Tangli Fried Snow

It was a large place, long since filled with women and eunuchs from the imperial harem, all with solemn expressions and anxious faces.

Outside the hall stood some fully armed imperial guards, among whom was Hong Yao. When Xue Li saw that he was still faithfully guarding her side, she felt much more at ease. She didn't dare to speak to him, only glanced at him, and then hurriedly followed everyone into the hall.

The Empress Dowager and the young emperor, along with the imperial concubines and princesses from various palaces, were all present. Most of the women appeared calm, the children were well-behaved, and the palace servants stood with their heads bowed to one side. Upon seeing their mother-in-law arrive, the Empress Dowager and several imperial concubines and their children greeted her politely, and the scene was relatively harmonious.

Princess Yaoguang, whom we hadn't seen for many days, was also sitting to one side. She was as beautiful and elegant as ever. When she saw the Empress Dowager arrive, she gracefully rose and came to her side, sitting down and chatting with the old lady. With her company, the Empress Dowager was visibly much happier.

Sherry secretly observed the princess. To avoid suspicion, she had never taken the initiative to contact her before. Apart from the princess pleading for her a few times in the Empress's palace, the two of them had barely exchanged a few words.

It is said that Duan Xueyao was very beautiful when she was born, with fair skin and a beautiful face. Prince Duan specially named her Xueyao and made her a princess when she was three years old, giving her seven cities as her dowry.

Compared to others, Duan Xueyao possessed a composed elegance, her words were full of wisdom, her thoughts were profound, her eyes were clear and upright, and she was kind to people. Even her spirit and energy were different from ordinary women. Later, Xue Li learned that this was the difference between someone who had practiced martial arts for many years and an ordinary woman.

Although the two look very similar, it's a pipe dream for Sherry to impersonate her and deceive everyone. The two have such different temperaments that even if she wore the other's clothes, people who know her would recognize her at a glance.

She felt a surge of anxiety and couldn't help but feel down.

Empress Dowager Jin, unusually, was drinking alone, with several exquisite snacks beside her. She sipped fragrant tea cup after cup. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but she seemed more relaxed than everyone else, occasionally exchanging a few words with her son beside her.

She even had her son taken away by the palace servants, and then beckoned Duan Xueyao to her side and said a few words to her.

Sydney was standing quite close and could hear everything clearly.

Empress Dowager Jin's phoenix eyes were hazy, and her first question was: "How many years apart are you and Duan Jingyu?"

Duan Xueyao was surprised by the question and blinked before replying, "Three years old."

Empress Dowager Jin said softly, "I am five years younger than Prime Minister Jin."

“They said we looked exactly alike when we were little, but we’ve looked very different since we were born.”

“He was born the heir to the Earl’s mansion and learned to write, recite, ride horses, shoot arrows, and fight on the battlefield from a young age. As for me, I learned to embroider, taste tea, make tea, and arrange flowers from a young age.”

“Even marriage is like this. He can marry the woman he likes as his wife or concubine, but I can only marry a husband who is more than ten years older than me, to be a tool for the prosperity of the family, to be a decoration in the deep palace. Since I married into the palace, I have never stepped out of the palace gates.”

“I also want to go to the night market, I also want to go hiking, I also want to ride horses on the grassland, but I can’t go anywhere. Now I can only stay here with a group of women and children and wait to die.”

After saying that, she drank another glass of wine and poured one for the princess next to her.

"You, you come here!" Empress Dowager Jin said, pointing at Shirley who was eavesdropping.

Sherry was listening intently, even thinking to herself, "Empress Dowager Jin, you're practically an empress now. No one dares to stop you from going out to play. What's there to be dissatisfied about?" She snapped out of her reverie and saw the Empress Dowager's slender hand pointing at her. Startled, she quickly went over, knelt on the ground, and whispered, "Empress Dowager."

Empress Dowager Jin stared intently at Xue Li with her phoenix eyes and said to the princess beside her, "I don't know if I'm drunk, but why do I feel that she looks so much like you? Have I seen this palace maid somewhere before? Yuanyang, come and take a look, don't the two of them look a bit alike?"

Duan Xueyao's face was somber, and she didn't say anything. The head palace maid named Yuanyang looked the two of them carefully and said, "Empress Dowager, you've had too much to drink. The princess and this head palace maid only have similar figures, but they don't look alike at all. You must have mistaken them."

Empress Dowager Jin chuckled and said, "Yes, upon closer inspection, it doesn't quite look like it. It seems I really am drunk."

