Chapter 589: Taking the City (Part 1)

“Brother Saleen, aren’t you worried about the people behind these bandits?”

“What’s there to worry about? Within the next ten days, Lex’s knights will arrive and this city will become part of Bitter Water Prefecture within a month,” Saleen replied nonchalantly. He was genuinely unafraid. He had already met someone like Fycro so there would hardly be anyone else on this dimension that could still scare him.

If the people behind these bandits were really as formidable, then things would just turn out like how it did with Fycro. They would head straight to Metatrin City to thrash out terms and conditions with Saleen or Lex. They would then either have to agree or be killed.

It was clear that they were not as strong as Fycro, otherwise they would not need to use such underhanded tactics like invading Phoenix’s lands while the northern regions were deserted.

The people of Cexing City were still unaware that the reinforcements from outside of the city had no intentions of saving them. For three consecutive days, the bandits attacked the city fiercely and hastily. It was originally unnecessary for them to do so, but Saleen’s forces disappeared after taking them unawares one time. This caused the bandits to be nervous and constantly looking over their shoulders so the only way was to take down the city as quickly as possible.

Besides, the food supplies that the bandits had brought along would only be able to sustain them for another one week or so, unless they managed to take down the city. There was a huge granary in Cexing City that the Grand Duke of Phoenix had asked a mage to build in the past. The grain in the granary could feed the entire city for a few decades.

Another push factor was that not many of their men were sent to engage Huoxing City so within two or three days, Huoxing City would be able to send over reinforcements.

Since the bandits had lost their catapults, they could only resort to using ladders to climb the walls and attack aggressively.

This was not something that the bandits were used to. On the other hand, there were only about one-hundred soldiers in Cexing City and about one-thousand men if the trained peasants were also included. If they needed to rest, they would only be able to defend one wall at a time. They would have to depend on the city’s youths to make up for the rest.

The buildings in the cities of north of Phoenix were made of rocks, so the soldiers in the city took down half of the houses and used the rocks to fortify the city walls. The city still had sufficient equipment except that they were running low on arrows. The bandits were only rushing at the city walls, but were not utilizing their bows and arrows to do so.

There was no way of replenishing the supplies of arrows in Cexing City so they were all used up within the first day.

The mage who was amongst the bandits did not interfere as Phoenix was still part of Qin in name. If the mage joined in the attack, the mages of Alchemy City would come after him.

Under normal circumstances, a city like Cexing City that had city walls of about fifteen yards in height should not be taken down easily without the necessary equipment, even if the troops in the city were not made up of elite soldiers.

There were just too few guards. Ten-thousand bandits could be split into four batches to attack non-stop, regardless of day or night. The city guards were not able to rest and by the third day, about one-hundred bandits managed to successfully reach the top of the city wall. Although they were sent back down very quickly, it was clear that Cexing City would not be able to hold them back for long.

For three days straight, no city guards were able to rest so they were all extremely worn-out. The bandits chose to attack only three of the city walls, leaving the south gate alone. The inhabitants of the city knew that the bandits had more than one-thousand knights. If they were to flee from the city, the knights would catch up with them very quickly and they would be doomed faster than if they were to stay in the city.

Saleen’s troops arrived at the city walls just as the bandits successfully managed to enter through the north gate. The bandits that were attacking the west and east gates immediately rushed over to the north gate. The city guards had fallen and there was no stopping the bandits from rushing into the city.

With Aini’s fifty knights as the core, the guards and servants of the caravan followed closely behind the bandits and charged into Cexing City as well.

It spoke volumes about the bandits’ lack of discipline that no one realized that a one-thousand strong troop that were not part of their gang had also entered the city. Aside from the goods that Baroness Guya and Aini transported in the big wagons, there were also magic nuclei transported by spatial equipment, hence they could bring along such a large number of soldiers. Typically, caravans only consisted of about one-hundred soldiers to hold off bandits along the way.

Before reaching Cexing City, Saleen had already reorganized his troops. He followed the military guidelines and instructed the servants to become support soldiers to support the bodyguards in battle. The bodyguards were wearing full-body armor that were metallic and light while the servants wore high-grade leather armors. At one glance, one might even mistake them for bandits as well.

Cexing City was shaped like a rectangle and was about one mile between the north and south gates. Once the north gates fell, the Viscount could not care less for the pride of a nobleman and led his over twenty bodyguards and over thirty servants out of the south gate on horses.

Cexing City had limited warhorses. No one in the city knew that they had fled, so they continued fighting.

It was evening when the gate fell and the sun resembled the blood spilled and the wind was chilly. The bandits did not have war drums nor horns, so they communicated with each other using a metal whistle. The whistle was sharp and high-pitched and pierced through the mundane sounds of killing. By the time Saleen and his men reached, more than half of the bandits have already entered the city.

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The sounds of swords and knives clashing against armor were piercing. The bandits’ handheld crossbows were finally put to good use in urban warfare. With the advantage of being able to shoot very quickly at a distance of more than ten yards, there was nothing the city guards could do against them. Cexing City’s layout was similar to those of many other Qin cities where the streets were broad, so it was obvious to any onlookers how much the bandits outnumbered the city guards.

