After the Black Wu forces withdrew, the northern frontier finally returned to peace — but the Ning Army could not immediately pull out entirely.

Yefu Lie’s military strategy was unpredictable. There was every possibility that he was staging a grand ruse, feigning a withdrawal while still waiting for an opportunity to strike.

And so everyone would have to spend this New Year in the northern frontier.

Fortunately, the northern frontier was no longer short on supplies. Even if the New Year celebration was kept simple, no one would go hungry.

Perhaps because of this, as the twelfth month arrived, people’s spirits began to lift with a certain small excitement.

It was a feeling that the people of the Central Plains could never let fade — the New Year, for every single person, carried a significance that was anything but ordinary.

Early one morning, Yu Jiuling went strolling along the city walls, muttering auspicious greetings to himself as he walked.

“Oh, oh, oh — don’t mention it, of course — same to you, Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year, Happy New Year — blessings to you as well.”

Xiahou Zuo and the others watched him from behind, thinking he must have come down with something. Li Chi, however, seemed to understand what he was doing.

Yu Jiuling was still preening up ahead, and Xiahou Zuo couldn’t hold back any longer — he walked over and gave him a kick in the backside.

“First thing in the morning, who the hell are you talking to? You’re giving everyone a fright.”

Yu Jiuling grinned. “Oh, nothing, nothing — I just heard all the voices from across the Central Plains, sending us their New Year’s greetings from every direction. This one wishing me a Happy New Year, that one wishing me good fortune and prosperity — so many people, truly.”

Xiahou Zuo sighed. “If those voices you’re hearing are from far away, that’s one thing — but if they’re from close by, I might have to take you to see Old Daoist Zhang Zhenren and have him stick a charm on you or something.”

Yu Jiuling leapt up onto the wall and sat on the edge, gazing out at the empty plain to the north. After a moment, he raised both hands and cupped them around his mouth, tilted his head back, and shouted up at the sky.

“Brothers — Happy New Year!”

Xiahou Zuo was momentarily stunned, and then he understood what Yu Jiuling had meant.

So many, so many brothers of the border army. So many, so many brave civilian fighters and volunteers. None of them would ever celebrate another New Year.

“Burn some paper money for our brothers.”

Li Chi slowly exhaled, and turned to walk down from the wall.

Shortly after, Ning Army soldiers carried vast quantities of paper money up the city walls. At intervals along the wall, fire basins were lit, one after another, and the paper money was placed into them to burn.

“We never wanted your days to be bitter when you were alive — and now that you are gone, we cannot let you suffer hardship on the other side. Don’t hold back with the money — whatever enjoyment comes your way over there, enjoy it.”

Yu Jiuling murmured to himself as he burned the paper money.

Many people would always forget, at some point — that Yu Jiuling’s own father had once been a frontier soldier.

Through how many life-and-death battles had he endured before finally rising to a fifth-rank general, able to return and bring his family to live by his side.

Yet he had not survived the illness that struck him on the road home. Life, it seems, always finds these unguarded moments to pierce the heart clean through — and all the beautiful things must be fought for with every ounce of effort.

Smoke rose once more from the city walls, but this time it was not the smoke of battle signals.

When the paper money had all burned, Yu Jiuling stood up and asked Xiahou Zuo, “Do you think our brothers might be waving at us from somewhere we can’t see?”

Xiahou Zuo nodded. “They probably are — though I’d imagine they might also be beckoning, saying, ‘Send a little more.'”

Yu Jiuling couldn’t help but crack a small smile. When he thought about it, his brothers — they really were capable of exactly that.

A moment later, Yu Jiuling murmured as if to himself, “If someday the realm is at peace, and it is a time of great flourishing, I will come back here to the northern frontier.”

He turned and looked in that direction — where Li Chi and Xiahou Zuo had previously discussed and ordered the construction of the memorial garden.

That garden had grown larger and larger. Every time he looked at it, it weighed heavily on the heart.

