On the official road sat several dozen large carts — not the comfortable carriages of wealthy households, just simple flatbeds without enclosures, and not very fine ones at that.

What they could be grateful for, if gratitude was appropriate, was that though there were no enclosures, there were no cages either.

Those about to depart on these carts were the Xie family members who had chosen wrongly. They sat one by one with drooping heads and darkened faces; some had fire smoldering inside them, but those who have lost have no right to vent their tempers. Whatever anger you carry, you keep inside yourself.

If you cannot learn to keep it inside on your own, someone else will teach you how.

So when Xie Huainan appeared before these people, they only glanced at him for a moment before quickly lowering their eyes.

Because they knew — this man had returned in the posture of a victor.

Xie Huaiyuan alone did not lower his head. He would not lower it before Xie Huainan. Perhaps, beyond that, there was nothing left that could demonstrate his courage — after all, he was different from the other Xie family members: they sat on the carts, but he sat in a cage.

“Did you come here to perform your hollow brotherly affection? Then you had best not call me elder brother — it’s nauseating.”

Xie Huaiyuan spoke.

Xie Huainan looked at him. He had indeed intended to say a few words of comfort — but because of what was just said, he changed his mind.

“No.”

Xie Huainan answered: “I came to display the posture of the victor. The man who won — it is only right for him to appear before the one who lost.”

Xie Huaiyuan gave a cold laugh. “How very proud you are.”

Xie Huainan said: “I should be somewhat prouder than you.”

Xie Huaiyuan drew a slow breath, and fixed Xie Huainan with a look of great seriousness. “Tell me the truth. Your insistence on leading the family to side with Prince Ning Li Chi — what was it truly for? Was it that you were always resentful — always felt that I was not as capable as you, yet I was family patriarch and you were not — that you never accepted that our father chose me and not you?”

When Xie Huainan heard all this, he suddenly smiled.

He said those four words — *I see how it is* — and then said nothing more. He only looked at his elder brother with that same calm expression.

And precisely because he said nothing further, Xie Huaiyuan became less and less able to remain calm.

For that calm gaze of Xie Huainan’s seemed to say: what a pitiable creature you are — what you are imagining I am thinking, you are already thinking yourself.

You yourself feel that you are inferior to me, and so you assume it is I who believe you are inferior to me.

You yourself believe that your becoming patriarch was our father choosing wrongly — and yet you insist on telling yourself these are my thoughts.

So you truly are pitiable.

“Get out of my sight!”

Xie Huaiyuan suddenly screamed, his voice tearing raw. His face looked twisted and contorted as he cried out.

The outburst drew glances from many around them, though they quickly lost interest.

They were not in a cage — but they were on the carts. And those on the carts were those who had been cast aside. Some of them were still quietly thinking to themselves: at least I’m not in a cage.

Xie Huainan smiled.

He walked up to the cage, rested a hand on it, and looked in at his elder brother. He said, in that same composed voice: “You see — I am the family patriarch now.”

He turned away. And as he turned, there was indeed a certain ease and grace to it.

Xie Huaiyuan began to howl from inside the cage. No one could make out what he was shouting — his voice was too raw, too ugly.

Xie Huainan walked and smiled. As he smiled, the tears at the corners of his eyes fell of their own accord.

Xie Xiu walked beside him and could not help asking: “Are you all right?”

Xie Huainan shook his head with a smile. “I am fine.”

A few steps further on, Xie Huainan looked back once more, and then in a tone both relieved and regretful — a complex mixture of the two — he said: “In the end I ruined him. Only not by the method our father taught me.”

Xie Xiu understood his grief, so he shifted the subject, asking: “What do we do now?”

Xie Huainan said: “You do what a general does — follow my lord on campaign. I do what a Military Governor does — I ensure Jingzhou stands firm as a mountain.”

He looked at Xie Xiu. “No matter who asks you — no Xie family member may serve under your command. No matter who asks me — no Xie family member may hold office in Jingzhou. Do you understand?”

Xie Xiu nodded. “I understand.”

He asked: “Is there anything more to be said to the family’s people — some further counsel, or restraint, or — should some people be dealt with?”

Xie Huainan walked as he spoke: “I can stand before all the members of our family and declare with pride that I won. But I cannot declare with pride that I have destroyed them.”

Xie Xiu turned this sentence over in his mind for some time, sensing that more than one meaning was layered inside it.

“I can take pride in the victory. I cannot be without feeling.”

Xie Huainan said to Xie Xiu with sincerity: “You ought to understand — a man without feeling will not last long in my lord’s service. The family’s business should continue as before. For now, taking office is out of reach. But so long as we conduct business within the bounds of my lord’s laws, the Xie family can endure for a long time yet.”

After a pause, Xie Huainan said: “In officialdom, there is you, and there is me. That is enough.”

Xie Xiu turned this over for a good while before he had untangled all the meaning in Xie Huainan’s words.

If Xie Huainan were to return home and ruthlessly eliminate all those who had opposed him, Prince Ning would hear of it, and Xie Huainan’s future prospects would be finished.

Everything in its proper measure.

“Let’s go.”

Xie Huainan gave Xie Xiu a pat on the shoulder. “Whether the Xie family can one day be honored with a ducal title — that falls to you.”

They left.

