Chapter 180

Lingbi, the last gateway south of Suzhou, stood on the east bank of the old Bian River course; to its west lay 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 surpassed those of Sizhoucheng and Hongxian. The city walls, rebuilt during the Dading era of the Jin, were faced with blue bricks and packed earth inside, rising thirty-two chi high with a base over twenty chi thick. Outside the walls, a moat two zhang wide had been dug and filled with water from the Bian River. Arrow towers were placed every fifty steps along the wall, and at each corner stood a projecting machicolation, allowing defenders to fire sideways at attackers. On the high ground north of the city stood a separate fortress, forming a pincer with the main city. The Jin had fortified the Huai River line for decades—Lingbi was the hardest nail in the southern front. Capture Lingbi, and Suzhou lay exposed to the Song army’s blades.

And now, the man sitting atop this nail was the fiercest warrior on the Jin’s southern front.

Heshilie Zhizhong arrived at Lingbi on the third day of the fourth month. He had been stationed as Commander-in-Chief of Shaanxi, guarding the silent, terrifying western neighbor—the Western Xia. But the six-hundred-li urgent dispatch from Wanyan Honglie in Lin’an overturned all deployments of the Jin Privy Council. Han Tuozhou’s northern campaign had begun; southern forces were critically insufficient, and 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 was sent to Shaanxi—Heshilie Zhizhong was reassigned to Lingbi, commanding all remaining troops south of Suzhou. He brought only three thousand men from Shaanxi; combined with Lingbi’s original garrison and the scattered remnants fleeing from Sizhoucheng and Hongxian, his total force was under five thousand. Opposite him, the Song eastern main force under Guo Ni and Guo Zhuo alone numbered over twenty thousand, with Deng Youlong’s army crossing the Huai River behind them.

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

The Song vanguard arrived at Lingbi’s southern suburbs on the evening of the fifth day of the fourth month.

The first to arrive were Guo Zhuo’s cavalry scouts. They saw the dark silhouette of Lingbi’s walls against the twilight, then turned and fled—not from fear, but from experience: this city was unlike the previous two. Sizhoucheng’s walls were hollow; Hongxian’s were broken; Lingbi’s 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 and, accompanied by Guo Zhuo, Tian Junmai, and other officers, circled the walls for reconnaissance. After one look, all fell silent. Lingbi’s defenses far exceeded expectations—the moat’s water was deep and swift, the walls tall and unbroken, and on the four corners, the outlines of crossbows were barely 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, but part of a decades-old defensive system.

Guo Ni convened his first war council inside his tent. The debate raged until midnight. Tian Junmai advocated besieging without attacking, bypassing Lingbi to strike Suzhou directly and cut off the Jin garrison’s supply lines, letting them starve. But Guo Zhuo opposed it: Lingbi blocked the highway—they couldn’t bypass it. If the main army marched north past 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 rose and spoke only one word.

“Fight.”

He stepped to the map, his finger pressing on Lingbi. “We’ve taken Sizhoucheng and Hongxian too easily—our troops have grown arrogant.” He looked around at his generals. “Lingbi is a hard bone. If we crush it, the whole army will know this northern campaign is no game. If we can’t crush it, we have no right to gaze north toward the Central Plains.”

On the eleventh day of the fourth month, 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 high ground south of the city; all the fire-oil jars brought from Sizhoucheng were deployed. The first volleys of stone and fire-oil smashed into the southern wall—flames erupted, smoke rolled thick, and Jin soldiers were driven back ten paces by the heat. Stones shattered the battlements, sending shards flying; several Jin soldiers caught unawares were crushed to pulp. Then came the second, then the third volleys—the trebuchets never paused; the entire southern wall was engulfed in fire and dust. The battering ram, shielded by infantry, slowly advanced toward the gate; the scaling ladders followed close behind.

Heshilie Zhizhong stood atop the northern fortress, overlooking the battlefield from above. His position was chosen with precision—not on the main city tower, but at the highest point of the northern fortress, giving him full view of the Song assault while staying beyond trebuchet range. He watched the Song forces surge like tidal waves against the walls, his face utterly still.

“Let them come close,” he told his messengers. “Don’t shoot until they’re near. Ignore the trebuchets—focus on the battering ram.”

When the Song battering ram reached the southern gate, the Jin counterattack began. Jin archers didn’t fire randomly—they rotated in three shifts, each targeting pre-marked zones. The first shift focused on the shield-bearers flanking the ram; arrows rained down like grain poured from a winnowing basket, embedding in shields, piercing through gaps, felling men continuously. The ram slowed. When gaps opened in the shield wall, the second shift targeted those openings. At the same time, two massive crossbows suddenly rolled onto the wall—huge bolts screamed toward the ram’s canopy. One bolt pierced straight through the wooden roof beams; splinters flew, several ram operators were crushed, and the ram halted crookedly halfway.

