Chapter 180: The First Hard Battle

Lingbi, the last gateway south of Suzhou, lies on the eastern bank of the old Bian River canal; to its west rise a chain of low hills, with the terrain sloping from high in the north to low in the south, overlooking the southern highway. Its fortifications far surpass those of Sizhou and Hongxian. The city walls, rebuilt during the Dading era of the Jin, are faced with blue bricks and packed earth inside, standing thirty-two feet high with a base over twenty feet thick. Outside the walls, a moat two zhang wide was dug and filled with water from the Bian River. An arrow tower stands every fifty paces along the wall, and at each corner projects a horse-face bastion, allowing defenders to fire sideways at attackers. On the high ground north of the city stands a separate fortress, forming a pincer with the main city. The Jin had spent decades fortifying the Huaihe line—Lingbi was the hardest nail in the southern front. Take Lingbi, and Suzhou lies exposed to the Song blades.

And now, upon this nail sat the Jin's most formidable commander on the southern front.

Heshilie Zhizhong arrived at Lingbi on the third day of the fourth month. He had been stationed as Commander of Shaanxi Road, watching the silent, terrifying neighbor to the west—the Western Xia. But the six-hundred-li urgent dispatch from Wanyan Honglie in Lin'an upended every deployment of the Jin Privy Council. Han Tuozhou's northern expedition had begun; southern forces were critically short. Someone had to hold back the first wave. At the military council, Wanyan Anguo said only one sentence: "Lingbi needs an old dog." After the meeting, the order went to Shaanxi—Heshilie Zhizhong was reassigned to Lingbi, commanding all remaining troops south of Suzhou. He brought only three thousand men from Shaanxi, joined by Lingbi's original garrison and scattered survivors from Sizhou and Hongxian—fewer than five thousand total. Opposite them, the Song eastern main force alone numbered over twenty thousand under Guo Zhuo and Guo Ni, with Deng Youlong's army crossing the Huaihe behind them.

Five to one odds. But Heshilie Zhizhong had served thirty years—he never judged a battle by troop numbers. In Shaanxi, he'd fought half his life against the Western Xia, where battles often pitted thousands against thousands—not who had more men, but who was fiercer, more patient, and could smash their last reserve at the decisive moment.

The Song vanguard reached the southern suburbs of Lingbi on the evening of the fifth day of the fourth month.

The first to arrive were Guo Zhuo's cavalry scouts. They saw Lingbi's walls, dark and heavy in the twilight, then turned and fled. Not from fear—but experience told them this city was different from the two before. Sizhou's walls were hollow; Hongxian's were broken. Lingbi's walls were intact, reinforced, and behind every battlement, shadows of heads moved.

Guo Ni's main force arrived two days later. He set up camp three li south of the city, then rode with Guo Zhuo, Tian Junmai, and other officers to circle the walls. After one look, all fell silent. Lingbi's defenses far exceeded expectations: the moat was deep and swift, the walls tall and unbroken, and on the horse-face bastions, the outlines of crossbows were visible. The fortress on the northern high ground bristled with Jin banners, connected to the main city by a causeway flanked by skirmisher pits—clearly not hastily dug. This was a Jin defensive system built over years.

Guo Ni convened his first war council inside his tent. The debate raged until midnight. Tian Junmai advocated besieging without attacking—bypass Lingbi, strike Suzhou directly, cut off Lingbi's supply, and let the Jin garrison starve. But Guo Zhuo opposed it: Lingbi blocked the highway; you couldn't bypass it. If the main army marched north around Lingbi, its supply lines would be exposed to Jin cavalry raids. Once cut off, the northern force would be isolated. Guo Ni listened to both sides in silence, then stood, and spoke one word.

"Fight."

He stepped to the map, his finger pressing on Lingbi. "We've taken Sizhou and Hongxian too easily. Our troops are growing arrogant." He looked at the officers in the tent. "Lingbi is a hard bone. If we crush it, the whole army will know this northern expedition is no game. If we can't crush it, we have no right to gaze north toward the Central Plains."

On the eleventh of April, the Song launched their first assault at dawn.

No probing, no feints. Guo Ni threw in three battalions—nearly six thousand men—attacking simultaneously from south and east. Five trebuchets were erected on the southern high ground; every fire-oil jar brought from Sizhou was unloaded. The first volley of stones and fire-oil jars slammed into the southern wall—flames erupted, smoke rolled thick, driving Jin soldiers back ten paces. Stones shattered the parapets, sending shards flying; several Jin soldiers caught in the debris were crushed to pulp. Then came the second, then the third volley—the trebuchets never paused. The entire southern wall was swallowed by fire and dust. The battering ram, shielded by infantry, crept toward the gate; the scaling ladders followed close behind.

