The moment it was mentioned that Plains City was three hundred li away, the Bohai guide was already so exhausted he could barely walk, muttering endlessly that Bohai was far too large.

Three hundred li… to a Ning Army soldier, was that even a long journey?

What left Dantai Yajing even more incredulous was that these Bohai villagers knew nothing whatsoever about the outside world.

He asked the guide whether he knew where the Bohai King was raising troops to fight. The man said yes — to fight those wretched Central Plains people.

Dantai Yajing asked him why they were fighting the Central Plains people, did he know?

The guide answered: the Central Plains is a tiny place, yet it has always threatened the borders of our great Bohai Empire. If the Central Plains petty kingdom is not destroyed, there can be no peace on our frontiers. Because those wretched Central Plains people have been constantly harassing our Bohai for years, coveting our territory.

Dantai Yajing was completely stunned by this. He asked the guide: have you been to the Central Plains? Have you ever seen Central Plains people?

The guide answered: never been, and haven’t seen many — but the officials said so every time they came to conscript soldiers.

The Bohai officials told their people that the Central Plains was a very, very small country, but extraordinarily wealthy.

They said the Chu state of the Central Plains didn’t even amount to a tenth of the Bohai Empire’s size, yet it occupied the most fertile land.

And even with all that, they were not satisfied — they still wanted to seize Bohai’s territory.

And so every time the officials came to conscript soldiers to fight the Central Plains, it was to wipe out that petty kingdom and seize that fertile land.

The officials also told them that the Central Plains’ land had something magical about it — a single acre there could yield more grain than ten acres of Bohai land.

Once the Central Plains was taken and that land was theirs, Bohai would become the wealthiest nation in the world.

When everyone heard the guide say these things, at first they wanted to laugh. Then the laughter died in their throats — first, because there was something pitiable about these Bohai people, and second, because they now understood just how enormous the enemy’s determination to take the Central Plains truly was.

A Bohai nation this poor and wretched, and yet its people spent every day dreaming of seizing the Central Plains. Every one of them overflowing with hatred for Central Plains people.

A hatred that wasn’t because Central Plains people had wronged them — but because: why should you be richer than us?

The fact that your life is better than ours is simply because that land is more fertile, more special.

Suddenly, a thought rose in Dantai Yajing’s mind: *These are our enemies. So why should we harbor any mercy?*

The guide was still chattering away. He said that though he had never been to the Central Plains and hadn’t seen many Central Plains people, he had witnessed with his own eyes captured Central Plains people being subjected to every kind of torment.

The officials would put captured Central Plains people on public display and allow anyone to go up and beat them — by any method they liked.

To cultivate hatred, the officials would even specifically select young men to go forward and gut the Central Plains captives alive.

The most courageous among them would receive commendation from the officials.

He spoke with pride and growing excitement — going on to say that in his younger days he had personally gutted a Central Plains woman, and her screams had been absolutely wretched, yet he hadn’t felt the slightest pity.

He grew more and more animated as he spoke, oblivious to the fact that the expressions of Dantai Yajing and his men had entirely changed.

No one knew whether what he described was true, or whether he was performing loyalty before what he believed to be a Bohai army — but the hatred he had cultivated was already deep-rooted beyond extraction.

They passed through a small town. The walls ahead were in a state of dilapidation that beggared belief — a large section had collapsed and gone unrepaired. Men in Bohai military uniform carrying whips beat and berated passersby at will.

After scouting out the situation, Dantai Yajing launched a night assault on this small town and killed every Bohai soldier there — several hundred in total.

This unit had been there to forcibly seize provisions, leaving the villagers not so much as a single grain of rice.

With the front demanding vast quantities of supplies, they went everywhere plundering.

After taking the town, they seized some dry rations to replenish themselves, and then Dantai Yajing had his men pull the Bohai soldiers’ garments over their own hide armor.

In official Bohai propaganda, most Central Plains people were described as ugly and short, with dark skin — the most hideous people in the world.

They were said to look like monkeys — revolting.

The captured Central Plains people who were paraded for display looked fair-skinned and tall — and so the officials would say those were Central Plains aristocrats.

The Bohai villagers believed all of this without question.

So when they had first entered that original village, the Bohai people had no idea they were Central Plains people, and would never have dreamed that Central Plains people would appear in Bohai.

“I have only one thought.”

Guard officer Qiao Lang said, his expression darkening: “Burn this place to the ground — burn all of Bohai to ash.”

Dantai Yajing raised his hand and patted him on the shoulder: “We can’t level this place right now — but we can set their homes on fire.”

The guide had served his purpose. Plains City was less than a hundred and fifty li ahead — follow the one flat road and it would lead straight there.

Dantai Yajing ordered the guide killed and all the bodies disposed of, then continued forward. He saw that his soldiers had killed everyone in the small town. He did not stop them.

Because if even one person got away, their movements would be exposed. For the first time, Dantai Yajing felt his own heart had turned to stone.

Guard officer Qiao Lang came back with a guilty look and said it was his order, and asked the general to punish him. Dantai Yajing only waved his hand and told him: this matter, when we return, do not tell anyone.

After walking another seventy or eighty li, they came upon another small town. Dantai Yajing sent scouts ahead, saying they were a unit come to collect provisions. The soldiers guarding the gate suspected nothing.

Fortunately, this time their group included several hunters from Yanzhou who were fluent in Bohai.

At first those few men had still been nervous with fear — but as they grew used to it, they could carry themselves quite naturally.

So naturally, in fact, that when a gate guard showed a hint of disrespect, one of the young hunters stepped up and gave the man a slap across the face.

After entering the town, they launched a sudden strike in the night, and in less than one shichen, the town had become a ghost town.

