Han Feibao knew he could not afford even a shred of wishful thinking — the moment he let himself hope, he was as good as dead.

Once Tang Pidi reached Dragon Head Pass and learned that he had led his troops south, Tang Pidi would not slow his pursuit again. A man like Tang Pidi would never allow himself to make the same mistake twice.

So the force Han Feibao brought with him fled at a pace that squeezed every last drop of strength from every man.

They dared not head toward any large city, avoiding even the bigger counties. Fortunately they had maps, however incomplete. If a major city cut off their path with a pursuing army at their backs, they would have no way out even if they sprouted wings.

To shake Tang Pidi as quickly as possible, Han Feibao constantly sent men ahead along the route to seize local villagers as guides.

Whenever a back road was available, they took it without question — they had no heavy supplies that required a main road.

Food and provisions were plundered when the chance arose; when it did not, they went hungry.

Rest was taken during daylight hours without exception; once darkness fell they pressed on at a run. This was done to keep local villagers from spotting them.

Han Feibao also drew on the lesson he had learned at Dragon Head Pass — what Yuanzhen had called “cutting off the wrist to save the arm.” He continuously dispatched small detachments in different directions to raid and pillage.

Those who made it back, he welcomed. Those who did not, he hardly mourned.

The effect was a flood of rumours that rebel forces had passed through in every direction, which gave the pursuing Tang Pidi no small headache.

Driving on like this for more than ten days, he somehow actually reached the sea.

This was not yet the coastal territory of Qingzhou — they were still at the far eastern edge of Jizhou, which had only a small stretch of coastline, far less prosperous than Qingzhou’s shores. Even the ruthless Sang pirates would not bother coming here.

Upon reaching the sea, Han Feibao ordered his men to seize fishing boats, and seized fishermen to ask where they might hide.

At this point Han Feibao and Yuanzhen conferred, and he changed his aim once more.

Yuanzhen had originally set his hopes on the Sang pirates of Qingzhou, but the closer they drew to Qingzhou, the more stories they heard about those pirates. Reportedly, Qingzhou’s Military Commissioner Wu Naiyu had personally trained an invincible force, and had fought several major engagements against the pirates along the coast, killing over a thousand of them.

So reaching the pirates in Qingzhou was no longer as simple as it once might have been.

Han Feibao and Yuanzhen therefore agreed: the only way to throw off Tang Pidi was to find an island — and not just any island. It had to be large enough to shelter tens of thousands of men, and capable of providing enough food to sustain them.

Yuanzhen’s suggestion was to send men out to capture large numbers of experienced fishermen. With these people in hand, they could survive in waters utterly foreign to them.

Moving south along the coast, they swept up fishing vessels as they went. By the time they entered Qingzhou they had gathered several hundred boats of all sizes.

They also seized many Qingzhou fishermen as guides, and truly found a suitable place.

The spot lay roughly a hundred li outside the city of Ziye, some forty-odd li offshore.

The fishermen called the island Yunlai. More precisely, it was not a single island but a cluster of at least a hundred — scattered across the sea like stars in the sky.

Han Feibao’s men plundered a coastal county, loaded up its grain and provisions, took on great quantities of cloth and fresh water, and before departing burned every vessel they could not carry. Then, all thirty thousand of them, they sailed straight to Yunlai Island.

The island was vast, and living on it posed many challenges — fresh water chief among them. Yet Han Feibao’s luck was extraordinarily good: Yunlai Island was so large that between two of its mountains lay a lake. How it had come to exist, they could only guess — perhaps centuries of rainfall had accumulated there. The sea brings much rain, and the island’s dense vegetation spoke for itself: fresh water was not scarce.

The day after arriving, Han Feibao ordered fortifications built at every possible landing point. The island had stone and timber in abundance, and manpower enough; a stone wall was raised quickly.

That wall was only the beginning. In Han Feibao’s mind, if a swift return to Yanzhou proved impossible, they would be living here for a long time — so a proper fortress was a necessity.

Knowing Tang Pidi as he did, Han Feibao understood that after his adversary’s miscalculation outside Dragon Head Pass, Tang Pidi would take things far more seriously this time. Having fought Tang Pidi in battle after battle without a single victory, Han Feibao’s fear of the man had seeped into his very bones.

Standing on higher ground, watching his men busy themselves hauling stone and felling timber, Han Feibao finally allowed himself a long, slow exhale.

Thinking back on his experiences over these past years, he could not help but feel a tide of complicated emotions.

It had all begun when he killed his adoptive father and seized power over Yongzhou — at that moment his ambitions had been as high as the sky. The first time he marched out of Yongzhou, how full of fire and pride he had been, certain that with an army in the field the whole realm was in his hands. He had set out with hundreds of thousands of Yongzhou’s finest — troops hardened by the bitter cold of the northwest — and had believed he could punch straight through the Central Plains.

And now here he was, shut up on an island, probably destined to live as a sea bandit — yet somehow still feeling a measure of relief at having made it this far.

