Chapter 22: The Eyes of the World (Part IV)

At the foot of Taiyuan City, a brutal massacre was unfolding.

Geng Shouzhong stood in the snow, gripping his sword, watching his Yisheng Army surge like a tide against the city walls, only to crash and fall like waves shattered against rocks.

Rolling logs and stones howled down from the ramparts; boiling oil splattered over the men, hissing as it steamed on contact. Screams pierced the air, sharp enough to rend eardrums.

“Big brother! We can’t keep attacking!” a bloodied junior officer rushed over, an arrow piercing his arm. “The brothers are almost all dead! Charging again is just throwing our lives away!”

Geng Shouzhong kicked him aside. “Not attacking? The Jurchen commanders are watching our every move. One step back means death!”

He pointed at the walls, cursing loudly, “Zhang Xiaochun, you old bastard! If you have any sense, open the gates and surrender! Must you drag us all down to hell with you?”

No answer came from the battlements, only a cold arrow whistled past his ear, embedding itself in the snow behind him.

“Zhang Xiaochun, you damn donkey! Hiding in the city like a coward—what kind of skill is that? If you’ve got guts, come out and fight me one-on-one!”

Geng Shouzhong touched his ear, bloodied hands trembling with fury. “Charge! The first to scale the wall gets a thousand strings of cash!”

His words fell like a stone tossed into still water, but a few desperate soldiers, their eyes wild with hunger, exchanged glances, hoisted the ladders, and surged forward again.

Most of these men were Han from Liaodong, fed up with the Song army's withheld pay. They had joined Geng Shouzhong in rebellion, lured by tales of wealth and ease under the Jin. Now they realized the Jin’s luxury came at the cost of their lives.

“Why not dig a tunnel?” a toothless man shouted. “We sneak in underground?”

Geng Shouzhong sneered. “Do you think the people in Taiyuan are fools? That old Wang Bing buried dozens of large jars beneath the walls—if you dig the first shovelful, they’ll hear it!”

“What else can we do? Send our brothers to die?” someone murmured. “Big brother promised riches and women if we followed the Jin...” The voice was low but cut like an ice pick into every man’s heart.

Geng Shouzhong’s face flushed red. He slammed his fist on a broken spear nearby, shards of ice scattering around. “What did I say back then? That the Song treated us like barbarians, beating and cursing us! I said the Jin would treat us like men! Now you regret it? Want to go back to being scolded as ‘barbarians’ by those civil officials?”

“But the Jin don’t treat us like men either!” a burly Han stood up. “Yesterday I saw Jurchen soldiers drag our brothers’ corpses to feed the dogs! They said, ‘Han meat is too tough even for dogs!’”

“You’re asking for death!” Geng Shouzhong drew his sword to strike but was held back by others. The Han man stood his ground, neck stiff, shouting, “Cut me down if you dare! We’re all going to die here anyway—might as well let you do it quickly!”

“Big brother, maybe we should run?” a confidant whispered urgently. “Head for the Xia Kingdom. Maybe there’s a way out there.”

Geng Shouzhong forced a bitter smile, nodding toward the rear.

The Jin’s supervisory camp was only three hundred paces away. A dozen Jin cavalry sat astride their horses, bows drawn taut. Anyone who dared retreat would be riddled with arrows immediately.

“Run? The Jin took our horses and armor. How can we outrun their cavalry on foot?” To prevent another rebellion, the Jin kept close watch, holding all mounts and armor in their control.

Just then, a bucket of boiling oil was poured from the ramparts, splashing on the soldiers at the front. A man screamed as he tumbled from the ladder, his skin melting like wax, eyes wide open, fixed on the wall.

Geng Shouzhong turned away, his stomach churning. That was a brother he'd brought from Liaodong, a comrade who once fought alongside him in the snow, vowing to survive this turbulent world together.

“Rotten bastards! What kind of damn world is this?” a soldier threw down his sword, sitting in the snow and sobbing. “The Song offer no way out, the Jin offer no way out! I rebel!”

At his words, a dozen more soldiers dropped their weapons, cries rising one after another.

Geng Shouzhong was terrified, rushing to cover the man’s mouth. “You’re killing yourself! Do you want all our brothers dead?”

But it was too late.

From the Jin camp, a rider heard the noise and galloped over with a squad of soldiers, his curved blade gleaming in the firelight. “Geng Meng’an, what’s all this noise?”

Geng Shouzhong kicked the crying man, forcing a smile. “Nothing, nothing! The brothers are just fired up for battle, giving themselves courage!”

He turned to the army, shouting, “Get ready! One more assault! The first to take the wall gets a woman!”

The commander’s whip cracked, pointing at the walls. “I just told the commander: if you take Taiyuan before the main army arrives, I’ll promote you to a thousand-household chief. Then, not just a woman, even the Song imperial princess will be yours.”

“I’ve told my men: take Taiyuan, and each household will get a Song woman, ten acres of land, and countless riches.”

Geng Shouzhong bowed deeply. “Thank you, general! Brothers, did you hear that? One last push!”

The commander patted his shoulder with satisfaction before riding back to camp.

Watching his retreating figure, Geng Shouzhong’s smile vanished, replaced by a despair that chilled him to the bone.

When the Jurchen cavalry was gone, Geng Shouzhong slammed his sword on the ground. “Did you all see that? Retreat means death, charging means death! So let’s fight to the end!”

He picked up his sword and roared toward the walls. “Charge! And if any of you dare retreat, I’ll be the first to cut you down!”

The Yisheng men surged forward once more, whipped like beaten beasts.

Standing in the snow, watching the number of his comrades dwindle, he recalled his mother’s prophecy in Liaodong—that he would one day be a marquis and chancellor. But now, he could barely keep his brothers alive until morning.

