Reborn In The Three Kingdoms

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Xi Zhicai nodded in grim agreement. ”The calculus is one of attrition, and we are the smaller number. Each assault widens the breaches. Each day drains our stores. We are a dam made of sand and dying will, holding back an ocean of steel. A week is a generous estimate, born of hope rather than stone.”

A week. Cao Cao absorbed the verdict. It was the timeframe he had already dreaded. He turned to Xun Yu. ”Wenruo. The orders for the west. Xiping, Wuwei, the garrisons on the Qinghai Plateau, the outposts in the Gansu Corridor, all of them. The letters commanding a full, immediate withdrawal to Chang’an, stripping the lands bare of all supplies, all able bodied men that I requested two days ago... they have been sent?”

Xun Yu bowed his head. ”They were dispatched yesterday at first light, Your Majesty. By the fastest messenger birds in our courier roost. We can only pray the distances are not too great, that the commands arrive in time, and that the commanders obey without question.”

”They will obey,” Cao Cao said, though a sliver of doubt, a rare and poisonous thing, gnawed at him. In the face of such overwhelming catastrophe, loyalties and oath could fracture.

”They must. Chang’an must become a hedgehog. Every scrap of food, every arrow, every man with a strong arm must flow into the city. We are not just defending a capital, we are preparing the final stomach of the beast, where the Hengyuan tide under Lie Fan will finally be forced to digest us, or choke.”

His gaze returned to the east, where the first direct rays of the sun now glinted off the polished bronze of the distant cannons. The distant shouts from the Hengyuan lines were becoming more organized, coalescing into a rhythmic, threatening chant.

”We have a week,” Cao Cao murmured, more to himself than to his advisors. ”We will sell them every hour of it. We will make Lie Fan pay for every stone, for every step towards my home. And when we finally turn our backs to this place, it will not be a rout. It will be a strategic withdrawal to a battlefield of our own final choosing.”

The words were brave, a commander’s necessary fiction. But as the first, deep throated boom of a ranging shot from a Hengyuan cannon echoed across the valley, shaking dust from the very stones under their feet, the fiction felt desperately thin.

The brief, illusionary peace of the new year was utterly shattered. The hurricane had begun its final, roaring approach, and the winds, as Lie Fan knew, were now blowing from every direction.

The siege of Tong Pass entered its final, deadly phase, and the race for Chang’an, a race between collapse and consolidation, between annihilation and a desperate, last gamble, was officially on.

The ranging shot was a punctuation mark, ending the brief, fragile sentence of peace. Then, the full paragraph of war began.

A deep, synchronized roar erupted from the Hengyuan lines as the cannons spoke in unison, their thunderous voices followed by the sharp, ripping whoosh of hwacha volleys and the groaning, arcing flight of trebuchet stones.

Tong Pass was once more swallowed by a world ending cacophony. Cao Cao did not need to be told twice. With a final, grim look at the incoming storm of iron and fire, he turned, his advisors close behind, and retreated from the exposed parapet.

They descended into the relative safety of the fortified command post below, the stone steps trembling under their feet with each earth shattering impact.

Command of the defense now fell squarely on the broad, scarred shoulders of Xiahou Dun. The one eyed general stood in a sheltered nook on the inner wall, bellowing orders that were mostly felt through hand signals and the example of his unflinching presence.

Across the battered battlements, Wei soldiers scrambled behind makeshift barriers, thick wooden planks braced with rubble, sections of broken siege engine housing, anything that could offer a sliver of protection.

These barriers were a pathetic defense against cannonballs that could pulverize stone, but against the deadly rain of hwacha arrows, they were the difference between life and a pin cushion death.

It was a desperate gamble, hope that the cannons and trebuchets didn’t target your specific section of wall first.

Xiahou Dun had also passed on Cao Cao’s most painful, pragmatic order to the remaining top generals, Xiahou Yuan, Yu Jin, Zhang He, Xu Huang, Gao Lan, and Pang De.

The command was simple, bitter, and spoke volumes about their dwindling fortunes, survival over valor. If the tide turns impossible, if capture by Lie Fan or one of his champions seems certain, you are ordered to disengage and retreat.

Cao Cao would not gift his enemy any more trophies. Each of these men was a pillar, to lose them was to hasten the collapse of the entire structure.

The bombardment, as planned by Lie Fan’s strategists, was fierce but not the continuous, soul obliterating barrage of the first day.

It came in waves, a few minutes of concentrated hell focused on a specific breach or tower, then an abrupt, ringing silence that was in many ways more terrifying.

It was in these silences that the defenders’ ears, still ringing, would pick up a new sound, a low, rhythmic rumble that resolved into the thunderous chant of hundreds of thousands of voices, and the ominous squeal and thump of the ”Climbing Tigers”, the sturdy, shielded assault ladders, being rushed forward.

And then, they came.

At the tip of the spear, unmistakable, was Lie Fan. He moved with a terrifying, fluid grace that seemed to defy the chaos around him. His dark armor drank the smoky light, and his halberd was a lazy extension of his will.

His two Yellow Ghosts alongside his generals Chao Bo, Chao Bai, and Huang Chao, formed a mobile fortress around him, but today, he seemed to outpace even their legendary vigilance.

