Several days later, at Tingyang Lake.

Liu Ge appeared on the lake’s surface with several dozen great ships, advancing in a sweeping, imposing formation that genuinely startled the Xie family.

Looking out from Tingyang Mountain, those dozens of ships bore down with a ferocious momentum that was truly unnerving.

Yet the Xie family was not overly alarmed, for they were confident — certain that the Ning Army could not possibly assault the city from the Tingyang Lake side. On the mountain slopes facing the lake there were high walls, fortified towers, and powerful siege crossbows.

The Xie family had spent hundreds of years establishing their roots in Jingzhou, and how could the foundation of their power not be built to be thoroughly reliable?

To fortify this place into a formidable stronghold, the Xie family had employed every means at their disposal. During the height of the Great Chu’s prosperity, what crime of overreach would it have been for a single family clan to construct a residence of such scale?

What the Xie family had used to their advantage was the Tingyang Lake just outside.

In the distant past, the Xie family had submitted a memorial to the throne requesting that a county administration be established at Tingyang.

Thereafter, at intervals, they had directed the county magistrate to petition the court in the name of rampant lake pirates as justification for constructing the Tingyang county walls.

Each time the pretext was much the same: pirates had broken into the county seat, burning, killing, and plundering, and the walls needed repair to protect the people.

The Xie family greased palms throughout the court’s upper and lower ranks, and since the project required no disbursement from the Ministry of Finance, the court simply approved it.

By the reign of the previous Great Chu emperor, the powerful eunuch Liu Chongxin had intended to use this matter to put pressure on the Xie family. But the Xie family was not about to wait until someone applied pressure before reacting — they immediately sent generous gifts, so generous that Liu Chongxin smiled with uncontainable delight.

With Liu Chongxin’s backing, the Xie family had even fewer scruples in their construction at Tingyang, raising and reinforcing the walls further, even bribing officials in the Ministry of War to ship in large quantities of city-defense weaponry.

For great families, such things were truly nothing out of the ordinary.

Especially once the Great Chu had completely crumbled and rebel armies rose in every quarter — which great family was not building walls and fortifying cities in exactly this way?

Had the Great Chu’s order still been intact, the Xie family would naturally not have dared act so openly, for no matter how powerful a clan might be, it could not buy the entire court.

The Xie family had their rivals and their enemies too. Yet something that in every previous dynasty would have been impossible had become possible in the Great Chu’s final years.

The Xie family’s Tingyang estate was built like a city of stone. On the lakeside slopes there were many walkways and jetties, along which the Xie family’s boats were moored. To enter the city one had to climb an uphill road — no ordinary city gate awaited at the top, for a deep trench had been cut outside the gate, leaving a drawbridge as the only means of entry.

So as long as the drawbridge was raised, it was impossible for anyone to attack up from the Tingyang Lake side.

Yet the city’s greatest vulnerability was water. All water had to be drawn from Tingyang Lake, which was why the Xie family had constructed dozens of aqueducts — great water wheels to carry the water up.

And this was precisely where Liu Ge’s objective lay.

Seeing the Ning Army’s fleet approaching, the Xie family’s private troops dared not engage outside the walls and fell back swiftly into the fortress.

Liu Ge met virtually no resistance. He simply had his soldiers dismantle those dozens of great water wheels into splinters.

Liu Ge’s fleet then encamped along the shore, denying the Xie family any chance of making repairs.

With that, the entire Tingyang estate was thrown into panic and unease.

“This must be that animal Xie Huainan!” Xie Huaiyuan stood on the city wall and cursed in fury.

He reasoned that without someone leaking information and devising the strategy, how could the Ning Army have known to take the roundabout route to Tingyang Lake — and with such unerring precision head straight for the water wheels?

At his shout, the rest of the Xie family joined in the cursing. In an instant, Xie Huainan seemed to have become the eternal villain of the Xie family — a man not worth mourning even if he died ten thousand deaths.

On the Tingyang Lake side, the Ning Army had destroyed the water wheels with effortless ease. Liu Ge immediately dispatched a messenger to report to Prince Ning.