The thought brought regret: if he had never marched out at all, could he not have kept his grip on Yongzhou? Even if Prince Ning, Li Chi, was formidable, taking Yongzhou would have been no easy matter. He could have been King of the Northwest.

Now it seemed he would only ever be King of the Pirates.

—

Meanwhile, twenty or thirty li from Yunlai Island, a man stood on a rocky reef above the waves.

Tang Pidi stood at its highest point, a telescope trained on the distant silhouette of Yunlai Island. Seen from far away, the islands rose from the water like the backs of enormous turtles.

“My fault,” Tang Pidi muttered to himself.

In order to annihilate Han Feibao in a single stroke outside Dragon Head Pass, he had ordered his soldiers to ease their pursuit and rest. That decision — not wrong in itself — was what had let Han Feibao slip through.

Master Wu stood beside Tang Pidi and shook his head. “How can the Grand General blame himself? No one could have imagined Han Feibao would dare run south.”

Tang Pidi said, “No one could have imagined it — but I am the Grand General. I should have imagined it.”

He lowered the telescope, brow deeply furrowed. Even Old Tang’s brow was creased, which said much about how complicated the situation had become.

“This will not be easy to take,” he said.

Master Wu looked at Tang Pidi. “I know this place. The largest of those islands — the fishermen call it Yunlai Fairy Island. According to them, there is only one viable landing point.”

Tang Pidi said, “And that one viable point has almost certainly been sealed off by Han Feibao already.”

Master Wu said, “We still do not have enough boats. Han Feibao was seizing them ahead of us at every stop.”

Even if they immediately began requisitioning fishing vessels, they could not gather enough for an army crossing in any short time. And even if they could — storming an island fortress was nothing like besieging a city on flat ground. In a siege you could surround all four walls and attack from every side. But Yunlai Island had only one landing point, and the usable beachhead would surely be small. Soldiers rushing ashore would be cut down by Yongzhou troops striking from the high ground; Ning Army casualties would be catastrophic.

“Master, please return and work on finding vessels,” Tang Pidi said. “I will take a closer look.”

Master Wu turned to the fisherman standing nearby. “Take the Grand General for a look, and be extremely careful.”

The fisherman was a local man; pirates had taken his friends, and he harbored a deep hatred for the Yongzhou rabble. He rowed Tang Pidi around to a small island and climbed to its highest point, from which the only landing beach on Yunlai Island was just visible.

By the time they had worked their way around it was already dark, and Tang Pidi decided to spend the night on this small island. Early the next morning they climbed to the summit to observe. When Tang Pidi saw that the Yongzhou troops had already raised a stone wall, his frown deepened further.

In terrain like this, every advantage the Ning Army held in arms and equipment was entirely nullified.

“Grand General,” the fisherman said, “for a large force trying to push through, it would be almost impossible. The water channels between the islands are narrow, and full of hidden reefs — even boats have difficulty getting close.” He pointed to wreckage still visible on the water. “That is almost certainly from the rebel force — ships they smashed up before landing.”

Tang Pidi raised the telescope and looked carefully. On some of the reefs he could still see the bodies of Yongzhou soldiers. The Yongzhou troops had clearly suffered no small number of casualties getting onto the island themselves.

“Is there truly no second landing point?” Tang Pidi asked, unwilling to give up.

The fisherman shook his head. “None. There are powerful currents all around the island. People from our village have drowned just trying to approach. River currents at least leave some signs you can read — but ocean currents leave none at all.”

Tang Pidi let out a long breath, then had paper and brush brought to him. Standing on the heights, he drew a map of Yunlai Island and spent an entire day noting everything he observed. By nightfall it was too dark to return, so he slept another night on the island before heading back to shore.

—

On Yunlai Island, Yuanzhen sat on a protruding rock, staring blankly out at the sea.

He had never once imagined, before all this, that he would ever see the ocean. He was a man of the outer steppe — the sea had meant nothing to him, something he had never thought about at all.

Han Feibao was reflecting on his own life; so was Yuanzhen.

He, a strategist of the Black Wu Empire, had ended up stranded on an island in the heart of the Central Plains, a place he might have to call home for the next several years. The gap between what he had been and what he was now was so vast that not even the sea’s sense of vast openness could ease the resentment and injustice pressing on his chest.

“Master,” said Han Feibao, walking over to stand beside him.

Yuanzhen rose and clasped his hands. “My lord.”

Han Feibao gazed at the sea before them. After a long silence he said, “From now on — forget that you were ever a man of Black Wu. And I… will forget whatever I once was.”

Yuanzhen acknowledged this with a quiet sound, yet in his heart he was not ready to give up.

He knew that only by reaching Yanzhou could they escape this life.

“My lord, we must send more men out. If we can make contact with the Sang pirates, there may still be a chance to strike into Yanzhou.”

At those words, Han Feibao did not answer right away.

He was conflicted.

Though he felt the weight of it all, the sorrow and the loss — if they simply settled down and made a life on this island, would that really be… so terrible?

—