Chapter 440: Trapping and Surrendering a Country

This wasn't the first comrade-in-arms he had sent off, and of course, it wouldn't be the last.

They all spilled their hot blood on the land of a foreign country.

After this area was cleared, all members of the Broken Blade Squad were injured, just to different degrees.

Because He Lingchuan was the first to charge, he encountered danger the most times, and twice he was almost directly KO'd and sent out of the dream.

The price was a hole in his ribs and his right ear being cut off. Compared to this, other skin injuries weren't worth mentioning.

When Alo sewed his ear, he hissed in pain.

"What are you yelling for!" Alo had a dark face, and there was a cloth strip wrapped around his own forehead, "Is such a big dark room something you can just rush into?"

"Wasn't I trying to make a feint for you guys?" He Lingchuan grinned, knowing he was braver in the Soul Township than in reality, and used a larger scale for his actions, "Where's the Stone Tuo Powder, give me some pain relief!"

Even in the Great Fanghu, every battle was a rare trial opportunity, and he had to explore his own fighting style and rhythm.

If you aren't brave here, when will you be? "Can't use too much, that thing is addictive." Alo said matter-of-factly, "You guys have used too much recently, endure it if you can, it's not like you're broken-handed or broken-legged."

Fortunately, this kind of clearing battle quickly became sporadic. By the afternoon of the fifth day, the Panlong Army had basically controlled the entire capital of Xi Ji.

If General Hong had adopted the method of collective punishment to suppress, the speed would have been much faster.

This was also a method commonly used in many siege battles, but it defeated the people's favor.

In the middle, the Xi Ji Palace sent troops out of the city several times, wanting to coordinate with these scattered troops, but they were all beaten back by the Great Wind Army waiting in full array outside the palace city.

After several battle damages, the Xi Ji Palace didn't dare to fight out again, just closed the door and didn't come out.

After all, each damage was as small as hundreds, and as large as more than one thousand one or two hundred, but they couldn't break out, and the price was a bit high.

In Huyan Zhao's days of suffering, the Xi Ji Palace City was besieged for ten days.

The reinforcements he repeatedly claimed to his subjects didn't even show a shadow.

And the territory promise General Hong gave him was reduced by another one-third compared to the beginning.

Huyan Zhao was upset.

The palace city was strong and had enough food, and there were water wells everywhere. In particular, the grain storage was configured according to the specification of 3,000 people holding on for 40 days. When his father configured it according to this rule, a bunch of ministers opposed it, saying it was too wasteful.

Now it seems, the old man was wise.

However, no matter how wise the old man was, he couldn't withstand the 13,000 people crowding in now, which was more than four times the capacity.

With so many people, they ate a lot.

With so many people crowded in the city and unable to go out, and still eating and drinking, Huyan Zhao's heart was dripping blood.

The worst thing was that medicine was seriously insufficient.

There were more than 4,000 wounded in the palace city, more than 900 seriously injured, and two or three hundred people died a few days ago because of lack of medicine or improper rescue.

The palace was full of complaints and morale was low.

Moreover, there was a terrifying trouble that the old Emperor didn't expect: the excrement of people and animals.

More than 13,000 people and more than 2,000 war horses together were manure-making machines running at full power.

In the past, the palace city had a special night-soil team that had to transport it out of the city every day, but now they couldn't go out.

Huyan Zhao demanded that the soldiers throw the excrement down the city gate to attack the Panlong Army.

But after more than a dozen people were shot and killed, the soldiers were no longer willing to do so.

Risking their lives to pour excrement was too, too unworthy, not to mention the process of collection, it was better to find a corner in the palace city at will...

Therefore, the palace was filled with the smell of blood everywhere, flies and mosquitoes were flying everywhere, accompanied by the mood of the Xi Ji people walking all the way down.

Now He Lingchuan and Liutiao, Hu Min, and others were sitting on the roof of a civilian house not far away, eating chicken while looking at the palace city not far away.

"The lights on the city gate tower are all out." Hu Min laughed, "It seems they have even started to save on oil lamps."

The Broken Blade Squad performed well in the Longhou Pass mission. In addition to the normal military merit rewards, He Lingchuan also got a welfare of two roast chickens a day for his teammates from the quartermaster. Tonight, there was nothing to do, so everyone gathered together to eat a whole chicken feast, replacing wine with water.

Menban laughed: "Once the wind direction changes, the stench inside the palace city drifts out, and no one wants to get close. I don't know how the Xi Ji people can sleep while sleeping next to the dung heap day after day?"

Liutiao stretched out her finger and pinched a cross spin on his waist: "We're eating, why talk about such disgusting topics!"

Hu Min also said: "I heard that there are deserters jumping out of the palace city these past few days, some were shot dead on the spot, and a few successfully slipped over to surrender. General Hong asked them to sit in front of the palace city gate to eat meat and drink wine for the people in the city to see. One sat too close, ate too forgetfully, and was shot dead again."

Liutiao asked him: "You have joined the Great Wind Army the longest, did siege battles have to be fought for so long in the past?"

"Ah, some are long, some are short." Hu Min thought for a while, "The longest time, we besieged the city for more than forty days before taking it down."

Liutiao said "Oh" and didn't ask any more questions.

He Lingchuan gnawed on a chicken leg. He was the only one here who had participated in the Gan Ge Hall pre-war meeting, so he basically understood what General Hong's plan was.

