Xianlai County.

As the Yongzhou assault ebbed back, Li Chi sat down on the wall and let out a quiet breath.

The Yongzhou Army hadn’t made it over the wall, but the pressure had been constant and prolonged — the toll on the defenders was heavy.

Yu Jiuling passed Li Chi a water skin. Li Chi smiled and said: “How does it feel, after all this time away from the battlefield?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Since I got too full of myself to notice.”

Li Chi burst out laughing.

Yu Jiuling grinned. “But there won’t be many more battles like this, so catching this one isn’t bad at all. At least I’ll have some military credit to my name. When I’m bragging later, I can say I fought in this battle — tens of thousands against hundreds of thousands. I’ve done that. Think how good that’ll sound.”

He took a sip of water and let out a long breath. “My luck has been outrageously good my whole life. The suffering of war — I barely caught any of it. But the good parts — all of those seemed to find me.”

Li Chi said: “Give an example.”

Yu Jiuling chuckled. “I won’t get into the other things. I’ll just talk about my household.”

Li Chi said: “I’d strongly suggest you do get into the other things you weren’t planning to mention.”

Yu Jiuling said: “At such a solemn moment on the battlefield, Boss, you really want to hear smutty stories?”

Li Chi laughed again.

Yu Jiuling said: “When I was pouring drinks as a waiter at a nobody tavern, I never imagined that one day I’d be a general — and married to a princess at that.”

He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Boss, you know what the biggest difference is between having a princess for a wife and having an ordinary girl?”

Li Chi shook his head. “What?”

Yu Jiuling said: “With an ordinary girl, you can only ever be her husband. But with Her Highness the Princess — at certain moments — you get to be her Royal Father.”

Li Chi raised one foot.

Yu Jiuling dodged.

Yu Jiuling said: “It’s also funny — Boss, you’ve still got your chastity intact, yet you understand all these filthy jokes perfectly.”

Li Chi said: “As the saying goes — within books lies a house of gold, within books lies a face of jade…”

Yu Jiuling said: “Then what kind of books have you been reading? Not that I’m criticizing — I mean, what classics have you been enjoying? I may not be the most literate man, but I do love to learn. Would the Boss lend me a look?”

Li Chi said: “Once the kingdom is established, I’ll hand this duty to you — inspector of banned books for the whole realm. You can read every single one of them…”

Yu Jiuling thought it over and suddenly realized this was genuinely a plum assignment. Just thinking about it made him feel a little restless.

Then he asked Li Chi: “If this post really does fall to me, you’ll need to give me extra salary.”

Li Chi said: “Why? I’ve given you a dream post and you still want more money?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Precisely because it’s such a dream post. I’m afraid I’ll be only halfway through the work, the great cause still unfinished, and my body just… won’t keep up. I’ll definitely need a supplemental nutrition budget.”

Li Chi raised a foot again. Yu Jiuling dodged again.

After a while of idle talk, Li Chi was suddenly struck by a thought and asked curiously: “At home — are you the same way with your wife? Always letting her have her way?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Naturally. What kind of grown man bickers with a child? Of course I let her have her way. After all — I am the Royal Father.”

Li Chi: “…”

A moment later, Li Chi murmured to himself: “Is it really that fun?”

Yu Jiuling said: “This kind of thing doesn’t need to be learned or envied. Truly… it just comes naturally when the time is right.”

Gao Xining walked over from a distance, smiling. “You two are grinning like a pair of fools. What are you talking about?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Enemy intelligence.”

Gao Xining: “And you think I believe that.”

Yu Jiuling: “Boss started it.”

Li Chi: “I thought you’d changed… A scoundrel remains a scoundrel, it seems.”

The soldiers cycled off to rest, and the night passed quickly. Just before dawn, the distant sound of Yongzhou Army horns drifted across — as if to announce that daylight was not far off, and neither was a battle to the death.

The sun may still have been rubbing sleep from its eyes. The Yongzhou soldiers already had blades in hand.

The sky was not yet fully bright — the world not black, not white, but the brief grey hour when color itself held its breath.

What dispelled that grey was not sunlight. It was the first breath of wind before dawn.

Standing on the wall, Li Chi felt the cool air move across his face — piercing, like it had sunk into the skin itself.

He raised his spyglass toward the Yongzhou lines. In moments, that feeling of clarity vanished.

He saw Yongzhou soldiers assembling with sandbags on their backs. That told him everything he needed to know about the enemy’s tactics.

Xianlai County was just a small city. Built on a hillside it may have been, but its walls were nothing like those of Daxing — they couldn’t be. Daxing’s walls were more than twice the height.

Here, the wall stood a little over two *zhang*. With hundreds of thousands of men, attacking without restraint, pouring sandbags over the slope and adding the bodies of their own dead on top…

They intended to build a ramp of human lives until it reached the top of the wall. This approach made clear that Han Feibao had made up his mind.

“Ninth Sister.”

Li Chi turned and called.

Yu Jiuling was at his side in an instant. “Boss, what is it?”

Li Chi said: “Take men into the bamboo grove. Cut poles — at least two *zhang* long each, and sharpen one end.”

“Yes, sir.”

Yu Jiuling didn’t know what Li Chi planned with the bamboo poles, but he moved without hesitation.