Especially after this latest Black Wu onslaught — the garden had gained another hundred thousand graves… some of Ning Army soldiers, some of civilian volunteers and fighters. A hundred thousand graves — what an expanse that was.

“When I come back, I’ll take up residence in the memorial garden. Just in case any of our brothers ever want to return and look upon the land they protected — someone should be there to welcome them.”

Yu Jiuling said, “I was afraid of ghosts from the time I was small. Never saw one, and still I was afraid. Just hearing people tell ghost stories would leave me too scared to go to the latrine alone at night. But I think — if it were our brothers coming back to visit — I probably wouldn’t be afraid.”

Li Chi raised his arm and draped it over Yu Jiuling’s shoulder. The two of them fell into silence together.

That year’s Spring Festival — no red decorations were hung in this frontier city.

According to the customs of Jizhou’s people, if a family had lost a loved one, they would not put up red Spring Festival couplets for three consecutive years, and on New Year’s Day they would not go visiting neighbors and relatives to exchange greetings.

In this one frontier battle, one hundred thousand new graves had been dug. How many households would not be putting up Spring Festival couplets this year, would hear no laughter and no cheer?

“I want to establish a rule.”

Li Chi suddenly thought of something.

He looked toward Xiahou Zuo and the others. “Starting today, a dedicated office must be established — it can eventually fall under the Ministry of War. This office must ensure, without fail, that the bereavement payment for every fallen soldier is personally delivered to their home by a dedicated person — along with a letter written on behalf of all the Ning Army’s soldiers to the family of the fallen.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “There should also be a set of the unit commander’s military uniform, a medal, and a commemorative plaque to be hung outside the family’s door. Anyone who dares to bully the family of a fallen soldier shall be punished without leniency.”

Li Chi nodded. “I’ll remember that. I’ll have people begin preparations shortly.”

He turned and came down from the wall, walking in the direction of the memorial garden. “Let’s go to the garden and burn more paper money and paper clothes for our brothers.”

At that same moment, in Daxing City.

On the city walls, the Dachu Emperor Yang Jing stood in a suit of armor, gazing out at the Mandate Army’s encampment beyond the city.

This time, Yang Xuanji had returned with a force even larger than before. He had likely brought along the full resources of his Shu province base of operations.

Now the Ning King Li Chi was unable to return from the north, and Li Xionghu had just been defeated and had fled to the southeast. Within Jingzhou, the most powerful force was Yang Xuanji.

He would not let such an opportunity slip by. And though he showed no urgency to assault the city, Yang Jing knew that Yang Xuanji was eager to proclaim himself emperor.

At first, Yang Xuanji had raised the banner of coming to the aid and rescue of the Chu state. Now he had enumerated dozens of crimes attributed to Emperor Yang Jing, blaming the entirety of the Chu state’s collapse on Yang Jing himself, and was pressing Yang Jing to abdicate.

Yet the current Emperor of Dachu burned with a fighting spirit within, utterly unlike his former self.

In the past, if Yang Xuanji had produced a list of dozens of crimes like this, the emperor would have been too furious to sleep.

Now he treated it all as nothing more than entertainment.

And every one of these changes had come about because of the woman who had healed him — the Empress of Dachu.

“Yang Xuanji believes we do not have enough grain to hold out for long, which is why he chooses to lay siege rather than attack.”

Prince Wu Yang Jiju stood at the emperor’s side, his expression not particularly grave.

Emperor Yang Jing smiled faintly. “His thinking isn’t wrong — only he hadn’t counted on us still having just barely enough to eat.”

The emperor had swept through all the great clans within the city in one decisive move, leaving not a single one untouched. Such ruthless resolution had even astonished Prince Wu.

Yet it was precisely that ruthless resolution that revealed just how much wealth those families had been concealing.

