The Empress's Gigolo

"Bastard, where are you? When you come out, I will surely kill you..." Ren Baqian was at a corner of the city wall and stealthily leaned out to look far away into the darkness.

He didn't notice that the "antenna" on his head had completely exposed him.

This was the corner where the east and south walls met and was a relatively quiet place.

There were blood-curdling screams that came from a place a dozen of meters away from him, but he didn't seem to hear them.

"Watch out for the arrows! Where did they come from?" Ren Baqian cautioned Shi Hu who was beside him. Shi Hu was also wearing the same type of night vision device as Ren Baqian and was curiously looking outside. Shi Hu had not expected the images of people to look like this and was quite fascinated by the novelty.

"Notify everyone! Fire!" Ren Baqian called out from behind him. He had already adjusted the angle of the mortar, so those who stayed behind just needed to load the mortar shells.

A moment later, the boom of a mortar was heard from the city, and Ren Baqian stared intensely at the crowd below. Although he couldn't see the people clearly, he could still make out their movements. All he needed to do was find the archer who was nocking an arrow at this time. The act of drawing back a bow was quite a big movement and had a high chance to be found out.

Boom! The mortar shell directly exploded outside the city wall and turned a corner of the night vision device red.

He saw at least three men doing the same action earlier, but none of the mortar shells had been shot yet.

"Could it be one of them?" Ren Baqian speculated, but he refrained from shooting his gun.

Ren Baqian quietly slipped down the city wall, re-oriented the angle of the mortar, and got someone else to open fire before heading to the top of the city wall to hide.

Boom!

Ren Baqian carefully watched the images of the people in the dark and cursed, "Son of a bit*h," when at least ten people were seen doing the same action.

There was more than one sharpshooting archer in Great Xia, and there was simply no way for Ren Baqian to find the specific person he wanted.

Thinking up to this point, Ren Baqian moved the gun rack and pressed the trigger to sweep across all the targets.

It doesn't matter if you are the right target or not.

I will shoot and if I shoot the wrong person, that just means you are unlucky.

The first two archers didn't even react and were smashed into tattered dolls.

The third archer leapt backward, then pushed off with his legs to run.

"An expert! An expert has to die!" Ren Baqian acted as if he had found the right target, ignoring the others as he aimed the machine gun and sprayed the bullets like a long metallic dragon at the fleeing shadow.

However, there were too many people out and about in the dark. He could only see the colored patches formed from body heat, and after that guy dodged a few times, it was difficult for Ren Baqian to pick him out from the crowd.

Ren Baqian emptied an ammunition belt by shooting in the general direction of his target and then let Shi Hu carry the machine gun down from the city wall.

There were still many things to be done tonight, so he couldn't continue to spend his time on this.

After releasing the subsequent mortar shells, Ren Baqian broke up the assault outside of the east gate to give the soldiers there a reprieve.

Furthermore, most of the scaling ladders were damaged. At present, the intensity of the attacks were still acceptable, so much so that a portion of the soldiers even took turns to rest.

Following this, Ren Baqian fired eight shots in a row in the direction of the north gate and two of the shells were hit by arrows. One of them collided with the city wall and exploded after dropping down to the ground. The other shell ended up like the two on the east gate and were pinned to the wall.

These few mortar shells instantly emptied the Great Xia soldiers outside the city wall, and half of the scaling ladders disappeared as well.

After all three directions were covered by Ren Baqian, the Great Xia attacks finally weakened. An hour later, the Great Xia soldiers retreated. Without the scaling ladders, it would be useless even if they had a lot of people. They could only cut down more trees from the nearby forest to make more siege equipment before they could organize another wave of attacks.

When the Great Xia soldiers retreated, many aboriginal soldiers sat directly in the pools of blood, leaned against the wall, and fell into a deep sleep.

After continuously fighting for so long, even a man of steel couldn't carry on.

Ren Baqian took the guards up the city wall again.

"Bring that down," Ren Baqian told Shi Hu as he pointed at the mortar shell that was pinned to the wall.

"It will not explode, right?" Shi Hu knew the power of this thing because he had seen it many times during these past two days.

