To achieve immortality, I cultivate using Qi Luck

Chapter 1121: Chapter 453 The Fall of the Liang State_3 Chapter 1121: Chapter 453 The Fall of the Liang State_3 The Chu army outside Ke City, even after being reinforced, had still suffered significant losses trying to uproot the camps around the city.

What remained was an army of one million soldiers, including eleven Inborns.

In terms of sheer strength, Chu State still held an absolute advantage.

Also, after receiving news that Xu Army reinforcements had arrived at Sheqiu City, Lu Yuan issued an order to transfer the 200,000 reorganized Xu Army captives from the rear at Xichang City to Sheqiu City, to further bolster the strength of the Chu armies on various battlefields.

With these reinforcements, the Chu forces at the heavily fortified Sheqiu City were still capable of combat, even after a wave of support from the Xu Army inside the city.

Although the casualties might be larger than anticipated, Chu’s strategy for siege warfare has always heavily utilized captives.

The Chu army at Sheqiu City, apart from the 500,000 main troops, had as many as 700,000 captive soldiers, mostly consisting of Xu People.

Since the dead were Xu Countrymen killing each other, the Chu side naturally didn’t care.

Therefore, the siege of Sheqiu City, which had just initiated, didn’t abate because of reinforcements arriving for both sides, nor was there mutual deterrence out of dread.

It rather escalated, with the brutality of the killing intensifying considerably.

Under Chu’s relentless assault, indifferent to the lives of captive soldiers, and the constant appearance of eleven Inborns on the battlefield,

Sheqiu City, despite being reinforced, suddenly found itself in dire peril.

Even the two Inborn Generals inside the city were repeatedly caught off-guard by the Chu army, with several Inborns coordinating their attacks on the defenders.

Had it not been for the Xu Army’s desperate rescues within the city, risking their lives to block the steps of Chu’s Inborns, those two Generals likely would have perished on the battlefield already.

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However, even so.

Having been besieged multiple times, the two Xu Country Innates were also seriously injured and, fearing another encirclement by the Inborns of Chu, hardly ever went up on the walls anymore.

Without them to help restrain the Inborns of Chu, the pressure brought by the Inborn Grandmasters fell entirely upon the low-level soldiers.

An Inborn Grandmaster unrestrained, without any opponents of the same level, could kill at least a thousand people before exhausting their internal pneuma.

Those with higher efficiency could even slay two to three thousand without difficulty.

And after returning, they could recuperate and, once their true pneuma was restored, rejoin the battlefield.

In this cycle, an Inborn Grandmaster could enter the battlefield three to four times a day, taking the lives of at least five to six thousand people.

With eleven Inborns in the Chu army, including several avatars of Lu Yuan with strength comparable to the Second Realm of the Inborns, their killing efficiency was even higher.

A guaranteed toll of over ten thousand a day.

Thus, after several days of battle, the Xu Army inside the city, just those killed by Chu Inborn hands, had already exceeded a hundred thousand.

Facing such circumstances, the two Inborn Generals of the Xu Army, no matter how reluctant, could no longer hide.

Because their underlings were already frightened to death.

If they continued to do nothing, they feared that before Chu Army attacked, there would already be a mutiny within the city, and their men would revolt.

By then, without the support of a large army to fend off the ferocious Chu forces, they would hardly escape death.

So the two came out again, bearing their unhealed wounds, and confronted the Chu Inborns with gritted teeth.

But facing the frenzied Chu Inborns, what could they, already injured, possibly achieve?

Although their interception reduced the number of defenders dying each day to just thirty to forty thousand,

The toll was still staggering.

If one were to add the casualties among Chu soldiers participating in the siege, the Xu Army was still incurring losses of over fifty thousand soldiers each day.

After just half a month of fighting, half of the Xu Army in the city had already been killed or wounded.

The soldiers below could no longer withstand it.

Even the two Xu Country Innates above were beginning to falter.

If the fighting continued, they would either die with a mutiny in the city and Chu forces entering, or

They would be killed on the spot in direct combat with the Chu army.

Both outcomes were death, unquestionably a harrowing prospect.

They did not want to die.

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Therefore, while struggling to repel the Chu offensive, the two Xu Country Innates within the city were also pondering and hesitating over whether to surrender or not?

At this point, Sheqiu City was indeed untenable.

Whether in terms of military strength or the number of Inborn Grandmasters, the gap between them and the Chu army was too vast.

So vast that they were simply not in the same league and inherently unable to resist.

However, both Inborn Generals were from the aristocratic families of Xu State, which through generations of statesmanship had shared in the nation’s prosperity.

Their ties with Xu State were far too deep and profound.

Even if they wanted to surrender now, it was difficult to forsake Xu State and their families, so they hesitated to make a decision.

But regardless of whether they decided to surrender, the trend of the battle for Sheqiu City was fairly clear.

The fall of the city was just a matter of time.

Perhaps in three to five days, or maybe in ten days to half a month, but at some point during August, this city was bound to fall.

At that time, the southwestern battlefield here would become the first major breakthrough achieved by the Chu army in the Le’an Prefecture warzone.

Compared to the Sheqiu battlefield, which had received two substantial reinforcements from Lu Yuan and was burdened with high expectations,

The performance of the remaining southern and southeastern battlefields of Le’an Prefecture over the past few months seemed quite mundane.

Both routes of the Chu army were not strong, with each having an army of three to four hundred thousand and three to four Inborns, both still mixed with Liang troops.

This strength, after taking one or two prefectures’ worth of territory in Le’an Prefecture, reached the limit of expansion once the Xu reinforcements arrived.

Now, the Chu forces on both battlefields found themselves in a stalemate with the Xu Army advancing to block them.

Both sides had roughly equal troop numbers, and the Inborn Grandmasters were almost on par, resulting in a scenario where neither side could overcome the other.

Without outside forces to break the deadlock, a breakthrough indeed seemed difficult to achieve.

For this reason,

As soon as the battle in the Liang Country ended with the annihilation of the two countries,

Lu Yuan immediately ordered the Southern Route Army, which no longer had a strategic objective, to march northward, fulfilling his original strategic plan:

Namely, to reinforce the Xu Country Battlefield.

Huang Xuan acted quickly as well.

Upon receiving the command from his original self, he did not have time for extensive rest.

He left 200,000 Chu troops to garrison Donglai Prefecture, and after reorganizing the captured 700,000 from the Liang Army,

He led the remaining 700,000 main Chu forces and 200,000 Liang vassal soldiers northward to Le’an Prefecture, prepared to reinforce the main battlefield of Xu State.