Early ninth month.

Li Chi led eighty thousand Ning soldiers northwest in pursuit. Dozens of Han Feibao’s Yong Zhou forces — dragging enormous quantities of provisions and supplies — should by all logic have been moving slowly. Li Chi’s column included forty thousand Nalan cavalry. Catching up should have been simple.

Yet after more than ten days of forced marching, the cavalry vanguard sent back word: still no contact.

They had, however, captured several straggling Yong Zhou soldiers — men who had fallen ill from the change in climate and been abandoned by the main force.

Boertiechina had them sent back from the front.

Li Chi had the prisoners brought before him. He wanted to question them personally.

When they saw who stood before them, their faces went pale — every one of them. They had reason to be afraid. The Yong Zhou and Ning armies had been locked in a fight to the death, and both sides had taken fearful casualties.

“Speak truthfully and I won’t harm you.”

Li Chi said, “Do you know where Han Feibao intends to go?”

A middle-aged soldier of about forty answered first. “Your Highness, in truth we do not know where General Han intends to go.”

“Yes, yes…” A younger soldier of perhaps twenty jumped in. “From the moment we left Yong Zhou, none of us knew what we were supposed to be doing.”

“No one dared ask. Orders from above forbade it — only that we were to follow military commands.”

The older soldier said, “The command was simply to keep marching. From Yong Zhou to Shu Zhou, and then out of Shu Zhou and north.”

The younger one added, “We seized a great deal of grain and supplies when we took Qingmian County — everything was hauled away.”

Li Chi nodded. These soldiers could not possibly know any secrets. Their words were credible.

Yet precisely because they knew nothing, something felt wrong to Li Chi.

Under normal circumstances, soldiers at minimum knew what they were marching toward — what place they were going to fight, whether they were going home or setting out again.

If the soldiers knew nothing at all, morale would be unstable.

Han Feibao had commanded armies for years. He understood this. There was no recognized military doctrine that kept soldiers entirely in the dark.

Telling soldiers nothing was sustainable for a short time. Prolonged, it bred resentment and grumbling.

Li Chi calculated: from Yong Zhou to Shu Zhou and then to here, at minimum a year of marching.

A year on the road and the men were supposed to stay calm? Utterly out of character.

Such a fundamental breach of military principle — yet Han Feibao showed not the slightest concern. Abnormal. And where there is abnormality, there is a plot.

“You came out of Shu Zhou — do you know where the Chu Emperor Yang Jing is?”

The older soldier immediately answered: “Your Highness, the Chu Emperor Yang Jing is at General Han’s side. The two of them travel in the same carriage.”

Hearing this, Li Chi’s puzzlement only deepened. What was Han Feibao’s game?

If his true purpose was simply to steal supplies from Shu Zhou and plunder Ji Zhou along the way home — he had absolutely no need to bring Yang Jing.

Did he want to reestablish Chu in Yong Zhou and prop Yang Jing up as a puppet?

That was completely inconsistent with Han Feibao’s character. And frankly, of dubious strategic value.

Li Chi pressed a few more questions, but the soldiers knew little. He let them go before long.

The army pushed on. After another seven or eight days, they were nearing the border between Jing Zhou and Ji Zhou.

Then Boertiechina sent back another report: traces of Yong Zhou forces had been spotted on the north bank of the Nanping River.

The cavalry was at least four or five days ahead. Li Chi ordered the main force to accelerate.

By now Li Chi had begun to piece things together.

Han Feibao was racing with absolute disregard for his soldiers’ endurance — pushing at maximum speed to reach the north bank of the Nanping River.

Once across, he could use the Nanping’s treacherous current and wide span as a barrier against pursuit.

Li Chi even suspected that what waited in full readiness on the north bank was not Han Feibao’s entire force.

If Han Feibao’s true objective was plunder, he would use the Nanping’s natural barrier strategically — deploying a portion of his forces to hold it while the main body continued raiding north.

From captured stragglers along the way, Li Chi had learned more.

To keep the pace, Han Feibao had required every soldier to carry forty to fifty catties of supplies on his back.

The man commanded his troops with terrifying ruthlessness. Human lives were of no account.

In other words, he had transformed hundreds of thousands of Yong Zhou soldiers into a walking supply train — every man loaded like a porter.

Under those conditions, the troops must have been pushed to the absolute limit of exhaustion.

And yet under brutal discipline, the Yong Zhou army had accomplished what seemed impossible: they moved all that materiel and still outpaced the Ning pursuit — successfully preparing defenses on the north bank of the Nanping River ahead of Li Chi’s arrival.

“They burned all the boats.”

Boertiechina briefed Li Chi on the situation.

“Every boat on the south bank was taken and destroyed on the north bank. It just came off the rainy season — the Nanping is wide and fast.”

Boertiechina shook his head. “Half our force is cavalry. Crossing becomes all the harder.”

Li Chi made a quiet sound of acknowledgment, brow creasing.

In all honesty, Han Feibao’s movements on this campaign had genuinely given him a headache.

Inside Ji Zhou at present, the Ning garrison numbered no more than fifty thousand — and many were newly conscripted troops. Holding the major cities was not in question, but the Yong Zhou forces had no intention of attacking cities, large or small.

And for this operation, Han Feibao had clearly designed things with extraordinary care.

In terms of timing, they had arrived at the start of the ninth month — exactly when Ji Zhou’s autumn harvest was being gathered.

