Nearly a month had passed since Zhao Cheng took Wu City.
A month ago, amid heavenly thunder and earthly fire, Wu City had fallen. Of the five thousand elite troops Wu Qi had left in the city, some died and some fled. Yet not many had actually died—only a few hundred. More had been burned. Later, Zhao Cheng threw open the city gates deliberately, allowing these remnant soldiers to leave the city in order to ensure Wu City's stability.
In this age, burns were certainly grave injuries, but in the period immediately after being wounded, they did not greatly diminish one's fighting strength. Had those wounded soldiers continued to be trapped within the city, with no way out, they would instead have fought the Heaven-Answering Army to the death.
With the Heaven-Answering Army's current strength, it was not as if they could not slaughter those men. But the price would be too great. It was not impossible—it simply was not worth it.
That was why military campaigns often spoke of surrounding on three sides while leaving one side open: deliberately leaving the enemy a thread of life.
With the city gates thrown wide open, those defeated troops naturally had no desire to fight to the death.
What was more, the earlier heavenly thunder and earthly fire had already utterly shattered the morale of Wu Qi's army.
Under those circumstances, the only ones who had truly fought a head-on battle against the Heaven-Answering Army were the household soldiers at Wu Qi's residence.
These were the forces Wu Qi had left behind to protect his family—some two hundred armored soldiers.
Two hundred against five thousand. The final outcome was easy enough to imagine.
In taking Wu City, the entire Heaven-Answering Army had lost only a dozen or so men, with a little