Datang: Just been appointed as the crown prince, the counterattack system is here

Chapter 417 Turning Point! Li Shimin's Bleeding Turn of Events! [Seeking Monthly Tickets]

The night, like cotton wool soaked in ink, pressed heavily on the Tang army camp and the city walls of Anshi.

On the construction site of the earthen hill reconstruction, the 'thump-thump' sound of wooden pestles striking the soil was like a blunt instrument striking everyone's heart, echoing from dusk till dawn.

Li Daozong's eyes were bloodshot, and his battle robe was stained with frost and salt from sweat. He lashed his whip more frequently, but he couldn't shake the numbness in the soldiers' eyes.

One laborer collapsed from exhaustion in a mound of uncompacted earth, only to be trampled over by the people behind him, leaving no time to utter a groan.

On the city wall of Anshi, Yang Wanchun wrapped his fox fur tightly around himself.

The night wind in Liaodong still carried a chill, but he stared at the wildly growing earthen hill opposite him, his eyes devoid of any warmth.

"Throw it ten times a day!"

He said to his adjutant, "No need for permission, just let them know that we haven't slept."

The whistling sound of the stones piercing the night sky became the nocturne of the Tang army.

Sometimes they crash onto construction sites, eliciting screams of agony.

Sometimes it lands in an empty space, only stirring up some dust, but it's more like a warning bell hanging overhead.

Li Daozong had wooden shields erected around the construction site, but they couldn't stop the soldiers from talking in their sleep in fear at night.

In Li Shimin's imperial tent, candles burned all night long.

On his desk lay a map of Goguryeo, and he repeatedly rubbed the location of Ansi City with his fingers until his fingertips turned red.

When Changsun Wuji entered, he saw him facing the sand table, moving the wooden figurines representing the Tang army one by one towards the earthen mound, as if this could change the course of the battle.

"His Majesty!"

Changsun Wuji's voice was hoarse: "The grain official reports that the laborers' rations are less than ten days' worth. If we levy more, there is fear that unrest will break out in the rear."

Li Shimin suddenly looked up, his eyes bloodshot like spider webs: "Send someone to urge them! I don't care what methods they use, the grain must keep up!"

"But the cities of Liaodong have just suffered from war, and the people..."

"People?"

Li Shimin let out a sinister laugh, filled with madness.

He tapped his knuckles on the table and said with great certainty, "Only after I conquer Anshi and pacify Goguryeo will they be qualified to be my subjects!"

This statement fully reveals Li Shimin's current state.

Changsun Wuji knew that he was already under a lot of pressure, otherwise he would never have said such a thing.

Just as Changsun Wuji was about to speak but hesitated, a commotion suddenly arose outside the tent.

Before long, Li Xiaogong lifted the curtain and entered, his face even darker than the night outside the tent: "Your Majesty, the laborers in the Northwest Camp have mutinied."

Li Shimin suddenly stood up, his sword clattering as it was drawn from its sheath: "They've rebelled!"

"They didn't rebel, they ran away."

Li Xiaogong corrected in a low voice: "More than 300 people escaped. They were all laborers from Shandong. Last night, they took advantage of the changing of the guard at the sentry post, killed the guards, and headed towards Liaodong City."

Upon hearing this, the tent fell into an instant silence, as if autumn leaves had been swept away by the wind.

Looking at Li Shimin's tense profile, Changsun Wuji suddenly recalled the words Li Chengqian had said to him before the expedition, and couldn't help but sigh sadly.

Perhaps the Crown Prince already knew that His Majesty's expedition to Liaodong would not succeed.

"Chase!"

Li Shimin's voice was like ice shards, brooking no argument: "Xiaogong, you immediately take five hundred cavalry and bring them back to me! Execute them and display their heads to the public!"

"His Majesty!"

Changsun Wuji hurriedly dissuaded him: "No! Pursuing them now will only cause more panic. It would be better to..."

"Not as good as what?"

Li Shimin turned around, his gaze sharp as a sword, pointing directly at Changsun Wuji: "Why not let them all run away? Let Yang Wanchun laugh at me? Let that rebellious son laugh at me for not being able to control even a few laborers?"

His chest heaved violently, and he suddenly coughed violently, so hard that he bent over and the sword in his hand clattered to the ground.

Changsun Wuji rushed forward to support him, only to find blood seeping between his fingers.

"His Majesty!"

"It doesn't matter."

Li Shimin pushed him away, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, but his eyes were frighteningly bright: "Issue my order: starting tomorrow, the rations of laborers will be halved, and the rations of soldiers will be used as provisions for laborers. Tell them that after the city is captured, they will receive 30% of the wealth of Anshi City."

This is a desperate measure to quench thirst.

