In this realistic war game, only I understand the course of the battle.

Then Qu Neng flipped back and dismounted. The thousand cavalrymen sat down on the spot.

"Qu Neng, has he rebelled?"

Li Jinglong's voice shrill for a moment. He whirled around to face the group of pale-faced advisors and generals behind him. "What did he just say to the Yan army? He sat down! He wants to defect! He actually dares to rebel?"

No one dared to speak. The staff exchanged glances, some of their lips moving, but no one uttered a word.

Li Jinglong threw the sword to the ground. The imperial sword bounced on the city bricks, and he gasped for breath, his hands trembling so much that he could not hold the hilt.

"Prepare the horses. Don't light torches. Go through the south gate." His voice was very low, as if he were talking to himself, but every word was trembling.

"General!" an aide exclaimed in surprise, "There are tens of thousands of garrison troops in the city. Although the twelve linked cities have fallen, but..."

"But what?" Li Jinglong turned his head, his eyes red as if he had just been crying.

"The Yan army is already at the city walls! Qu Neng has rebelled! Tie Xuan's reinforcements are still dawdling on the way! Are we waiting for Tie Xuan to come and collect my corpse? I'm not gambling with my life, let's go! Let's go now!"

At almost the same time, on the Xiajiaying observation tower, Qingshan was looking south with binoculars.

He saw Shen Du's thirty or forty men standing below the city—then Qu Neng's cavalry sat down.

"He won."

The man in the green robe spoke lightly, as if he were commenting on a game of chess that had already been played.

"He gambled on Li Jinglong from beginning to end. Not on Twelve Linked Cities, not on Dezhou City. He gambled on Li Jinglong's heart."

Song Yu stood behind him, looking at the map on the table. Most of the fourteen circles of the Twelve Linked Cities had been crossed out.

The five camps of Baojia Camp, Chenjia Camp, Banbian Camp, Zhong Camp, and Beidaying were captured. Although the remaining camps were still in the hands of the defending troops, they were no longer connected. The chain of defenses had broken.

"Qingshan, what will we do if Dezhou City falls?" Song Yu asked.

The man in the green robe remained silent for a moment, then rolled up the map and tucked it into his sleeve.

"The Twelve Linked Cities have fallen, and Dezhou City cannot be defended. Li Jinglong will definitely flee tonight."

The order was given: all members of the Aspiring Guild were to retreat to Jinan immediately. Sheng Yong and Tie Xuan were still in Jinan, and Ping An's reinforcements were on their way. The decisive battle would not be fought in Dezhou.

He took the bronze talisman off his waist and held it in his hand.

"Then draft a military report for me and present it to General Sheng Yong. The loss of Dezhou is the fault of Li Jinglong, who abandoned the city and fled first."

But the one who broke through my Twelve Linked Cities Pocket Formation was Li Jingzhong, the commander of the Poisoning Camp of the Left Guard of Yanshan.

This man's tactics are cunning, his strategies unpredictable, and his military tactics unconventional. In the Battle of Jinan, General Sheng Yong should consider him his primary target for defense.

As night fell completely, a small door quietly opened at the south gate of Dezhou City.

A troop of cavalry escorted an unmarked carriage out of the gate and sped south along the main road. No one carried torches, and the sound of the carriage wheels rolling over gravel was completely drowned out by the sound of the horses' hooves.

On the north gate tower, the banner embroidered with the character "Li" still hangs in its original place, but the flag has been torn into a ball by the night wind.

The defenders below the city, unaware that their commander had fled, remained standing behind the battlements, warily gazing into the darkness ahead.

At the end of their line of sight, the thirty or forty Yan soldiers still stood on the north bank of the moat.

Shen Du stood there watching the figures on the city wall grow thinner and thinner, and watching the torches behind the battlements dwindle one by one.

He gave no orders to charge or retreat; he simply stood there, like an iron spike driven into the frozen ground, letting the night wind carry away the stench of blood from his body layer by layer.

Zhao Laoliu sat down next to him and finally lit his pipe. The firelight briefly illuminated half of his face, which was blackened by gunpowder, before going out again.

"Master Li," Zhao Laoliu said, his voice muffled by a pipe in his mouth, "do you think Li Jinglong has run away?"

Shen Du did not answer. He looked up at the commander's flag on the north gate tower of Dezhou City.

The flag trembled in the night wind, then trembled again, and then suddenly stopped moving.

It wasn't that the wind had stopped; rather, the rope at the top of the flagpole had been untied.

The commander's flag slowly descended and disappeared into the darkness, never to be raised again.

"They ran away," Shen Du said.

He stuck his sword into the soil and sat down.

"Zhao Laoliu".

"Um?"

"Send someone back to tell General Zhu Neng that Dezhou City can be taken over."

When the commander's flag was lowered at the north gate of Dezhou City, Zhu Neng was standing on the ruins of Baojia Camp, looking south.

His robe was covered in blood and mud, turning it a dark gray color. One of the copper rings on the back of his sword had been cut off during the charge, leaving two still clanging.

The messenger rode in from the south, but before the horse had even come to a complete stop, he fell off, his voice trembling uncontrollably.

"General Zhu! The commander's flag has been lowered at the north gate of Dezhou City!"

Zhu Neng thrust the ghost-head knife into the ground, the blade sinking half a foot into the rammed earth.

He gazed south, his lips twitching as if he wanted to say something but swallowed it back. After a long while, he finally managed to squeeze out two words through clenched teeth.

"Good lad."

He turned around and roared at his deputy behind him: "Send the order: all troops forward! Dezhou City must be taken tonight!"

Send another man to find that Li-surname captain in the Broken City Camp. Report back to me immediately after finding him. Tell him I'm waiting for him in the central command.

Zhu Neng's command tent was set up at 11:45 AM.

Outside the tent, there were captured weapons and provisions everywhere. The more than one million shi of military grain in the North Factory granary were completely captured by the Yan army. The grain carts lined up from the granary gate all the way to the official road, and the long line of torches stretched for several miles in the night.

The remaining camps of the Twelve Linked Cities surrendered before dawn. The garrison soldiers threw down their weapons and walked out of the camp gates, their armor and helmets piled up like small mountains.

The Yan soldiers ran back and forth between the camps to count the prisoners. Occasionally, someone couldn't help but cheer, but they were quickly stopped by their respective officers.

The tent was brightly lit by torches.

Zhu Neng sat behind his desk, with a general map of Shandong's defenses that had just been seized from the government office in Dezhou spread out in front of him.

Sitting next to him was Zhang Yu, the deputy commander of the Yanshan Central Guard, and next to him was Huo Zhen, the cavalry commander of the Doyan Three Guards, a Mongolian man with a full beard, wearing a shiny sheepskin vest over his armor. He hadn't said a word since entering the tent, and was just using a dagger to whittle a horse bone.

"Texas City has been captured."

Zhu Neng pointed his finger at the location of Dezhou City on the map.

"But Jinan is still in the hands of the Southern Army. Sheng Yong and Tie Xuan have already set up defenses in Jinan, and reinforcements from Ping An are on their way. We cannot stay in Dezhou for too long; we must continue to push south before they can encircle us."

Zhang Yu nodded and was about to speak when the tent flap was lifted.

A young man covered in blood and mud walked in. His left shoulder was hastily tied with a strip of cloth, and he walked with a slow but steady gait.