The moment Tang Pidi sensed that Prince Wu had a secondary plan in motion, he moved at once.

Gao Zhen took the cavalry to intercept. Cheng Wujie took the remaining forces to assault Ting’an County.

With that arrangement, the Chu army would be hard-pressed at both ends. If Prince Wu held the center and supported his vanguard, the rear would be pinned and destroyed by Cheng Wujie. If he turned to save the rear, the vanguard would be cut off — and the main column might not escape either.

Tang Pidi then rode quickly to Li Chi’s camp. He said only one sentence upon arriving.

“澹台 and all cavalry, come with me.”

Not only澹台 — Li Chi didn’t even ask what had happened. He grabbed his saber and fell in.

At Ting’an County, Cheng Wujie drove the Ning army forward, while Nie Qitai prepared to die where he stood.

The Left Martial Guard garrison troops had set a final defensive line along Ting’an.

As the Ning army charged, a volley of arrows first suppressed the trenches, forcing the Chu defenders’ heads down. When they looked up, Ning soldiers were already leaping in.

This was a kind of battle unlike any since the Ning army had been founded — brutal, savage, unlike anything ordinary people could witness without going pale and weak at the knees.

Blades. Clubs. Teeth. Stones. Soldiers from both sides writhed together in one mass, every inch of ground fought over.

A Chu soldier took a saber across the shoulder and staggered backward. A Ning soldier moved in for the kill — and was stabbed through the lower back by another Chu man. The falling Ning soldier landed on top of his killer. The two men looked at each other. Then they stabbed wildly, again and again, until neither moved.

By then, all the blood had likely left them.

This was the Left Martial Guard — forged by Prince Wu himself, the pride of the old garrison army, the last unit still bearing the honor of the Great Chu garrison tradition.

And the Ning army — the symbol of a new power rising in the world, representing what was yet to come.

The best of the old, and the best of the new, colliding without hesitation or preamble.

A Ning soldier charged forward and took a crossbow bolt to the belly. His feet slipped and he tumbled into a trench. Several Chu soldiers closed in, hacking.

They were still hacking when the next wave of Ning soldiers arrived, jabbing long spears down into the trench.

Beneath four or five Chu corpses lay a mass of shredded flesh that had once been a Ning soldier.

The fighting moved from the outer trenches to the city gate. Ting’an County’s walls were not high — the Ning army battering them down was not impossible. Before long, a gate was smashed open with a beam, and the slaughter spilled into the streets.

Every road, every courtyard, every paving stone — contested and re-contested by both armies, over and over.

“General!” A guard ran to Nie Qitai. “The west gate has been broken — should we withdraw from the city?”

“No!” Nie Qitai bellowed. “Even if every last one of us dies here, let our bodies form the wall that holds the Ning army back — buy the Prince his time!”

At the west gate, when few Ning soldiers had entered, the Chu forces pressed them hard, trying to squeeze them back out. When more and more Ning men poured in, the balance reversed.

The bodies on the streets were so thick the paving stones had vanished beneath them. Every crack between bricks ran full of blood.

Left Martial Guard Main Column.

A scout caught up, breathless. “Your Highness — General Nie’s rear guard has not followed!”

Prince Wu’s face changed instantly. He understood at once what Nie Qitai had done.

Nie Qitai had chosen to spend his life, and the lives of the rear garrison brothers, to buy time for the main column.

“With me — we go back for him!”

Prince Wu gave the order — and his guards blocked him.

“Your Highness, by now General Nie has likely already fallen.”

“Your Highness — ten thousand men in the main column. If we turn back, there is no second chance to break free.”

“Your Highness — that is a chance purchased with the General’s life. Please, think carefully.”

They pressed from all sides. Prince Wu’s eyes filled. He let out one wordless cry, wheeled his horse forward: “Continue the advance.”

The main column did not look back. They pressed southeast.

Inside Ting’an, Nie Qitai looked left and right. Only a few hundred guards remained beside him.

The formation had collapsed entirely. Fighting was everywhere. Rallying his troops was impossible.

“We hold the east gate!” he roared. “As long as one man breathes, not a single enemy passes east!”

“Yes!”

Several hundred guards answered and fell back with him to the east gate.

On the main street, Cheng Wujie’s force swept from west to east. The last Chu garrison soldier fell before him.

In that soldier’s eyes, Cheng Wujie saw no fear. No retreat.

He gave the man a soldier’s salute. Then he turned toward the east gate. “With me — forward!”

From above, one could see the walls still contested, the Chu defenders step by step compressed back. Courtyards and alleys — some still a blur of battle, some already carpeted in the dead.

Cheng Wujie’s force reached the east gate of Ting’an County.

Before him, a few hundred Chu soldiers had formed ranks to wait. The general at their head was drenched in blood — his face nearly unrecognizable beneath it — save for a pair of eyes that still burned clean.