After this slaughter, every one of Dantai Yajing’s soldiers was able to don a Bohai soldier’s uniform. They took up their flags and banners, and the next day set out toward Plains City.

At the city gate, Dantai Yajing had the hunters go forward to negotiate. They said they were troops returning from the front, under the Bohai King’s orders to come to the palace and escort the queen and the royal concubines, along with the clan nobility, back with them.

Dantai Yajing had his men tell the Bohai people that they had already achieved a great victory in Yanzhou — the Bohai King had taken Yanzhou, and now wished to bring the clan families over to see what the Central Plains was like.

It was a reckless plan, riddled with holes everywhere — yet the Bohai people never suspected a thing.

What they could never have imagined was that the Central Plains Ning Army would appear at the gates of the Bohai capital.

Before long, the news had spread throughout Plains City. Nearly every Bohai person in the city poured into the streets and cheered for Dantai Yajing’s forces.

Ning Army soldiers all had cloth wrapped around their faces. Looking at these people cheering and celebrating with such joy, every one of them felt nothing but revulsion.

The queen granted an audience. The few hunters entered the palace and recounted the fabricated Bohai military triumph that Dantai Yajing had invented. The queen heard that her people had already seized the Central Plains palace, and that the Bohai King wanted her to come over — her excitement was plainly visible.

Before long, the entire rear palace was in a flurry of activity as the consorts and concubines frantically packed their things, every one of them seemingly unable to contain their impatience.

It was a scene too absurd for words — a storyteller would never dare tell it this way — yet here it was, happening.

Two days later, the Bohai royal clan’s party set out in grand procession from Plains City, under Dantai Yajing’s escort, heading toward the front.

Halfway along the road, Dantai Yajing gave a single order: every guard was killed. Not one was left.

Then, with this remarkable entourage in tow, they turned around and retraced their path. On the way back, every village and town they passed through was not spared.

When they returned to the first small village they had entered, Dantai Yajing gave the order again and had the village wiped clean.

“When we get back, do not speak of the village killings.”

Dantai Yajing looked at his men: “These things — treat them as secrets. Every one of you keep them buried deep in your own hearts.”

He had his personal guard officer Gao Baobao take three hundred men and escort the Bohai royal clan into the forest, to hold them captive there temporarily until they returned.

Then Dantai Yajing led nine hundred men back toward Plains City.

This time they moved faster — they now had horses. All the horses from the Bohai royal clan’s traveling party had been put to use by Dantai Yajing. They covered the distance back to Plains City in just two days.

He had his men tell the guards that the queen had remembered she’d left many things behind and sent them back to retrieve them.

Just like that, they infiltrated Plains City again. Made straight for the palace, ransacked it thoroughly, and set it ablaze.

Plains City, already empty of troops, was thoroughly ravaged by a force of fewer than a thousand men.

Dantai Yajing had made a point of observing carefully the first time they entered the city — the city walls had very few soldiers on watch.

In the city, most of the population was elderly, women, and children. Able-bodied young men were almost nowhere to be seen.

From this it was clear that in order to attack Yanzhou, Bohai King Shi Zaixin had conscripted virtually every fighting-age man in Plains Province.

Whether the other provinces were the same remained uncertain — but even Plains Province alone was enough to show that Shi Zaixin had taken away a full third of Bohai’s men.

This was also why Dantai Yajing had decided to double back for another strike. A garrison this hollow — not causing more havoc would be like making the trip for nothing.

And since there was no certainty of making it back alive, he might as well go wild.

His mounted troops rode through the city setting fires in every direction. When they rode out of the city, the entire Bohai capital was lit up in flames from one end to the other.

They rode hard for two more days back to the edge of the forest. They slaughtered all the horses, took as much of the horsemeat as they could carry, and re-entered the forest.

On the way in, they had marked the trail throughout. They couldn’t go straight back to Yanzhou, but at least they could make it back to the place where they had lost their way.

The weather had been clear these past days. Once they reached that spot, it would come down to luck — using the position of the sun and stars to navigate. If fortune favored them, they’d find their way out of this deep mountain wilderness.

Every one of them was also prepared: if they couldn’t get out, they would slaughter all the Bohai royals right there in the forest.

Even if the Ning Army soldiers couldn’t get out themselves, at least they wouldn’t have come away empty-handed.

And so they pressed on through the dense forest, climbing mountains and crossing ridges. After walking for several days, they reached the place where they had lost their way.

From here on, it was genuinely a matter of luck. The general direction could be determined, but not every stretch of terrain was passable — they might find themselves at sheer cliffs with no way forward, or lose themselves in an even deeper and more remote stretch of forest.

Like this, they walked for another five or six days without seeing the gorge. By this point, even Dantai Yajing felt like giving up.

He had nearly issued the order to kill all the Bohai captives — it would have freed up rations for the rest of them.

Though as it was, they hadn’t been giving the Bohai captives much to eat during these days either. To make sure the Bohai people had no strength to resist, they were fed only once a day.

They persisted for one more day. Dantai Yajing himself climbed to a high point and looked out in all directions — nothing but treetops as far as the eye could see.

He climbed back down, his mood heavy.

Guard officer Gao Baobao looked toward the Bohai captives and drew his broadsword. The sight sent every one of the Bohai people into a state of utter terror and confusion.

“Who’s there?!”

At that moment, figures appeared in the distance and shouted in their direction.

That shout — in the Central Plains tongue — sounded like music from the heavens.

Dantai Yajing shouted back at once. Before long, a squad of Ning Army soldiers came trudging through the snow toward them, one foot sinking deep and the next barely skimming the surface.

All these days, the Ning Army had never stopped searching.