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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Taishi Ci stepped over a fallen body, his cold eyes fixed on the struggling Yu Jin, preparing to deliver the final, killing blow. A few feet away, Zhang He saw his comrade falling. Knowing that if Yu Jin died, the entire gatehouse defense would instantly collapse, Zhang He made a desperate, split second decision.
He executed a brilliant, feinting thrust that forced Zhang Liao to step back, then immediately abandoned the duel. He lunged across the walkway, grabbing the back of Yu Jin's collar just as Taishi Ci's rod hammer came swinging down, hauling the injured tactician backward and out of the lethal arc.
"Retreat! Fall back to the inner courtyard!" Zhang He screamed, abandoning the gatehouse. He knew the position was lost.
As Zhang He dragged the gasping Yu Jin toward the stairs, Zhang Liao and Taishi Ci did not pursue them. They turned their attention to the heavy, iron banded doors of the control room. With a synchronized, brutal kick, the two Hengyuan generals shattered the locking mechanism, blowing the doors wide open.
Inside, the panicked Wei engineers scrambled away from the massive winches. The Hengyuan elites flooded into the room, their swords making quick, bloody work of the remaining defenders.
With swift, practiced motions, the Hengyuan soldiers grabbed the heavy iron levers and pulled. The massive ratchets disengaged with a series of deafening, metallic clanks. The thick, oiled chains began to unspool rapidly.
Down below, at the base of the shattered wall, the Hengyuan battering rams delivered one final, thunderous strike against the heavy oak.
With the locking chains severed from above, the great eastern gates of Chang'an groaned, splintered, and finally, catastrophically, blew inward.
The dam had broken. The black tide of the Hengyuan main army roared, pouring through the shattered archway, flooding into the streets of the ancient capital. The inner city was breached, and the final hour of the Wei Dynasty had officially begun.
While the eastern gate fell to the peerless martial prowess of Lie Fan and his vanguard of war gods, the situation miles away on the southern perimeter of Chang'An was an entirely different, far more gruesome spectacle.
Here, the assault was not a surgical strike of elite champions, but a brutal, grinding meat grinder. Zhang Wei and Yang Ang, the commanding generals of Zhang Lu's forces from Hanzhong, were capable men, but they were not legends.
They lacked the terrifying, supernatural strength of a Dian Wei, and they lacked the fluid, unparalleled martial genius of a Taishi Ci. They were pragmatic frontier commanders, and the task of breaching the towering southern wall of the ancient capital was proving to be a horrific ordeal.
To compound their difficulties, the Wei defenders holding the southern battlements were commanded by two of Cao Cao's most elite, trusted kinsmen, Cao Xiu and Cao Chun.
These were men who had cut their teeth commanding the legendary Tiger and Leopard Cavalry. Though forced to dismount and fight as heavy infantry commanders on the high walls, their grasp of localized strategy, defensive formations, and raw, physical combat strength far exceeded that of Zhang Wei and Yang Ang.
Consequently, Zhang Lu's infantry suffered the highest casualty rates of the entire siege. The base of the southern wall was a nightmare of blood and broken bodies.
"Hold the line! Let them break themselves upon our shields!" Cao Xiu roared, his voice cutting through the din of clashing steel and the screams of the dying. He stood near the primary gatehouse, directing disciplined volleys of arrows that decimated the Hanzhong troops as they desperately tried to scale the Climbing Tigers.
A few yards away, Cao Chun was a whirlwind of slaughter. Wielding a heavy, long handled glaive, he stepped into the frontline, personally turning back every wave of attackers that managed to set foot on the stone walkway. His weapon rose and fell with rhythmic, terrifying efficiency, cleaving through the lesser armored Hanzhong infantry with ease.
Zhang Wei, his armor slick with the blood of friend and foe alike, parried a stray spear thrust and ducked behind a wooden hoarding. He was breathing heavily, his eyes scanning the absolute carnage.
"They are too entrenched!" Yang Ang shouted, sliding into cover beside him, clutching a shallow gash on his forearm. "Cao Chun is butchering our vanguard! We cannot establish a wide enough perimeter to reach the control room!"
Zhang Wei gritted his teeth, looking back at the sea of their own soldiers waiting below. What the Hanzhong infantry lacked in elite martial training, they made up for in sheer, fanatical zealotry. They were the followers of the Celestial Master, they did not fear death, believing their sacrifices would be rewarded in the heavens.
"We do not need to outfight them, Yang Ang," Zhang Wei growled, a desperate, feral light entering his eyes. "We just need to drown them! Signal the reserves! All of them! Funnel every man up the ladders! We will bury Cao Chun and Cao Xiu under the weight of our own dead if we must!"
The order was given. Below, the drums of Hanzhong beat a frantic, suicidal cadence. Thousands of fresh, zealot infantrymen poured forward, entirely ignoring the arrows raining down upon them. They swarmed the ladders like a colony of frenzied ants.
The sheer volume of bodies suddenly pressing onto the southern wall was incomprehensible. Cao Xiu's archers ran out of arrows, forced to draw their short swords.
Cao Chun, despite his immense strength and skill, found himself bogged down. He could cut down three men with a single swing of his glaive, but five more would instantly climb over their corpses to take their place, throwing themselves at his shield, grabbing at his weapon shaft, biting, clawing, and stabbing with rusted blades.
"Push! Push forward!" Zhang Wei screamed, leading a wedge of his heaviest infantry directly into the fray.
The overwhelming numbers finally began to tell. The disciplined Wei formations buckled under the sheer, suffocating weight of the Hanzhong fanatics. Cao Xiu, recognizing that they were moments away from being completely surrounded and dragged down by the mob, made the bitter, necessary calculation.
