The west city wall is three hundred feet long. Although it is in ruins, it must be admitted that it was indeed rammed straight back then. The only difference is that the city gate in the middle is a little concave. Outside the city gate is a deep stone pit. It was said to be a pond originally, but there has not been a drop of water here since the sixth year of Guanghe. At a glance, there are only round stones with some moss scattered on them, and occasionally a wild grass will grow tenaciously in the middle.
Our situation may be much worse than theirs. I don’t know how bad it is. It all depends on how long we can hold on.
"Take your wives and mother to the outside of the government office in the north of the city and let them go into the arrow tower there. Remember, this is my order. When you go there, prepare more arrows, swords and axes, and lock the door... well... then drag more things from the government office to completely block the door from the inside, and prepare more water. If we can't hold on here, we will have to make the final resistance at the north city wall and the six arrow towers under the wall. After blocking the door, you can put a rope on the battlement above. Go and come over when you are ready. If you are short of manpower, there will be people over there to help you." For me now, I can only give the orders calmly and then turn around to look at the familiar black dragon in the distance.
"Marquis Fengyun, that brother asked me and you to forgive his sins before he died." The Yellow Turban man who had spoken to you was now sobbing, with a group of people gathering not far behind him.
"Why are you crying? Why are you crying at this time?" I finally couldn't help shouting, and then without turning my head, I shouted at the back: "Bring some wine."
The wine was delivered in a moment. I took the jar in my hand and walked to the crowded area. I looked at them lying on the ground in silence, raised my neck and took a big sip, and continued to shout: "Hurry up, what did he do? Pick up the important things!"
"He..." The big man tried hard to steady his trembling voice, and finally said, "He and his men wanted to attack Dong Zhuo when he crossed the river, because they were afraid that we couldn't hold on, and they were afraid that you would blame them when they came back. You always think of others, so this time they had to think of you... But Dong Zhuo's army's bows and arrows were too strong, and the people on the other side of the river shot them so hard that they couldn't get close, and the cavalry who had just crossed the river dispersed them, and they were killed miserably. They wanted us to take them to capture your city, but they would rather die than agree. The people of Xiliang stripped them of their clothes one by one and killed them. One of the brothers suddenly thought that it would be too dangerous if they were allowed to go with their clothes on, so..."
"Alright! I... got it!" Looking at the enemy getting closer and closer, knowing the general cause of the matter, he could only interrupt him.
This might be the last time we commemorate others, and the next time might be when we are commemorated by others. I knelt on one leg, and the people beside me knelt with me. I looked around, and finally looked at these young but lifeless faces. I felt sad and angry, and said slowly and very forcefully: "We are seeing you off together. We will kill the enemies for you. Farewell, brothers!"
He poured the wine on the ground, took another big gulp, stood up and faced the enemy, and ordered his men: "Everyone drink too, it's for our brothers and for ourselves. Don't smash the jars, we may need to save them to hit the enemy. Also... let these dozens of brothers stay here and fight the enemy with us."
Soon, the sounds of drinking and shouting for wine were heard all around us, and the darkness seemed to become extremely far away in an instant, so far away that we didn't need to worry about it at all, and even life and death seemed to have no meaning.
I suddenly thought, if everyone's life is waiting for such a death, then maybe from the moment we are born, he is like this, just some people are far away, some people are close, this may be too pessimistic; or you can think like this, when death comes, maybe you will be allowed to struggle, and if you can struggle, then you will be let go once, return to the original place, and chase you again in the future. Thinking this way, I feel much more peaceful. Now maybe it's really time for us to struggle, maybe all we can do is struggle. So at this moment, there is not much difference between Ping An Fengyun Hou and the soldiers next to him, and after a few hours, there is even less difference.
"Everyone, listen up. The arrows of the Xiliang people are powerful. Put up your shields and get ready!" Seeing the enemy approaching, I gave the last order. I realized that my voice was almost hoarse after I shouted: "All camps below, take your positions. Don't let the enemy enter the city. Behind... Lao Liu! Get your people ready. See which side the enemy enters the city and counterattack at any time. Send some more people to notify the people in the south to prepare the defense of the south of the city. Soldiers in other cities should be on guard. If anything happens, don't ask me. Make the decision yourself."
