Chapter 1 A City Under Siege

A siege warfare emphasizing speed is a challenge for all members of the Blood Kirin Army. But for the defenders of Xiangning City and the small number of civilians inside, it is an ordeal. From its inception, the Blood Kirin Army has carried a distinct gaming style and the personality traits of Ye Tao. The Blood Kirin Army always emphasizes rationality, coordination, command, technology, equipment, preparation... a series of keywords that make the Blood Kirin Army the best-equipped and best-trained army in the world, but also temporarily hide the surging blood and sharpness of tens of thousands of soldiers in the Blood Kirin Army. The Blood Kirin Army rarely encounters decent enemies. They always fight in a calm and unhurried manner. The Blood Kirin Army usually doesn't care much about spoils of war and other extra income. Many soldiers and officers of the Blood Kirin Army don't care about money at all. Not to mention looting, the Blood Kirin Army's meticulousness in collecting spoils of war is far from comparable to their attitude during combat.

But now, the pressing time pressure forces the soldiers of the Blood Kirin Army to unleash all the frenzy behind their rationality and meticulousness and engage in a fearless battle.

However, frenzy does not mean not using their brains. The main reason why the Blood Kirin Army is the strongest army of this era is their exceptionally high level of education. In the past, although the Eastern Peace Army was powerful, many of its generals came from military families. They were agile, but their understanding and tactical literacy were relatively poor, often commanding operations based on animalistic instincts. The Blood Kirin Army is the opposite. The most important considerations are their brains and tactical literacy. Only after being recognized in these two aspects are they required to meet the quality requirements of an officer in terms of horsemanship and archery. When it comes to the accuracy and strictness of command during combat, no army can compare to the Blood Kirin Army. In the past, even in Eastern Peace, the lowest rank of an officer was Commandant, which was a command of a hundred soldiers. But now, command has been extended to groups of five. In the Blood Kirin Army, everyone is capable of commanding these groups of five. A strong non-commissioned officer corps ensures that the Blood Kirin Army will fight to the last man as long as they are ordered to hold their ground.

This wisdom, which erupts in times of urgency, is especially important when attacking Xiangning. Just as dawn breaks, Zou Shuangwen walks through the camp, carefully checking the preparations of the troops. In the dim morning light, the soldiers of each battalion have already gotten up, washed, and tidied up. In front of each fully equipped field kitchen, soldiers are lining up to receive breakfast. Given the personalities of the Blood Kirin Army, everyone is obviously not excited about the extra egg and sausage before the battle. Everyone's anticipation for the great battle also gives Zou Shuangwen more confidence.

Throughout the camp, soldiers can be seen making final checks on their weapons and armor. The pre-war inspection of weapons, re-wrapping the mixed ropes on the handles of their sabers to make them easier to handle, is a very fixed, very ritualistic procedure for the Blood Kirin Army before any major action. In the heavy ordnance battalion, catapults, ballistae, and Shenbi crossbows have all been assembled. After completing the assembly, the experienced technicians watch as the soldiers make detailed adjustments according to the scale, while leisurely eating breakfast and drinking tea.

What surprises Zou Shuangwen slightly is that the brigade led by Li Mingtao, who comes from the Ye's Workshop, is urgently fiddling with the scaling ladders at this moment, seemingly installing some kind of device on them in a hurry.

The Blood Kirin Army rarely uses scaling ladders, but that doesn't mean they haven't put any thought into them. The scaling ladders they use have already begun to be promoted and popularized throughout the Eastern Peace Army. Their scaling ladders are equipped with sharp steel teeth on the side that comes into contact with the city wall. For those brick and stone city walls, they can sometimes spark a string of fire and leave deep marks on them. For those earthen or cement walls built with locally passed-down secret methods, they can often directly pierce into the city wall with the huge kinetic energy of the scaling ladder. Each step of the scaling ladder has clearly visible anti-slip blocks. This batch of scaling ladders in Li Mingtao's hands is the latest updated model. The anti-slip blocks are not cut out of wood, but rather the treads of the steps are chiseled out with grooves, and then rubber blocks are pasted into them. Although Yazhou's rubber production has increased rapidly in recent years, it still cannot withstand the urgent demand for this new material from the entire Eastern Peace nation and army. Rubber has become a national strategic resource. Except for Ye's Workshop and Qi's shipyard, which can allocate a portion of rubber for civilian products, almost all rubber is used in military-related fields. Everyone knows that scaling ladders are used when fighting for their lives, so even if it can reduce the casualties of soldiers by one percent, they will spare no expense. The allocation of rubber for scaling ladder improvements is still quite sufficient, but because the process of this type of scaling ladder is relatively complex, only the Blood Kirin Army and some light infantry units in Yunzhou have updated this equipment.

Zou Shuangwen doesn't know much about technology and feels that the Blood Kirin Army's equipment is now difficult to improve any further. Seeing Li Mingtao tinkering with these things without approval or reporting, he rushed up and asked, "Li Mingtao, what are you doing?"

"General," Li Mingtao stood at attention and tapped his right fist on his left chest, giving a neat military salute, and said, "This is an improvement that this humble officer came up with on the spur of the moment. When I woke up this morning, I had a flash of inspiration. This way, the scaling ladder will not be pushed down after it is set against the city wall. There was no time to report it. Please forgive me, General."