Both Shirley and Princess Yaoguang secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

Empress Dowager Jin laughed a few times and then pulled Duan Xueyao aside to talk.

"Don't be afraid. Even if those Tartars breach the city gates and the gate to Hongxiao Palace, we won't be harmed by them. In a little while, I'll give each of them a poison pill and let them keep it in their hands. When the time comes, each of them will take one pill and die cleanly and neatly. Isn't that great?"

Duan Xueyao smiled slightly at her and said softly, "Yes, it's very good."

Empress Dowager Jin said quietly, "We all have medicine and can feel a little better, but the others are in a terrible state."

Do you know what happens when a city falls?

Duan Xueyao gently shook her head.

“All the men will be killed, the women will be raped, and they will be pregnant with the enemy’s bastards. Their own children will be cleaved in two by those beasts. Half the houses in this city will be burned down, even here.” She waved her arms and continued, “This place will also be burned to the ground. We will die together, burned to the ground here.”

The women around her began to tremble, and Xue Li felt as if she were being roasted over a fire. Duan Xueyao remained relatively calm, though her delicate body trembled slightly. She downed the wine in her hand in one gulp and softly said to Empress Dowager Jin, "I will absolutely not allow anyone to rape you."

Empress Dowager Jin smiled slightly at her, took a deep breath, and whispered in her ear, "If it were Duan Jingyu who were besieging the city this time, then I would completely believe what you said. Mu Bai is a truly upright and honorable man. This palace and this throne are rightfully his or your father's."

She raised her voice a little higher and said, "But this time it's the Khitans who have come, along with that bastard's son. Even if I surrender on the city wall, they'll shoot me through with arrows! It's easier to appease their warhorses than to appease that Yelü traitor."

“These Tartars have no humanity; nothing you say will make a difference.”

Before she could say anything more, her mother-in-law couldn't stand it any longer and spoke up to stop her, saying, "Yuanyang!"

"Don't let your young lady drink anymore, she's talking nonsense. Quickly take the wine away and make her a bowl of hangover soup."

Yuanyang hurriedly stepped forward to remove the wine pot, and Empress Dowager Jin drank the last bowl of wine in her hand before letting her take the wine cup away.

Perhaps she had said what she needed to say and vented what she needed to vent, because she stopped talking and called her son to her side. She stayed with him, her face flushed, and stared blankly into space.

. . . . . .

From the very first day of the siege, Jiang Qimo witnessed firsthand the ferocity of the Khitans. He wondered what they ate to grow up like that; all the Khitans were tall and strong, seemingly possessing inexhaustible stamina. When the first fierce attack began, the enemy's strangely shaped catapults smashed several large holes in the high city walls.

Once the catapults were used up, the armored vanguard charged forward like a tidal wave.

With a wave of his hand, Jiang Qimo unleashed a barrage of arrows that rained down on the enemy cavalry with a whistling sound. Most of the cavalrymen were clad in armor and carried shields, and even their horses were covered in iron armor. Ordinary arrows were no match for the fully armed Khitan vanguard.

It seemed these arrows could only be saved for the ordinary infantry behind. Jiang Qimo ordered his adjutant to change the flags, and a group of men with huge crossbows aimed at the armored cavalry.

With a wave of the red flag in Jiang Qimo's hand, the super crossbow, carrying a powerful crossbow bolt two meters long, shot towards the enemy at the forefront with a deafening whistle, like a nightmare.

Giant arrows pierced the bodies of the warriors in front, dragging them three or four meters behind. Some arrows even killed two enemies at once, like skewering candied hawthorns, piercing through both the front and rear. The sounds of flesh and blood being pierced filled the air. Some warhorses were also shot through on the spot, collapsing to their knees and letting out dying neighs in pain. Enemies behind them, unable to dodge in time, fell to the ground along with their horses, trampled to death on the spot by the warhorses behind them.

The enemy at the front was felled in droves, and cheers erupted from the city wall.

This super crossbow is incredibly powerful. If more of it were made, the famous Iron Forest Army of the Khitan would all be dead here today. It's such a pity. The super crossbow is complex to manufacture and the raw materials are extremely difficult to find. Only this batch was made, and the number of giant arrows is also small. Several need to be prepared for each city gate. We only have ten here.

Several volleys of giant arrows ravaged the enemy's vanguard, and the infantry phalanx with shields and weapons slowly came into range.

Jiang Qimo ordered his men to change the color of the flags, and ordinary archers stepped forward to unleash a volley of arrows on the enemy as a welcome surprise.

