(Because it's almost eight thousand words, it's a bit late. There's still one more chapter before dawn.)
Outside of Crouching Bow City, there were no more peace fires lit.
Beimang's vanguard arrived at the city gates.
Strong winds, yellow sand, and barren land blew the dry yellow sand into the air, hitting the flapping flags. Outside of the city, in front of Beimang's formation, there were constantly elite cavalry passing down orders. On top of Crouching Bow City, large ballistae were ready to fire. All the generals on top of the city walls subconsciously tightened their grip on their blades.
A loud and shrill horn suddenly sounded!
If it was in the past when Beimang attacked a city south of the river, they would usually order the civilians and surrendered soldiers to charge forward. Not only would they fill up the trenches, they would also use up a large amount of arrows from the defending side. At most, they would use the auxiliary troops to push the cart forward, and the cavalry would swarm out. Once they arrived at the city walls, they would fire tens of thousands of arrows at the same time. As long as the defending side's morale was shaken, the Beimang soldiers would be able to crush them in one battle. However, today, when the army arrived at Crouching Bow City, under the command of Northern Mang's Great Commander Yang Yuanzan, they displayed a completely different siege style compared to the past two hundred years of northern barbarians invading and raiding. At the same time the two flanks of three thousand cavalry began to charge forward, there was a type of military heavy weapon that rarely appeared in the northwestern border fortress that appeared on a large scale. Catapult carts!
Yang Yuanzan had set up no less than six hundred catapults in one night. The largest catapults required two hundred people with outstanding strength, and each rock weighed a hundred pounds! Not only did the six hundred catapults bring a considerable amount of rocks with them when they went down south, they also swept up all the rocks north of Crouching Bow City. At this time, all of the Northern Mang soldiers who were biding their time couldn't help but raise their heads, quietly waiting for that spectacular scene. Countless giant boulders would be flung high into the sky, and then smashed into Hidden Bow City's walls, or landed on Ring City's military path.
The six hundred catapults seemed to be facing Crouching Bow City, but from the top of the city walls, one would know that they were arranged in an arc. The stronger ones would be placed in the center of the arc furthest away from the city, while the weaker ones would be placed on the left and right, and so on.
No one knew who was the first to shout, but the Beimang soldiers near the catapults shouted the same words in unison.
When the first fifty kilograms of flint, wrapped in oil cloth, was ignited, it flew high into the air and was thrown towards Crouching Bow City.
It was as if a Fire Spirit of the Heavenly Court had descended to the mortal realm.
Following this flint, hundreds of huge rocks smashed towards the first city at the mouth of the gourd in Youzhou Province. All the Beimang generals and soldiers were shocked by this strange siege method.
Boulders fell on top of the city wall, inside the city, or were blocked by the city wall and rolled into the moat.
Both inside and outside the city were filled with the sounds of wind and thunder.
It was as if everyone could feel the earth trembling, as if Crouching Bow City was silently sobbing.
Meanwhile, the six thousand Mang cavalry that moved ahead before the rocks were tossed but slower than the rocks smashing into the city naturally weren't going to directly attack the city. Using cavalry to attack a city, unless there was no other choice, even the most powerful of commanders wouldn't be able to bear this type of pain. The purpose of these cavalry troops was only to escort the infantry two hundred steps outside the city, to help their own side suppress the archers on the city walls. After the cavalry troops on the two wings that had opened up some distance with the infantry, after firing a rain of arrows at the top of the city walls, they no longer continued forward, instead quickly moving diagonally outwards to make room for the cavalry troops behind them. That was why the two cavalry troops were like a flood meeting a reef, but they didn't risk their lives to collide with it, instead scattering to the left and right on their own. When one of the robust cavalry commanders turned around, he gave the city wall a look.
On top of the city wall, as one of Yang Yuanzan's personal commanders, he knew about the existence of the six hundred catapult carts, moreover, he knew about the power of the catapult carts even earlier than normal commanders. Originally, in his opinion, there was no need for the two cavalry troops to protect Crouching Bow City. Under the concentrated bombardment of several hundred boulders, Crouching Bow City's defenders would be scared to the point where they couldn't even raise their heads, allowing the infantry outside the city to push all the way out of the moat. However, during the charge, casualties continuously appeared in front of and behind him. The ballistae on the city walls fired out waves after waves of arrows, among which, two cavalry troops were actually directly penetrated by a giant ballista bolt! The two cavalry corpses were nailed to the ground just like that by the ballista bolts. If one were to say that Beiliang had long heard of the sharpness of the ballista bolts, then the fact that Crouching Bow City's arrows were still raining down in an orderly manner while the boulders were exploding made this commander feel very conflicted. He had personally seen two Youzhou soldiers being smashed by boulders, yet the nearby archers on the city walls still shot out arrows that were above standard. The commander curled his lips. Were these Youzhou people really not afraid of death? There was a pile of rotten meat right next to their feet.
