Li Chi looked at Dantai Qi. “Take two hundred boats downriver, hug the southern bank and come back up, then attack their left flank. Remember — wait for my signal before attacking.”

Dantai Qi clasped his hands in a bow. “Understood.”

Li Chi looked at Xie Xiu. “Take your men, two hundred boats, go upriver. Same as Dantai — wait for my signal before you attack.”

Xie Xiu also bowed. “Understood.”

Li Chi then looked at Xiahou Zuo. “You will hold the main camp. Han Feibao is not a man without strategy. If I fail to win on my end, he will certainly use the opportunity to cross and attack the camp. With you here, we can hold without concern.”

Xiahou Zuo didn’t want to stay behind — but at this moment, he had to follow Li Chi’s arrangements without question.

Because he was one of the people closest to Li Chi, he had to set an example all the more.

Li Chi finished his arrangements and looked at Gao Xining. “Wait for me at home, steady and safe. I’ll be back once I’ve fought this battle.”

Gao Xining nodded vigorously.

Li Chi took a slow deep breath and exhaled. “If we win this battle, we can force Han Feibao’s army to retreat and make them too afraid to invade Jing Province again.”

After saying this, he turned and walked back. “I’m going to pick the troops.”

Li Chi’s personal guard of twelve hundred men, plus eight thousand elite soldiers selected from the Ning Army — just under ten thousand men in total: this was the main assault force Li Chi would personally command.

Han Feibao was no fool. If he simply sent the fleet in from both flanks hugging the southern bank to attack, they would be spotted long before reaching the enemy camp.

So Li Chi would strike from the front: one, to buy time for Dantai Qi and Xie Xiu to get their fleets into position; two, to draw the bulk of the opposing shore’s defensive forces toward himself.

Before going into battle, Li Chi called out loudly to his force: “While I stand, every soldier is to press forward without retreat. If I fall, every soldier may withdraw without reprisal!”

With that, Li Chi stepped onto a sheepskin raft.

These rafts had been captured from the Yong Province army in the first great battle, along with a large quantity of rattan shields.

One by one the rafts were pushed into the water. Soldiers leaped on and began paddling forward.

The foremost raft was Li Chi’s. He had said it before: as long as he was on the battlefield, he would always be ahead of his soldiers.

He had also said: I would rather have my soldiers see my back as they charge than see my face when they look back.

The rafts began moving forward, picking up speed.

Just as the Yong Province army had done when attempting their own river crossing, the Ning Army soldiers held rattan shields up front, the men behind rowing beneath the shields’ cover.

The rafts were small and light, with excellent buoyancy, and far more maneuverable.

A large warship, faced with a boulder hurtling toward it, might have no chance to dodge — it simply couldn’t be steered fast enough.

But rafts of this size were different. Their buoyancy was better, they were more flexible, and at critical moments they could be steered out of the way. And even if they couldn’t dodge, the soldiers on them had more than enough time to jump into the water.

Li Chi led just under ten thousand elite Ning soldiers in the assault. Large and small, over eight hundred rafts were launched onto the river — the entirety of what had been captured.

On the far bank, Han Feibao stood among the catapult positions, raising his spyglass to observe.

He had made his preparations for a crossing, but had never anticipated that the Ning Army — with less than half his numbers — would dare to strike first.

Any student of basic military strategy knows: even when your forces are double those of the defending side, crossing a river is not something to be undertaken recklessly. For the attacking side to have less than half the defenders’ numbers — possibly less than a third — and then voluntarily initiate a river crossing was no different from walking into death.

And yet the Ning Army came just like that.

On the Yong Province Army’s own rafts, behind the Yong Province army’s own rattan shields, they came — without an ounce of hesitation.

“Smash them down!”

At Han Feibao’s command, the large catapults were the first to unleash their power, boulder after boulder arcing up into the sky.

It was because the terrain of Yong Province was so complex — valleys and highland where an army of ten thousand could train without detection. So although Li Chi had sent many men to watch for activity on the Yong Province side, not a single suspicious report had come back.

On top of this, most of the spies he had sent had actually been turned and manipulated by Han Feibao to work against them — and so most of the intelligence that had returned was false.

Long before this, the Yong Province army had been drilling infantry combined with catapult assault tactics.

But Han Feibao had always intended to keep this trump card hidden, to use it at the decisive moment.

He hadn’t expected that the very first battle of his campaign into the Central Plains would be the decisive moment. Without it, he had no way to defeat Li Chi’s Ning Army.

Now the boulders were flying, and Han Feibao watched through his spyglass — yet his heart held little certainty.

Because these rafts were themselves one of the instruments designed to work alongside catapult tactics.

Rafts were light and small, their bases packed tightly with fully inflated sheepskin bladders, rounded and buoyant. Even if struck on the side by a boulder, the raft would instantly flip over rather than shatter.

Only a direct center hit could destroy one.

And because of the rafts’ special construction, soldiers who fell into the water could quickly right an overturned raft and continue pushing forward.

Compared to a large warship — whose movements were relatively inflexible — a sheepskin raft had little to fear from catapult fire.

Even the waves churned up by boulders smashing into the water could overturn a raft — but could not destroy it. The soldiers would flip it back over and keep going.

So at this moment, Han Feibao’s brow was deeply furrowed.

Unsurprisingly, the falling boulders inflicted little damage on the dispersed sheepskin rafts.

