The palace.

Emperor Yang Jing stood on the high terrace, watching the civil and military officials come rushing in, jostling not to be last. These men, as though whoever reached Dantai Yajing first would receive some reward.

But they did not know that Dantai Yajing was not in the palace. And so their frantic scrambling struck the Emperor as both laughable and, in some way, pitiable.

The crowd they rushed toward was not the Emperor. And when they caught sight of the Emperor, none of the deference they once showed — even if it had always been feigned — was there any longer.

The Emperor thought to himself: *so they truly did deserve to die.*

They could tell the times had changed. The Emperor was no longer Emperor. And so they no longer saw any reason to keep up appearances.

This finally extinguished whatever flicker of mercy the Emperor had still been nursing — whatever thought he’d had of sparing a few of them. The dynasty was already gone. The Emperor was no longer Emperor. What kind of subjects were they?

The Emperor raised his hand slowly. The Commander Jin Jieyin, seeing the signal, turned and walked out.

“Your Majesty, where is the General?”

Someone called out.

The Emperor looked at him and smiled. “Which general? What generals does Great Chu have left?”

Another said, “Your Majesty, now that Chu is gone, of course there are no generals of Chu. We were asking about General Dantai.”

They would not even say the word *minister* anymore. The anger the Emperor had been suppressing — quietly, all this time — in that moment, for no particular reason, broke free. Perhaps this was his final act of furious retribution against this filthy world.

The corners of his mouth curved into a cold, vicious smile.

“Great Chu is still here. Until I hand over the imperial seal, Great Chu exists.”

He was still smiling. But the chill in that smile had already made people uneasy.

“Moreover, whether Great Chu exists is not for you to declare. I may say Chu is gone. You may not.”

The Emperor sighed. “To say Chu is finished while standing before me — and to bow to no one when you see me — and then to ask openly where the Ning general is…”

His smile grew more terrible. “It seems you have truly not grasped it. As long as I am still on the imperial throne — I must uphold the dignity of Great Chu.”

“Your Majesty — what do you mean by that?”

“Your Majesty, where is the General, actually?”

“If the General isn’t in the palace, we may as well head back. He’s probably already left for the field.”

“Just a moment.”

Someone looked at the Emperor sharply. “Could it be that the General never came to the palace at all — and it was you who summoned us here in his name?”

Everyone looked at the Emperor.

The Emperor nodded. “Dantai Yajing truly is not here…”

He had been about to say: *and what does it matter whether he is here or not — does his absence give you license to trample on the dignity of Great Chu?*

But before the words were out, the assembled men turned and walked away the moment they heard the General was not in the palace. Not one of them had any interest in hearing more.

The Emperor knew — it had all been smoke.

And so he raised his hand a second time.

Outside, Jin Jieyin had already assembled his men. Seeing the Emperor’s hand rise again, he understood: the Emperor’s mind was made up.

“You brought this on yourselves.”

Jin Jieyin said it quietly to himself. Then he raised his hand and pointed it forward. “Kill them all. Not one left. Whatever they’re carrying is yours — whoever makes the kill, keeps what they find.”

Those words landed, and the Palace Guard soldiers surged forward like madmen.

Crossbows, arrows, then drawn blades.

The slaughter did not last long. The commanders and officials were few in number, caught entirely unprepared, and had not been permitted to bring weapons into the palace — they could not hold out for long. The armored commanders fared a little better; some managed to make their deaths count for one or two of the attackers. The civil officials had no such luck — they fell without exception.

The Emperor watched this final savagery, this bloody killing. He watched for a while, then turned to Gao Zhen. “Is the General satisfied?”

Gao Zhen inclined his head. “As long as Your Majesty is satisfied.”

Then he strode out, his dozens of personal guards following.

Gui Yuanshu moved to leave as well. The Emperor called after him. “Minister Gui, a moment.”

Gui Yuanshu turned. “What does Your Majesty need?”

“My judgment may have been wrong at the time. I truly should not have sent you to…”

Before he could finish, Gui Yuanshu had already replied. “Your Majesty’s judgment was not wrong. I truly was a rebel against Great Chu.”

With that, he cupped his fists in salute, said not another word, turned, and walked away.

The Emperor watched his retreating figure. He looked at the bodies filling the ground. Then, without warning, a sharp pain seized his chest — so sudden that sweat broke out on his forehead instantly.

“I am… truly alone now.”

—

Gao Zhen and Gui Yuanshu had no time to linger. Seeing that the Palace Guard had finished off everyone, they went at once to report back to their commander.

Outside the city, the columns were beginning to march. They could see Chu soldiers still standing in place — uncertain, hesitating — while others had taken up their weapons and were already moving forward behind the Ning army.

These things hardly mattered anymore. What mattered was the decisive battle that was coming.

—

The Ning army formation.

Li Chi sat on horseback, looking through the spyglass. When he saw columns of black smoke rising from the south of the Yongzhou forces, he knew Dantai Yajing had begun to move his army northward.

He lowered the spyglass and looked at Tang Pidi. Tang Pidi gave Li Chi a nod, then turned to Shen Shancao. “Begin the advance.”

