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Lie Fan nodded. He looked at the cannons, then at the distant, ancient walls of Hongnong, silhouetted against the brightening sky. He thought of Cao Cao inside, trusting in stone and courage. A fierce, almost pitying smile touched his lips. He raised his arm, high and straight.
Every eye on the berm fixed on that arm. The engineers with the torches stood poised, the flames guttering in the cool dawn breeze.
Lie Fan's voice, when it came, was not a roar, but a clear, carrying command that sliced through the silence.
"Fire."
Five torches dipped.
A simultaneous, viperish hiss from five fuses.
Then—
BOOOOOOM!
The sound was not of this world. It was not the deep thud of a trebuchet or the collective twang of a thousand bows. It was a single, monstrous, concussive CRACK that seemed to split the sky itself.
The very ground beneath their feet lurched. Birds for miles around erupted from trees in a panic of wings. On the berm, seasoned generals flinched. Muchen stumbled back a step, his hands flying to his ears, his eyes wide with shock.
Only Liu Ye, Huang Chengyan, and their team stood steady, their expressions focused, analyzing the reports.
Before the echo could even begin to roll across the plain, the results were visible.
At the Hongnong gatehouse, a section of the upper battlements simply… vanished. A cloud of stone dust, timber, and darker, unidentifiable fragments erupted outwards. A heartbeat later, the sound of the impact reached them, a deep, grinding CRUNCH.
The second and third shots were for the flanking towers. One ball slammed into the base of the western tower with a force that made the entire structure shiver. Cracks raced up its side like lightning. The other shot was a direct hit on the eastern tower's roof, punching through and presumably causing carnage within.
The fourth and fifth shots, aimed lower, struck the massive, iron reinforced main gates. The sound was a deafening, metallic GONG, like the strike of a titan's hammer. The gates, which had withstood months of rams and fire, visibly bowed inward. Splinters the size of spears shot out from the impact points.
On the walls of Hongnong, the world dissolved into chaos and disbelief. The sound alone had been a physical assault, stunning men, shattering pottery, shaking loose tiles.
Then came the rain of stone and the sight of their impregnable defenses being casually dismantled from a distance far beyond any archer's range. It was not warfare, it was sorcery. It was the wrath of heaven made manifest through iron and fire.
The disciplined lines of Wei defenders broke into screaming, panicked mobs. Officers shouted unheard orders, their authority rendered meaningless by the scale of the violation.
The cannons did not pause. As soon as they were swabbed out, reloaded by the efficient, drilled crews, they fired again. BOOM! Another section of wall crumbled. BOOM! A siege tower being readied on the walls was smashed into kindling. BOOM! The main gates groaned, a deep, tortured sound, and one of the immense hinges tore partially from the stone.
The bombardment continued, a rhythmic, apocalyptic drumbeat. Five shots. Reload. Five shots. Reload. The stockpile of cannonballs dwindled, and with each shot, a piece of Hongnong's defiance was pulverized into dust.
Lie Fan watched, his initial surprise replaced by a cold, towering satisfaction. This was it. The end of an era. He saw the terror in the eyes of his own men, the awe on his son's face, and knew the same magnified a thousandfold was happening within the city.
When the last cannonball was fired and an eerie, ringing silence descended, broken only by the distant cries from the city and the settling rumble of collapsing masonry, Lie Fan turned. The cannons' muzzles smoked, hot and menacing.
He no longer needed to raise his voice. The demonstration was over. The argument was won.
He looked at Sima Yi and gave a single, slight nod.
Sima Yi, his own composure visibly shaken, turned to the signal officers. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. "Sound the war drums, advance to Hongnong."
This time, the war drums that answered were almost an afterthought. The true declaration of war had already been made by the five smoking sentinels on the berm.
The Hengyuan army, a tide of steel and awestruck fury, began to move forward, not to assault a fortress, but to walk through its shattered teeth. The siege of Hongnong was over. The conquest had just entered its final, devastating hour.
Meanwhile, inside Hongnong—
The Governor's Castle, once a place of rigid order and stern confidence, had become a crucible of fear.
The great hall trembled, not from the aftershocks of the cannon fire, but from the people within it.
Dust drifted down from the rafters in thin, ghostly curtains. Bronze lamps rattled on their chains. Somewhere deeper in the castle, a servant screamed, the sound abruptly cut off, swallowed by the stone corridors.
The echoes of the bombardment still lived in the air, lingering like the aftertaste of thunder. Every man present could feel it vibrating in his bones, an alien, hateful force that refused to fade.
Cao Cao sat rigid upon the dais, his posture straight but brittle, as though one more breath might shatter him.
His face was ashen.
Not pale, ashen, like cooled embers after a fire that had burned too hot, too long.
One by one, officers staggered into the hall, armor smeared with dust and blood. Their movements lacked the crisp discipline of Wei; they walked like men waking from a nightmare, unsure if the world around them was real.
They knelt.
They tried to speak.
Their voices shook.
"Your Majesty…" The first soldier swallowed hard, his throat working visibly. His eyes were unfocused, staring somewhere far beyond the hall. "The… the western battlement… it's gone."
Gone.
The word landed like a hammer.
"Not breached," another officer whispered hoarsely. "Not damaged. Gone. The stone.... all of it just… vanished."
A third man began to sob before he could stop himself. His helmet slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor. "The black iron balls," he said, voice breaking. "They were glowing. They screamed through the air like demons. Men were... were torn apart. Limbs—"
He retched violently onto the polished stone.
No one reprimanded him.