Heshilie Zhizhong stood atop the northern fortress, looking down over the entire battlefield. His position was cunning—not on the main city tower, but at the highest point of the northern fortress: he saw the full scope of the Song assault, yet remained beyond trebuchet range. He watched the Song surge like a tide against the walls, his face utterly still.

"Let them come close," he told his messenger. "Don't shoot until they're near. Ignore the trebuchets—focus on their battering ram."

When the Song battering ram reached the southern gate, the Jin counterattack began. Jin arrows weren't random—they rotated in three shifts, each targeting pre-marked zones. The first shift fired exclusively at the shield-bearers flanking the ram—arrows rained down like grain poured from a winnowing basket; shields bristled with shafts, and men kept falling through the gaps. The ram slowed. When a gap opened in the shield wall, the second shift aimed straight into it. At the same time, two massive crossbows suddenly rolled onto the wall—huge bolts screamed toward the ram's canopy. One bolt pierced the wooden roof beam clean through; splinters flew, several ram operators were crushed, and the ram halted, lopsided and stuck.

The first day's assault lasted from dawn to afternoon. The Song charged four times—four times repelled. The base of the wall piled high with corpses and shattered ladders; bricks scorched by fire-oil turned black. During the final charge, the trebuchets ran out of ammunition. Guo Zhuo personally led a death squad, carrying ladders to the wall. The moment the ladders were raised, Jin soldiers hooked them and toppled them. Half the death squad fell; Guo Zhuo himself was grazed by a crossbow bolt—blood soaked half his sleeve. At dusk, Guo Ni ordered a retreat. When the casualty report came in, Tian Junmai's hand trembled—three hundred dead, nearly a thousand wounded. Never before in the northern expedition had losses been this high. Sizhou took half a day, fewer than a hundred dead. Hongxian took six days, two or three hundred casualties total. Lingbi claimed that many on the first day.

Heshilie Zhizhong's battle report contained only eight characters: "Song forces launched fierce assault. City still held."

For the next seven days, the Song assault became a grinding war of attrition. Trebuchets pounded daily for seven days—half the battlements were shattered, the southern wall pockmarked with a dozen craters, one gap three zhang wide. But every night, the Jin rebuilt the breach with sandbags and wooden palisades. The Song smashed it again the next day; the Jin rebuilt it again that night. Guo Ni tried a night raid—he selected three hundred elite troops, slipped under cover of darkness to the eastern wall, hoping to scale it. But the Jin had strung bells and wire nets along the wall. Three hundred men were halfway up when bells rang out—torches flared, ambush troops surged from all sides. Fewer than a hundred returned.

The hardest stretch came in mid-April, when a late cold snap swept down from the north. Two days of freezing rain dropped temperatures near freezing. The Song camp froze solid—many soldiers still wore their thin crossing garments; winter gear remained stranded on supply wagons behind the Huaihe. Tents filled with coughing, feverish soldiers; medical herbs ran out—they boiled ginger water to endure. The Jin inside fared no better—they had winter gear, but rations dwindled daily. The Song siege sealed the city like a iron barrel; no supplies could enter. On the tenth day of the siege, Heshilie Zhizhong halved the city's food rations, diverted all horse feed to soldiers, slaughtered thirty packhorses, and distributed boiled horsemeat—one bowl per man. He stood before them, bowl in hand, drank his portion, not a flicker of a frown.

"Tell the troops," he said, setting the empty bowl on the table before his hundred-commanders, "reinforcements will come. Before they arrive, Lingbi is the southern gate of Great Jin. As long as the gate stands, Jin stands."

On the twenty-third of April, the Song's fifteenth assault finally breached the southern wall.

This time, Guo Ni led personally, concentrating every trebuchet and all fire-oil jars on one stretch of the southern wall. For the entire morning, they pounded it. Blue bricks shattered and peeled away, exposing the packed earth beneath. After relentless blows, the earth gave way—with a thunderous crash, a gap over three zhang wide opened. Dust exploded skyward; several Jin soldiers were buried alive, their screams merging with the collapse. Behind the breach lay a steep slope, rocks and earth still tumbling down. Guo Zhuo led the charge, at the front. His troops poured through the breach, engaging the Jin in brutal street fighting inside the gate—clashing blades, shouts, dying moans all merged into one roar. Meanwhile, Tian Junmai stormed the eastern wall with scaling ladders, attacking from two sides.

