Who killed the Ming Dynasty?

"Commander!"

Lieutenant General Wang Jing knelt on one knee, with half a broken arrow embedded in his left shoulder, clearly indicating that the siege was being hampered.

"The crenellations on the palace walls have been replaced with iron shields; the siege ladders and grappling hooks can no longer hold onto the bricks!"

Zhang Wu, the flag bearer standing to the side, added:

"The Western bandits have hidden cannons in the palace, and Zhou's vanguard battalion..."

He stopped abruptly halfway through his sentence, then slammed the iron spear into the ground, creating a deep crater in the spearhead.

Zhu Cilang could see the blood clots on Wang Jing's chainmail and hear the scraping sound of Zhang Wu's iron spear.

He gripped his longsword and dismounted.

With the palace gates remaining unconquered after a prolonged siege, the sound of Li Dingguo's horse hooves could be heard more and more clearly in the north wind from the direction of the Jinshui River behind them.

What they lacked most was the time to break through the inner city of the Shu King's Palace.

"Li Yan, Wang Jing!"

His longsword suddenly pointed to the highest point of the palace.

"Do you see that brocade dragon banner? I order you to plant the battle flag on the eaves at the third quarter of the hour of Mao (5-7 AM)."

"If this humble general is late, may the Commander-in-Chief kick my head into the Jinshui River like a football!"

Li Yan made a pledge and immediately rushed towards the siege formation.

Wang Jing tore off the blood-stained waistband, his eyes revealing a fierce glint:

"No matter how much tung oil the Western bandits spilled, this humble general will repay them with their blood!"

Zhu Cilang turned to Zhang Wu and Zhou Dingchang and sternly gave the order:

"Hold the breach. If reinforcements get in—"

He slammed his sword hilt heavily on the ground.

"I'll stuff you all into the barbican and burn you alive!"

"Yes, sir!"

The four men clasped their fists together and then rushed off to their respective battle positions.

Zhu Cilang's gaze swept across the battlefield:

Ahead, the soldiers of the Beijing garrison were fighting fiercely on the palace walls; behind them, Li Dingguo's red tide was rushing towards the breach.

He felt as if he were being squeezed by two iron walls, with danger in both advancing and retreating, and every step he took was crucial to the survival of the entire army.

A muffled sound of a cowhide drum drifted from the southwest horizon, breaking Zhu Cilang's reverie.

This was the signal for the Western Army to launch an attack.

Li Dingguo's vanguard battalion swept across the Jinshui River like a crimson tide.

Torches stretched along the river in a vibrant chain, illuminating the wolf head tattoos on the faces of the soldiers of the Great Western Army.

These "wolf soldiers" from Sichuan and Guizhou still had the hair of their fallen comrades wrapped around their ankles.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Three cannon shots boomed, and Li Dingguo's Great Western Army immediately launched a fierce attack, instantly raising the intensity of the fighting along the Jinshui River by eight octaves.

Zhang Wu's iron spear churned wildly at the breach, unleashing a storm of blood and gore.

The spear tassels were already soaked in blood, turning blackish-brown, and each thrust pierced deep beneath the Western Army's leather armor, bringing out bone fragments.

"withstand!"

Zhou Dingchang roared and waved the command flag, instantly changing the defensive formation. The three rows of rattan shield bearers quickly crouched down and revealed their hook-and-sickle spears from the gaps.

As the first warhorse charged close, dozens of hook-and-sickle spears were simultaneously thrust out!

The sharp iron hook snagged hard on the horse's leg tendon.

The warhorse neighed and knelt down, throwing the rider on its back into the burning trench, its screams mingling with the sizzling sound of flesh charring.

The soldiers' roars were like those of demons from hell, shouting wildly again and again:

"Break down the city! Break down the city!"

As dawn broke in the east, the fighting at the breach had become so intense that the battle formations were indistinguishable.

Zhu Cilang saw that the Ming army's hook-and-sickle spears had just severed the horse's leg when the Western army's spiked clubs smashed the man and his armor into a bloody mess.

Beneath their feet, broken weapons and mutilated corpses were piled up, leaving almost no room to step.

Li Dingguo's personal guards pushed a battering ram containing a "ten-thousand-enemy" explosive canister closer, but Zhang Wu extinguished the fuse with a water-soaked cotton quilt and pushed it into the enemy ranks, triggering a chain of explosions.

The corpses piled up to a height of ten feet at the breach on the west side of Zunyi Gate. Li Dingguo's vanguard battalion charged in turn, but could not cross the line even half a step.