Changsun Wuji opened his mouth, but ultimately said nothing more.

He knew that at this moment, Li Shimin was no longer listening to words like grain, manpower, and future troubles; all that remained in his mind was the earthen hill that had to be built, and the city of Anshi behind it.

Seven days later, the earthen mound was already higher than the first time.

Li Daozong knelt before Li Shimin, his forehead pressed against the cold ground: "Your Majesty, in three more days, it will be completed! This time, the foundation has been dug five zhang deep, the wooden frame is made from the keel of a warship, and the rammed earth is made from a mixture of glutinous rice juice and lime. Even if we use fire to attack it, it will be impossible for it to collapse!"

Upon hearing this, Li Shimin did not speak, but instead walked out of the tent and looked up.

This earthen hill, built with countless drops of sweat and blood, stands like a giant beast in front of Anshi City.

On the hilltop, soldiers were installing the last few cannons, their dark muzzles pointing straight at the city walls of Anshi.

“Very well.” He said slowly, “Three days from now, I will be here to watch Yang Wanchun surrender the city.”

However, on the morning of the third day, instead of the good news of the completion of the earthen mound, what arrived was strange activity in Anshi City.

Yang Wanchun actually opened the city gate.

It's not surrendering, it's going to war.

Ten thousand Goguryeo soldiers lined up outside the city, with Yang Wanchun's general's flag fluttering in front of them.

Even more strangely, they did not carry siege equipment, but instead pushed dozens of carts filled with hay.

Li Shimin stood on the earthen hill, watching this scene through a telescope, his brows furrowed.

Li Daozong, standing to the side, said, "Your Majesty, this is a trap to lure the enemy! They must be afraid of our army's earthen mound and want to lure us out to fight so they can take the opportunity to harass us!"

Li Shimin remained silent.

Looking at the hay carts, he suddenly recalled the sight of burning gunpowder barrels rolling down the hillside during the first landslide.

"Issue my decree!"

He lowered his binoculars and said in an unusually calm voice, "All cannons, aim three hundred paces inside the city gate. Catapults, load them with oil canisters."

Li Daozong was taken aback: "Your Majesty, they are outside the city."

"Do it!"

Military orders are like mountains.

The dark cannon muzzle slowly turned, no longer pointing at the city wall, but towards the depths of the city gate.

Half an hour later, Yang Wanchun's army moved.

They pushed the hay carts slowly toward the Tang army camp, but stopped a hundred feet away from the earthen mound and set the hay carts on fire.

Thick smoke billowed up, carried by the wind, and rushed straight towards the Tang army's position.

"It's a smokescreen!"

Li Xiaogong shouted, "They're trying to take advantage of the chaos to attack the camp!"

However, before the thick smoke reached the earthen hill, the city gate of Anshi suddenly slammed shut with a bang.

Immediately afterwards, a deafening explosion rang out from inside the city gate.

Li Shimin's pupils suddenly contracted.

He finally understood Yang Wanchun's plan.

They weren't harassing or attacking with fire; they were blasting up the earthen mound.

Yang Wanchun had no intention of guarding the city gate. Taking advantage of the Tang army's focus on rebuilding the earthen mound and concentrating on the front, he dug a tunnel inside the city gate and filled it with gunpowder.

Those were the leftover gunpowder that the Tang army hadn't had time to transport when the earthen hill collapsed last time, which they secretly smuggled back.

"Boom——!"

Another loud bang, and the east gate of Anshi City collapsed, not outwards, but inwards, revealing the moat that had been dug beforehand.

Countless Goguryeo soldiers leaped out of the trenches, not to charge the Tang army, but to charge towards their own city.

"Are they demolishing the city?" Li Daozong exclaimed.

That's right, Yang Wanchun is demolishing the city.

He abandoned the east gate, using the collapsed city walls and moats as a barrier to completely block the Tang army's earthen mounds and cannons from a useless direction.

Meanwhile, his main force was using the smoke and dust to move toward the flank of the Tang army.

Li Shimin stood on the earthen hill, looking at the hill he had painstakingly built, now a joke, with its cannons pointed at a pile of ruins.

He suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, his vision went black, and he almost collapsed to the ground.

"His Majesty!"

"His Majesty!"

Amidst the chaotic shouts, Changsun Wuji picked up Li Shimin, whose eyes were tightly closed and bloody foam kept oozing from the corner of his mouth.

In the distance, the faint sound of Goguryeo war drums could be heard, like a death knell tolling for this frenzied battle.

The unfinished earthen hill stood silently in the morning breeze, like a tomb destined to bury the ambitions of countless people.

Before the thick smoke had even cleared, what Yang Wanchun considered a stroke of genius was unfolding on the ruins of Anshi's east gate.

