Yuwen Shangyun was young, and in this age of chaos, the one thing he was most unafraid of was having too little time.

What Prince Wu Yang Jiju feared most was precisely what Yuwen Shangyun feared least.

Even if he could not bring the Yuwen family to the threshold of founding their own state, his ability alone — leading the young men of his clan — was more than sufficient to carve out dominion over a region. And whoever eventually sat on the throne could hardly do otherwise than grant him the rank of a frontier lord.

He should not have come to Jizhou. He could have gone anywhere else. With his ability, he would have fared well no matter where — even facing that Jiangnan warlord, Li Xionghu, in Yangzhou.

But Yuwen Shangyun, who had now vomited blood three times, woke the next time with something he had never felt before: a fear of time running out.

So young — and suddenly, he began to fear that his days might be numbered.

“Do not let this spread.”

Those were the first words he spoke when he came around.

He seized Yuwen Dian’s arm and said, “Under no circumstances can the news that the city has almost no food remaining be spoken aloud. The soldiers must not know.”

“Yes — do not worry, Great General.”

Yuwen Dian answered immediately, but his own eyes were filled with panic.

It was the first time any of them had seen something like helplessness — even a faint shadow of despair — cross Yuwen Shangyun’s face.

The Ning Army had gone around and around, and seemed to have had plan after plan seen through by Yuwen Shangyun, rendered apparently harmless. Yet in truth, everything had been under Ning Army control from the start.

All of it had unfolded so naturally, so smoothly, so inevitably.

Tang Pidi’s humiliating retreat into Anyang City. The Chu forces crossing the river. Tang Pidi’s panicked flight out of Anyang. The Chu forces marching in.

And now — Dantai Qi’s fifty thousand Ning soldiers had never marched on Qingzhou at all. They had cut off the Chu Army’s road back to Yuzhou.

Inside a fortified city that was now nearly out of provisions — what did it matter how impregnable those walls were?

How long could they hold? A month? Two? Three?

Even if they held for three months, the Ning Army only needed to watch.

Barring some unexpected development, Ning Army reinforcements drawn from the surrounding territory would arrive within a day or two — otherwise the forces on the southern bank would not have revealed themselves yet.

Charge north through the Ning Army while provisions still remained, and try to break Tang Pidi’s lines?

Charge north to where? All the way to the walls of Jizhou City?

They would still have no food. They would be ground to pieces on the soil of Jizhou.

Turn and break out southward across the river?

The Ning forces on the southern bank were waiting — poised and ready.

He had been right all along that the Ning Army intended to strike them mid-crossing. He had simply misjudged which crossing they meant.

He had seen firsthand just how formidable those fifty thousand battle-hardened Ning soldiers were.

After months in Jizhou, did he not know the Ning Army’s fighting strength?

At this moment, Yuwen Shangyun found himself wishing desperately that he did not.

He wished he had never come to Jizhou. Never witnessed the Ning Army’s training. Never known any of this. Never let any of it happen.

But time could not be reversed, and regret had no remedy.

“Great General, what do we do now?”

The blunt-spoken Yuwen Yingxiong asked the question that no one else quite dared to raise — but that every one of the assembled commanders wanted answered.

In his heart, Yuwen Shangyun — two years his junior — was an invincible figure. No one could simply defeat his Great General.

“Right now…”

Yuwen Shangyun raised his eyes and looked at Yuwen Yingxiong, but found himself unable to answer.

“Great General, just say the word! I will lead the first assault!”

Yuwen Yingxiong had not caught the faint shadow of despair in his commander’s expression. In his mind, this was simply another difficult battle. In Yangzhou, they had faced Li Xionghu, a man commanding eight hundred thousand soldiers with a million-strong popular following surging behind him like a swarm of locusts. Had that battle been easy to fight?

Yet which battle had Yuwen Shangyun not won?

“Everyone go. Leave me alone to think.”

Yuwen Shangyun exhaled slowly. “And remember — not a word about the provisions to anyone. Whoever lets it slip will be executed. No exceptions.”

“Yes!”

Everyone bowed in unison.

