In the days that followed, the military situation around Anyang City became extraordinarily strange.

On the surface, the Ning Army that had supposedly been routed returned every day to provoke the city.

They showed not the slightest awareness that their numbers were less than one-tenth of the Chu forces — no sense, in other words, of what it meant to be the weaker party.

Since the Chu forces had offered their enthusiastic thanks for the “performance,” the Ning Army took them at their word and performed every single day.

The forces deployed for each visit, however, suggested a rather perfunctory attitude toward the whole affair.

On the first day, Luo Jing came with six thousand Nalan light cavalry and staged an impressive, meticulously ordered cavalry formation outside the city.

On the second day, Luo Jing came with a thousand cavalry — the force had shrunk to one-sixth — and staged a performance of sitting around and chatting idly.

On the third day, Luo Jing came with three or four hundred men. No cavalry formation, no idle chatting — this time, they staged a game of polo outside the city.

On the fourth day, Luo Jing brought a few dozen men and staged a wrestling match outside enemy walls.

On the fifth day, Luo Jing came with three men. They staged a game of mahjong in front of the city gates.

On the sixth day, Luo Jing brought two men. They staged a nap.

Two attendants, one holding a parasol to block the sun and one fanning him.

He had brought a reclining chair with him and slept through an entire afternoon under the gaze of thousands of Chu soldiers watching from the walls.

Anyang City remained still throughout — the Chu forces paid Luo Jing not a shred of attention.

Yet Luo Jing showed not the slightest sign of self-awareness. He showed up each day like a man clocking into work — required to report in without exception.

On the seventh day, Luo Jing returned with a few attendants, and this time a cart came along as well, pulling a large wooden tub and several buckets of water.

Luo Jing staged a public bath, in full view of all observers.

This treatment was, for the soldiers watching from the city walls, a humiliation that was genuinely difficult to endure.

On the eighth day, it became even more outrageous.

Luo Jing had somehow procured a theatrical troupe and set them to performing opera outside the city. The libretto had been altered — one piece, originally called “Three Apes Presenting Treasures,” had been rewritten as “Three Vassals Presenting Their Heads.”

It told the story — entirely fabricated — of Yuwen Shangyun’s grandfather, his father, and his great-uncle: three loyal and devoted servants of the Yuwen family who, for the eternal prosperity of Great Chu, had voluntarily offered their heads to the new emperor.

At this, even Yuwen Shangyun’s considerable patience finally ran out. He gave the order to open the city gates and kill Luo Jing. The moment those gates opened, Luo Jing and his men were in the saddle and away without a moment’s hesitation.

The actors, apparently trained for exactly this contingency, mounted their horses at a speed that was not much slower than the cavalry themselves.

Yuwen Shangyun was furious enough to feel it in his liver. He knew this could not continue — every day Tang Pidi sent Luo Jing to come and perform was, in its own way, an assault on Chu Army morale. Eight days running. If it kept up like this, every soldier in the army would inevitably begin to feel that their Great General was somewhat pathetic.

And so on the ninth day, Yuwen Shangyun sent men ahead to set an ambush north of the city, planning to spring a trap when Luo Jing arrived.

The strange thing was — Luo Jing did not come.

An entire day passed without a trace of him.

It was as though the Ning Army had left a pair of eyes inside the city, watching every move the Chu forces made with perfect clarity.

In truth, there were no such eyes — it was Tang Pidi who had reasoned it out.

By reading a person’s reactions, character, and habits, one could predict with considerable accuracy how they would respond to a given situation. In Changmei the Daoist’s words, this was a discipline of the jianghu arts.

But whether it was jianghu arts or battlefield tactics, if it was useful, it was valuable.

On the afternoon of the ninth day, the cavalry unit Yuwen Shangyun had dispatched eastward to search for Dantai Qi’s Ning Army column finally returned.

One look at Yuwen Yingxiong made it clear — he was dusty and windswept, his face tight with urgency.

When he reached Yuwen Shangyun, this general who had ridden hard for some ten days and found nothing had to restrain himself from cursing every ancestor of every Ning Army soldier he could think of.