Xie Huaiyuan also rushed to send word to the Tianming Army’s camp, hoping Yang Dingfang could spare troops to come to their aid.

But at that very moment, urgent reports arrived from the northern side of the city: a Ning Army unit had bypassed the Tianming Army’s main camp and was now setting up an encampment between the camp and Tingyang.

When Xie Huaiyuan heard this, his heart filled with anguish and fury.

As he saw it, every one of these schemes had been devised by his third brother Xie Huainan — vicious, cunning schemes. He had already begun to suspect that Xie Huainan’s willingness to throw in his lot with Li Chi was not truly because he believed Li Chi had the makings of one who could take the empire, but rather because Xie Huainan wanted to seize the position of family patriarch for himself.

Use Li Chi’s strength to seize control of the Xie family — when put that way, it seemed to explain everything.

Otherwise, on what basis did Xie Huainan think that Li Chi, a bandit by origin, could conquer the empire?

The more he thought about it, the more his rage flared. That anger bored into him like something lodged in his very arteries. Xie Huaiyuan felt the world go dark before his eyes, and a mouthful of blood surged up and out — and he collapsed to the ground.

On the Ning Army’s side, Xiahou Zuo brought his cavalry regiment and, quite openly and without any attempt at concealment, began constructing an encampment right between the two enemy strongholds.

He had brought only cavalry. The Xie family’s private troops dared not come out to engage him. If the Tianming Army mobilized in force, he would lead the cavalry in a fighting withdrawal, drawing them after him — and the moment the Tianming Army dared give chase, Prince Ning’s side would immediately launch an assault on the Tianming Army’s main camp.

If this were a game of chess, Li Chi had placed one piece on Tingyang Lake and another here, and his opponent’s pieces were left with nowhere to move.

Either stake everything in one desperate gamble, or concede.

When Yang Dingfang received word, his first instinct was to immediately dispatch troops to help — he might not trust the Xie family, but if the Xie family truly fell, the Ning Army could encircle him completely.

Single-front defense and two-front warfare were two entirely different propositions.

But before the order left his lips, the realization hit him: with Prince Ning Li Chi’s two moves, he had been plunged into a position of complete helplessness.

The best course was actually to hold perfectly still. With the provisions and materiel the Xie family had previously delivered, holding out for several months was no problem.

Within those several months — would the Tianming King’s main army not have arrived?

With that thought, Yang Dingfang resolved to pay no attention to the Xie family’s situation.

What made it all the more infuriating was that Xiahou Zuo’s Ning Army cavalry had planted themselves squarely between the Tianming Army’s camp and Tingyang, yet made absolutely no move to intercept the messengers — you were welcome to come and go as you pleased; send messages all you liked.

So the number of messengers Xie Huaiyuan dispatched to the Tianming Army’s camp only grew, and though he knew perfectly well the Ning Army was using this to humiliate them, what could he do about it?

The Ning Army’s humiliation Xie Huaiyuan could endure. What he found even harder to bear was being ignored by Yang Dingfang — that was a deeper humiliation still.

A man can hold out for a while without food, but without water — how long can he last?

On the Ning Army’s side, meanwhile, they were eating hot pot — seemingly in no hurry to launch an offensive at all. And they were eating it right in front of the enemy’s face. At a gentle slope less than four li from the Tianming Army’s camp, where the first thin film of spring grass had just spread across the ground in a most pleasing sight, Li Chi had set up a pot on the highest point of that slope and was sitting there with his men, cooking and eating.

From inside the Tianming Army’s camp, Yang Dingfang watched through his telescope, and the more he watched, the more his chest tightened.

You knew he was doing this deliberately to goad you. You knew he hoped you’d get angry enough to come out and fight. You knew there was absolutely no point in letting yourself get angry. And yet — you could not help getting angry.

What was most maddening of all was that Li Chi and his men were eating hot pot — and there was a pig loose on the hillside!

A very large pig!

When you are already convinced the other side is deliberately provoking you, everything they do looks like a deliberate provocation.

