Dou Yong led a second assault and achieved nothing. The Ning army hit back and drove him off again.

“General…”

Returning once more before the Princess of Wu Wang, Dou Yong’s face and eyes were full of guilt.

He had believed he could turn the tide. He had believed he could repay those who had placed their trust in him — repay them with success.

Yet the world offers so few leading roles. So few miracles. So few moments of getting exactly what one hopes for.

“It’s all right — we haven’t lost yet. What are you hanging your head for?”

The Princess of Wu Wang did her best to smile, even as her own eyes had already filled with that same helplessness.

Just now, watching that Ning counterattack, only one thought had occupied her mind: *Is this the gap?*

Is this the true gap between a seasoned commander and someone like herself, who had never led troops in her life?

Whether it was reading the flow of a battle or arranging tactics, every adjustment Shen Shancoral made was a step above the Princess of Wu Wang.

So the state of Dou Yong’s heart was the state of her heart.

She too had believed she could turn the tide. She too had believed she could create a miracle. She too had believed things would go her way.

The rare warmth and generosity she had shown to outsiders — what she had offered Dou Yong as encouragement — was, more truly, a last breath she was blowing into her own rapidly fading confidence.

“We haven’t lost yet,” she repeated, as if to herself.

“The shield wall works — we can get to the edge of their line…”

She forced herself to think calmly, talking through what the two failed charges had taught her.

More than a hundred thousand Chu soldiers were watching her. She could not show panic. She could not show a lack of confidence.

“The enemy used a spear wall to counter our shield wall. We’ll use a combination of spears and shields — and in addition to that, I need a unit of men willing to die. Yes — willing to die!”

The brightness came back to the Princess of Wu Wang’s eyes.

“Dou Yong, go and ask — which soldiers are not their family’s only son, who still have brothers at home. If they are willing to fight to the death for the relief of Wu Prince, I will personally reward each man with five hundred taels of silver.”

She corrected herself immediately: “No — a thousand taels. A thousand taels each. I will arrange for it to be delivered properly to their families.”

Dou Yong asked, “General, what is your plan? My personal guard and I — we are all willing to die for you!”

The Princess of Wu Wang shook her head. “You cannot serve as a death-soldier — you have more important work ahead. There are Ning forces behind us as well, and I need your unrivaled valor to break through them layer by layer.”

When a person is moved, even words that do not truly have their welfare at heart can feel as though they do. Dou Yong heard the words and felt a rush of emotion — even knowing those words meant *we need you later, we don’t need you to die yet*, he still felt that he mattered.

“I’ll go ask right now!” He rushed off.

Heavy reward draws brave men. Most of the soldiers in this Chu army were from poor households, and most had joined the army simply to eat. A thousand taels of silver was enough to give their families a very good life — far more than one generation’s worth.

Looking at the death-soldiers assembled before her, the Princess of Wu Wang also felt a stirring in her chest.

“I thank you on behalf of Wu Prince!”

She bowed deeply to them.

“In a moment, General Dou will lead you forward once more. The Ning spear wall will be handled by the others. Your task is to wait until the Ning army changes formation and their rattan-shield troops advance — then engage them… and take them with you.”

All listened in silence. Having already chosen to trade their lives for reward, the phrase *take them with you* did not cut the way it might have otherwise.

“Rattan is oil-soaked and extremely tough — blades and swords cannot pierce it. But fire can burn it.”

The Princess of Wu Wang continued: “You will conceal yourselves within the shield wall, carrying cloth and fire-oil. When the Ning army changes formation and the rattan-shield troops emerge, set the oil-soaked cloth ablaze and charge into them. If you can do it without losing your own lives, so much the better — but if it requires your lives…”

She paused, and bowed again. “Then on behalf of Wu Prince and the brothers of the Left Guard trapped on Mangdang Mountain, I thank each of you.”

One soldier shouted out, “As long as you guarantee the silver gets to my family, this life is yours!”

“You have my word,” the Princess of Wu Wang said at once. “Every last coin will be delivered to your homes without exception.”

She turned and said, “Zhaoluan, Cainan — take men and record each brother’s home district and address, one by one. Not a single one may be missed.”

“Yes!” Zhaoluan and Cainan answered together, and went to work, questioning each death-soldier in turn and recording their details carefully.

There were roughly a thousand death-soldiers in all. With enough people helping to record, it did not take long before every entry was complete.

The soldier who had spoken out called again: “As long as the Princess doesn’t deceive us, we’ll sell our lives. This rotten world of ours — everything about it has gone bad. For people like us, the best thing we can say about this life is that it can still be exchanged for money.”

He thrust his arm into the air. “I’m in!”

Many more shouted in answer.

“I’m in too!”

“The brother’s right. This world treats us unfairly at every turn. At least we know now — dying can fetch a price.”