The first day’s assault lasted from dawn to afternoon. The Song charged four times—each time repelled. The base of the wall was piled 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. As soon as the ladders were raised, Jin soldiers hooked them over and toppled them. Half the death squad was killed or wounded; Guo Zhuo himself was grazed by a crossbow bolt—his sleeve soaked through with blood. 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 campaign had losses been this high. Sizhoucheng had fallen in half a day with fewer than a hundred dead. Hongxian had taken six days and two or three hundred casualties. Lingbi had claimed that many in one 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, the largest gap over two zhang wide. But every night, Jin soldiers rebuilt the breaches with sandbags and wooden palisades; the Song broke them again the next day, and the Jin rebuilt them again that night. Guo Ni tried a night raid—he selected three hundred elite troops to sneak under the wall at night and scale the eastern side, only to find the Jin had strung bells and wire nets along the walls. As the three hundred reached halfway, bells rang out, torches flared, ambushes erupted; 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 was filled with frozen soldiers; many still wore their thin river-crossing coats, winter gear stranded in supply wagons far behind. Tents overflowed with coughing, feverish troops; medical herbs ran out—they boiled ginger water to endure. The Jin inside fared no better—they had enough winter gear, but food dwindled daily. The Song siege was a sealed iron bucket; no supplies could get in. On the tenth day of the siege, Heshilie Zhizhong halved the city’s rations, converted all horse feed into army provisions, slaughtered thirty packhorses, and distributed the meat as one bowl per man, boiled in salt water. He stood before his men, ate his bowl, and didn’t even frown.

“Tell the troops,” he said, placing the empty bowl on the table before his battalion 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 day of the fourth month, the Song finally breached the southern wall.

This time, Guo Ni led the charge personally, concentrating every trebuchet and all fire-oil jars on one section of the southern wall, pounding it relentlessly through the morning. The blue bricks shattered and peeled away, exposing the packed earth beneath. After relentless blows, the earth gave way with a thunderous collapse, opening a gap over three zhang wide. Dust exploded skyward; several Jin soldiers were buried alive, their screams merging with the roar of collapse. Behind the breach lay a steep slope, rocks and earth still tumbling down. Guo Zhuo led the charge, sprinting 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 tangled together. 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 inner side of the north gate, donned a four-foot-long double-handed saber, its blade rusted but sharpened to a gleam, mounted his horse, the blade resting across his 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 repeatedly charged Song infantry through narrow streets, hooves sparking on cobblestones, sabers crashing against shields with dull thuds. Street fighting lasted from noon to dusk; blood pooled in the cracks of the stones, making the ground slippery. Heshilie’s personal guards fell one by one—until only he remained mounted, his saber chipped, armor slashed open three times, his left arm pierced by a spear. He still fought. Until his deputy—a Khitan battalion commander named Wanyan Anlin—grabbed his horse’s head from behind and dragged him, horse and all, out the north gate.

“General! Reinforcements aren’t coming! 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 were falling one by one in the flames, replaced by Song red flags. The city he had defended 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 held the Song eastern main force at Lingbi for a full half-month—half a month enough for Jin to do many things.

“Withdraw.”

Heshilie Zhizhong led fewer than two hundred survivors out the north gate, vanishing into the night. They took back roads; the rear guard, fighting to the death, blocked Song pursuit. The rear guard perished entirely—none surrendered. Lingbi fell completely on the night of the twenty-third day of the fourth month.

After the city fell, Tian Junmai noticed something while counting the spoils: the Jin granaries held less than three days’ worth of food. 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 army to Lingbi’s gates for fifteen days. Every arrow embedded in the walls, every corpse piled beneath the southern wall, every street soaked in blood during street fighting—he had bought Jin time.

The assault on Lingbi was the first hard battle of the northern campaign. Song casualties neared three thousand; two battalion commanders died—one pierced through the throat by a Jin spear during the southern breach charge, another shot through the eye socket by a hidden arrow. Wounded numbered in the thousands. 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 was worth it.” Then he bandaged himself and returned to the front.

The battle report sent to Lin’an carried far heavier weight than the previous two. Deng Youlong drafted it himself, omitting the usual boast of “a thousand heads taken.” He recorded casualties, duration, and the Jin general’s breakout. But he added one final line: “With Lingbi fallen, Suzhou’s gates lie wide open. Though the enemy general was brave, he could not turn the tide.”

Han Tuozhou read the line in the Political Council and said nothing. He simply placed the report gently on his desk. Then he rose, walked to the wall where a large map hung, and his gaze moved from Lingbi northward—to Suzhou, then Xuzhou, finally settling on the place marked in cinnabar—Kaifeng. Behind him, a group of officials held their breath, none daring to speak. He knew what this battle meant—the first phase of the northern campaign was over. The theme of the first phase had been “like a bamboo splitting.” The next theme would be “head-on collision.” Jin had used this small city to tell him one thing: even the southern front, though empty, still had men who could fight.

On the twenty-fifth day of the fourth month, Guo Ni led the main army north from Lingbi. One thousand troops remained behind, commanded by a deputy, to secure the supply lines. Before leaving, Guo Ni erected a stele on a hill outside the north gate. On it was carved: “In the second year of Kaixi, fourth month, 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.