Chapter 96
Cannes, inside the central army tent.
The scout hurried in from outside the tent, half-knelt on the ground and clasped his fists, saying: "My Lord, today the rebels in Kangcheng City are still guarding the city gates and refusing to come out!"
The man sitting in the first seat was dressed in black clothes, without any armor. He was tall and handsome, holding a military book between his slender white fingertips. His eyes were calm and he seemed to have expected this situation. He just said, "Continue to attack the city until the rebels can't even fill the battlements with their heads."
The scout quickly took the order and went down.
Xie Zheng threw away the military book in his hand and called to his personal guards: "Bring me my armor."
Gongsun Yin, who was standing by, asked, "Do you want to go and challenge them?"
Xie Zheng said: "The remaining soldiers in Kangcheng are not a threat, but Sui Yuanqing is still a potential threat. Now the morale of the soldiers in the city has been broken. I am not afraid that he will not respond if I go to challenge him."
Gongsun Yin naturally understood the pros and cons. The only one who could fight in Kangcheng was Sui Yuanqing. Xie Zheng wanted to get rid of Sui Yuanqing before leaving.
To challenge Sui Yuanqing two days after the siege would undoubtedly be like putting Sui Yuanqing on the fire. If he accepted the challenge, it would be exactly what Xie Zheng wanted, and he could eliminate this great threat directly on the battlefield.
If he doesn't respond, the already low morale in the city will probably get even lower.
-
Below the city tower of Kangcheng, the Yanzhou Army, which was attacking fiercely, stopped halfway. Before the soldiers on the tower could catch their breath, they saw that the Yanzhou Army's formation below had changed.
The ant-like army formation split up, leaving a narrow passage wide enough for two people to walk side by side.
In the yellow sand and smoke, a man and a horse walked slowly from the end of the narrow path to the front of the formation. The unicorn on his shoulder looked solemn and fierce under the scorching sun. The black cloak dragged on the horse's back, and he held a long halberd with a black handle and a gold-painted dragon pattern at an angle.
Just this black horse in black armor was enough to frighten the soldiers on the city wall so much that their pupils shrank and their legs trembled.
Seeing the black iron halberd handle and the dragon pattern on the blade, the soldiers on the city wall became more panicked as they confirmed the identity of the person coming.
"The black gold halberd with dragon pattern is from Marquis Wu'an!"
"Marquis Wu'an has come in person. Kangcheng will not be able to be defended today!"
Normally military generals would never dare to use weapons with dragon patterns. The black gold halberd with dragon patterns was given to Marquis Wu'an when he recaptured Jinzhou to avenge the shame of ceding land seventeen years ago. The emperor was very pleased and personally ordered hundreds of craftsmen to forge it and gave it to Marquis Wu'an.
When he was conferred the title of Marquis of Wu'an, the emperor also said: "With such a Marquis of Wu, my eldest son can rest in peace."
Nowadays, all the arrogant military generals in the court and the public want to compete with Marquis Wu'an.
However, the numerous military exploits of Marquis Wu'an were indeed peaks that they could never reach in their entire lives.
Two rows of war drums were mounted on the chariots below the city wall. When the deep drumbeats echoed in the empty battlefield, the soldiers guarding the city wall on the city wall were so frightened that they got goosebumps all over their bodies and almost lost their swords.
The hands of the soldier with a bow on the battlement of the city wall were shaking like chicken claws, and the arrow on the string could not hit the target at all.
Amid the sound of war drums, the young general on horseback raised his head and looked up at the tower. He had a pair of indifferent eyes and a face as handsome as jade. He pointed his halberd at the tower with one hand and shouted, "Where is Sui Yuanqing? Come out and die!"
The herald on the city wall almost crawled back to report the news.
-
Kangcheng had been besieged for only a few days, but the city lord's mansion was already filled with gloom and sorrow.
