Eager to rescue their comrade, Huang Taiji and Timur used their lightness skills and leaped onto the gate tower like two great rocs.
Corpses lay strewn across the tower.
-Though they wore Ming armor, their blood had congealed. They had not died recently.
Huang Taiji and Timur were too intent on the rescue to look closely. Had they done so, they would have discovered that these bloodstained "patrolling soldiers" were all Royal Tent Guards who had been dead for some time!
The two headed straight for Toghto.
Timur unfastened the bone whip at his waist and lashed it toward Toghto, intending to pull him back to his side.
Brigade Commander Chen Shi sneered and punched the brickwork beside him.
A blue brick sank inward, activating a mechanism.
A pitch-black gap suddenly opened beneath Toghto. He fell through it into the gateway below, landing with a dull thud and a muffled groan.
Timur's bone whip caught nothing.
"You killed my garrison troops and tried to open the gates for the enemy. You won't leave here alive either!" Chen Shi threw back his head and roared, "Enemy attack!!!"
His roar thundered through the night sky.
Though the patrolling soldiers atop Dushi City were dead, large numbers of troops still defended the walls.
At his shout, torches began rising along the walls, and horns sounded one after another!
Soldiers defending the eastern and western sections began moving toward the center to reinforce it, while the troops stationed inside the city began assembling in force.
Huang Taiji's suspicions faded at the sight.
Mobilizing the entire city for defense hardly looked like an attempt to "shut the gates and catch the thieves."
If they failed to seize this chance to open the gates and bring their army inside, all Toghto's planning would go to waste