Yang Jingyuan sent word back to Prince Wu — the path was open, press forward at speed.

At the same time, he dispatched scouts to the northeast to judge how far the Qingzhou Ning forces were.

This was a race. The Chu army had to stay ahead of the Qingzhou force to the northeast, and ahead of the Ning force pressing hard from the rear. Their destination was a crossing point to the southeast — over the Panxing River, then a straight march back to Daxing City.

As the vanguard commander, Yang Jingyuan’s duty went beyond cutting through any Ning units blocking the road — he also had to scout terrain for the main column.

A day and a half of hard marching southeast brought them to the crossing.

The locals called it Immortal’s Ford.

Villages sat on both banks of the Panxing River. At the sight of the Chu column approaching from a distance, the villagers fled. The reason for choosing this crossing: there was a stone bridge here, spanning the narrowest stretch of the Panxing. Even so, the current ran fierce. The bridge was nine arches of stone — no one knew how old — and perhaps thirty-odd zhang across.

North of the bridge, exhausted, parched, and starving Chu soldiers poured into the village. Military discipline had ceased to mean anything. They smashed through doors, turned over every pot and basket, stuffed whatever food they found into their mouths.

Yang Jingyuan didn’t try to stop it. He had only one requirement: don’t slow down.

His priority was securing both ends of that nine-arch stone bridge. The bridge was the entire army’s lifeline back.

The Chu soldiers swept through the village and sprinted for the bridge — less than two li away.

But as they ran, they saw another force on the far bank running for the bridge too.

“Ning army!” Someone’s raw voice cracked. He had spotted the burning red banners across the river.

Yang Jingyuan’s stomach dropped. His eyes went wide with disbelief.

How could the Ning army have gotten here this fast?

To reach this side of the bridge from the previous camp, a Ning force would have had to wade across the Panxing, then run the full length of the south bank. That distance was greater than the Chu army’s route — and required crossing a river besides. How were they faster?

Or had the Prince of Ning Li Chi, or Tang Pidi himself, foreseen that this ford would be the Left Martial Guard’s retreat line and pre-positioned troops here?

If so — the moment they broke through at Ting’an, the Ning army had already known they would come here.

None of it mattered now. The bridge had to be taken.

“Forward — kill them!”

One order from Yang Jingyuan.

Take the bridge and the main column could escape the Ning encirclement. Lose the bridge and every garrison brother who had died would have died for nothing.

His side surged forward. The Ning soldiers on the far bank spotted the Chu banners, understood at once, and broke into a sprint.

Both forces reached opposite ends of the bridge almost simultaneously. Without a moment’s pause, archers on both sides opened fire.

By chance, this Ning unit was also cavalry — but far fewer in number. Yang Jingyuan’s cavalry, despite heavy losses from the running battles, still numbered in the thousands.

The Ning force across the bridge? At a rough glance — seven or eight hundred at most.

With those odds, Yang Jingyuan had no intention of yielding.

“Ning’s got maybe a few hundred! Hit them — leave no one standing!”

At his command, the Chu cavalry launched their charge.

Thunder of hoofbeats filled the stone bridge. Frogs dove into the water. Birds burst from the reeds.

The Ning force was outnumbered. They should have formed a defensive position at the south end. Instead, a charge-call horn rang out.

The Ning cavalry came driving straight at the Chu force.

A few hundred men charging into thousands. Yang Jingyuan stared, genuinely confused. Do the Ning soldiers not know the meaning of fear?

The two forces rushed toward each other on the bridge, almost upon collision — and Yang Jingyuan finally read the Ning banners.

羅.

Luo.

His eyes went wide in an instant.

The fight hadn’t even started, and something in his chest had already tightened.

Beneath that burning red banner, Luo Jing gave no thought to who the enemy was. He only cared that they flew the Left Martial Guard colors. He snapped his visor down. His horse screamed. He came like a dragon riding water — like a divine general diving from the sky.

Yang Jingyuan drove his lance at Luo Jing’s throat.