Everyone knew that the one who surrounded Kangcheng this time was Marquis Wu'an. Not only were the soldiers under him afraid, but even the servants in the city lord's mansion knew that it was only a matter of time before the city fell.
But no one dared to talk about the war out of fear. In the past few days, several servants who had dared to suggest that Cannes would soon be undefendable had been beaten to death in the palace.
The messenger who rushed back from the city gate hurried all the way, passed through the deep courtyard, and was finally led to Sui Yuanqing.
He knelt on one knee and said with a trembling voice: "Sir, Marquis Wu'an is calling for battle in front of the city gate. Please go out and fight."
As summer approaches, the sunlight is quite scorching. The bamboo curtain in front of the study window is half-opened. The sunlight is scorching at the entrance, but no sunlight can reach the inside, making it look a bit gloomy.
Yuan Qing was sitting barefoot on the ground with his hands loose, and the low table in front of him was piled with books, pens, and ink.
He had fallen into Xie Zheng's hands before and suffered a lot. After being rescued, he recuperated for many days. Although the flesh wounds on his body healed, he looked much thinner and his brows became more gloomy. Hearing the voice, he said gloomily: "No, you guys continue to defend the city gate."
The messenger hesitated: "Sir, the soldiers in the city are demoralized and their morale is low. If this continues, Kangcheng will be conquered without a fight. You have defeated Marquis Wu'an in the battlefield of Chongzhou. If you go to the battlefield, you can at least boost the morale of the soldiers."
Sui Yuanqing sneered: "If this prince really goes to the battle, then he will fall into Xie Zheng's trap. He left Chongzhou unconquered and came to Kangcheng to capture me. Isn't it because he is eager to get out of the court's party struggle? As long as Chongzhou is not conquered, he will not dare to enter the gate of Kangcheng."
The herald had no choice but to retreat.
When Yuan Qing was the only one left in the study, he suddenly roared in anger, knocked down the book scroll on the low table, and smashed the inkstone filled with ink to the ground, and the black ink splashed on the wooden floor.
Sui Yuanqing supported the dwarf with both hands, the veins on the back of his thin hands were bulging, and his pale jaw was tense from clenching his teeth tightly.
Once upon a time, surpassing Xie Zheng had always been his inner demon. After all, for so many years, he had been living like Xie Zheng, learning what he had learned and practicing the skills he had practiced.
In their first encounter on the battlefield of Chongzhou, he thought he had won, and from then on Xie Zheng was his defeated general.
Only now did he realize how naive he was.
He even had a premonition that he might die at Xie Zheng's hands.
This premonition was like a layer of fog covering his heart, making him more and more gloomy day by day. He locked himself in the study during these days.
He needed to stay calm. As long as he could find the point to restrain Xie Zheng and the purpose of his sudden attack on the city, he would always be able to find a way to deal with it.
Sui Yuanqing closed his eyes solemnly.
There were trembling footsteps approaching outside the house.
When Yuan Qing opened his eyes, the girl was startled and almost knocked over the plate of cakes in her hands.
With shaking hands, she placed the plate of exquisite snacks in front of the low table and said in a trembling voice, "It's me, cousin."
The girl who was brought up in seclusion had a face only the size of a palm, skin as smooth as cream, and a pair of apricot eyes with tears in them. She looked timid, which made people think of the four words "rain hitting pear blossoms".
Sui Yuanqing narrowed his eyes. This was a kind of beauty that was completely different from the wild cat he met. The wild cat had a very bad temper and would scratch, claw, and bite people.
The woman before me was like a delicate flower trembling and blooming in the rain and dew, just waiting to be picked.
She was too weak, as if others could do anything to her and she was completely powerless to resist. Even if she did resist, she would probably just look at the people who bullied her with her watery eyes and cry silently.
When Sui Yuanqing raised his hand to hold her jaw, she trembled all over. She grabbed a piece of exquisite pastry from the plate in a panic and wanted to feed him: "Mother said...she said that my cousin has been working very hard to defend Cannes these days, so she asked the kitchen to make some snacks and asked me to bring them over."