Reaching the base of a Climbing Tiger, he didn’t climb. He ascended. With a powerful, almost casual step onto the first rung, he propelled himself upward, his feet touching the ladder only briefly, his body a blur of dark motion.

It was less a climb and more a vertical sprint, a display of preternatural agility and strength that left his own elite guards scrambling to keep up, their eyes wide with a mixture of awe and alarm. This was the new power, the fruit of his dawn’s cultivation, made manifest.

He crested the wall like a storm breaking. The first Wei soldiers to meet him, brave men, their faces set in desperate snarls, were swept aside before their weapons could even fully rise.

The halberd moved in arcs that were too fast to track, a whirlwind of polished steel that left only falling bodies in its wake. There was no elaborate technique, no flashy maneuver, it was brutally efficient, physics defying power.

Each swing carried the force of a battering ram, shattering shields, shearing through armor, and clearing a bloody semicircle on the crowded parapet in moments.

By the time his bodyguards and generals vaulted over the crenellations behind him, Lie Fan was already moving forward, carving a red path into the heart of the Wei defense.

His presence was a lodestone, drawing the fiercest Wei resistance and shattering it, allowing the Hengyuan troops swarming up the ladders behind him to establish a firm, expanding beachhead.

The battle that raged across Tong Pass that day was of a different character than the previous assaults. The Wei soldiers, fueled by Cao Cao’s alchemy of shame into resolve, fought with the desperate courage of men who knew they were buying time, not victory.

They fought for the prince in a cage, for the home behind them, for the hour, the minute, the second.

They clashed with Hengyuan soldiers who were equally determined, buoyed by feasts, wine, and the unshakable certainty of their emperor’s imminent triumph.

On the main front where Lie Fan rampaged, the outcome was never in doubt. He was an elemental force, a one man breach.

But on the flanks, where Zhang Liao’s disciplined ferocity, Huang Zhong’s peerless glaive work, and Taishi Ci’s relentless rod hammer met the stalwart defenses led by Xiahou Yuan, Zhang He, and Xu Huang, the fighting reached a new peak of brutality.

It was grinding, meat and steel warfare. Sections of wall changed hands multiple times, the stones becoming slick with blood and grime.

The air was thick with the screams of the dying, the clang of steel, and the constant, background roar of combat. For the first time in the siege, the Hengyuan advance was not a rolling tide, but a hard fought, bloody push. They had the upper hand, but the Wei defenders made them pay for every inch with a pint of their own blood.

Hundreds of miles to the west, as the sun climbed towards its zenith, a different kind of military pressure was being applied.

The Hengyuan Southern Army, a force hardened by the swift capture of Wudu, now stood before the formidable walls of Tianshui. There was no festive air here, only the crisp efficiency of a campaign on the move.

Fa Zheng and Meng Da stood on a slight rise, the newly issued brass telescopes, precious tools bestowed by Lie Fan via the unseen network of the Orioles, extended to their eyes.

The lenses brought the city walls disconcertingly close. They could see the defenders milling about, banners flying, preparations evident. There was no panic, no disorder.

”Their scouts were competent,” Fa Zheng remarked, his voice calm. ”They’ve had time to prepare. No surprise attack for us.”

Meng Da lowered his telescope, a frown on his face. ”The walls are high, the gates look stout. A direct assault would be costly. His Majesty would not approve of wasting lives when stratagem can bleed the enemy instead.”

”Precisely,” Fa Zheng said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. ”We have no ’heaven thunder’ cannons here that was described by the Oriole Agent. We must use the older tools, cunning, pressure, and misdirection.”

He gestured for the generals to gather. Zhang Ren, Yan Yan, Meng Huo, Li Yan, Wu Lan, and Zhang Ni, their faces were set in expressions of focused readiness.

”The plan changes slightly,” Fa Zheng announced. ”We will not feign weakness. We will display overwhelming, methodical strength, but applied with a surgeon’s care.”

He pointed at the walls. ”General Zhang Ren, Yan Yan. You will lead the initial assaults, but your goal is not to take the wall. Your goal is to probe, to identify the strongest and weakest commanders on their battlements, to gauge their response times, to see where their reserves are deployed. Apply pressure, then withdraw before they can commit fully. I want them constantly reacting, never able to settle.”

He turned to Meng Da. ”You will oversee the construction of siege works, trenches, ramps, towers, but build them slower than we are capable. Let them watch our progress, let the inevitability of a full scale siege sink into their bones day by day. We will also use our arrows and light catapults first to make night a living hell for them, no sleep, constant alerts.”

Meng Huo grinned, a fierce sight. ”Psychological warfare. Weakening the spirit before breaking the body.”

”Exactly,” Fa Zheng nodded. ”Tianshui is not Tong Pass. It is a vital artery, but it is not manned by Cao Cao’s personal guard or his most seasoned front. line troops. Their morale is brittle. We will find the crack and pour fear into it.”

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Name: Lie Fan

Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty

Age: 36 (203 AD)

Level: 16

Next Level: 462,000

Renown: 2325

Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)

SP: 1,121,700

ATTRIBUTE POINTS

STR: 1,010 (+20)

VIT: 659 (+20)

AGI: 653 (+10)

INT: 691

CHR: 98

WIS: 569

WILL: 436

ATR Points: 0