In the days surrounding the great battle with the Black Martial forces, every time Li Chi looked at Xiahou Zuo’s face, it had pained him.

He had once been such a free and easy, graceful man — but after going to the northern frontier, he had grown oppressed and somber, with seemingly no joy to speak of from one day to the next.

Now, seeing him again, Li Chi found that Xiahou Zuo had somehow reclaimed a measure of his old bearing.

He was fairer-skinned, his complexion no longer so dark, and in the lines of his brow and eyes there was a glimmer of his former spirit.

Li Chi leaned close to Xiahou Zuo and asked, “You weren’t exactly idle while you were in Jizhou, were you?”

Xiahou Zuo said, “Of course not — so many things to take care of every day. When would I have had time to be idle?”

Li Chi said, “What I mean is, looking at that rosy, glowing face of yours, you clearly spent more than a little time visiting certain kinds of establishments.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “Get lost…”

Then laughed. “Just a handful of times. A mere handful.”

Li Chi gave a scoff. “I knew it!”

Xiahou Zuo said seriously, “Those are one of Jizhou City’s commercial enterprises. If you don’t go, and I don’t go, and nobody goes — how do we improve tax revenue?”

Li Chi said, “My admiration knows no bounds.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “Don’t mention it.”

The two rode side by side back into Yuzhou City. Li Chi had ridden out to meet him for over ten li, and when Xiahou Zuo finally appeared before him, he had felt the almost unbearable urge to cry.

If not for Xiahou Zuo raising a middle finger at him — prompting him to raise two in return — he might well have.

“I’ve learned a lot of new things lately,”

Li Chi said as he urged his horse forward. “I’ll cook for you once we’re back.”

Xiahou Zuo’s eyes narrowed. “Just to save yourself the cost of a restaurant?”

Li Chi said, “…”

Xiahou Zuo laughed and asked, “Is Mother well?”

Li Chi said, “She’s doing well. The business of setting up a public school in Yuzhou — our mother insisted on organizing it herself, and even went in person to teach the students. One of the old pedants in the city declared that a woman showing her face in public violated decorum, and a woman giving lessons to students was even more improper. When word reached me, I rushed to the school and found the old pedant in tears — actually crying. Our mother didn’t argue with him at all. She just said, *Let’s have a competition — compare learning and insight, compare skills and abilities. Whatever this gentleman wants to compare, we’ll compare.*”

Xiahou Zuo broke into a smile. Since coming to know Li Chi, it seemed as though many people had been quietly changing without even realizing it.

Like his mother, for instance — once someone who never smiled, her spirit clouded by the matter of Prince Yu. But she had grown increasingly cheerful and lively over time, until she looked visibly younger for it.

Counting the years, his mother had only just passed forty — being young was exactly as it should be.

Li Chi laughed. “The old pedant cried and couldn’t stop — so our mother patted him on the shoulder and said: *Old fellow, you’re not so old, you know. If you want to learn something, come sit in on my classes.*”

Xiahou Zuo burst out laughing. “*Old fellow*…”

Li Chi said, “On that subject — have you noticed that women’s forms of address always seem to carry a higher seniority?”

Xiahou Zuo said, “How so?”

Li Chi said, “*Young fellow, young girl* — the man is *zi*, the woman is *niang* — *lad, lass*. *Old man, old woman. Little Zuo’er. Big Boss Chi.*”

Xiahou Zuo said, “Get lost!”

He gave Li Chi a sharp look. “Diudiu.”

Li Chi said, “…”

With Xiahou Zuo’s arrival in Yuzhou, it marked the complete transfer of Li Chi’s base of operations — from Jizhou to Yuzhou.

But everyone knew that Yuzhou itself was only a stepping stone. The ultimate objective was Jingzhou, separated from Yuzhou by only a single river.

Xiahou Zuo had arrived at a good time — he brought eight thousand troops with him, enough to help fill the gap in manpower left by Tang Pidi’s departure with his forces.

Li Chi’s intention was that the Ning Army would not enter Jingzhou so early. With those three powers tangled up with each other, and the realm as vast as it was, there were plenty of opportunities elsewhere.