"Won't be pushed down?" Zou Shuangwen perked up and said, "Show me."

Li Mingtao led Zou Shuangwen to an open space in the camp where they were working hard. The improvement they made was simple: adding two long poles that were firmly connected to the scaling ladder but had a certain range of motion on both sides of the ladder. After the scaling ladder was set against the city wall, the long poles would naturally hang down to the ground and quickly install a wide base on the ground. In this way, the contact between the scaling ladder and the ground would not be a single point, but rather form a triangle of three points. In the vertical direction, it would also form a stable structure of three points. This design limits the density of scaling ladders that can be deployed on a single combat surface, but it also makes it difficult to push the scaling ladder over from any direction. However, these long poles can only be made temporarily based on the specific length of the city wall. Because they cannot actually get close to the city wall to take actual measurements, the soldiers still need to operate on-site, such as sawing off a little if the long pole is too long, and having to move stones to pad it if it is too short. And this operation must be done against the clock. The enemies on the city wall will not sit idly by while they carry out these tasks.

Although Zou Shuangwen doesn't know much about technology, he has been in the Blood Kirin Army since its inception in this atmosphere, so he still has the most basic concept that the triangle structure is the most stable. He asked in surprise, "How many scaling ladders have you modified?"

"Four have been modified, and these are the last two," Li Mingtao said calmly, "The width of the city wall allocated to us is just that much. In fact, deploying four is enough. Two are for backup."

"I'll take these two and put them on the north city wall for A Xing's brigade to use. You will attack from two sides." Zou Shuangwen made a quick decision. A powerful weapon determines a tactic, and this scaling ladder determines that they can definitely stably project troops onto the city wall. At this time, breaking through at two points is obviously better than breaking through at one point. By preventing the enemy's forces from concentrating, they can better exert their advantage in individual combat strength.

Li Mingtao did not argue and nodded. He said, "General, there is less than an hour before we line up for battle. Our battalion can modify two more. Let's get started!"

Zou Shuangwen's reaction was even more intense than Li Mingtao's. He convened a small operational meeting in Li Mingtao's battalion. After a brief two-minute meeting, everyone saw the grasp of a quick victory. The soldiers in Li Mingtao's brigade who participated in the scaling ladder modification were all kept. Soldiers from other battalions with engineering backgrounds were also selected to modify as many scaling ladders as possible in one hour. These soldiers will get a rest period of more than one hour after the start of the operation, and then return to their original units to join the battle.

At seven thirty, according to the twenty-four-hour system established by Ye Tao's Tiansuo Clock Shop, the Blood Kirin Army's camps surrounding Xiangning neatly sounded the horns. The soldiers were originally sitting and chatting or wiping their weapons in preparation. Upon hearing the horn, they exchanged pre-battle blessings. Excited or indifferent expressions were manifested more clearly on different people. They seemed to walk casually towards the camp gate, but when they left the camp, they had already formed a neat queue. Seeing this majesty formed by neatness and order on the city wall made people feel even more terrified.

Twenty minutes later, the entire army was ready for the attack. Two airships flew over Xiangning, taking in the movements within Xiangning City. This time, the heavy ordnance battalion went even further. For the first time, they disregarded safety regulations and pushed two super-heavy crossbow cannons to the front line, stopping just ten steps beyond the range of the catapults on the city wall of Xiangning. This is a dangerous distance. If they were to encounter the wrong wind direction, they would be beaten. But the soldiers of the heavy ordnance battalion needed this feeling of being on the edge, needed the stimulation and pleasure of having their nerves constantly on edge, and also needed this distance to directly smash heavy flaming oil bombs onto the gate of Xiangning. The gate of Xiangning was made of processed oak wrapped in copper skin. They estimated that they could directly burn away the outer copper skin and turn the wood into charcoal residue. And at this distance directly facing the gate of Xiangning, they did not feel any risk of being charged by the enemy out of the city. Zou Shuangwen was right behind them, and protecting them were a thousand elite cavalry and a thousand longbowmen. There were also fifteen hundred light and heavy infantry mixed, sitting neatly behind them to rest, watching with expectant and doubtful eyes when they could deal with the city gate, waiting for the opportunity to rush straight into the city. These people's expectations, but also their doubtful gazes, were the best encouragement for the soldiers of the heavy ordnance battalion.

At seven fifty-eight, the two super-heavy crossbow cannons of the heavy ordnance battalion made a creaking sound. The torsion spring group was tightened. Just before loading the ammunition, Zou Shuangwen's order arrived: "Two gliding bombs, followed by free attacks with ordinary flaming oil bombs." Zou Shuangwen also went on a rampage. Immediately, a narrow-shaped shell was loaded onto the rail...

Heart of Time has somewhat disrupted my writing plans, and the work at the newspaper has made things even worse. It's my fault for letting everyone down and causing resentment. However, I never thought of abandoning the story. Being called a "tj" (translator's note: abbreviation for "tail-ending," meaning to abandon a story halfway) is not a good thing either. It's quite stressful to write two books at the same time. I probably won't be able to earn two full attendance awards at the same time, but I will definitely finish Heart of Time according to the original outline without cutting corners. Thank you for your continued support.

Also, do you want to read those articles I wrote in the newspaper? I'll pick some fun things later and throw them up in that "Over-Interpretation" column for everyone to enjoy, and also to see my submission volume...