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"We can recall the armies sent to the Gansu Corridor and the Qinghai Plateau," he said. "All of them. The expeditionary forces. We abandon those lands entirely, for now. They return east. We consolidate. Those hundreds of thousands of soldiers could be redirected toward Jianmen Pass."
The words fell like a stone dropped into deep water.
For a long moment, no one moved. No one even breathed noticeably. Every man in the hall understood the enormity of what had just been proposed.
The Gansu Corridor was not merely territory, it was prestige, expansion, proof of Wei's ambition stretching toward the western horizons. The Qinghai Plateau represented months even years of blood, logistics, and political maneuvering. To abandon them was to admit weakness on a scale that would ripple across the realm.
Guo Jia's eyes flicked downward briefly, already calculating distances and timelines. Xi Zhicai's brow furrowed, his lips pressing into a thin line.
Xu You's mouth tightened. Cheng Yu frowned deeply. Tian Feng's eyes flickered, calculating even as unease settled into his posture.
Cao Cao did not respond immediately. He stared at the spilled wine on the floor, watching it seep between the cracks in the stone.
The silence stretched, taut and heavy.
Then Guo Jia spoke.
"It would be futile, Your Majesty," he said, his voice calm but edged with sorrow. "And useless."
Xi Zhicai nodded almost immediately. "I must agree."
All eyes swiveled to the two men, the military architects of Cao Cao's early, expansive campaigns. Guo Jia, with a cold mentally incisive expression, stood in front. Xi Zhicai stood with his arms crossed, his face a mask of tactical certainty.
Cao Cao's eyes nrrowed, sharp despite the exhaustion weighing him down. "Explain. Quickly."
Guo Jia began, his mind visibly racing through maps and logistics tables. "The distance, Your Majesty. From the furthest outposts on the plateau to Jianmen Pass is over a thousand li of the most broken terrain imaginable."
He took a deep breath before then continuing his words. "Even if we sent the order by our fastest horse today, it would take days to reach the scattered commanders. Then they must break camp, camps designed for long term occupation, with siege trains, local administration, families in some cases. That is not a swift process. Then the march itself…"
Xi Zhicai took over, his voice clinical. "To move even fifty thousand men at a forced march pace across that distance would take a minimum of three weeks. And that is assuming no resistance from the tribes we've been pacifying, who will see a retreat as weakness and swarm like wolves."
"Assuming they abandon all heavy equipment, all supplies. They would arrive at Jianmen Pass exhausted, starving, and ill equipped, just in time to witness its fall and walk into the waiting jaws of Fa Zheng's fresh, entrenched army. We would not be sending reinforcements. We would be sending lambs to a second slaughter."
Guo Jia added the final, damning point. "And this assumes Jianmen Pass holds for three more weeks. After the messenger's description… I give it ten days. At most. The math does not work, Your Majesty. The geometry of defeat is already drawn. To attempt this would be to lose the west and the army within it, for nothing."
The cold, brutal logic of it settled over the room. Xun Yu's face, usually so composed, showed a flicker of grim acceptance. He had offered a desperate move, and the two sharpest tactical minds had shown him the board was already lost. He bowed his head slightly. "I apologize, Your Majesty. I sought only a lever. It seems there is no ground left to place it on."
Cao Cao waved a hand, the gesture weary. "No, Wenruo. You think. That is your duty. You sought a path where none may exist. That is not a fault." He sighed again, the sound seeming to come from the depths of the earth. "So. A dead end. As all paths seem to be."
It was then, from the corner where the older, more stubborn advisors stood, that Tian Feng spoke. His voice was low, hesitant, as if voicing a treasonous thought. "Your Majesty… if the south cannot be saved, and we are pressed here… why do we remain in Hongnong?"
Cao Cao's gaze snapped to him, sharp as a dagger.
Tian Feng pressed on, his words gaining a little strength. "Tong Pass. It lies to the west, between the mountains and the river. Its defenses are legendary. The natural barriers alone make it ten times more defensible than Hongnong, even with all our improvements here. If we conducted a fighting retreat now, conserved our strength, we could fall back to Tong Pass. We could make it a fortress that would bleed Lie Fan white for quite some time. We could buy time. Time to rally, to regroup, to… to see what happens in the south."
The idea of retreat, of yielding Hongnong, hung in the air. It was militarily sound. It was, perhaps, the only rational move left.
Cao Cao's reaction was immediate and visceral. He shook his head, a slow, firm denial. "No."
The single word was absolute.