He stood on the makeshift watchtower, watching the soldiers wielding hoes and crowbars, filling the trench with the collapsed city wall bricks.

He wanted to use this man-made barrier to completely isolate the Tang army's earthen mound from the threat. "Quick! Push that section of wall down again!"

Yang Wanchun shouted at the top of his lungs, his face glowing with a determined gleam.

The soldiers on the city wall shouted as they used thick hemp ropes to pull a section of half-collapsed blue brick wall outwards. A dozen men worked together to pull it out.

Just then, the towering new earthen hill of the Tang army opposite them suddenly emitted a teeth-grinding 'crack' sound.

At first, no one paid attention.

Because these days, the earthen hill has been making a few noises at night, Li Daozong said it was the natural subsidence of the rammed earth.

But this time the sound was particularly piercing, like countless giant trees snapping at the same time.

"Something's wrong!"

Suddenly, the deputy general beside Yang Wanchun pointed to the earthen mound, his voice trembling: "My lord, look!"

Yang Wanchun turned his head sharply, his pupils instantly shrinking to pinpoints.

On the western side of the earthen hill, which was taller than the city wall, a huge crack appeared. Soil was constantly rolling down from the crack, and the whole hill looked like a punctured clay figure, tilting towards Anshi City at a visible speed!

"how come."

Yang Wanchun's mind went blank. He had only blown up the city gate, so how could it have disturbed the earthen hill?
The answer was quickly revealed.

As the slope of the hill increased, the drainage ditch that the soldiers had temporarily raised at the foot of the hill was completely crushed. The water that had accumulated at the foot of the hill, mixed with the freshly turned soil, instantly became a lubricant for the mudslide.

Even more critically, the hundreds of pine tree piles that Li Daozong had buried to reinforce the mountainside suddenly snapped like matches being twisted by an invisible hand, making their final, sharp sound.

"Boom——!"

An even more terrifying roar than the previous collapse shook the heavens and the earth.

Unlike last time, the entire hill did not split open. Instead, it collapsed like an out-of-control beast, carrying millions of tons of soil, rocks, broken wooden frames, and even several cannons that had not yet been secured, towards the east gate of Anshi City.

The first thing to be affected was the ruins that Yang Wanchun had just demolished.

The mudslide, carrying boulders, instantly filled the bricks and stones in the trench like swatting flies, and then crashed into the inner city wall of the East Gate, which had not yet completely collapsed.

“Crack—crash!”

The city walls, already weakened by the gunpowder, could hardly withstand such a crushing impact.

The rammed earth wall of the inner city, more than ten feet thick, was like a child's toppled block, breaking and arching from the bottom up, and finally collapsing outwards, raising more dust than when a mountain collapsed.

Yang Wanchun, who was on the arrow tower, was thrown off the tower by the blast wave and almost tumbled down.

He clung tightly to the railing, watching helplessly as his own city wall crumbled like paper, the smoke and dust mingling with the screams of his soldiers.

The soldiers who were demolishing the city walls just now were all buried underneath, along with their hoes.

No, that's impossible.

Yang Wanchun's voice trembled like fallen leaves in the autumn wind. How did his carefully planned demolition of the city to repel the enemy turn into a mountain attack on the city?
What's even more absurd is yet to come.

In the aftermath of the landslide, a Tang army cannon, pushed along by the mudslide, inexplicably crashed into a boulder and fired with a loud 'boom' as the cannon muzzle faced upwards.

The iron bullet didn't fly towards the Tang army; instead, it grazed the arrow tower and hit the watchtower on the city wall, shattering the wooden structure into pieces. Wood chips and tiles rained down on Yang Wanchun.

On the Tang army camp side, Li Shimin, who had just woken up from unconsciousness, was startled by the loud noise and sat up, struggling to crawl outside the tent.

When he saw the devastation in Anshi City, he was first stunned, then burst out laughing. As he laughed, he coughed up blood, but couldn't stop slapping his thigh: "Yang Wanchun! Hahaha! This old bastard has shot himself in the foot!"

Li Daozong, who was being held aside, was also dumbfounded. After a long while, he murmured, "Your Majesty, your earthen mound has actually been breached in this way?"

Changsun Wuji, both amused and exasperated, helped Li Shimin up, saying, "Your Majesty, this is truly the will of Heaven."

"Daozong! Xiaogong! Go quickly!"

Without hesitation, Li Shimin immediately issued orders to Li Xiaogong and Li Daozong.

Amidst the billowing smoke and dust, the collapsed earthen mounds and broken city walls blended together, creating an absurd landscape on the Liaodong land.

No one expected that this stalemate that lasted for months would end with such a ridiculous and unexpected turn of events, bringing about the most dramatic turning point.

However, that wasn't the only turning point.

