The horn wailed mournfully, like weeping and lamenting.
It was not a horn for charging, but a whistle used to drive livestock.
A gap split open in the Barbarian formation, and nearly a thousand ragged figures were driven forward by cavalry with whips and the flats of their blades, stumbling toward the moat.
They were Great Liang citizens, the "Two-Legged Sheep" the Barbarians had captured and plundered all the way south.
The cries of the elderly, the screams of women, and the wailing of children converged into a torrent of despair that crashed fiercely against the ears of Black Stone County's defenders.
"Don't shoot! That's my second uncle!"
"That's Sister-in-law Wang from the next village!"
On the city wall, the Local Militia who had been gripping their weapons tightly began to stir. Though those three hundred private soldiers had received training, they were locals in the end. Seeing familiar faces below, the blades in their hands began to tremble, and they could not bring themselves to pull their crossbow triggers.
The Barbarian cavalry hid behind the crowd, letting out piercing laughter.
This was one of their usual tricks—"filling the moat." They used living corpses to fill the moat, draining the defenders' arrows while shattering their morale.
"Boss..." Pockmarked looked at Ji Ye, his voice trembling. "How... how are we supposed to kill them?"
Ji Ye watched the scene below without expression.
The prisoners had already reached the moat. Behind them were the gleaming curved blades of Barbarian soldiers; before them lay the freezing river water. Some tried to turn back, only to be cut down at once. Others jumped into the river, hoping to swim across, but sank beneath the water when their strength gave out.
"This is war."
Ji Ye's voice was soft, scattered by the wind as soon as it left his lips.
He snatched a heavy crossbow from a crossbowman beside him, cocked it, and took aim.
His target was not the Barbarian soldiers behind them, but an old man from Great Liang running at the very front.
The old man carried a sandbag on his back, something the Barbarian soldiers had forced him to carry to fill the moat.
Bang!
The bowstring trembled.
The thick crossbow bolt tore through the air with a shrill whistle and instantly pierced the old man's chest.
The old man collapsed beside the moat, his blood staining the sandbag red.
The city wall fell deathly silent.
Everyone stared at Ji Ye in disbelief. That was one of their own!
"What are you standing around for?"
Ji Ye cocked the crossbow again, his tone cold and hard as iron. "They are no longer people. They are the Barbarians' shields, tools for attacking the city. If you let them come close, the ones who die will be your parents, your wives, and your children."
"Fire!"
Ji Ye pulled the trigger again, shooting down a woman clutching a child.
His hand was steady—terrifyingly steady. Yet no one saw that his knuckles gripping the crossbow had turned white, even splitting open with threads of blood.
The cruelest thing in this world was not killing enemies, but killing one's own kin.
But it had to be done.
Mercy could not command an army. If they softened now and let these nearly thousand people fill the moat and throw their formation into chaos, then the tens of thousands of Black Stone County citizens behind them would truly have no way to survive.
"Fire!!"
With bloodshot eyes, Pockmarked let out a heart-rending roar and pulled the trigger with his eyes shut.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A sparse rain of arrows fell, then rapidly thickened.
The cries below the wall turned into screams of agony.
Blood dyed the moat red, and corpses piled atop one another, truly on the verge of filling it flat.
Within the Barbarian army formation.
The giant man seated on the war chariot watched the scene, a cruel smile curling his lips.
"Ruthless enough."
He waved his hand, that palm as large as a cattail fan seeming to blot out the sun.
"Attack the city."
This time, it was no longer a probing assault.
As the war drums thundered, the true Barbarian elite—the Wolf Cavalry—swung down from their mounts, raising round shields and carrying crude siege ladders as they charged over the corpses of their comrades and captives.
They moved as nimbly as apes, able to keep their balance even on slick ice.
"Pour the Golden Juice!"
Ji Ye tossed aside the heavy crossbow and seized an iron spear.
More than a dozen great cauldrons were overturned, and scalding dung water poured down the city walls.
"Ah—!!!"
Those screams were ten times more shrill and miserable than before.
Golden Juice was not only hot, but filthy. Once it touched the skin, even if it did not scald someone to death, the wounds would swiftly fester and become infected. In this age without antibiotics, that was practically a death sentence.
The steaming dung water splashed over the Barbarian soldiers' leather armor, instantly cooking the flesh beneath. The Barbarian soldiers on the ladders fell like dumplings dropped into a pot.
But the Barbarians were too insane.
When the men in front fell, those behind continued climbing upward, stepping on the still-twitching bodies of their comrades.
A powerfully built Barbarian centurion actually used a door plank as a shield, forcing his way through the rain of arrows and Golden Juice. With one hand, he seized hold of the battlements.
"Die!"
With a furious roar, he leveraged himself onto the city wall, and his curved blade instantly cut down two Local Militia men.
He was an expert in the Bone Forging Realm!
Ordinary Local Militia were like lambs waiting for slaughter before him.
"Move aside!"
A thunderous shout rang out.
Ji Ye charged over, dragging his iron spear behind him.
The centurion gave a savage grin, thinking another man had come to throw away his life, and swung his saber down.
But this time, he was wrong.
Ji Ye did not block at all. He wielded the eighty-jin iron spear like a staff, unleashing Triple Brute Force to its fullest. It swept out sideways with howling wind pressure.
Clang!
The curved blade was smashed crooked at once. The iron spear did not slow, slamming heavily into the centurion's waist.
Crack!
The centurion's body folded into a grotesque angle, his spine shattering instantly. He was sent flying off the city wall like a cannonball, tracing an arc through the air before crashing into the sea of people below.
One spear, one kill.
"Who else?!"
Ji Ye stood with his spear planted before him, drenched in blood like a demon god.
The defenders atop the wall were greatly roused. Their fear turned into frenzied killing intent.
With the boss this fierce, what the hell was there to fear?
The first wave of attacks was forced back.
But this was only the beginning.
In the distance, that war chariot slowly advanced.
The giant man rose to his feet and drew a massive iron-backed bow from his back.
The bow was as tall as half a man, its string as thick as a child's arm.
He set a huge arrow like a spear to the string and slowly drew it back.
His target was the most conspicuous figure atop the city tower—Ji Ye.
A chill like being watched by a venomous snake instantly enveloped Ji Ye's entire body.
"Move!"
Ji Ye instinctively sensed danger and shoved Pockmarked aside.
Bang!
The bowstring boomed like exploding thunder.
The next instant, the battlement where Ji Ye had been standing exploded apart. The huge arrow shot through the blue bricks, its momentum still unspent as it buried itself in the watchtower pillar behind them, its tail still shaking violently.
Had he been half a second slower, Ji Ye would have been blown apart by the arrow.
Ji Ye climbed up from the ground and stared at the giant arrow buried deep in the wood, his pupils contracting.
Was this the power of Organ Tempering?
To hit a willow leaf from a thousand paces, force piercing through gold and stone.
He raised his head and looked into the distance.
The giant did not fire again. Instead, he lowered his bow and, from several li away, made a throat-slitting gesture at Ji Ye.
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