Target: Suzhou.

—

Rewinding the clock — the day after Wei Chiguang headed north, Gui Yuanshu and his companions entered Daxing City.

The Emperor was predictably furious over Wei Chiguang’s defection — word had it he smashed quite a few things in the eastern study.

The Minister of Personnel Huang Wei’an and the Minister of Finance Li Shang both knelt outside the Shiyuan Palace, asking the Emperor to thoroughly investigate what had happened. They refused to believe their eldest sworn brother Wei Chiguang would defect without cause.

The two of them knelt for an entire day, but the Emperor paid them no heed.

By nightfall they were still kneeling outside. The head palace attendant Zhen Xiaodao called down from atop the palace wall: “You may go back. His Majesty says Wei Chiguang’s matter is no concern of yours — he asks only that you continue to serve the state and work for the people’s welfare.”

The two had no choice but to rise and return home — though how either of them was supposed to sleep was another question entirely.

As it happened, Wei Chiguang’s northward departure had actually done Gui Yuanshu a considerable favor. Everyone assumed they had fled together — who would imagine they would dare enter the capital?

So their entry into the city went remarkably smoothly. When the guards checked them, there was nothing to find.

Once inside, they did not rashly seek out any members of the Mountain River Seal. Instead they went straight to an inn.

Gui Yuanshu sent people out to gather information while he remained at the inn to rest and recover from his wounds, turning over in his mind how to make those two men believe him.

He looked down at Wei Chiguang’s personal letter in his hands. He knew those two men all too well — they would not easily abandon their convictions.

Most likely they would assume Wei Chiguang had taken a wrong turn and pin the entire blame on Gui Yuanshu’s incitement.

While he was wrestling with these concerns, another group — far away in Jingzhou — was living a thoroughly free and easy life.

Master Ye’s team moved boldly, openly, doing as they pleased across several counties within Jingzhou.

Yang Xuanji had only recently taken control of the entirety of Jingzhou, and his hold on it was far from stable. Master Ye reckoned there were bound to be gaps to exploit.

Master Ye first slipped into a rear camp of the Heavenly Mandate Army, making off with a large cache of military uniforms. His group changed into the clothing, raised their banners, and passed themselves off as soldiers under the Heavenly Mandate King tasked with collecting grain throughout the region.

No concealment whatsoever — they walked straight up to the county granaries and official storehouses and demanded the grain and supplies outright.

They also had local county officials recruit civilian laborers and arrange carts and draft animals to transport the grain northward.

Over the span of this operation, Master Ye’s team had carved out an open channel for grain-smuggling right in enemy territory.

Grain and supplies were moved to the riverbank, the civilian laborers dismissed, a location well clear of the Heavenly Mandate Army’s main camp selected, and Ning Army boats dispatched across the river to collect the shipments.

If it had only been done once, the audacity of it might have gone unappreciated — but they averaged a delivery roughly every ten days.

With the bulk of the Heavenly Mandate Army’s forces massed along the southern bank of the great river, not a soul had thought to wonder what was happening behind them.

Master Ye lived comfortably. The highest-ranking uniform stolen happened to be a fifth-rank general’s — but that was more than enough. County magistrates were only seventh rank; faced with a fifth-rank general, none of them would dare refuse or resist.

Yang Xuanji would never in his wildest dreams have imagined: he had sent men to Yuzhou to burn Li Chi’s fields and granaries — and Li Chi had sent men to *steal* his — quite openly, in broad daylight.

—

At the same time, in Qingzhou.

General Luo Jing stood atop the walls of a county seat he had just seized. His face showed no joy whatsoever.

To him, taking yet another county was nothing to be proud of — nothing to feel pleased about. It was simply routine.

“Same as before,”

Luo Jing said in a flat voice. “Empty the granaries and storehouses within a day, then hand them over to the civilian militias to transport back to Yuzhou.”

He glanced at the fallen enemy banners lying on the ground beside him. His aide immediately picked them up. “General — thirteen banners now.”

