The Hei Wu had noticed something was wrong.

The Ning army had reached the Xue Fútu camp and pushed inside without any fighting — and that was clearly off. So Kuòkědí Yèlán’s second-in-command, General Xie Luófugē, immediately issued the order to advance.

Xie Luófugē had served under Kuòkědí Yèlán for several years before being transferred to the Southern Enclosure as a general.

He had been present during the last Hei Wu push south as well, though he’d had no chance to distinguish himself then. This time, Kuòkědí Yèlán was naturally inclined to trust his old subordinate, and had elevated Xie Luófugē to Grand General rank.

In the encirclement of the Xue Fútu camp, Xie Luófugē brought one hundred thousand Hei Wu soldiers, with orders to seal the Ning army inside at all costs.

Not a frontal assault — a siege.

Only in this way could he draw Ning relief forces into a trap. The battle Kuòkědí Yèlán wanted to fight was with the reinforcements that would come after.

Xie Luófugē was thirty-four this year — a man in his prime, and at the peak of his confidence.

And for this particular assignment, there was genuinely little difficulty. All he had to do was hold shut the lid on this camp and keep the ten-thousand-odd Ning soldiers from breaking out.

As the war horns sounded, the surrounding Hei Wu forces began sweeping toward the camp from all sides.

Inside the stockade, Gao Zhen looked at the rising dust in every direction and turned to shout: “The Hei Wu think they’ve succeeded — they think they’ve got us pinned. But what they don’t know is that we’re the ones keeping them here.”

He was already climbing the wall as he spoke. “Hold this position! Show the Hei Wu what we’re made of!”

“Ha!”

The vanguard soldiers bellowed and took the walls in an instant, settling into their defensive positions.

Gao Zhen glanced back with some satisfaction. The Hei Wu had been quite thoughtful, it turned out — they’d left behind a good number of crossbow carts. How considerate.

“A pity…” He looked toward the tower.

If that passage hadn’t been sealed, they’d have had another way out — though where it led, none of them could say.

He thought again about Xu Suqing’s conduct. There was only one word for it: crooked.

The Hei Wu came fast, and in rolling clouds of dust they completed the encirclement of the camp with frightening speed.

Tang Pídí had predicted this before the battle began. When Gao Zhen brought his troops out, the scouts had already spotted Hei Wu forces maneuvering in the distance.

Yet the battle had been fought this way regardless. Gao Zhen hadn’t asked the Grand General to explain himself — because he had long since learned that when fighting under Tang Pídí, you followed orders and trusted the man.

Further out, on a rise, Tang Pídí stood with a spyglass trained on the Xue Fútu camp.

When he saw the Hei Wu forces begin to appear, rather than growing tense, he actually exhaled with relief.

“The Hei Wu think this is where the battle will be decided. Let’s play our part and make it convincing.”

He turned to Xia Hóuzhuó: “Xia Hou — I’m giving you all the light cavalry transferred from Ji Province, roughly fifty thousand. Place them here—”

Tang Pídí pointed to a spot on the map.

Xia Hóuzhuó clasped his hands. “Understood.”

No wasted words — he took his orders and left at once.

Tang Pídí turned to Chéng Wújié: “Your column has six thousand heavy cavalry. I’m adding twenty thousand heavy infantry on top of that. Place them here.”

Another point on the map. Chéng Wújié clasped his hands. “This officer complies.”

Tang Pídí wasn’t worried about Gao Zhen’s position — that unit was the bait, and the Hei Wu had no reason to swallow the bait too quickly.

What he couldn’t quite read was why the Xue Fútu bandits had withdrawn without fighting.

The Ning scouts had kept watch around the bandit camp continuously — right up until Gao Zhen arrived, no bandit force had been seen leaving.

Yet the signal Gao Zhen had sent meant the camp was completely in Ning hands.

The bandits hadn’t fought, hadn’t fled. They’d simply given the place up?

It was a puzzle — but it didn’t stop him from arranging his pieces.

“That ground is the highest.” Tang Pídí looked toward Grand General Zhuāng Wúdí: “Brother Zhuāng, take your men there and form up — neat ranks, and have them raise the Emperor’s dragon banner.”

“Yes!”

Zhuāng Wúdí clasped his hands and led his own troops toward that elevated stretch of ground. Before long, they had taken their positions there and planted the banner of Great Ning’s Emperor in the earth.

Far to the rear, Lǐ Chì raised his own spyglass and watched Zhuāng Wúdí’s position. The moment he saw the dragon banner go up, he pursed his lips.

“Won’t let me up there — only lets my flag up there…”

There was a trace of genuine sulking in the complaint.

The northern wastes were vast. Central Plains people tended to picture them as bare desert, but the reality was different. From the northern passes to the Báishān mountain range, the region spanned some seven or eight hundred li at its widest, five or six hundred at its narrowest. East to west it stretched over two thousand li — large enough to fit two and a half Bohāi kingdoms.

