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

Like a stone statue nailed to the ground.

The fuse burned out.

The deafening roar instantly overturned half of the city gate tower!

The gunpowder bundle at the bottom of the sluice gate exploded with a loud bang.

A violent shockwave, carrying debris and metal fragments, swept wildly in all directions.

A three-foot-thick iron plate was blasted open, creating a gap the size of a head.

It wasn't enough for one person to squeeze through, but it was sufficient.

Shen Du was violently thrown away by the shockwave, his back slamming heavily against the stone slabs at the base of the city wall.

Everything went black instantly, and all I could hear was a sharp ringing in my ears; I couldn't hear anything else.

Warm blood trickled down from the cracked corner of his mouth.

My left leg was cut open by flying shards of metal, leaving a gash half a foot long. It burned and stung, as if a knife was twisting inside my bones.

He gritted his teeth and tried to stand up by supporting himself with his hands on the ground.

It managed to hold on twice, but both times it fell heavily back down.

His hands, which were supporting him on the ground, trembled uncontrollably, and it felt as if the bones in his body had been forcibly torn apart from his flesh.

Inside the inner city, Zhu Di heard the loud noise.

He turned his head abruptly.

Then you can see that a gap has been blown into the iron plate of the sluice gate.

Firelight flickered and smoke billowed outside the cave entrance.

A young man covered in blood was gritting his teeth and desperately crawling from the ground toward the opening.

Several times he managed to get up, only to fall heavily back into the mud each time.

Zhu Di recognized him at a glance.

That was Li Jingzhong, the centurion of his broken city camp.

"Li Jingzhong!"

Zhu Di shouted loudly.

Shen Du heard it.

The sound pierced through the sharp tinnitus and landed clearly in his ears.

He used the last bit of strength he had left to crawl one step toward the opening.

The entire arm was inserted through the opening.

He forcefully handed over a gleaming silver token—the silver command flag Zhu Neng had given him that allowed him to mobilize the Yan army's infantry and cavalry—to Zhu Di.

"Your Highness—take the flag—"

Zhu Di reached out and took the silver plaque through the gap in the iron gate.

The silver medal still bore traces of Shen Du's body heat and scalding blood.

At that moment, he held the sign without saying a word.

The Yan cavalry outside the city had already rushed onto the stone bridge over the moat like madmen.

Huo Zhen, leading his mounted archers, used the gap in the wall to unleash a barrage of arrows into the inner city.

A rain of arrows swept across the sky, completely suppressing the approaching swordsmen and axemen.

Gu Zhang led the swordsmen and shieldmen of the wall-climbing group, stepping over the rubble of the blasted opening, and frantically climbed over the gap.

They used their bodies to build an impenetrable shield between Zhu Di and the executioners.

The main force of the Yan army had already pressed in from the west gate, a dark mass pressing in.

Although the sluice gate was not completely blown open.

However, the opening at the bottom was large enough for Yan soldiers to pour in continuously.

The axemen lying in ambush inside the inner city, after wounding Zhu Di's warhorse and tying him down for a moment, were first suppressed by Huo Zhen's mounted archers with a rain of arrows from the gap, and then were charged head-on by Gu Zhang's swordsmen and shieldmen.

The assassins carefully selected by Sheng Yong were ultimately forced to retreat step by step.

Zhu Di stood inside the city gate.

He carefully tucked the blood-stained silver medal into his bosom.

He immediately stepped forward and caught Shen Du, who had just fallen through the gap.

The young man could no longer stand.

His body was covered in blood mixed with mud, which flowed down his clothes.

The entire weight of the person was almost entirely hanging on Zhu Di's arm.

"Are you fucking crazy?"

Zhu Di's voice trembled.

It wasn't fear, but an anger he hadn't felt in many years.

A raging fire that arose from the extreme cherishing of something.

"Your Highness."

Shen Du's voice was very soft, so soft that only Zhu Di, who was very close to him, could hear it.

"Tie Xuan feigned surrender, trapped you with a heavy gate, and then had his ambush troops kill you. You shouldn't have come."

"But he miscalculated."

"He thought your cavalry were still outside the city, and that your men wouldn't dare blow up this heavy gate."

"But he overlooked one thing."

"What is it?"

Zhu Di's voice was very low.

A blood-stained smile appeared on Shen Du's face, blackened by gunpowder smoke.

"You are His Highness. I am a soldier from the Broken City Camp."

"The soldiers of the breaching camp will not leave you on the other side of the city wall."

Zhu Di remained silent for a very long time.

Then, he swung his broadsword back and plunged it hard into the mud beneath his feet.

He then bent down and firmly placed Shen Du's left arm on his shoulder.

He used his own body to support almost the entire weight of the young man.

Step by step, they walked steadily toward the opening.

The Yan army's cannons began firing at Chenshi (7-9 AM).

This was no ordinary shelling.

After Zhu Di narrowly escaped death from the inner city of Jinan, he sat in the central command tent for an entire night.

No one dared to go in.

Even Zhang Yu didn't dare.

There were no lights in the tent.

Zhu Di sat alone in the boundless darkness.

On the table in front of him lay the silver command flag, its edges charred by gunpowder.

