Chapter 1123: Chapter 1123: I Will Co Back to Save You
All the confidants had been rcilessly slaughtered by the heartless wolves.
Hai Tang found herself utterly alone.
After innurable struggles, she finally escaped from the blood-drenched Imperial City.
Having desperately fled the whole night,
she finally erged in a forest, a hundred miles away from the Imperial City, by dawn.
Climbing to the mountain top, she gazed back at the direction of the Imperial City, tears welling up as she knelt down and wept bitterly.
"Father, brother, I’m sorry!"
"I am leaving first, but I will definitely co back to save you!"
The Western Xia and the Great Chu Dynasty had officially entered into war.
The Prince Jin should not have much attention to spare on them here.
If she could escape, there might still be a sliver of hope for the three of them.
If all three of them were captured, they would be thoroughly dood.
So she had to leave!
Kneeling respectfully in the direction of the Imperial City, she kowtowed three tis.
Biting her lip, Hai Tang arose with a resolute look in her eyes.
Turning around, she walked towards the border with the first rays of dawn.
There, lay the hope of survival, people she knew, and more importantly, a chance for her to rise again.
Prince Jin!
The debts you owe , I will demand back a hundredfold, a thousandfold!
...
The borders between the Great Chu and the Western Xia were already shrouded in the smoke of war.
Hai Xiangjin led eighty thousand elite soldiers with cavalry, fully equipped with supplies, attacking Yinshan City at the southwest and northwest junction.
Though Yinshan City was a small northwest town,
it was a small strategic thoroughfare, possessing both water and land routes.
As long as this place could be conquered,
the Western Xia Army would successfully tear open a huge gap.
The northwest mountainous terrain was complex.
Once the Western Xia Army entered, they wouldn’t be easily defeated.
Like nurous rats entering a complex network of burrows, visible but unreachable, reachable but impossible to eradicate!
Exactly!
Though the taphor might not quite fit, this was precisely the effect Prince Jin desired!
Yinshan City had suffered a raid before,
but those bastards masquerading as bandits had already been completely eliminated by Xia Tingfeng and Zhao Qichen.
Nonetheless, dealing with soone like Hai Geli was trickier.
He lingered like a venomous snake in Yinshan City with a small troop of a few thousand n.
Coupled with Liu Shouwei’s treachery, the city’s populace was under their control.
Xia Tingfeng and Zhao Qichen found themselves utterly incapable of acting rashly.
The only course left was to encircle Yinshan City firmly.
To prevent Hai Geli from collaborating with the Western Xia Army across the border.
But, would that really work?
Xia Tingfeng’s expression was grave.
Zhao Qichen’s face was dark and oppressive.
Though inexperienced in campaigns and battles, he wasn’t foolish!
The initiative in Yinshan City rested with Hai Geli.
Like a venomous snake clutching a defenseless child in its jaws, threateningly.
"Retreat, or I will kill him!"
If Hai Geli truly held the citizens’ lives as leverage to demand their retreat,
he really didn’t know how to choose!
Ignoring the threats and attacking directly would an abandoning Yinshan City.
It wasn’t about one or two individuals, but a whole city!
Elderly, children, won, and simple citizens; they were not lesser beings but rightful citizens of the Great Chu Dynasty.
Abandoning the city even before battle starts! Logically, emotionally, internally, or externally, it didn’t make sense.
But what if they didn’t abandon it?
If they complied and retreated dozens of miles,
then Hai Geli and Prince Jin would act in unison.
They would infiltrate the northwest of the Great Chu Dynasty like snakes and rats, never to be easily rooted out again.
By then,
it wouldn’t rely be a matter of one city and a few thousand people,
but countless villages, towns, countless families, countless lives!
In such a situation, what should they choose?
To abandon or not to abandon, they couldn’t make a decision.
The initiative in the battle always lay in the enemy’s hands.
...
As Xia Tingfeng and Zhao Qichen spent days with grim faces and silent struggles, pondering solutions,
the thing they feared most happened.
That evening at nightfall,
a ssenger arrived at the camp, carrying the flamboyant handwritten letter from Hai Geli.
The letter contained just one sentence in bold characters.
"Retreat fifty miles by tomorrow, or the day after, the city will be massacred!"
One sentence pushed them into a tighter dilemma.
Xia Tingfeng and Zhao Junyao gripped the letter, their faces dark as the bottom of a pot.
Agree?
Hai Geli would join forces with Prince Jin here; their coalition would swiftly penetrate the interior and massacre civilians.
Decline?
The lives of everyone in the city were at risk!
What should they choose!
Crown Prince Zhao Qichen faced his first unsolvable dilemma in life!
Who knows how long it went on,
before Xia Tingfeng grabbed the letter resolutely, making an extrely difficult decision.
"We don’t retreat!"
Zhao Qichen widened his eyes abruptly, full of disbelief.
"Uncle?!"
He knew his uncle’s choice was correct.
Yinshan City was a bottleneck where a single man could hold off a thousand; it was a tactical stronghold.
If a gap was torn open, the enemy would infiltrate the interior and never be extricated again.
But...
To personally utter those words, to abandon the citizens inside, he simply couldn’t do it!
Xia Tingfeng chuckled coldly.
"You think if we retreated fifty miles, the city’s citizens would be spared?"
The Western Xia were cunning and ruthless.
Traveling from afar to attack the Great Chu, the costs of transporting and consuming supplies were extrely high.
How could they waste provisions on hosting so many people?!
Therefore, massacring to resolve everything was their habitual practice.
"Perhaps, they’ve already started massacring!"
After all, consuming one more al ant wasting an additional al’s provisions.
With so many people, provisions shouldn’t be sparse!
Xia Tingfeng tucked the letter away, slipped it into Zhao Qichen’s hands.
"Tonight, you guard the camp! Do not move the troops!"
"I’ll sneak into the city to check the situation, if I’m not mistaken..."
Xia Tingfeng couldn’t bear to think further!
Initially, Zhao Qichen disagreed.
"It’s too dangerous, the city is filled with their people!"
Xia Tingfeng smiled.
"Rest assured, your uncle possesses at least this much skill!"
Otherwise, haven’t those years as a rogue been in vain?!
Zhao Qichen reluctantly agreed.
That night.
Left alone to guard the camp, Zhao Qichen,
Xia Tingfeng ard with a few weapons and hidden weapons, clad in a set of night clothes, disappeared into the boundless night like a nimble swallow.
...
The iron claws hooked onto the sturdy city walls.
Xia Tingfeng, seizing the mont when the guards weren’t attentive, leaped from a secluded corner onto the wall.
A patrolling soldier spotted him, ready to alert others.
Unfortunately, his throat went cold, and his voice was stifled within his throat, unable to co out.
Xia Tingfeng dragged the man to a corner.
Stripped the clothing off him and put them on himself.
Covering his face, he mingled with the patrolling guards, making rounds along the city walls.
Finally, taking a chance to stealthily slip away.
The streets were eerily quiet, not a single soul in sight!
The air was thick with the scent of blood.
A gust of wind rustled by, stirring the branches with a series of mournful wails.
It sounded eerily like soone’s forlorn weeping.
He searched the city’s most desolate areas, going house by house.
By the end of the long night, he found many dead bodies but not a single survivor.
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