Ch.164Extinction (1)

I mounted my horse and smiled.

Then I looked up at the high sky.

And I murmured softly.

“Ambaghai.”

He was the Khagan of Khamag Mongol who was brutally killed by the Jin Emperor.

In truth, I didn’t know him.

I didn’t know what he liked or what he looked like.

He was merely a relative.

A stranger who shared the same surname, Borjigin.

“Ambaghai. Ambaghai.”

I called his name repeatedly.

Calling the name of a relative I didn’t know at all, I expressed false anger.

“The Jin Dynasty killed Ambaghai, who was the Khan of Khamag Mongol.”

“…”

“Brutally, while tied to a wooden horse.”

At this, the Ulus soldiers became enraged.

For Mongols, who consider dying without bloodshed an honorable death, the Jin Emperor’s actions were condemnable.

Especially to the Khan of Khamag Mongol, of all people.

“Inside those massive walls is an emperor who looks down on the Ulus. To bring the emperor before me, we must cross these walls.”

Being walls that protected the emperor, their height and thickness were extraordinary.

However, this didn’t make me afraid.

There was only one thing I feared.

The fear that I wouldn’t show enough anger toward the enemy.

“Howl! My wolves!”

The Mongol soldiers clashed their weapons together, making noise.

The sound was like a mixture of bear and wolf howls.

“Attack Zhongdu!”

At my command, the Ulus cavalry charged forward.

They were men who knew no fear.

As they charged, countless arrows rained down on them.

But the weak arrows couldn’t stop the wolves’ attack.

“Chaaaarge!”

“Take my attack!”

“Feel the wrath of the Ulus!”

The enemy was greatly confused by the Ulus cavalry’s attack.

This was because the cavalry was charging directly toward the walls.

It was like charging toward an unbreakable mountain.

But the Ulus cavalry rushed forward as if they didn’t care about such things.

And they threw their bodies forward to surround the walls.

As the walls were surrounded, stones flew over them.

The walls of Zhongdu trembled under the stones hurled by the Ulus trebuchets.

To stop this, they needed to send troops outside the walls.

But the Jin Dynasty, with its walls surrounded, couldn’t do that.

The moment they sent out troops, they could reach an unfavorable outcome.

Yet they couldn’t hold out like this either.

The Ulus trebuchets were turning Zhongdu’s walls to rags.

The Jin Dynasty had only one choice.

Either fight us as they were.

“Or die.”

I smiled as I looked at Zhongdu.

They were holding out with vain hope.

When this hope crumbles, the enemy will collapse even faster.

* * *

Wanyan Liang gritted his teeth as he glared at the enemy.

Then he began to press the messenger.

“Is the reinforcement still far away?”

“I will check right away.”

The messenger bowed and moved to check if reinforcements were coming.

Just a few minutes after the messenger disappeared, there was suddenly a crashing sound from somewhere.

“The eastern wall has collapsed!”

“Everyone, defend the eastern wall!”

The Jin Dynasty’s wall had collapsed under the Mongol siege engines.

The walls of Zhongdu, the Jin capital, were known for their thickness.

Yet they had collapsed so helplessly.

In a way, this was inevitable.

The Jin Dynasty had suffered great damage from the Yellow River floods.

So they had deployed many workers for disaster recovery.

This delayed the wall reinforcement work that should have been done.

As a result, the walls couldn’t help but collapse under the attack of the Mongol siege engines.

In fact, this was largely due to the Jin Dynasty’s complacency.

The Jin Dynasty hadn’t properly checked how the Mongols had conquered Western Xia and Western Liao.

So they didn’t know what level of siege engines the Mongols were operating.

More precisely, they thought the level of siege engines operated by the Mongols was low.

That had come back like a boomerang, causing this great damage.

But Wanyan Liang couldn’t collapse here now.

The 650,000 reinforcements hadn’t arrived yet.

If only they came, they could survive.

He was holding out with such thoughts.

While he was thinking this, a messenger urgently approached him.

“Y-Your Excellency! B-big trouble!”

“What is it?”

“The Goryeo bastards have betrayed the Great Jin and attacked Liaodong!”

“Goryeo…!”

Wanyan Liang gritted his teeth.

Goryeo was such a country.

It was a country that never had loyalty to the Great Jin from the beginning.

So their betrayal wasn’t a big problem.

This was partly because they had anticipated Goryeo’s betrayal, and partly because they knew that even if Goryeo betrayed them, their military power wasn’t formidable.

Relatively recently, Goryeo and the Jin Dynasty had been at war.

So they knew better than anyone that Goryeo’s cavalry forces weren’t strong.

Goryeo was only strong in rugged mountainous areas.

As a result, they couldn’t exert much power in the Liaodong region, which had many plains.

