Wei School's Three Good Students

Chapter 36 Ashes and the Bifang Fire
In the 27th year of the Tianli reign, the siege of Yongji Pass in the southern border led both the defenders and attackers to a consensus after experiencing and surviving: the defenses of Yongji Pass were exceptionally strong. However, the defenders were quite pleased with this conclusion, while the attackers cursed and swore at Yongji Pass as a cunning slaughterhouse.

It took Black Tide an hour to finally build enough ladders on the city wall after the first wave of "cursed assassins" led the charge.

It's worth mentioning that the ladder wasn't placed directly on the battlements. Because the Yongji Pass city wall was well-equipped with a special lever, the top of the ladder placed directly on the city wall could be pried up, and the person lying on it could be thrown down.

After several unfortunate soldiers from the southern border fell to their deaths, they finally found a way: they set up the device half a meter below the battlements, leaving no point for the lever to pry it open. The soldiers from the southern border then climbed up, took the large arrowheads they had picked up, and hammered them into the bricks, using them as the last point of support to reach the top of the city wall.

However, as the command flags turned on the city walls, the Wu family army employed entirely new tactics to defend the pass.

All that could be seen was a yellow liquid flowing from the drainpipes at the very top of the city wall—oh, that was yellow mud. Its purpose was to make the city wall slippery and difficult to climb.

Oil can also have this effect, as can gold juice, but the city wall of Yongji Pass is very large. In order to ensure effective coverage of hundreds of meters of the city wall, well-mixed mud is the most economical and practical option.

Soon, the mud seeped out of the round pipes in the city wall like diarrhea, leaving patches of yellow mud across the entire wall. Even the most adept climbers, the snakes, could no longer swim on these muddy patches. Although they tried to zigzag around from the side, the wider the zigzag they traversed, the greater the impact from above.

Before the snake-man who had taken the shortcut could even congratulate himself on his cleverness, he suddenly felt a gust of wind overhead and was easily smashed down by a "falling object." He crashed to the ground below.

In just five minutes, the mud had divided the climbing area into eight small sections. The ants that were swarming the city wall could only move the ladders aside and climb the sections of the wall that were not covered by the mud.

However, these places without drainage outlets for the yellow mud were all "recessed" areas on the city wall, meaning that climbers would be attacked from both sides. So, after changing the city wall, these fools in the southern border finally found another place to climb, and after climbing up, they encountered the guards on both sides of the battlements with long weapons, that is, poles with axes or hammers attached, smashing and chopping down one by one.

…The camera pans to a small battlefield on the city wall…

In one of the battlements' designated areas, Wen Si directed his squad to take turns dealing with these unfortunate southerners who dared to show their faces. They were accurate with their axes and spears, and each person would take seven or eight hits before resting, making it almost like an assembly line operation.

Two seconds after each strike, a loud thud was heard from below. The axe could actually split the ladder in two, but there was no need. This useful "top of the head to withstand an axe" formation had to be preserved.

From his position on the battlefield, Wen Si, who was drawing the crossbow string, watched as the soldiers complained that they had to hold the hammer for too long, and that his arms were aching.

Wen Si cursed, "You complain about how easy it is to take heads! I left the city four days ago, stabbing people with a pole—that was risking my life! You guys—"

At this point, Wen Si stopped speaking and raised his crossbow to aim at the snake-man who was trying to climb the wall by stepping on the bricks on the side of the crenellation. The snake-man, who was climbing the wall in a zigzag pattern, was only three or four meters away from the top of the wall when he was pierced in the neck by a crossbow bolt, lost his balance and fell down.

At first, the soldier who still had strength in his arms thought that Wen Si was stealing his kills, thinking, "I can do it myself. When the snake-man climbs up, I can get my weapon too. I just need to give him a few more taps." But now, as his strength is being depleted, he has realized that Wen Si is helping him fill in the gaps in his defense.

In such a fixed formation, killing one enemy at a time is perfectly timed. If two suddenly come at once, the pole might be caught by the other while striking one, leading to a loss of defense. Just like in a city defense mini-game, sometimes it's precisely that one wave that allows the enemy to break through. Wen Si, wielding a crossbow with a wide control range, preemptively eliminates such potential threats, ensuring that the assembly line of striking heads with axes on the city wall doesn't experience any "product delays."

The soldier glanced at the corner of the city wall and shouted to Wen Si, "Brother Wen, the corpses down there are piled up really high, why haven't they given up yet?"

Wen Si once again laboriously stepped onto the bowstring. As for his younger brother's question, he pointed to the city gate and replied, "Can you hear that 'thump thump thump' sound of banging on the door? They're holding their breath, hoping to break down the door and rush in, so they're dragging us to the city wall."

The soldier peeked out from under the city wall at the piles of corpses and the Southern Barbarians continuing to surge up: "Those guys are really stupid."

Wen Si: "Get to work! Stop nagging."