Under the cover of the boulders and the two flanks of Beimang, the ballista bolts from Crouching Bow City were increasingly concentrated on the attacking infantry of the Beimang army. More and more infantry were pierced through by the ballista bolts, and there were even some unlucky ones who were shot in the chest by a single bolt. The inertia of the bolts caused them to slide back a dozen or so steps, causing the foot soldiers and shield soldiers behind them to fall to the ground. Even more of them were shot to death by the ballista bolts on the city walls. This was especially true when the infantry's battle line became uneven. The soldiers and auxiliary soldiers who were the most courageous and daring to charge at the very front were targeted by the master archers on the city walls.
The ballista bolts weren't weak, but they were like a drop in the bucket in the face of the dense swarm of locusts. There was still no end to them.
Like a swarm of black locusts, the slightly crowded foot soldiers did not care about the corpses and the wounded at their feet and continued to charge forward.
A burly armored archer on the city walls drew his bow to the fullest. Just as he was about to shoot at a Beimang barbarian leader who was loudly giving orders to fill the trenches, an arrow pierced through his throat.
His corpse was randomly dragged to the side, and the archer behind him quickly took his place.
Continuously drawing the bow, especially to the fullest, would damage the arm the most. In the Youzhou army, there were strict military orders regarding the distance between the enemy and the angle of drawing the bow, and when to use the crossbow was deeply ingrained in everyone's hearts. Crossbows followed by crossbows were the unshakable laws of Beiliang. Among them, 'crossbows first' were ballistas, waist crossbows, and pedal crossbows. As one of the three cities at the mouth of the Gourd in Youzhou, Sleeping Bow City didn't have as many ballistas as Liangbei's Hutou City. However, it wasn't that Great General Yan Wenluan didn't have enough ballistas. It was just that the size of Sleeping Bow City limited the number of ballistas. However, in the previous exchange of fire, the Beimang army still suffered heavy casualties. At a glance, there were more than a hundred enemy soldiers killed by the ballista bolts. Two of the Beimang generals who were holding the line were even shot to death by the ballista bolts due to carelessness. Presumably, these two chiliarchs who were already extremely far away from the city walls would die with everlasting regret. After all, their craftsmen from the Southern Dynasty always said that their ballista bolts didn't lose to Beiliang in terms of range and strength. However, when they actually arrived on the battlefield, they discovered that this wasn't the case at all!
Under the cover of the rain of arrows from the cavalry on the two wings, and even before the Beimang had fired their own ballistas, Sleeping Bow City's ballistas and waist crossbows had already been fired from the top of the city walls.
If it weren't for the giant rocks from the catapults suppressing the rain of arrows from the top of the city walls to a certain extent, the soldiers of the central army would probably have died near the moat. Dismounting and sieging a city was something Northern Mang's warriors were the worst at to begin with. If they were fighting with their lives on horseback against Northern Liang's cavalry, then even if they were at a disadvantage, they still wouldn't feel any fear. However, without a horse to ride on, this really was a vexing matter. Fortunately, the soldiers in charge of attacking the city this time were all soldiers from the various border towns of the Southern Dynasty. They had always been a level lower in the Beimang army, so their lives, such as the elite cavalry on the two wings, weren't of much concern.
A bearded Beimang general waved his hand, and the six hundred catapults began to move forward, preparing for the second volley of rocks. They didn't want to destroy the city walls, but rather, they wanted to cut off the reinforcements on Sleeping Bow City as much as possible.
Commander Yang Yuanzan was determined to take down Sleeping Bow City, which had less than six thousand soldiers. Moreover, the old general's request was to take down the city in one day! There was no lack of dissent in the commander's tent regarding this decision. Some said that the terrain outside Sleeping Bow City wasn't conducive to attacking the city. The infantry formation was too long and narrow, so it didn't make much of a difference whether they sent in ten thousand or eight thousand. It was better to send them in batches and give Sleeping Bow City a constant pressure. Even if they couldn't take down the city in a day, they would be able to take it in two days at most, reducing the number of casualties.
It was the son of the Zhong family, Zhong Tan, who was advancing with the catapults. In front of them were many self-made ballistas from the Southern Dynasty, as well as many scaling ladders and battering logs. There were also many siege towers that had yet to be manned by archers.
Zhong Tan raised his hand to cover his forehead. Finally, Sleeping Bow City had no choice but to use light crossbows.
Zhong Tan heard the constant stream of reports from the roaming cavalry. All he could hear was cold numbers, how many had died, and how many had been injured.
In just an hour, more than a hundred cavalry and more than a thousand infantry had died, and this was before they had even scaled the city walls.
They were all dead. All of them had died outside the moats. The furthest they had died was at the foot of Sleeping Bow City's walls.
However, Zhong Tan, who could be considered one of the top sons of generals in Beimang, was surprised even by himself. He didn't feel too much emotion. Instead, he began to think of many interesting things, such as when he heard his father, Great General Zhong Shentong, talk about the early Spring and Autumn War. During the chaotic war between the Nine Kingdoms, it was said that Liyang had mobilized sixty thousand cavalry to attack a majestic city of Dongyue to the south. After three days of fierce fighting, they returned without any success. Afterwards, the entire country of Dongyue celebrated, worshipping the general who had defended the country with only ten thousand men as a god. The Dongyue emperor even issued an imperial edict to bestow upon him the title of Grand Tutor. Many years later, the people of Dongyue finally realized that the soul-stirring defeat and victory of seventy thousand men had only lost less than six hundred men after three days of fighting.
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