From beginning to end, Ma Xianglin's forces had done exactly nothing.
No arrows loosed.
No heroic charges.
No glorious clashing of steel.
They had simply… walked.
Slowly.
On both flanks.
Like extremely polite escorts.
And yet, somehow, the enemy's front line had already collapsed.
Marauders defending the so-called "city wall" were now engaged in a variety of desperate activities, including but not limited to:
climbing over the wall, running three steps, and immediately dying
crouching low, sprinting five steps, and dying slightly later
hiding behind the wall, trembling violently, peeking out carefully—
and losing half their face to a gunshot
Under these conditions, the marauders reached a unanimous conclusion:
This is not how war is supposed to work.
Even Ma Xianglin was starting to lose his grip on reality.
He stared blankly at the battlefield, thoughts spiraling.
Who am I?
Where am I?
Why am I here?
I am Ma Xianglin. A White Pole Soldier of Sichuan. Renowned for courage, bloodshed, and frontal assaults.
And yet I haven't stabbed a single man.
And we're winning.
This was deeply upsetting.
A subordinate ran over, shouting, "General! We're almost at the city wall! Should we… keep advancing slowly?"
Ma Xianglin froze.
This was not a question he had prepared for.
In his entire military career, no one had ever asked him:
"General, should we continue casually winning?"
Before he could answer, Cheng Xu's voice rang out from behind.
"General Ma—please take the wall."
Ma Xianglin didn't hesitate. His instincts finally found something familiar.
"White Pole Soldiers!" he roared.
"Charge! Take the wall!"
Thousands of Sichuan White Pole Soldiers felt their blood ignite.
Finally.
Finally.
Something respectable to do.
With thunderous battle cries, they surged forward.
The "wall"—if one could even insult the word that way—was barely waist-high. To the White Pole Soldiers, it wasn't a wall at all. It was an inconvenience.
They vaulted over it like annoyed tigers stepping over a fence.
The marauders behind it were still busy performing advanced bullet-dodging techniques—crouching, curling, praying to ancestors.
They never expected actual melee troops to arrive.
What followed was brutally short.
White waxwood spears stabbed into the huddled bandits like chopsticks into a bowl of terrified dumplings.
Those who had miraculously avoided bullets did not avoid spears.
Moments later, the wall changed hands.
Ma Xianglin laughed thunderously.
"I have never taken a city this easily in my life!"
He raised his hand, about to order a deeper push—
Then he noticed something strange.
The firearm troops… weren't following.
Instead, they dropped to their knees behind the wall with military precision.
The wall—just captured at great emotional cost—was immediately repurposed as cover.
Firearms were propped on it. Barrels extended. Lines formed.
Ma Xianglin blinked.
"…You're not advancing?"
Cheng Xu gestured forward.
Ahead lay a nightmare: twisted streets, cramped alleys, tangled houses, blind corners everywhere.
A paradise—for ambushes.
"Our troops excel at long-range combat," Cheng Xu said calmly. "Those alleys are ideal for seventeen angry grandmothers to jump out and kill us."
Ma Xianglin nodded solemnly.
"…That makes sense."
"So what now?" he asked.
Before Cheng Xu could reply, Gao Chuwu spoke up cheerfully.
"Don't rush. Advance layer by layer. Secure one street. Set up firearms. Then move to the next."
Everyone present understood instantly.
That wasn't Gao Chuwu talking.
That was the Heavenly Lord calmly explaining modern urban warfare—
to a group of Ming dynasty generals.
Street by street.
House by house.
Meter by meter.
No charging.
No heroics.
Just grinding inevitability.
Cheng Xu's eyes lit up.
"Nibbling tactics," he said. "General Ma, your men advance. Mine provide cover."
Ma Xianglin waved his hand.
The White Pole Soldiers advanced.
And this time, the marauders had absolutely no idea what to do.
They tried rooftop attacks.
Bang.
They fell off roofs.
They tried throwing stones.
Bang.
They fell off roofs.
They tried peeking.
Bang.
They fell off life.
Soon, no one dared show their head above ground.
Freed from overhead threats, the White Pole Soldiers stormed the street.
Short fight.
Quick screams.
Street taken.
Firearm troops surged in immediately—into houses, out windows, onto rooftops.
Within moments, guns were aimed at the second street.
The marauders there suddenly realized something horrifying:
They were now decorations.
Gunfire erupted.
Visible bandits scattered or died.
White Pole Soldiers advanced again.
At this point, the defeat was total—like a mountain collapsing, except the mountain had panic attacks and ran away screaming.
Lao Huihui watched calmly.
"…Yeah, no," he decided. "Cavalry preserved."
His iron cavalry vanished northward with professional efficiency.
Wang Ziyong, Chuǎng Wang, Southern Camp Eight Great Kings—
their forces crumbled.
Bandits, after all, were professionals at one thing:
Running.
They fled Daning County faster than rabbits discovering fire.
And just like that—
Daning County was retaken.
Ma Xianglin walked through the streets, occasionally nudging a corpse.
"…Still alive?"
No response.
He sighed.
"Are there no living people left?"
A subordinate answered grimly. "The houses are full of civilian corpses."
Ma Xianglin's mood darkened.
Then he changed the topic immediately—like a man stepping around a pit.
"I… don't understand General Xing's way of fighting."
Zhang Fengyi nodded slowly.
"If we fought them," she asked quietly, "what do you think our chances would be?"
Ma Xianglin laughed. Then stopped laughing. Then sighed.
"What chances?"
She fell silent.
Ma Xianglin continued, "We're lucky they accepted amnesty. If they'd joined Wang Jiayin's rebellion… no one could have stopped them."
Zhang Fengyi nodded.
"In Puxian, I saw them share half their rations with civilians. They're not bandits."
Just then, a soldier ran up.
"General! There are still residents alive ahead!"
Ma Xianglin's eyes lit up.
"Alive? Excellent! Let's go!"
He hurried forward—along with Zhang Fengyi and the leaders of the Gao Family Village militia.
Because after incomprehensible tactics—
Sometimes, incomprehensible mercy mattered more.