"Just be careful not to touch the front and it will be alright." Ren Baqian gestured.

Shi Hu had asked about this before. This type of shell had two safety features; it would not detonate if the trajectory was too low or if force of impact at the tip did not reach a certain level.

As long as one of the conditions wasn't met, the shell was safe to handle.

It had only been shot through by an arrow, and even if it had been hit by a tracer bullet, it wouldn't explode.

Ren Baqian asked for a few pieces of cloth before cutting the arrow shaft and pulling out the arrow. He then wrapped the mortar shell properly. It was taken carefully to one side, ready to be thrown down directly at the Great Xia soldiers the next time they came back to attack.

He wasn't sure whether or not it would explode under such conditions.

Even if it didn't explode, it could smash one person to death.

Then, he carefully examined the broken long arrow that had been extracted from the pinned shell. The shaft was totally made of wood, the fletching was made up of white feathers, and the arrowhead was made of fine iron.

He looked at it for a long time without finding anything and handed the two arrows to Shi Hu.

"Sir, these arrows came from the same person," Shi Hu said after taking just a glance.

"How do you know?" Ren Baqian asked curiously.

"Some archers make a mark on their arrows to indicate who the victim was killed by. There is an engraved mark here that both arrows have," Shi Hu explained and pointed to the tail of an arrow as he handed it to Ren Baqian.

"Sure enough!" Ren Baqian looked at where Shi Hu was pointing and saw a simple floral pattern at the end of the shaft.

"Well, if he isn't dead, he can be considered lucky." Ren Baqian waved his hands and stopped pursuing the matter regarding the archer. He went back to the city commander's residence to take out the box containing the landmines. Following which, he quickly brought along some people, traveled out of the city, and buried ten landmines spread out over an area that was 100 to 200 meters away from the city wall.

When stepped on, the OZM-72 bouncing landmine would pop up about one to two meters before exploding. The explosive power wasn't considered strong, but the 650 pieces of lethal shrapnel could cause numerous injuries within a 14 meters radius.

This type of landmine wasn't meant to kill people, but designed to injure them. After all, a wounded person needed two people to carry him or her away. An injured casualty also required other people to care of them and was more of a burden than a dead person.

Furthermore, the injured also needed food.

These were the reasons why Ren Baqian brought the landmines back from Earth.

Did the other party want a war of attrition? Then he would create many wounded people for them. People who couldn't fight, needed to be taken care of, and consumed food.

"Make sure you do not step on them. Whoever steps on them will be as good as buried." Ren Baqian buried the landmines before covering the sides with soil. He then emphasized his warnings repeatedly.

After hearing this, the guards and winged cavalry beside him went silent.

These things used by Ren Baqian would cause serious injuries or death to anyone, even experts who were at the Earth Wheel level, if not handled carefully.

Each one of these sturdy men walked like a cat and didn't even dare to breathe hard.

In actual fact, these mines wouldn't be operational until they had been buried for a period of time in order to prevent injuries to the minelayers if they accidentally stepped on a mine.

At the same time, these so called bouncing landmines weren't the same as the mines depicted in the movies. In the cinema, a landmine wouldn't explode if you stepped on it or pressed down on it with something else and kept pressure on the mine trigger. In reality, once these bouncing mines were stepped on, the fuse would be activated and would explode after a short time even if there was no further movement. It was just that the damage to the surrounding would be less.

Ren Baqian and his party then went to the northern and western areas outside of the city. Altogether, they laid ten mines in each of the three locations. Ren Baqian brought them back to the city, requested for more than ten pieces of white cloth, and scrawled the words: "Watch your step!" on them.

"Sir, isn't this the same as alerting them? What if they discover this?" Shi Hu rubbed his head and asked.

"From how many meters can this cloth be seen clearly?" Ren Baqian squinted his eyes as he asked him.

Shi Hu ran out to observe the clothes carefully from a distance under the lantern light, then ran back and reported, "It should be about 120 meters during daytime. Right now, it isn't even clear from about 30 meters away."

