The sun slowly rose over the eastern horizon.
General Yue Jin stood atop the walls of Xiangyang in full armor, staring through the pale morning fog drifting across the Han River. At first glance, there was nothing there except mist and dark water. Even so, the unease in his chest refused to fade.
It felt as though some enormous beast was lurking beneath the river's surface, waiting silently for the right moment to emerge and crash into Xiangyang itself.
Yue Jin frowned and shook the thought from his mind.
Ridiculous. Whales did not live in rivers. Clearly, exhaustion was beginning to affect his judgment.
Cold dew clung to his beard, and he brushed it aside impatiently before raising one hand toward the horizon.
His guards immediately understood the signal.
Orders spread rapidly across the battlements, and within moments groups of light cavalry burst from Xiangyang's gates. One detachment rode south along the riverbanks while another disappeared directly into the heavy fog ahead.
Unlike Cao Cao back at headquarters, Yue Jin did not have the luxury of clean intelligence reports and carefully organized maps. He was standing on the front line of the war, where information was always incomplete and decisions carried immediate consequences.
His responsibilities were brutally straightforward. Watch carefully, react quickly, and hold the line for as long as possible.
Quietly, he had already transferred elite troops and important grain reserves from Fancheng into Xiangyang. In his heart, Yue Jin had fully prepared himself to die defending these walls if necessary.
After all, Cao Cao's order had been perfectly clear.
He was to hold Xiangyang, not Fancheng.
Yue Jin remembered those words with absolute clarity.
He owed the Prime Minister everything.
His career, his status, even the safety of his family back in Yecheng all existed because of Cao Cao's favor. On top of that, Yue Jin carried a lingering resentment toward Guan Yu that had never truly faded.
Retreat simply was not a thought he allowed himself to entertain.
Still, waiting for the scouts to return felt like torture. To distract himself from the endless fog beyond the river, his thoughts drifted back to earlier years.
He remembered the third year of Jian'an, when Cao Cao crushed Zhang Xiu, captured Lü Bu, and stabilized Xuzhou. Despite all that, Kong Rong still dared to publicly suggest surrendering to Yuan Shao. The scholar had loudly praised Yuan Shao's supposedly unbeatable generals, especially Yan Liang and Wen Chou.
Back then, Xun Yu had dismantled Kong Rong's arguments in front of the entire court, calmly listing every weakness in Yuan Shao's faction one by one.
But Yue Jin understood Cao Cao well.
"Ah, this scholar Kong Rong. His EQ was basically zero. Why were you so proud of Yuan Shao, shouting it out loud in court? Didn't you know? Our Cao Cao hated and envied everything that Yuan Shao guy had. And you just had to rub it in his face. No, worse. You slapped him in the face."
Yue Jin shook his head. The Prime Minister definitely took those words personally.
Then came the fifth year of Jian'an.
Guan Yu charged directly into Yuan Shao's army and cut down Yan Liang in broad daylight. In a single battle, he erased Cao Cao's greatest insecurity regarding Yuan Shao's famed champions.
Afterward, Cao Cao openly mocked Kong Rong at court, asking what had happened to those "invincible generals."
Yue Jin still remembered it clearly.
"I told you, Kong Rong. EQ. Zero."
He shook his head. "And poor Yuan Shao... Boss Cao is a vindictive guy."
That same year, he himself had led a successful night raid against Chunyu Qiong's camp and killed the enemy commander. It had been a genuine military accomplishment.
Yet compared to Guan Yu's feat at Baima, it felt insignificant.
One was a clever tactical operation.
The other sounded like something from a heroic ballad drunken storytellers exaggerated for coin.
Then, after receiving Cao Cao's favor, titles, and rewards, Guan Yu simply abandoned everything and rode back to Liu Bei without hesitation.
Yeah. Because of your wild mouth, Kong Rong, Yuan Shao got eliminated. And now Guan Yu gets all the prize.
I hated him for that.
