Chapter Fourteen: The Crimson-Stained Battle Robe Reveals True Valor

The deep, resonant sound of war drums thundered across the land, filling heaven and earth with an air of grim determination and slaughter. The soldiers of the Western Qin army raised their arms and roared, “Great Qin victorious! Great Qin victorious!”

With a sweeping gesture, Xue Ringuo signaled, and over a thousand crossbowmen from the Accumulated Shot Battalion, each gripping a foot-drawn crossbow and quiver slung over their backs, marched in perfect formation to the base of Jingyang’s city walls. When they were just over fifty paces from the ramparts, the entire company lay flat on the ground, hands clasping the bowstrings, feet braced against the crossbow arms.

A harsh, teeth-grinding creak filled the air as the thousand Western Qin soldiers slowly cocked their weapons.

“Damn it!” Chen Ying’s face drained of color as he witnessed the scene. Foot-drawn crossbows! Though he was no expert in ancient warfare, he vividly remembered their devastating power from a film he’d once seen called “Hero.” Afterwards, he’d even looked up the foot-drawn crossbow in an online encyclopedia.

The reconstructed crossbows in the modern era could shoot as far as three hundred twenty-seven meters, with lethal accuracy up to two hundred eighty meters, and at eighty meters, they could pierce five millimeters of steel.

“Get down! Quickly, get down!”

A chorus of sharp whistles filled the air as a dense swarm of arrows, like locusts, swept toward Jingyang’s walls. Though Chen Ying’s timely warning saved some, many of the local militia froze in terror, rooted to the spot, unable to react.

One young militia man, who had just complained to Chen Ying that dying before knowing the touch of a woman was too great an injustice, was struck by a sharp arrow that pierced his lung. He tried to open his mouth, but no words came; instead, he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

Chen Ying’s eyes reddened. In just one volley, dozens of Jingyang militia men had fallen, over a hundred wounded—almost two companies rendered combat ineffective. Blood seeped through the cracks in the city wall, trickling down to Chen Ying’s feet.

“Fight them to the death!” As Chen Ying leapt up, he suddenly felt someone yank at his armor skirt with tremendous force.

“Are you mad? Do you want to die?” Only then did he see Li Xiuning, face expressionless, ducking behind the parapet with the other militia and Tang soldiers, as if oblivious to the carnage.

Seeing his men dead or wounded at his side, rage boiled up in Chen Ying, veins bulging on his forehead. He slammed his fist hard against the merlon, and his knuckles were instantly drenched in blood.

“Mercy has no place in command!” Li Xiuning’s tone was still cool, her face unreadable. “I truly wonder how you’ve survived this long.”

Chen Ying slowly regained his composure, only now recalling that all the bows and crossbows they’d seized from the Western Qin had been destroyed on his orders. Now, the Jingyang militia could barely scrape together twenty hunting bows; trying to return fire against the Western Qin’s crossbowmen was pure folly.

Under such circumstances, only by luring the enemy into close-quarters combat atop the walls could there be any hope of survival.

With this, Chen Ying roared, “Everyone, hide yourselves well—damn it, don’t give them a target!”

The battlefield was the harshest of teachers, and the Jingyang militia no longer needed reminders. They instinctively shielded their vital areas behind shields or crouched behind the parapet.

As anguished screams echoed from the walls, the Western Qin soldiers’ morale soared. Their crossbowmen fired rapidly, pouring a relentless rain of arrows onto the defenders.

Soon, the ramparts resembled a wild, overgrown meadow.

With their crossbowmen suppressing the walls, the Western Qin’s light infantry hefted their scaling ladders and advanced swiftly.

Chen Ying loathed this helpless suppression, vowing that, if ever given the chance, he would see his men armed with the finest crossbows—even the scorpion-draw models of the modern era, one for every soldier.

The first Western Qin soldier to scale the wall shook with excitement. In the army, there was a prestigious title for such men—“the First to Ascend.” If he survived the battle, he would receive ten oxen and four female slaves—a windfall akin to winning the lottery and joining the propertied class overnight.

Yet, as his head crested the parapet, a thunderous shout exploded in his ears.

“Kill them all!”

Before Chen Ying had finished speaking, cold steel flashed. Several broadswords whirled through the air, and the Western Qin soldier tumbled screaming from the ladder.

Leading the charge, Chen Ying fought in the thick of it. The once-cowardly Jingyang militia, now emboldened as if possessed, roared and threw themselves into the melee with the Western Qin attackers.

“Behind us lies Jingyang—our home, our families. If we retreat even one step, our loved ones will suffer!” Chen Ying bellowed as he hacked at the enemy. “Can I retreat?”

“No!”

“No!”

“What do we do?”

“Slaughter the Western Qin!”

The Western Qin assault slammed up against an immovable stone. Dozens of ladders were thrown up, and hundreds of soldiers surged onto the walls—yet within a quarter-hour, they were slain to the last man.

Seeing the attack falter, Xue Ringuo flew into a rage. He roared, “Loose! Loose! Shoot those bastards dead!”

A soldier ventured timidly, “My lord, but there are still our men on the wall—”

A cold flash, and the speaker suddenly found himself flying through the air. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a headless corpse spurting blood from its neck—it looked vaguely familiar.

Xue Ringuo’s eyes gleamed with a wolfish ferocity as he glared at his men. “Any who disobey my orders will be executed!”

The surrounding soldiers, terrified, dared not meet his gaze.

Xue Ringuo shouted, “Archers—raise your aim by a finger. Fire!”

The crossbowmen, helpless, continued to rain arrows over the wall.

A storm of arrows swept over the defenders and attackers alike. Whether Jingyang militia or Western Qin soldiers, all were caught beneath the deadly hail. Those struck fell with screams to the blood-soaked stones.

The Western Qin army was heavily comprised of Qiang wolf warriors—fierce tribesmen who could be recruited in endless numbers so long as they were fed. Xue Ringuo cared nothing for their casualties. They, in turn, were truly savage, holding their shields high as they charged on despite the arrow storm.

At the critical moment, You Ziying stepped forward, raising his shield to protect Chen Ying from a fatal arrow.

Chen Ying glanced at You Ziying, who still gripped his long infantry shield. He was an oddity—perhaps the only regimental captain among tens of thousands of Tang troops to carry a shield into battle. After Chen Ying restructured the militia into five companies per regiment, each regiment with five hundred men and a captain at its head—akin to a battalion commander in modern terms—You Ziying still refused to part with the shield that had accompanied him through a decade of war.

More and more Western Qin soldiers swarmed the walls. Even Li Xiuning had slain three men, when Chen Ying suddenly spotted the logs and boulders stored atop the parapet.

“Clear the way—use the rolling logs and stones on them!”