Monkey, Don't Make Things Difficult for Us!

Upon learning that Yan Capital had held and that the Song army had been driven back, the noble ladies of the harem were overjoyed. Many embraced one another and wept, tears of joy streaming down their faces.

Those who wept were almost all concubines of no great status. The even lower-ranking ones had already been dealt with earlier. Once the city fell, it was easy to imagine that they would be the first whose lives could not be saved. Keeping Yan Capital meant keeping them alive.

That terror, that fear, had finally passed.

Once, they had believed that entering this place was the height of glory.

Now they had come to understand deeply that once storms surged and clouds churned beyond those lofty palace walls, they, clinging to the shelter within, had no control over their own fate, like lambs awaiting the slaughter.

"The Song army has withdrawn..."

Beneath the vast sky and over the sprawling land, amid camps stretching endlessly, Meng Shanming sat in his wheelchair outside the central command tent and murmured softly.

"Yes, they withdrew. Marshal Meng's earlier judgment was right. They retreated in less than seven or eight days." Gong Lince sighed sincerely at his side. Even now, he had not figured out the chain of cause and effect behind it. All he could do was admire the old battlefield veteran's seasoned eye; he had read the situation with uncanny precision.

What concerned Meng Shanming, however, was another matter. "How many troops did the Song army lose in the siege?"

Gong Lince looked at the report from the Capital City in his hand. "The rough count from clearing the bodies is around one hundred and eighty thousand."

"One hundred and eighty thousand..." Meng Shanming murmured again, a trace of melancholy flashing through his eyes.

The