After that, I should naturally go to where I should go, because a part of that place collapsed at some point in time. Now the rammed earth has been tied, but there is no time to tamp it. We can only fill in some soil and wet the outside with water to prepare for the enemy.
I came here, thinking that at least I could feel at ease and that my brothers who were guarding the city could feel at ease. However, I didn't know if the enemy was affected, but at least they rushed to the front of the city so quickly. The words on the banner in the middle could not be seen clearly in the surging smoke and dust, but at least they were heading towards the city gate. When they really arrived, they did not immediately shoot arrows to deploy their formation as I thought, as I saw in Hanzhong, but just looked at the corpses lying on the ground with some doubt from a distance where the arrows could not reach.
There were actually two or three hundred corpses down there! There were more of them near the city, and fewer farther away.
"Were we the only ones on the city wall at that time?" someone nearby suddenly asked. It seemed that everyone just remembered this question at this time. Everyone looked at each other, and no one could explain it.
The enemy general who led the battle was quite young, but also quite unfamiliar. Anyway, I had never seen him in Hanzhong, and if I had seen him, he would not be there now. He rode his horse and waited in front of the battle, waiting for his soldiers to stand in formation in the dust. For a moment, the front was gray, and only the image of the young general in black armor was relatively clear.
"Is Lord Xie, Marquis of Ping'an Fengyun, here?" The man had an air of youthful frivolity. He showed no surprise at what was happening in front of us, and actually had a rather smug tone.
"It's me." When I heard the words and was walking quickly towards the city gate to confront him, suddenly the big man with yellow turban stood on the top of the city wall with his right arm exposed. I stopped at that time and looked at the big man in front of me with some doubt, wondering what his name was.
"Since you, Xiliang'er, have come here to die, why not leave your last words first? I pity you for having still some breasts that have not dried up. I'll pass the message to your family and I'll make sure to get them to them within five years." This man was very powerful. He could actually speak to the enemy chieftain with a fluent Jingzhou accent, and his words were quite powerful and "appropriate". Halfway through listening, he suddenly realized something was wrong. There was a man behind the big man whose mouth was constantly moving, but the big man's Adam's apple didn't seem to move, only his mouth was moving.
"Oh, Marquis Fengyun turned out to be such a rough man..."
"Yes, it's thick enough to fit all of you inside..." This is a very clever statement, I may not find it so interesting.
"Haha, it's a pity that you have no way out now. Five hundred people... right, Lord Ping An Fengyun, humph, I have five thousand people, ten to one, your wall is only two people high, surrender early, and I will let your soldiers and civilians leave alive. Rumor has it that you cherish your soldiers very much, right?"
"I always keep my word. If you do not attack my city and withdraw your troops, I will offer my head to you. God is my witness. If I go back on my word, I will be struck by lightning and my descendants will be extinct." There was silence on the city for a while. Everyone looked at the big man standing on the battlements at the city gate, because it was him who came out this time, but this time the trick of the two people was completely exposed. Although they seemed to be serious at the beginning and their words were polite, the foreign accent that was obviously not from Jingzhou made people understand what was going on at once.
“Haha, this is obviously the accent of Qingzhou in Hebei. Although Xu’s voice is crude, I can still hear it... Besides, how could someone who can write three parts of drunkenness and seven parts of frivolity be like you... Marquis Ping’an Fengyun! I didn’t expect that a person as arrogant as you would be cowardly and afraid of death after all, but you find someone else to fill the role and only dare to speak from the back. How ridiculous! Ha..." The people behind him also laughed along with his laughter, but their laughter was much more hateful.
When I was thinking about how to respond, the person behind the big guy continued in the Jingzhou accent, which was the voice that the people below thought was that of Marquis Ping'an Fengyun.
"Haha, that's right, what's the big deal, just fight. You guys laughed at me just now and I beat you all to death. Now I'm not in human form, so it's inconvenient for me to come out, for fear of scaring you kids. Haha..." Although we were few in number, this time everyone's laughter was more powerful, and it almost set off a roar on the city wall and rushed down.