"How far away did we bury them?" Ren Baqian was exasperated.

"About 200 meters away." Shi Hu estimated by counting on his fingers.

"Is that right? When the other party steps on a mine, many will be killed or wounded. When they see the cloth on the city wall, wouldn't they watch their step? Even if they do not watch carefully, wouldn't they make all kinds of disorderly conjectures?"

"What about afterward? We didn't bury any at the base of the wall, and they will discover this quickly!" Shi Hu continued asking because he still did not understand the intention of Ren Baqian.

Ren Baqian crossed his arms and said solemnly, "I am just trying to frighten them!"

Shi Hu was speechless.

...

The next day, the Great Xia army finally rested for a full day. On the third day, they brought along a stack of scaling ladders to continue their attack on the city.

Right now, there weren't anymore of the mobile and enormous scaling ladders. They were all step ladders that could be carried by a few people directly to the city wall.

The Great Xia army gathered into bloodlusting formations and approached Liao City.

Ren Baqian heard that the Great Xia soldiers were coming out of their barracks and rushed quickly to the top of the city wall with the empress, Li Qianqiu, and the others. They saw the army coming out of their barracks in an orderly manner and approaching Liao City.

The soldiers who were at the forefront were still carrying shields and were followed by the archers and pikemen.

Additionally, between every two rows of soldiers, there were a few people carrying step ladders.

As far as he could see, there were currently more than 40 step ladders with even more step ladders being carried out of the barracks.

"Aren't these step ladders made from our trees?" Ren Baqian suddenly realized.

"They also cut down our trees to cook their food!" Li Qianqiu followed up with a soft whisper from the side.

"Isn't this considered eating and using our resources, yet still wanting to attack us?" Ren Baqian asked.

Li Qianqiu was stunned, he hadn't consider this before, but it seemed to be the case after listening to Ren Baqian!

His mood instantly changed for the worse.

"They are arriving soon!"

Ren Baqian and Li Qianqiu exchanged a few words and saw that the Great Xia soldiers were approaching the mine that was laid yesterday that was the furthest away from the wall.

Li Qianqiu knew about Ren Baqian going out at night to bury something, but he didn't know what had been buried. After hearing what Ren Baqian said, Li Qianqiu focused his attention on the unfolding events.

The first row of soldiers passed over the first mine, and the second row also marched past it. To their surprise, these soldiers miraculously didn't step on it.

However, an archer from the third row stepped on it, and there was a slight clicking sound.

One second later, as he raised his leg, the mine popped up from the ground.

Boom!

With an explosion, numerous steel ball bearings and shrapnel were propelled violently into the surrounding area.

With the exception of those who were nearby and blown away with their bodies riddled with holes from the explosion, many were maimed by the scattered fragments. In no time, the Great Xia soldiers were in utter disarray.

Followed by the second mine, third mine...

The crowd watching from the top of the city wall saw the chaos among the Great Xia soldiers and were elated.

"Principal Ren, what type of treasure is it this time?" Li Qianqiu turned his head to ask.

"Bouncing mine!" Ren Baqian mentioned two words.

He just found out an interesting fact. The melee infantry of Great Xia were placed in front, while the crossbow battalion and archers were behind. This was to guard against an assault by the aboriginal soldiers by providing cover with a rain of arrows in the initial stage.

However, these mines had all been tripped by the crossbow battalion and archers who wore the least protection. This resulted in the maximal number of deaths and injuries.

Although there weren't too many dead and injured people, it still numbered up to 300 or 400 people. Most of them were injured, especially below the waist...

The Great Xia soldiers were already in chaos before they reached the base of the city wall.

After two hours, the Great Xia soldiers finally continued their advance. At this point in time, those with good eyesight saw what was written on the white cloth hanging on the city wall.

However, what happened next, Ren Baqian hadn't expected. Those Great Xia soldiers acted as if they didn't see the message and weren't panicked at all.

Ren Baqian was initially surprised, then he frowned and looked pensive.

"Damn it, this bunch of illiterate people can't read!" Ren Baqian finally found the reason and almost threw a cup in frustration.

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