Sui Yuanqing didn't open his mouth, just staring at the pretty face in front of him, and asked nonchalantly, "Cousin, you are shaking so hard, what are you afraid of?"
The woman shook her head in panic.
Sui Yuanqing loosened the hand that was holding her jaw, picked up the cake she was about to feed him, looked at it, suddenly smiled, fed it to the woman's lips, and said, "I don't like sweets, let my cousin eat it."
The woman's face turned pale instantly, and she just shook her head: "I...I don't like it either."
Sui Yuanqing kneaded the cakes, and when he lowered his head, he still had a smile on his face, but his expression was extremely gloomy. He asked in a low voice: "Why?"
The woman's temper was no match for him, and she soon broke down and burst into tears, saying, "Cousin, run away quickly. Father heard that Marquis Wu'an was personally calling for battle at the city gate, and he was afraid that the Liu family would be plundered after the city was breached, so he asked the kitchen to make this poisonous snack, intending to poison you to death and then cut off your head and take it to the city gate as a surrender."
Sui Yuanqing grinned, his smile getting even bigger, and said, "Is that so?"
Yan Jue actually took the sword directly from the sword rack and went out.
When the Yan army attacked the city, the main forces in the city were concentrated at the four major city gates, and only a few hundred soldiers were left in the city lord's mansion.
The woman thought that Yuan Qing was going to escape from the house with the sword in hand, so she walked out of the study with weak limbs. She was panicking and didn't know how to go back to report, but she heard ghostly cries and howlings from the front hall.
She was startled and the light gauze she was tucked around her arm fell to the ground without her even bothering to pick it up. She grabbed the hem of her skirt and ran quickly towards the source of the crying. When she entered the front hall and saw the room full of dead bodies, she almost fainted on the spot.
When she saw her parents lying in a pool of blood, she collapsed to the ground. She was so grief-stricken and frightened that she couldn’t even cry. Tears just rolled down her cheeks like beads from a broken string. It took her a long time to recover from the pain and she cried out in grief, “Dad—Mom—”
She looked at the sword with sticky blood still dripping from it like a demon. Standing in the middle of the hall, Sui Yuanqing sobbed unsteadily, "Why...why did you kill my parents? With your kung fu, you could have escaped. Why didn't you just escape from the City Lord's Mansion..."
Sui Yuanqing looked coldly at the delicate woman who was crying so hard that she was almost dying, and curled the corners of his lips.
I don't know if his cousin was brought up too naive or just too stupid.
Or maybe the Liu family knew very well that the rich and powerful would only marry daughters of noble families who were carefully trained to be wives of clan members, and if they wanted to marry a beauty, she would have to be gentle, considerate, and simple-minded, so they raised their daughter to be weak and vulnerable.
In a sense, the woman in front of me had already been abandoned by the family long ago.
It's pathetic that she even cried like this for her parents who were planning to give her away as a toy at any time.
He half-knelt down in front of her, touched her face with his bloody hand, and asked her, "They are all going to take my head as a sacrifice, why can't I kill them?"
There were his bloody fingerprints on Liu Wan'er's snow-white cheek. She opened her mouth but couldn't utter a word. Her long eyelashes fluttered and tears fell, making her look even more fragile and pitiful.
She is extremely beautiful. I'm afraid there is no man in the world who would not be soft-hearted towards such a beauty.
But Sui Yuanqing somehow suddenly remembered the cold and fierce look in Fan Changyu's eyes when he stabbed him.
In the past, he also liked beauties like Liu Wan'er, who was well-behaved and weak, like a vine that would wither and die without the tree, so she could only cling to him with all her might.
But he had seen so many beauties like this that he could hardly remember whose face was whose. They had the same temperament and were both very delicate. He could not even remember who was around and who was not.
The rich and powerful are only competing for the most beautiful one among these beauties, but beauty fades quickly. After only three to five years, new beauties as young as scallions will re-enter the vision of the rich and powerful.
