The Bohai forces’ attacks had no particular strategy or method to speak of — they simply swarmed forward across the hillsides, howling as they came, like a pack of starving wolves.

Yet the pack of starving wolves they were facing was not a flock of defenseless sheep. They were tigers — fiercer than any wolf.

The Bohai fighters charging up had nothing to recommend them beyond their fearlessness of death. Against the Ning Army’s formidable weaponry and equipment, that fearlessness seemed pitifully cheap.

With near and far-range weapons working in concert on the defensive line, the Ning Army — well-manned and excellently equipped — displayed a fighting capability that could only be called a slaughter.

In the gorge, the Ning Army’s end had been narrower, leaving no room to deploy properly — the retreat had been an unavoidable concession.

Out here in the open, with the advantage of high ground, the Bohai forces had no chance of using their numerical superiority to push the Ning Army back. None whatsoever.

From the moment Li Chi arrived at the northeastern frontier, day after day, the Bohai assaults appeared ferocious but gained no ground.

Once the Ning Army began using ice spears, it gave the Bohai forces an idea as well — they started melting snow and freezing their own ice spears.

But they hadn’t thought it through: how vast was the gap in equipment between the two sides?

For one thing, the Ning Army was on defense and had a solidly frozen ice wall in front of them. For another, the Ning Army had abundant shields. And even without those, there was still their heavy hide armor.

An ice spear could gouge a pit in a tree, but punching through thick hide armor was a different matter.

The Bohai forces were different — their clothing wasn’t particularly thick, and a well-propelled ice spear could run a man clean through.

So the battlefield became an enormous millstone. The Ning Army were the ones driving it, and the Bohai forces were the grain being swept under and ground up.

Bohai King Shi Zaixin was now caught in a dilemma. Keep fighting, and every day brought colossal losses for the Bohai side. Even setting aside concerns about manpower, other matters kept him from feeling at ease.

Because what he faced was not only the losses on the battlefield — there was also the fact that his forces were critically short of provisions.

Shi Zaixin’s campaign strategy had been to sustain the army by plundering — to rely on what was seized to keep the troops fed.

Now they were pinned down here. The army was immense and reinforcements kept arriving, but provisions were running desperately thin.

Bohai had thrown the full might of the nation into this — all to win a single Yanzhou for themselves. And now it appeared that even that desperate gamble might yield nothing.

The one hope left was that the Sang fleet would insert reinforcements behind the Ning Army’s lines, creating a pincer attack from two directions.

On the hillside, Li Chi raised his spyglass and surveyed the battlefield. At this rate of fighting, the Bohai forces probably couldn’t hold out much longer.

But without finding a way to stop the Bohai reinforcements, the Ning Army’s path to victory remained equally difficult.

Li Chi lowered the spyglass and pointed toward the gorge: “We can’t retake the gorge for now — but if we could find a way to block it, the Bohai forces on this side would become a completely isolated army.”

“Block it?”

Dantai Yajing thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll find some local villagers and ask — whether there are any small paths that lead up the mountain.”

Li Chi nodded: “Ask around. If there’s a way, after the last avalanche, the snow on the slopes hasn’t fully stabilized. If we could trigger another avalanche, we might be able to seal the gorge completely.”

Dantai Yajing accepted the order and set off with men to find local villagers.

After three or four hours of fierce battle, the Bohai forces charged to the edge of the Ning Army’s position multiple times, but were each time driven back.

With no other options, the Bohai forces sounded the retreat — they couldn’t think of any way to break through the Ning Army’s formidable defense.

Dantai Yajing took his personal guard troops and spread out in different directions, and before long brought back some villagers who had been sheltering from the fighting.

He asked an elderly hunter whether there were any small paths leading up the mountain. The old man shook his head: “There were, once — but after the collapse, the paths were buried under snow.”

Even with all his experience, a hunter like him didn’t dare venture up under these conditions.

“In that case, let our men go with you and see how far you can get. Go as far as you can, and if you truly can’t press on, we’ll turn back. With many people, we can look out for each other — and if we mark the trail, we won’t get lost.”

The old hunter thought it over. With so many people along, it wouldn’t be too frightening.

If it were just himself going alone into those deep mountain wilds, all the gold and silver in the world wouldn’t get him to go.

And so the old hunter brought along his younger nephews and kinsmen, took along a few hunting dogs, and led Dantai Yajing and twelve hundred soldiers up the mountain from one side.

The snow in this forest all looked the same, but it was full of hidden dangers — you never knew where a patch of snow was actually just a thin crust, and if you broke through and slid in, they might never find you.

Fortunately, there were many of them. They had brought enough dry provisions and water, and no one’s heart was particularly troubled.

As they went, they marked the trail. At worst, they could simply retrace their steps.

But what no one anticipated was that on the second day after entering the mountains, a storm arrived.

The snowstorms in Yanzhou were beyond imagining — someone who had spent their life in the south could be told in careful detail, but still find they couldn’t picture what it was actually like.

A howling blizzard, the sky blanketed in dense cloud. The party that had entered the mountains lost contact with the outside world.

Li Chi sent out many search parties, but with a storm this severe, the markers Dantai Yajing’s group had left were no longer visible.

By the sixth day after entering the mountains, the old hunter had lost all hope. He had absolutely no way of telling where they were.

