At a time like this, sending ordinary people with little to no training up onto the walls was simply sending them to their deaths—or rather, using their lives to wear down the enemy's ammunition.
After all, from late June to early August, more than a full month had already passed. Given such a long span of time, if the city walls had not been built so tall and sturdy, an ordinary city would have long since been blasted open by force.
And Heaven's End Pass was different from Heaven-Answering City. Heaven's End Pass had a moat, and with people constantly standing guard above, there was no chance for anyone to pile explosives beneath the walls and blow them down directly.
Yet even so, the bunkers at the very top of the walls had long been flattened by artillery over the past month or so. There was nowhere left to hide.
Soldiers who had undergone sufficient training still knew what to do to stay safer in such circumstances, but the able-bodied men being used as cannon fodder did not.
Sun Yuantai did this only to preserve his own strength to the greatest extent possible while wearing down the enemy's forces—even if doing so would leave him with eternal infamy.
Zhao Cheng had only amassed his reserves for three years. No matter the kind of resource, none could be limitless.
If the war dragged on too long, Zhao Cheng might not necessarily refrain from withdrawing his troops.
Though Sun Yuantai himself knew the chances of that happening were slim, he still clung to that sliver of hope.
But the reality was that Southern Wasteland's potential for war was far more terrifying than Sun Yuantai had imagined.
Zhao Cheng's three years of accumulation had not merely been a simple stockpiling of resources. More