The Jin soldiers truly were at the brink.
They had no great trump card remaining.
Their special ammunition was gone.
Their initial numbers had been reduced drastically. Their bodies were exhausted beyond measure.
Many could barely keep their eyes open.
If Elder Zhoung had been able to hold and maintain that pressure for another hour or two, the castle might genuinely have fallen without a great assault.
Then Luo He arrived. He walked alongside his wife, Jin Mulan and stood atop the battlements while keeping his head resting atop her shoulder.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then a soldier noticed him. "Young Master!" He shouted.
Then another voice shouted. "Young Master Jin!"
The cry spread across the fortress. Then the entire courtyard erupted. Soldiers who had been leaning against walls straightened.
Men who could barely stand moments earlier suddenly grabbed their weapons.
Wounded soldiers pushed themselves upright without concern.
The exhausted defenders looked toward the courtyard as though someone had breathed life back into them.
The atmosphere changed completely.
Elder Zhoung's carefully calculated pressure had been aimed at breaking an exhausted army.
Instead, Luo He had given that army a reason to keep standing.
The approximately twenty-five hundred surviving soldiers returned to the walls.
And they did not return like exhausted men awaiting their deaths.
They returned like demons. The strange thing was that Luo He did not order them to fight harder. He did not need to. These soldiers already knew why they were fighting for him.
They knew who had paid them.
They knew who had given them leave. They knew who had allowed them to build families.
They knew whose wages fed their wives and children.
They knew that if they died, their families would not simply disappear into poverty.
They knew their lord had created the system that had transformed their lives.
They loved Jin Mulan. Yes. She was their commander. She was their lady. But Luo He was different. He had deliberately cultivated their loyalty.
He had spent years turning the empty relationship between lord and soldier into something personal. And now, for the first time, the result was visible.
The soldiers had been moments away from surrender. Then Luo He appeared.
And surrender disappeared from their minds entirely.
Not a single whisper of it remained. Elder Zhoung's attacks continued. A shield formation advanced. The defenders drove it back.
A group carrying ladders approached.
They were forced away. Another contingent appeared with a battering ram. Bolts rained down upon them.
Then another group came. And another.
The sixth day passed beneath constant fighting. The night came. The fighting continued.
The defenders barely slept. Yet they did not break. They fought until their arms trembled. They fought until their voices became hoarse.
They fought until their bodies screamed for rest. But whenever one man looked toward the high wall and saw Luo He still standing there, his exhaustion seemed insignificant.
Their lord was here. His wife was here.
Their home was here. That was enough.
And Luo He did not even fight. He stood behind Jin Mulan on the battlements, his arms wrapped around her.
His chin rested near her shoulder. He had simply missed her. He had been away for far too long, and now that he had finally returned back to her arms, he had no desire to immediately leave her side.
Jin Mulan remained focused on the battlefield. She watched the enemy formations approaching through the darkness.
But she did not push Luo He away. She simply allowed him to hold her. The two of them stood together while their loyal soldiers fought around them.
Occasionally, Luo He tightened his arms around her. Jin Mulan kept continuing to watch the enemy. Neither needed to say anything.
Their soldiers were fighting for them. And their soldiers were winning. Not because they were stronger than the enemy. Not because they had recovered.
Not because they had suddenly become less exhausted. They were winning because they had found something stronger than exhaustion.
They had found a reason not to surrender. The night of the sixth day passed in a continuous sequence of small battles.
Then dawn came. The seventh day began. Elder Zhoung continued exactly as before. Another few hundred soldiers.
Another shield formation. Another group carrying ladders. Another probing attack.
He still believed the Jin army was on the brink. He simply did not understand that the brink had already been crossed.
The army that had nearly surrendered yesterday was no longer the same army.
Two thousand five hundred exhausted soldiers stood upon the walls.
They had no special ammunition left.
They had barely slept. They had lost half their comrades. And yet not one of them was thinking about surrender.
They had already made their decision.
If the castle fell, Luo He's home would fall. If the castle fell, Jin Mulan would fall.
And if defending it required every one of them to die, then they would die there.
