Volume 6, Chapter 31: Three Thousand

Li

of Territory

1

It was five oclock in the evening on the twenty-sixth day of the second month in Xiangyang.

Underneath the setting sun, the Yong army slowly retreated. Rong Yuan sighed softly, feeling intense melancholy. After the death of the Prince of De, he became the General of Xiangyang on the princes last will recommendation. He was stationed in a strategic city, but in all these years, he had never once felt a shred of joy. In the eyes of the Southern Chu monarch and ministers, Rong Yuan was just a destitute scholar. Although he had some skill in siege defense, he was far from being a famous general, so for a dozen years, he was forced to guard Xiangyang in vain. He really wanted to gain some major victories and be able to hold his head high, then enter the core of the Southern Chu military. However, no matter how hard he worked, he had always remained a defensive general.

He was made gloomier by the fact that after the Prince of Qis two assaults on Xiangyang suffered crushing defeats, Great Yong didnt place another huge army at Xiangyang. Every time war broke out, Great Yong always sent between eighty thousand and a hundred thousand troops to besiege Xiangyang. With the current events, even though Xiangyang could sleep soundly, military achievements were out of the question. For the campaigning season that had just ended, Lu Can and Shi Guan received various rewards, whereas Yu Mian at Jiameng Pass and he hadnt even received a single commendation letter. He thought that even if he hadnt achieved the destruction of the enemy army, countless Yong soldiers had still died under the walls of Xiangyang. Moreover, just the city of Xiangyang alone had tied up over a hundred thousand Yong troops. This was in and of itself no small feat. However, after the huge battles, he hadnt received any acknowledgement whatsoever. With Rong Yuans temperament, how could he bear such humiliation?

Gazing at the retreating Yong army, Rong Yuan angrily slapped his palm against a merlon of the stone wall. Zhangsun Ji, that brigand, had actually turned the city of Xiangyang into a training location for his troops. Every day, he rotated units in to assault the city, polishing their combat prowess. They didnt have any courage to risk everything on one final assault. Did the Yong army not know that if they didnt take Xiangyang, they would have no way of threatening Jiangling and Jiangxia? And even if they seized Huainan, their position would be precarious?

It was nine oclock in the evening on the twenty-sixth day of the second month in Suzhou.

At dusk, a cool breeze blowing