Before the enemy had even finished forming up, Yu Jiuling’s men had already delivered the first batch.

Soon the Yongzhou Army’s formations began to press forward again — great rectangular blocks of men, like pieces of tofu moving across the earth.

“Brother Zhuang!”

Li Chi shouted to Zhuang Wudi. “Get the bed crossbows we haven’t deployed yet — find a way to position them on the slope.”

Zhuang Wudi dispatched men immediately.

The city was built against the hillside, lower at the front, higher at the rear. From positions deeper in the city, the elevation was nearly level with the front wall.

More than a thousand Ning soldiers threw every ounce of their strength into hauling the bed crossbows up and fixing them in place. Once the angle was adjusted and each weapon secured, the soldiers locked their eyes on the signal banners on the wall.

At this point it no longer mattered how much each weapon could contribute. Even if it killed only one enemy soldier, it had to be used.

The Yongzhou Army’s tactic was to fill the slope with bodies at whatever cost. More kills on the Ning side would slow that filling process.

When the Yongzhou soldiers reached the base of the hill, some were already dropping their sandbags. This brought furious shouts from the commanding officers, who bellied abuse at them.

The supervisory troops came forward with whips and drawn swords, threatening to force those soldiers to carry the bags to the top.

With sandbags in their arms, there was no room for a shield. At this, the killing power of the Ning Army’s arrow formations reached a terrifying level.

Yongzhou soldiers climbing the slope fell one after another, pierced by arrows, tumbling back down. The men behind them stepped over the bodies and the sandbags and charged forward — only to quickly become stepping stones themselves.

The fallen men and bags piled up rapidly, raising the ground level at a visible rate. At this pace, perhaps a single day would be enough for the Yongzhou Army to build the slope up level with the wall.

Heavy crossbow bolts from the bed crossbows flew over from behind the city walls — by now at the edge of their effective range, yet still carrying horrifying force. Nothing survived a direct hit from a heavy bolt.

A single arrow could not be counted upon to kill outright — most of those struck died later from untreated infection.

But Li Chi had no time now to think about mercy or cruelty.

He ordered his soldiers to cover their mouths and noses with wet cloth, and had men gather waste from inside the city — latrine buckets, brought up to the wall. Before arrows were loosed, the tips were dipped.

It was among the more vicious tactics of siege warfare. And yet it appeared in nearly every siege battle ever fought. Every defender, regardless of who they were, made use of it.

The wave of infected wounded it would produce would inflict immense psychological weight on the attackers.

At last, some Yongzhou soldiers did reach the base of the wall — not one of them came back alive. But they had left their sandbags and their bodies there.

The carnage of the entire morning was incalculable, and the height of the ramp rose visibly with every passing moment.

The Ning defenders cycled through four rotations. The number of arrows loosed was beyond counting.

Yet the young Yongzhou soldiers had no choice. The supervisory troops were right behind them.

To die going forward was to die with a chance — one in ten. To retreat was to die for certain.

The ones lucky enough to make it back alive had genuine reason to be grateful. By custom, in circumstances like these, a man who survived once would not be sent up again. Whatever tomorrow might bring — today, at least, he was alive.

By late afternoon, even under the Ning Army’s ferocious suppression, the Yongzhou Army had managed to raise the slope by nearly a full *zhang*.

The wall now stood barely a *zhang* and more above them.

Up on the high ground, watching the sun sink slowly in the west, Han Feibao allowed himself a thin smile at the corner of his mouth.

He had never cared about lives. He had never cared at all.

Besides — most of those being driven up the slope were new conscripts, press-ganged from Yongzhou.

“You can call a halt for now,” Yuan Zhen said, a quiet reminder. “Today’s gains are considerable. Let the men come down and rest.”

Han Feibao looked over at him. “If we keep pushing through the night, the slope will be filled by morning.”

Yuan Zhen said: “Has the General considered the soldiers’ resentment?”

Han Feibao paused.

Yuan Zhen said: “Under enough pressure, resistance will come. Try to put yourself in those soldiers’ position — what are they thinking right now? They dare not resist yet. Their only hope is that night will fall and they can breathe again.”

“If the General orders the assault to continue through the night, there will be deserters. And once it starts — it cannot be stopped.”

Han Feibao was not quite convinced, but nodded anyway. “The adviser is right. I’ll defer to you.”

He ordered the retreat sounded.

From the front, the soldiers erupted in a wave of cheering.

Not in celebration of victory. In celebration of the fact that they were still alive.

Watching the dark mass of Yongzhou soldiers recede, the Ning defenders on the wall finally breathed.

“Boss.”

Zhuang Wudi stood beside Li Chi, his mood subdued.

“One more day, and they’ll be over the wall.”

Li Chi made a sound of acknowledgment. “Yes. One more day and they’ll have the slope filled.”

Zhuang Wudi said: “Should we break out?”

Li Chi shook his head. “A breakout would cost us more.”

Zhuang Wudi said: “I mean… you break out.”

Li Chi looked at him, then shook his head again. “You know me.”

Zhuang Wudi said nothing more. Of course he knew. Li Chi would never abandon his troops and escape with the cavalry.

Li Chi gazed out at the torchlight blazing in the Yongzhou camp, and let out a long, slow breath.

“Tomorrow has its own way of being fought.”

—