Jing Yangxu watched the fleet being struck by the ramming logs and grew increasingly anxious.

Yang Xuanji had entrusted him with the role of vanguard commander for this assault. If he performed well in this battle, his standing in the army would naturally rise above the others.

After all, his opponent was Tang Pidi — ever since the two armies had faced off, not a single person had managed to gain any advantage over Tang Pidi. This was the Tang Pidi who had never lost a single battle.

As long as he won this fight, Jing Yangxu would become the foremost general among the hundreds of commanders, great and small, in the Army of Heaven’s Mandate.

“Send word to General Bai of the Bai Regiment on the flanks — have his fleet move up to intercept the ramming logs!”

Jing Yangxu turned and bellowed the order.

Jing Yangxu had formerly served as the Grand General of the Right Command Guard of Dachu, while Bai Kaifu served as Grand General of the Left Archery Guard. The two men held identical military ranks and noble titles.

In this campaign, Jing Yangxu served as the vanguard commander while Bai Kaifu served as his deputy — and was expected to follow his orders.

When the command reached Bai Kaifu at the rear, he immediately flew into a rage.

“You want my men to serve as sacrificial scapegoats?!”

Bai Kaifu roared: “Has Jing Yangxu lost his mind?!”

The forces both men commanded were府兵 — the imperial府兵 of Dachu — and for each of them, these soldiers were the very foundation of their livelihood and standing.

Now Jing Yangxu was ordering Bai Kaifu to go intercept the ramming logs surging down from upstream. That was even less palatable than ordering Bai Kaifu to lead his men in the first wave of the charge.

“Grand General,” someone counseled, “if you refuse, and Jing Yangxu suffers a defeat in this opening engagement, he will surely speak ill of you before the lord, saying you refused to follow orders.”

Bai Kaifu let out a cold grunt, his face full of resentment, but with no better option, he had no choice but to order his troops to move toward the right flank.

Jing Yangxu saw the Left Archery Guard advancing and felt a slight easing of the tension in his chest. He reached out, seized his *modao* blade, and shouted: “We are soldiers — we receive our orders on the eve of battle! If we cannot take victory, we bring shame upon the name of the Right Command Guard. I shall lead from the front — follow me, up the riverbank, and straight to Tang Pidi’s central command!”

With those words, he gripped his *modao* and leapt down from the warship.

Jing Yangxu charged forward alone. With his *modao*, he thrust and flung aside the first row of spiked barriers, then swept left and right, hacking the flanking barriers apart.

His personal guards held shields to his left and right, ready to intercept any incoming arrows with their shields.

The imperial府兵 had always been formidable soldiers — they would not easily retreat in battle.

Before this, many had been saying that the Ning Army’s fighting strength had already surpassed that of Dachu’s府兵 in their prime — that the府兵 were no longer the unrivaled, feared soldiers of the realm.

Such words were, to the府兵, simply unbearable.

Before this assault, Jing Yangxu had told his generals: if they could not demonstrate the true might of the府兵, they would only invite further contempt going forward.

When Yang Xuanji had sought to win over the府兵 corps, he had offered military funds and salaries far exceeding what he provided to his other recruited forces. This had bred resentment among the other units — especially after their repeated engagements against Tang Pidi, when that resentment grew fiercer still.

They all faced the same defeat against Tang Pidi. So why should the府兵 be drawing triple pay?

And so in this battle, Jing Yangxu’s men were straining to vindicate themselves — and to shut up those naysayers.

Even amid such chaotic conditions, Jing Yangxu led from the front, swiftly rallying his troops back into order. The府兵 charging forward in formation still exerted enormous pressure on any opponent.

Tang Pidi stood on the high ground watching as the府兵 formation crashed through the tidal flat and drew close to the Ning Army’s lines — yet he showed no particular reaction.

In a direct frontal engagement like this, he had no need to issue commands.

In front of the Ning Army’s formation lay several rows of spiked barriers. When the府兵 charge reached them, they were stopped again.

“Arrows!”

Among the Ning Army commanders directing the front line, one was a young man of only seventeen — Mu Huanzhi.

Among Tang Pidi’s officers, more than half were under twenty years of age. Such a thing could only be done without hesitation by Tang Pidi — and could only be supported without hesitation by Li Chi.