Who still remembers what the beauty who made them fight so hard a few years ago looked like?
Just like the courtesan in a brothel, when one gets old, there will be a new one to take her place.
Having seen too many identical beauties, it was the hurtful cat that he could not forget.
Sui Yuanqing withdrew his hand and looked at the woman lying on the ground, her waist and hips shaking because of her crying. He said, "You are a good child. Tell me the truth. I won't kill you."
He put away his sword, stood up and walked to the door, then stopped and turned his head to say, "From now on, you are no longer the daughter of the Liu family. Hide among the people and live a good life."
Liu Wan'er stared blankly at Yuan Qing's departing back, then looked at her parents who died with their eyes wide open in the house. They had never encountered such a misfortune in more than a decade. At this moment, apart from crying, her mind was filled with fear and confusion about the unknown.
She didn't even care that the man had just killed her parents. She instinctively climbed up through the door, crying and holding onto the wall as she chased after him: "Cousin..."
-
The sun was blazing brightly at noon. Sui Yuanqing had not been out of the study for a long time. When he passed the hanging flower gate, he stopped and squinted at the round sun hanging in the sky.
The strong light made his eyes seem to lose all color for a moment, and the whole world went dark.
He smiled lazily, as if he had calmly accepted his fate.
There is another way of living in this world, which is living towards death.
-
The Yanzhou army had been shouting at the bottom of the city gate for a long time, but no one followed Yuan Qing into battle. Instead, they received a banner of no need to fight hung on the city wall by the other side.
The Yanzhou Army below was cursing more and more fiercely. The Chongzhou soldiers on the city wall were all covered in dust and their eyes could even be said to be a little numb. Compared with the torture of siege day after day, they now hoped that the Yanzhou Army would be quick and take Kangcheng in one fell swoop.
After Xie Zheng and Gongsun Yin returned to the camp, Gongsun Yin was so angry that he fanned his folding fan wildly: "Sui Yuanqing, that shrunken turtle, dared to challenge you arrogantly on the battlefield of the Frontline Gorge, but now he can only tuck his tail between his legs! How shameless!"
Xie Zheng said: "He was not provoked to fight. He must have understood that I am waiting here to fight him until Chongzhou is captured first. But after today, the rebels in Kangcheng have no morale. If there are those in the army who have second thoughts, the internal chaos will give them a headache for a while, and they will not take the initiative to attack again in the short term."
Gongsun Yin calmed down and said, "Alright, alright, you are going to Chongzhou, right?"
He clicked his tongue twice: "We agreed to wait three days, but you can't sit still after only two and a half days?"
Xie Zheng simply said, "I have some personal matters to attend to. Sui Yuanqing already knows I'm here, so he won't dare to act rashly. After I leave, you can find someone to pretend to be me and stay in the tent."
Gongsun Yin couldn't help but wonder: "You went to see her, isn't it a private matter? Do you have private matters to deal with?"
Xie Zheng said: "I ordered someone to make a weapon for her."
Xie Wu had already told him that the last time Fan Changyu fought with Shi Hu, he was almost beaten because he had no suitable weapon.
Almost as soon as he came down from the mountain, he had already ordered people to find a blacksmith to forge weapons. He wanted to give Fan Changyu a surprise, but she had a big idea and wanted to join the army and go to the battlefield in Chongzhou.
Counting the days, the weapon should be ready by the time he gets it. He can just go get it and send it to her.
Gongsun Yin thought of the humiliation he had suffered last time, and this time he only heard the beginning of the conversation, so he immediately said, "Alright, alright, hurry up and leave!"
Outside the tent, a personal soldier came in with a rolled-up letter: "My Lord, Hai Dongqing has sent a letter back."
Haidongqing was taken away by Fan Changyu, and Haidongqing would suddenly send a letter back, which is most likely news from Fan Changyu.