Even the guards flanking the dais stood stiff and silent, knuckles white around their spear shafts. These were veterans of countless campaigns, men who had marched through rivers of blood under Cao Cao's banner. Yet now their eyes betrayed them, wide, shaken, and most importantly haunted.
Cao Cao listened.
He did not interrupt.
He did not move.
Each report struck him like another nail driven into a coffin he had sensed being built for days.
"The main gate," another officer forced himself to say, trembling visibly. "It has… bowed inward. One hinge is torn loose. We cannot hold it. We cannot—"
His words dissolved into helpless silence.
Cao Cao closed his eyes.
For a fleeting moment, the world receded, and he remembered yesterday, the inexplicable weight in his chest, the sense of standing at the edge of a precipice he could not see. He had dismissed it as fatigue. As the price of command.
How foolish.
So this was it.
This was the shape of doom.
He raised a hand slowly.
"Enough," Cao Cao said.
His voice was quiet, but it carried. The trembling soldiers fell silent at once.
"Take these men away," he ordered the guards gently. "See that they are given water. Food. Let them rest."
The soldiers looked up in disbelief, as if mercy itself were another shock too great to process.
They were guided from the hall, their steps unsteady, their faces still white as ash.
And then—
The war drums began.
Deep.
Relentless.
Rolling across the city like the heartbeat of an approaching god.
DOOM.
DOOM.
DOOM.
The sound crawled under the skin, rattled the teeth, seeped into the marrow. It was not the defiant thunder of Wei. It was the measured, inevitable advance of Hengyuan.
Guo Jia stepped forward.
His fan trembled slightly in his hand, though his face remained composed. Of all the men in the hall, he alone seemed to grasp the full shape of what had happened, and what was about to happen next.
"Your Majesty," he said, bowing his head. "The walls are breached in multiple locations. The gate is compromised. The defenders are… broken. Not just in body, but in spirit. They have seen something for which their courage has no answer."
He looked up, his fever bright eyes looking at Cao Cao's face. "Hengyuan is advancing. With the breaches opened, Hongnong is no longer defensible. They will flood the city with numbers alone."
He then straightened himself, his eyes meeting Cao Cao's.
"To remain here is to invite annihilation. We must retreat to Tong Pass, now. For your safety. For the longevity of Wei."
Silence fell like a shroud.
Cao Cao did not answer at once.
He stared at the floor.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, roughened by something dangerously close to bitterness.
"So this is the feeling," he murmured. "The one that haunted me yesterday."
Several heads snapped up.
Xun Yu's expression tightened. Guo Jia's eyes narrowed slightly. Xi Zhicai's lips pressed into a thin line.
Cao Cao exhaled slowly.
"I thought it was exhaustion. Or age. But no… it was this." His fingers curled against the arm of the throne. "The feeling of losing Hongnong."
Months.
Months of preparation. Of fortification. Of blood and steel poured into these walls. He had done everything right, everything a commander of his caliber could do.
And yet.
"Stone and courage," Cao Cao said softly, almost mockingly. "It seems iron and fire have surpassed them both."
The weight in the hall deepened.
Xun Yu and Guo Jia exchanged brief, regret laden glances. Xi Zhicai lowered his gaze.
But not all understood.
Jia Kui frowned, confusion creasing his brow. Cheng Yu glanced between the advisors, unsettled. Tian Feng and Xu You looked at one another, unsure what invisible line Cao Cao was tracing.
It was Cao Ang and Cao Pi who broke the paralysis of despair. They moved to their father's side, their young faces etched with fear, but also with a desperate, filial urgency.
"Imperial Father," Cao Ang pleaded, his voice tight. "Your safety is paramount. The dynasty depends on you! We must go, now! The Hengyuan troops will be in the streets any moment!"
Cao Pi, sharper, more pragmatic, added, "Every moment we delay is a moment Lie Fan uses to tighten the noose. We must order a general disengagement. A fighting retreat is impossible now. It must be a flight. We save what we can."
The words 'flight' and 'retreat', which had been unthinkable hours before, now hung in the air as the only rational, survivable path. Cao Cao seemed to shrink further into his robes. Then, with a visible, physical effort that seemed to cost him years of his life, he pushed himself to his feet. The movement was slow, heavy, as if he were lifting the weight of his entire failed ambition.
The sound of him standing seemed unnaturally loud.
"Very well," Cao Cao said.
Each word weighed a hundred jin.
"We retreat."
A ripple ran through the hall.
"Order all forces not to engage deeply," he continued. "Full retreat to Tong Pass. All units. No rearguard actions. No last stands. Disengage and run."
He turned to his sons.
"Ang. Pi. Go. Inform the commanders. Tell them under no circumstances are they to seek personal duels or glory. Their duty is to escape. To be captured now is to gift Lie Fan another piece of our soul. Go. Now."
Both bowed deeply.
"Yes, Father."
They turned and left at once, their strides purposeful, carrying the weight of Wei's fate upon their shoulders.
Cao Cao descended the dais slowly.
His advisors fell in beside him. Imperial guards closed ranks.
As they exited the great hall, another thunderous BOOM echoed in the distance, closer this time. Stone groaned. Somewhere, a tower collapsed with a scream of breaking masonry. Hongnong was dying. And the Hengyuan army was already inside its throat.
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Name: Lie Fan
Title: Founding Emperor Of Hengyuan Dynasty
Age: 35 (202 AD)
Level: 16
Next Level: 462,000
Renown: 2325
Cultivation: Yin Yang Separation (level 9)
SP: 1,121,700
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
STR: 966 (+20)
VIT: 623 (+20)
AGI: 623 (+10)
INT: 667
CHR: 98
WIS: 549
WILL: 432
ATR Points: 0