Tang Pidi had already seen through the Black Wu’s intentions. What remained was to make the Black Wu believe that Ning’s army had *not* — and had taken the bait.
On the surface, this seemed straightforward enough — simply do what the Black Wu expected: dispatch troops to attack Blood Floating Tower. The battle would unfold accordingly.
But in practice, the execution was extraordinarily difficult.
First: if only ten thousand men were sent against Blood Floating Tower, those ten thousand would soon find themselves encircled by Black Wu forces. This would technically be advancing the battle as the Black Wu had planned — but those first troops sent in would be certain to die.
Second: if you sent a larger force to protect the initial contingent, the Black Wu might suspect that Ning had seen through the scheme. Sending ten thousand against Blood Floating Tower and sending thirty thousand would look roughly the same to the Black Wu — they would encircle regardless. But sending a hundred thousand men to wipe out a gang of bandits? Would the Black Wu be naive enough to call that normal?
The trap had to be sprung, but *how* to spring it was far from simple.
“I need to go see the terrain around Blood Floating Tower’s encampment myself.”
Tang Pidi looked at Li Chi and said, “If I don’t have the ground in front of my eyes, this battle is better fought from behind the city walls.”
Li Chi nodded. “Go as you see fit.”
The Magistrate Bureau had already explored most of the northern wastes and drawn up detailed maps. But it was Tang Pidi’s habit that without seeing the land with his own eyes, he felt something was missing.
Early the next morning, Tang Pidi left the border city with a small force, guided by the Magistrate Bureau in the direction of Blood Floating Tower’s encampment.
He brought few men — barely a hundred cavalry. Speed was what he wanted. More people would only slow him.
And he did not merely need to see the small patch of ground around Blood Floating Tower’s camp. With Ning and Black Wu forces combined, this war could involve more than two million troops. That was not a conflict that fit into a small patch of ground.
If the Blood Floating Tower encampment was the core, then the battlefield radiating outward from it could span hundreds of *li* in every direction. Every feature of terrain within that radius that might affect the outcome of battle needed to be known in advance.
Did the Black Wu not know this? Of course they did — which was precisely why they had valued Han Sanzhou so highly. They wanted not just a lure, but Han Sanzhou’s deep knowledge of the northern wastes.
The two guides assigned to Tang Pidi were the Magistrate Bureau’s Senior Officers Shang Qingzhu and Yu Hongyi. Behind them rode Tang Pidi’s personal guard detachment.
Neither guide was particularly at ease — not out of fear of the journey, but because the man they were accompanying was the Great General Tang Pidi himself.
They rode northward at full gallop, each rider cycling through three warhorses to maintain speed.
Under normal circumstances, the journey from the border to Blood Floating Tower’s encampment took four or five days. They covered it in a little over two.
All along the route, Tang Pidi committed every feature of the terrain to memory.
His capacity for memorization was, by any measure, beyond compare in the known world.
When they were still six or seven *li* from the encampment, they found a small stand of trees sufficient to conceal men and horses. Tang Pidi ordered his guard to wait there, and with only the two Senior Officers, advanced toward the encampment on foot.
The landscape here was almost completely flat, with only the occasional slight rise — enough to hide two or three people, not nearly enough to conceal a hundred men and several hundred horses.
So even just the three of them: if they rode forward on horseback, Blood Floating Tower’s sentries would spot them instantly. They would have to go on foot.
Fortunately, the wasteland was thick with wild grass. Moving in a low crouch, they could go largely unseen.
The last time Master Ye had approached, he had gotten within two or three *li* of the encampment, where a small rise gave them a position from which to lie flat and observe. Shang Qingzhu and Yu Hongyi knew the way; they brought Tang Pidi crawling up to it.
Tang Pidi did not climb the rise immediately. Instead he stood at its base and looked back the way they had come.
This vast plain gave the eye a sense of spaciousness. With green grass in every direction it would have been more pleasant still.
Tang Pidi’s gaze drifted, as though something had come to mind — though he said nothing.
He climbed to the top of the rise, raised his telescope, and trained it on the encampment.
He had barely begun to scan when, perhaps seventy or eighty *zhang* away, a handful of sparrows startled into flight. Tang Pidi’s telescope swiveled instantly toward them.
“Move!”
In the next instant, Tang Pidi said that one quiet word — then turned and slid back down the slope.
The three of them moved quickly back the way they had come. But behind them, rustling sounds had already broken out — and looking back, they could see figures rising up from the grass.
“They must have spotted the tracks from your last visit and set an ambush here,” Tang Pidi said, moving and speaking at the same time. He deliberately fell to the rear, letting the two Senior Officers go ahead.
Then voices called out from behind — *loose arrows, loose arrows* — and Tang Pidi pulled out his saber.
“Lock the chain around my waist!”
