Sensing Meng Tian's doubtful gaze.
Meng Wu also examined Zhao Cheng closely and couldn't help feeling a little speechless.
This kid seemed to have grown even taller. He looked even more valiant, too.
Hadn't he been a farmer before? How did he have such an extraordinary bearing?
Strange!
Still feeling suspicious, Meng Wu said, "You don't really look like a woodcutter, but you could pass for a hunter."
"Zhao Cheng, are you familiar with hunting?"
Zhao Cheng grinned, showing a neat row of white teeth. "Very familiar."
"In those years, farming alone didn't earn enough to fill my belly, so I relied on hunting in the mountains to bring home some game and get a little fat in my diet. I know it well."
Meng Wu nodded with satisfaction. "Excellent!"
Zhao Cheng was already eager to go. "General, when do I disguise myself and sneak in?"
Alone in the city, surrounded by enemy troops, he could kill as he pleased whenever an opportunity arose and stir up chaos to his heart's content.
With his current level of Qi Body Refining, even if the enemy discovered him, he had nothing to fear.
Meng Wu shook his head. "There's no rush. The time isn't right yet."
"Even if you sneak in now and open the city gates, it'll be difficult for the army to coordinate with you and storm the city. We need to dam the river first, then pressure them with our army. Once the enemy is anxious and terrified, you can take advantage of the opening."
Zhao Cheng realized he was right. Unless they cut off the broad, swift river, the army couldn't even cross it, let alone attack the city.
"Understood. I'll await your orders, General!"
Meng Wu nodded, waved his command pennant, and ordered the army forward.
The Qin army surged ahead like a black flood, bearing down on the city like dark clouds pressing against its walls.
The defenders of Ye County immediately fell into disarray.
"The Qin army is here!"
"Quick, light the warning beacons!"
"Raise the bridge!"
"Shut the gates! Hurry!"
On the walls, the defenders scrambled into action.
Smoke billowed from the beacon towers, and the defenders raised the bridge over the moat.
In no time, Ye County had become an airtight iron tortoise.
Even Zhao Cheng, valiant as he was, couldn't attack the city without flying. He could only try to swim across the raging river.
All the while, the enemy defenders would rain arrows and stones down on him.
The huge Crossbow Mechanisms mounted at the four corners of the walls would also keep firing.
Ordinary soldiers wore armor; if they fell into the river, they would sink at once and drown within moments.
Seeing this, Meng Wu remained unhurried. He made a grand show of deploying his troops, setting out siege equipment as countless soldiers fixed their gaze on Ye City.
The sheer pressure was enough to leave countless Han soldiers with dry mouths and trembling legs.
The next moment, soldiers raised the flag of the Mountain Pass defenders and displayed the half-dead Han Ming at the front of the formation.
"That's General Han Ming! They actually captured him alive?"
"If they captured even the general, then the defeat at the Mountain Pass must have been disastrous. The ten thousand elite defenders may have been wiped out."
"How many troops do they have? We can't even see the end of them!"
"What are we going to do?"
Just as the army's morale began to waver, Han commander Han Jiang strode onto the city wall and roared, "Have you all let the dogs eat your courage!?"
"The Qin army just arrived, and you're already weak in the knees?"
"Open your dog eyes and look down there! Look at our moat, look at our walls! Even if the Qin army had wings, they couldn't fly over!"
"Curse them! Curse the Qin army with all you've got!"
"Whoever curses them best gets an extra bowl of rice tonight!"
Many of the Han soldiers glanced down at the moat. Its broad, rushing waters gave them a great deal of confidence.
So when the first man began to curse, the Han defenders joined in. More than ten thousand voices rang out, hoarse and furious, and their momentum grew stronger by the moment.
"Your mother's a whore!"
"You worthless swine! You dare attack Ye County? We'll slaughter your whole family!"
"Come over here if you've got the guts!"
"..."
After cursing for a while, the Han army realized the Qin army didn't seem so impressive after all.
They couldn't do a thing, even after being cursed at.
Some of the younger Qin soldiers even turned red and trembled from the abuse.
The Han army's morale gradually recovered. They grew more relaxed, then began laughing recklessly.
They became more and more brazen, hurling every kind of filthy insult at the enemy.
But their confidence didn't last long.
At a wave of Meng Wu's command pennant, large groups of Qin soldiers left their positions and headed upstream, right under the defenders' noses, to start building a dam.
The Han army's curses immediately dwindled, and they panicked again.
"General, what do we do? They're going to dam the river. If we let them cut off the flow, the moat will dry up before long!"
The Han soldiers watched in mounting anxiety, and Han Jiang furrowed his brow.
The enemy was moving quickly and had picked the right spot. They had clearly surveyed the narrow stretch upstream before arriving. They were far faster than he'd expected.
And nearly ten thousand soldiers had gone to block the river.
At this rate, the moat's water level would plunge within days, making even drawing water difficult.
But they didn't dare leave the city to stop the enemy from damming the river. They could only watch helplessly as the Qin soldiers went to build it.
Han Jiang felt the heat rising in his chest.
By that afternoon, the Qin army had settled on a narrow stretch of river and begun building the dam.
By midnight the next day, the dam was complete, and the moat outside Ye County began to steadily recede.
By noon on the fourth day, the moat had fallen by more than half. In some places, the riverbed had begun to emerge.
Blisters were visibly breaking out at the corners of Han Jiang's mouth, while the Han soldiers on the walls were all frantic with worry.
Even drawing water had become difficult. They had no choice but to dig more wells around the city to ensure a water supply.
