At night, Li Chi leaned against the city wall and fell asleep. If not for a war this dangerous and this cruel, he might have chosen to take the night watch himself, giving others the chance to rest properly.

This time was different. This time, Li Chi needed to maintain enough stamina for the fighting to come.

On the front lines, he alone could hold back far more enemies than anyone else. In terms of sheer killing power, one of him was worth a hundred men.

As for his role within the Ning Army — one man was worth the entire force combined, and the larger the force, the greater his worth.

Because he understood this deeply, he made no pretense of humility. When it was time to sleep, he slept. When it was time to eat, he ate.

Whenever the enemy pulled back, he seized every moment to rest.

The most important thing was this: as long as the Ning Army’s soldiers could see the Prince of Ning still standing at the front of the line, their hearts were steady.

If a banner was the symbol of an army, then their king was its soul.

As long as Li Chi stood there, the soldiers felt certain the enemy would lose.

—

Over in the Yong Prefecture Army’s camp, Han Feibao could not sleep.

He had overlooked something — though now he was reluctant to admit it.

He had always believed his most feared opponent was only one man: Ning Army General Tang Pidi.

He had forgotten that the intelligence reports had mentioned more than once — in terms of all-around capability, the Prince of Ning surpassed even Tang Pidi.

Commanding troops in person was something the Prince rarely did. Not because he couldn’t or wasn’t capable, but because there was no need for it.

Most of the time, he was simply lazy — not useless.

Now that he was personally leading troops, his enemies finally understood: it wasn’t only Tang Pidi who was to be feared.

What Han Feibao was even less willing to say aloud was this — days of relentless assault, piling up human bodies until a ramp as tall as the city wall had been built, and still they could not take that city.

If it had been a well-fortified major city with heavy defenders, perhaps that would be understandable. But it was just a small town.

Of course, the ramp was only one path. Even if the Yong Prefecture Army drove themselves to madness and spared no lives, they couldn’t pile the earth that high all along every section of the wall — so that single ramp bottlenecked their attacking force.

And yet the Ning Army was so few. Their defensive line couldn’t be spread everywhere.

This frustration made Han Feibao reluctant to discuss the battle at all. The more he talked about it, the more incompetent his army looked — and he feared people would think it was he himself who was incompetent.

“General Han?”

Yuan Zhen called softly.

Han Feibao turned to look at him. “If Adviser Yuan has something to say, speak freely.”

Yuan Zhen said, “Tomorrow, the General should personally go to the foot of the city wall to oversee the battle. There’s no need to lead the assault yourself — just let the soldiers see that you are there.”

Han Feibao nodded. “I understand Adviser Yuan’s intent. I’ll go up myself tomorrow.”

Yuan Zhen gave a quiet hum. He could clearly see Han Feibao’s low spirits, and a measure of contempt inevitably settled in his heart.

In the intelligence files of the Black Wu Empire’s Qingya Bureau, information about Han Feibao was not extensive, but it was enough to tell that he was a ferocious and ruthless man — one who would stop at nothing to win.

A man like that should have possessed far stronger psychological fortitude than most.

Yet the resentment Han Feibao now displayed gave one reason to doubt whether he was as formidable as assumed.

But in the next moment, Yuan Zhen suddenly understood.

Han Feibao had been defeated by the Ning Army before. He might once have been insufferably arrogant — the ruler and autocrat of Yong Prefecture. But a man like that, having had his entire army annihilated and being forced to flee in disguise with only dozens of guards barely escaping with his life, had likely undergone a fundamental shift in his state of mind.

What Yuan Zhen did not know was that when Tang Pidi defeated Han Feibao back then, Han Feibao’s disguise had been to dress as a woman — an old woman, at that — and it was in that humiliating manner that he had escaped.

Han Feibao could never let anyone know this. The men who had protected him on that retreat — even though he knew every one of them was loyal to the bone — he had them all killed.

Because he absolutely could not let the story spread: that he had escaped by disguising himself as an old woman.

He had a fearsome reputation in Yong Prefecture. If that story got out, the reputation would become a joke.

The men were killed, and the secret was buried. But what of the wound in his heart?

That kind of self-loathing worked its way into the marrow.

If Yuan Zhen had known this, he might have better understood why Han Feibao seemed so unlike himself.

But looked at from the other side — if Yuan Zhen had known, Han Feibao would long since have found a way to kill him.

“It’s already been five days.”

Han Feibao looked at Yuan Zhen. “Adviser, you said before that we have ten days at most.”

Yuan Zhen nodded. “Ten days was a conservative estimate — an upper limit. We may not even have ten days.”

Han Feibao asked, “Will Tang Pidi really come? That doesn’t make sense. We opened such a fine opening for Tang Pidi in Shu Prefecture. And he hasn’t received intelligence that we’re here besieging Li Chi — he shouldn’t arrive within ten days.”

There was a phrase that almost left Yuan Zhen’s lips, but he swallowed it back.

What he had nearly said was: if you understood Tang Pidi, you wouldn’t have lost so badly.