With a force guarding the Nanping River to pin down Li Chi’s pursuit, and Ji Zhou’s few Ning troops unable to face hundreds of thousands of Yong Zhou soldiers in open field battle, the damage to Ji Zhou’s autumn grain would be catastrophic.

Whatever could be carried, Han Feibao would carry. Whatever could not, he would burn.

“I already dispatched riders ahead to circle back into Ji Zhou and alert Commander-in-Chief Lian Xiwu,” Boertiechina said. “If all has gone well, the messengers should already be north of the Nanping.”

Li Chi held out his hand. “Map.”

An attendant stepped forward and unrolled it. Li Chi spread it on the ground and crouched over it, studying intently.

His mind ran through the calculations — time, distance, weather, and more.

The longer he thought, the more unsettled he felt.

“They burned the boats…”

Li Chi murmured, then looked at Boertiechina. “Send more scouts east along the south bank of the Nanping.”

Boertiechina blinked. “Your Highness means…?”

“Hundreds of thousands of troops, all that cart and horse, all those supplies — how could they possibly have all crossed the Nanping this fast?”

Boertiechina thought carefully, and his eyes lit up.

“Your Highness believes the burnt boats on the north bank are misdirection.”

Li Chi nodded. “My assessment is this: a portion of their forces crossed light — no heavy supply — and burned the boats once they reached the north bank. A performance for our benefit. A feint to make us think the entire Yong Zhou army has already gone north.”

He turned to Guiyuanshu. “Send elite agents from the Military Intelligence Division. Have them circle around the defended stretch and reach Ji Zhou as fast as possible to meet with Lian Xiwu. Tell him to bring thirty thousand troops toward the Nanping and have a look. If the Yong Zhou forces are all massed on the north bank — don’t move rashly. But if the forces north of the river are few — attack and wipe them out.”

Guiyuanshu acknowledged the order and turned to arrange it.

Li Chi looked to Zhuang Wudi. “Order the main force to rest on the south bank. No need to make camp.”

Zhuang Wudi went to carry out the command.

More than two hundred li east of the Ning encampment, a great column of Yong Zhou forces was still pushing forward. Inside a carriage, Han Feibao had his eyes closed in rest. Someone called softly from outside.

He opened his eyes. “Is that Master Yuan?”

A voice answered from outside. Han Feibao glanced at Yang Jing across from him, hesitated, and stepped out of the carriage.

Outside stood a man who appeared to be in his early thirties. His features were those of neither Central Plains nor Western Regions origin.

“Master Yuan — something urgent?”

Han Feibao asked.

The man called Master Yuan was from the northern steppes — a man of the Tiehu Tribe. But he had not come at the Tiehu chieftain’s behest. He came in the name of the Heiwu Great Khan.

His name was Yuan Zhen. Though of steppe origin, his exceptional gifts had drawn the attention of the Heiwu Great Khan some seven or eight years ago, and he had been summoned to serve at the Heiwu court — spanning the reigns of two Khans.

Within the Heiwu court he held no formal title, yet he was called Heiwu’s *uncrowned chancellor*.

His capabilities were, by any measure, without peer in the Heiwu court’s current ranks.

Yet the Heiwu Empire’s caste hierarchy was rigid and unforgiving. He was a steppe-man by birth, and so true authority could never be entrusted to him.

The overall strategic framework of Han Feibao’s current campaign — its broad design from inception — had come from this man’s mind.

Shortly after Han Feibao returned to Yong Zhou, the Heiwu Great Khan sent Yuan Zhen to Yong Zhou as well.

As it happened, when Han Feibao’s forces were fighting across the Central Plains, Heiwu had been largely out of touch — the defeat in the northern borderlands had disrupted Heiwu’s intelligence networks in the Central Plains, making it difficult to relay information as before.

As a result, Heiwu had a poor understanding of how events in the Central Plains had unfolded. The Great Khan still believed the man controlling Yong Zhou was Han Feibao’s adoptive father — the former Yong Zhou Military Governor.

Yuan Zhen’s mission to Yong Zhou had been to drive a wedge through the Central Plains and incite Yong Zhou’s rebellion.

But when he arrived, he found that Han Feibao had already been fighting across the Central Plains for over a year.

He had not yet returned to Heiwu when the defeated Han Feibao came back to Yong Zhou.

Yuan Zhen had traveled under his own name — there was no one in the Central Plains who knew of a figure like him within the Heiwu royal court.

What won Han Feibao’s trust was Yuan Zhen’s connection to the Tiehu Tribe.

Han Feibao knew that Li Chi and the Ning army had assisted the Nalan Tribe in defeating the Tiehu. The Tiehu Tribe sending Yuan Zhen here made a certain sense.

Combined with the man’s ability — which was nothing short of astonishing — Han Feibao had kept him at his side.

Yuan Zhen had designed a grand scheme. And this campaign was only its opening move.

“Speak freely, Master Yuan.”

“General Han — we must prepare for battle.”

Hearing this, Han Feibao’s expression shifted visibly. “Master Yuan, didn’t you say we wouldn’t be detected?”

“We cannot deceive him.”

Yuan Zhen shook his head slowly. “I’ve thought it over again more carefully. If the pursuing force is led personally by the King of Ning Li Chi, we cannot deceive him.”

Han Feibao said, “With supplies on this scale — how do we fight?”

Yuan Zhen’s gaze moved to the carriage.

Han Feibao followed his eyes.

Both men fell silent. Then both nodded at the same time.

Yang Jing, sitting inside the carriage, had been straining to listen — but at this point could no longer hear a word.

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