In all fairness, what business was it of his if they had a pig there…

“Chief.”

Yu Jiuling suddenly had a wild idea: “Can I ride Divine Carver over to the enemy camp and take a turn outside?”

Li Chi laughed. “I have no objection, but would Divine Carver actually let you ride him?”

Yu Jiuling said, “Let me try — what if he does let me? If I ride over to the Tianming Army’s camp and make a lap out front, I could make them cough up blood.”

Without another word, he abandoned his hotpot meat and went waddling over to where Divine Carver was.

Divine Carver was rooting in the earth — genuinely, blissfully rooting. It was a rare thing, this vast stretch of green grass where he could root about freely to his heart’s content.

For a pig, this feeling was almost transcendently beautiful.

Other pigs rooted for food — succulent grass roots, earthworms beneath the soil. But not Divine Carver. Divine Carver rooted purely for the sake of rooting.

Yu Jiuling descended from the high slope, and as he walked, his pace gradually slowed.

He turned back to look at Li Chi, voice carrying a tone of uncertainty: “Chief, is Divine Carver just rooting around randomly?”

Li Chi stood up and looked. The gentle slope had been churned up in all directions by Divine Carver’s snout, yet somehow — inexplicably — the marks seemed to form a word that looked distinctly like “scram.”

Yu Jiuling felt he had just been insulted by a pig. Insulted with its snout.

He asked Li Chi: “Chief, did you give Divine Carver lessons?”

Li Chi: “I certainly did not. If anything, it must have eavesdropped during lectures back at the Four-Page Academy.”

Yu Jiuling walked up to Divine Carver and in a thoroughly fawning tone inquired: “Master Carver, may I ride you?”

Divine Carver had been absorbed in rooting with great concentration. Hearing Yu Jiuling speak, he lifted his head to look at the man — and gave him the look of someone who wants you gone but won’t say so outright, fully expecting you to take the hint.

Yu Jiuling was not about to be deterred by a pig. He cautiously lifted one leg to climb on — but the moment his leg came up, Divine Carver spun sharply to face him, head lowered, as though about to charge.

Yu Jiuling lurched back in fright. Before he had even fully processed what was happening, Doggy came swooping down from the sky, apparently also preparing to have a go at Yu Jiuling.

Without the slightest hesitation, Yu Jiuling turned and fled back.

Divine Carver seemed to be telling Yu Jiuling: *just anyone thinks they can ride me?*

Doggy seemed also to be telling Yu Jiuling: *that pig — you dare touch him?*

Had it been anyone less familiar with Yu Jiuling, it would be no exaggeration to say blood might well have been spilled on the spot.

Watching this scene, Li Chi was suddenly seized by curiosity. It had been a very long time since he had ridden the pig — he wondered whether Divine Carver had simply grown unaccustomed to being ridden?

So Li Chi walked over to Divine Carver and patted him on the back. Divine Carver actually lay down.

Li Chi swung a leg over and mounted. Divine Carver let out a few snorts as if asking: *do you want to run?*

Li Chi gave the pig’s hindquarters a light pat, and the great beast — so unlike what one expected of a great beast — finally lived up to its fearsome reputation, bursting into a gallop that seemed to shake the very ground.

Doggy circled overhead in wide loops. When Li Chi stretched out his arm, Doggy glided down and perched on it.

Yu Jiuling watched this with his mouth hanging open.

Whether to ease his own slightly awkward predicament, or because he was genuinely moved, Xie Huainan murmured to himself: “Such a ferocious creature — rare in all the world — yet it submits to Prince Ning.”

Yu Jiuling glanced back at him, thinking: this fellow’s something else. Did this mean he was about to have a rival in the flattery department?

He felt a pang of regret. Such a perfectly good piece of flattery — why hadn’t he thought of it himself?

He very much wanted to ask Xie Huainan to take those words back. As a man of letters, Xie Huainan was supposed to have integrity — this kind of line was beyond him; better to leave it to Yu Jiuling.

But he didn’t ask. After all, he had his dignity.

Even if not very much of it.

—