Bulegdi departed, taking his few attendants with him, along with the contingent Li Chi had assigned to him, transporting a considerable amount of provisions and supplies.

The convoy slipped out through the city gates under cover of night, taking advantage of the Black Wu forces being completely preoccupied elsewhere at the moment.

Yu Jiuling stood at the city gates watching the convoy disappear into the distance, then ordered the gates shut. When he turned back, he found Li Chi watching him with a smile.

“You look like something’s weighing on your mind.”

Li Chi asked him.

Yu Jiuling let out a sigh. “He’s a pitiable man, too.”

Li Chi chuckled. “You have a knife for a mouth but tofu for a heart.”

Yu Jiuling said, “If they really do manage to provide us cover from Unnamed Mountain while we hold the city, then once the fighting’s done — why not just let them pass through the pass?”

Li Chi laughed heartily. “Tofu heart indeed.”

Yu Jiuling raised a hand and scratched the back of his head. “Honestly, even my sharp tongue is a front… It might be because people who’ve suffered since childhood can’t bear to watch others suffer the same way.”

Li Chi said, “So do you think he’s sincere?”

Yu Jiuling nodded. “From the look of him, he seemed genuinely sincere.”

Li Chi asked, “What was his name again?”

Yu Jiuling thought for a moment. “Wasn’t it… Bule Horse-Hoof? Buge-Yadi? All’s Well That Ends Well? Bujia-something-Di? Male…”

Li Chi clamped a hand over his mouth. “All right, that’s enough.”

Yu Jiuling grinned sheepishly. “These Chile tribe names are genuinely hard to remember. It’s not that my memory is bad — their names are just too strange.”

Li Chi said, “Can’t blame you…”

Yu Jiuling said, “The fact that you can say those three words — ‘can’t blame you’ — with a straight face already takes considerable nerve. Thank you…”

Li Chi laughed. “You can’t even remember his name, yet you feel he’s sincere. Someone like you wandering the jianghu would be stripped down to your undergarments by someone like me before you even noticed.”

Yu Jiuling said, “But why would you want to strip me of my undergarments?”

Xiahou Zuo, standing nearby, remarked, “He’s not after your undergarments. He’s after your body.”

Li Chi: “…”

Yu Jiuling: “…”

After a moment, Yu Jiuling sighed and said, “Before, the boss told me frontier army culture is remarkably uninhibited. I didn’t really understand what ‘uninhibited’ meant then. Now I do — ‘uninhibited’ means not caring about all sorts of matters that polite people care about…”

Li Chi once again clamped his hand over Yu Jiuling’s mouth. “If you don’t want to be struck by thunder and lightning and drag the rest of us down with you, shut your mouth.”

Yu Jiuling: “Mmph, mmph, mmph…”

Xiahou Zuo kicked him in the backside. “Mmph your sister…”

From Beishan Pass to Unnamed Mountain was not a great distance. The convoy set out in the dead of night and would surely make it into the mountains before dawn.

Those mountains were tall and their forests dense. With the Ning Army’s assistance, the Chile people shouldn’t take too long to construct a mountain stronghold.

Their first priority was to avoid being spotted by Black Wu scouts. Fortunately, they held the high ground, so they could raise the alarm in time if anyone approached.

The mountains were full of tall trees that could be felled to build wooden walls. Using the terrain to mount a determined defense, it would not be so easy for the Black Wu forces to break through.

There was another advantage to holding Unnamed Mountain — however powerful the Black Wu trebuchets were, they couldn’t reach a wooden stronghold built halfway up the mountainside.

Beishan Pass’s fortifications stood right there in the open, immovable and inescapable, which was precisely why the Black Wu trebuchets posed such a devastating threat there.

The mountain stronghold could be built somewhat higher up. Trebuchets couldn’t be hauled up the mountain and so would pose no threat to the wooden fortress. And if the Black Wu forces had to climb on foot to assault the Chile position, their casualties would inevitably be severe.

On the Beishan Pass side, Li Chi and his men began stockpiling supplies to meet the next wave of assault the Black Wu forces might launch at any moment.

It wouldn’t take long for the Black Wu to sort out their provisions problem — they would ruthlessly strip every surrounding tribe bare.

What they plundered only needed to last a month, and by then, reinforcements and fresh provisions would arrive.

“Bulegdi said that when his tribespeople escaped, they also destroyed a portion of the trebuchets.”

Li Chi said, pacing as he spoke. “That’s the real good news for us. From the Black Wu’s last assault, their trebuchets are sturdier than ours and more effective. The walls can’t withstand that kind of relentless bombardment.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “If we could take out their remaining trebuchets, there’d be nothing too difficult about holding the city.”

Easier said than done — destroying the enemy’s trebuchets in the midst of a million-strong army was nothing short of a pipe dream.

Not that Li Chi’s side lacked truly formidable fighters. Every one of the warriors currently at Li Chi’s side was a first-rate powerhouse.

But even a powerhouse like Master Chu or Su Ruye, venturing deep into a camp of a million soldiers, would be walking into a death trap with no way out.

There wasn’t a shred of doubt about this. Unless you were an immortal who couldn’t die, no one could withstand ten thousand arrows loosed simultaneously.

“If we can’t destroy the Black Wu trebuchets, then we find a way to make the walls more resilient.”

Li Chi said, “We still have enough timber to last a while, but that too is a vulnerability.”

He looked around at the assembled men. “If the Black Wu use those grappling-hook bolts, we have to sever the ropes and let the logs drop away. Over time, first, our timber supply gets depleted, and second, the accumulated logs piling up against the city walls could be exploited by the Black Wu.”