The "Da Xi" banner under the eaves of Chengyun Hall was already riddled with arrow holes. Li Yan and Wang Jing's attacking battalion changed ladders three times, but they still couldn't break through the tightly closed palace gate.

A layer of morning mist suddenly rose from the gap, blurring the banners on both sides of the Jinshui River.

Zhu Cilang was finally able to catch his breath, and the archers on both sides stopped firing simultaneously.

The corpse-collecting team, clad in burlap sacks, wandered through the fog and writhed in the blood-red swamp.

At this moment, the fighting seemed to be paused by the thick fog, leaving only the groans of wounded soldiers and the cawing of crows in the distance.

The drops of blood that fell from Zhu Cilang's sword condensed into ice crystals in the mist.

In the distance came the muffled sound of war drums from Li Dingguo's army, creating an eerie harmony with the murmurs of wounded Ming soldiers.

When Li Dingguo sounded the rhinoceros horn for the second time, Zhu Cilang was ordering his personal guards to reinforce the breach at Zunyi Gate.

"boom--!"

With a loud bang, the Western Army's gunpowder exploded on the left side of the collapsed West Gate.

The gap that was more than ten feet wide has now become a gap that is twenty feet wide, revealing the sandbags and abatis piled up on the inner wall.

Li Dingguo's rattan armor soldiers leaped into the gap by stepping on their comrades' shoulders, their Miao swords scraping against the brick walls, sparking a series of fireballs before dawn.

Wang Tiezhu, the Ming army's chief flag officer, suddenly thrust from behind the horse-face wall!

The spear tip pierced precisely through the rattan armor, stringing the three Western soldiers together like candied hawthorns and throwing them down the slope.

"Hold on to the left flank!"

Zhu Cilang roared, and his guards, their heads covered in waterlogged quilts, surged toward the breach.

"Sizzle—!"

Amidst the smoke and fire, cotton wadding was torn to shreds by arrows and muskets, and the flying fluff temporarily blurred their vision.

In the instant when vision blurred, a heart-wrenching scream rang out!

Sixteen rattan shields formed a tortoise-shell formation at the broken wall, and long spears thrust out from the gaps, piercing the soles of the Western Army's vanguard.

As the cold light flashed, all that could be seen were a dozen bare feet, clad in straw sandals and covered in mud and blood, being swept into the air.

As the morning mist drifted over the blood-red Jinshui River, the fighting at the breach had evolved into a civil-engineering offensive and defensive battle.

After the seventh wave of attacks was forced back by the hook-and-sickle spears, the Western Army retreated like a tide, and the breach fell into a brief silence.

Zhu Cilang wiped the blood from his brow bone and suddenly realized—

The wind has stopped!

The air suddenly fell silent, even the drifting smoke seemed to freeze in mid-air. On the broken city wall, a half-flying tattered flag suddenly drooped.

The air was thick with the stench of blood.

The surviving Ming soldiers leaned against the ruins, coughing and vomiting violently. Some trembled as they fumbled for the nicks in their waist knives, while others rewrapped strips of cloth around their split hands.

Zhang Wu stood motionless at the breach, holding an iron spear, like a war god.

"Clatter—"

A drop of blood fell from the tip of his iron spear.

Sweat seeped from beneath Zhu Cilang's fish-scale armor, beads of sweat slowly sliding down his breastplate.

As beads of sweat dripped into the air, their glistening surface reflected Zhou Dingchang's shattered armor, while his soot-covered face roared angrily toward the gap in Zunyi Gate.

The moment the smoke of battle froze!

A sharp whooshing sound suddenly rang in Zhu Cilang's ears.

He suddenly looked up—

Sixteen crimson meteors streaked across the southwestern sky, their trails of flame leaving dazzling fiery lines in the air.

Li Dingguo's third wave of offensive has begun!

"hidden!"

The roar stuck in his throat, and the first firearm had already struck the breach.

The Ming army's three-zhang-tall banner was instantly torn to shreds, and the flying shards, coated with burning tung oil, turned the breach into a living hell.

Thick smoke billowed into the sky, and countless burning human figures twisted and writhed in the sea of ​​fire, their piercing screams even drowning out the aftershocks of the explosion.

In Li Dingguo's central army formation, twelve dough drums sounded simultaneously. The sound reverberated for miles around, even causing the earth to tremble.

The cavalrymen charged through the burning piles of corpses and crashed into the gap, charging madly at the rattan shield formation!