Xie Zheng took the letter and read it at a glance. His originally warm expression suddenly darkened. He threw the letter into the charcoal basin used to burn important letters and said coldly, "Prepare the horses!"
Gongsun Yin felt as if a cat was scratching him, and asked hurriedly, "What's wrong?"
But Xie Zheng didn't answer him at all. He just lifted the curtain and walked away.
Gongsun Yin glanced at the letter paper in the charcoal brazier beside him and saw that it had not been completely burned and was blown away by the wind. He couldn't help but pick it up out of curiosity and took a look.
Although most of the letter had been burned by the charcoal fire, the words "Li Huaian has an affair with his wife" at the end were still clearly visible.
Gongsun Yin burst out laughing and couldn't help but gloat over the misfortune and said, "Xie Jiuheng, Xie Jiuheng, your retribution came too quickly!"
-
Fan Changyu, who was far away in Chongzhou, had just run around the mountain for more than ten miles with the army in training. The soldiers below him fell to the ground like boiled noodles. Some soldiers found a river ahead, and the sweaty soldiers got up and clamored to go to the river to wash.
The weather was getting hotter and hotter, and Fan Changyu was sweating a lot. However, as a girl, it was still inconvenient for her to wash at this time. Naturally, she could not go into the water to wash, so she just stood in the shade of the tree and drank a few sips of water.
Before, she thought that it was quite ostentatious that Master Tao directly helped her get the title of captain. But after the military camps were divided and she learned that she had to be at least a captain to have her own independent military camp, she felt that Master Tao had good intentions.
She went to find Master Tao to thank him, but Master Tao said that if she were made the sergeant, there would only be eight of the nine people left after removing Xie Wu, and she could manage it with her eyes closed.
Since she already knew that one plus one equals two, learning something like this would undoubtedly be a waste of time, so she was allowed to start as a team leader.
She has to learn to manage more and more people, dozens now, hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands in the future.
There are so many people that she cannot discipline each one of them personally, so she has to promote those who can be used by her.
This involves something more complicated - winning people's hearts and minds.
Xie Zheng had said before that Fan Changyu was not good at this. She was used to being straightforward, and it was indeed a bit difficult for her to suddenly consider so many intricate things.
However, on the battlefield, the lower-level soldiers must first seek to survive before they can seek a future, money, and other external things.
The hearts of the people here are relatively simple.
Fan Changyu is now like a child who has just learned to walk, stumbling along this road.
Her previous duel with Captain Guo could be considered a blessing in disguise, as she established her prestige in the army. At least among the 100 men under Captain Guo, no one dared to look down on her anymore.
The sergeants and squad leaders under her also respected her very much.
Xie Wu told her that among these people, perhaps some could become her confidants in the future, or perhaps none of them could be used.
She had to figure out for herself whether it could be used, and if it could be used, how to use it; if it couldn't be used, the person was already in her hands, so what should she do with it...
Fan Changyu now follows the drills during the day, and when he has free time he goes to study military books with Master Tao. When he goes to bed at night, he is either thinking about the parts of the military books that he doesn't understand, or thinking about how to employ people.
But maybe it was because she was too tired, but she would fall into a deep sleep within a few breaths.
During this free moment, Fan Changyu stared at the few people under his command who did not go to the river, and began to think about selecting his confidants, when suddenly he sneezed without any warning.
Xie Wu was standing by Fan Changyu's side, and when he saw this, he asked hurriedly, "Captain, are you catching a cold?"
Fan Changyu waved his hands and said, "As the old saying goes, when you sneeze, you 'think, curse, and then talk'. It may be that Ning Niang is thinking about me."
As soon as she finished speaking, she sneezed again.
Fan Changyu was stunned.
Xie Wu thought of the letter he had asked Xie Qi to send back, and suddenly felt guilty.
The author has something to say:
Changyu (super fierce): Who dares to scold me!
Xie Moumou (gritting his teeth): I made weapons for her and prepared gifts for her, but in the end, a bad love affair came to her!
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