Chapter 198: Assassination, Decapitation, Breaching the Pass, Repelling the Enemy
Shanhai Pass.
The city of Shanhai Pass measured roughly four kilometers in circumference and connected to the Great Wall stretching along the northern frontiers of the various dynasties across the Divine Land. The city itself served as the pass, with walls around fifty feet high and over twenty feet thick, four main gates, and various defensive structures.
From afar, the entire fortified city resembled a giant beast crouching on this northern frontier.
Now, the stench of blood filled the city, and dust and smoke rose everywhere. Corpses lay almost everywhere within its walls, a scene of utter desolation.
When the Qing Army invaded, Shanhai Pass had been the first place to suffer.
The civilians who had failed to flee in time had all been killed by the Qing Army. The women had become the soldiers' playthings; once they tired of them, they killed them with a stroke of a blade and threw them outside the city to feed the wolves.
Wails filled the land, and bones lay in heaps!
In the eyes of the Ming civilians, these Manchu Qing Tatars were beasts without a shred of humanity!
During the fifth night watch.
As the night deepened, ghostlike shadows silently emerged outside Shanhai Pass.
The next moment, grappling hooks flew onto the walls like arrows, catching on the stone along their edges. Then those ghosts began climbing the ropes toward the battlements.
Winter had already arrived, and the weather was cold. With the night so late, most of the Qing soldiers guarding the city were huddled around fires, leaning against one another and dozing, almost asleep.
By the time they noticed anything amiss, it was too late.
Shhk, shhk-
One Qing soldier after another had his throat slit, some still half