Chapter 133: Between Wars
Of course, Xiao Talan Wanyan Guoying wanted to get out alive, and he soon figured out that this must be due to the different heights of the inner and outer walls. It was not some magic trick, but just a very simple but practical trap. Once he understood the principle and got rid of the fear in his heart, the youngest Meng'an of the Jin army, who had a strong desire to perform and survive, naturally wanted to try his best to climb back.
The two simplest ways are to call on other soldiers who have fallen into the trap to serve as a human ladder for you, and to carefully carry and stack the bodies yourself and make a place to stand under the wall.
Wanyan Guoying chose the second method because the former would expose his identity as a frontline general and would easily attract the attention of the Song army crossbowmen on the city wall, while the latter would be much more bland... at least many people did so.
However, things were still somewhat difficult. Firstly, most of the bodies slid to the bottom of the ditch, making them difficult to carry. Secondly, the gap between the inner side of the sheep-horse wall and the trench was very narrow, making it difficult to stack the bodies.
After several failed attempts, Wanyan Guoying, whose armor had been pierced by seven or eight crossbow arrows and who looked like a hedgehog with its hair lost, noticed someone else's escape route. A few dozen steps to his side, a young man who was obviously a "strong civilian" under Zhang Yu was trying a seemingly feasible escape route.
This man was also stacking corpses, but he was not doing it at the bottom of the narrow wall. Instead, he was stacking them at the bottom of the inner trench... Because there was a ladder next to him, it was obvious that he was going to use the corpses to build a stable base for the ladder on the ice so that he could climb over the wall and escape back.
Wanyan Guoying chose to cooperate with this person without any hesitation.
A young Jurchen noble and a young Han citizen who might be from the street somewhere west of the capital, under the city wall of the Song army, amid the sounds of wailing and arrows, worked together to carry the corpses of Jurchens, Han people, or people of other ethnic groups, in an attempt to escape back to the Jin army camp... There is nothing in the world more absurd, yet more reasonable, than this.
This is the powerlessness and helplessness of an individual in a total war.
The silent cooperation between the two sides went very smoothly, and they soon successfully put up the ladder. However, at that moment when the ladder was put up, the nearest person on the top of the city wall noticed the movement here. With the shouts of the commander on the top of the city wall, their chances of escape were greatly reduced.
So, on the noisy battlefield, Wanyan Guoying threw his former collaborator onto the ice at the bottom of the ditch without hesitation, and climbed up the ladder first, ready to escape before the impending mass shooting... The latter climbed up awkwardly and hurried to catch up, but as the two climbed the ladder together, the already unstable lower body of the ladder suddenly slipped, and it tended to lose control.
Wanyan Guoying was furious, so he reached for the knife at his waist on the ladder, ready to kill the man behind him on the spot. However, before he touched the knife at his waist, he felt a pain under his armpit... The Jin army soldier turned around and realized what was happening.
It turned out that the young reinforcement behind him keenly noticed Wanyan Guoying's intention, and then took the lead and snatched the strange white blade hanging on the opponent's waist from below, and then directly inserted the knife into the gap of the opponent's armor from the lower side.
After being stabbed with a knife, Wanyan Guoying was still enduring, but this man was the first to panic. He actually gave up the fight for the ladder and chose to jump off the ladder in a panic and lie down behind the pile of corpses on the ice.
In contrast, the intense pain stimulated Wanyan Guoying, and the retreat of the man made him no longer care about the stability of the ladder. With a strong desire to survive, he continued to crawl hard, but the pain in his armpits seriously hindered his movement. He only managed to climb three or five steps before he could no longer move. During this pause, many arrows flew at him, and at least four crossbow arrows successfully penetrated his arm, which was the weakest part of his defense, causing significant damage.
Under the combined severe pain and the location of the wound, the man could no longer hold on to the ladder and fell directly onto the pile of corpses.
The man who was holding his head at the bottom of the ladder, after seeing this scene, realized the opportunity. He actually picked up the knife on the ground for the second time, rushed forward to the opponent's back, and stabbed the blade in his hand into the opponent's neck. Then, under the subtle gaze of the Song army crossbowmen on the city, he rushed up the ladder and climbed over the fatal sheep and horse wall.
As for Wanyan Guoying, who was stabbed twice and hit by four arrows, he did not escape alive in the end.
Originally in history, this man lived to be seventy-four years old. As a rare long-lived royal veteran of the Jin Dynasty, he experienced the rise of the Jurchens, civil strife, and all the wars and uncertainties of the Song-Liao War and the Song-Jin War. In the end, he held the same military rank as Da Talai, that is, the title of deputy marshal of the Jin Dynasty; and held a similar prominent position to his father, that is, the governor of Xijing. He died at the end of the most prosperous period of the Jin Dynasty, Emperor Shizong.
But now, at the age of 23, he died under the city of Nanyang because of a trench and a wall, because of his strong desire to perform and survive, died under the sword of his uncle, and died under the resistance of a Haner reinforcement of a similar age...
Nothing could be more reasonable.
Otherwise, with the war having progressed to this point, who can we turn to for excuses for the millions of lives that have been lost on this land?
Even in the afternoon, when the Jin army called off the battle and the Song army went out of the city to clean up the battlefield inside the Yangma Wall, none of the Jin army generals who had already known the situation of the inner trench behind the Yangma Wall asked why Wanyan Guoying never returned? They didn't even know that the young Meng'an had been stripped naked by the unsuspecting Song army, and even the crossbow arrows that hit him were pulled out with great effort. In the end, like other Jin army soldiers, he was thrown out of the Yangma Wall naked and became the outer barrier of the wall.
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