Elder Zhoung had spent an entire night trying to exhaust them. Instead, he had discovered the one thing exhaustion could not defeat. Loyalty.
Day Six: The Hell Storm
The sixth day passed strangely quiet.
After the bloody assault yesterday, Princess Ning Luo along with the three generals stood atop the wall.
Watching the distant enemy camp like hawks looking at prey. Yet neither side attacked.
The silence was almost unsettling. The Wu army was building. Carpenters, engineers, and soldiers worked hard throughout the day.
Timber was hauled from one place to another. Wheels were assembled. Ropes were stretched. Trebuchets rose one after another, followed by ballistae and other siege engines.
By evening, the reason for their silence became obvious. They had never just intended to capture the capital intact.
The Crown Prince of Yue was the greatest uncertainty in Wu's plan.
If Wu captured the capital and simply handed it over to him, what would stop him from turning around and breaking the agreement?
He could take the throne, declare himself emperor, and refuse to become Wu's subordinate.
The Wu Emperor and Crown Prince therefore needed very strong leverage.
And there was no better leverage than ruin and chaos in the capital itself.
The capital had to be damaged first.
Every shattered storehouse, collapsed house, destroyed road, and broken government building would become another heavy burden placed upon the Crown Prince's shoulders.
When he eventually inherited the throne, he would inherit a devastated capital and a kingdom already drowning in debt. He would need money.
A great deal of it.
Merchants would hesitate to lend to a newly crowned emperor whose kingdom had just lost a war. The treasury would be strained. His very capital would require enormous reconstruction.
And then Wu would offer exactly what he needed. Money. Materials. Food. Funds for his coronation. Funds to rebuild his capital.Funds to restore his government.
But there would be a price. Nearly one third of Yue's territory. The right for Wu to appoint a prime minister within Yue's imperial court.
Restrictions on Yue's foreign policy. And hundred years as Wu kingdom's political subordinates. There was, however, one peculiar obstacle.
Such an agreement could not be signed while the war was still being fought.
Under the laws of the Great Yang Empire, all kingdoms were brothers beneath a single supreme sovereign.
One kingdom could fight another, but neither was legally permitted to openly extinguish another kingdom or make it an eternal vassal.
Yet the law contained a convenient loophole. An armistice could last for a maximum of one hundred years. Eternal submission was forbidden.
A hundred-year political arrangement was not. Thus, a defeated kingdom could become a vassal in everything but name.
Its emperor would not kneel before the victorious emperor.
Both would remain, officially, fellow vassals beneath the Great Yang. But Wu could appoint Yue's prime minister. Wu could dominate Yue's foreign policy.
Wu could control much of Yue's court through a single office. And after one hundred years, the agreement would simply expire.
The Great Yang Empire knew such arrangements existed. It simply did not care enough to close every loophole. So the loophole remained.
And Wu intended to exploit it completely.
By the evening of the sixth day, the Yue capital was under bombardment.
Nearly forty seven trebuchets had been dragged within several hundred meters of the walls. Then they began firing.
Boulders crashed through rooftops.
Walls collapsed. Ballista bolts tore through buildings. Dust rose over entire districts as houses were smashed apart beneath the relentless bombardment.
The capital had become a place of broken timber, shattered stone, smoke, and terrified civilians. Yet the walls themselves remained remarkably difficult to damage properly.
The Wu army continued firing. The Crown Prince of Wu kept on his miniature assaults. He had abandoned massive assaults. Instead, small elite groups advanced throughout the evening.
A handful of soldiers approached. A few crossbows fired. Another formation appeared elsewhere. A shield wall suddenly advanced before retreating.
Then another attack came from a different direction. None of them were intended to break through. They were intended to exhaust.
The prince understood that Ning Luo's army had suffered enormous losses. Their ammunition was dwindling, their soldiers were exhausted.
And their morale should have been approaching its breaking point.
If he continued applying pressure without giving them time to breathe, eventually they would surrender. That was his calculation.
Their enemies still vastly outnumbered them. The army should have broken.
But even the Crown Prince had casually overlooked one person. Luo He.