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

Ten men suddenly sprang out of the alley, arrows chasing their heels and embedding themselves in the mud. They charged forward desperately through the rain of arrows.

Just as he crossed the halfway mark, the spearman on the far left suddenly groaned and slammed his knee heavily to the ground as a stray arrow pierced his knee with pinpoint accuracy.

Gu Zhang didn't stop walking, nor did he even turn his head—he couldn't stop.

The moment he reached the base of the city wall, Gu Zhang snatched the gunpowder from Zheng Biao's hand and stuffed it into a crack in the wall. He then took out a flint and steel and struck it between the arrows as they flew through the air, creating a blinding spark. He watched as the sparks sizzled along the fuse and disappeared into the depths of the crack.

Gu Zhang turned around and ran wildly eastward, hugging the wall tightly. Zheng Biao gritted his teeth and followed closely behind him.

As the fuse burned to its end, a muffled thud suddenly erupted at the base of the city wall, blasting a gap in the thick rammed earth wall, sending debris mixed with bricks and stones flying wildly outwards.

The opening wasn't large, just a few feet wide, but it was wide enough for someone to climb in.

The defenders on the left side of the city wall were stunned by the explosion. The musketeers and archers behind the crenellations instinctively looked down to the south, but the next second, the deafening crash of the battering ram into the city gate interrupted their movements. At the same time, an allied force from the east launched a simultaneous attack, pouring dense firepower down on the western section of the city wall.

Gu Zhang scrambled to his feet, his face covered in dust, half his lip sliced ​​open by flying bricks, blood dripping from his chin. He stared intently at the gash, then abruptly drew his sword, his hoarse roar almost breaking his voice: "Send the signal! Get the follow-up troops to press up from here!"

Seven days after capturing Hengjie, Tie Xuan's banner still stood atop Jinan's city walls. The Yan army's black flag on the west gate tower had been blown down twice by the defenders' cannons, and Gu Zhang and his men had painstakingly re-hung it twice. The charred marks from gunpowder spread from the corner of the city wall all the way to the inner side of the barbican, and the ground was littered with broken bricks and arrows that crunched underfoot.

Shen Du stood motionless behind the crenellation at the highest point of the West Gate tower, gazing towards the inner city. His face was streaked with black and white from the gunpowder smoke, but his eyes shone with an astonishing brightness.

In those seven days, the Yan army launched eleven assaults. They captured the West Gate barbican, the Luoshui ferry crossing, and the three alleys south of Hengjie Street, but they couldn't even touch the inner city walls.

Sheng Yong deployed all his reserves to the inner city walls, while Tie Xuan organized all the laborers in Jinan into the city's defense force. The blacksmiths' furnaces burned day and night as they frantically produced arrowheads, and the boiling oil stones on the city walls never stopped from morning till night.

Zhu Neng personally led his troops to charge the south gate of the inner city twice, but both times they were repelled by Sheng Yong's suicide squad. During the second charge, his warhorse was startled by the boiling oil, reared up, and threw him hard to the ground, breaking his right arm on the spot. When his guards risked their lives to pull him back, his entire face was covered with blisters from the boiling oil.

Shen Du also failed to make it to the top. His mixed infantry and cavalry assault group spent two days grinding through the abandoned alleys on the east side of the inner city, at one point coming within two hundred paces of the inner city wall. Two hundred paces would normally be just a dozen or so breaths' time, but that section of road was a key blockade zone for Sheng Yong's musket team. The dense barrage of lead bullets hitting the rammed earth walls sent flying fragments that could leave a person with a black eye and a swollen face.

The following evening, Shen Du tried again. Infantry pushed a pointed wooden donkey covered in thick, wet cowhide to block bullets, while mounted archers followed behind, firing arrows to suppress the fire from the city walls. But after only 150 paces, two large muskets came crashing down from the city walls. One shot blew half the roof off the wooden donkey, and splinters of wood mixed with gunpowder pelted Shen Du. He lay behind a pile of rubble, spitting out a mouthful of bloody dirt, waved to Zhao Laoliu behind him, and retreated.

But Zhu Di did not withdraw.

For the past seven days, he has remained in the central command tent, without armor, wearing only a faded blue cloth robe. The tea on the table has been changed dozens of times, each cup brought to a full bowl and then taken away again. It's not that he can't drink it; he's just enduring it.

Zhang Yu and Zhu Neng took turns trying to persuade him to temporarily halt his troops and rest, but he refused. He said that Jinan was the throat of Shandong, and only by controlling this throat could he breathe southward; he couldn't wait any longer.

On the eighth night, Zhu Di stood on the old dike of the Yellow River outside Jinan. Before him lay a pitch-black riverbed, with only the moonlight reflecting a cold, dark silver in the puddles.

Behind him stood a tall, thin man in black, who held not a knife, but a scroll of river engineering maps.

"I understand what was presented yesterday." The night wind carried Zhu Di's voice softly, yet it was ruthless and undeniable. "Break the dike here, and the water will flow southeast, filling the low-lying area between the north and west gates of Jinan. The north city of Jinan is the lowest point, and the moat connects to the city's drainage ditches. The water will flow in from the north city and back into the inner city through the drainage ditches. No matter how good Tie Xuan is at fighting, he'll have to fight me while he's soaked in water."

The man in black was a river management officer who had spent half his life building dikes along the Yellow River. At this moment, he lowered his head and remained silent.

Zhu Di's voice rang out again, containing only two words: "Dig the dike."

On the morning of the third day, the water from the old course of the Yellow River flooded into Jinan.

It wasn't an out-of-control breach, but a precise excavation. The engineering battalion dug a hundred-paced opening on the north bank of the old course of the Yellow River, diverting the river water into a pre-dug canal, which slowly overflowed in a southeast direction. The water level was low, only about three feet, but the current was terrifyingly steady.

When the river reached the low-lying area outside the northern city of Jinan, it was blocked by several makeshift earthen dikes and remained there overnight. At dawn the next day, the earthen dikes were broken open, and the river water, which had accumulated overnight, rushed into the northern city of Jinan like a moving iron wall.

The houses in the northern part of the city were mostly low-lying, and within the first hour of the flooding, the water reached knee-deep. All the grain stored in the granaries was submerged, and the blacksmith's forges on the street hissed and steamed as the cold water hit them. The city's drainage ditches were mostly blocked by silt, preventing the water from draining out and forcing it to back up into the inner city through underground channels. The drainage outlets at the base of the inner city walls continuously gushed out murky, yellowish-brown water.

Shen Du stood atop the west gate tower, watching the yellow floodwaters surge in. The firelight on the north city wall flickered in the night, and the sounds of crying, smashing doors, and building rafts could be faintly heard in the wind. His sword lay on the crenellation, its hilt chilled to the bone by the night wind.

"Master Li," Zhao Laoliu stood behind him, a pipe in his mouth but no fire in sight, his voice much muffled than usual, "Will this water...flood our side?"

"No." Shen Du's voice was calm, but beneath that calm lay an indescribable melancholy. "The west gate is on higher ground, so the water will only flow to the lower-lying areas of the north city. They breached the dikes, besieged the city for almost a month without success, and resorted to this underhanded method. This tactic will not take the city at all; it will only drown all the people in the city."