Grand General Shen Shancao rode forward and thrust the command pennant ahead. The war horns sounded their long, resonant call.

Bore’etei China heard the signal and shouted to his men. His men lit the firecrackers tied to the tails of the cattle, and in an instant there was a crackling explosion of noise.

Startled, the steppe cattle lunged forward, and on either side of the herd, the steppe cavalry used their formations to keep the cattle stampeding in a straight line.

If this had been a charge directly into the Yongzhou forces, it would have been more effective to bind sharp blades to the tips of the cattle’s horns. But this charge was aimed at the refugee encampments — the goal was to scatter and frighten, with as few casualties as possible — and so no blades were tied.

The immense herd of cattle came thundering toward the refugee mass in a churning cloud of dust. The pressure of it was more terrifying than an army at full charge.

“Mother of—!”

Someone screamed. “Cattle! They’re all cattle!”

“Run!”

With that one desperate cry, the refugee column exploded into chaos.

The Yongzhou soldiers tasked with overseeing them were equally terrified. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for this — the sight of that surging stampede left them with no desire to charge back against it. No one would have thrown themselves at cattle unless they were even more berserk than the cattle themselves.

The defensive formation that had been so carefully arranged collapsed in an instant. Cattle crashed through the crowd; people scrambled to get out of the way.

In only moments, the refugee line that Han Feibao had placed such faith in had been broken wide open.

Without spending a single soldier, the Ning army had torn a massive gap in the Yongzhou defensive line to the north.

Through the dust and chaos, Bore’etei China saw his opportunity and at once ordered the advance.

Behind the cattle, the steppe cavalry came pouring forward, and their task was simple: make the refugees run faster.

For people who had no idea how to fight, there was nothing left to do but flee — and a people who had no idea how to fight, watching an endless torrent of cavalry roaring in after the cattle, would never choose to stand their ground.

Like a vast, tightly packed swarm of ants that had been suddenly scattered, they ran in every direction.

Tang Pidi saw this and signaled the drums.

At the front of the line, eighteen enormous oxhide war drums began to sound, one after another — a dense, rhythmic thunder, like lightning striking the earth.

At the drum’s call, the Ning army began to advance. Tight square formations, one after another, moved forward as though great fortresses were sliding across the ground.

Han Feibao’s face had gone iron-grey. He had played out every kind of Ning army offensive in his mind. He could never have imagined a cattle charge.

This approach was unreasonable, verging on shameless.

Yet he had forgotten: he had placed all those innocent civilians on the front line. Was that not a far greater shamelessness?

The Ning assault from the front, the Yongzhou enforcers pressing from the rear — the refugees ran toward the flanks in blind panic. The contagion of fear spread, and those to the sides who hadn’t even been caught in the cattle charge started running with the rest.

“Spear wall and shield wall, advance!”

Han Feibao shouted the order.

There was no counting on the refugees now — but that did not mean he had already lost.

The army in his hands was the Yongzhou iron force that had swept the northwest. These soldiers had never retreated before an enemy; they had always been the ones doing the crushing. They were rigorously trained. They had a taste for blood. And they had no intention of conceding anything to the Ning army.

The defensive formation came together quickly. Shield wall and spear wall coordinated, forming a dense and heavy defense.

Behind the defensive line, archers were already in position, every quiver placed within easy reach, waiting for the Ning army to enter range.

And at the same time, on both sides, the catapults began to loose their projectiles almost simultaneously.

The Yongzhou forces had lost much of their catapult equipment in their first engagement with Li Chi — but not all of it. And it was a good thing that so many had been destroyed in that battle. With the full complement, the threat to the Ning army would have been extreme.

Boulders flew across the sky — and by chance, two of them collided in midair with a grinding crash.

On horseback, Tang Pidi’s face was anything but relaxed.

“Their training methods are the same as ours,” he said to Li Chi.

Li Chi nodded. This came as no surprise.

The spies who had been embedded within the Ning army had long since reported back to Han Feibao — every training method, every tactic and formation, every weapon and piece of equipment, all of it passed along. The reason the Yongzhou forces had been invincible throughout the northwest was precisely because everything they used mirrored the Ning army exactly.

He looked at Tang Pidi. “So Han Feibao stole from you.”

Tang Pidi said, “He stole the best things I came up with. But I can always come up with something better. The formations and methods Han Feibao trained his soldiers on — they’re already out of date.”

When the two armies made contact, Han Feibao discovered this for himself.

On the surface, the Ning army’s offensive formation still looked like the reformed Fu Bing — the regular infantry formation of the Great Chu dynasty. But Tang Pidi had transformed it into something considerably different. For instance, during the advance, it still appeared to use the Chu five-man squad model — but only appeared to.

The Chu army had been the first military force in the world to adopt the five-man squad tactic. In an advance, what looked like a scattered formation was in fact a tight grouping of five. Each group supporting the others, each working in seamless coordination.

But this five-man squad approach was slightly rigid — five men locked into a fixed pattern of attack.

What Tang Pidi had developed was the five-man plum-blossom formation.

This seemingly small change was something the Yongzhou forces now understood firsthand, through the force of its killing power.