After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 437: Chapter 436: Forcing a Kingdom to Surrender

Hee Lingchuan closed his eyes and silently bowed his head.

This wasn’t the first comrade he had sent off, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

They had all spilled their lifeblood on foreign soil.

...

After sweeping this district, every member of the Broken Blade Squad was injured to varying degrees.

Having led from the front, Hee Lingchuan had faced the most danger. Twice, he had nearly been knocked out and ejected from the Dream Realm.

The price was a hole punched through his ribs and his right ear sliced off. Compared to that, his other superficial wounds were nothing to speak of.

As Aluo stitched his ear back on, he hissed and yelped in pain.

”What’s all the racket for!” Aluo’s face was grim, a strip of cloth wrapped around their own forehead. ”You can’t just charge into a pitch-black room like that!”

”I was trying to create a diversion for you, wasn’t I?” Hee Lingchuan grimaced, knowing he was far bolder and took greater risks in the Soul Village than in reality. ”Where’s the Shituo Powder? Give me some for the pain!”

Even inside the Grand Square Pot, every battle was a rare opportunity to train. He needed to fully explore his own combat style and rhythm.

’If not now, when? This is the place to be brave.’

”Can’t use too much. That stuff is addictive,” Aluo said sternly. ”You’ve all been using it too much lately. If you can bear the pain, then bear it. It’s not like you lost a hand or a leg.”

Fortunately, this kind of cleanup operation soon dwindled to sporadic skirmishes. By the afternoon of the fifth day, the Panlong Army had gained basic control over the entire Xiji Capital City.

If the Red General had used the method of collective punishment to exterminate resistance, it would have gone much faster.

This was a common tactic in many sieges, but it destroyed any goodwill from the populace.

In the meantime, the Xiji Royal Palace had sent out troops from the city several times, attempting to coordinate a pincer attack with the scattered soldiers, but they were repelled each time by the Great Wind Army, which was lying in wait outside the Palace City.

After suffering losses several times, the Xiji Royal Palace no longer dared to sally forth, choosing instead to keep its gates shut.

After all, each attempt cost them anywhere from several hundred to over eleven or twelve hundred soldiers, yet they couldn’t break through. The price was a bit too high.

While Huyan Zhao felt each day pass like a year, the Xiji Palace had been besieged for ten days.

There was still not even a shadow of the reinforcements he had repeatedly promised his subjects.

Meanwhile, the territory the Red General had offered him was now a third smaller than before.

Huyan Zhao was a mess of anxiety and frustration.

The Palace City’s walls were strong and its grain stores were ample, with wells scattered throughout. In particular, the grain reserves were stocked to allow three thousand people to hold out for forty days. When his old man had it built to these specifications years ago, a crowd of ministers had objected, calling it too wasteful.

Now, it seemed the old man had been wise.

However, no amount of wisdom from the old man could account for the thirteen thousand people now crammed inside—more than four times the intended number.

More people meant more mouths to feed.

With so many people trapped in the city, still eating and drinking their fill all day, Huyan Zhao’s heart bled with every meal.

Worst of all, medical supplies were severely lacking.

There were over four thousand wounded in the Palace City, more than nine hundred of them seriously. Another two or three hundred had already died in the past few days due to a lack of medicine or improper treatment.

The Palace was filled with grievances, and morale was low.

Furthermore, there was a horrifying problem that even the Old Monarch had never anticipated:

Human and animal waste.

Over thirteen thousand people and more than two thousand warhorses, all together, were a full-throttle manure-making machine.

Before, the Palace City had a dedicated Night Team that transported waste outside the walls every day, but now, there was no way out.

Huyan Zhao ordered his soldiers to throw the waste down from the city gates to attack the Panlong Army.

But after more than a dozen soldiers were shot and killed, they were no longer willing to do it.

Risking their lives to dump excrement was just... it just wasn’t worth it. Not to mention the collection process. It was better to just find a random corner in the Palace City...