“Who are you?” Cheng Wujie called out.

“Nie Qitai — Third-Rank Garrison General of Prince Wu’s command. And you?”

“A subject of the Prince of Ning. Cheng Wujie.”

Nie Qitai’s voice rose. “I know you. We drove you running, not daring to give battle.”

Cheng Wujie didn’t bother with the taunt. He called out: “You cannot hold. General Nie — think of your men. Why not surrender?”

Nie Qitai laughed loud and long. “Surrender? Since the day the Left Martial Guard was founded, not one of its men has ever surrendered.”

He leveled his saber at Cheng Wujie. “Will you meet me in single combat?”

“I need to pursue Prince Wu. I won’t waste time here,” Cheng Wujie replied. “One more word — surrender, and I’ll do everything in my power to protect you. What kind of court are you dying for? Is it worth your life?”

“Commander Cheng!” Nie Qitai’s voice rang out. “I am not dying for that court. The court means nothing to me. If I told you Prince Wu wanted to rise against the court, every Left Martial Guard soldier would follow him without hesitation — do you believe me?”

He drew a slow breath. “I am dying for Prince Wu’s great kindness to me. Nothing more.”

He raised his blade. “Come and kill us!”

Cheng Wujie shook his head. “There’s no reason to sacrifice my brothers for this. No reason to waste more time.”

He pointed. “Loose arrows!”

The surrounding Ning soldiers sent a volley. More than half of the few hundred garrison soldiers guarding the gate went down.

“Again!”

A second volley.

“Again!”

After the third, there was no one left standing. Not even Nie Qitai — he had dropped to a sitting position on the ground, six or seven arrows in him, his field blade still clenched in both hands.

He watched Cheng Wujie walk toward him. He opened his mouth to speak. Blood poured out instead.

Cheng Wujie knelt and caught him, his voice heavy. “Brother. I’m sorry.”

Nie Qitai’s voice came out barely a whisper. “I have served faithfully… I die… without regret…”

He gathered the last of his strength to look up at Cheng Wujie. “Bury me with my brothers… And if you remember us someday… come to our graves and tell us… what the good days ahead… look like…”

He had said what he needed to say. His body pitched forward. Cheng Wujie caught him.

“Open the east gate and pursue the Chu army. Rear guard — clear the field, bury our brothers. Bury the Chu soldiers too.”

He gave his orders, then carefully carried Nie Qitai’s body to the side, laying him clear of the path of the advancing army.

He opened the gate and drove his force forward at full speed.

The cavalry had already pulled back — Gao Zhen’s wounds had forced the unit to retreat, its losses more than half. The Chu cavalry had suffered even worse.

Cheng Wujie met the cavalry unit at the halfway point. When he saw Gao Zhen’s condition, his voice went hoarse with alarm.

“Get him to the rear surgeons — now!”

Ahead, already clear of the encirclement, Prince Wu’s face had gone the color of ash.

Not long before, Nie Qitai and Yang Jingyuan had each proposed taking a force and breaking out left and right — drawing the Ning army — and asked Prince Wu to use the opening to escape.

Prince Wu had refused. I will not spend a single Left Martial Guard life to buy my own.

And yet here they were. Nie Qitai had died for him anyway.

Not just Nie Qitai. The ten-thousand-odd garrison brothers in the rear. All of them. Dead for him.

Not fighting for the court. Not for the Emperor. Only for him.

If every battle the Left Martial Guard had ever fought before was for the Great Chu and its Emperor, then this battle was different.

This battle, the Left Martial Guard had fought only for Prince Wu — spent their lives for him alone.

“Your Highness—” A guard spoke quietly. “General Yang sends word from the vanguard — scouts report no Ning forces blocking the road ahead. He requests you press forward.”

Prince Wu nodded. “Understood.”

The column was already moving as fast as it could. What more could press forward mean?

Prince Wu looked back toward Ting’an County. His heart was full of nothing but remorse.

He could have avoided this battle. This was perhaps the gravest mistake in decades of commanding armies.

When they discovered the vast stores of grain and supplies hidden in the Mangdang Mountains, he had naturally suspected it was bait left by Tang Pidi. Had he ordered the army to work in shifts, day and night, loading everything out without rest, it wouldn’t have taken long to discover the grain was false.

The reason he hadn’t done so was that he wanted to use the opportunity to annihilate Tang Pidi’s force.

He had even been waiting — deliberately. What he had failed to account for was that to deal with him, the Prince of Ning Li Chi had emptied the armies of several entire provinces.

Yuzhou. Jingzhou. Suzhou. Qingzhou. Perhaps even Jizhou and Yanzhou, further still.

To kill him. To defeat the Left Martial Guard. The Prince of Ning and Tang Pidi had thrown every ounce of their strength into this.

“General Nie. Brothers…”

Prince Wu murmured the words to himself. “May your journey be peaceful.”

—