Luo Jing’s spear swept once, twice — pressing the lance shaft down. Then, using the forward momentum of both charging horses, the spear shaft slid along the lance like a rail.

It rolled over the fingers Yang Jingyuan was using to grip the lance. The next instant, the shaft crashed into Yang Jingyuan’s body.

Yang Jingyuan had fought Gao Zhen to nearly a draw. Yet now he hadn’t survived even one exchange.

Exhaustion played a part. So perhaps did the fear that had flickered through him the moment he read that banner. But not surviving a single move — that spoke to Luo Jing’s terrifying strength.

The shaft hit Yang Jingyuan square in the chest and blasted him off his horse.

Before the man had landed, Luo Jing’s spear slipped through beneath Yang Jingyuan’s armpit, flicked upward, and sent him cartwheeling into the air ahead of him.

Luo Jing reached out with his left hand, seized Yang Jingyuan by the collar plate, and slung him backward with one arm. “Bind him.”

Yang Jingyuan crashed into the press of men behind, bouncing off the ground in a heap.

Luo Jing didn’t bother looking at whoever he’d captured. He drove straight with his guards into the thousands of Chu garrison troops and did not stop.

In one opening exchange, the Chu vanguard commander had been taken alive. The blow to the Chu soldiers’ morale was immediate and total.

Then Luo Jing rode back and forth through their ranks with a few hundred men, and what he was breaking was no longer morale — it was courage itself.

The fighting lasted less than half a shichen. Thousands of Chu cavalry — routed, scattered. Luo Jing himself accounted for several dozen. His guards combined for more than a thousand. The rest had simply lost the will to stand and ran.

Luo Jing brought his force back to the south end of the bridge. From horseback, he looked down at the bound Yang Jingyuan.

“Who are you?”

“Yang Jingyuan — Third-Rank Left Martial Guard General under Prince Wu’s command.”

Luo Jing: “Never heard of you.”

He pointed his iron spear. “Where is that old traitor Yang Jiju?”

Yang Jingyuan spat.

Luo Jing looked around him and ordered: “Go through the field. Any wounded still alive — ask them what happened. Report back fast.”

His guards scattered across the recent battlefield, questioning the injured.

Shortly, a guard returned and gave a full account.

Luo Jing nodded. “Anyone who talked — have the surgeons treat them. They’ve surrendered. Take them into custody.”

Then he turned to Yang Jingyuan. “You won’t speak. Which means you’re that old traitor’s close man — willing to share his fate. So I’ll honor your loyalty.”

Still in the saddle, he extended his spear.

A muffled thud. The iron point drove through Yang Jingyuan’s heart.

Luo Jing had been urgently recalled from Suzhou by Tang Pidi. He’d come faster than his column — feeling that marching with the army was too slow, he’d handed command to his deputy and ridden ahead with eight hundred of his Tiger-Leopard Cavalry personal guard.

He had only one fear: that by the time he arrived, Tang Pidi had already finished off Prince Wu, and his chance was gone.

In Luo Jing’s heart, Prince Wu was the man responsible for his father’s death — the root cause. Until that man was dead, Luo Jing would know no peace.

He had brought over twenty thousand troops from Suzhou, but left them to the deputy. He pushed on to the Mangdang Mountains with eight hundred.

Then — here, at this crossing — he ran headlong into Yang Jingyuan’s Left Martial Guard vanguard.

That Yang Jingyuan had fallen in one move was partly down to his exhaustion, yes. But there was no denying: the instant he saw the Luo banner, something in him had gone cold.

Luo Jing’s name was known across the realm. What chance did a few thousand battle-worn Chu cavalry have against the Tiger-Leopard Cavalry that Luo Jing had trained with his own hands?

The fugitives who made it back to Prince Wu were a sorry sight. Prince Wu took one look at how few had returned from the vanguard — and went white.

“Where is General Yang?!”

A deputy commander knelt. “General Yang — Luo Jing — Luo Jing killed him with one spear.”