One could immediately see the uneasiness and restlessness among the Liangzhou troops, with whispers everywhere.
The general was indeed amazing. He waved his weapon and pointed it at the top of the city wall, then shouted loudly: "I came here for you. Just come out and fight me." After a pause, he shouted even louder: "I called you but you didn't come out. Are you afraid of your master?"
The boy finally didn't know what to do and looked at me.
It seemed like it was time for me to come out, but coming out like this would put me at a disadvantage, so after thinking it over, I made up my mind, yawned loudly, and shouted, "Which bastard disturbed your grandfather Xie Zhi's sleep?"
I smoothed my hair, picked up a wine jar, and pushed aside the brothers in front of me, pretending to be sleepy all the way. I only nodded to the two men, then sat down on the battlement, picked my ears with my fingers, and started talking, but not to the people below, but to the people next to me, and my voice was a little louder: "Brothers, what's going on? Haven't these people been dealt with yet?... Who are these people down there? They're preventing me from getting a good night's sleep." Then I hopped onto the battlement and actually drank the wine with my neck tilted back. In fact, my heart was pounding. I still remembered the cold arrow shot by someone in Hanzhong, but I thought the risk was worth taking.
When I replied and wiped my mouth, I realized that there were indeed people with bows and arrows in the formation ahead, but they did not shoot. I was relieved, but at the same time I thought that I must not let my Lady Pingguo know about this, otherwise I would really have no way to survive. However, I might not live long enough to see her find out.
At this time, the wind suddenly turned to the southeast. The big flag was seen being unfurled. On it was a black word "Guo", which kept shaking, like a beheading knife and a prisoner trembling beside it.
After a few gulps of the yellow soup, he began to speak in a confused tone: "Boy, you are young, why don't you do anything else? Why be a soldier? Why don't you be a soldier of something else? What's the point of being a soldier? It's fine if you are just a thing, but you come here to fight? Why don't you fight the town of Jingxi of the Han Dynasty? Even if you want to fight, just fight. It just so happens that I, an old man, am here... It seems that you really don't want to live. Fine, I'll grant your wish! And don't say those lies. You are acting like a good person with this attitude. Do you really think my brothers are all fools? And you killed so many of our brothers. Even if you really have nothing to do with us, we still need to avenge you!" I thought to myself that this sentence was quite good. At this moment, I didn't know what fear and tension were. I turned around and jumped off the battlement. I raised my even hoarse and heavy voice among my brothers and shouted almost hysterically: "Brothers, Dong Zhuo's people are coming, kill them! We are going to avenge you, brothers, kill Dong Zhuo! Kill!"
After I finished shouting, I realized that I was crying. I didn't know why. Many things flashed through my mind one by one, but I didn't have time to think about why, because a familiar scream of an injured bird made me turn my head back.
It all started at last, but the people around were very quiet, just like the brother lying behind, as if nothing had happened in front, as if time had stopped here, the river had stopped flowing, and the dead had passed away.
Under the blood-red setting sun, arrows blew past like the wind, and some people quickly fell down, splattering flowers the same color as the sun. Some fell on the people next to them, and some floated into the dust and then withered away, silently and lightly, making it difficult for people to accept.
The helpless wounded trembling on the ground are making their last struggle, but they can only rely on themselves, no one can help them. In fact, we are also cruel, but we have no choice, otherwise, we will be the same as them, and there will be no hope waiting for us.
The situation deteriorated faster than I thought. The people on the city wall soon became sparse. I had to watch over the people coming up from the four battlements by myself. So, I was hit by three arrows in the chest, all of which were on the breastplate. I can only think that I was too lucky. However, the three arrows were also shallowly pierced in the chest, which made me extremely uncomfortable, but I couldn't free my hands to pull them out. I could only let this piercing pain accompany me all the time, and made me sober up from the numbness of drunkenness so reluctantly during this period. Time suddenly became difficult and painful.
