[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse":3,"chapter-from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-188":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","From Special Forces to the Multiverse",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2315238,4527,"Chapter 188: Defeat at Sizhoucheng","from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-188",188,"\u003Cp>Beneath Sizhoucheng, the Song army’s encampment was shrouded in damp, sweltering mist. In July’s Huaibei, even the wind felt sticky, as if leaking from a steamer. The camp reeked of an inescapable stench—pus from wounded soldiers, feces piled in the mud, and corpses left unburied, all fermenting together.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo sat in the central command tent, carving a willow branch with a captured Jin dagger. He carved with fierce force, each stroke as if severing something vital. Outside, cicadas screeched incessantly, driving men mad.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Two months,” he tossed the stripped branch to the ground. “Two months for Sizhoucheng.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No one answered. The staff officers bowed their heads; the commanders stared at the map as if deciphering some arcane celestial secret. The map was blurred by sweat stains; the location of Sizhoucheng had been poked through by a finger.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo rose and walked to the tent flap. The afternoon sun blazed white on the ground; the walls of Sizhoucheng in the distance lay like a gray dead serpent across the horizon. On the ramparts, the Jin banner stood utterly still, as if nailed there. He knew what lay beneath it—the Jin general Heshilie Zhizhong, with his remnant force of fewer than five thousand, had held firm against two months of Song assaults.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“He’s not defending the city,” Guo Zhuo said suddenly, his voice low, almost to himself. “He’s waiting.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Waiting for what?” asked his deputy, Tian Junmai.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo said nothing. He remembered Xin Qiji’s letter, Zhanzhuan  delivered to him. Only sixteen characters: “The Jin retreat but do not disorder; the western forces hesitate and advance not; the steppe’s tigers and wolves have already formed.” He had burned the letter, but the words were seared onto his eyelids—he saw them whenever he closed his eyes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Three days later, Heshilie Zhizhong moved.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was the dawn of the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the moon full, casting the Huaibei land in ghastly white. Song sentries on the walls noticed something strange—the Jin had set up dozens of large cauldrons atop the ramparts, fires blazing beneath, boiling something unknown. The report reached the command tent; Guo Zhuo threw on his robe and stepped out, gazing toward the walls. In the firelight, Jin soldiers were pouring black liquid into the cauldrons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What is that?” he asked.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No one could answer. But soon, an odd fragrance drifted across the battlefield, filling the Song encampment. It was the smell of meat—intense, long-missed meat. After two months of siege, the Song soldiers’ rations had shifted from rice to coarse grain mixed with sand. Now, smelling this scent, their stomachs growled, their eyes turned red.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“They’ve slaughtered every cow and sheep in the city,” Tian Junmai realized. “They’re going to sally out.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before he finished speaking, the gates of Sizhoucheng burst open.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What emerged were not cavalry or infantry, but a crowd of ragged civilians. Driven by Jin soldiers, they carried clay bowls brimming with meat broth, crying out as they ran toward the Song lines. Among them were elders, women, children—all gaunt, eyes wide with terror. Yet each held meat in their hands.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Song front line stirred. Starving soldiers, drawn by the scent of meat and seeing the stumbling civilians approach, loosened their grips on their blades. Some even broke ranks, rushing forward to snatch the clay bowls.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At that instant, the main Jin force surged out from both sides of the gate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Heshilie Zhizhong had committed his last elite troops. He sent the civilians out with meat to lure the enemy, then personally led his death squad to flank the Song army. The Song soldiers, still dazed by the scent of meat, suddenly snapped awake at the thunder of hooves—but it was too late.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Jin cavalry sliced through the Song lines like a red-hot knife through congealed lard. Wherever they passed, the Song formation melted. Soldiers from the shattered front fled backward; those in the rear, unaware of what had happened, turned and ran too. Panic spread like plague, faster than any order.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo leapt onto his horse, trying to rally the fleeing troops. He saw Tian Junmai—waving his banner desperately, trying to halt the flood of retreating men—but the soldiers surged past him like a broken dam. A Jin cavalryman charged from behind, slashing the flagpole clean off. Tian Junmai was swallowed by the crowd and vanished in an instant.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“General! Flee!” His personal guard seized Guo Zhuo’s reins.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo turned back to look at Sizhoucheng. The Jin banner still stood nailed to the ramparts, unmoving. Two months—he had fought for two months and still could not bring it down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He spurred his horse southward. Behind him, the Song encampment had become a burning hell. Tents burned; grain stores cracked and exploded in the flames; wounded soldiers screamed inside their tents, but no one stopped to help them. Supplies, weapons, documents, banners—all abandoned beneath Sizhoucheng.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Song army retreated all the way to Qixian.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When Guo Zhuo counted the survivors atop Qixian’s walls, fewer than forty thousand remained of the original eighty thousand eastern force. The rest had not died in battle or been captured—they had scattered during the rout, vanishing into the reed beds along the Huai River, never to return.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“How many reinforcements did Heshilie Zhizhong have?” Guo Zhuo asked.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A scout who barely escaped knelt on the ground, trembling: “My general, the Jin reinforcements… were only two thousand. Old and weak, scraped together from Bianjing.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The tent fell into silence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo closed his eyes. Two thousand reinforcements. Heshilie Zhizhong had never had more than seven thousand men total. Yet he held for two months, then used the mere appearance of two thousand more to shatter the psychological defenses of eighty thousand Song troops.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Good,” Guo Zhuo opened his eyes, his voice dry as grinding stone. “A fine Heshilie Zhizhong.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He picked up his brush and began drafting the report to Lin’an. After a few lines, he stopped. How to write it? That eighty thousand men were crushed by seven thousand? That corpses littered the ground beneath Sizhoucheng, staining the tributaries of the Huai? That Wu Xi on the western front still held his position, waiting for something?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the end, he wrote: “The Jin deployed elite northern troops to reinforce Sizhoucheng, numbering no less than thirty thousand. I fought valiantly but could not prevail; I have withdrawn to Qixian to regroup and prepare for another advance.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When he finished, he flung his brush onto the desk and walked to the window. On the southern horizon, summer thunderstorms brewed—black clouds rolled in, pressing down. Rain was coming. The Huai’s water level would rise again. The bodies buried beneath Sizhoucheng would be washed into the Huai by the rain, drifting southward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And farther north, a shadow more terrible than the Jin was taking shape. The steppe beast that had devoured the Western Xia was now licking its paws, waiting to watch the Jin and Southern Song bleed each other dry.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Guo Zhuo suddenly remembered Xin Qiji’s sixteen words—and shivered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The outcome of this northern expedition had been written from the start. No one simply chose to read it.\u003C\u002Fp>",1191,"2026-06-20T13:48:22.834Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","cb0252d000f0cf77ccf739e5281c0cabe1c54da907bf9edbf9d56979628673e2","from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-189","from-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-chapter-187",205,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Ffrom-special-forces-to-the-multiverse-cover.jpg"]