Seeing his men hesitate, Han Feibao’s expression darkened. The Ning Army attacking across was barely ten thousand strong — if they were allowed to break through like this, what face would the Yong Province army have left to contend for the Central Plains?

So he turned his gaze to his Geling Army.

Among the Geling Army there was a general named Shang Bajiao — a strange name that came with an even stranger background.

The highlands of Yong Province had always been a harsh land, where people lived at the mercy of the sky. Shortly after Shang Bajiao was born, he fell ill and was abandoned.

Eight wandering beggars found him. Whether out of pity for the infant or some notion of taking on a disciple, those eight men raised him to adulthood.

He had no name all the way to his twelfth or thirteenth year — the eight beggars just called him Little Lucky, a modest wish for something good.

One day, driven by desperate hunger, the eight of them decided to take the risk of stealing grain from a granary storehouse. They left the boy to keep watch — and he nodded off and missed the storehouse owner returning. All eight beggars were caught inside.

The eight men had no money, nothing of value. Reporting them to the authorities wouldn’t accomplish much.

The storehouse owner gave the order to have his men break all eight beggars’ legs.

From that day on, the eight men became eight cripples. In the local Yong Province dialect, a cripple was called a “jue” — a lame one, one who walks with a limp.

Eight of them — so to make the boy remember his mistake, they gave him the name “Eight Lame” — Bajiao.

As time went on, these eight crippled men found it increasingly impossible to keep themselves alive. Even their old means — trickery, swindling, petty theft — had become difficult now that they couldn’t walk and had to drag themselves about on hands and knees. With no way to survive, they depended entirely on the young Shang Bajiao to go out and find food.

When he couldn’t, the eight of them — whose dispositions had darkened considerably — beat him with sticks.

One time the beating was particularly severe. Shang Bajiao ran out of the crumbling cave dwelling they lived in, and the more he thought about it, the more furious he became — so he piled a great stack of firewood against the cave entrance and set it alight.

He had thought the fire wouldn’t actually reach inside the cave, just scare the eight old men.

But those eight men with their useless legs couldn’t run fast enough to get out — and all eight were suffocated to death by the smoke.

It was only on that day that Shang Bajiao learned that smoke could kill.

The discovery frightened him badly. He didn’t dare look back, and fled from that place.

Afterward he went on surviving alone through trickery and theft. Having been trained by the eight beggars and subjected to years of beatings, he had by now developed a body of remarkable agility and reflexes.

On the day Han Feibao massacred Geling, Shang Bajiao had been inside a temple, stealing. He saw the great army slaughtering everyone, was terrified half to death, and hid himself away.

His skills were considerable. Han Feibao’s forces swept through the temple several times and pronounced it clear of survivors — but they never found him.

When he finally snuck out to flee, he ran directly into Han Feibao himself.

Han Feibao had casually ordered this Shang Bajiao killed along with the rest — but the man moved with the agility of a gibbon, and although he knew nothing of formal martial arts, his reflexes and adaptability were exceptional, and his strength was not small. He leaped and scrambled and could not easily be caught.

Han Feibao found it amusing and kept him.

Once in the army and given instruction in martial arts, Shang Bajiao’s progress was rapid. And he had taken on Han Feibao’s temperament along with the training — killing without hesitation.

Anyone who angered him would have their legs broken, be stuffed into a cave, and be suffocated to death with smoke. He had done this dozens of times.

Earlier when Han Feibao had called for volunteers and no one had stepped forward immediately, this included the Geling Army soldiers — but for a different reason. They stood in perfect stillness not because they were reluctant to fight, but because without Han Feibao’s direct order, they were not even permitted to speak out of turn.

Such was the severity of this discipline that Han Feibao had forged the Geling Army into a unit of truly bloodless, cold-blooded killing.

Han Feibao’s heart was burning with anger, yet he also knew that sending more men up at random would probably be no match for that Ning King Li Chi either.

And so Han Feibao turned toward the Geling Army’s commanders: “Shang Bajiao!”

Shang Bajiao immediately stepped out. “Your subordinate is here!”

Han Feibao called out: “Take your men up there. If you cannot hold back the Ning King Li Chi, don’t bother coming back.”

Shang Bajiao bowed. “Your subordinate obeys!”

Not another word. Shang Bajiao turned and ran.

Shortly after, his four thousand eight hundred Geling Army soldiers moved out with him from the main formation.