Although Wen Si and Xiao Bing did not know what arrangements the commander-in-chief had made at the city gate, the war had progressed to this point, and the soldiers on the city wall were almost deliberately trying to trick the enemy into attacking the city in various ways. Each time, it seemed that they were pointing out a certain method to try. However, after the command flags were raised on the city wall, the defenders of Da Yao realized that the Southern Barbarians were just finding another way to send their heads to their deaths.

Wen Si knew his general well: "Tsk tsk, not very old, but really wicked. Oh, or rather, wise and mighty."

…Both sides are losing stamina…

Finally, one of the city gates was breached, but what they found was a barbican. When these big men broke through the gate with huge stone hammers, they only saw the backs of the soldiers who had been holding up the gate with planks and pillars, quickly retreating to the barbican. When they realized that the soldiers wanted to close the second gate, they panicked and hurriedly chased after them.

However, these giants were running so fast that they didn't see the road. Suddenly, a rope was pulled up from the ground, and the giants fell hard. After getting up and taking a closer look, they realized that the rope was taut and was activated by the force of a bamboo stick. The giants, who had been furious after falling, realized that no one was hiding nearby to pull the rope, but that it was just a timed trap set by a cunning person. They then became discouraged and started smashing things indiscriminately.

However, just as they were learning from their mistakes, the city gate separating the inner city from the outer city was already closed. So they chased after them back to the outer city gate and started smashing it down, blocking the new main entrance.

But then they suddenly sensed something was wrong above the city gate they were entering. There were several openings above the gate, and large vats of liquid were prepared inside. The defenders poured a large amount of lime into the vats, stirred it, and soon the food was ready.

This round of "golden juice" poured down, its destructive power maximized, leaving the two large figures blocking the entrance and exit of the walled city with their skin torn and bleeding.

The golden liquid attack immediately rendered the more than one hundred giants who rushed in incapable of fighting. But then, one after another, black iron bombs fell, and the shrapnel caused secondary damage to the trolls' scalded skin. The trolls, howling in pain, fled in panic under the constant threat of the bombs.

When these big guys hastily withdrew from the barbican, the morale on the battlefield collapsed.

The smaller men climbing the city wall, upon hearing the screams of the larger men as they escaped, knew all too well that "our army has been defeated."

So these short men jumped onto the pile of corpses one by one, trying to escape, but with broken legs, they were quickly picked off one by one by crossbow bolts from the city wall. This siege resulted in the loss of more than two thousand men. As for the remaining ants of attackers, they scrambled away, leaving only the steaming, stinking pile of corpses below the city wall.

Note: If it is a colonial war during the Age of Exploration, the scenario ends when the defenders hold out against an overwhelming numerical advantage of the locals until the locals suffer heavy casualties and are forced to retreat, because the garrison inside the castle is not capable of chasing them out for open battle.

However, Wu Fei did have a field army under his command, and it had been conserving its strength. He didn't participate in the battle on the city walls, but instead remained behind the barbican awaiting orders. ...The pursuit began...

As the bugle sounded from the city wall, the victorious peasant army on the wall began to muster their last strength, firing arrows to kill the remaining enemies while others peered out from the city walls to watch the pursuit.

Meanwhile, some people held shields and banged them rhythmically on the city walls. Especially when they saw their own cavalry charging behind the Horned and Clawed Men, a large number of them fell like wheat being harvested by a black tide, only to be trampled into corpses on the ground by the horses' hooves. This performance was incredibly exciting.

As Zhao Tu's griffin guided the ground cavalry in the sky, they split into two groups and charged into the Southern Frontier camp in a pincer movement. Let's just call it a camp for now. It was full of thatched huts made of tree branches that were only one or two meters high, and there weren't even many proper sheds.

After Zhao Tu ordered his cavalry to throw out flammable materials, he set the garbage dump ablaze. This meant that the Black Tide of Southern Xinjiang would never have another chance to regroup. The fleeing Southern Xinjiang tribes had already lost their courage and were trampled to death as they were chased and killed, their souls gone.

The large, slow-moving figure, having just escaped from under the city wall, was certain that the killing gods had entered his camp. Without further ado, he scattered like stars across the sky; the remaining four thousand-plus Black Tide soldiers vanished instantly.

Cheers erupted from the city walls. Aside from necessary defenses, the armored warriors orderly withdrew from the walls to eat. The clinking of wooden spoons and bowls was minimal; in this battlefield mess hall inside the city walls, the only sounds were "smack" and "slurp."

However, another alarm sounded from the city wall. A group of Crowmen, who had been hiding in the jungle on the left side of the battlefield, stormed the city wall. Wu Fei didn't know what their purpose was in attacking after the siege had ended. But the sentries were prepared immediately.

In this war, Wu Fei's troop control ability improved again. He was able to find the right time to switch troop positions in most key positions during the battle, let alone in the later stages of this confrontation.

