The air in the eastern gate corridor of Xuzhou was thick with the metallic stench of blood and spilled guts. The bodies of Wei soldiers were piled as high as a man's waist. At the edge of the ruined courtyard, General Yue Jin sat upright on his gray horse. His cold, disciplined eyes swept over the hellish scene before him. He saw that the Xuzhou army's Tortoise Shell Formation was still locked tight behind the corpses of his own men. Their long spears still jutted out like the impenetrable spines of a porcupine. "General Yue Jin. Shall we continue the assault?" a Wei lieutenant asked from his side. Yue Jin shook his head slowly. "No. Forcing the infantry into a narrow corridor that has already become a graveyard is just foolish. Their formation is too solid. Pull all troops back. We will surround this city from all sides. Let Prime Minister Cao's artillery do the talking tomorrow morning." Receiving

Night finally fell on Xuzhou. The meteor shower of stones from the Wei army's Trebuchet stopped for a while. Cao Cao’s soldiers needed time to rest their arms and repair the machines that had overheated from continuous firing. However, the silence of the night felt far more terrifying. The groans of people trapped under the rubble of buildings were heard from every alley. The smell of blood and brick dust hung in the air. In the inner city courtyard, dozens of torches were lit. Jo Fan stood in the middle of the field, his forehead wrapped in a torn piece of Liu Bei’s robe. Fresh blood was still seeping through, staining the cloth a deep red. His head was throbbing violently. The pain from the gash on his forehead combined with the effect of the Caffeine Rush, which was forcing his heart to keep pounding. In front of him, dozens of large wooden chests had just been forcibly opened by the Xuzhou soldiers. The c

The arrogant smile on Jo Fan’s face didn’t last long. From a distance, he saw hundreds of small points of fire light up at the rear of the Wei army. “Shit. He’s changing ammunition,” Jo Fan cursed. The young man threw the rest of his potato chips on the stone floor. “Everyone, take cover! They’re using fire arrows!” The warning came just in time, but it was too late to save his architectural masterpiece. Thousands of arrows, their tips wrapped in oil-soaked cloth, shot up, covering the morning sky. It wasn’t giant boulders that fell this time, but a meteor shower of fire that rained down on the giant silk umbrella over Xuzhou city. Silk cloth was indeed very strong against kinetic pull. But silk was still a very flammable fabric. In a matter of seconds, the flames caught the fibers of the expensive silk. The colorful net that stretched over the ci

The tenth day of the Xuzhou siege felt like being at the bottom of the coldest hell. The city walls were still standing strong after the Turtle Shell formation and Zhang Fei’s rampage had repelled the Wei close-quarters assault. But intact walls were meaningless if the stomachs of the people inside were empty. The Pingyuan grain logistics and the Xuzhou food supplies had completely run out. The thin smoke curling from the city's street corners was no longer from residents' cooking stoves. The smoke was from small fires where desperate soldiers were roasting sewer rats they had caught. Medicine had vanished since the seventh day. Even a small cut would turn into a festering infection, spreading a smell of death that overpowered the stench of blood. Inside the south tower command room, Jo Fan lay weakly on a hard wooden cot. The young man’s face looked more like a skull wrapped in thin skin

The night sky of Xuzhou was truly weeping, but it wasn't water that fell to the earth. Round, swollen objects shot down from the darkness, launched by the hundreds of giant Trebuchets of the Wei army. Splat! Thud! Splat! The sound of wet impacts echoed throughout the city courtyard. Human corpses that were already rotting, swollen with gas, and a greenish-purple color slammed into the brick streets. The stiff bodies exploded on impact with the hard ground. Stomach fluid, rotten blood, and intestines filled with maggots sprayed in all directions. A sharp, ammonia-like stench filled the air. The smell of decaying flesh immediately choked the lungs of the thousands of Xuzhou soldiers defending near the gate. “Ugh! What is that smell?! Please, I can’t breathe!” a young soldier shrieked, dropping his spear and vomiting uncontrollably all over his own feet. Mass panic