From bone collectors to the supreme ruler of humanity

Chapter 65 If you die, there will be no one to fight this war!

The fire started in the stables and spread all the way to the grain storage area.

Tonight, the firelight illuminated half the sky.

The general guarding the barbarian camp was a subordinate general of the Great Khan. He fought desperately for a while, but Xiong Kuo cleaved off half of his shoulder with a single blow.

The routed soldiers fled into a narrow passage, where Ye Qingxue's light cavalry were waiting.

When dawn broke and the Khan's army arrived at the pass, they were greeted by the ruins of the camp burned to ashes and hundreds of headless corpses neatly arranged on the pass walls.

Seeing this, everyone stood still, speechless for a long time.

On the gate wall, Sun Dayong held up the wolf-head flag he had seized from the lieutenant general, tore it in half in front of tens of thousands of barbarians below, and threw it off the wall.

The Great Khan only ordered the attack on the city a full incense stick later.

The barbarians have several times more siege equipment than before.

More than twenty catapults were pushed up from the rear camp.

The sound of the stones hitting the gate wall was like muffled thunder, and each one created a crack in the wall. The soldiers guarding the gate wall did not even dare to raise their heads.

Ye Qingxue stood behind the battlements, a streak of blood appearing on her face from flying pebbles. She didn't even wipe it away, her eyes fixed on the densely packed barbarian soldiers surging up below.

Lin Yan paced back and forth on the gate wall.

In just a short while, the garrison at Zhenbei Pass suffered more than half its losses, and the supply battalion had less than sixty men left standing. Fang Dahai's three hundred remaining soldiers were also reduced to half their number.

Liu Shijie sent another 500 reinforcements from Zhenbei City, but these were all new recruits who had just been conscripted from civilians, and many of them had never even sharpened their swords.

They are completely unfit for the battlefield.

After fighting for half a day and suffering over a thousand casualties, the barbarians finally managed to tear a gap in the eastern section of the wall.

Dozens of barbarians from the Blood Wolf tribe poured in through the gap and clashed with Fang Dahai's remaining troops.

Fang Dahai, holding a shield in one hand and a knife in the other, blocked the front of the gap. With only seven soldiers left who could still fight, he managed to push the barbarians back a bit.

At this moment, the catapults from the Northern Barbarian side unleashed another volley.

A stone hit the crenellation next to Fang Dahai. In the instant the rubble flew, a cold arrow shot out from the barbarian formation, passing through the gaps in the rubble and aiming straight for Fang Dahai's face.

Fang Dahai's shield was currently blocking the aftershocks of the stone projectiles and had no time to retract it.

The arrow struck him squarely in the throat, the arrowhead protruding more than an inch from the back of his neck.

Fang Dahai was stunned for a moment, looked down at the arrow tip protruding from his throat, and then fell backward in disbelief.

The severed hand, still bandaged, was pressed against the shield.

The remnants of the Left Vanguard Battalion roared and surged toward the breach, using knives, spears, fists, and teeth—using every means at their disposal—frantically trying to plug the gap.

But Fang Dahai was unable to stand up.

Sun Dayong rushed into the gap and retrieved Fang Dahai's helmet.

This soldier who had followed Lin Yan all the way had three arrow wounds and two knife wounds on his body, but he didn't utter a sound. He threw his helmet on the wall and turned around to continue killing the barbarians.

On the battlefield, blood and flesh flew everywhere.

When Ye Qingxue arrived at Lin Yan's side, he was bandaging a new recruit's leg wound at the foot of the East Section Pass wall.

Seeing the expression on her face, Lin Yan paused in his actions.

"Fang Dahai is dead." Ye Qingxue looked at Lin Yan.

Lin Yan tied a knot in his bandage, stood up, and slowly drew his sword as he listened to the barbarians outside the wall sounding a new round of bugle calls.

"You stay here for a while. I'm going down," he said.

Ye Qingxue grabbed his arm, "It's too dangerous, you..."

"Even if it's dangerous, someone has to go down."