The arrogance. The pride. The way he just walked away like none of it mattered. Trash. Just a pretender.
And the worst part? Cao Cao still admired him afterward. Still talked about him like some girl from the neighborhood who married another man, and Boss Cao still can't forget.
Guan Yu left. Just hung up his seal, turned his back, and left. Didn't even look at Boss Cao's face. Poor Boss Cao. His obsession with Guan Yu is like one-sided love. That kind of pain is hard to swallow.
If I tried leaving like that, my corpse would be hanging over the city gate before sunset, and nine generations of my family would follow me straight to hell. But Guan Yu? Guan Yu got gifts. Escorts. Respect. Poetry.
Where is the justice in that?
Yue Jin tightened his grip on his sword.
Now he's coming back. Coming north with his fancy new fleet and his fancy new blade.
Good.
Let him come.
Let's see if the god of war is still a god when I'm standing on these walls, or merely the luckiest fraud, like Yan Liang was a fraud.
As the morning progressed, the rising sun gradually burned away the fog blanketing the Han River.
The dew clinging to Yue Jin's beard disappeared into the warming air while cavalry scouts steadily returned through the gates of Xiangyang with fresh reports.
Yue Jin listened carefully.
Then he felt an overwhelming wave of disappointment.
A southern army had indeed marched out from Dangyang. Their banners carried the character for "Han," while the commander's standard bore the surname "Huang." Based on the scouts' estimates, the force numbered somewhere between three and five thousand men.
But the banner Yue Jin truly cared about was nowhere on land.
The "Guan" standard was flying above the Han River itself, mounted atop an enormous warship surrounded by dozens of smaller vessels.
Yue Jin had spent more than a year stationed in the region. He knew perfectly well who guarded Dangyang.
Huang Zhong.
An aging officer inherited from Liu Biao's old administration. The man had a reputation for decent archery and absolutely nothing else.
Yue Jin had previously sent spies to Xinye and Wancheng to dig up files on the man. The reports were highly laughable. Under Liu Biao, Huang Zhong spent his entire career chasing poorly armed mountain bandits. He had zero notable military achievements against professional armies. Plus, the man was practically a fossil.
"It's an obvious trap. And you, Huang Zhong, you're already old. Why not just retire? Go home, work the farmland, plant some vegetables. Let us who are still young handle this business of war and killing each other," Yue Jin declared with certainty.
"And you, Guan Yu. Using an old man as bait to lure the Xiangyang defenders into an open field battle. Where is your bottom morality?Where is the basic respect for the young to respect the old? And now, you just swing your naval fleet around and prepare to attack. Who would fall for such a basic trick?"
Yue Jin felt highly superior. That feeling lasted exactly as long as it took to eat a bowl of hot noodle soup.
Hoofbeats hammered against the cobblestones. Another squad of riders desperately spurred their horses through the city gates. The news hit the command center like a physical blow.
"Yicheng has fallen?" Yue Jin repeated the words slowly. He refused to process them.
Yicheng was located barely a hundred miles southeast of Xiangyang. The two cities formed a mutually supporting defensive line. Yicheng was a critical strategic buffer.
And now it was gone?
Yue Jin had literally just finished breakfast.
How does an entire city disappear before my noodles even finish digesting?
A messenger knelt on the stone floor. Blood leaked from a nasty wound on his forehead. He was openly weeping.
"The enemy brought a giant ship right up to the bank. They bombarded the eastern wall. The structure collapsed completely. The enemy infantry marched right in without breaking a sweat."
Yue Jin stared at him.
"Let me understand this correctly." His voice was dangerously calm. "A giant ship. It shot at the wall. The wall fell down. And then what?"
The messenger swallowed hard, his eyes wide with leftover terror. "Our prefect led a retreat out the back gate. We ran straight into an ambush. I barely escaped with my life. Right before I broke out, I saw the prefect get completely cut down by an old general."
Yue Jin slowly closed his eyes.