Xie Huaiyuan went mad.

Over the following days on the road, he alternated between weeping and laughing. No one went near him. None could tell when he might suddenly break into great heaving sobs, or why — and then just as suddenly burst into wild, roaring laughter.

Or without warning, he would curse into the air at the top of his lungs until he screamed himself hoarse — sometimes cursing himself into unconsciousness.

One of the Tingwei escorts watching over the cart glanced at Xie Huaiyuan and sighed. “That man has gone truly mad.”

Another Tingwei replied: “Does being mad affect one’s ability to tend pigs?”

The first one actually gave this some careful thought, then said: “Probably not, I’d suppose.”

“Then let’s keep moving.”

“Right. I just hope he doesn’t frighten the pigs we already have at Qipan Mountain. Those are our pigs, after all.”

—

At the Tianming Army’s camp.

Yang Dingfang looked at the assembled commanders. For a moment he did not know how to begin, and those commanders looked back at him, waiting.

In the different expressions he read, Yang Dingfang could plainly see different expectations.

Some were hoping he would say: break out. Some were hoping he would say: hold firm. And some were hoping he would say those words — *forget it. We surrender.*

Yang Dingfang said: there were only two choices — continue holding and wait for reinforcements from their lord, or break out.

Yet everyone present knew there was a third choice. And that third choice was growing more and more tempting.

“The truth is…”

One general’s voice dropped very low, as though afraid of being heard — and yet yearning to be understood — as he said: “The truth is, we have never actually engaged the Ning Army in open battle, have we…”

His longing was quickly met with a response from a fellow general he was close with, who gave a slow nod: “That’s right. We never fought Xie Xiu. We never fought Xiahou Zuo. We haven’t even fought the Xie family.”

After saying all this, both of them exchanged a glance — and then both lowered their heads at the same moment.

No one echoed them. No one rebuked them either. No one objected.

“I am the commanding general.”

Yang Dingfang let out a long, long breath. “But in this moment, I cannot decide your lives and deaths in the name of commanding general alone.”

Everyone raised their eyes to him, waiting for what came next.

Yang Dingfang waited until his composure had settled before continuing — for he was a great general, and for a great general even to entertain the thought of surrender was torment, was humiliation, was the most unbearable choice imaginable, ten thousand times harder to bear than dying in battle.

And yet he had to think of the men under his command. Go for a breakout? A breakout meant total annihilation.

Wait for reinforcements?

If reinforcements could have come, they would have arrived long before Prince Ning Li Chi came in person.

Even if he were not a great general — even if he were just an ordinary soldier — his identity as a military man meant he could not let himself think about surrender.

This was the true source of his torment: that he had to think about it.

“If I choose to fight, the outcome of this battle — the lives of a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers — the limit of what I can be responsible for is to die with you.”

Yang Dingfang’s voice was low and heavy as he spoke. “If I choose to surrender and this battle is not fought, the soldiers will all survive. Most of you will not suffer greatly for it. And I — will take my own life in atonement. That, too, is the limit of what I can be responsible for.”

“Therefore…”

Yang Dingfang rose to his feet. “Let us settle this with the oldest and most reliable method. Every general present will receive a slip of paper. Write on it either *surrender* or *fight* — no name is needed. I do not wish to have you cursing one another, turning against each other afterward.”

He held up one of the slips. “I have one too. But I will let every one of you see what I have written — unlike yours, mine is open. Any other slip that I see bearing a name I will treat as invalid — I will tear it up.”

He finished and looked to his personal guard: “Distribute them.”

The guards stepped forward and placed a small blank slip into the hands of every commander. The slips were not large — lighter than a feather — yet every man who took one in hand felt the weight of a mountain.

Yang Dingfang said: “No names. It is required that you write.”

He swept a hand through the air. “Begin.”

Each man held a stick of charcoal. They glanced at one another. Some quickly wrote a single character, immediately crushed the slip into a ball, holding it in trembling hands like a child who had done something wrong. Others bowed their heads in silence, and a long, long time passed before they could bring themselves to make a single brushstroke — the slip was ten thousand times heavier than stone, the charcoal ten thousand times heavier still.

“Count.”

Yang Dingfang looked to his guard and ordered: “Count to fifty, then collect all the slips.”

The time came quickly. The guards stepped forward to receive the crumpled slips from each commander’s hands.

Suddenly, someone crouched down and began to weep.

Yang Dingfang opened the slips himself, one by one, saying as he went: “Surrender to the left. Fight to the right.”

He read each one and placed it down, one after another. The guards beside him kept count.

When all were laid out, he looked to the guard on the left. “Twelve slips.”

He looked to the guard on the right. “Also… also twelve slips.”

Yang Dingfang froze. Everyone froze.

Twelve and twelve — a perfect deadlock. How was a choice to be made?

“There is one more.”

Yang Dingfang held up his own slip. He rose and walked it past each of the commanders in turn so that every person could see what was written.

*Surrender.*

“Take my general’s seal and sash, my armor and sword — and go to the Ning Army’s position. Tell Prince Ning Li Chi that we surrender.”

Having spoken these words, Yang Dingfang turned and walked out of the command tent, alone, moving toward the distance.

“The General means to take his own life!”

Someone realized and broke into a run after Yang Dingfang.