He removed her hand from his arm, looked at Ye Qingxue, and said, word by word, "If I don't come back, you take good care of my mother and Xiu'er for me."

Upon hearing this, Ye Qingxue gripped the hilt of her sword tighter.

Her lips moved, and in the end she only said one sentence: "Come back alive."

Lin Yan nodded.

Then he summoned Xiong Kuo and thirty strong soldiers, and together they climbed over the wall through the eastern gap and crept along the low cliff toward the barbarians' catapult positions.

The catapult position was set up on an earthen platform below the slope.

More than twenty catapults were lined up in two rows, and the barbarian craftsmen were loading new stone projectiles.

There were about two hundred barbarian soldiers guarding the position this time, but their attention was all on the wall, and no one noticed the shadow that was reaching down from the low cliff on the side.

Xiong Kuo was the first to jump onto the earthen platform, swinging his thick-backed knife in a wide circle from right to left.

The next instant, blood spurted from the necks of the three barbarian soldiers, the blood shooting into the sky like a fountain.

Seeing this, the craftsmen next to the catapult were so frightened that they threw down their stones and ran away.

"A great opportunity!"

A glint flashed in Lin Yan's eyes, and he immediately led his men to attack from the other side. The two men, one on the left and one on the right, clamped the barbarians on the earthen platform like two iron pincers.

Lin Yan cut the main rope of the catapult with a single stroke, then took three captured oil canisters from his waist, stuffed them into a rag soaked in oil, lit them, and threw them into the wooden frame of the catapult.

After a series of crackling sounds.

The oil canister exploded instantly, and flames shot up along the tung oil-soaked wood, engulfing the six stone machines in the blink of an eye.

The barbarian craftsmen swarmed down the earthen platform, only to run into the support team led by Sun Dayong.

Sun Dayong was now wrapped in countless layers of bandages, holding a chipped long knife, standing like a menacing figure on the narrow path below the earthen platform.

The craftsmen and guards were huddled together, and he felled several of them with a single blow.

The rest couldn't squeeze into the narrow passage and fell off the edge of the earthen platform.

Lin Yan lit eight more catapults before jumping down from the earthen platform. He looked back and saw that the entire position had been burned into a sea of ​​fire, and none of the more than twenty catapults were still usable.

"Walk!"

Xiong Kuo turned his head and roared angrily.

The barbarian infantry on the side of the earthen platform had already surrounded it, flanking it from three directions.

Lin Yan led his men to retreat up the low cliff, with Xiong Kuo covering their rear.

A centurion from the northern barbarians tried to charge forward, but was cleaved in two by Xiong Kuo's blade.

As they retreated to the bottom of the cliff, Lin Yan suddenly felt a numbness in his calf. An arrow had pierced his calf, the tip penetrating two inches into the flesh and grazing the leg bone, causing blood to gush out.

Xiong Kuo grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the cliff; the barbarian pursuers were already within thirty paces.

Sun Dayong threw down two bundles of straw that he had prepared beforehand from the cliff. The thick bundles of straw blocked the entrance to the narrow passage. Then a torch landed on the bundles of straw, and a wall of fire suddenly rose up, keeping the pursuers at bay below the cliff.

The group climbed back up the wall from the low cliff, and Lin Yan leaned against the battlements, panting.

Old Meng rushed over to remove the arrow and stop the bleeding. After cutting open his trouser leg and seeing the wound, he gasped, "The arrow tip hit the bone. If it had been an inch off, the leg bone would have broken."

Lin Yan pushed him away and said calmly, "I'm fine, Lao Meng, you bandage the other brothers first."

Ye Qingxue gripped her sword and squatted down in front of him, looking at him.

"Let me bandage you up. Fang Dahai is gone, you can't afford to have anything else happen to you."

Just then, a sudden change occurred.

A sword light of extreme sharpness suddenly appeared, as if it had existed since time immemorial, accompanied by a low, hoarse voice, heading straight for Lin Yan's throat.

"If you die, there will be no one to fight this war!"