“Great General — there is simply no trace of the Ning Army. I took light scouts and we traveled fast, far outpacing any large army on the march. In five days we covered over five hundred li. By rights we should have found sign of them — even if they had turned back after traveling seven or eight hundred li, they ought to have returned by now.”

“We inquired at villages along the route — the locals confirmed that a Ning Army did pass through heading east, but no one knows of them coming back.”

At this point, Yuwen Yingxiong spotted a cup of water nearby, picked it up, and drank deeply without pausing.

“Something is wrong here…”

Yuwen Shangyun thought carefully.

When he had feigned drowning and slipped away from the Ning Army, it had been the fourth day of Dantai Qi’s eastward march. At Yuwen Yingxiong’s pace — far exceeding that of an infantry-heavy force — he should long since have passed the location where Yuwen Shangyun had gone into the water.

“Ah, right.”

Yuwen Yingxiong finished drinking and said, “I did find out one thing — that man Dantai Qi actually halted the army for two or three days after the Great General went into the water. He had men searching along the river the whole time, and sent a good number of them across to search the opposite bank as well.”

“What?”

Yuwen Shangyun’s expression shifted visibly, because this did not add up.

If Li Chi and Tang Pidi had already known from the start that he was a Chu Army operative, how could Dantai Qi have cared so much?

A full army halted for two or three days — the cost in food and supplies, the opportunities squandered. Dantai Qi had absolutely no reason to stop his advance for two or three days over a man who had drowned — an enemy spy, at that.

“Something is wrong…”

Yuwen Shangyun moved to the window and rested both hands on the sill, his brow tightly creased.

“Crossing the river. Searching for me?”

He murmured those few words to himself — and then his eyes went wide.

“Someone come!”

Yuwen Shangyun called out loudly.

The attendant outside hurried in and bowed. “Great General — your orders.”

Yuwen Shangyun said, “Bring me Yuwen Dian.”

The attendant rushed back out.

Before long, Yuwen Dian came running.

“Take a unit south across the river — go back and look. Check whether there is any Ning Army presence south of the Nanping River!”

As he spoke these words, Yuwen Shangyun’s face had gone slightly pale, his voice carrying a faint rasp.

He was clearly alarmed — forcing himself not to show it.

“Great General, what has happened?”

Both Yuwen Dian and Yuwen Yingxiong asked at once; they could both see that something was wrong with him.

“Ask no questions — go quickly.”

Yuwen Shangyun said, “The moment you find any trace of Ning Army forces on the southern bank, return and report to me immediately.”

“Yes!”

Yuwen Dian answered, turned, and ran out.

“Yingxiong — come with me to the granary.”

Yuwen Shangyun called out and strode through the door.

They mounted in the courtyard and rode urgently to the granary district of Anyang City.

It was a heavily guarded location, with a unit of Yuwen Shangyun’s own men posted there, the security rigorous.

When the soldiers on watch saw the Great General arrive, they bowed in unison.

“Open the granary — quickly.”

Yuwen Shangyun called out sharply.

Before the granary doors were even fully open, Yuwen Shangyun had shouldered through.

The stored grain inside was divided into two sections. One section consisted of large grain bins with removable bottom boards — pull the board free and the grain would pour out from inside. The other was a series of underground grain cellars, cool and sheltered, stacked with sack upon sack of provisions.

“Open the bottom boards!”

Yuwen Shangyun called out, his voice trembling slightly.

The soldiers moved along the first row of bins, opening them one by one — and grain did indeed pour out.

After a short time, all the bins in the first row had been emptied; they had been drawing from this row for ten-odd days.

“Open the second row!”

The soldiers quickly opened the bins in the second row — grain poured out from those too.

Yuwen Shangyun had just begun to exhale in relief when his eyes suddenly snapped wide open.

After only a brief flow of grain, what came pouring out changed to sand and grit and small stones.

“Tang Pidi… he calculated this. The grain in the bins — it is only enough to last my army ten days. Get to the cellars — now!”