“I have two kids at home. The elder is seven, the younger four. I’ve been a soldier for more than two years and haven’t sent a single copper coin back. Not because my conscience failed me — I genuinely haven’t received a single coin of soldier’s pay in two years.”

The speaker looked at the Princess of Wu Wang. “Princess! My life is yours. But if you don’t bring that money to my family — if you don’t place it in my wife’s hands yourself — I will come for you as a ghost!”

Cainan shouted back: “The Princess keeps her word! Every coin will be sent to your homes!”

“Then let’s do it!” another called out. “Give us the fire-oil and the cloth, and give each man a blade. Before we die, if we can take one of them with us, that’s not a bad deal.”

And so the third Chu assault was prepared.

Dou Yong removed his iron helmet, bound his hair back with a strip of cloth, and seized his phoenix-beak blade. “Kill!”

The Chu formation advanced again in shield walls — at this point it was the only method that could reach the Ning line.

Each Chu soldier crouching forward moved in silence. Whatever prayers they had left in them, they kept inside.

The death-soldiers, for their part, had made peace with their choice. They had already decided. What was there left to fear?

The Ning heavy bolts came screaming in. The front-rank shield-bearers were knocked flat, and the bolts that flew through the gaps found their marks inside the wall.

Those terrible heavy bolts — whenever they punched into a shield wall, they never claimed only one life.

A Chu company commander was trembling with fear, and so he shouted to steady himself: “Don’t be afraid, everyone — we’ll be through before long, we’ll all be—”

He was rallying his men. He was rallying himself.

He never finished the sentence. A bolt the thickness of a man’s lower leg came through and struck him in the face.

The heavy bolt drove through his mouth, then through the skull of the Chu soldier standing behind him, exiting through the back of the man’s head.

The noise outside the shield walls had become a continuous wall of sound. The front-rank shields had iron plating, but there were not many of that kind — they were too expensive to produce. The shields further back were leather-faced — fine for reducing the force of ordinary arrows, but now, under this overwhelming volume of fire, they were being shredded.

One can imagine just how many arrows those leather-faced shields were stopping.

Once the leather facing was destroyed, more and more arrows lodged directly into the wood of the shields, until, seen from a distance, each long column of the shield wall looked as though it had sprouted a coat of white fur in an instant.

At enormous cost, the Chu shield walls finally pressed close to the Ning defensive line once more.

There was something almost dreamlike about it — this scene had unfolded not long before.

The difference was that when the Chu soldiers arrived this time, the ground around them was covered in the bodies of their comrades.

“Kill!”

Dou Yong screamed.

The shield walls split apart and the Chu spear-infantry pressed forward, jabbing with their spears against the Ning spears.

Both sides’ spears were so densely packed that the hafts clashed and rang in the air without cease.

The sound of a speartip entering a human body — which should, in theory, be small — filled the ears of every person on that field.

One could even hear, clearly, the sound of iron grinding against bone.

The Chu soldiers’ ferocious, all-out assault did inflict real casualties on the Ning army as well.

Ning General Zhou Ye bellowed an order for the rattan-shield troops to advance. The spear wall shifted, clearing lanes, and the rattan-shield Ning soldiers poured through like water released through a dam, flooding into the Chu formation.

Dou Yong’s face was covered in blood. He turned and howled: “Now it’s your turn!”

The death-soldiers raised their voices and surged forward through the crowd.

Some ignited oil-soaked cloth and charged in swinging it. Others — already lost to their own madness — wrapped the cloth around themselves and set it alight.

When these human torches appeared, the Ning formation erupted into chaos.

One Chu death-soldier, his entire body in flames, disregarded the spear that punched into him, threw himself at a Ning soldier, and locked both arms around him. Within the fire, face twisted into something like a demon’s, shrieking from the pain, he sank his teeth into the Ning soldier’s throat.

One after another, balls of fire plunged into the Ning ranks. The rattan shields caught easily, and the fires spread and grew.

High on her position, Shen Shancoral’s expression changed for the first time.

How does this Chu army still have death-soldiers this ferocious?

She had calculated everything — except for this — human nature…

Those men throwing themselves into the Ning lines were fathers, brothers, sons, husbands. All of them were men.

They had nothing left to leave this world. If one life could buy the people they cared about a good life, then that life was worth spending.

Under the completely frenzied assault of those thousand-odd death-soldiers, a genuine gap opened in the Ning defensive formation.

They charged madly forward, the burning flames tearing screams from them — and so they poured that terror and agony into pure, reckless action. They swung their long blades wildly. They latched onto men and would not let go. Some of them still had the strength to grin with bared teeth.

On the Chu side, the Princess of Wu Wang went pale.

She was frightened.

The opening had been made. But watching those burning men, she was truly frightened.

—