"So. To summarize. The old man I just finished mocking for being too ancient to fight? That exact old man just took a city from us in the time it took me to digest a bowl of noodles."
He turned and looked at his officers.
"Does anyone else find this timing slightly embarrassing, or is it just me?"
The officers stared at the floor in perfect silence.
"Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I spend the entire morning declaring this is an obvious trap that nobody would fall for, and now Huang Zhong, who should apparently be at home planting vegetables, has just walked through Yicheng's front door like he owns the place."
He looked back at the messenger.
"And the prefect? Dead?"
"Cut down, General. By the old man personally."
Yue Jin pinched the bridge of his nose. "Of course he was. Of course."
He turned and stared out toward the river.
"Collapsed walls. From a ship. What kind of nonsense is this? Walls are not supposed to collapse. That is the entire point of walls!"
He shook his head in disbelief.
He remembered the siege of Jiangling. Those massive ballista bolts snapping wooden pontoon bridges in half.
But this? Destroying a city wall directly from the water? That was impossible. That violated every known rule of siege warfare. Stone walls were specifically invented to stop armies from casually walking inside.
If ships could break city walls now, then what was next? Warships climbing mountains? Floating cavalry? Naval infantry charging uphill on boats?
For the first time that morning, Yue Jin no longer felt superior.
He felt cheated.
Yue Jin slowly sat back down.
War was changing far too quickly.
The rules he grew up studying suddenly felt outdated. Every battlefield lesson drilled into his head now came with an invisible footnote saying: unless Guan Yu's engineers built something weird again.
Still, he forced himself to calm down.
Yicheng was one thing.
Xiangyang and Fancheng were entirely different beasts.
These were premier fortresses guarding the central corridor of the realm. Their walls were thick, their foundations deep, and their defenses layered carefully over decades. They were not some random county town that collapsed after getting hit a few times by floating madness from the river.
No matter how unreasonable Liu Bei's faction had become lately, stone was still stone.
The walls would hold.
They had to.
Yue Jin exhaled slowly before issuing orders in a cold, steady voice.
"Draft a full report on the fall of Yicheng. Send it north to the Prime Minister immediately. Tell him... tell him the ships can break walls now. Let him figure out what to do with that information."
At this point, figuring out how to deal with giant wall-breaking warships was no longer his responsibility.
That sounded like a problem for people in Yecheng with better robes and larger salaries.
Yue Jin's only job was to make sure Xiangyang did not crack.
He stood up and pointed toward the gates.
"Lock down the city. No one rides out."
After a brief pause, he added grimly:
"And if anyone sees Huang Zhong near the walls, shoot him first. I am suddenly very tired of old men."
---
Out on the river, Guan Yu stood calmly atop the deck of his enormous flagship, one hand stroking his long beard while the other rested against the hilt of the Green Dragon Crescent Blade.
He looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
Xu Shu stood beside him, reading the battle report with an expression somewhere between amusement and disbelief.
Even though he had fully expected the operation to succeed, the enemy's version of events still felt absurd.
Collapsed walls?
The defenders made it sound like the heavens themselves had split open.
The actual truth was much less dramatic and somehow even more insulting.
Guan Yu had simply ordered the dreadnought to anchor sideways along the riverbank before aiming every mounted ballista directly at Yicheng's eastern gate.
Not the walls.
The gate.
The giant bolts smashed apart the wooden doors, shattered the supporting beams behind them, and wrecked the upper archway holding the entire gatehouse together. The top section partially collapsed under the impact.
Technically speaking, the walls themselves were still mostly intact.
Unfortunately for the defenders, watching your "impregnable fortress" explode open from the front entrance tended to produce severe emotional damage.
Once panic spread through the city, military accuracy vanished immediately. A broken gate somehow evolved into "the walls collapsed" by the time survivors reached Xiangyang.
Guan Yu chuckled softly.