He didn't come out of the tent until dawn.

He only said one sentence to Zhang Yu.

"Bring all the cannons to the walls of Jinan."

It was three quarters past Chen Shi (7:45 AM).

The Yan army concentrated all the artillery it could muster.

Twenty muskets, twelve cannons, and eight cannons captured from the Southern Army in Dezhou.

In addition, the artillery battalion worked through the night to produce three new cannons.

A total of forty-three cannons were neatly arranged in two rows outside the north and west gates of the city.

The gunners, shirtless, were loading gunpowder into the cannon barrels.

Sweat streamed down his dark back, leaving wet marks on the muddy ground beneath his feet.

No one speaks.

On the position, only the muffled sound of iron tweezers tamping gunpowder and the creaking of the gun carriage wheels turning could be heard.

Zhu Di stood on an earthen slope outside the West Gate.

The dark satin robe fluttered in the morning breeze.

His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was frighteningly pale.

It's not fear.

It is anger.

Tie Xuan used a heavy gate to trap him and sixty axemen to surround and kill him, but he could endure all of that.

The only thing he couldn't tolerate was Tie Xuan's use of the people to feign surrender.

He was deceived by those white-bearded old men kneeling by the moat, kowtowing and begging for surrender.

They tricked him into entering the city alone, then trapped him in the city gate and beat him to death.

He fought in wars for half his life.

I've never been played like this before.

"fire."

His voice was not high.

But every word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.

Forty-three cannons simultaneously spewed fire.

The heavy stone projectiles, trailing plumes of smoke, slammed into the Jinan city wall.

The solid rammed earth wall was smashed, sending fragments flying everywhere.

One after another, the edges of the barricades were flattened by the stones.

The deafening roar of cannonballs hitting the city walls echoed throughout the city.

It was as if an invisible giant hand was wielding a massive hammer, relentlessly pounding down on the city.

The soldiers guarding the city wall huddled behind the crenellations, not daring to even raise their heads.

Tie Xuan stood inside the city gate tower.

The wooden beams overhead shook, causing dust to fall and settle on his official hat. He didn't even blink or reach out to brush it off.

The shelling lasted for a whole day.

They fought from Chen Shi (7-9 AM) to Wu Shi (11 AM-1 PM).

They fought from noon until late afternoon.

The western city wall of Jinan was smashed open, creating more than a dozen cracks.

Half of the parapet in the southern part of the city was blown down.

Broken bricks and stones rolled down the city wall and crashed into the moat.

The once clear river water has been stained a murky yellowish-brown by mud and gravel.

Stray bullets that flew over the city wall smashed through several houses in the city.

The people huddled together in the cellar, shivering.

The children's cries were completely drowned out by the deafening roar of the cannons.

Shen Du did not participate in the shelling that day.

He lay in a makeshift tent for wounded soldiers inside the western gate of the barbican.

The cut on my left leg from the metal shards had been washed with liquor and stitched up with eleven stitches.

The stitches are crooked and uneven.

It was sewn by Gu Zhangfeng.

His hand never trembled even slightly when he wielded his sword to kill enemies on the battlefield.

But when I hold a sewing needle, my hands shake so much it's like I'm shaking dice.

Shen Du's lips were deathly pale.

The bloodstains on his face, blackened by gunpowder, had dried and scabbed over.

But he never closed his eyes.

He was listening to the sound of cannon fire.

He could clearly distinguish the sounds of all forty-three cannons.

Each volley was preceded by twelve shots from a musket.

Then came the dull, heavy thud of the general's cannon.

Finally, the captured Confederate artillery pieces added the sound of gunfire.

The rhythm is very steady.

This shows that the gunners have not been blinded by their commander's anger.

Zhao Laoliu stood guard at the entrance of the tent.

He held the tobacco pipe in his mouth, but didn't light it.

He would peek out every now and then.

Each time I finished reading it, my face became even uglier.

"Master Li, if we keep bombarding like this, the city wall will collapse sooner or later."

He lowered his voice, his tone full of worry.

"But there are still hundreds of thousands of people in the city. If this gets out—"

"If word gets out, His Highness will bear the infamy of massacring the city."

Shen Du's voice was very soft.

With each word I spoke, the wound on my left leg throbbed with pain.

But he gritted his teeth and finished speaking.

"Cheol-hyun saw this clearly."

He didn't care whether the city walls collapsed or not.

"What he cares about is how the world views His Highness."

"When news of the flooding of Jinan and the bombardment of civilian homes reached Nanjing, Jianwen had a solid reason to say that Zhu Di was a rebel, not a pacification of the country."

Gu Zhang tucked the sewing needle into his belt and squatted down beside Shen Du's bed.

"What should we do then?"

Shen Du closed his eyes and remained silent for a long while.

When I opened my eyes again, they were clear.

"Wait for Cheol-hyun's next move."

"He's not the kind of person who just clings to the past."

"He's even willing to feign surrender and use His Highness's life as a pretext. If we bombard his city walls, he'll definitely have a backup plan."

The sun did not rise the next day.

Low-hanging, dark clouds hung heavily over the city of Jinan.