The two sides were locked in a grueling war of attrition. Every day, an army of 30,000 would march out of the city to engage in battle. Truly, for every soldier who went out, one was carried back. Not a single man returned on his own two feet; those who were recovered were all gravely wounded. Out there on the battlefield, it was a fight to the point of total exhaustion. The lucky ones managed to cling to their lives, while the unlucky were either hacked to death or simply worked to death. It was on that battlefield that I truly grasped the cruelty of these wars between the imperial dynasties. For five consecutive days, their morale remained extraordinarily high.
I secretly mused to myself: every imperial dynasty has ten vassal kingdoms beneath it. Must we wait for all ten of these kingdoms to fight a round before the imperial dynasties themselves finally clash?
It turned out my intuition was correct; one kingdom would head out to fight each day. Every time they engaged, the soldiers were either killed or crippled; those who returned unscathed were few and far between. These were, perhaps, the absolute elite among the vassal armies. You could say that, until now, no one had really won. The best day was when, on the opposite side, over a thousand men managed to return standing, while our side suffered total casualties. Yet, this had no effect on the morale of our soldiers; instead, they became even more fired up.
Chapter 197