"Fall back!" Cao Xiu ordered, parrying a desperate lunge and kicking his attacker over the edge. "Cao Chun! Disengage! We are yielding the wall! Retreat to the inner barricades!"
Cao Chun let out a roar of frustration, decapitating one last Hanzhong soldier before violently pulling his glaive free and stepping back, covering his kinsman's retreat.
With the formidable Wei commanders pushed back and their defensive line collapsing, Zhang Wei and Yang Ang surged forward.
They led their surviving infantry in a brutal, chaotic charge down the blood soaked walkway, overwhelming the few remaining defenders at the gatehouse. They battered down the heavy doors of the control room, slaughtered the winch operators, and seized the mechanisms.
Minutes later, with a screech of tortured metal, the massive southern gates of Chang'An were violently forced open, allowing the fanatical tide of Zhang Lu's army to finally spill into the city streets.
Simultaneously, a radically different tactical masterpiece was unfolding on the western wall.
Here, the assault was an exercise in overwhelming psychological and martial pressure, orchestrated by two of the most brilliant, ruthless minds in the west.
High upon a massive, reinforced command platform that had been rolled to the very edge of the moat, Fa Zheng and Meng Da stood like twin conductors of a symphony of destruction.
Fa Zheng leaned over the railing, his cold, analytical eyes taking in the entire breadth of the western defense. He held a series of command flags, while Meng Da managed the relay runners, ensuring that every order was executed with flawless precision.
The western army of Hengyuan, boasting over one hundred and fifty thousand men, was a terrifying amalgamation of Shu veterans and mountain warriors. But the true terror lay in the men leading the charge.
"The Wei defense relies entirely on their commanders to hold discipline under this bombardment," Fa Zheng observed, his voice calm despite the roaring chaos around him. He pointed toward the center of the western battlements, where two distinct, heavily armored figures were desperately trying to rally their wavering troops.
It was the veteran Wei generals, Xu Huang and Gao Lan.
Xu Huang wielded his legendary great axe, a massive weapon that he swung with devastating, bone crushing force, holding the primary breach almost single handedly. Gao Lan, a master of the spear and a veteran of countless northern campaigns, anchored the flank, his precise strikes keeping the Hengyuan infantry at bay. As long as those two stood, the western wall would not fall.
Fa Zheng narrowed his eyes. "Meng Da. Signal General Yan Yan, General Zhang Ren, and King Meng Huo. Tell them to ignore the rank and file. I want a decapitation strike. Pin Xu Huang and Gao Lan down. Break the head, and the body will die."
Meng Da immediately relayed the order. The specialized drums beat out the command for a concentrated champion assault.
Down on the blood-slicked stones of the western wall, the three titans of Shu received the order.
Meng Huo, the Barbarian King, let out a booming, feral roar that echoed over the clash of steel. He wore no heavy iron plate, only thick, hardened animal hides, relying on his unnatural, bear like strength and speed. He charged forward, dual wielding massive, spiked maces.
"Out of my way, little men!" Meng Huo bellowed, physically plowing through a line of Wei shieldbearers, tossing them aside as if they were made of straw. He locked his wild eyes directly on Xu Huang.
Xu Huang saw the mountain of muscle charging toward him. He braced his stance, gripping the thick wooden haft of his great axe with both hands, ready to meet the barbarian's charge.
But Meng Huo was not fighting alone.
Just as Xu Huang raised his axe to parry Meng Huo's leaping, overhead strike, Yan Yan stepped into his peripheral vision.
The white bearded veteran moved with a deceptive, terrifying speed. Wielding a heavy, long handled guandao, Yan Yan executed a sweeping, low angle strike aimed directly at Xu Huang's knees, forcing the Wei general to violently alter his guard.
CLANG!
The impact of Meng Huo's maces against the hastily raised haft of Xu Huang's axe sent a shockwave up the Wei general's arms. Xu Huang gritted his teeth, his boots sliding backward on the stone.
He was a master of his weapon, but trying to defend against the savage, overwhelming brute force of Meng Huo while simultaneously parrying the precise, veteran strikes of Yan Yan was a nearly impossible task.
A few yards away, Gao Lan found himself in a similarly desperate struggle.
Zhang Ren, his face as cold and unreadable as carved granite, engaged Gao Lan in a blinding flurry of spear thrusts. Zhang Ren was a strict disciplinarian, and his martial style reflected it, there was no wasted movement, no flashy flourishes, only perfectly angled, lethal strikes seeking the gaps in Gao Lan's armor.
"You cannot hold all three gates!" Gao Lan shouted, parrying a thrust that nearly took his eye, attempting to demoralize his opponent.
"We do not need to hold them," Zhang Ren replied coldly, stepping inside Gao Lan's guard and driving the butt of his spear into the Wei general's ribs. "We only need to open them."
Because Xu Huang and Gao Lan were entirely suppressed, locked into a desperate, losing duel for their own survival against three master warriors, they could no longer issue commands. They could no longer direct the archers, shift the shield walls, or call for reinforcements.
Without their leadership, the Wei defense on the western wall rapidly crumbled.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the secondary tier of Shu commanders, Li Yan, Wu Lan, and Zhang Ni, led a massive wave of elite infantry straight past the dueling generals. They carved a bloody path down the walkway, cutting down the disorganized Wei officers and storming the gatehouse.
Xu Huang, seeing the Hengyuan soldiers swarming the control room out of the corner of his eye, let out a roar of absolute fury. He swung his great axe in a massive, horizontal arc, forcing Meng Huo and Yan Yan to step back, but it was too late.
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 36 (203 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 11)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 1,010 (+20)
VIT: 659 (+20)
AGI: 653 (+10)
INT: 691
CHR: 98
WIS: 569
WILL: 436
ATR Points: 0