Luo Jing remained completely unmoved. He turned and descended the wall. “Tell me when it reaches twenty.”

Luo Jing had entered Qingzhou with only a little over ten thousand battle-hardened Ning soldiers — but they moved through it like ten thousand tigers unleashed upon a flock of sheep.

Much of his success owed to the earlier killing of Gan Daode. With Qingzhou’s largest rebel faction shattered and fragmented, there was no one left capable of standing against Luo Jing’s spear.

A day later, the granaries of this county town had been emptied. Luo Jing mounted his horse and looked at his banner-bearer. “Keep up with me.”

He pressed his heels in, the horse let out a whinny and surged forward.

The crimson Ning Army banner snapped and streamed in the wind across the land of Qingzhou.

Another half a day later, the column was advancing through open country when the vanguard suddenly halted. A scout came riding back at full gallop.

“General!”

the scout called urgently. “Thirty li ahead of the vanguard — a large enemy camp has been spotted. Based on the scouts’ assessment, the camp is enormous. Estimated strength: no fewer than a hundred thousand.”

Luo Jing’s brow furrowed slightly.

In all of Qingzhou — a force of over a hundred thousand?

After Gan Daode’s death, his subordinates had fractured — none would submit to any other, and each had peeled off to form their own force. The infighting and attrition had been severe, which was precisely why Luo Jing’s lone column had swept through like a bolt from the blue.

Hearing that such a massive force had been discovered here, Luo Jing fell into brief thought, then ordered, “The column halts and rests in place. Send out mounted pickets to maintain watch.”

Then he urged his horse forward. “I’m going to take a look myself.”

He rode ahead with his personal guard, covering about twenty li before catching up with the vanguard — twelve hundred soldiers who had also stopped, unwilling to advance any further without orders.

“Have the scouts who found it come forward and lead the way.”

On Luo Jing’s command, a scout soon appeared, and he rode ahead with a few dozen personal guards to investigate.

After some seven or eight li, a five-man scout patrol came riding back toward them — and they looked distinctly wrong.

Seeing Luo Jing, the patrol leader’s face filled with shame. “General…”

Luo Jing looked them over. None were injured — but every one of them looked crestfallen. Then he noticed: not one of them was carrying any weapons.

The patrol leader said, “I sent a man back to report, then tried to get closer for a look — and ended up… caught.”

Luo Jing was genuinely taken aback. “They let you go?”

The patrol leader said, “Yes… we were told to come back and tell you that your soldiers aren’t trained well enough — so they kept our weapons. If you’re not convinced, you’re to come see her in person.”

“*Her?*”

Luo Jing immediately asked.

The patrol leader said, “We didn’t recognize her. But that force is flying our Ning Army banners. The soldiers aren’t in matching armor — the discipline isn’t exactly strict. They look more like a band of outlaws honestly. The one who sent us back was a woman. She said to tell you — her surname is Shen.”

Luo Jing was stunned for a moment.

A mysterious army of a hundred thousand flying Ning colors?

Led by a woman surnamed Shen?

Then, all at once, it hit him…

*Shen Shanhu!*

He couldn’t hold himself back a moment longer. He drove his horse forward at a full gallop.

Before long he arrived outside the camp. Even from a distance he could see a group of people waiting outside the main gate.

The woman at the front — it was indeed Shen Shanhu, returned just recently from Yanzhou.

Luo Jing dismounted and clasped his hands. “Miss Shen — what brings you here?”

Shen Shanhu tilted her chin up slightly, a smile on her face. “I finished cleaning up over there, so I started on this one. Got about halfway through.”

Just a little proud of herself.

Luo Jing’s mind held only one thought in that moment: *This woman is something else.*

Then: *No wonder Old Tang took a liking to her.*

Shen Shanhu asked with a smile, “General Luo — what brings you here?”

Luo Jing was quiet for a moment, then said with a touch of helplessness, “Qingzhou over here… I’ve also gotten about halfway through.”

Shen Shanhu thought for a moment. “Well then, that’s most of it.”

—