Yuwen Shangyun lifted a weary hand in dismissal — as if even the gesture cost him more than he had.

At roughly the same time, some thirty li north of Anyang City.

The Jizhou garrison forces called up from across the region — troops drawn from various postings throughout Jizhou — had finished assembling at this location. Total strength: thirty-six thousand and some hundreds.

The timing had been coordinated precisely. North of the river and south of the river, two forces now had Anyang City in a pincer.

To an ordinary person, this situation might have seemed strange. The Ning forces south of the river numbered over fifty thousand, the Ning forces to the north thirty-six thousand — together they still did not outnumber the Chu Army.

And yet they had formed a pincer. In conventional military thinking, this should have been considered a grave blunder.

Sometimes, though, reason had nothing to do with it. That was simply what it meant to be strong.

When Luo Jing had finished recounting everything he had done over the past ten-odd days, Li Chi could not help but burst out laughing.

He looked at Luo Jing and said, “Everything you just described is exactly the kind of thing Yu Jiuling does — but you went and did it yourself.”

Yu Jiuling, standing nearby, laughed and shook his head. “General Luo did it better than I ever could. There is absolutely no way I would have been capable of bathing in public in front of several thousand enemy soldiers. I have my dignity.”

Luo Jing reached over and gave Yu Jiuling a kick. Yu Jiuling shot away with a yelp.

“One good bite of this, and we’ll be full for a good while.”

Tang Pidi looked toward the southern direction of Anyang City, a quiet smile on his face. “A hundred thousand Chu soldiers — even setting aside the men, a hundred thousand sets of equipment is no small thing.”

“We do want the men.”

Li Chi smiled. “A hundred thousand elite Chu regulars — if we could keep half of them, that would genuinely be something to celebrate.”

He paused and shook his head slightly. “But though the Great Chu court has rotted, the true府兵 remain formidable fighters. Getting Chu regulars to surrender is no easy thing.”

Tang Pidi said, “Yuwen Shangyun is a man of fierce pride. Getting him to surrender is even less likely. From what I can see, he has the backbone of a man who bends for nothing — and the forces a man like that builds up have backbone too.”

Li Chi asked, almost as if playing dumb, “Is that man really Yuwen Shangyun?”

Tang Pidi said, “Seven or eight out of ten, yes.”

He looked at Li Chi. “You won.”

Li Chi held out his hand.

Tang Pidi reached into his clothes, produced a tael of silver, and placed it in Li Chi’s palm. Li Chi held it up, examined its quality, then put it away.

Luo Jing stared blankly.

He looked at Tang Pidi. “You were so vexed earlier, saying you’d lost to Prince Ning — I thought you must have wagered something significant. One tael of silver?!”

Tang Pidi said, “It was never about the silver.”

Li Chi put his silver away, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

Winning a wager against Tang Pidi — just once — really was worth being pleased about.

Luo Jing asked Li Chi, “How did you figure out that Changsun Wuyou was actually Yuwen Shangyun?”

“I didn’t figure it out. I guessed.”

Li Chi said, “When he first arrived, I looked at him — those eyes could not lie. To give you a comparison: if you took someone like Prince Wu Yang Jiju and told him to pass himself off as a traveling merchant, do you think he could pull it off?”

Luo Jing nodded. “I may hate that old scoundrel, but I cannot deny it — the presence he carries is something an ordinary person cannot learn, and he himself cannot conceal it.”

Li Chi said, “Yuwen Shangyun already had traces of that presence. That is not something a young man from a minor branch of the Changsun family would possess.”

“But at the time, even my guessing would not have gone so far as to guess he was Yuwen Shangyun himself. I assumed he was one of Yuwen Shangyun’s capable field commanders.”

“Yet he drafted a complete strategic plan in three days and passed the flowing-cloud formation diagram on his third attempt. At that point I said to Tang Pidi — this man had to be kept at my side. He was someone only marginally beneath Tang Pidi himself.”

Li Chi smiled. “I had originally intended to place him with Yan Qingzhi, but the man was too dangerous — I feared he might pose a threat to Yan Qingzhi. So I kept him beside me instead.”