"Yicheng is a small settlement," he explained. "The prefect relied too heavily on the river and mountain terrain. He neglected repairs for years because he believed nobody could realistically attack the place."
Most of that information came directly from Ma Liang, who knew the region almost offensively well.
Xu Shu was fairly certain Ma Liang could probably navigate half of Jingzhou blindfolded using tree positions and soil texture.
Guan Yu continued, clearly enjoying himself.
"A year ago, Lady Huang Yueying designed a new type of ballista bolt specifically for siege warfare."
He gestured toward a nearby wooden crate.
Xu Shu walked over and picked one up for inspection.
The bolt looked deeply unreasonable.
The tip was not sharpened steel meant for piercing armor. Instead, the front had been fitted with a heavy iron hemisphere.
It looked less like ammunition and more like someone tied a blacksmith's hammer to a giant spear.
"It cannot penetrate heavy armor properly," Guan Yu admitted. "But against gates, towers, and wooden fortifications, the impact is devastating."
Xu Shu nodded slowly.
"Extremely practical."
That was the terrifying thing about Jiangling's engineering workshops lately. Nothing they designed felt elegant anymore. Everything was brutally practical.
The ships carried an entire collection of specialized ammunition now.
Some bolts had multiple hooked fins designed to tear apart sails and rigging. Others used stabilizing wings for long-distance firing. A few contained hollow compartments for incendiaries or oil mixtures. There were even harpoon bolts attached to thick ropes for naval boarding operations.
Every time Xu Shu inspected their arsenal, he became more convinced Huang Yueying spent her free time asking herself deeply concerning questions like:
"How can I make warfare even less enjoyable for the enemy?"
Xu Shu set the siege bolt back into the crate before glancing toward Guan Yu.
"With Yicheng secured, Jichang can finally stop worrying about his family."
Since returning to Liu Bei's faction, Xu Shu had been genuinely impressed by Ma Liang.
The young man was frighteningly competent.
He understood local geography perfectly, grasped grand strategy unusually quickly, and after months of exposure to the celestial lightscreen broadcasts, his military vocabulary had evolved in directions that occasionally gave Xu Shu headaches.
Sometimes Ma Liang casually used phrases like "supply chain optimization" or "operational tempo" with complete confidence despite living in the second century.
Xu Shu still had no idea what "tempo control" was supposed to mean in military terms, but Ma Liang sounded intelligent whenever he said it, so nobody questioned him.
The young strategist lacked battlefield experience, but that problem solved itself quickly during wartime.
That was why Xu Shu paired him with veteran General Huang Zhong for this campaign. Taking Yicheng first allowed Ma Liang to immediately evacuate his extended family from the region.
A strategist performed much better when enemy armies were not holding his relatives hostage.
In the end, Yicheng was merely a convenient stop along the route north.
The fleet did not even anchor for the night.
Warships continued pushing upriver under the cold evening wind while soldiers worked through the darkness preparing the next phase of the campaign.
Xu Shu pulled his cloak tighter around himself.
Despite the victory, a tight knot of anxiety sat in Xu Shu's chest. He looked toward the western horizon.
Right now, Pang Tong should have already begun moving in Hanzhong.
Xu Shu suddenly felt a wave of sympathy for whichever Cao Cao officer woke up tomorrow morning and discovered multiple disasters happening simultaneously
---
Cao Cao knew exactly what Pang Tong was doing.
In fact, he figured it out before Xu Shu fully pieced the entire operation together.
The pressure from a looming two-front war instantly destroyed whatever peaceful retirement lifestyle Cao Cao had been pretending to enjoy in Yecheng.
The Prime Minister immediately packed a light travel convoy, summoned his senior ministers and generals, and moved the entire command structure south toward Xuchang.
No more leisurely banquets.
No more poetry appreciation.
No more pretending the empire was stable.
War had arrived at the door again.
Unfortunately, the journey south lasted just long enough for reality to become even worse.
Halfway to Xuchang, an emergency dispatch from Xiahou Yuan intercepted Cao Cao's carriage.