Six days without once seeing the sun — the sky was as dark and oppressive as nightfall. Direction was impossible to determine.

Under such conditions, even experience became useless.

“Perhaps we should split up and look for a way out.”

One of the younger hunters suggested.

Dantai Yajing shook his head: “If we scatter, our chances of survival get smaller, not bigger. Together like this, even if we run into dangerous wild animals, we don’t need to be afraid. Separated, once we lose contact with each other, some of us may never make it back.”

He had his men help the old hunter climb a tall tree and look out in all directions. From high up, the vague outline of what might be the gorge could just barely be discerned in the distance.

“Find the gorge first. Once we can see the gorge, we can determine direction.”

Dantai Yajing gave the order: “Head that way. If it is the gorge, we follow it back. If we’ve gone the wrong way, a few days of walking will tell us soon enough.”

The old hunter felt there was nothing else for it, and led the young hunters forward to scout the path.

And so, even though from the top of that tall tree the gorge had seemed to be in that direction, after walking for two days, the gorge was still nowhere to be seen.

At that point, nearly everyone in the group was panicking.

None of them feared battle. None of them feared fighting the enemy. But being trapped and dying in a wilderness where you couldn’t even tell which way was which — the fear that brought was far greater than anything a battlefield had ever inspired.

The young hunter climbed the tall tree again to survey. But every part of this forest looked the same — straight, towering trunks as far as the eye could reach, with no variation.

“It seems to be right in that direction.”

The hunter came down from the tree and pointed in the direction they’d been heading. “Maybe we just walked too far — it might not be something we can get back to in two or three days. Why not walk two more days and try?”

The old hunter had no idea either, and could only look to Dantai Yajing.

Dantai Yajing nodded: “Two more days then. If two days still shows us nothing, we turn back.”

And so they pressed forward for two more days. The gorge remained unseen — yet the sky had finally cleared.

Waking that morning, Dantai Yajing scooped up snow and scrubbed his face with it. This man who usually attended to himself so fastidiously had gotten his fill of the most rugged life imaginable over the past days.

“Forest’s edge ahead!”

Several scouts came running back, their faces lit up with excitement.

Dantai Yajing felt excitement stir in him too. Those words — the hope they carried was immeasurable.

Everyone followed the scouts and ran forward. Walking roughly two li or so brought them to the forest’s edge. If they’d pushed just a little further the previous evening, they’d have seen it then — but last evening the sky had still been heavy and dark, nightfall had come early, and no one had dared press on.

Reaching the edge, Dantai Yajing raised his hand and signaled for everyone to crouch. He crept silently to the tree line and peered out.

This was not the gorge. The descent from the mountain opened onto a hillside slope, and faintly visible in the distance was a small village.

“We’ve gone in a circle and come back around — but who knows how far we are from our camp.”

Dantai Yajing turned back and ordered, “Qiao Lang — take two squads of ten and go with Old Liu and the others into the village to find out.”

Qiao Lang was one of Dantai Yajing’s personal guard officers. He acknowledged the order, took the old hunter with him, and slid down the slope.

Dantai Yajing kept the rest of the party at the forest’s edge to rest. After waiting perhaps half a shichen, a few scouts came running back, visibly out of breath.

“General.”

The scout who arrived first had a clearly troubled look on his face.

“What is it?”

Dantai Yajing asked quickly.

The scout, still breathing hard, said, “We did make it out — but… this side… this side is Bohai.”

“What?!”

Dantai Yajing’s eyes went wide.

After ten-odd days of wandering in that forest, they had somehow stumbled their way onto Bohai territory?

The scout said, “The village doesn’t have many people left — mostly the elderly, women, and children. Fortunately, Old Liu and the others speak Bohai, so they asked around. All the able-bodied men were conscripted.”

“The villagers had no idea who we were. They assumed we were another conscription squad, and just kept kowtowing and begging, saying there was truly no one left in the village.”

Dantai Yajing’s eyes flickered, and he beckoned: “Let’s go into the village and take a look.”

After going in and questioning several more villagers, they confirmed that this was a village in Bohai’s Plains Province. Bohai was divided into three large regions — Plains Province, Hanshui Province, and Weiang Province — roughly equivalent to the great provinces of the Central Plains.

Bohai’s capital, Plains City, was roughly three hundred li from here, which meant this was already considered the Bohai interior.

Bohai’s territory was narrow — long from north to south and short from east to west. Plains Province was the northernmost, followed by Weiang Province and Hanshui Province.

Plains Province was six or seven hundred li across east to west, and seven or eight hundred li from north to south — though Bohai as a whole stretched over two thousand li from north to south.

“Interesting.”

A gleam was already growing bright in Dantai Yajing’s eyes. He thought for a moment, then gave an order: “Go — ask which of them has been to Plains City. Give them some rations, and have them lead the way.”

He then told his other personal guard officer, Gao Baobao, to take two hundred men and stay in this village to wait and provide backup.

He stretched and rolled his shoulders, and the corners of his mouth curved into a smile.

“A chance like this has found us — let’s make the most of it. Since we can’t find the road home just now, let’s go pay a visit to theirs.”

The next morning, Dantai Yajing led a force of one thousand men, guided by local villagers, and set out toward Plains City.

—