"A breach! The city wall has collapsed!!"

Beside the ruins of Tushan, a sharp-eyed Tang army sergeant pointed in the direction of Anshi City, his voice distorted with ecstasy.

The shout was like a thunderclap, instantly waking the hundreds of Tang soldiers who were standing in a daze guarding the earthen mound camp.

They were only a few hundred steps away from the breach.

Ecstasy instantly ignited them.

"Heaven is on our side! Charge in! Take Anshi City!"

The lieutenant's voice trembled with excitement as he drew his sword, ready to order a charge.

"and many more!"

Another veteran hurriedly grabbed him, looked around, and exclaimed, his face ashen: "Where is General Fu?! Where is General Fu Fu'ai?! To launch an attack without the command flag is a capital offense!"

Only then did everyone realize that their superior, Fu Fu'ai, the brave captain in charge of guarding the Tushan camp, was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is the general?!"

I just saw him near the camp.

"Quickly! Split up and find General Fu!"

"It's too late! The opportunity is fleeting!"

The soldiers were in complete chaos, like ants on a hot plate.

Some tried to charge, but were held back by their companions.

Some people looked around searching for their commander, while others were so anxious they were stamping their feet.

The precious opportunity to charge was quickly lost amidst the chaos and hesitation caused by the lack of unified command.

"Damn it! Never mind! Send a few men on the fastest horses to the central army camp to report to His Majesty and the Grand General! Tell them the city walls have collapsed, and the earthen mound has collapsed too. Please send a large army to attack immediately!"

The lieutenant finally roared out the order, and several quick-witted soldiers immediately mounted their horses and spurred them on towards the central army.

On the city wall, Yang Wanchun was suddenly jolted awake from his initial despair.

He saw the chaos and hesitation of the Tang army beside the ruins of the earthen mound.

The instinct for survival and the ruthlessness of a veteran warrior instantly overwhelmed everything.

"Heaven has not forsaken Anshi!"

Yang Wanchun, his eyes bloodshot, drew his sword and roared hoarsely:

"Warriors! Do you hear me?! The Tang dogs are leaderless! The earthen mound is right before us! The breach is right beneath our feet! Those who don't want their families destroyed, follow me and fight our way out! Reclaim the earthen mound! Seal the breach! Kill—!"

"kill--!"

In this desperate situation, the remaining elite troops and fearless young men in the city were instantly ignited.

A suicide squad of several hundred men, armed with rudimentary knives, guns, and even farm tools, led by Yang Wanchun's trusted general, burst out of the menacing breach in the city wall like a flood breaking through a dam.

Their goal was exceptionally clear.

It is the earthen mound ruins closest to the breach and currently the most vulnerable to attack.

"The Goguryeo people! The Goguryeo people have broken out!"

The Tang soldiers guarding the earthen mound looked in horror at the suicide squad that charged straight at them like mad tigers.

"Hold on! Hold on!"

The lieutenant shouted at the top of his lungs, trying to organize a resistance.

However, with their commander absent and the soldiers already bewildered, the Tang army's resistance crumbled instantly when faced with a similarly large number of Goguryeo soldiers charging with a death wish.

"General Fu has escaped! We can't stop him!"

"Run!"

Fear spread like a plague.

The guards dropped their weapons and fled back towards the camp.

The army was defeated like a mountain.

When Fu Fu'ai finally arrived from a corner behind the camp, cursing and pulling up his belt, all he saw was the Goguryeo flag fluttering on the ruins of the earthen mound, and the gap being frantically blocked by wood, stones, and debris.

His men had long since vanished without a trace.

"Drive! Drive!"

Li Xiaogong and Li Daozong took the lead, leading an elite cavalry force, and arrived at the scene with lightning speed.

They received a rambling report from the messenger soldier.

However, it was too late.

The smoke and dust have not yet completely settled.

On the ruins of the earthen hill, Goguryeo soldiers were quickly building a makeshift defensive line, relying on the collapsed earth and rocks and captured Tang army equipment, with their bows and arrows aimed below.

The huge breach in the city wall still exists, but it has been mostly blocked by debris. Fearless Goguryeo soldiers, armed with spears, are holding the breach tightly, forming a flesh and blood barrier.

Subsequent Goguryeo reinforcements were pouring out of the city to strengthen the defenses.

Li Xiaogong reined in his warhorse, gazing at the gap that seemed so close yet so far away, and at the enemy flag fluttering on the earthen hill, he trembled with rage.

He suddenly drew his sword from his waist, pointed it at Fu Fu'ai who had just run over in a disheveled state, and roared across the battlefield:
"Fu Fu'ai! You idiot who has ruined the country! You've missed a crucial opportunity in the war; you deserve to die!"

"Men! Seize him!"

(End of this chapter)