They were too well prepared, with ropes, grappling hooks, short ladders, etc. What was even more prepared was their people, who kept swarming up. The endless stream of them forced me to admit that I was completely desperate for a long time at that time. Every time I saw an arrow coming up, I thought my life was about to end. But sometimes it seemed that the arrows were hanging in the air. For some reason, they whistled past me when I leaned over and almost subconsciously swept down the soldiers who were climbing up the city, but my arms were still repeatedly grazed by arrows or left on them.
The excited atmosphere eventually turned into a final and courageous resistance, but I couldn't even put up a brave resistance. The numbness in my arms made it almost impossible for me to complete the movements I was accustomed to.
But at this time, the people of Xiliang suddenly retreated!
Originally, only the people on a section of the wall began to retreat, but soon it became a whole movement. Then, the whole brigade began to retreat in a hurry, without any rules at all. At other times, if I had two thousand people, or even one thousand, I would have ordered a pursuit without hesitation. But now, at that time, I just watched them leave with a heavy breath, and a fleeting sense of relief passed quietly through my heart. I didn't know what it was like to watch a perfect opportunity leave without any regret.
"Why are they retreating? Are our people here?" I looked around. Most of the brothers around me didn't say anything. They were panting and preparing for the next charge of their opponents. Those who were already prepared just stared at the dark clouds gathering in the west with dry lips.
Lao Liu's men had come up a long time ago. When he saw me, he wanted to talk to me but he was panting. I waved my hand to show that there was no hurry and pointed to the west, indicating that we still had time. In fact, I was also trying to calm myself down and catch my breath while looking at him. His head, which was already full of white hair, was wrapped with a layer of white cotton cloth. In the setting sun, the cloth was covered with layers of blood of varying depths, all of which were reflected dark red.
"My head was grazed by a stray arrow behind the city... It's okay! I just saw that Xiliang barbarian getting close, and I thought he was getting impatient after failing to capture the city, so I asked my brothers to shoot arrows at him... This guy was hit by several arrows and is probably dead by now. Good, now that they have lost their leader, they may retreat, right?" He said while panting, his voice hoarse.
"No... ah!" At this point, I pulled out the arrow stuck in my armor, and I couldn't help but groan. I found that I didn't know when there was another arrow stuck in the front armor, in the lower right abdomen, and it didn't penetrate deep into my flesh. Relatively speaking, the injury was not serious. It just felt a little painful when I pulled it out. Before I pulled it out, I didn't even feel it. Maybe it was the arrow that was deeply stuck in my arm that made me feel the pain, and I didn't take the other things seriously. Obviously, there is a big difference between having armor and not having armor. The barbs of the arrow cluster made me sweat all over as soon as I touched the arrow shaft, and my fingers were shaking, not to mention pulling them out.
"Come... help me." A drop of sweat dripped from my forehead, blurring my vision. The people in front of me turned into a ball. Soon, all the bones in my body also felt the same. I insisted not to shout out, but just said incoherently: "It's easy for them to come... but it's troublesome to leave... They must take Mingzi... otherwise they will be wiped out. They must come back"
I didn't have time to pay attention to my injuries. After a quick bandage, the person who helped me bandage and I returned to our original positions. Almost at the same time when the arrows had just left my body, all of us saw the vague black cloud rushing towards us with the chilly spring evening breeze. In fact, we didn't feel any warmth in the spring breeze.
Half of the 400 people around were lying on the ground, and the other half were mostly half-buried in the ground. I was already feeling a little exhausted, and my mouth was very dry. I wanted to drink water, but I couldn't leave. I looked ahead, and then at the brothers next to me. Most of them were looking at me. I suddenly wanted to shake my head and sigh, but I knew I couldn't.
Because they were not loyal to me in the first place, they just trusted me.
They trust me. If I lose confidence in them, they will be completely desperate, and even their final resistance will become a helpless struggle.
Thinking about what they said to me, I think in addition to trust, there is something else that warms the heart.
I straightened my back, wiped the sweat off my forehead, pulled out an iron shield from the ground with my left hand, picked up the spear from the parapet with my right hand, looked around, and laughed silently.