Three to five bandits would surround one peasant soldier before killing him. The poor peasant soldiers had only received two months of training every year and although they wore metal armor, they were not as used to it as the leather armor that they wore during training. At least the leather armor was light and nimble while the metal armor distributed by the Lord could only be comfortably worn by beginner-level swordsmen.

Since the peasant soldiers were not used to the weight and the angle of the armor plates, their movements were off-balanced. When they were attacked, they could only use their armor to defend while counter attacking with their spears.

No matter how good their armor was, the peasant soldiers would not be able to handle the wild hacking of the bandits. Often times, the peasant soldiers’ weapons would first be hacked off then their armor would be torn off by the bandits’ long swords slipping through the gaps.

The braver bandits would use a delta dagger to try and break the armor, but most of the time, two bandits would hold down a peasant soldier while a third would stick his half-sword into the soldier’s throat.

The only casualties the bandits suffered were when some of them charged in too fast and found themselves surrounded by peasant soldiers.

When Su entered the city, he saw chaos. The bandits had already entered through the south gate and locked it behind them. After the Viscount had escaped, the city was in a mess. With no one to command the peasant soldiers, they were like dogs with their teeth and claws plucked out. These bandits did not care to take them as prisoners even if the peasants put down their weapons or surrendered. All the bandits did was shoot from afar with their handheld crossbows before charging in for the kill.

Those peasant soldiers without armor would be shot to death by the arrows while the remaining ones were too few in numbers to stand against the rest of the bandits and could only await death.

Su came from a noble family and always held a high regard for peasants. The bandits’ cruelty and recklessness in butchering them angered this silver grand swordmaster greatly. The only thing holding him back from trying to save the peasants was that Saleen had instructed him to keep an eye out for the bandits’ mage. The mage had yet to appear and Su had no idea where he might be hiding.

Cuisi had already changed into a full body armor. This armor was newly refined by Saleen, but it was designed to look fearsome. In between the armor plates were long and sharp spikes that could cause serious damage to any enemy that got too close to Cuisi.

Demons had a knack for knowing a human’s heart. When Cuisi saw Su raging, he knew that it was time for him to help Saleen maintain their relationship.

“Su, you continue to watch for the mage. Give me twenty men, I will help you kill those idiots,” Cuisi said as he rode over to Su. Su nodded and pointed out twenty knights for Cuisi.

Cuisi was wielding a huge horse-killing sword instead of his whip and charged towards where the bandits were gathered. The twenty knights behind him were armed with machetes distributed by Saleen. These machetes were crafted similarly to those that they had obtained from the soldiers of the Supreme Court. Every one of them were enchanted with magic, allowing them to pierce through heavy armor.

Cuisi was riding on a skeletal warhorse that was clad in full body heavy armor and the enormous horse-killing sword he wielded weighed more than two-hundred pounds. Wielding a gigantic sword and charging in full speed on a skeletal warhorse, Cuisi quickly left behind a trail of destruction. The twenty knights behind him only needed to help Cuisi look out for attacks from the flank.

Cuisi was enjoying the killing spree and released his mental assault. Although his mental assault was not as powerful as Tolesi’s, he was facing normal bandits that were mostly low-level swordsmen so their mental strength was no match for a powerful demon like Cuisi.

The bandits that were attacked by the mental assault mostly became shaky and the weaker ones began to bleed from their orifices and died immediately while those that have trained up some sword aura were not able to stand on their feet. Cuisi excitedly used his skeletal warhorse to trample on them, a form of attack that only a skeletal warhorse could carry out.

The total weight of Cuisi with his warhorse and heavy armor was close to two-thousand pounds. The hooves of the skeletal warhorse were covered with metal and when they trampled on the bandits’ bodies, blood and flesh splattered everywhere. Cuisi still wanted more. He decided to aim at the bandits’ heads instead, so now the red color of blood was mixed with the white color of brain juice. His gigantic horse-killing sword was cutting up the limbs of the bandits instantaneously, it was almost like a scene from purgatory.

The twenty knights behind Cuisi trembled in fear as they felt uncomfortable with Cuisi’s wild rampage. This woman was just too strong. Typically, three-meter long huge horse-killing swords were only for display in shops that manufactured weapons instead of actually being wielded. They usually used it only to show off what wonderful craftsmen they were.

Only Su was enjoying the sight of the rampage. Noblemen never pitied bandits. In normal circumstances where bandits were caught, noble families would think of ways to torture bandits to death.

Su was overjoyed by what he was seeing and led his troops to take over a tall building nearest to the city gate then arranged for the servants to occupy the highest points of the building with their iron crossbows. As for Su, he took down the longbow behind his back and prepared to deal with the grade-6 mage.

Even as the bandits were rushing into the city, they were shot by the rain of arrows let loose by the servants. These bandits even thought that it was the city’s final resistance. Although the servants did not have a good aim, they were too close to miss so most of the bandits rushing through the city gate were either injured or killed.

Only after killing for half an hour did the bandits realize that they were not the only ones that had entered the city.

Two-hundred knights began to charge towards the north gate from the flank. This time around, the arrows shot by the servants were less effective. These two-hundred knights were the elite forces of the bandit gang and wore two layers of armor with animal skin in between. Their helmets were extremely firm and solid so they could easily deflect the arrows shot by the iron crossbows.

With the blink of an eye, these two-hundred bandits were already charging towards Su.