“Luo Jing?!”

The corner of Prince Wu’s mouth twitched slightly. “As expected. He came after all.”

He raised his head and looked at the sky. “Heaven’s will… it is all heaven’s will.”

The old man’s face was carved with grief and a bone-deep exhaustion.

Even as he was preparing to break out, he had been tempted to lead the vanguard himself — precisely because he’d calculated there was a chance they’d encounter Luo Jing in the southeast. None of his generals were a match for Luo Jing.

He’d also half-convinced himself that Tang Pidi, shrewd and measured as he was, might not deploy Luo Jing precisely because of their personal grudge — it was too unpredictable.

But nothing was ever certain. And so he’d been ready to ride at the front himself.

Then Yang Jingyuan and Nie Qitai had quietly arranged things between them: one took the advance and rode off, the other held the Prince firmly back.

Prince Wu had outplanned Tang Pidi’s every stratagem. He had only forgotten to plan for his own people.

The Left Martial Guard had retreated fully into the Mangdang Mountains. Prince Wu seemed somehow smaller now — every year of his age showing at once.

“Pass the order — on entering the wooden fort, each unit proceeds to their assigned camp in good order.”

Prince Wu gave the command, then turned to look at another general — Wuliangge, a man not of the Central Plains but born of the southern borderland peoples of Chu. Even as a boy he had stood a head above his peers, and by fourteen or fifteen had the build of a grown man in his prime. When Chu army recruiters had come through the southern borders, the leading officer had spotted him immediately and brought him back to Daxing City. Wuliangge had been sixteen then — precisely the year Prince Wu emerged from retirement to take command — and he was selected for the Left Martial Guard.

Twenty-three or twenty-four years, by now. He’d risen from common soldier to Fourth-Rank general by accumulated merit, and had deep in Prince Wu’s trust.

“Wuliangge.”

“Here.”

“Take your division up to the wooden fort and set the defenses.”

Wuliangge received the order and led his ten thousand-odd men to their positions, distributing arrows and defensive materials, setting everything in place without wasting a breath of time.

Yet Prince Wu knew — Tang Pidi would not attack.

He knew. He had no choice.

Surrounded in open country, there was no survival. Retreating into the Mangdang Mountains and the wooden fort — perhaps one thread of a chance.

Tang Pidi intended to seal him in with a force of hundreds of thousands and simply starve him out. No assault. Just a siege.

Prince Wu found a place to sit and breathed out slowly. Age brought a particular kind of fatigue. When he was young, a short sleep — even an hour or two — left him restored and vital.

Now when the exhaustion came, it was more than his body. His heart hurt too.

“Huyan Sheng!”

Prince Wu called the name. A guard’s face went pale. “Your Highness — the General… he has fallen in battle.”

Prince Wu stood still. He had only now remembered. His Tiger Guard captain, Huyan Sheng, was dead at Ning hands.

The exhaustion — body and soul both — deepened sharply.

“Cui Yuansheng.”

Prince Wu called again.

Cui Yuansheng was a deputy commander in the Tiger Guard. Hearing his name, he ran over. “Your Highness — here.”

“At first light tomorrow, pick the best men from the guard and search every part of the rear mountains. Find out if there’s any way out.”

Cui Yuansheng almost said: We already sent men to look — there’s no way out. He had been present when it was done, during their earlier time at Mangdang.

But the words would not come. He bowed. “I will personally lead the search.”

Prince Wu made a sound of acknowledgment. “Go rest now. I am tired. I’ll sleep a while.”

Cui Yuansheng bowed again and backed away. Two or three steps — and Prince Wu’s voice reached him again.

“You are the Tiger Guard commander now.”

“Yes.”

Cui Yuansheng breathed in slowly.

Being named Tiger Guard commander should have been cause for joy. Under any other circumstances. But how could he feel anything like joy now? Even if they had offered him a peerage, it would have meant nothing.

All the same: now that the rank was his, the responsibility was his too. What had been Huyan Sheng’s burden to carry was now his.