The message itself was brutally concise.
Send more grain.
Or send more troops.
Pick one.
Cao Cao stared at the report for a long moment before slowly lowering it.
"Wonderful," he muttered. "My generals have started giving me multiple-choice questions."
Xiahou Yuan attached a detailed explanation of the disaster unfolding in Guanzhong.
Liu Bei's forces had already marched out from Hanzhong.
A fast-moving forward detachment led by Wei Yan and Huo Jun established itself around the Wuzhang Plains. They completely refused to fight a normal campaign.
No major sieges.
No decisive engagements.
No heroic battlefield showdown where everyone dramatically charged at each other beneath fluttering banners.
Instead, they specialized in making life unbearable.
Wei Yan in particular behaved less like a traditional general and more like an especially malicious bandit chief who somehow acquired military education.
His cavalry squads rode through villages scattering propaganda everywhere.
The message was painfully simple:
Come south.
Free land.
Guaranteed grain.
Under normal circumstances, Cao Cao might have laughed at such childish tactics.
Unfortunately, Guanzhong had just suffered through a brutal spring famine.
Hungry peasants hearing the words "free land, free grain" reacted with shocking enthusiasm.
Entire groups began abandoning their homes and heading toward Hanzhong.
Xiahou Yuan immediately panicked.
He deployed regular troops to intercept civilians and forcibly relocate them into military farming colonies before half the population escaped south.
Then Wei Yan started targeting the colonies.
Sometimes cavalry appeared screaming out of the hills before abruptly retreating after firing a few arrows. Sometimes they attacked supply wagons. Occasionally they genuinely stormed a farming camp, burned equipment, stole livestock, and disappeared back into the mountains before organized resistance could arrive.
There was no rhythm to it.
No reliable pattern.
Wei Yan operated like a man whose primary military doctrine was personally inconveniencing Xiahou Yuan.
The result was psychological torture.
Xiahou Yuan could not split his forces casually because Wei Yan's defensive positions around Wuzhang were extremely strong. Small assaults achieved nothing except casualties.
But if Xiahou Yuan mobilized his full army, the massive movement became visible from miles away. Wei Yan would simply pack up his troops and vanish back into the Baoxie mountain routes before contact was made.
Trying to catch him felt like trying to punch smoke.
In the end, Xiahou Yuan summarized the situation into two miserable options.
Option one.
Send grain.
Use food supplies to stabilize Guanzhong, buy peasant loyalty, and prepare for a larger autumn campaign.
Option two.
Send reinforcements.
Deploy fresh troops to seal the Baoxie exits and launch a major offensive into the mountain roads.
Cao Cao finished reading the report and closed his eyes briefly.
"So my choices are feeding starving peasants with grain I do not possess…"
He lifted the letter slightly.
"…or killing rebels with soldiers I cannot spare."
The dispatch landed beside him with a soft slap.
"Perfect," Cao Cao muttered darkly. "Absolutely perfect."
"My generals have stopped sending reports. They are sending riddles now."
"And this Wei Yan... are you a thief or a bandit? Why are you poaching my people? And where did Liu Bei find this kind of scoundrel?"
Inside the moving carriage, Xun You quietly watched Cao Cao's complexion darken with every passing minute. The Prime Minister looked one bad report away from coughing blood directly onto the floorboards.
After mentally reviewing the strategic situation for the third time, Xun You finally spoke.
"We cannot abandon Guanzhong."
Cao Cao already knew that. Hanzhong alone was troublesome enough. If Guanzhong also slipped from his control, Liu Bei's western position would become terrifyingly stable. Anyone could take Hanzhong. Anyone. But not Liu Bei. Never Liu Bei.
But after a long silence, Cao Cao shook his head.
"We cannot abandon Xiangyang and Fancheng either."
"That was the real problem.