The snow thickened, covering the bloodstains beneath, but not the stench of death.

Geng Shouzhong’s eyes reddened. He wasn’t sure whether he hated Zhang Xiaochun, or the commander, or even the man who once urged his brothers to surrender. He only knew he had to press forward; otherwise, the Jurchen overseers behind him would shoot arrows into his back.

Only the flags atop the walls flapped fiercely in the wind and snow, telling the tale of this merciless war.

The setting sun was blood red as Geng Shouzhong led the remnants back to camp.

“Damn your ancestor, Zhang Xiaochun!”

A soldier with a broken arm knelt in the snow, cursing and crying. “If we’d surrendered earlier, would we have died? You had to drag me down with you!”

The curses spread like a plague, venomous and raw in the harsh dialect of Liaodong:

“You rotten scholar! Even as a ghost, I’ll sell your lady into a brothel!”

“When the city falls, I’ll drink to your heart and liver!”

They dared not curse the Jurchen directly. Just yesterday, a drunken centurion who grumbled about the commander was found impaled on the camp gate at dawn, his body full of arrows like a hedgehog.

Late at night, after the last wave of Yisheng troops was repelled, Geng Shouzhong sat in the snow, counting the survivors.

From over two thousand men, fewer than eight hundred remained. He pulled a hard, dry biscuit from his coat and chewed slowly, the crumbs mixed with tears as they slid down his throat, bitter and harsh.

The tents reeked of blood and sweat. Around an oil lamp, a dozen commanders sat, the flickering flame casting shadows over their scarred faces.

“Big brother, we lost three hundred more today!” a scar-faced man slammed his helmet down. “The bodies piled beneath the south gate tower nearly reach the battlements!”

From a corner came muffled sobbing. Geng Shouzhong looked up to see Zhao Wu, an old comrade from Liaodong. The previous day, Zhao Wu’s younger brother had been scalded by boiling oil from the walls and now wailed outside the camp.

“Stop crying!” Geng Shouzhong kicked over a low table. “When we starved in Liaoyang Prefecture, more died than now—yet now you complain at the sight of death?”

Silence fell like a tomb.

A tall, thin man spoke gloomily, “Big brother Geng, this ‘Meng’an’ rank the Jin gave us—isn’t it paid for with our brothers’ lives?”

He gestured outside. “Listen…”

The night wind carried the cries from the wounded camp—no doctors, no herbs, only doomed men from Liaodong waiting to die.

“Big brother, will we attack again tomorrow?” a confidant’s voice trembled.

Geng Shouzhong said nothing, only staring at the faint firelight atop Taiyuan’s walls.

He knew that when the sun rose tomorrow, he would have to force his brothers to charge once more, even if ahead lay a mountain of blades and fire. Behind them waited the Jin’s slaughter; before them, a city that refused to surrender. In this world, there was no turning back.

---

Snowflakes bit at his cheeks as Alubu tightened the ties on his otter-fur cap. His exposed greenish forehead stung with cold.

Behind him, over three hundred scouts formed a loose formation. Hooves struck the frozen ground, sounding like the chase of elk through the harsh forests of White Mountains and Black Waters.

“Teams of ten, spaced three li apart.”

“Left wing, ten teams advance along Broken Cloud Ridge; right wing, ten teams search the ridges; the center follows me along the official road. If you find any trace, fire a signal arrow. If you see the main army, report immediately. Even if you have but a breath left, get the message back!”

Fifty Jurchen warriors answered in unison, their voices shaking the snow from the branches. Chosen hunters from the Meng’an and Muke clans, each could navigate blizzards and judge prey’s weight by the depth of hoofprints.

The rest, over two hundred, were a mixed group of seasoned mountain soldiers, their bows polished bright, quivers full of oiled arrows—Jurchen scouts’ custom to prevent bowstrings from freezing and arrows from cracking.

The formation quickly fanned out, leaving clear tracks in the snow.

Alubu watched the leftmost team disappear into the dense forest, recalling his father’s lessons from hunting on Changbai Mountain: “A scattered net catches big fish, but the mesh must be tight, or the fox slips through.”

Now, with these three hundred spread out, no movement within a hundred li could escape their eyes.

He led the center team along the road, his gaze sharp as a hawk’s, scanning every inch of snow.

A Xi scout crouched, sweeping aside snow with his scabbard, pointing at faint hoofprints. “Bojin (commander), these are Song warhorse tracks—the tread shallower than ours.”

Alubu bent closer. Jurchen horses, hardened by mountain and grassland, left deep, thick hoofprints. These were smooth-edged, obviously stable-kept Song mounts.

He measured with his knife. “Left here a day ago, heading north.”

By afternoon, a signal arrow came from the right wing. Alubu spurred his horse toward ten scouts gathered around disturbed snow.

They uncovered three naked corpses, skin blue and purple from the cold, faces frozen in death’s grimace.

“They’re our men!” a Jurchen scout howled, lunging forward, but Alubu held him back.

He recognized one—a comrade who had patrolled with him days before, ranked among the top three archers in Muke, now stripped bare, even his ear braid torn away.

“Despicable!” Alubu smashed his fist against a tree, snapping branches. “The southerners dare to dishonor our brave dead!”

By Jurchen custom, the dead must be buried with their clothes, lest their souls freeze in the wind and snow.

These Song left not even a shred to cover them, slapping the entire Jurchen tribe’s honor in the face.

He forced himself to calm, surveying the area like tracking a wounded black bear.

Drag marks led into the forest south of the road, with trampled dry grass nearby. The enemy had moved north, their footsteps slow.

“They’re trying to hide their trail,” Alubu licked cracked lips, eyes flashing fiercely. “But the snow is too thin to cover all traces.”

He signaled the scouts to spread out, fanning out like a hunting net across the terrain.