The black clouds pressed down on the city, threatening to crush it...
With the Western Xia Army arriving and taking up its positions, Weizhou was gripped by an unprecedented level of tension.
Soldiers and civilians alike—the very air seemed to tremble.
Sensing the atmosphere within Weizhou, Li Su's eyelids twitched.
Damn it, surely not? Surely not?
The battle hadn't even started, and they were already this tense? If it really came to a fight, would these people have any strength left?
To be honest, Weizhou currently had around fifteen thousand soldiers and eighty thousand residents.
And Weizhou was no small city. As a shield for Jingzhao Prefecture, it had been built on a grand scale. The city walls alone stood over two zhang high, and with the moat, they came close to three zhang.
Don't think three zhang was low. In the Song era, one zhang was a little over three meters, so three zhang came to nine meters.
Nine meters was about as high as a three-story building.
In Western Xia, where the average person stood under 1.7 meters tall, seven people would have to climb onto one another's shoulders just to reach the stone wall.
In this kind of siege, even with the Song Dynasty army's poor combat strength, they could still inflict three casualties for every one they suffered.
For Western Xia to break through, it would need at least a hundred thousand troops, and even then, it would have only the faintest chance. It would take a long time, perhaps until the city ran out of food.
In other words, under normal circumstances, Western Xia had no chance of taking Weizhou.
Yet looking at the atmosphere within the city now, Li Su felt his scalp prickle and his heart pound.
Still, at least there was that!
In the eyes of the people of the Song Dynasty, the Western Xia Army was exceedingly brutal. After all, Western Xia was no great power and had only so many people; when it came to war, it relied on sheer savagery.
As the saying went, savagery was both its strength and its downfall.
The people of the Song Dynasty would never surrender—not because they couldn't, but because they didn't dare.
Once the Western Xia soldiers won, they wouldn't accept surrender. They would only massacre the city.
So even though the soldiers and civilians were terrified, they were united in their resolve: hold the line, no matter what.
*******
At that moment, in the Western Xia camp.
The army was led by Meizang Shici, the son of Meizang Epang and the brother of the Western Xia ruler Li Yuanhao's favorite consort. He was a powerful minister with ties to the imperial family.
Meizang Shici furrowed his brows, his expression gloomy.
He hadn't intended to attack the city.
But the First Rank Hall had ordered him to launch an assault.
The First Rank Hall was a special department personally established by His Majesty, Li Yuanhao. It had few members, but each was exceptionally powerful, and they excelled at infiltration and assassination.
As it belonged solely to Li Yuanhao, Meizang Shici had no right to interfere with it.
The two sides had never meddled in each other's affairs, but unexpectedly, the First Rank Hall had suddenly arrived with an imperial decree from Li Yuanhao.
As an army commander, he knew very well how difficult Weizhou would be to take. With the troops he had brought, conquering it was absolutely impossible. He didn't have enough men, and there wasn't enough time.
He had originally brought his army to the city only to put on a show and make the Song Dynasty court in Kaifeng feel threatened.
Weizhou was only one city away from Jingzhao Prefecture, and Jingzhao Prefecture was only one fu away from Kaifeng.
Given the Song emperor's cowardly nature, it was regrettable that they hadn't reached Jingzhao Prefecture, but their strategy was already sufficient now that they had come this far.
The negotiations that followed would favor Western Xia.
So once he arrived at Weizhou, he had already begun thinking about withdrawing.
After briefly considering the Song Dynasty's current situation, Meizang Shici looked at the short, masked figure holding the imperial decree. The person stood about 1.23 meters tall.
"We can attack the city, but only for two days at most. If we can't take it in that time, I'll move the army elsewhere."
"It won't take that long. One assault will be enough. The First Rank Hall will join the soldiers in the attack, find an opening to break through the wall, and open the gates."
Meizang Shici's expression shifted. The First Rank Hall would also take part directly in the battle?
He hadn't seen them many times, but he knew the skill and strength of the people in the First Rank Hall. If they led the charge as a suicide squad, then perhaps they really did have some chance of taking Weizhou.
A hundred percent was out of the question.
The Song Dynasty also had experts like those in Western Xia's First Rank Hall. Though they weren't under the court's command, they appeared whenever war broke out. It seemed that this time, too, it was because those experts had passed along the news; otherwise, the Song Dynasty couldn't have reacted so quickly, and the previous battle would have been far easier.
In the end, they had killed nearly ten thousand Song soldiers, but their own losses were considerable: fewer than eight hundred dead, and over a thousand wounded.
They had been fortunate that the commander on the other side was stupid enough to choose to break out instead of holding his position after falling into the trap. Otherwise, the casualties wouldn't have been two thousand; the dead alone would have exceeded two thousand.
Meizang Shici nodded. "I'll have people prepare the siege equipment. We'll attack tomorrow during the Shen hour, striking the west and south gates simultaneously, with the west gate as our main target. At the same time, I'll station a force of five thousand at the north gate and attack at the start of the Xu hour. Have your people join in as well. At the second quarter of the Xu hour, I'll send the night-fighting unit to attack the east gate, while three thousand cavalry wait outside."
The short figure's eyes shifted. There was no denying that the man before him was no match for him in personal combat—weak to the point of insignificance—but he did have a certain knack for military strategy.
Attacking two gates would naturally weaken the defenses at the other two, though the enemy commander would be on guard against a sneak attack on either side.
An attack on the north gate at the start of the Xu hour would surely make the enemy think that was the real target. Once they committed themselves to defending it, their nerves would begin to slacken. A sudden assault on the east gate would catch them off guard.
The east gate lay behind the Western Xia army's formation. It was the side left open in the strategy of surrounding three sides and leaving one open, so ordinarily, no attack would come from there. Most of the city's civilians had gathered there, ready to retreat if the city fell.
"Agreed. I'll send people to coordinate with your forces!"
*******
Within Weizhou.
Wang Yan's brows were tightly furrowed. As time passed, his expression grew increasingly grave and perplexed.
A moment ago, a guard had reported that the Western Xia Army was felling trees. This had shocked him greatly.
A siege?
What was Western Xia thinking?
Did they actually believe they could break in?
Even if the Song Dynasty's military was weak, and in an open battle Western Xia could inflict the terrifying ratio of three casualties for every one it suffered—
In a siege or street fighting, against a city as large as Weizhou, that ratio would be reversed. In street fighting, the ratio would be at least one to two.
Even if they won, what then?
How many Western Xia soldiers would be left? They had only thirty thousand. They shouldn't be launching a siege at all.
And yet, they were.
Felling trees clearly meant they were preparing for a siege.
Wang Yan wasn't Ge Huaimin; he had considerable experience. If he focused on defending the city, Weizhou could not be breached within a month.
And clearly, they didn't need a month. The Song Dynasty army would arrive in no more than five days...
Were they planning to catch them off guard, or did they have a way to break through the city walls head-on?
Wang Yan narrowed his eyes slightly. He wasn't stupid, and he immediately considered several possibilities.
"Someone!"
"Here."
"Have someone invite Master Tianming over. I suspect the Western Xia First Rank Hall may be mixed in with the attackers this time."