The moon shone bright on this night, with only a few stars in the sky.
The thirty-two days of bloody fighting no longer mattered. Mongol soldiers poured into the city like a tide, flames flickering as if in celebration. The fighting went on, and the blood kept flowing. Soldiers and civilians alike chose to fight, because fighting or not, they would die. They might as well fight, though every last flicker of hope for survival in their hearts had already been extinguished.
Wang Xiang felt no such way. He had begun preparing ten days earlier for the choice he would face when the city fell. A person’s life was precious above all else. He had joined the army with ideals in his heart, hated the Mongols, and fought bravely, but he had never felt afraid. Death had always seemed far away, and he had never even been wounded.