Everyone moved in a rush, scrambling to the cellars. The topmost layer of sacks was indeed grain. The sacks below it — likewise filled with dirt and stones.

Every store of provisions had been swapped out by Tang Pidi.

“He… he did it when Dantai Qi was drawing provisions!”

The realization struck Yuwen Shangyun like a thunderclap.

Using the opportunity created when Dantai Qi’s forces came to collect their allocation of food and supplies, they had swapped out and carried away virtually all the provisions.

And at the time, Dantai Qi had deliberately brought up the matter of dividing his forces — wearing a smile as he remarked that Yuwen Shangyun had failed to talk Tang Pidi out of it.

Yuwen Shangyun had thought that if he did not go to make the case, it would seem suspicious. So he had gone out of his way to call on Tang Pidi.

He had spent nearly the entire day in Tang Pidi’s residence, not released until dark — and had never gone anywhere near the supplies Dantai Qi was drawing.

Even if he had gone, he could never in a thousand years have guessed the truth.

It had not been so long ago — and yet scene after scene played through Yuwen Shangyun’s mind at blinding speed.

His expression reached a point of such bleakness it could go no further. His heartbeat began to accelerate, and for the first time in his life, he felt a boundless, encompassing dread.

Tang Pidi had calculated every last one of his reactions.

He knew Yuwen Shangyun would play the role of the concerned ally and go to argue with Tang Pidi — so he had arranged for the grain to be switched out during that time.

Yuwen Shangyun’s hands were trembling. When he turned to walk, his legs felt as though both of them had been packed with sand — impossibly heavy.

He raised his head in a daze, staring at the opening of the cellar above him. He paid no attention to the men calling his name around him. His feet moved mechanically forward.

As he walked, he murmured under his breath: “The Ning Army must not be on the southern bank, they must not be on the southern bank, please, not on the southern bank…”

“Great General!”

At that moment, a shout rang out from some distance away, startling him badly.

The man he had dispatched — Yuwen Dian — came running back at full speed, shouting as he ran. “Not far past the river crossing, we saw Ning Army banners!”

A sound like a great bell rang through Yuwen Shangyun’s mind. It was as though an enormous dark cloud had swept through his skull — blackness flooded his vision, and along with it a wave of muffled thunder, rolling again and again beside his ears, filling them with reverberations, driving a splitting pain through his head.

“Ahh!”

Yuwen Shangyun let out a sudden cry toward the sky — and then vomited a great mouthful of blood.

His vision went black and he collapsed, hitting the ground hard. The Chu commanders and attendants all around cried out in alarm, rushing to support him.

Half an hour later, Yuwen Shangyun came to, his face the color of paper.

“Yuwen Dian — where is Yuwen Dian?!”

Yuwen Shangyun wrenched himself upright and shouted.

Yuwen Dian rushed over. “I am right here, Great General — are you all right?”

“Yuwen Dian — can you be certain? Were there truly Ning Army banners on the southern bank?”

“Great General, there were — right in the tree line on the southern bank. As soon as we crossed the river we had not gone far before we spotted them. They appeared to be moving toward the riverbank. Fearing the Ning Army would detect us, I brought the men back immediately.”

Hearing those words, the last faint flicker of hope inside Yuwen Shangyun was extinguished.

“He is not — he is not — he is not!”

Yuwen Shangyun cried out three times in denial, and vomited blood again.

The assembled commanders were terrified, their own faces drained white.

The attending physician worked frantically to treat him; only after a considerable while did Yuwen Shangyun manage to get his breath back.

“He was not drawing me north to attack Jizhou. He did not see through my plan to ambush Dantai Qi. He deliberately let me take Anyang — to seal us inside and let us die here.”

Yuwen Shangyun turned his head to look north, toward the back wall of the room, through which there was nothing to see.

Yet somehow he seemed to see Li Chi standing there, looking back at him with a quiet smile.

*First — I do not trust you.*

*Second — I do not trust the Changsun family.*

*Third — I intend to use you.*

The moment those three sentences came to him, his vision went dark again, and he vomited blood for the third time — a great and terrible mouthful.

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