These young commanders, some just sixteen or seventeen years old, numbered more than ten. These young men burned with fierce passion. They regarded Tang Pidi not only as their commanding general, but as their teacher and master.

In a sense, Tang Pidi was an elder brother to these young men. That their talents could be put to use at all was entirely to his credit — his unwavering trust in the people he employed.

The fierce, boiling ardor in the chests of these young men was something to be feared.

In this world, all the sharpest edges belong to youth.

Li Chi was skilled at employing the young. Tang Pidi was skilled at employing the young. While every other major faction was still carefully balancing their use of men, Li Chi had already abandoned that kind of cautious hedging.

Mu Huanzhi had another identity: he was Xu Ji’s classmate — and even his close friend. But he had come from Yanzhou without telling Xu Ji, and had never mentioned to anyone that he was Xu Ji’s friend.

He had heard that Grand General Tang Pidi was peerless under heaven, and had come to join him.

He went directly to Tang Pidi’s army to enlist, and with the skills he possessed, he was assigned to the new recruits’ camp without a word of protest or complaint.

During training in the new recruits’ camp, his extraordinary qualities were swiftly noticed by the officer in charge of the unit. That officer took Mu Huanzhi by the arm and brought him before the commander of the new recruits’ camp, earnestly requesting that Mu Huanzhi be recommended to the Grand General himself.

Later, Mu Huanzhi was directly promoted to a Fifth-Rank General. From new recruit to general — this kind of unreserved appointment was something only Tang Pidi could carry out.

Promoted to Fifth-Rank General at the same time as Mu Huanzhi was Tan Zhi, the officer of the new recruits’ camp who had recognized him.

At this very moment, the Ning Army force facing the enemy was commanded by Mu Huanzhi and Tan Zhi.

With a single high cry of “arrows,” the Ning Army archers released their arrows.

The charging府兵 fell one after another, but their pace never slackened.

These well-trained, elite府兵 soldiers all knew that from the start of the charge to the moment they reached the enemy formation, even the strongest archers could only loose a handful of volleys.

The faster the charge, the lower the casualties — paradoxically.

Consider: if halfway through the charge, soldiers lost their nerve at the sight of dense incoming arrows and hesitated, the casualties during that wavering would be far heavier.

Every府兵 also knew to press their bodies low and drive forward, holding their infantry shield in front to cover vital points, and leaving the rest to fate.

Mu Huanzhi turned to Tan Zhi and called out: “I’m going to the rear formation to get ready. You stay here and command the front line.”

Tan Zhi called back: “Be careful.”

Mu Huanzhi grinned: “Big brother, just watch how I cut down the enemy in a moment.”

By now the府兵 had charged up to the outermost row of spiked barriers, with about fifty *zhang* still between them and the Ning Army formation.

“Level shot!”

With Tan Zhi’s single command, the archers lowered the angle of their longbows. The arrows hissed out, and in an instant the outermost row of spiked barriers was thick with white-feathered shafts — while the府兵 in front of those barriers were, in that same instant, carpeted across the ground.

Those府兵 clenched their teeth and shoved the barriers aside, then pushed themselves forward again.

With the arrow trajectories leveled considerably, the incoming shafts flew mostly at the height of a man’s upper body. The round shields carried by the men charging at the front were bristling with arrows.

With every step forward, no one knew how many more had fallen.

One soldier, struck in the lower abdomen, tumbled to the ground. As he struggled to rise, a boot sole descended into his line of sight — there was nowhere to dodge, and a comrade trampled down onto him. His face was ground into the river sand, filling his eyes, nose, and mouth with grit. His eyelids scraped across the coarse sand and gravel until the corners of his eyes were torn open. The sand clung to the blood and with every rub, the wounds burned more sharply.

The府兵 broke through the first row of barriers and charged forward another dozen or so *zhang* before reaching the second row, where the arrows grew even denser — fired straight into their faces like a wall of shafts.

After paying with countless lives, Jing Yangxu led his men through the second row of barriers as well. The third row stood roughly ten *zhang* in front of the Ning Army formation.

“Kill the enemy!”

Jing Yangxu’s battle cry rang out as he thundered forward in great strides.