Then, I saw their smiles in response. Old Liu smiled the brightest, as if he was so happy for the first time in his life. The big guy and the short guy who was talking behind him at the beginning also smiled at me, which suddenly made me interested: "The game you guys played today is interesting. After finishing this chapter, let's play this together."
"Okay!" they both said at the same time.
However, things are usually not as interesting or perfect as they are said to be.
This was the last sentence I heard from the young man, "Okay!" I can still remember that voice with a Jingzhou accent, but not a moment after the battle, I saw an arrow hit his left temple, and it was deeply pierced. When he fell among the brothers, he didn't even breathe, but a lot of blood flowed from his mouth and nose - a lot of blood that was insignificant.
When he died, his eyes were open, as if he was looking at me, probably trying to tell me that he couldn't play anymore.
We didn't hold out on the west wall until dark, and we almost didn't have time to retreat to the south wall. Almost at the same time, there were no defenders on several walls, and then the black poisonous stream poured into Mingzi. If the people on the south wall hadn't used the slope to rush down and pick us up, at least my battle would have ended at that time.
I don't want to recall the sunset of that day. Under the blood-like setting sun, all the blood shed was black. There were people standing, sitting, and lying inside and outside the city wall, but all of them were dead or about to die.
We are becoming less and less like humans and more like animals to be slaughtered. We burn our corpses to stop the enemy; we remove the armor of the dead to shield ourselves; we roll down the city wall, groaning in pain regardless of everything. And I am just an ordinary me among us, exactly the same as this me, that me, and a certain me.
But we still resisted, always resisting, with our weapons free from our minds. When we looked at each other, we could still muster some courage, but when we faced the enemy in front of us and felt alone, I completely lost all my courage. I almost only saw the enemy all the time, but I didn't dare to look back.
I don't know what I was afraid of. I couldn't think of anything at the time. I was just afraid. I had never been so scared before. At least today was the first time I felt this way.
Maybe I have some concerns and am no longer the silly guy I used to be.
Suddenly, a sound that was out of tune with this killing scene appeared in my ears. It was a woman's scream, coming from my right.
I seemed to be back to that afternoon, when Yinling and I walked hand in hand, but the beautiful memories could not stay in my mind for long. Then, the flame of a rocket burned in front of my eyes, making me blink for a while. I just waved my gun to defend. In front of me, there was only the red color of the flame and the black color reaching the horizon. I remembered that there were women in our city, and I wondered if Pei and the common people had arrived in Lingling.
In the corner of my right eye, I saw a dark chaos, as if someone was charging towards the arrow tower. I took a few steps back and finally returned to everyone.
Leaving my left and right sides to my brothers, I immediately looked closely at the six arrow towers an inch south of the city. Sure enough, the black vines of the Xiliang people were climbing up the battlements of one of the towers, while the others could barely defend each other's tower bases.
It looked like one of the towers was about to fall, and some people had even climbed up to the battlements and started fighting. I didn't hesitate, I didn't even think about anything, I just picked up my spear and stabbed out like that. To be honest, I had never practiced throwing a spear before.
"Quick, support that tower." The gun was immediately submerged in darkness, and I had to urgently ask everyone to help. As I shouted, I felt a cloud of arrows flying out from the wall on my right, and the poison vines shrank back, and I felt a little relieved.
My heart was in suspense again. Suddenly, a group of arrows flew up from the slope of the city wall, and many brothers fell down around us. We had no time to mourn our newly deceased brothers, but retreated directly.
A moment later, when someone came to tell us that the Xiliang people had gone around the city wall to the east and launched an attack, we had just used the burning wine jars and cloth to burn the front into a red flame. We were looking at each other with a slightly puzzled smile. This sudden and expected bad news meant that they had completely forced us to the south city wall. I had nothing, and everyone had no emotion to show. We picked up arrows silently, but we knew in our hearts that everything was just a matter of time.
We can't go anywhere!
We are going to die!
The stars in the sky were all mixed up, I couldn't make out anything, they just swayed back and forth above us, making the sky a mess. There was no moon that day.