Reborn In The Three Kingdoms

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”Archers!” he bellowed, voice like a temple bell. ”Loose at will! Bring down those engines! Drench them in fire!” The first volley leaped skyward, a black storm of arrows hissing like angry snakes. They fell upon the advancing tide, drumming on shields, biting into flesh. Men screamed, stumbled, fell, and were trampled underfoot. But the host surged on, relentless as the sea.

Then the trebuchets spoke.

A deep, booming thud, like the heartbeat of some colossal beast, and a boulder the size of a bull hurled skyward, whirling end over end. It screamed through the air and struck the wall with a thunderous crack.

Stone shattered and their shards flying like jagged rain. Men on the battlements were hurled screaming into the void, their bodies crumpling on the ground far below.

Another thud. Another screaming stone. The wall shook, dust fountained, and terror rippled through the defenders. Still, Phanindra roared defiance. ”Do not falter! Aim for the towers! Burn them with our arrows!”

Flaming arrows streaked across the sky, trailing tails of fire. They struck the hides swathing the siege towers, hissing, spitting, but the brine soaked leather smoldered only to black smoke, the flames choking and dying.

The towers crawled on, implacable, as archers within sent back death in black feathered shafts that whickered through the air and thudded into flesh.

On the ground below, Ma Dai led the vanguard like a thunderbolt. His spear flashed, carving arcs of crimson as he hewed a path through the Funan skirmishers who had sallied forth in desperate bid to burn the engines.

”Push them back!” Ma Dai roared, his voice a lion’s roar. ”For the Hengyuan Dynasty! For the Emperor!”

Beside him, Lu Meng’s blade whirled like a storm of steel, while Zhou Tai, a giant of a man, his scarred face set in a rictus of fury, waded through the press like a war god risen from blood. Zhu Ran loosed flaming bolts from his heavy crossbow, skewering men like fowl on a spit, his calm precision a chilling counterpoint to the chaos.

The Climbing Tigers were flung forward, great hooked ladders that bit into the stone like iron fangs. Men swarmed up them, snarling, shields on their backs, swords clenched in their teeth.

Arrows lanced into them, oil rained down, fire blossomed, but still they climbed, clawing upward through the storm of death.

Above, defenders heaved stones the size of skulls, toppling ladders, crushing men to pulp. Cauldrons tipped, and boiling oil cascaded in shrieking sheets, peeling flesh from bone. But for every man who fell screaming, two more took his place, scrambling over his corpse toward the parapet.

The air was a furnace, thick with smoke, with the reek of burning flesh, with the metallic tang of blood. The roar of battle was a living thing, a beast that bellowed and writhed, its voice the clash of steel, the scream of the dying, the crash of stone upon stone.

And through it all, the drums beat on, implacable, inexorable, the heartbeat of war.

Hours bled into each other. The sun climbed, a merciless white eye glaring down upon carnage. The ground at the foot of the walls was slick with blood, choked with bodies, Hengyuan and Funan soldiers alike. Siege towers groaned against the sky, inching ever closer, their drawbridges poised like jaws to bite into the battlements.

On one tower’s deck, Ma Xiu stood, his spear dripping crimson, his hair matted with sweat and gore. His voice split the heavens as he pointed toward the wall, now scarred and cracked from a hundred blows. ”Forward! Tear down their gates! Today we carve our names into the bones of this city!”

From the platform far behind, Sun Ce and Ma Chao watched, their face a mask of iron. Sun Ce’s spear rested across his knees, but his hand clenched so tight upon the hilt that his knuckles shone white.

”Gonglu,” Sun Ce said without turning, ”will it hold? The plan?”

Zhou Yu’s fan stirred the heavy air, slow, deliberate. His eyes, bright as polished steel, never left the maelstrom before him.

”It will hold,” he murmured, though his heart beat a drumbeat of dread. ”But this is only the beginning.”

By dusk, the walls of Vyadhapura still stood, though they bled from a hundred wounds. Fires guttered along the battlements, painting the sky with sullen crimson. The cries of the dying mingled with the howls of jackals drawn to the feast of corpses strewn like broken dolls upon the trampled earth.

The siege had begun and it would not end with the setting of the sun.

The fires along Vyadhapura’s walls guttered low, sending thin serpents of smoke into the bruised purple of dusk. Jackals wailed beyond the killing grounds, drawn by the rank sweetness of death. The smell was everywhere, burnt flesh, scorched leather, blood baking on stone. The cries of the wounded crawled through the streets like ghosts that could not rest.

The air inside the makeshift command post was thick with the smell of blood, sweat, and despair. General Phanindra leaned heavily on the map table, the reports from his lieutenants feeling like physical blows. The parchments might as well have been soaked in crimson.

”Three thousand dead,” said the first, his voice hoarse, as though the numbers themselves had clawed his throat raw. ”And five thousand wounded. Heavy and light both.”