Ning Army Camp.

Luo Jing was not happy. Deeply unhappy. He hadn’t crushed the Left Martial Guard in one decisive blow. He hadn’t killed the old Prince with his own hands. It felt as if a boulder had settled on his chest.

Li Chi, watching him, couldn’t help a small laugh. “The reason Old Tang recalled you was because he knew your mind. Throw a tantrum now and I’ll have him transfer you back to Suzhou.”

Luo Jing snapped to attention. “No tantrum. Very obedient!”

Tang Pidi and the others burst out laughing.

Xiahou Zhuo grinned. “General Luo being obedient is much more adorable than whatever that was a moment ago.”

Luo Jing muttered: “If I’m not obedient I get transferred — there’s a saying… when under someone else’s roof…” He glanced at Tang Pidi and found he couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Talk business,” Tang Pidi said, rising.

He stood before them all. “The terrain of the Mangdang Mountains — I’ve had it personally surveyed no fewer than ten times.”

He looked at Yan Qingzhi. “Master Yan handled much of that work for me. Master Yan’s people have likely surveyed Mangdang even more often.”

Yan Qingzhi smiled. “Fewer than twenty times would be an understatement.”

“There is no other exit from the Mangdang Mountains,” Tang Pidi continued. “Based on the volume of grain Prince Wu managed to carry out, I estimate the Left Martial Guard can hold out inside for no more than two months.”

He turned to Li Chi. “I’ve assessed the situation in Jingzhou. Within three months, no one will come to trouble us.”

Li Chi: “Then we seal them in for three months.”

Luo Jing: “Hmph—”

Li Chi: “Old Tang, write the transfer order.”

Luo Jing: “Hmph… hmph-hmph-hmph, hmph-la-la, hmph-hoo-hoo. Am I adorable?”

Tang Pidi gave him a sideways look, then smiled and continued. “Assignments for each unit.”

Everyone stood to attention.

Li Chi spoke: “Xiahou and Zhuang Wudi — take the Yuzhou forces and seal the western face of Mangdang. Camp at the base.”

Xiahou Zhuo and Zhuang Wudi answered as one. “By the Grand General’s order.”

Tang Pidi turned to Shen Shanhu. “Shen Shanhu — your division holds the east side of the mountain entrance.”

Shen Shanhu: “Understood.”

“I will hold the mountain entrance with the Prince of Ning,” Tang Pidi said. “No unit enters the mountain without my explicit order. Violations are punishable by death.”

A unified response: “Yes!”

“That’s the broad shape of it,” Tang Pidi said. “Now eat. Everyone’s been running on empty for a day and a night.”

Luo Jing blinked. “And… and me?”

He looked at Tang Pidi. “Did the Grand General forget me?”

“You’re not under my command,” Tang Pidi replied. “Before you arrived, the Prince already said — he misses you terribly and wants you by his side.”

Luo Jing’s eyes went wide. He turned to Li Chi.

Li Chi said, with complete sincerity: “Deeply missed.”

Yu Jiuling patted his own chest heartily. “Long time no see, General Luo — you’ve gotten even more strapping.”

Luo Jing shuddered and immediately turned back to Tang Pidi. “Grand General — I’d rather stay under your command.”

Li Chi sighed. “There — being disobedient again. Old Tang, write the transfer.”

Luo Jing: “…”

He wasn’t foolish. He understood exactly why his Prince had arranged this — to keep him from doing something reckless the moment Prince Wu was in reach.

Understanding it and accepting it were two different things.

So he sulked, mouth twisted, somewhat aggrieved.

Li Chi smiled. “If, when the Grand General finally orders the assault on the mountain, I do not give you the honor of leading the first charge — you may beat me once to work out your frustration.”

Luo Jing: “I don’t believe you. You know I wouldn’t dare.”

Li Chi: “Then if I don’t let you go in first, you can beat Yu Jiuling once instead.”

Luo Jing: “Now that I can believe.”

Yu Jiuling: “…???”

—