Take the Cui clan in the city, for example. In Jingzhou, the Cui family were among the foremost great clans — but within Daxing City itself, they could only be considered second-tier. Even so, when the Cui family’s courtyard was excavated, what was uncovered in the hidden grain storehouse beneath the ground was so staggering that no one could believe it, even seeing it with their own eyes.

When the Zhou family’s estate was being searched, there were no particularly striking discoveries at first. Then the commander of the inner palace guards, Hui Chunqiu, suddenly noticed that the Zhou family had an unusually large number of heated platform beds.

In principle, great personages of their standing would not be accustomed to sleeping on beds that hard. And this region was not the north — the winters were not so severe.

It was only in the rural north that heated platform beds were a common sight.

In the south of the Yangtze, every household slept in actual beds. Wealthier families had more lavishly appointed beds; poorer families laid a plank of wood and that sufficed.

But a heated platform bed — these were extremely rarely seen here.

So Hui Chunqiu ordered all the platform beds in the Zhou family’s rooms to be torn open, and what was found inside them was solid silver and gold.

Hidden grain storehouses beneath the Cui family courtyard; hidden silver and treasure beneath the Zhou family’s platform beds.

With the experience of searching these two households, when Hui Chunqiu led his men to search other locations, they truly dug three feet into the ground.

In the long-since ruined old residence of the Yuwen family, when the floorboards were broken open, enormous underground cellars were discovered.

The grain and silver stored within them, when combined with everything found in the Cui and Zhou households and doubled, still fell just short.

When the Yuwen family had been investigated back then, only the visible rooms had been ransacked and emptied.

Who could have imagined they had concealed such quantities of provisions and wealth underground?

And so one could now well imagine the scene: while the city was running so short on food that even the Dachu Emperor himself had cut down to one meal a day, and the city’s powerful figures were all publicly declaring they too were tightening their belts — in truth, they were still living in comfort.

It was genuinely true that the emperor had nothing to eat. Their having nothing to eat was only a performance.

It was as though, at the very depths of poverty and desperation, an abundance of hidden treasure had suddenly been unearthed.

Prince Wu said, “By the look of things, they have surrounded the city with no urgency to attack — but by around the third month of next year, if they still see no sign of us opening the gates and surrendering, they will assault.”

The emperor nodded. “Just as with Li Xionghu’s defeat — let Yang Xuanji come and attack freely.”

“Royal Uncle.”

The emperor looked toward Prince Wu. “As long as we can endure through this crisis — once Yang Xuanji is forced to withdraw, can we gradually reclaim the Jiangnan territories?”

Prince Wu had by now rediscovered hope as well. The emperor’s transformation had rekindled the fighting spirit within him.

“If Li Chi in Jizhou does not return for one full year, I am confident we can recover Yangzhou and Liangzhou.”

Hearing Prince Wu’s answer, the hope within the emperor grew even greater.

He smiled, and his eyes brightened considerably.

Prince Wu, looking at the emperor before him, could not help but reflect… Perhaps the Central Plains truly did have divine spirits watching over it. For when the Black Wu forces descended from the north, a man like Li Chi had emerged to meet them. Perhaps the Yang imperial house truly did have divine blessings as well — for in the Chu state’s hour of peril, a woman like the empress had appeared.

“Royal Uncle, today is the first day of the New Year. Would you accompany me on a walk through the city?”

Prince Wu smiled. He understood that the emperor had finally come to his senses.

To walk out into the streets, to be among the people — that was how an emperor’s prestige and standing would grow ever higher.

“With pleasure. I shall accompany His Majesty on a walk.”

As they walked, the emperor said, “Actually… Xiaodao, go find some fireworks. Tonight we’ll set them off properly — fill the city with noise and festivity, and let the people outside the walls see it too.”

Prince Wu was silent for a moment, then lowered his voice and said, “Your Majesty… it may not be entirely appropriate. The situation in the northern frontier remains unclear, and the casualties must be severe. A celebration at this time…”

The emperor was also silent for a moment, then smiled. “Precisely because of that, we should help the people feel at ease.”

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