The rafts that took direct hits were destroyed — but the soldiers on them had seen the boulders coming and jumped into the water.

“Get the crossbow carriages ready.”

Han Feibao gave another order.

His unease was real, yet his fear was not great. The attacking Ning forces were limited in number — what could they do even if they reached the bank?

He judged this to be a suicide force, coming to destroy the Yong Province catapults and prepare the way for the fleet’s main assault to follow.

For the Ning Army to move large numbers of troops across the river, they would need their warships.

The Yong Province army’s equipment was superior and their numbers vast.

Their catapults were more powerful than the Ning Army’s. Their crossbow carriages were no inferior to the Ning Army’s either.

As the spread of rafts crossed the midpoint of the Tuo River, the Yong Province army’s smaller catapults began launching stones.

The large catapults’ range was now too far to be effective.

But the Yong Province army had more of the smaller catapults, and the stones came in denser volleys.

After losing a portion of the sheepskin rafts, Li Chi’s force still closed in on the southern bank.

“Crossbow carriages — fire!”

Han Feibao gave the command.

The Yong Province army’s heavy crossbow launchers began sending enormous bolts screaming out, skimming low across the water toward the approaching Ning Army.

Previously, when the Yong Province army had launched their own crossing, they had relied on the toughness of the rattan shields, kneeling half-upright on the rafts and bracing their shoulders against the shields to block the arrows.

But the Ning Army did things differently.

When the volleys of heavy bolts and feathered arrows came pouring down in dense formation, Li Chi was the first to flatten himself on the raft.

All the Ning Army soldiers on all the rafts, following Li Chi’s lead, went flat as well, pulling the rattan shields over themselves.

They lay prone on the rafts and paddled forward with their hands.

In this way, the incoming bolts caused the Ning Army almost no casualties at all.

Han Feibao’s expression changed.

The Ning King Li Chi had taken his rafts, taken his rattan shields — and used them with tactics superior to anything he himself had employed.

Because they were lying prone, even bolts that struck the rattan shields were deflected and glanced away.

The water’s surface looked as though it had been lashed by a downpour, spray flying everywhere.

But the Ning Army’s approach to the southern bank did not slow at all. The Yong Province soldiers were beginning to feel a creeping panic.

“Spearmen forward! Archers pull back.”

Han Feibao ordered again.

He had drilled his forces in Yong Province for many years and had absolute confidence in his troops’ ability to adapt.

The Yong Province army quickly completed the formation change. Dense ranks of spearmen advanced and formed a thick wall of steel along the beach.

Behind the spear formation, archers were already in position, bows raised, attempting to aim at the rear ranks of the Ning Army.

Not heavy cavalry, not heavy infantry — the tactical options for breaking through a dense, close-packed spear defense were genuinely few.

Fortunately, the Yong Province army had provided rattan shields to the Ning Army in advance.

Li Chi was the first to leap onto the far bank, single hand raised to hold a rattan shield as he advanced. His personal guard rushed up behind him, quickly forming a spearhead formation.

Ning soldiers coming ashore in succession rapidly poured into the spearhead, swelling it from behind. Viewed from high above, it would have been a breathtaking sight — like fifty black dots converging from behind, expanding that razor-sharp triangular formation wider and wider.

At its apex was the blade — once it cut in, the wedge shape would keep pushing the gap wider and wider.

“Charge!”

Li Chi let out a thunderous roar.

He pushed off hard, launched himself into the air, shoulder braced against the rattan shield, and drove directly into the spear formation.

That one impact bowled over several Yong Province soldiers. Li Chi killed two or three more as he rose back up.

It was a tiny opening — against the scale of the Yong Province spear formation, four or five men going down was a loss almost too small to count.

But that tiny opening was the beginning of the Ning Army’s brutal wedge driving into the heart of the Yong Province force.

Li Chi moved like a savage beast. He had not been free to fight like this on a battlefield in a long time.

Before his battle blade, no one could stand.

Layer one, layer two, layer three…

The speed at which Li Chi was cutting through left even Han Feibao stunned.

The intelligence had said that the Ning King Li Chi possessed extraordinary martial skill — the courage and power of ten thousand men. But in this era of constant warfare, every army had a handful of fighters worth ten thousand men.

Han Feibao had not imagined that Li Chi’s individual combat ability could be this terrifying.

One shield, one blade — and by sheer personal force alone, he was cutting through the spear formation layer by layer.

“Get up there and pin him down!”

Han Feibao turned and shouted.

One of his chief generals, Liu Fei Yuan, seized his broad saber and charged forward. “Your subordinate will go kill that Ning King!”

About a quarter of an hour later, word came back from the front: General Liu Fei Yuan had been cut down.

“Who will go?!”

Han Feibao shouted again.

“This subordinate volunteers!”

Another of his chief generals, Wang Zu, grabbed his twin hammers and charged forward. Those two hammers together weighed over a hundred jin. For years, this man had fought in battle after battle without ever meeting a match.

Yet again about a quarter of an hour later, word came back from the front: General Wang Zu had had his head cleaved off by the Ning King Li Chi.

The time both men went up and the time both men died were nearly identical — which meant that both generals of ten-thousand-man valor had each been killed by the Ning King Li Chi with a single stroke.

Han Feibao’s expression was now deeply grim. He turned and shouted again, “Who else will go?!”

This time, no one stepped forward quickly.

—