Luo Jing said, “Even at that point, you had already thought of turning the scheme back on him?”

Li Chi said, “Scheming against a person that capable is not easy, because they are every bit as good at scheming in return.”

Li Chi tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, exhaled, and said, “One can only be me, really. Ah… as expected of myself.”

Tang Pidi looked away into the distance. Luo Jing let out a quiet sigh.

Li Chi laughed. “Why have none of you sycophants said anything to praise me?”

Tang Pidi: “Hmph…”

Luo Jing: “Pfft…”

Li Chi said, “Yu Jiuling — these people cannot even manage basic flattery. What use are they? Have them all dragged off and castrated!”

Yu Jiuling startled. “What does not knowing how to flatter someone have to do with *that*?”

Luo Jing said, “The ones who *can* flatter should be the ones castrated.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Understood — I will go summon the executioners right now and have them all dragged out and beheaded.”

Luo Jing said, “Prince Ning said castrated.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Same difference. Beheading will do.”

Luo Jing thought about it, then made a disgusted noise.

“Great General.”

Li Chi looked at Tang Pidi. “Now we can issue the order. Yuwen Shangyun should have discovered by now that his retreat has been cut off. He will be planning his way out.”

Tang Pidi said, “No need to rush. We have made our move — it is their turn to respond.”

He smiled slightly. “The man came all the way to Jizhou and spent months here. He must have picked up something along the way.”

Yu Jiuling asked, “What could he have picked up?”

Tang Pidi said, “The art of flattery.”

Yu Jiuling said, “Did he ever come and ask me for advice on the subject?”

Tang Pidi said, “If he had come to ask you for advice on anything, we would never have needed to go to all this trouble to scheme against him…”

Yu Jiuling turned this over in his mind. Was that a compliment to him, or a compliment to him?

Anyang City.

Yuwen Shangyun could not remain lying down. He had his armor buckled on and rode out to the city walls with his personal guard.

It was not only that he did not want to lie down — he did not dare. If the soldiers learned he had vomited blood three times, it would shake the army’s will. With no battle yet fought and the commander already spitting blood, how was one supposed to fight a war?

Standing high on the wall looking north, he could make out, faint but unmistakable, that the Ning Army had arrived.

While he had been unconscious, scouts had already reported the sighting of Ning Army main forces north of the city.

“Li Chi…”

Yuwen Shangyun murmured the name quietly, almost under his breath.

“Why was it that when I was still in Jiangnan, no one knew that Jizhou had produced people like these…”

He asked the question, but who could answer it?

In Jiangnan — whether in Jingzhou or Yangzhou — those places were thick with great families and old clans. The high officials and nobles there spoke of Jiangnan affairs, because in their eyes Jizhou was a land of rough wilderness.

Just as in the eyes of Jizhou’s people, the lands beyond the northern passes were rough wilderness.

A land like that — what remarkable figures could it possibly produce?

For that matter, they had not even taken Li Xionghu seriously, despite the man having seized two full prefectures — and not just any two, but Yuezhou and Yangzhou, among the richest territories in all of Great Chu.

“Great General.”

Yuwen Dian appeared at his shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “Rumors are already circulating in the ranks. I have had a few soldiers executed for spreading them.”

Yuwen Shangyun gave a small nod. “Especially the soldiers guarding the granary — make absolutely certain they understand. No loose talk.”

“Already done.”

Yuwen Dian was not Yuwen Yingxiong. He was not slow.

He lowered his voice. “If we break south across the river — what are our chances?”

Yuwen Shangyun shook his head. “None.”

“Then… if we go east?”

Yuwen Dian said, “We abandon Anyang entirely. Follow the Nanping River east and withdraw…”

Yuwen Shangyun snapped his gaze toward him. “And Yuzhou?”

He asked, “The moment we leave, we lose not just Anyang — Yuzhou falls into Li Chi’s hands as well. This position of his has no way out…”

He fell silent for a moment, then exhaled with a long sigh. “Whatever you consider giving up to gain something in return — you will find that everything you would have to give up is something you cannot bear to lose.”

—