The words struck like a mace to the skull. Eight thousand gone. General Phanindra’s jaw tightened, his knuckles whitening where his hands gripped the arms of his chair.

His army had been a strong force of 25,000 men, proud men, sons of Funan, the king’s pride, the nation’s shield. Now more than a third were carcasses rotting in the dust, and of the rest, five thousand bled in the wards, their moans like the dirge of a broken empire.

”Eight thousand...” he breathed, barely a whisper, but in the silence that followed, it was louder than a shout. His lieutenants kept their eyes lowered. None dared speak.

General Phanindra’s gaze drifted to the great bronze bowl of water set in the center of the room. It quivered with every distant thud of Hengyuan’s trebuchets, like the heartbeat of some vast, cruel god beyond the walls. We cannot hold. Not like this. The thought slid cold into his gut, a serpent of dread.

The walls were cracked. The towers burned. And those engines, those monstrous engines, vomiting death, they were beyond anything Funan had faced. Hide wrapped towers that sneered at fire, ladders that clawed like iron demons, stones that shattered granite as if it were clay.

When at last he spoke, his voice was low, almost gentle, but the veins throbbed like cords in his neck. ”Increase the rations,” he said. ”Tonight, every soldier eats his fill. Meat, grain, wine, everything whatever the stores can give. They will need strength for tomorrow.” His gaze lifted, black and bottomless as a storm torn sea. ”And the lightly wounded, bind them fast. If they can stand, they fight.”

The lieutenants bowed and scattered like leaves before the wind. When their footsteps faded, Phanindra rose. He crossed the chamber, past the dim light of guttering torches, and mounted the stairs to the wall.

Night had fallen. The enemy’s camp burned like a constellation sprawled upon the earth, a hundred thousand strong. Tents like pale teeth, banners snapping black against the starlight. Fires dotted the plain, cooking fires, signal fires, the hearths of men who had crossed the seas to grind Funan into dust.

General Phanindra stood staring, hands clasped behind his back, his armor dented and smeared with blood that was not his own. Behind him, Vyadhapura sprawled in silence, her gilded towers dark, her streets choked with fear. He could hear the sobbing of women in the wind, the mutter of priests chanting hollow prayers.

’If we wait, we die.’ The truth was a knife in his brain. King Kaundinya III’s order was clear, hold the walls, bleed them until the monsoon breaks their bones. But what good were walls when the enemy’s stones could shatter them like pottery? What good were prayers when the earth itself shook beneath their engines? A week, at most.

And then the streets would run with blood, and Funan’s king would be dragged in chains before the leader of this foreigners, to their king or whatever they called their leader was.

Unless...

The thought took root, dark and bitter as henbane. The plan formed, audacious and likely suicidal. It would never receive royal approval. It defied the king’s direct command. But it was the only move left on the board. He then turned, descending swift as a hawk into the shadowed heart of the city.

Inside the emergency HQ of the army, its smelled of wax and parchment and the stale sweat of despair. A map sprawled across the table like the skin of a slain beast, inked with lines that meant life or death.

Around it stood men who had followed him through a hundred battles, scarred veterans, killers with eyes like drawn steel. His most trusted. The ones who would die before they bent knee to a foreign tyrant.

Phanindra looked at them one by one. Their faces were gaunt, their mail torn, but in their eyes burned the same fire that smoldered in his own. ”You know why I called you,” he said.

They said nothing. They only waited.

He drew a breath deep as a bellows. ”We lost eight thousand today. Eight thousand! And tomorrow...” He slammed a fist on the map. Ink pots jumped. ”Tomorrow we’ll lose ten. Then twelve. And by week’s end, the jackals will be gnawing our bones. Unless we strike.”

Still silence. A silence that rang louder than any battle-horn.

He bent, stabbing the map with his dagger, the steel sinking into a black marked patch beyond the walls, the enemy camp. ”We hit them here. Tonight.”

Heads jerked up. A hiss of breath, like men scorched by sudden flame.

”General—” one began, but Phanindra cut him dead with a glance.

”A night raid,” he said, voice low but hard as hammered iron. ”Five hundred horse. We ride light, we ride fast. We burn their siege engines, their granaries, their powder. We gut their camp and vanish like smoke.”

At last one found his tongue. ”Does... does His Majesty know of this?”

Phanindra’s laugh was a bark without mirth. ”The king?” He spat the word like poison. ”The king bids us cower behind stone until the rains save us. The rains will not save us! Those devils will storm the walls, butcher our sons, chain our daughters, and hang our king in a cage! That is what obedience brings.”

They stared at him, and in their eyes he saw it, the truth they dared not speak. He straightened, his shadow stretching long across the map. ”I will not die penned like a goat. I will not watch my city burn while I hold a royal order like a chain around my throat.” He looked at each man in turn, and his voice softened, rough with something like grief. ”I do not ask this of you. I ask if you will stand with me.”

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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