"We do not retreat," he said, his voice gaining steel. "Not now. Not from him." The 'him' was unmistakable. This was no longer just about territory, it was about the man standing beyond the eastern wall. "To abandon Hongnong is to concede this round. To admit he pushed me out. I will not give him that satisfaction. I will not have the historians write that Cao Cao fled from Lie Fan."
He began to pace, the energy of defiance pushing back against the despair. "And Tong Pass is not ready. It is a strong position, yes, but its granaries are not full, its internal defenses have not been updated for a modern siege, its garrison is skeletal. To fall back there now would be to arrive as refugees, not an army. We would be trapped between Lie Fan's pursuit and a fortress unprepared to receive us. It would be a slower, more ignoble death."
He stopped, his eyes finding each of his advisors in turn, the familial loyalty warring with the strategist's cold logic. "And there is another matter. Cao Hong. Cao Ren."
He said their names with a weight that silenced any further argument about retreat. "They are my cousins. They are my blood. They are in Lie Fan's clutches because they fought for me on that wall. To retreat now is to abandon them. To write them off as lost. I will not do that. As long as there is a sliver of a chance to retrieve them, through prisoner exchange, through a negotiated pause, through… anything… we stay. We fight here."
The admission laid bare the core of the dilemma. Pride, strategy, and raw, familial loyalty were tangled into an impossible knot. A rational retreat was morally and personally unacceptable. Holding was tactically suicidal. And no outside salvation was coming.
The hall fell into a deeper, more hopeless silence. The strategic options had been examined and found wanting. The personal imperatives had been stated and were immovable. They were left with the grim arithmetic of the siege, dwindling supplies, mounting casualties, a southern front collapsing, and an enemy outside whose will seemed as inexhaustible as the tide.
Cao Cao returned to his seat, not with the energy of a commander, but with the heavy finality of a man settling in for a long, inevitable vigil. He looked at the shattered pieces of the wine cup on the floor, the dark stain spreading on the stone.
"We hold Hongnong," he said, his voice quiet but leaving no room for debate. "We make Lie Fan pay for every stone, for every drop of blood. We make this city a tomb, for as many of his men as we can take with us."
He looked up, his eyes burning with a dark, resigned fire. "And we wait. We wait for a mistake. We wait for a miracle. Or we wait for the end. But we do not run. Not from him. Not ever."
The silence that followed Cao Cao's declaration was the deepest yet, a well of despair so profound it felt like the air itself had been siphoned from the room. The shattered cup, the spreading stain of wine, they were perfect symbols of a reign cracking under unbearable pressure.
Outside, the night was a tapestry of distant screams, the thump thump thump of the relentless trebuchets, and the ever present, acrid smell of smoke. It was Lie Fan's voice, speaking in the language of siegecraft, and his message was clear: I am still here. I am not tired.
Far to the west, under a sky pricked with indifferent stars, the atmosphere was one of controlled, predatory patience. Fa Zheng stood at the periphery of the sprawling Hengyuan camp, a sentinel of cold intellect.
The camp behind him hummed with the quiet industry of an army that had drawn first blood and was now digesting its meal. Forges glowed, engineers repaired minor damage to the mighty siege engines, and the wounded were tended to with efficient, impersonal care.
Meng Da materialized beside him, his presence as quiet as the night breeze. "They're afraid now," he observed, following Fa Zheng's gaze up to the fire dotted scar that was Jianmen Pass.
Fa Zheng's lips thinned in something that was not a smile. "They should be." His voice was soft, almost absorbed by the vast darkness. "Fear is a more potent weapon than any trebuchet stone. It saps will. It clouds judgment."
"The retreat today," Meng Da mused, "it unsettled them more than another full assault would have. They expected us to be desperate, to keep throwing men at the hole we made. Instead, we… stepped back."
"Because we revealed the truth," Fa Zheng said, finally turning his head. In the dim light, his eyes were like chips of obsidian. "The truth that this is not a battle of desperation for us. It is a process. We choose the time, the place, the pressure. We are the anvil, and they are the metal. Today, we heated them. Tomorrow, or the day after, we will strike again. They will spend the night repairing stone that we will reduce to powder in the morning. They will exhaust themselves, while we rest and plan. Time is not their ally. It is ours."
He looked back toward the warmly lit command tent, where maps awaited and couriers from Chengdu brought news of steady supplies. "Let them hold. Let them cling to their broken wall. Every day they hold is another day their hope dies, and another day our foothold in their minds and soon, in their lands, becomes unshakable."
Meanwhile, Hundreds of li to the south, in the heart of the pacified but still watchful Yi Province, Zhang Song worked in a pool of lamplight. The administrative halls of Chengdu were silent but for the scratch of his brush and the rustle of scrolls.
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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