The silence was the first lie.
After the days of unceasing thunder—the roar of Jin drums, the shriek of wounded men, the constant, sickening thud of stone and iron against earth—the sudden hush was a physical blow.
The cold, thick fog that had settled over Qiling Ridge felt like a shroud, muffling the world, absorbing even the sound of their own breathing. The air was still and heavy, carrying the stench of old blood and wet, charred wood. It was a false peace, a held breath.
Captain Guo found Lin Wei staring into the mist-shrouded valley below. They did not need to speak. The look they exchanged was one of grim, final understanding. The Jin were not gone. They were coiling, gathering their strength for one last, terrible constriction. This was the calm before the annihilation.
The attack, when it came, was not with a war cry, but with a whoosh and a crackle. From the gloom, dark arcs of fire rose. Clay pots, hurled from Jin catapults, shattered against the Song fortifications, splashing a sticky, reeking liquid that burst into furious, water-resistant flames.
The naphtha fire spread quickly, climbing the wooden palisades, turning the defensive works into a wall of flame. Men scrambled, beating at the flames with cloaks, throwing mud, their shouts of alarm the first real sounds to break the silence.
But the fire was a feint. A distraction.
As the defenders fought the flames, a new, more insidious volley arced into the sky.
These pots landed with a softer crash, shattering to release not fire, but a thick, yellowish smoke that billowed and rolled, dense as soup, across the ridge. It did not dissipate. It clung to the ground, seeping into the trenches and redoubts.
Lin Wei caught the first whiff—a sharp, acrid, chalky dust that burned the inside of his nose. His eyes also began to water. A soldier next to him gasped, then collapsed to his knees, retching, clawing at his face. The cloud enveloped them.
"[IMMEDIATE HAZARD: Airborne particulate matter detected. Chemical composition: Predominantly Calcium Oxide (Quicklime). Trace alkaloids: Capsaicin (pepper extract). Effect: Severe respiratory and ocular irritation. Neutralizing agent: Water. Protocol: Damp cloth over airways CRITICAL.]"
The system's alert was cool and precise, a stark contrast to the hellish chaos erupting around him. Men were screaming, blind and choking, stumbling into each other, the line dissolving into a disoriented mob.
Captain Guo's voice could be heard, hoarse, shouting orders that were lost in the cacophony of coughs and gags. The ridge was not being taken by steel, but by suffocation.
Water. They had no water to spare. The fire had already claimed most of it.
Then, a memory sparked in Lin Wei's mind—a text on ancient warfare, a desperate remedy for lime burns. It was grotesque, degrading, but it was the only solution.
"PISS!" he bellowed, the word tearing from his raw throat. He ripped a strip of cloth from his tunic. "Soak your rags! Piss on them! Now! Cover your nose and mouth! DO IT!"
The order, so shocking and primal, cut through the panic. For a heart-stopping moment, men stared, revolted. Then, survival instinct overrode dignity. The air filled with the sound of fumbling and the sharp, ammoniac smell of urine. Soldiers, weeping and choking, followed the grotesque instruction, tying the wet, reeking cloths over their faces.
It worked. The relief was not instant, but it was real. The burning in their lungs and eyes lessened from an inferno to a manageable ache. Vision returned, bleary and tear-filled, but functional.
The line, which had been on the verge of disintegrating, stiffened. Men coughed, spat, and picked up their weapons, their eyes wide with a mixture of horror and a fierce, desperate will to live. They could see the enemy again.
And the enemy was coming.
Seeing their chemical screen fail, the Jin commander committed his final reserve. A solid wall of their best heavy infantry, their scale armor glinting dully in the firelight, began their steady, inevitable advance up the slope. This was the hammer blow.
The battle disintegrated into a thousand individual nightmares of close-quarter combat on the blood-slick, muddy ground.
The aid station, once a relative sanctuary, was overrun. A group of Jin soldiers, having broken through a weak point, surged into the gully.
Ox Li met them. He was not a medic. He was a force of nature. He picked up a fallen Jin axe and became a whirlwind of destruction, his roars of fury a match for the battle cries. He did not fight with skill, but with pure, terrifying power, carving a bloody space around the wounded, his sole purpose to protect the men who could not protect themselves.
Nearby, Young Kuo was trapped with a group of wounded behind a barricade of supply crates. A Jin soldier vaulted over, his sword raised. Kuo had no weapon. In a flash of pure, terrified instinct, he grabbed the bone-saw from his kit and, as the soldier lunged, he didn't stab, but hooked and pulled, dragging the serrated edge across the man's leg. The soldier screamed and fell, and Kuo stared, horrified, at the tool in his hand, now a weapon.
Lin Wei was trying to drag a wounded man to safety when a Jin soldier, his face a mask of battle-rage, charged him.
Lin Wei had a scalpel in his hand. There was no time to think, no room for his physician's oath. As the man swung his sword, Lin Wei sidestepped and, with the same precise motion he used to make an incision, he slashed the blade across the soldier's exposed throat.
It wasn't a deep cut, but it was perfect. The man stumbled, a look of profound surprise on his face, a jet of bright blood arcing into the air. He collapsed, gurgling, at Lin Wei's feet.
Lin Wei stood frozen, staring at the dying man, at the blood on his hands, on his scalpel. The world seemed to slow down. He had not saved a life. He had taken one. The system in his mind was silent. It had no analysis for this.
It was in that moment of personal cataclysm that a new sound cut through this hell—not the deep bellow of Jin horns, but the higher, clearer peal of Song signal horns. They came from the east, from the direction of the Jin siege lines at Xiangyang.
The effect on the Jin was immediate and electric. Their advance faltered. Orders were shouted in their own tongue, voices sharp with alarm. The hammer blow against the ridge was being pulled back.
The main Song army was attacking their rear. Reluctantly, with furious glances at the decimated but still-holding Song line, the Jin commander sounded the retreat. The tide of armored men receded as quickly as it had come, leaving behind their dead and dying.
The ridge fell silent once more, but this time the silence was different. It was the silence of utter exhaustion, of a pain so deep it was beyond sound. The fog had lifted, revealing a scene from a butcher's nightmare. Lin Wei stood amidst the carnage, his body trembling with spent adrenaline and shock. He looked from the Jin soldier he had killed—a young man—to the rows of his own maimed and dying men.
Captain Guo stumbled over, leaning heavily on a broken spear. His armor was dented and bloody. He looked at Lin Wei, then at the held line. He didn't say "we won." He simply gave a single, slow, grave nod. The message was clear. They had done their duty. They were the anvil that had held.
Lin Wei nodded back, a hollow, empty gesture. Then he turned away from the dead man and walked back towards the moaning rows of his wounded. The battle was over. But his work, the true, terrible work of accounting for the cost, had only just begun.
He had survived. But a part of him, the healer, lay dead on the ground next to the soldier with the slashed throat.