Arrows rained throughout the northern and southern walls. Death throes can be heard everywhere. You can see all inhabitants who are not fighting trying to help with the every strength they got to protect their home.

Looking at it I realized this hell started because of me. Because of my actions the people are now paying the price. Now I must end it once and for all.

I managed the logistics into 3 separate teams the medic team, cooking team, and the miscellaneous team. The main job of the medic team is to try and heal those injured soldiers from the front lines as their priority while the cooking team handles the food. The most important group as of the moment is the miscellaneous team because they must deliver the injured to the medic tea, they must also send the ingredients required by the cooking team and at the same time they must send the required materials requested by the general of the northern and southern walls.

The casualties are starting to rise at both walls. Good thing that my order to concentrate fire at the enemy siege towers was worth it because both of those towers are now in flames rendering them useless. With those towers out of the picture the only thing that my brother can do is siege the walls through ladders and battering rams.

General Sun Liao is an expert at offensive warfare so he has a bit of trouble when it comes to defending the tight walls. In order to resolve that he arranged his troops into a group of strike force that will attack at key moments on his designated kill ground at the top of the walls. With the flexibility of the conscripts weapons where they could change from swordsman to archer units at moments noticed it further bolstered the defense troop’s performance.

General Yuan Chong however is enjoying a good battle right now. His side has the least casualties for the following reasons. He arranged his troops into some sort of cube formation. Because of it the enemies’ troops is slowly dwindling down with less casualties on our side.

My brother is coughing up blood because of the situation on both fronts. His face is so red with anger that he thrashed his messengers near death which caused to further demoralize his troops. 

He suddenly came to the front lines and said… “Huánghòu!!! You dumb animal! Do you think it will just end like this?! Then let me tell you, I’m going to the Kingdom of Song and ask for their help! Your death is assured after I sold them some information about what’s happening here and I wont even mind becoming their vassal state if that’s the priced I have to pay to kill you bitch!”

After saying those words he ordered for his troops to organize at the southern wall in preparation for a retreat…

General Sun: Crown Princess please order a pursuit led by me and the 2000 regular soldiers, we have enough horses anyway so please consider!

Huánghòu: Don’t worry general I already prepared incase things like this happens… Eunuch come!

Court Eunuch: Yes Crown Princess is there anything you need from this lowly one?

Huánghòu: Yes! Is that thing ready? 

Court Eunuch: You mean that thing that throws stuff?

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Huánghòu: Yes that thing and it’s called a Trebuchet understood?

Court Eunuch: Yes your highness the contraption is ready.

Huánghòu: Then position it at the southern walls immediately include the little barrels filled with black powder too while your at it.

Court Eunuch: Your will be done Crown Princess…

Well I suppose I need to use those things now even though those things will only appear at the Battle of Caishi in 1161, trebuchets operated by Song Dynasty soldiers fired bombs of lime and sulphur against the ships of the Jin dynasty navy during the Jin–Song wars. But I think it’s alright to use it earlier the trebuchet used by the Song dynasty was a “traction type” anyway. My design are the “counterweight type” one where its much more efficient to use.

General Sun: If you could forgive my ignorance Crown Prince what’s a “trebuchet”?

Huánghòu: Do you still remember the mohist of old?

General Yao: Oh those people! I know that during the time before Qin united all the states there was a group of people calling themselves Mohist. During that time the Mohist were well known in their skills of defending a castle against all odds with good strategy and as far as I’ve heard with weird contraptions. Is this one of those contraptions those Mohist used Crown Princess?

Huánghòu: Well technically yes but I modified it a bit to suit our needs.

Technically the first record of a counterweight trebuchet was in the 12th century from Mardi ibn Ali al-Tarsusi while talking of the conquests of Saladin. Niketas describes a trebuchet used by Andronikos I Komnenos, future Byzantine emperor, at the siege of Zevgminon in 1165 which was equipped with a windlass, an apparatus which was required neither for traction nor hybrid trebuchets to launch missiles. The dramatic increase in military performance is for the first time reflected in historical records on the occasion of the second siege of Tyre in 1124, when the crusaders reportedly made use of "Great trebuchets". During the Crusades, Philip II of France named two of the trebuchets he used in the Siege of Acre in 1191 "God's Stone-Thrower" and "Bad Neighbour." During a siege of Stirling Castle in 1304, Edward Longshanks ordered his engineers to make a giant trebuchet for the English army, named "Warwolf". The largest trebuchets needed exceptional quantities of timber: at the Siege of Damietta, in 1249, Louis IX of France was able to build a stockade for the whole Crusade camp with the wood from 24 captured Egyptian trebuchets.

Counterweight trebuchets do not appear with certainty in Chinese historical records until about 1268, when the Mongols laid siege to Fancheng and Xiangyang. At the Siege of Fancheng and Xiangyang, the Mongol army, unable to capture the cities despite besieging the Song defenders for years, brought in two Persian engineers who built hinged counterweight trebuchets. These engines were called by the Chinese historians the Huihui trebuchet, or Xiangyang trebuchet because they were first encountered in that battle.

After Aju asked Kublai, the Emperor of the Mongol Empire, to help him with the powerful siege machines of the Ilkhanate, Ismail and Al-aud-Din from Iraq arrived in South China to construct a new type of trebuchet. These Persian engineers built mangonels and trebuchets for the siege. With the introduction of gunpowder, the trebuchet lost its place as the siege engine of choice to the cannon.

Now with a lot of trial and error I finally made a working trebuchet that can throw explosive to enemy lines at a far distance. The accuracy might be low but its best weapon we got right now.

Huánghòu: Now my generals look at what’s going to happen now. ALL TREBUCHET FIRE AT THE ENEMY LINE!

The trebuchets fired those barrels filled with black powder. Due to that the enemy line experience hell. Explosions happened on various locations of the enemy camp. Body parts are flying everywhere; horses are thrown midair while the enemy troops descended into anarchy. My brother was affected by those bombs, his horse was thrown mid air while he lost his right arm and left leg.

The bombing lasted for only 5 minutes. But those 5 minutes became hell for the enemy. When I looked at my generals and troops some of them were opening their mouths wide enough for flies to come in, some peed out of fear, some cried because of the devastation. The generals however are showing faces of excitement that there’s finally a weapon that can turn the tide of battle.