The instant the southern breach opened, Heshilie Zhizhong led his reserve from the fortress. He knew once the wall fell, defense became street fighting—and street fighting was decided by the last breath. He gathered his final three hundred elite cavalry at the northern gate's inner side, donned a four-foot-long two-handed saber, its blade rusted but honed to a gleaming edge, mounted his horse, the saber laid across the saddle, his single eye burning with final resolve. He did not flee—he charged into the fiercest fighting at the southern gate, trying to drive the Song back from the breach. The battle was horrific. Jin cavalry charged repeatedly through narrow streets, hooves sparking on stone flags, sabers crashing against shields with dull thuds. Street fighting lasted from noon to dusk—blood pooled in the cracks of the paving stones, making the ground slippery. Heshilie's personal guards fell one by one; finally, only he remained mounted, his saber notched, armor slashed open three times, a spear lodged in his left arm. He still fought. Until his deputy—a Khitan hundred-commander named Wanyan Anlin—grabbed his horse's head from behind and dragged him, horse and all, out the northern gate.

"General! Reinforcements won't come! The city is lost! If you die, Lingbi's defense was for nothing!" Wanyan Anlin roared.

Heshilie Zhizhong turned and looked back at Lingbi—the Jin banners on the walls fell one by one in the firelight, replaced by Song red flags. The city he'd held for half a month was being lost inch by inch. Something dimmed in his single eye. Then he slammed his saber into its scabbard, voice hoarse and low. He was not surrendering—he was accounting. He had pinned the Song eastern main force at Lingbi for a full half-month. That half-month gave Jin time to do many things.

"Withdraw."

Heshilie Zhizhong led fewer than two hundred survivors out the northern gate, vanishing into the night. They took back roads; the rear guard, fighting to the last, held off the Song pursuit. The rear guard died to a man—none surrendered. Lingbi fell completely on the night of April 23.

After the city fell, Tian Junmai noticed something while clearing the battlefield: the Jin granaries held less than three days' rations. Heshilie Zhizhong hadn't held out because he believed in reinforcements—he knew they might never come, and held anyway. He held for fifteen days, nailing the Song to Lingbi's gates for fifteen days. Every arrow stuck in the wall, every corpse piled at the southern rampart, every street soaked in blood during street fighting—each was time he bought for Jin.

The assault on Lingbi was the first hard battle of the northern expedition. Song casualties neared three thousand; among the dead were two battalion commanders—one pierced through the throat by a Jin spear during the southern breach charge, another struck in the eye socket by a hidden arrow. Wounded numbered countless. Guo Zhuo himself was struck by an arrow during the breach charge—the arrowhead pierced his shoulder armor and sank into flesh. When the surgeon pulled it out, he bit a stick without a sound, tossed the bloody arrow to the ground, and said: "This arrow? Worth it." Then he bandaged himself and returned to the front.

The battle report reached Lin'an heavier than the previous two. Deng Youlong drafted it himself—no flowery "ten thousand heads taken." He wrote the casualties, the duration, the Jin general's breakout. But at the end, he added: "With Lingbi fallen, Suzhou's gate lies wide open. Though the enemy general is brave, he cannot turn the tide."

Han Tuozhou read those words in the Political Council. He said nothing, only laid the report gently on his desk. Then he rose, walked to the wall where a large map hung, his gaze moving from Lingbi northward—to Suzhou, then Xuzhou, finally settling on the place marked in vermilion—Kaifeng. Behind him, officials stood silent, none daring to speak. He knew what this battle meant—the first phase of the northern expedition was over. The theme of the first phase had been "like a bamboo splitting." The next theme would be "clash of iron." Jin had used this small city to tell him one thing: even the southern front, though empty, still had men who could fight.

On April 25, Guo Ni led the main army north from Lingbi. One thousand troops remained behind, commanded by a deputy, to guard the supply lines. Before leaving, Guo Ni erected a stele on a hill outside the northern gate. On it was carved: "In the second year of Kaixi, April, Great Song soldiers fought bloody battle at Lingbi and took it." That hill was the last place Heshilie Zhizhong had stood before withdrawing.

Ahead lay Suzhou.