For five nights in a row, the war horns of the nomads thundered against the walls of Jinhai. They swept down at dusk like ghosts drifting from the steppes, riders forming wave after wave, their voices raised in strange, foreign tongues. Black fleece standards and bone‑carved totems fluttered in the cold wind. Their horses—lean, sinewy, and sure‑footed—seemed to glide over the frozen ground as if borne on the breeze, swift and ruthless like starving wolves. It was the war‑cry of a people who showed no mercy.
But within the walls of Jinhai, the flame of resistance refused to die.
Torchlight flickered from the tall towers, scattering light across the stone battlements. Makeshift pikes shook in the grip of untrained hands. And at the center of it all, never sleeping, stood General Shen Ruolin. Clad in a heavy cuirass and draped in a goat‑wool cloak, he paced the ramparts like a sentinel carved from granite.
Their first assault came on the second night, just as the moon peaked out from behind broken clouds. A cacophony of screams, the hissing of arrows, ladders cast up against the walls… thirty thousand nomad warriors surged against the citadel like a crashing wave.
Yet they did not expect such tenacious defense.
Peasant levies—hands blistered from days of shovel and sickle—gripped their pikes as if they were the pillars of the empire itself. Women hissed boiling oil from the parapets. Children ran with water, arrows, and battered shields to help hold the line.
The savage clash lasted through the night and into dawn. When the first golden rays touched the wall, a mound of fallen warriors lay at the gates—a grim testament to survival.
Shen Ruolin gave no triumphant cry. His voice was steady and resolute. "Collect the dead. Reinforce the palisades. Bury the fallen with their names." He saw to it, personally, that no one passed without honor.
What followed were nights that tasted of hell itself: feints in the darkness, flaming arrows streaking through the air, traps broken, gates battered with logs, cries in the imperial tongue from defectors used as human shields. Yet, Jinhai held firm—it did not fall.
By the dawn of the seventh morning, the nomadic host had vanished.
Not in a glorious rout nor in open surrender—
They simply… faded away.
From the tower balustrades, sentinels reported that enemy tents had been deserted, and hoof‑prints receded eastward, disappearing into the vast farmland of the north.
Shen Ruolin's gaze narrowed into a harsh, knowing look.
"They're going to burn everything they cannot conquer," he murmured, eyes fixed on the reddened horizon.
And so they did.
In the ensuing weeks, while Jinhai remained a spike driven into the earth, the surrounding provinces were transformed into a wasteland of ghost villages and smoldering fields.
Denied the citadel, the nomads pillaged everything else.
Unprotected hamlets fell in turn to violence and ruin. The elderly were slaughtered. Women were taken captive, sometimes scarred beyond recognition. Young farmers were dragged off like animals, roped together in chains—some strong enough taken off to be slaves.
Grain stores were emptied. Temples razed. Statues of the empire toppled. Every stone of authority defaced. Every voice of dissent extinguished.
Loot‑laden carts groaned under the weight of stolen grain, tools, heavy blankets, crude jewelry, even captured heraldry. Everything that couldn't be carried off was drenched in oil and set aflame.
In the north, fire became the new sun.
From the greatest rampart of Jinhai, General Shen watched the distant skies bleed red.
Each column of smoke marked another lost village. Each day of survival marked another town that slipped beyond save.
And still… they endured.
"They will destroy the fields," he told his captains, voice as harsh as broken stone. "But we will guard the gate."
His strategy—avoid open battle, fortify the heart, sacrifice the perimeter—had held. But its cost was immeasurable. Voices clamored in anger for reprisal expeditions deeper into the north—but Shen Ruolin knew better. With militia alone, they had no power to pursue. He resolved instead to defend Jinhai until reinforcements arrived.
This was a stance of stubborn steel, a decision made in the face of desperation. Shen Ruolin would not allow the city, this stubborn jewel of the north, to fall—not yet, not as long as he drew breath and held the gate.