The Geling Army had eight generals in total, each commanding roughly five thousand men — not counting Han Feibao’s personal guard. In total the Geling Army numbered sixty-eight thousand: forty thousand divided among the eight generals, and twenty-eight thousand as Han Feibao’s personal troops.

Han Feibao had orchestrated the death of his own foster father — so how could he trust the old soldiers of the Yong Province army? His most trusted force was the Geling Army. The rest he kept under varying degrees of watch.

Shang Bajiao led his contingent forward. His battalion had been named by Han Feibao the Xin Company — the eighth.

The eight battalions were designated by the sequence: Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin — first to eighth, with those ranked earliest being the most powerful.

Among these eight, the strongest was General Pang Ba, commander of the Jia Company, and one of Han Feibao’s most trusted men.

By the time Shang Bajiao reached the front, Li Chi had already broken through the dense spear defense. With the spear formation collapsed, the archers behind it — who had little protection of their own — could only be cut down. So the archer formation was already withdrawing, preparing to cycle rattan shield infantry up to plug the gap.

Shang Bajiao arrived with his force, ordered the rattan shield soldiers to clear the way, and then charged forward at the head of his men — confident in his own invincibility — straight toward the breach.

By this point Li Chi was drenched in blood from head to foot. He had no interest in counting how many he had killed.

The spear formation had been at least fifteen or sixteen layers deep. Cutting through from the front, even at six or seven kills per layer, would mean over a hundred men cut down by him alone.

And this was only an estimate — the actual count could only have been higher.

Shang Bajiao caught sight of the figure charging at the head, and let out a roar of fury, both sabers slashing down toward Li Chi.

Li Chi raised his rattan shield with his left hand to deflect — not even paying much attention to who was in front of him.

In a natural, flowing motion his blade swept horizontally outward. His sword was among the sharpest in the world — anything caught in that sweep would be cleaved cleanly in two.

Shang Bajiao had not expected the Ning King Li Chi to be so fast. He barely managed to step back and avoid the blade’s arc.

But in stepping back, he captured Li Chi’s attention.

He was the first person, since Li Chi had led the landing on the southern bank, to dodge one of Li Chi’s strokes.

Li Chi glanced at him. The man’s armor was impressive, and the twin sabers in his hands were no ordinary weapons. Li Chi made him his target.

Shang Bajiao’s first strike had missed. His second saber came for Li Chi’s throat — but concealed beneath it was a thrust aimed at Li Chi’s lower abdomen.

Such a vicious and underhanded combination. Li Chi had no patience for it.

He pressed his rattan shield down with his left hand, using the shield’s edge to impact Shang Bajiao’s wrist. Shang Bajiao’s left hand dipped downward involuntarily.

Li Chi raised his right hand — but rather than using his blade to parry, he flipped his wrist so the hilt drove upward into Shang Bajiao’s other wrist.

Left and right hands both targeting the enemy’s wrists — in the next instant, sharp pain shot through both of Shang Bajiao’s hands simultaneously, and both sabers dropped from his grip.

Li Chi released the rattan shield. Before it had even fully fallen, he had already launched himself upward to stand on it, and drove a kick straight into Shang Bajiao’s chest.

Shang Bajiao was sent flying backward. In that instant, Li Chi had already taken both his sabers.

Li Chi called out: “Fine blades — they’re yours!”

The two nearest bodyguards gave a whoop of delight and scooped up Shang Bajiao’s weapons.

In the next breath, Li Chi hooked the rattan shield upward with his foot, caught it with his left hand as he spun, and flung it loose.

The shield, spinning at speed, cut through the air toward Shang Bajiao’s throat like a rotary blade. Shang Bajiao only just managed to duck his head in time to avoid it.

But barely had he bent forward when Li Chi crossed a full zhang in a single step and was on him.

Both hands gripping his blade, Li Chi brought it down in a single cleaving stroke from Shang Bajiao’s spine, driving a perfectly straight centerline from the base of the back up through the skull.

One of Han Feibao’s eight most prized generals — and Li Chi had split him down the middle.

Shang Bajiao’s body pitched forward onto the ground. Li Chi raised his blade and hooked it forward.

The man was cleaved open in the shape of the character for “eight.”

Not long after, the news reached the Yong Province army’s command.

“Report!”

A messenger came sprinting up, dropped to one knee, breathless: “General — Shang Bajiao… fallen in battle!”

