The battering rams began pounding at the city gates, and dozens upon dozens of large siege ladders were set up against the city walls; countless soldiers surged forward like a swarm of ants.
It was truly strange for Turing Tuo. Why had they managed to reach the walls of Tianshui City so easily?
Why was there no resistance at all? It was deeply unsettling.
However, Turing Tuo had already anticipated that Suo Lun might use a fire attack with burning oil.
First, they had their most elite samurai wear fireproof cloaks, and second, every one of those samurai carried a bag of mud so that if a fire did break out, they could quickly smother it with the mud.
At this time atop the city walls, Yan Yan and the others were extremely anxious.
Suo Lun had just ordered that no arrows should be shot and the medium catapults should not launch powder kegs, which allowed Turing Tuo’s army of forty thousand to charge under the walls very successfully, with almost no casualties.
And now, countless soldiers had climbed up, swarming like ants.
If hundreds or even thousands of soldiers reached the ramparts, it would be a serious problem.
Meanwhile, the massive crossbow formation of the Tuling Tuo Army kept firing wildly at Tianlang Pass’ battlements, pinning down the defenders so they couldn’t even lift their heads.
Yan Yan urged urgently, "My lord, we must ignite it now, the enemy is about to climb up!"
Suo Lun, observing the densely packed soldiers below, said, "Wait a bit longer!"
He wanted to wait until all of Turing Tuo’s forty-thousand-strong army had rushed into this death zone of hundreds of thousands of square meters, where several million pounds of oil were strewn.
Seeing the battle progress so smoothly, Turing Tuo felt a growing unease instead and said, "Why is this so strange? What is this smell in the air?"
Of course, it was the pungent odor of burning oil, but it had been completely covered by another scent, that of decaying corpses.
On the battlefield, Suo Lun had placed several thousand corpses of the Zhi Wei army, which by now were rotting and emitting waves of foul stench, enough to mask any other odors.
In the eyes of Turing Tuo, this was just a scare tactic by Suo Lun, utterly dull and boring.
"Charge, charge, charge..."
"Flatten Tianshui City, exterminate the Suo family..."
With the battle proceeding so smoothly, the attacking army of over forty thousand soldiers went completely mad, racing each other to scale the walls.
Finally, all forty thousand soldiers had entered Suo Lun’s death trap of several hundred thousand square meters.
Beholding the densely packed soldiers, scrambling beneath the walls like ants, vying with one another, fearing to fall even a step behind.
Suo Lun sneered coldly and commanded, "Throw down the fish oil barrels!"
At once, hundreds of samurai, braving a rain of arrows from the sky, hurled hundreds of fish oil barrels down from the ramparts.
Upon impact with the ground, the barrels shattered, and the fish oil inside splashed out. Fearing that the solidified burning oil might not ignite, Suo Lun had used tens of thousands of pounds of fish oil as an igniter.
"WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH..."
Hundreds of fire arrows were shot down!
"No, no..." Turing Tuo immediately thought of that naval battle, where Suo Lun led hundreds of warships and tens of thousands of soldiers into Devil’s Bay and then incinerated them all with a single fire.
Though he hadn’t witnessed the scene himself, he knew it very clearly and it was etched into his heart.
Seeing the fire arrows descend, and recalling the previous odd occurrences, Turing Tuo’s heart trembled, and realization dawned.
But, it was already too late.
The fire arrows fiercely ignited the flammable vegetation on the ground, the poured fish oil, and then the thick layer of burning oil beneath.
Millions of pounds of burning oil blazed fiercely.
The surface of hundreds of thousands of square meters instantly turned into a hellish sea of fire.
The burning oil death trap, Suo Lun had used it once at sea, and now he was using it again on land.
The soldiers of Turing Tuo desperately tried to smother the flames with the mud they had brought. But the place was entirely engulfed in a sea of fire, utterly beyond suppression.
Over forty thousand soldiers were all crammed into this area of several hundred thousand square meters.
Although some elite forces were dressed in fireproof cloaks, they were of little help against the overwhelming inferno and suffocating carbon monoxide fumes.
Innumerable screams and roars of agony twisted through the air...
Crowds of soldiers struggled in the flames, howling, frantically trying to flee.
They ran, ablaze, but not making it a hundred meters before collapsing dead on the ground.
Suo Lun’s ruthless strategy had worked again.
The army of over forty thousand soldiers from Turing Tuo was entirely buried in the flames!
Note: The second update of over four thousand words is here. Typing from my rural hometown after traveling a thousand miles and having a drink, I am truly at the brink of exhaustion. Time to sleep now, thank you everyone!