Hundreds of thousands of Yong Prefecture elite troops, routed by Tang Pidi again and again — not crushed once, but every single time.

And this time, Han Feibao had cornered the Prince of Ning, thinking he had trapped the weaker one.

Just as Han Feibao was about to say something more, a clamor rose outside.

Immediately after, a personal guard came rushing in and bowed. “My lord — the Ning Army is launching a night raid!”

“What?!”

Han Feibao shot to his feet.

“Where did the Ning Army come from?!”

He demanded an answer at once.

He assumed Ning Army reinforcements had suddenly arrived. But that wasn’t it — the force that had just struck the Yong Prefecture Army’s camp was Li Chi’s own men.

Li Chi had slept for a little over an hour and then woken up, as though something finely tuned within him could regulate his sleep to the precise moment.

When Li Chi woke, it was just past the end of the zi hour.

Three thousand Nalan warriors were already lined up inside the city, waiting for him.

Li Chi rose, stretched out his body, drank some water, then had his horse brought over.

Three thousand cavalry charged down the ramp — the very ramp the enemy had built for them.

No matter how hard he tried, Han Feibao could not believe the Ning Army would dare counter-attack under these circumstances.

Disbelief aside, as a battle-seasoned commander, he had arranged men to stand guard against exactly this. What he hadn’t counted on was how quickly those men would crumble — because the Yong Prefecture soldiers simply did not believe the Ning Army would charge out.

Han Feibao had ordered General Liu Duosheng’s troops to take the night watch, roughly fifteen thousand men. This Yong Prefecture force was deployed close below the mountain town on alert — but Liu Duosheng had thought it was an unnecessary precaution on Han Feibao’s part.

The Ning Army had held the city, yes, but they had been pushed to the brink. Why would they waste precious rest launching a sortie?

Indeed — no one ever knew how bold the Ning Army’s daring could be.

Three thousand prairie elite cavalry charged down the ramp at full speed, as though the Yong Prefecture Army had spent countless lives building them a runway to accelerate on.

That is how battles go: whoever grows careless, pays the price.

What those above do, those below will follow. Liu Duosheng thought the whole arrangement was pointless, so after deploying his men, he went off to find a place to sleep. With the leader asleep, those on watch had no one to answer to, and they grew lax.

Their lives ended in that moment of carelessness.

Li Chi rode at the very front, leading three thousand elite cavalry through Liu Duosheng’s force, then driving straight for the Yong Prefecture Army’s main camp.

By the time the Yong Prefecture Army began to muster, Li Chi had already led the cavalry back.

Half of Liu Duosheng’s fifteen thousand had been cut down by the cavalry. A section of the main camp had been set ablaze.

The losses, in cold numbers, were not insurmountable. But the humiliation of it was beyond bearing.

After five days of being besieged — the Ning Army dared to launch a night raid!

And from start to finish, the whole raid had lasted less than an hour.

The Ning Army cavalry charged back up the ramp and into the city, as casually as if they had slipped out for a stroll.

Li Chi jumped down from his horse, a faint smile at the corner of his lips.

He knew how to lift the morale of his men — and knew that it had to be done at the critical moment.

After this raid, the excitement among the Ning Army’s soldiers was easy to imagine.

“I think… we might not even need to wait for the General’s reinforcements before we beat them.”

Li Chi smiled. “Tens of thousands in their camp, and we can still come and go as we please.”

The soldiers erupted in cheers. That was the power one man had over morale.

Li Chi turned to Zhuang Wudi. “Let the brothers rest a while — eat first. No rush to sleep yet.”

Zhuang Wudi acknowledged and had steaming hot mantou sent up to the city wall.

After eating and drinking their fill, they sat on the walls and talked, resting easy. Li Chi, for the first time in front of his soldiers, even took the initiative to sing a little tune.

Then he invited the men of the prairie to sing their own songs — and joined those rough, free-spirited but beautifully expressive grassland dances along with them.

Just like that, they spent a full hour in high spirits. Li Chi calculated the time — less than an hour remained before dawn.

“Move out!”

Li Chi rose and mounted his horse. “One more round. By now they’ve just barely laid down to sleep.”

Nobody could have expected it: Li Chi dared to launch two night raids.

One hour after the first raid, at the darkest hour before dawn, Li Chi led his three thousand cavalry out again.

This time, it exceeded even Han Feibao’s expectations. Even Yuan Zhen was startled.

He had never seen a fighting style so bewildering.

And this time, the Ning Army cavalry were fiercer — driving as though heading straight for the main command camp.

The Yong Prefecture Army’s horns sounded without pause. Soldiers who had barely made it back to their tents scrambled into emergency formation again.

They rushed to intercept, and the command center braced itself in tight formation for the cavalry charge.

But Li Chi never actually attacked. Instead, he led his force in a sweeping crescent arc before the fully assembled Yong Prefecture line — a flawless curved-saber turn — and rode away.

The cavalry drew a great half-circle in front of the Yong Prefecture formation, then galloped back.

*We came. And now we’re gone.*

*Twice.*

—