All counted, Shang Bajiao had lasted only a little longer than the previous two combined.

Han Feibao’s expression had gone beyond grim. Why was Li Chi’s combat strength this terrifying?

On the front line, with Shang Bajiao dead, the Xin Company Geling Army’s fighting spirit immediately flagged.

Blocking and retreating, though they fought with fearsome power — what they were resisting was Li Chi and Li Chi’s personal guard. That they could hold even this long was proof they were stronger than any other formation.

By now, the force Li Chi had brought was driving deeper and deeper into the Yong Province army’s ranks. The breach they had torn was only getting wider.

Seeing that there was no easy way to stop this, Han Feibao immediately ordered troops drawn from both flanks to converge, cutting off Li Chi’s force from behind.

No matter how well this Ning Army unit could fight, what could they do once completely surrounded?

At Han Feibao’s command, the Yong Province troops on both flanks moved to reinforce the center.

Like two great hands slowly closing together.

Li Chi glanced back. Seeing that the rear ranks were nearly encircled, he immediately called out: “Fire the signal!”

With that shout, several of his bodyguards launched the signal flares into the sky.

Dantai Qi and the others, who had been burning with impatience, the moment they saw the signal, immediately urged their warships to full speed from both upriver and downriver.

The moment the two flanks of the Yong Province army moved — barely completing the encirclement of the Ning Army — Dantai Qi and Xie Xiu’s forces arrived.

Their fleets had hugged the southern bank the entire way, outside the catapults’ effective range.

The land forces were already thrown into chaos by Li Chi’s assault. When Dantai Qi’s force came ashore, there were no archers in organized formation to meet them.

The moment he hit the bank, Dantai Qi was charging forward like a man possessed.

He couldn’t see Li Chi’s forces — only a massive swirling vortex of movement in the center where the Yong Province troops were all converging.

The chief had personally led the assault and drawn in almost half the enemy’s defensive forces. If they let this moment slip, how could they live with themselves?

On the other side, Xie Xiu drove his force in a fierce assault on the Yong Province army, driving to rescue the Ning King from the encirclement.

But Dantai Qi — even though he desperately wanted to do the same, even more so than Xie Xiu — could not.

Because the task Li Chi had given him was to tear open the Yong Province army’s flank and drive into the catapult positions — destroy the enemy’s long-range weapons that were suppressing the river.

This assault had always been conceived by Li Chi as three layers.

The first layer: Li Chi leads the assault in, draws the defensive forces, and fixes them in place.

The second layer: Xie Xiu brings his force to reinforce Li Chi and break the encirclement around him, while simultaneously Dantai Qi drives his force to attack the catapult positions and destroy the enemy’s long-range river suppression.

The third layer: the general assault. Once the catapults are destroyed, Xiahou Zuo leads the remaining fleet out from the main camp and strikes head-on.

Of the three layers, the most dangerous was Li Chi’s. But equal in importance to Li Chi was Dantai Qi.

This general from Liang Province — a tiger-and-leopard commander — gritted his teeth and was the first to plunge into the enemy lines. He cut his way through the mass of fighting bodies.

Like a dagger driving hard into the belly of a massive beast — and then twisting.

The Yong Province catapult positions lined the riverbank. Dantai Qi was driving laterally along the river’s course, and so the defending forces here were relatively thin.

Combined with the fact that Li Chi had already drawn away most of the enemy’s strength, Dantai Qi needed only half an hour to fight his way to the catapult positions.

“Kill!”

Dantai Qi let out a roar like a tiger.

The Ning soldiers surged forward and overwhelmed the Yong Province defenders in an instant.

These catapults were not easily destroyed outright — but making them unusable was not difficult.

The larger the catapult, the more it depended on its winches and cables. Dantai Qi led his men in and began cutting with abandon, slashing through the winches and cables. With those severed, the large catapults could no longer hurl their stones.

This pack of ferocious Ning soldiers, killing and hacking simultaneously, slashed the winches and cables into ruin with a kind of savage joy.

It was a great killing spree — bodies strewn all along the riverbank.

“Fire the signal!”

Seeing that the large catapults were now disabled, Dantai Qi gave the shout, then immediately turned and drove his men toward the smaller catapults.

On the northern bank, Xiahou Zuo saw the signal rise. His eyes had long since gone red. “Attack!”

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