If you die, I will be able to inherit your cultivation.

Chongzhou, Shunning City.

Yuwen Shuo has been besieged by Su Mingyue for ten days.

After the three southern prefectures of Chongzhou surrendered without a fight, his outer defenses were peeled away layer by layer like an onion, and the remaining 100,000 troops were huddled in Shun Ning City.

The rations for the soldiers guarding the city wall were reduced from two meals a day to one meal a day, and then from one meal a day to one meal every two days.

After killing all the mules, they started killing the warhorses. After killing all the warhorses, they started boiling leather belts and bowstrings.

The people in the city ate everything they could find, and even the rats were all caught.

The envoy came out from the east gate of Shun Ning City.

A white horseman, unarmed, held a letter of surrender above his head with both hands.

The horses were so thin that their ribs bulged out, and their hooves left deep and shallow hoofprints on the muddy ground outside the moat.

The scouts of the Youzhou army stopped him, searched him, blindfolded him, and took him to Su Mingyue's command tent.

Su Mingyue was sitting in front of the map, discussing matters with several generals.

She was still wearing that black armor, her silver spear leaning against the armrest of her chair.

The envoy was brought in, prostrated himself on the ground, and held the letter of surrender high with both hands.

The letter of surrender was short and its wording was extremely humble.

Yuwen Shuo confessed his grave sins and was willing to bear all the blame himself, only asking Su Mingyue to save the lives of more than a hundred members of the Yuwen family.

After Su Mingyue agreed, he would open the city gates, lead his entire clan to surrender, and go to Yuyang County in Youzhou to live the rest of his life as a wealthy man, detached from worldly affairs.

All eyes in the command tent were on Su Mingyue.

Su Mingyue did not answer immediately.

Her knuckles turned slightly white as she held the letter of surrender, her face still showing the same calm expression, but the generals in the tent could all sense it.

The veins on the young lady's hand, which was gripping the letter, were bulging from the excessive force.

The conditions proposed by Yuwen Shuo were actually not harsh.

Accepting the surrender would allow them to take Shunning City without losing a single soldier, avoiding a brutal siege and sparing tens of thousands of Youzhou soldiers from dying beneath the high walls of Shunning City.

As the commander-in-chief, this is the most rational choice.

But her father, Su Yongning, was not the only one who died on Wild Wolf Slope; two hundred thousand northern border soldiers also perished.

They were besieged on a desolate mountain by hundreds of thousands of followers of the Zhong Sheng Sect when they ran out of food and reinforcements.

The allied forces of Yuwen Shuo and Zhao Chongyuan were just outside the mountains, but they withdrew their flank defenses, blocking the supply lines and retreat routes.

Two hundred thousand men, including the Marquis, all perished in battle.

Su Mingyue placed the letter of surrender on the table and looked up at the envoy.

Her voice was calm, so calm that it sent a chill down the envoy's spine:

"Go back and tell Yuwen Shuo to wash his neck clean and wait. My father and 200,000 northern border troops have been waiting for him for a long time at Wild Wolf Slope."

When the envoy was taken away, his legs were weak, and two soldiers from Youzhou had to support him on either side to keep him from collapsing to the ground.

That very night, Su Mingyue ordered a full-scale attack on Shun Ning City.

Shun Ning City was Yuwen Shuo's stronghold, which he had been building for many years. The city wall was about three zhang high, with the outer layer covered with blue bricks and the inner part being a solid wall made of rammed earth and glutinous rice paste.

The city walls were densely packed with arrow towers and catapults, and the moat was wide and deep.

The siege began at nightfall, with the Youzhou army's catapults launching the first attack. Burning oil canisters were hurled onto the city walls, exploding into blinding bursts of fire on the arrow towers.

The defenders on the city wall fought back desperately, raining down boiling oil, boulders, and arrows.

Su Mingyue ordered the first wave of attackers to be the surrendered soldiers of the loyalist army.

These people need to prove their stance with blood. She will not let them die in vain. She provides them with the thickest shields, the sturdiest ladders, and two veterans from the North to supervise each team.

The surrendered soldiers charged up the ladders, braving a hail of arrows; one group fell, and another took their place.

The corpses piled higher and higher at the foot of the city wall. He climbed up by stepping on the pile of his comrades' corpses, and his knife struck the city bricks, sending up a string of sparks.

The battle raged from midnight until dawn, and then from dawn until noon the next day.

The defenders on the city wall were exhausted, their arrows were running low, and their boiling oil was almost gone.

Standing on the high ground behind, Su Mingyue observed the frequency of the troop movements on the city wall and seized a gap in the troop rotation to order the entire army to advance.

All reserves were deployed at once, and dozens of siege ladders were simultaneously erected on the city walls. The elite troops of Youzhou climbed the city walls amidst a hail of arrows.

The first soldier to climb the city wall was stabbed through the chest by three swords at the same time. The second was also cut down. The third, fourth and fifth soldiers jumped onto the city wall one after another.

The blades flashed under the blazing afternoon sun, finally securing a breach about ten feet wide.

Subsequent troops poured onto the city walls along this breach, pushing the defenders to both sides of the walls.

The city gate was smashed open from the inside, the drawbridge was lowered with a crash, and the army outside the city surged into Shun Ning City like a tidal wave.

The city has fallen.

The army advanced along the main street of Shun Ning City toward Yuwen Shuo's residence.

The sporadic resistance encountered along the way was quickly crushed. The fleeing soldiers threw down their weapons, knelt by the roadside, and surrendered with their heads in their hands. The civilians hid behind doors and windows, not daring to breathe.

When the vanguard rushed to Yuwen Shuo's mansion, the vermilion gate was wide open, and the stone lions in front of the gate were splattered with someone's blood.

The soldiers, shield in hand, charged into the mansion and searched the front hall, back hall, study, and storerooms. Finally, they found a white silk ribbon on the beam of the main hall.

A person was hanging from the white silk, dressed in a purple python robe, with a crown and hat neatly placed on his head. His face was bluish-purple, and he had been dead for some time.

When Su Mingyue arrived, the soldiers had already taken Yuwen Shuo's body off the roof beam and laid it flat on the blue brick floor of the main hall.

Su Mingyue stood at the doorway, not going in.

They just stared quietly at Yuwen Shuo's corpse.

She drove him to desperation by annihilating his 200,000-strong army, used proclamations and rumors to demoralize his troops, and used layers of encirclement to eliminate his outer cities one by one.

Finally, after a day and a night of fierce attack, they broke down his city gates.

But before the city fell, he ended his own life with a white silk ribbon.

He killed her father, humiliated her family, conspired to massacre 200,000 border troops in Youzhou, and then hanged himself from the beam of his own house.

She ultimately failed to avenge her father with her own hands.

Su Mingyue stood outside the main hall for a long time.

Dongmei followed behind her, intending to say something, but seeing the taut lines of her profile like cast iron, she swallowed back the words of comfort that were on the tip of her tongue.

Finally, Su Mingyue withdrew her gaze and coldly ordered that Yuwen Shuo's body be buried with the rites due to a duke, and that all members of the Yuwen family, regardless of age or gender, be executed on the spot.

Su Mingyue knew his order was cruel, but she felt it was even crueler not to avenge her father or the 200,000 border troops with her own hands.

After capturing Shunning City, Su Mingyue ordered Ren Yunjie to lead the troops of Yinyun Valley to garrison Chongzhou, incorporate the surrendered soldiers, and stabilize the situation.

She herself only rested for one night in Shun Ning City, and the next morning she mustered her army and headed south, leading 150,000 elite troops straight to Cangzhou.