“It’s fine. The Goryeo bastards can be dealt with by the border troops alone.”

At this, the messenger’s expression wasn’t good.

Wanyan Liang immediately realized that the messenger still had facts left unsaid.

“Don’t tell me…”

“Yes, Your Excellency. The Goryeo bastards have joined hands with the Khitan bastards. Because of this, our country’s influence in Liaodong is rapidly diminishing.”

For the Jin Dynasty, losing Liaodong was unacceptable.

It was both the place where the Jurchen had risen and one of the few vast pastures where cavalry could be supplied.

Of course, there was the vast North China Plain, but since it had become a battlefield now, it was difficult to supply horses.

Moreover, with the fall of Juyong Pass, control of the North China Plain had passed to the Mongols.

So the news of Goryeo’s capture of Liaodong was a great shock to Wanyan Liang.

“Kugh… At such a critical time, the Goryeo bastards stabbed us in the back…!”

But there was still a chance for counterattack.

If Wanyan Shunan’s reinforcements arrived, they could join hands with them, defeat the Mongol bastards, and then deal with the Goryeo bastards.

Just as he was thinking that.

Another messenger urgently approached Wanyan Liang.

“Your Excellency! Big trouble!”

“What is it? Is it about the Goryeo bastards again?”

“No… the Prince has been captured by the Song army.”

“What?!”

Wanyan Liang was shocked as if hit by a hammer.

Because Wanyan Shunan being captured by Song meant only one thing.

“The Song bastards have betrayed us… cough…”

“Your Excellency!”

“Your Excellency! Pull yourself together!”

Wanyan Liang, having received a great shock, began to vomit blood.

This was because Song capturing Wanyan Shunan meant that the 650,000 reinforcements, which were like the Jin Dynasty’s lifeline, had been completely disbanded.

For Wanyan Liang, who had been waiting only for the reinforcements to arrive, there could be no greater shock.

“So… so that’s why the Mongol bastards surrounded the city with cavalry…!”

Wanyan Liang wailed.

Surrounding a city with cavalry was effective but a tactic that caused great damage.

So it wasn’t often used unless the outcome of the battle was certain.

But the Mongols had used this tactic.

That meant the Mongols knew that Song had betrayed the Jin Dynasty.

“Where did it go wrong…”

Wanyan Liang, due to the great shock, began to talk to himself.

The reason for his soliloquy was simple.

When he first heard that a new Khan had emerged in Khamag Mongol, he had thought to use him.

He had thought to use him to deal with the Tatars who wouldn’t listen.

So he had used that man, and the man had brilliantly completed the Jin Dynasty’s request.

The man had used this as a stepping stone to develop further.

He conquered beyond Khamag Mongol to the Mongolian steppe.

Then he conquered Western Xia and even occupied Western Liao.

That man’s name was Yesugei.

He was the Gurkhan of Mongolia.

“If… if I had killed him then… the Jin Dynasty wouldn’t have suffered such humiliation.”

Regret washed over him.

He felt as if everything had been twisted because of his advice to the emperor.

His mistake was one.

That he had ignored Yesugei.

That one mistake was now strangling the Jin Dynasty.

“…Hoo.”

Stopping his soliloquy, Wanyan Liang took a deep breath.

Then he picked up his sword and looked at Yesugei.

“I will clean up the mistake I made.”

If things continued like this, Zhongdu would fall.

Then the emperor would inevitably become the Gurkhan’s prisoner.

That was something Wanyan Liang could never allow.

Therefore, he intended to throw his life away to stop that monster.

He believed that if he could stop that monster now, the Jin Dynasty could revive.

Of course, this was just his own delusion.

Anyway, Wanyan Liang drew his sword and came down to the gate to command the soldiers directly.

And he reorganized the soldiers and gathered them under his command.

“Today we face a monster. If we don’t stop this monster that devours the world, we will eventually become its prey.”

The Jin soldiers showed a lukewarm response to Wanyan Liang’s words.

This was because even if they became food for wolves, their lives wouldn’t change much.

Only the ruling class would change.

“Soldiers of the Jin Dynasty! If you survive this battle, I will personally petition His Majesty to reward you. If that’s not enough, I will sell my own property to reward you.”

Wanyan Liang tried to persuade the lukewarm Jin soldiers with these words.

But since it wasn’t something given right now, but later, the number of troops didn’t increase significantly.

With this, he had done everything he could as the Grand Chancellor.

All that remained was to resist with his life.

At that moment, suddenly a tremendous sound echoed at the gate.

Crack.

At that sound, the wooden door split in half.

Seeing this, the Grand Chancellor, like a dumbfounded person, made eye contact with a man through the split gap.

“…Yesugei.”

Yesugei.

He was here.