tide of steel and determination, began its advance, shields locked, a forest of spears pointing at the wounded wall.
Simultaneously, as if the drumbeats were a signal to the very mountains, chaos erupted on the high flanks. War cries in unfamiliar, guttural tongues echoed as Meng Huo's Nanman warriors, who had moved like ghosts through the pre dawn mist, swarmed the isolated Wei mountain outposts.
They fought with ferocious, unfamiliar tactics, using the terrain itself as a weapon, rolling boulders, unleashing clouds of poisoned darts from blowpipes.
On the eastern approach, soldiers rushed forward not with ladders, but with pre built sections of bridge and packed earth, following the path Wu Lan's engineers had prepared under cover of darkness. They began frantically filling the dry river ditch, creating stable ground right under the walls.
And on the northern ridge, as the Wei artillery crews on the north tower turned their attention and their catapults, toward the main assault, they were hit from behind. Zhang Ni's two hundred elite climbers, having scaled the impossible goat path, erupted onto the tower walkway.
They were few, but they were fresh, enraged, and attacking an unprepared rear. The tower descended into a frantic, close quarters melee, its deadly artillery falling silent.
The siege of Jianmen Pass was not a single wave; it was a coordinated tsunami hitting from every direction at once. The defenders, brave and disciplined, found themselves fighting on walls that were crumbling, flanks that were disintegrating, and in positions being sabotaged from within.
The sheer, shocking simultaneity of the assaults overwhelmed their capacity to respond.
Fa Zheng and Zhang Song, from their command post, directed the storm with cold precision, shifting reserves, reinforcing success, exploiting every new crack that appeared in the Wei defense.
Zhang Ren and Yan Yan were everywhere on the frontline, their voices hoarse from command, their swords bloody as they led from the front, sensing the moment the defender's will might break.
The first day at Jianmen Pass was not a tentative probe. It was a declaration, written in fire, stone, and blood. It announced to the garrison, and to the distant, besieged court in Hongnong, that the southern front was no mere diversion.
It was a second, equally formidable jaw of the imperial vise, and it had just snapped shut with terrifying force. The battle for the pass would be fierce and bloody, but its outcome, from the very first moment of that perfectly orchestrated storm, seemed less a question of 'if' and more a matter of 'when.'
The late afternoon sun bled across the sky, casting long, grotesque shadows from the shattered parapets of Jianmen Pass. The furious symphony of battle—the drumbeat advance, the shriek of the hwachas, the thunder of collapsing stone, the cacophony of clashing steel and desperate shouts—had risen to a crescendo and now began to ebb. From his vantage point, Fa Zheng watched with a strategist's cold eye. They had tested the wall, probed its weaknesses, and drawn blood. The western platform was a gaping wound. The north tower was a silent, contested ruin. The mountain flanks were alive with Meng Huo's warriors, and the eastern ditch was now a solid, blood-soaked ramp leading right to the base of the stones.
But a wall, even a wounded one, defended by desperate men, could still exact a terrible price. The initial, shocking momentum had been absorbed. The Wei defenders, though reeling, had rallied around their inner bastions. The cost in Hengyuan lives was mounting with each attempt to press the advantage into the heart of the pass itself.
Fa Zheng glanced at the position of the sun, then at the weary but still disciplined lines of his troops. He had seen enough. The day's objectives—to cripple key defenses, test the enemy's response, and gauge their own army's coordination—had been met, and then some. To continue into the narrowing, murderous corridors of the pass as dusk approached would be to trade soldiers for no strategic gain.
He gave a subtle nod to the signal officer beside him. "Sound the retreat. Covering fire pattern delta."
The officer saluted and turned, raising two flags—one black, one green—in a specific, sweeping arc. Below, a drummer who had been beating the relentless advance rhythm paused, took a deep breath, and then began a new, measured cadence: Boom… boom-ba-boom… Boom… boom-ba-boom…
It was not the frantic beat of a rout, but the deliberate, pulling-back rhythm of a fist unclenching. Across the battlefield, the order was understood instantly. Unit commanders bellowed, "Back! In step! Shields high!"
The Hengyuan tide, which had been crashing against the stone, began to recede with the same disciplined ferocity with which it had advanced. Soldiers disengaged, stepping backward in locked shield formations, dragging wounded comrades with them. On the mountain flanks, echoing horn blasts from the Nanman sent the tribesmen melting back into the rocks as swiftly as they had appeared. From the ruined north tower, Zhang Ni's climbers, having wreaked havoc and planted their flag on the highest beam, began a fighting withdrawal down the inner stairs, disappearing into the chaos they had created.
The Wei defenders, seeing the pressure relent, let out a ragged, exhausted cheer that quickly turned into a surge of vengeful energy. Archers rushed back to the intact sections of the wall, eager to punish the retreating foe. Officers screamed orders for sorties, to harry the enemy's flanks as they pulled back.
But their attempts at a punishing pursuit were immediately stifled. From the rear of the Hengyuan lines, the hwachas, the multi arrow launch carts, came to life once more. This time, their fire was not aimed at specific structures, but at the sky above the walls and the ground before the gates.
With a terrifying, ripping HISSSSS CRACK, volleys of dozens upon dozens of arrows, many tipped with incendiary compounds, arced into the air, descending in a deadly, whistling rain. The area immediately in front of the pass and the wall walks themselves became zones of instant death.
Wei soldiers who rushed to the edge to take shots found themselves pinned down, ducking behind merlons as fire and steel hailed around them. Any attempt to open the gates for a cavalry sortie was suicidal; the approaches were a choked nightmare of fallen arrows and spreading flame.
It was a masterclass in controlled disengagement. The retreat was not a flight, it was a tactical repositioning conducted under an umbrella of overwhelming firepower.
Fa Zheng, Meng Da, Zhang Ren, and Yan Yan watched from their posts, grim satisfaction on their faces. The army pulled back to its fortified lines, the wounded were carried to the rear, and the hwachas finally fell silent as the last Hengyuan soldier crossed back into the trench network.
The field before Jianmen Pass was left a smoldering, corpse strewn testament to the day's fury. But the important thing, the thing the generals discussed in low voices as they gathered in the command tent at dusk, was the feeling in the air.
"Their defense is stiff, but it is brittle," Yan Yan stated, cleaning his sword with a rag. "They fought with the courage of men who know no help is coming. Once we cracked their outer shell, the fear set in. It's not the fearless defiance of a garrison expecting relief."
Zhang Ren nodded, sipping water from a skin. "The coordination of our assaults broke their command. They were reacting, not directing. The goat path, the mountain attack… they had no answer. They are relying on the stone itself, not on clever tactics."
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 35 (202 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 9)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 966 (+20)
VIT: 623 (+20)
AGI: 623 (+10)
INT: 667
CHR: 98
WIS: 549
WILL: 432
ATR Points: 0