Xiahou Zuo thought for a moment before saying, “Use sandbags. Fill them with earth and sand and hang them along the outside of the walls.”

Li Chi nodded. “Worth trying.”

Yu Jiuling said, “The Black Wu probably won’t attack the city in the short term. If we send men out at night to dig a large number of pitfall trenches outside the walls, I’m not sure how effective it’ll be, but at the very least it’d stop the Black Wu from getting close so easily.”

Li Chi suddenly thought of something. “What if the Black Wu digs, too?”

He looked at Yu Jiuling. “You little brain of yours is teeming with ideas, isn’t it.”

Yu Jiuling looked thoroughly bewildered. “What idea? I didn’t think of anything…”

Li Chi turned to Dantai Qi. “Pass the order — dig a trench through the city, at least one and a half zhang deep and one zhang wide. Increase the patrol forces, especially at night. Muster enough manpower and get it dug quickly.”

He then looked at Yu Jiuling. “Go find a supply of large urns. Bury them in the ground, bottom side up, and arrange for soldiers to keep watch in rotation.”

What Yu Jiuling hadn’t anticipated was that his single offhand remark would, some time later, save Beishan Pass yet again.

More than ten days later, the Black Wu forces had more or less finished scrounging up their provisions, and their camp began advancing forward. The Black Wu encampment had originally stood more than twenty li from Beishan Pass; this forward push brought it to within roughly eleven or twelve li.

The Black Wu had indeed begun tunneling. They sent men out at night to dig through the night, then cleared away the excavated earth just before dawn and covered the tunnel openings.

During the day there was no sign of anything amiss. Then, in the deep stillness of the night, they sent men back to dig again.

Having hit upon the tunnel strategy actually suggested that Yefulie had genuinely run out of other options.

They dug for more than ten consecutive nights and finally got the tunnels to roughly the right length, estimating they had reached within the city’s perimeter. In the dead of night, the troops began to muster.

Yefulie had ordered five tunnels dug simultaneously, all proceeding at roughly the same pace.

In the second half of the night, Black Wu soldiers began entering the tunnels, leaving just enough room for one person to pass while the last of the soil was hauled out.

Everyone was on edge. The moment they broke through, the first men who rushed into the city were certain to be surrounded and cut down.

Such had always been the way of battle — those who charged fastest were often the first to die.

What they hadn’t anticipated, however, was that they would break through without having to dig upward at all, because the Ning Army had dug a deep trench inside the city.

The moment the Black Wu soldiers tunneled through, there was even a flicker of elation — until the lead men stepped forward cautiously and promptly slid off the edge.

The tunnels hadn’t been dug one and a half zhang deep, only just under one zhang, so the moment the soldiers emerged, they dropped straight down.

The men in front fell; the men behind kept pushing forward. Five tunnels — the Black Wu poured in like water flowing through a channel.

And then they faced despair.

They were at the bottom of the trench. Its walls had been dug sheer straight on both sides; there was simply no way to climb out.

The crowd packed tighter and tighter at the bottom of the trench. Daring not to shout aloud, they tried to stop those behind from pushing forward, but it was entirely impossible to halt the flow.

As the trench filled to capacity, Li Chi walked to the edge carrying a torch. The Black Wu soldiers at the bottom looked up at the sudden light overhead, one after another going wide-eyed with terror.

Li Chi casually tossed his torch into the trench, turned, and walked away. Immediately after, countless other torches were thrown in.

Moments later, Ning Army archers surged to the trench’s rim and began loosing arrows down into it. This kind of slaughter would have been enough to frighten ordinary civilians out of their wits.

Arrows rained down in a dense swarm. Those at the bottom cried out, thrashed, struggled — but there was no escape.

Those further back finally dared not advance any further. The screams of the dying were the most effective deterrent to those still behind.

The trench was filled with corpses — a sight to chill the blood.

Xiahou Zuo raised a hand and pointed. Countless bundles of firewood were hurled in, and the flames in the trench climbed higher and higher.

The fire barely illuminated half the border city, yet the smell of burning bodies drifted through the entire night sky.

There was no way to count how many of the Black Wu had perished. Everyone could see with their own eyes that trench full of bodies being reduced to charcoal.

The Ning Army packed the trench with stones and lime and tamped it firm on top.

At the Black Wu camp.

Yefulie waited for his subordinates to come back with a report — but there was no good news. They told him the Ning Army had been prepared, and the men who had entered the city were wiped out entirely.

Yefulie walked out of his command tent and looked toward the distant city walls.

“Ning King Li Chi…”

He murmured to himself, his tone carrying a peculiar complexity.

Back inside his tent, Yefulie began writing a letter to the Black Wu Khan Emperor. He wrote for a long time — writing, tearing it up, starting again — back and forth, for a full two hours, from dawn to midday.

The letter was very long, running to more than ten pages in total, and every single word required extraordinary deliberation on his part.

The entire letter conveyed just one thing — a request to the Black Wu Khan Emperor for more time, and for additional reinforcements. Because what he feared was this: once Ning King Li Chi became the new ruler of the Central Plains, the Black Wu Empire would find it very difficult to invade the Central Plains ever again.

Within the letter, there were several lines that read as follows:

Ning King Li Chi will become the Black Wu Empire’s greatest enemy. If he ascends the throne, his sons and grandsons for generations to come will all become the Black Wu Empire’s greatest enemy.

The Emperor of Chu personally ruined his own realm, yet Li Chi is making that realm more formidable with each passing day.

If the Black Wu Empire must spend a million soldiers — or even more — to destroy Ning King Li Chi and his Ning Army, that would still be a victory.

Failing to destroy the Ning Army now, the Ning Army of the future may bring pain even the empire cannot bear.

—