"The old Emperor of Xi Ji used several years of income from the capital to build the palace city like an iron bucket, truly easy to defend and hard to attack. It is said that there are more than a dozen layers of defensive talisman arrays." He explained to his subordinates, "If you really want to take it down by force, I'm afraid you have to use human lives to pile it up. Therefore, General Hong wants to besiege instead of attack, and exchange victory with the minimum cost."

Is it just that? General Hong and Zhong Shengguang's lack of urgency obviously had more considerations.

And He Lingchuan also had his own questions:

Attacking Xi Ji Nation this time, why didn't General Hong use the Three Corpse Worms? He had heard Hu Min mention the experience of retaking Weicheng last time, where the Baling army guarding the gate suddenly went crazy and counterattacked their own people, which was obviously the Three Corpse Worms showing their power.

But this time the raid mission was heavier than retaking Weicheng, why was there no trace of the Three Corpse Worms on the battlefield? This thing didn't fear meta-power, and didn't even be affected by ordinary spell arts, and was one of General Hong's trump cards.

Why did she still use clumsy methods and slow methods to besiege and force Huyan Zhao and his ministers to surrender?

He Lingchuan had a strange idea:

Could it be that she couldn't use them? He had asked Sun Fuping a question before: Since the Panlong Army blessed by the Great Fanghu was so powerful, why didn't they kill their way back to Western Luo Nation, but instead sat trapped in the Panlong Wasteland? Sun Fuping didn't have an answer either.

Instead, the Black Dragon in the Panlong ruins illusion gave them a sentence:

You can't take it away. The Great Fanghu is Panlongcheng, and Panlongcheng is the Great Fanghu, they have long been one. Let alone humans, even gods cannot take it away.

And Xi Ji Nation had already left the scope of the Panlong Wasteland. Was it because it exceeded the service area that the Three Corpse Worms from the Great Fanghu couldn't be brought here? If General Hong and Zhong Shengguang couldn't take away the Great Fanghu, then this trip to Xi Ji...

Linking this to General Hong's negotiations with Huyan Zhao these past few days, it always gave He Lingchuan a strange sense of incongruity. She was always decisive in killing, when would she give people so many opportunities? He Lingchuan frowned.

Five more days passed.

The Panlong Army didn't waste time either, having long ago dispatched several troops to occupy the entire territory of Xi Ji to reduce the pressure of the capital battle.

During this period, more and more Xi Ji soldiers fled over the palace city wall, they were willing to risk being shot by the supervisors to escape, because the food in the palace city was no longer enough, and because of low morale and meta-power decline, an epidemic began to spread within the high palace walls.

Originally, there was a lack of medicine in the palace city, and now it was even worse. Even if ordinary soldiers were infected, they basically didn't get a chance to be rescued.

It was better to risk death to escape, and there was still a glimmer of life.

Five more days passed, and even Huyan Zhao himself was a bit muddled.

The eyes of the soldiers were completely different from twenty days ago. If it weren't for some confidants protecting him, there would have been a mutiny in the palace city long ago.

Suddenly, a rider galloped close to the city and shouted: "Huyan brat, come out quickly, your reinforcements are here!"

The guards guarding the city looked down with a start, only to see a big man galloping back and forth under the city, holding a long spear high, with a string of disheveled heads hanging on it, at least five or six, with their hair all knotted together.

This big man was General Nanke.

He shouted seven or eight times, and was impatient, when Huyan Zhao, with a pale face, climbed onto the gate tower. Looking down, he felt dizzy:

The string of heads hanging on General Nanke's spear were exactly the generals of the Nanping garrison, from top to bottom, the order was not wrong.

He had been cheering everyone up in the city, saying that reinforcements would come sooner or later.

Now the reinforcements had indeed come, but not in the way they had hoped.

With a "dang" sound, a long knife in the hand of a small soldier on the city wall fell, making a loud sound.

No one paid attention to him.

General Nanke looked at Huyan Zhao and laughed: "Our General Hong gives you one last chance, surrender now, and you can still be a Marquis south of the Lujua River. Otherwise—" his long spear raised again, "tomorrow next year will be the memorial day for all of you!"

Lujua River? Huyan Zhao's lips trembled a few times.

Now the territory General Hong promised him was less than a quarter of the beginning.

If he had known this earlier, if he had known this earlier...

General Nanke added: "By the way, since Huyan Zhao is stubborn, whoever in the city can take his head and offer it, will get the same reward!"

There was a gasp in the city.

Cutting off Huyan Zhao's head, not only didn't have to continue to be trapped in the city, didn't have to continue to starve, didn't have to sleep by the dung heap, but also could go south of the Lujua River to be a Marquis with ten thousand households who had food and clothing? Even the few confidants under Huyan Zhao looked at their master with flickering eyes.

It was really that the days in the city these past few days were too difficult, and the new King didn't have a proper solution.

Huyan Zhao only felt that the eyes everyone cast on him were full of malice, like wolves staring at sheep, like cats looking at fish...

Also like living people looking at the dead.

If he reacted a little slower, these people might have torn him alive in the next second.

"Wait..." Huyan Zhao saw someone in the back row raising a long spear directly at him, and couldn't care about anything else, hurriedly shouting, "I surrender, I surrender!"

He was safe once he shouted "surrender".

This guy was sensible, General Nanke was overjoyed: "Then what are you waiting for, open the city gate!"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 441 =====