Chapter Twelve: Jingyang in a Frenzied Madness

“Open the gates for me!”

More than twenty local militiamen from Jingyang strained as they pushed the heavy, iron-clad city gates, slowly closing them. In the instant before the gates shut completely, Yao Damu raised his single-horned bronze halberd and drove it forcefully into the door.

The local militiamen were knocked aside as if struck by a charging rhinoceros, toppling over in a heap within the gateway. Before they could scramble to their feet, Yao Damu, brandishing his formidable halberd, unleashed a massacre within the gatehouse.

Gifted with Herculean strength, Yao Damu wielded his eighty-pound bronze halberd as if it were a feather, each swing wounding or killing those it touched. In mere moments, the more than twenty militiamen within the gatehouse had been slaughtered to the last.

Holding aloft his blood-drenched weapon, Yao Damu charged into the city.

Jingyang County was a typical medium-sized town, its four gates aligned with a cross-shaped main street running east to west, north to south. Gazing at the deserted avenues within, a single thought echoed in Yao Damu’s mind—loot and women.

With a sweeping gesture, he commanded his men, “Forward!”

Over three thousand Qiang wolf soldiers surged into the city like a swarm, oblivious to the cold, sinister smile on Chen Ying’s face atop the city wall.

“Drop the portcullis!”

The local militiamen atop the wall struggled to operate the winch mechanism. With a series of creaks, the massive portcullis thundered down.

It crashed mercilessly upon a dozen or so Western Qin soldiers who had just rushed through the gate, grinding them into pulp before they could even scream.

Outside the city, Xue Renguo saw the portcullis fall and shouted, “It’s a trap!”

But by then, it was already too late.

At that very moment, as the portcullis slammed down, Yao Damu, charging ahead, suddenly felt the street vanish beneath his feet. A vast pit, several yards wide and nearly forty yards long, yawned before him.

Though Yao Damu’s face resembled that of a gorilla, his movements were agile as a cat. He leapt aside in time, but his men behind could not halt their momentum and crashed into him, knocking him into the pit.

Inside, he saw a dense forest of sharpened wooden stakes. Letting out a roar, Yao Damu swung his halberd in a wide arc, smashing down a dozen spikes.

Though he tumbled in dust and dirt, his thick hide and robust build spared him any real injury.

“Trying to ambush me? Think again!” Yao Damu bellowed from the pit.

He had barely finished his shout when a Qiang wolf soldier leapt down, landing squarely in his arms and knocking him backward.

Unbeknownst to Yao Damu, a broken spike remained just behind him—a three-foot-long stake as thick as a child’s arm, pointing straight at his rear as he sat down.

A guttural, pig-like scream tore from Yao Damu’s throat as the stake impaled him a full foot deep. He sprang up as though seated on a red-hot iron.

A torrent of black blood gushed from his wound.

The sudden calamity struck terror into the Western Qin soldiers. While they froze in shock, Chen Ying did not hesitate. He leapt down from the wall, shouting to the local militiamen, “Beat the bastard!”

He grabbed a bag of lime and hurled it at the Qin soldiers’ heads. Following his lead, the others threw their own bags of unslaked lime, prepared in advance.

While preparing to preserve the heads of the Western Qin dead, Chen Ying had discovered over a thousand pounds of raw lime in the city’s pharmacies. With several hundred pounds remaining after salting the heads, he was not about to let it go to waste.

As clouds of lime dust descended upon the Western Qin soldiers, they clutched their eyes and screamed in agony.

“My eyes!”

“I can’t see!”

With a grin, Chen Ying raised his broadsword and brought it down upon the head of a Qin soldier writhing in pain on the ground.

Ma Sanbao was astonished to see the formerly timid local militiamen now crazed with excitement, as if intoxicated, raining blows on the helpless Qin soldiers.

Their brutality was unmatched—they beat and hacked at their victims until even the twitching stopped before turning to the next target.

Three thousand Qiang wolf soldiers would have been a formidable force on any battlefield. The Qiang, meat-eaters by nature, were taller and stronger than Han Chinese and renowned for their ferocity. Yet now, they scattered like headless flies, beaten senseless by the local militiamen.

Chen Ying spared no effort to annihilate his foes: first the portcullis severed their escape, then the pits sowed panic, then lime blinded them, and finally, the locals closed in for the kill.

At this point, the Western Qin soldiers could not mount any effective resistance. They shoved and trampled one another in disarray.

The local militiamen only grew fiercer with each blow. Even Captain You Ziying, who had nearly wet himself in terror earlier, now fought like a different man—each stroke drew blood and ended a life.

In less than a quarter of an hour, a third of Yao Damu’s Qiang wolf soldiers were wiped out, while the local militia had casualties still in the single digits.

What happened next left Li Xiuning dumbstruck.

A woman in her forties or fifties seized a fallen Qin soldier with one hand and, with the other, raised a cleaver. Chopping as if splitting firewood, she hacked at the now-unrecognizable head over a dozen times before finally severing it, then handed the blood-soaked trophy to Chen Ying.

“Chief Chen, how much is this head worth?”

“Fair trade for all—one bushel of rice each!” he replied.

Not only that, but even boys in their teens used rope snares to drag downed Qin soldiers to the roadside, where four or five children would bludgeon them with sticks.

The pitiful screams faded. When the last Qin soldier was hacked to pieces by the frenzied militiamen, Li Xiuning felt her stomach churn.

She had seen brutal battles before, but never imagined the people of Jingyang could be so savage.

At that moment, as Li Xiuning and Ma Sanbao stood in stunned silence, the townsfolk, unfazed by the blood pooling at their feet, queued up to exchange the heads they had severed for grain.

Outside the walls, Xue Renguo had no siege equipment, nor wings to fly—he could only watch helplessly as Yao Damu’s Qiang wolf soldiers were decapitated one by one, their heads traded as merit badges.

Gasps of horror rippled through the crowd. A great question burned in Li Xiuning’s mind.

What method had Chen Ying used to drive all of Jingyang into such madness?