Several officials had already tried comforting him by dismissing Guan Yu's campaign as a bluff. According to them, Guan Yu was merely a cavalry general pretending to understand naval warfare. The fleet was supposedly all noise and spectacle.
'My lord, you know Guan Yu. The man is a genuine northerner. A land lubber. What could he possibly understand about naval warfare? This whole fleet business is basically a joke.'
Cao Cao rejected that argument immediately.
Cao Cao stared at the advisor who had spoken.
"A joke," he repeated flatly. "You think Guan Yu sailed a fleet up the Han River as a joke."
The advisor's confidence visibly wavered.
"Let me make sure I understand your strategic assessment correctly," Cao Cao continued, his voice dangerously calm. "The man who once rode alone into an army of thousands and came back with my enemy's head... is now playing pretend with boats. For fun. Is that your professional military analysis?"
And nobody understood Guan Yu's personality better than he did. Guan Yu was arrogant to the point of absurdity, but his arrogance rested on top of terrifying ability. The man would never formally declare war and march north unless he genuinely believed he could win.
That exact realization was why Cao Cao was currently rattling around inside a carriage instead of comfortably drinking wine in Yecheng.
Xun You lowered his eyes slightly.
"Then we must send Xu Huang south with reinforcements to stabilize Xiangyang."
He paused before continuing.
"As for Guanzhong, Xiahou Yuan does not necessarily need victory. He simply needs to survive."
The overall strategy became clear very quickly. Suppress the southern offensive first. Then pivot west afterward.
"We crush Guan Yu's advance at Xiangyang," Xun You said calmly. "Once the southern front stabilizes, we redirect the army into Guanzhong and eliminate the western threat afterward."
Cao Cao slowly nodded. It was unpleasant. But it was workable.
Then Xun You delivered the truly ugly part.
"We still hold the families of Ma Chao and Han Sui in Yecheng."
Cao Cao looked up immediately.
"We should use them," Xun You continued. "Send an envoy west. Offer negotiations. Promise rewards if necessary. As long as Ma Chao and Han Sui pressure Hanzhong from the outside, Xiahou Yuan's situation becomes manageable."
Cao Cao narrowed his eyes. Desperate. But reasonable.
Now he simply needed an envoy intelligent enough to survive northwest politics while also expendable enough that losing him would not ruin the government.
Fortunately, the perfect candidate was literally riding beside the carriage at this very moment.
"Draft the order," Cao Cao said casually. "Appoint Sima Yi, the Eastern Bureau Assistant, as official envoy to the northwest. Send him to negotiate with Ma Chao and Han Sui."
Xun You's expression twitched very slightly.
Ah. So the Boss Cao still remembered that.
Earlier in his career, Sima Yi famously pretended to suffer from severe paralysis just to avoid entering government service. Cao Cao never forgot insults like that. Apparently, the punishment for fake illness was being sent directly into a warzone filled with angry cavalry warlords.
Technically speaking, it was not a suicide mission. Ma Chao and Han Sui still had relatives imprisoned in Yecheng. Even rebellious warlords needed to maintain appearances.
They could not immediately slaughter an imperial envoy without consequences.
Still, the mission possessed what scholars politely called "extreme career uncertainty."
And if Sima Yi somehow died during negotiations? Well. That would also send a useful political message to every proud noble clan in the empire.
Outside the carriage, Sima Yi suddenly found himself handed a fresh horse, an official travel seal, and an escort unit of armed cavalry. He stood motionless in the road for several seconds, watching Cao Cao's carriage continue rolling toward Xuchang without him.
The realization slowly settled into his soul. He had been reassigned. Violently.
Nearby, the captain of the royal guard offered him a polite smile filled with absolutely no sympathy whatsoever.
"Assistant Sima," the officer said courteously, "the military situation is urgent. We should depart immediately."
Sima Yi stared westward toward the distant wastelands of Liang Province. At that moment, he experienced profound regret regarding several past life decisions. Pretending to be crippled suddenly felt less clever in hindsight.