As a result, the stench of blood wafted through the Palace, and flies and mosquitoes buzzed everywhere, accompanying the sinking spirits of the Xiji People.

Right now, Hee Lingchuan was sitting with Willow, Hu Min, and the others on the roof of a house, eating chicken while gazing at the Palace City in the distance.

”The lights on the gatehouse tower are all out,” Hu Min said with a chuckle. ”Looks like they’re even starting to conserve lamp oil.”

The Broken Blade Squad had performed exceptionally in the Dragon Throat Pass mission. In addition to the standard military merits, Hee Lingchuan had also managed to wrangle a bonus for his teammates from the quartermaster: two roast chickens a day. With nothing to do tonight, everyone gathered for a ”whole chicken feast,” substituting water for wine.

Door Panel laughed. ”When the wind changes, the stench from inside the Palace City wafts out. No one wants to get close. I wonder how the Xiji People can sleep at night, pillowed on dung day in and day out?”

Willow jabbed him in the side with her fingers, twisting them. ”We’re eating! Why bring up something so disgusting!”

Hu Min added, ”I heard some deserters have been jumping from the Palace City walls these past few days. Some were shot dead on the spot, but a few managed to slip over and surrender. The Red General had them sit in front of the Palace City gates, eating meat and drinking wine for those inside to see. One of them sat too close and got too carried away while eating, and ended up getting shot dead too.”

Willow asked him, ”You’ve been in the Great Wind Army the longest. Did sieges used to take this long?”

”Ah, some were long, some were short,” Hu Min said after a moment’s thought. ”The longest one, we besieged a city for over forty days before we took it.”

Willow said, ”Oh,” and asked no more questions.

Hee Lingchuan took a bite of his chicken leg. He was the only one here who had attended the pre-war meeting in Gangge Hall, so he had a basic understanding of the Red General’s plan.

”The Old Monarch of Xiji spent years of the Capital City’s revenue to build the Palace City into an iron fortress, truly easy to defend and hard to attack. They say it has over a dozen layers of Defense Talisman Arrays,” he explained to his subordinates. ”If we wanted to take it by force, we’d probably have to pile up bodies to do it. That’s why the Red General wants to use a siege instead of a direct assault, to achieve victory at the lowest possible cost.”

’Is that all there is to it?’ The Red General’s and Zhong Shengguang’s lack of urgency clearly hinted at other considerations.

Besides, Hee Lingchuan had his own question:

’Why didn’t the Red General use the Three Corpses Insect in this surprise attack on the Xiji Kingdom?’

He had heard from Hu Min about the time they recaptured Wei City. The Baling Army guarding the gates had suddenly gone mad and attacked their own men, which was clearly the work of the Three Corpses Insect.

’But this surprise attack is a more important mission than retaking Wei City. Why is there no sign of the Three Corpses Insect on the battlefield?’

This thing was impervious to Primordial Power and even unaffected by ordinary Magic. It was one of the Red General’s killer moves.

’So why is she using this slow, clumsy method of besieging and forcing the surrender of Huyan Zhao and his court?’

A strange idea occurred to Hee Lingchuan:

’Is it because she *can’t* use it?’

He had once asked Sunx Fuping a question:

’Since the Panlong Army, empowered by the Grand Square Pot, is so formidable, why didn’t they just fight their way back to the Xiluo Kingdom instead of remaining trapped in the Panlong Wasteland?’

Sunx Fuping didn’t have an answer either.

Instead, it was the Black Flood Dragon in the Panlong Ruins Illusion Realm that had given them a clue:

”You cannot take it with you. The Grand Square Pot is Panlong City, and Panlong City is the Grand Square Pot. They have long since become one. Forget humans; not even Deities can take it away.”

’And the Xiji Kingdom is outside the range of the Panlong Wasteland. Is it because it’s ’out of the service area’ that the Three Corpses Insect from the Grand Square Pot can’t be brought here?’

