More and more people were affected, and the defenders on the walls were brimming with morale!
The lord of Snow City was an old man with snow-white hair and beard, yet he was actually not even sixty. His name was Ximen Wuqing. His name meant "heartless," but the man had a heart. Snow City had had eight lords since its founding, and if its people were asked to rank them, Lord Ximen's benevolence would definitely place him in the top three.
He had truly shown what it meant to love the people like his own children. In twenty years in office, he had never taken so much as a needle or thread from them. Whenever he heard of a family unable to put food on the table, he even paid out of his own pocket to help them. He showed what honest governance meant. During his years ruling Snow City, never mind officials or nobles bullying the common people-there was not even petty theft on the streets. As a result, the people loved him deeply and respected him from the bottom of their hearts.
Precisely because of this, a hundred answered his call, and the entire populace took up arms. Men or women, young or old, anyone who could still stand on the walls would never hide in the city to cling to life.
There were those who clung to life and feared death, but not many, because everyone understood that once Snow City fell, no egg could remain intact beneath an overturned nest.
Outside the city, 100,000 Demon Soldiers pressed against the border. On the walls, 100,000 citizens of Snow City stood ready, while the actual Snow City Army numbered fewer than ten thousand. In peacetime, these ten thousand merely maintained order in the city. When war came, they