Still, refusing the assignment now would simply get him executed in a much more efficient manner.
Sima Yi swallowed heavily, mounted his horse, and grabbed the reins.
"Move out."
As the envoy party rode west, Cao Cao and Xun You inside the carriage had already shifted their attention toward the next looming problem.
Sun Wu.
The situation in the east made no sense. If Liu Bei truly intended to launch a major northern campaign, then logically he should have coordinated operations with Sun Quan. A combined offensive would maximize pressure across the entire central plains.
Yet Hefei remained strangely quiet. No troop movements. No naval mobilization. Nothing.
The silence itself became unsettling.
Cao Cao frowned slightly.
"Is Guan Yu acting alone..."
He looked toward Xun You.
"...or is Sun Quan hiding something?"
---
While Sima Yi rode toward the mountains, the news of Yicheng's destruction finally reached Wancheng. At that exact moment, Guan Yu's naval armada slowly, methodically dropped anchor right in the middle of the Han River, perfectly bisecting the space between Xiangyang and Fancheng.
The defenders on both sides of the river stared down from their stone walls. Dozens of floating wooden fortresses dominated the water.
Many of the defending soldiers were born and raised in the Jingzhou basin. They were watermen. They knew how to handle boats. Their commanders had been screaming about a southern navy for days. But seeing these mechanical leviathans in person shattered their reality. This was not a navy. This was a floating apocalypse.
Yue Jin stood on the Xiangyang wall, his face grim. He watched the massive flagship slowly pivot its broadside toward the city. Over the churning roar of the river, he heard a sound that made his blood freeze. The synchronized, agonizing groan of thick wooden gears pulling back massive bowstrings.
His eyes widened. "Take cover!"
He was too late.
The air tore open. A deafening screech echoed across the water, sounding like a flock of giant predatory birds diving for the kill.
Hell rained down on the battlements.
Yue Jin watched his elite personal guard get erased from existence. These were the men he had left behind during his disastrous assault on Jiangling. They had survived that day by pure luck. Their luck just ran out.
A massive steel bolt, twice as thick as a standard cavalry lance, slammed onto the wall. The tip was modified with spinning razor blades. It punched straight through the torso of his closest bodyguard and buried itself deep into the stone bricks, vibrating violently.
The quivering, blood-soaked shaft was planted exactly three inches in front of Yue Jin's boots.
Yue Jin stumbled backward. For the first time in his long, bloody career, his heavy steel armor felt like it was made of wet paper.
He stared at the bolt. Then at his dead bodyguard. Then back at the bolt.
Three inches.
That was three inches from my chest.
The old man took Yicheng before my noodles finished digesting. And now Guan Yu nearly killed me with a glorified spear from a floating fortress.
His hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists.
No. No. Get it together. You are Yue Jin. You have survived worse. You have survived....
He looked at the bolt again.
....actually, no. I have never survived anything like this. What in the nine heavens is that thing?
He pointed at the blood-soaked shaft with a trembling finger.
"Someone explain to me," he said, his voice strained, "how a ship just shot a spear through my bodyguard, buried it in stone, and the spear has spinning blades. Why does it have spinning blades? Who puts spinning blades on a siege bolt? What kind of deranged engineer wakes up and decides arrows need more murder?"
Nobody answered.
"Giant ships block the great river. A lone city stands on the brink of annihilation, waiting for salvation."
Yue Jin muttered the words to himself, then paused.
"Waiting for salvation," he repeated flatly. "That's what I'm doing now. Waiting. Like some minor official waiting for a promotion that never comes. Except instead of a promotion, I'm waiting for reinforcements. And instead of a minor official, I'm a general. And instead of an office, I'm on a wall. With spinning blades. Everywhere."
He took a deep breath.
"Fine. Fine. We hold. We hold the walls. We hold until Cao Cao sends help or we die. Those are the options."
He straightened his armor and looked toward the river one more time.
"...I should have retired."