A stray arrow flew in and — with a sharp, wet sound — drove into the throat of the guard beside him. That soldier snapped backward and fell.

Another guard swiftly moved up, shield raised, to fill the gap.

The commanding general charges; his guards give their lives to protect him.

By the time they reached the third row of barriers, the府兵 casualties had reached a level that made the scalp crawl.

The Ning Army archers had absolutely no need to worry about expending arrows — they simply kept firing as fast as they could, sending shaft after shaft.

Many府兵, reaching out to shove aside a barrier, already had a layer of white-feathered arrows piercing their bodies by the time their hands touched the wood. Those who came behind to move the corpses draped over the barriers would soon become arrow-covered corpses themselves.

Just to clear this single line of obstacles, the府兵 paid with more lives than could be counted.

The men at the front were struck so quickly that no words could describe it — the arrows were loosed in layer after layer, almost simultaneously.

Jing Yangxu flipped another barrier aside with his blade and bellowed the order to charge.

Ning Army commander Tan Zhi, seeing that the third row of barriers had been broken through, immediately called out: “Shield wall!”

The archers swiftly fell back. Soldiers carrying shields as tall as a man began to advance, rapidly forming a three-deep shield wall in front of the formation.

Behind each layer of the shield wall stood soldiers gripping long spears.

And behind the three layers of shields, the archers set down their longbows and took up repeating crossbows instead.

Within ten *zhang*, the repeating crossbow is invincible.

If the arrows had been dense and terrifying, then within that range of a dozen or so *zhang*, the bolts discharged from repeating crossbows were even more so.

One layer fell, and the men behind stepped over the bodies of their comrades; another layer fell.

In the midst of this enormous attrition, Jing Yangxu finally led his men to within five or six *zhang* of the shield wall.

Then they saw a black cloud.

Javelins.

With a roar, the dark mass fell on them like a descending sky.

If arrows and crossbow bolts struck men down in successive waves — not killing everyone in each pass — then this volley of javelins was a clean, even cut straight through the府兵 formation.

In a single, orderly sweep, every man at the front was knocked to the ground.

Jing Yangxu’s eyes had gone blood-red. From the moment they crossed the river to the time they reached this point, the personal guards around him had suffered dozens of casualties. Just now, in that single volley of javelins, the two guards flanking him had both been killed.

“Push through!”

Jing Yangxu roared again, and was the first to reach the shield wall — but before his *modao* could even descend, the long spears from behind the shields had already thrust out.

The spearmen behind the shield wall simply kept thrusting and withdrawing, thrusting and withdrawing, without any concern for whether they hit or not.

The sound of speartips punching through leather armor and then through human bodies was forced into every man’s ears.

Through the spear holes, blood sprayed and gushed.

The repeating crossbows in the rear kept firing without pause; the spearmen in the front kept stabbing without pause. War brought with it an understanding of death — and also an indifference to it.

The charging men packed tight against the outside of the shield wall until the spears could no longer be withdrawn — grabbed by府兵 soldiers and seized, or pinned beneath the piling bodies of the fallen before they could be pulled free.

The first layer of the shield wall was swiftly broken. The府兵 surged through like a flood bursting a dam, crashing against the second layer of shields.

At this range of close-quarters combat, formations no longer mattered. It was simply bodies pressing against bodies, driving forward by brute force.

And then, at that very moment, the third layer of the shield wall suddenly opened on its own.

The shields parted, creating corridor after corridor. A group of Ning Army soldiers — not even wearing leather armor — came howling out of the formation.

No armor. No shields. In each man’s hands: only a blade.

The man at their head was Mu Huanzhi.

These soldiers all came from Yanzhou, chosen by Mu Huanzhi with Tang Pidi’s blessing — handpicked fierce warriors from Yanzhou, trained personally by Mu Huanzhi himself as his blade corps.

They did not carry the standard straight *hengdao* blades. They carried the *huanshou dao* — the ring-pommel sabre, wider, heavier, and more powerful.

“To clash blades with the enemy — only my Blade Corps shall go!”

Mu Huanzhi thrust out his hand, and three thousand six hundred ring-pommel sabres poured out like a sluice gate thrown open — a surging tide charging straight against the current!

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