Although the enemy suffered countless casualties, with many shot dead on the spot, greatly boosting their morale, the enemy's numbers seemed to have not decreased at all. At noon, Yelü Hongdan's command flag slowly appeared behind him. He was muscular and clad in full armor, riding a warhorse surrounded by a group of equally fierce Khitan officers.

His tens of thousands of troops advanced steadily and slowly. The Khitans' tight formation and three times the number of soldiers still managed to reach the city walls at a leisurely pace.

Jiang Qimo couldn't help but sigh. In the face of such a massive battle between two armies, no matter how skilled one was, how many ingenious schemes one had, or how many super weapons one possessed, it was all useless. What truly mattered now was the power of collective cooperation. As long as the army was disciplined, united, and numerous enough, victory could be achieved.

I can only maximize the use of my limited forces, try my best to delay the inevitable, and hold out until reinforcements arrive.

A gap appeared in the continuous lines of troops in front of the camp, and an enormous siege engine was slowly pushed in from a distance. A huge log with a sharp iron shield in front of it was carried by soldiers and began to ram the city gate.

Jiang Qimo ordered his men to pour oil down below and then shoot flaming arrows at the siege engine. A sea of ​​fire immediately erupted below, and the enemy's screams filled the air. The siege engine was basically destroyed, and the city gate was temporarily out of danger.

Before he could catch his breath, several thousand soldiers, in groups of ten, carrying massive 15-meter-long ladders, spread out and approached the city wall. They placed the ladders on the wall, and the fierce Khitan wall-climbing experts began their ladder warfare.

A total of one hundred siege ladders were piled up along the city wall. As the Khitans climbed higher and higher, Jiang Qimo ordered his deputy to lead men to attack the enemy with large stones. The enemies on the ladders were hit and fell down with bloodied heads, and also crushed their comrades below, leaving them half-dead.

Soon the stones were all thrown, and the archers began firing at the enemies on the ladders again. The moment an enemy looked up, a trembling arrow pierced their terrified eye socket, sending them tumbling headfirst off the high ladder. On the unprotected city wall, one Khitan after another screamed in agony as they fell from the top.

The skilled Khitan warriors below the city walls retaliated with arrows, inflicting heavy casualties on the soldiers on the walls. Only when the first Khitan soldier scaled the walls using a siege ladder did the brutal hand-to-hand combat begin, with one soldier fighting three against one. Jiang Qimo led from the front, repelling wave after wave of Khitan attacks. After two days and two nights of valiant fighting, they finally forced all the enemy back from the walls, holding the first line of defense.

The sky gradually darkened again. Winter days are short, and in the blink of an eye, it was suddenly dark. The Khitans sounded the retreat, and as they watched the enemy recede like the tide, the soldiers finally breathed a sigh of relief and began to clean up the battlefield. The city walls were already a mess, and their own soldiers had suffered heavy casualties.

Several men were dealing with the corpses on the city wall. The enemy's bodies were all thrown off the wall, while the bodies of their own comrades were recorded and then dragged to a deep pit to be burned. You see, the biggest fear in a defensive city is the outbreak of plague. Although it was winter, unlike in summer when the bodies would decompose and stink quickly, the dead still had to be burned immediately before being buried deep in the ground.

Before Jiang Qimo could catch his breath, a soldier rushed in to report, "Lieutenant General, 'Mud Wall' is under fierce attack and is about to fall."

Jiang Qimo broke out in a cold sweat and immediately rushed over with his personal guards and skilled fighters.

Before they even reached the "mud wall," they saw that the city wall had been blasted open by the enemy's catapults, leaving several large holes. Amidst the sea of ​​fire, many Khitan men wearing leather armor and with braided hair stormed into the city wall.

Jiang Qimo took the lead, and wherever his red-tasseled spear went, the enemy immediately bled. With each strike, whether it was a thrust, a slash, a parry, or a block, the spiraling force was like a whirlwind, killing those who blocked it with a chilling blow.

As soon as the fresh troops arrived, the enemy inside the city was wiped out. Yu Zhentian's engineers also arrived. The craftsmen and bricklayers worked together, and the reserve personnel blocked the corpses on the ground in the ditches and on the damaged city walls. They began to repair the city walls with clay and stones, and kept pouring water on the walls. It took them a whole night, until dawn, to completely repair the "mud wall" and the dog hole.

Repairing the city wall would normally be an extremely difficult task, but now it is the dead of winter, the end of the year is approaching, and it is the coldest time of year. The mud and corpses freeze as soon as they come into contact with water, which makes the repair work easier.