Yes, changing squads during battle is like changing parts in a running machine. During the most intense battle, the shift change is the easiest to get chaotic. If the squad retreats too early and fails to take over, or if the squad's route is not well planned and is delayed by the chaos of the battlefield, it will not only be late but also block other passages and routes, which will be disastrous.

The crow-men circled eighty paces away in the air, and the large crossbow formation began to prepare, awaiting orders to strike. It wasn't that the crossbow bolts couldn't reach them, but rather that these bird-men had a wide range of maneuvering in the air. Moreover, these flying bird-men didn't have sufficiently long-range attack methods; if they really wanted to attack, they could only get within fifty paces.

Wu Fei looked at these birdmen. They didn't attack. Instead, the leader of the birdmen flew over alone. Wu Fei ordered the crossbowmen to keep watch further away and let this guy come over.

The birdman tossed a bamboo tube and quickly left; inside the tube was a "snake-skin book".

This clearly means they intercepted Xiaoqing's intelligence work, but what's the point of giving it to me now?
Wu Fei smiled as he looked at the bird-men still circling in the air. He picked up a carving knife and wrote a letter on a bamboo slip, then tied it to a bow and arrow and shot it towards the bird-men. The bird-men caught the arrow and flew away.

…A wise bird chooses its tree to perch on…

During this Black Tide in Southern Xinjiang, Angri and Jiamude have already separated, which was intentional on his part to make the Crow people run away separately.

The Crow people did not play a significant role in the entire Black Tide campaign.

Last night, after their first defeat, the barbarians were unhappy with the Arakkoa's cowardice in circling the jungle and refusing to cooperate with their charge against the city walls. (Arakkoa side: You bunch of fools, didn't you see there's a group of reserve armored soldiers sitting quietly behind the walls? I warned you, but you fools wouldn't listen.)
Just after the Black Tide's first failure, harassment from various races arose from all sides, but no Arakkoa language was heard (because Angri had just returned with his people, and Wu Fei had no traitors to join him).

But amidst the black tide, the noisy voices of the southern barbarians began to shout, roughly meaning, "We've all gone in, why aren't you?!" "You freeloader!" "Grandpa wants to pluck your fur!"

Heaven has mercy. The crow people don't engage in direct hand-to-hand combat with the dragon descendants of Haotian Realm. They are only skilled in reconnaissance. Because they can dodge arrows in the sky with their agile movements, if they rush to the city wall and fight the armored soldiers, they will be beaten like drowned rats.

If we flee with those southern barbarians after this battle, we'll most likely just become punching bags. Besides, the crow people can fly, and flying is much faster than running.

Angri quickly received Wu Fei's letter, and he rode the Taiyue Luan towards Yongji Pass.

In the past few days, Angri has seen that the southern barbarians recruited by Wu Fei have become scouts in this battle. Based on this, he judges that Wu Fei should be willing to accept useful barbarians to serve him.

However, as he approached Yongji Pass, Jiamude, who was retreating, immediately sensed this pledge of allegiance. He snorted coldly, turned the alchemy furnace, and a wisp of flame floated out.

Here, Angri suddenly felt the flame power on his body go out of control, consuming his "wood essence magic power". He paused for a moment because he hadn't used the strange food, the Flowing Ash Pill. But then he remembered that although he hadn't used it, he had used his Bifang Fire to refining the Flowing Ash Pill. The flame part of the Flowing Ash Pill contained the residual information of a higher-level sacred bird, so his Bifang Fire was affected.

Sensing that the flames on his body were spiraling out of control, Angri quickly spat out a ball of wood-attribute flame, which turned an eerie blue. The flame then flew south.

…the mantis stalks the cicada…

Southern Jamud sensed the object he had drawn and nodded. This was the sacred relic his ancestor had instructed him to obtain from Angri at the right time; only by acquiring such a relic could the curse upon his tribe be alleviated. However, just as Jamud was silently reciting the incantation, suddenly, a ball of blue flame appeared on his finger. Burned by the flame, he immediately jumped up and tried to extinguish it, but his hand gesture had already stopped.

The object he dropped was flying north at that moment.

…the oriole is unaware of the one behind…

Three incense sticks later, inside Yongji Pass, Third Aunt looked at the ball of flame in her palm. The blue flame she controlled seemed to pinch the green flame like a finger. As companions who assisted in his transformation, Third Aunt and Xian Daoren were well aware of the Taoist arts of that fellow from the Southern Fire Sect, and thus easily broke through the "Fire Sect Lamp Wick" technique.

Auntie San rarely showed a sweet smile: "The next step is for me to transfer it into his body."

Having said that, Third Aunt slightly parted her lips, swallowed the ball of Bifang flame, and then used her past power to alter it. Once the alteration was successful, she could dispel the mountain of prejudice in that stubborn fellow's heart.

(End of this chapter)