At the eastern edge of the wastes, only a single mountain range separated the land from Yǎn Province. That far edge was the bitterest, coldest ground — blanketed in snow and ice through almost the entire year.

To the northwest, the wastes gave way to the Outer Steppe.

When the Tiě Hè had twice driven south to attack the Nǎlán grasslands, they had passed through that very corridor.

Right now, through that same corridor the Tiě Hè had used twice before, eighty thousand cavalry from the Nǎlán grasslands were moving in the opposite direction.

Nǎlán Khagan Bó’ěrtì Chìnà tugged the sandcloth down from his face and looked ahead. The grey-yellow wastes were nearly behind them.

On the distant edge of sight, a faint wash of tawny grass was coming into view.

“The Tiě Hè force passed through here six or seven days ago.”

Bó’ěrtì Chìnà breathed deep, drawing the cold air into his chest, and felt his mind sharpen.

“They still expect to find us here in the wastes and cause us grief — but we’ve come to find them in their own home.”

He drew his curved sword and pointed it toward the Outer Steppe. “The Tiě Hè came into our home twice and butchered our brothers and sisters. Now let them repay us tenfold!”

He leveled his sword ahead: “Charge!”

“*Aaooo!*”

“*Huh!*”

The Nǎlán cavalry erupted in wave after wave of roaring — the sound of tigers and leopards who have spotted an open hillside full of sheep.

Eighty thousand riders, who had lain in wait here for half a month, watching no fewer than three hundred thousand Tiě Hè cavalry file past them.

They had waited this long. Now the day of reckoning had come at last.

After several major campaigns, the Tiě Hè’s fighting strength had been badly depleted.

This time, the Hei Wu Great Khan would surely call on the Tiě Hè cavalry again for the northern wastes battle.

Bó’ěrtì Chìnà had watched carefully, counting the Tiě Hè formations as they passed. His best estimate: three hundred thousand riders represented approximately the full extent of the Tiě Hè’s available military strength.

Which meant that on the Tiě Hè’s home grazing grounds right now, there would be precious little in the way of any organized resistance to the Nǎlán people’s vengeance.

Eighty thousand riders — a surging torrent rolling into the Outer Steppe.

Since the decline of the Chǔ Kingdom, when the Outer Steppe’s various tribes had declared themselves independent of Chǔ’s authority, no Central Plains army had set foot on that ground for over a hundred years.

In those ancient days, the Nǎlán tribe had served as Chǔ’s designated lords of the Outer Steppe. When they were defeated, they retreated to the Inner Steppe.

After a hundred years, the Nǎlán cavalry rode back into the wider land that had once been theirs.

Bó’ěrtì Chìnà had fought at Tang Pídí’s side for so many years. He loved this feeling more than he could say.

To sweep in from behind, to bring blood and fire into an enemy’s home while they stood there unprepared — there were no words in the language for how satisfying it was.

On the first day of the raid into the Outer Steppe, the Nǎlán cavalry made several smaller tribes feel the force of what it meant to face a flood tide of fury.

In one day, several tribes on the outer edges submitted. Two that resisted were destroyed.

Then Bó’ěrtì Chìnà released the prisoners and sent them riding to every corner of the steppe to spread word: *the Nǎlán have returned.*

He told them to make clear to all the other tribes that he had no quarrel with them for now — only with the Tiě Hè. Any tribe that dared shelter or fight for the Tiě Hè, the Nǎlán cavalry would deal with first. But any tribe willing to stand alongside Nǎlán against the Tiě Hè would share equally in all they took.

Bó’ěrtì Chìnà understood perfectly that none of those tribes would dare ride with him against the Tiě Hè.

Because the Tiě Hè’s army had merely left — it hadn’t been wiped out yet.

Even if he spread word that the three hundred thousand Tiě Hè riders had been annihilated to the last man, the other tribes would only watch and wait.

For them, staying out of it entirely was already the limit of their courage.

So what he needed was speed — the Nǎlán riders had to strike fast and strike hard. Once those other tribes watched the Tiě Hè being torn apart before their eyes, they would start thinking about their own interests.

For years, every tribe on the Outer Steppe had been ground underfoot by the Tiě Hè, heads kept down and pride kept buried.

When they saw a chance to carve meat from a giant that was already falling, not one of them would pass it up.

So: speed. That was the only requirement.

As long as the other tribes didn’t dare take part, that was already a gift to the Nǎlán.

Bó’ěrtì Chìnà had run the numbers. Even at a hard ride, it would take the Tiě Hè three hundred thousand at least twenty-some days to turn back. Ten days or so just for the news to reach them — and then another ten-plus days to get back.

So as long as the Nǎlán moved fast enough — break the Tiě Hè’s main camp within twenty days — it wouldn’t matter whether they came back. They would still be beaten.

Because by that point, every tribe on the Outer Steppe would no longer be a Tiě Hè subject. They would be enemies.

—