Luo Xiao sat astride the Black Qilin and slowly lowered the great bow in his hands. Several figures lay pinned dead to the ground, their blood flowing in rivulets.
His gaze fell upon their corpses.
What did so-called glory and riches, so-called power and high office, amount to in the face of life and death?
Nothing but a skeleton destined to rot!
He turned his gaze from Gong County, across the mountains and rivers, toward Luoyang. The Han Dynasty's emperor and Dukes and Ministers were there.
Even if your power overshadowed all beneath heaven, could you be any exception?
This defeat had been truly devastating. In the Battle of Handan, once said to have destroyed Qin in a single battle, the tide had already turned irreversibly after the fighting, but apart from Liu Bang, the Coalition of the Lords had still been more than a thousand li from the Qin capital of Xianyang.
But how far was Gong County from Luoyang?
One hundred li!
At that distance, a forced march could almost bring them there between dawn and dusk.
That was why Liu Bei and the others had been unwilling to return to Luoyang. They might enter the city one moment, only for Zhang Jue's Taiping Army to surround it the next.
Luoyang was certainly not an empty city. The emperor could not possibly have let Huangfu Song take every soldier away.
Enough troops remained in the city to defend Luoyang. The Sage King had designed it as a city that would never fall, and it had undergone repeated repairs since. Even when Bai Qi had personally led an army against it, he had needed a very, very long time to breach its walls.
In principle, the Taiping Army could not possibly take it in a short time, and once