The Fall of Silver Maple City, Part One

The sun blazed over Silver Maple City like a furnace, its unbearable heat seeming ready to melt the earth itself.

Outside the city, the Northern Alliance Army gathered like a torrent of steel. Banners streamed, drums thundered, and tens of thousands of soldiers stood in vast, orderly formations, like an impregnable fortress radiating a chilling menace.

Fully armed, with blades and spears bristling and cold steel flashing, the troops waited only for the order to launch a fierce assault on the walls.

The defenders atop the walls had stood ready, their morale high. Now they scattered like a disturbed swarm of bees, no longer sparing a thought for the enemy watching hungrily outside. They shoved past one another to flee down from the walls.

Dozens of enormous counterweight Catapults stood among the besiegers like giant beasts. Their thick, fearsome arms swung again and again, each sweep accompanied by a dull boom and an arc streaking across the sky—a deadly stone shot!

These massive projectiles, weighing a hundred jin or even several hundred, hurtled from the Catapults one after another at astonishing speed, raining down on the walls and across the city.

In an instant, the entire city plunged into chaos and panic. The walls shook violently, bricks and stones flew; houses struck inside the city collapsed in moments, filling the air with dust; innocent people fled in every direction as cries rose and fell...

Just then, another enormous stone shot struck a battlement atop the wall dead on.

With a thunderous boom, it punched straight through the sturdy parapet!

Countless fragments of stone and masonry sprayed outward, sending a powerful shock wave sweeping through. A squad of defenders behind the parapet was caught unawares and flung aside like kites with their strings cut before crashing to the ground.

Their bodies