But as the moat continued to recede, the wells yielded less and less water. The wells had to be dug deeper, and getting water became increasingly difficult.
Han Jiang knew they couldn't go on like this, or the defenders would die of thirst sooner or later.
So that night, he sent three thousand soldiers out through the West Gate under cover of darkness, hoping to sneak over and destroy the dam the Qin army had built.
But the moment the three thousand soldiers had gone any distance from the city, Zhao Cheng led three thousand Light Cavalry out to attack them from both sides.
Ying Nian and He Ping swept in from the left and right.
The Han army immediately fell into chaos and tried to break through and retreat.
But Zhao Cheng had already led a thousand Light Cavalry on a flying charge to cut off the enemy's rear. While the three thousand soldiers were in disarray, he plunged straight into their ranks!
He galloped forward, sharp as a blade, and plunged right into their formation.
His sword swept across, cutting down a swath with every stroke!
Endless Qi surged within him, erupting in peerless power.
The Han soldiers were like paper before him. He sliced them clean in two with ease.
Their bisected bodies piled beneath his horse's hooves as he charged onward, trampling out a path of blood!
After a single charge, the Han soldiers were already scared witless. The moment they caught sight of Zhao Cheng from afar, they scrambled to either side. None dared face him head-on!
With their morale shattered, Zhao Cheng cut straight through their formation.
The thousand Light Cavalry behind him slaughtered their way through the enemy ranks with exhilarating ease, utterly unstoppable!
It was a complete, one-sided slaughter.
Covered in blood, Zhao Cheng turned his horse and charged back into the enemy ranks.
In mere moments, he had cut through the formation again.
After charging through seven times, he had slaughtered all three thousand enemy soldiers.
"Tch, there were so few of them. They weren't nearly enough to kill."
Zhao Cheng sheathed his sword, still hungry for more. Behind him lay a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
He checked the system. His lifespan had now increased to two thousand five hundred years.
That battle had earned him only seven hundred years. It was pitifully little.
He began looking forward to sneaking into the city.
Zhao Cheng rode back to the front of the formation and ordered, "Sever their heads and hang all the corpses outside the East Gate! Let the enemy see what happens when they leave the city!"
The three thousand Light Cavalry immediately obeyed and went to carry out his orders.
They looked at Zhao Cheng with nothing but admiration.
How many years had it been since they'd fought such a satisfying battle?
With Zhao Cheng leading the charge, the enemy ranks were as flimsy as paper.
All they had to do was follow behind him, and it became a one-sided slaughter. They had wiped out all three thousand enemy soldiers without lifting a finger, and without suffering a single loss.
After such a great victory, every one of the three thousand Light Cavalry had earned plenty of merit. They were grinning from ear to ear, wishing the defenders would send another ten thousand men out for them to kill.
Unfortunately, the enemy wasn't stupid. No one came out again.
Early the next morning, the corpses of three thousand Han soldiers were hanging in front of the East Gate.
The Han soldiers who saw them went pale, their spirits sinking to rock bottom.
Han Jiang had blisters all over his mouth and was frantic with worry.
The moat had already exposed its riverbed. There was no water outside the city, and it was growing harder and harder to draw water from the wells inside, too.
The wells were being dug deeper and deeper, yet the defenders' lips were cracking, and they groaned in thirst.
The civilians were even more alarmed. In their terror, they begged to be allowed up the mountain to search for water and supplies.
With no other choice, Han Jiang reopened the Wolf Tooth Gorge in the north, which had only recently been sealed off, and stopped forbidding civilians from going into the mountains.
At the same time, many soldiers disguised themselves as woodcutters and went into the mountains to gather supplies and draw water from the streams.
By then, the noose had tightened.
"The time has come. Zhao Cheng, take an elite scouting unit and slip into the mountains north of Ye County. Look for a chance to enter the city."
"You've never worked as a spy, but Feng Quan and Feng Ruo are both experts at it. Take them along. If there's any intelligence you need to send out, they can get it through for you."
"Leave some scouts behind on North Mountain to support you. If things go wrong, withdraw at once through North Mountain."
"This subordinate obeys!"
Zhao Cheng was delighted. He hurried back to camp, picked Feng Quan and Feng Ruo, then, with their help, selected an elite scouting unit.
Death Spies were better few than many. The more there were, the easier it was for the enemy to notice something was amiss.
Even this unit wouldn't all be entering the city. Most of them would remain outside to provide support and relay intelligence.
Inside his tent, Zhao Cheng took off his armor and began changing his appearance.
He put on a shabby coarse-cloth shirt and smeared himself with charcoal and ash from plants, making himself filthy and disheveled. He hid his valiant features and looked far more wretched and unkempt.
He picked up a hunting knife, completing the same outfit he had worn when he went hunting in the mountains before.
Even Feng Quan could hardly recognize him at a glance. He looked like nothing but a mountain hunter, though a far sturdier one than most.
"Sir, with that disguise, even I can barely recognize you, let alone the Han army."
Zhao Cheng smiled. "I was a hunter to begin with."
"When we get to Kunyang Mountain, we'll hunt a few hares and wolves. That'll give us a reason to enter the city, and we can get some meat to boot."
Feng Quan grinned. "Couldn't be better."
Feng Quan and Feng Ruo disguised themselves as woodcutters and followed Zhao Cheng as they slipped into Kunyang Mountain.
Once they entered the forest, they raced ahead like lightning.
Before long, Zhao Cheng had led the group into the deep mountains north of Ye County.
They had barely entered the northern mountains of Ye County when arrows suddenly rained through the forest, shooting straight at Zhao Cheng's group.
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