’If the Red General and Zhong Shengguang can’t take the Grand Square Pot with them, then this expedition to Xiji...’

Thinking back on the Red General’s negotiations with Huyan Zhao over the past few days, Hee Lingchuan felt a strange sense of dissonance. She had always been swift and decisive in killing. When had she ever given someone so many chances?

Hee Lingchuan frowned.

「Five more days passed.」

The Panlong Army hadn’t wasted any time. They had already dispatched several units to occupy the rest of Xiji’s territory, alleviating the pressure of the battle for the Capital City.

During this time, more and more Xiji soldiers climbed the walls to escape from the Royal Palace in the Capital City. They were willing to risk being shot by their own Commanders to flee because food in the Palace City had long been insufficient. On top of that, due to low morale and waning Primordial Power, disease had begun to spread within the high palace walls.

The Palace City was already short on medicine; now the situation was dire. An ordinary soldier who caught the plague had no chance of receiving treatment.

It was better to risk death and escape. At least that way, there was a sliver of hope for survival.

「Another five days passed.」 Even Huyan Zhao himself was in a daze.

The looks his officers and soldiers gave him were completely different from twenty days ago. If not for a few loyal confidants protecting him to the death, a mutiny would have erupted in the Palace City long ago.

Suddenly, a rider galloped toward the base of the city wall, shouting, ”Huyan, you brat, come on out! Your reinforcements are here!”

The Guards on the wall jolted and looked down, only to see a large man on horseback galloping back and forth below. He held a Long Spear high, on which was impaled a string of disheveled human heads—at least five or six of them, their hair matted together.

This burly man was none other than General Nanke.

He yelled this seven or eight times until he grew impatient. Only then did a pale-faced Huyan Zhao clamber up the gatehouse tower. He looked down and was instantly overcome with dizziness:

The string of heads on General Nanke’s spear belonged to the commanders of the Nanping Garrison, arranged in perfect order from highest rank to lowest.

He had been boosting everyone’s morale inside the city, insisting that reinforcements would arrive sooner or later.

Now the reinforcements had indeed arrived, just not in the way they had hoped.

CLANG! A Long Saber slipped from the hands of a young soldier on the wall, making a loud noise as it hit the ground.

No one paid him any mind.

General Nanke looked at Huyan Zhao and laughed. ”Our Red General is giving you one last chance. Surrender now, and you can still be a marquis south of the Lugua River. Otherwise—” He raised his Long Spear again. ”This day next year will be the anniversary of your deaths!”

’The Lugua River?’ Huyan Zhao’s lips trembled.

The territory the Red General was promising him now was less than a quarter of the original offer.

’If only I had known, if only I had known...’

General Nanke added, ”By the way, since Huyan Zhao is so stubborn, whoever inside the city can bring me his head will receive the same reward!”

A collective gasp went through the city.

’Cut off Huyan Zhao’s head, and not only do you get to escape this siege, stop starving, and stop sleeping next to a pile of shit, but you also get to become a Marquis of Ten Thousand Households south of the Lugua River, living a life of ease and luxury?’

Even the gazes of Huyan Zhao’s own loyal confidants began to flicker as they looked at their master.

Life in the city these past few days had simply been too miserable, and the New Monarch had no proper way to solve their problems.

Huyan Zhao felt everyone’s gazes suddenly fill with malice, like a wolf staring at a sheep, like a cat eyeing a fish...

And like the living looking at a dead man.

If he had reacted even a fraction of a second slower, this crowd might have torn him to pieces right then and there.

”Wait...” Huyan Zhao saw someone in the back ranks raise a Long Spear and point it right at him. He couldn’t care about anything else and screamed, ”I surrender! I surrender!”

By being the first to shout ”surrender,” he was safe.

’This bastard knows what’s good for him,’ General Nanke thought, overjoyed. ”Well, what are you waiting for? Open the gates!”