At his call, Shang Qingzhu and Yu Hongyi turned back. Each of them looped a chain section around Tang Pidi’s waist.
“Just run straight ahead,” Tang Pidi told them, facing backward, his back to the two Senior Officers.
The two officers exchanged one glance, then simultaneously lunged forward.
Whatever the General said, that was what they did. No need to question, no need to think — only to obey completely.
Both men poured everything into sprinting forward, and Tang Pidi’s feet left the ground. He was carried along behind them like a kite on a line.
Of course, a man towed this way could not stay airborne forever — he would come down at intervals. Tang Pidi used those moments of descent to adjust his direction and shift himself laterally.
Arrows flew from behind. Tang Pidi, one hand gripping his saber, cut them all down as they came.
Shang Qingzhu and Yu Hongyi were both exceptional fighters, and at a full-strength sprint they moved with staggering speed. Before long, the pursuing men began to fall behind.
Through all of this, the archers had loosed at least a hundred shafts — not one had threatened the two Senior Officers.
But then: the sound of hooves.
A column of cavalry burst from the tall grass on one side. The riders — Blood Floating Tower bandits — howled as they came, waving their blades. Some of them raised repeating crossbows and took aim at Tang Pidi and his companions.
“Don’t look back. Keep running.”
The two Senior Officers heard Tang Pidi’s voice again — perfectly steady, as though he were chatting over tea.
That untroubled tone gave them boundless confidence.
The General says don’t look back, just run — so we run.
At first they managed to match the cavalry’s pace over short ground, but eventually the riders closed in. When they were near enough, they stopped loosing bolts and swung their blades straight at Tang Pidi.
Tang Pidi pushed off the ground and was briefly aloft. From the air he brought his saber down, severing the head of the nearest warhorse in a single stroke. The rider had no time to react before the fallen horse flung him tumbling away.
In the next instant, Tang Pidi landed and swept his blade low, cutting through both front legs of a second horse. That rider too was thrown, end over end, to the ground.
Tang Pidi pushed off again, drifting aside — then swept his blade sideways and sheared the head from one charging bandit in a clean cut.
“Insolence!”
A shout came from a distance. A bandit commander hurled his spear from horseback — it came fast and true as a bolt of lightning.
The spear reached Tang Pidi — and Tang Pidi caught it. With his bare left hand, he snatched it from the air.
He gave the spear a single spin in his grip, then hurled it back.
“What can you do?” he said, voice as flat as before.
The return throw was far faster than the throw that had come in.
The bandit commander had no time to react. The spear drove through his chest, knocked him from the saddle, and carried enough force that it struck the rider immediately behind him too, sending both men crashing to the ground.
At that moment, two warhorses came from left and right, converging on Tang Pidi in a pincer. He saw the riders — and his eyes sharpened.
Black Wu men.
The two riders wore white — clearly Sword Sect disciples.
One extended his heavy sword to the right as he charged. The other extended his to the left. Together their blades formed two sweeping barriers — one aimed at Tang Pidi, one aimed at his horse.
At this speed, on this collision course, being caught by either heavy sword meant being cut in two — man or horse alike.
Tang Pidi rode to meet them. Before either blade could arrive, he brought his iron spear sideways and struck his own warhorse sharply across the head. The blow rolled the horse straight over with not even a dying cry — and in the same motion Tang Pidi swept the iron spear the other way.
A *bang* as it connected with the heavy sword in the right-hand rider’s grip. The impact sent the heavy sword spinning back on its own path — and that same heavy sword sliced away half of its owner’s skull.
The horse kept galloping forward. Its rider had lost the front half of his head.
The blade had passed horizontally — from the crown down to the neck, taking the forehead and face with it. The face hit the earth, eyes still open, as the hooves of the riders behind thundered forward and came down on it. The face caved inward, something beneath it — flesh, perhaps, or something else — squeezed out from under the impact.
—
Not far from all of this, the Black Wu Sword Sect’s Grand Swordmaster, Daxin Tuonuo, was watching through his own telescope.
When he saw that Ning officer actually seize a Black Wu heavy sword in mid-air and begin killing with it — wielding it as though he had trained with it for years — his expression underwent a sudden, violent shift.
“Who is this man?! How does he know Sword Sect swordsmanship?!”
The instinctive exclamation was full of astonishment.
Beside him, Han Sanzhou gave an unimpressed laugh. “A true master — the moment his hands close around a weapon, he instantly understands its nature. Your Sword Sect’s swords are simply heavy. That’s all there is to it…”
The words were dismissive, but Han Sanzhou himself felt a private shock. That man who had seized the sword and killed with it — he was absurdly, unreasonably strong.
First contact with a Black Wu heavy sword, and he had grasped its technique instantaneously.
Someone like that…
Gifted beyond all measure.
—