Wu Prince — close to seventy years old — rode his blue-grey horse with a long spear in hand, charging at the fore, the death-soldier battalion raising the Left Guard’s battle cry behind him, voices like rolling thunder.

The first obstacle they met was where the Ning forces had dug endless pits. Chu casualties surged here — those who fell were shot down by the Ning arrow formations before they could rise, and the slowed column was swept again and again by those arrows.

Yet the Chu forces’ resolve to die was absolute. Even without Tang Pidi’s elaborate lure, with the number of Ning troops currently deployed at the foot of the mountain, they could not have stopped the Chu forces from charging with such ferocity.

The majority of the Ning army had been dispatched earlier to set up the outer ambush. The mountain-foot Ning forces fought and withdrew, and the Chu breakout moved with surprising speed.

“Something is wrong,” Wu Prince muttered quietly.

With hundreds of thousands surrounding Mangdang Mountain, it should not have been this easy to push several li forward. Tang Pidi’s use of troops left no such gaps. Even if the Princess of Wu Wang’s assault had forced a division of Ning forces here, there should still be more troops than what he was encountering.

The thought had barely formed when horns sounded from the Ning lines ahead.

Then from every direction, great sheets of torchlight appeared — an uncountable number of Ning forces visible, converging from elsewhere to intercept him.

Seeing the Ning response, Wu Prince actually let out a small breath of relief.

If the obstruction had been only what he had just faced, he would not have dared push further. He might have ordered the center and rear to fall back — though he himself would not have retreated.

Because his wife was ahead. The soldiers could fall back, even surrender — but if he stopped, she might be in danger.

A scout came galloping back from the front and stopped beside him. “My Lord — the Ning forces ahead have formed a defensive line. Their numbers appear very large, and they fly the *Tang* banner.”

Hearing that, Wu Prince knew his concern had been unfounded. He ordered the army to push forward.

But the man waiting for him ahead was not Tang Pidi — it was Tang Ancheng.

Tang Ancheng had only just returned when Tang Pidi gave him this crucial task. Tang Pidi told him: whether we can deceive Wu Prince into continuing his advance is entirely up to you.

Wu Prince had no idea Tang Pidi had a younger brother. For that matter, most of the Ning army itself did not yet know that Tang Ancheng and Tang Pidi were family.

“No stopping — follow me forward!”

Wu Prince called out. The signal officers raised their horns, and even though several were wounded, each time they gathered the breath to blow, blood ran from the corner of their mouths and noses.

The notes followed in succession — this was a specific rhythm Wu Prince himself had designated. Hearing this cadence, the Chu forces behind would accelerate.

Still charging ahead. Suddenly, it seemed as though a mass of shadows swept toward them from the front — like a sky full of dense, swarming bats.

Wu Prince instantly pressed low in the saddle. “Watch out!”

Before the words had even finished, the soldiers around him began going down one by one. Their ears filled with the thick, muffled sound of bladed implements punching through leather armor and human flesh.

Not bats. The Ning army’s weapon for killing infantry — the rapid-fire crossbow array.

One volley from a rapid-fire crossbow array released twenty bolts simultaneously across a flat plane. Against infantry, it was a reaper.

“Dismount!”

Wu Prince shouted.

The terrain ahead was complex and could not be ridden through, and with arrows this dense, dismounting behind a shield was far safer.

His guards dismounted as well — each holding a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, held before them.

“Charge!” Wu Prince crouched low, using the shield to cover most of his body, bent at the waist as he pressed forward. The resistance he felt through his shield arm grew with every step.

Arrows struck the shield in a continuous drumming, leaving his wrist numb and throbbing.

Wu Prince could not help but admire: the Ning army’s equipment truly was something to envy.

Chu soldiers fell in numbers no one could count. Some of them, running, suddenly found there was no one in front of them anymore — they had been placed in the fourth or fifth rank, and without knowing when, all the ranks ahead of them were gone. The soldiers behind them felt the same: they had been somewhere in the middle, and without knowing when, the men in front had vanished.

Only when they charged close enough did they see: the Ning army had built layer upon layer of earthen walls. None were tall — only reaching a man’s chest — but there were many of them.

Looking ahead, the walls rose in formation like a pattern of hexagrams. Behind each layer of wall were Ning archers.

“Kill!”

Wu Prince roared.

Chu soldiers pressed forward under their shields. By the time they reached the first wall, heaven knew how many lay dead.

Each wall was short — about five zhang long — with gaps of roughly one zhang between adjacent walls. But the next layer of walls was offset to block those very gaps, like bricks in a wall laid in a staggered pattern.

This meant that the Ning archers defending each layer of wall faced a gap in the layer ahead. The same pattern was repeated for every subsequent layer. The practical result: the Chu forces running through the gaps were subjected to concentrated fire from every angle at every level.

One can imagine the death toll in those passageways.

The Ning soldiers at each wall had been given one order: fight as if you intend not to let a single man through.

If they fought carelessly, Wu Prince would suspect a trap.

Tang Ancheng, commanding here, felt the weight of his responsibility: whether the Left Guard could be entirely destroyed, whether Wu Prince could be left with no road of retreat, rested entirely on his shoulders.

From a high position to one side, Tang Pidi watched the battle through his spyglass.

In such deep darkness, all he could judge was the direction and shape of the torchlight.

When he saw a vast mass of torches jam and completely stop advancing, he knew Tang Ancheng had held Wu Prince.

Those earthen walls had been Tang Ancheng’s idea. He had gone to Tang Pidi and said: only by fighting as though one intends not to let a single man escape can Wu Prince be convinced there is no ambush. Therefore his forces would necessarily take severe casualties.

A long while passed. Tang Pidi still had not lowered his spyglass. He asked the man beside him, “How long?”

His aide checked the hourglass standing beside a nearby torch. “General Tang Ancheng has been holding Wu Prince for nearly one full hour.”

“One full hour,” Tang Pidi repeated, and calculated. It should be past midnight now. Wu Prince could be held until perhaps the second watch — any longer and he might begin to consider retreating.

“Send someone south to check on the situation there.”

He said no more. The battle below had become impossible to describe.

Behind each earthen wall, bodies were piled everywhere — Chu and Ning alike. The number of lives taken at every layer of those walls exceeded the height of the walls themselves.

Tang Ancheng felt his heart bleeding. So did every commander present.

But this was war. The Chu forces were never going to sit passively in Mangdang Mountain and accept their fate.

Wu Prince would never watch his Left Guard starve to death in the mountain. Even without the Princess of Wu Wang’s relief column, this kind of slaughter was inevitable.

The Left Guard would always have broken out. The Princess of Wu Wang’s arrival had only brought it forward slightly.

“General!”

One of Tang Ancheng’s men ran to him. “Twelve layers of walls have been broken through. Only three remain.”

Tang Ancheng thought for a moment. “Pull the troops from the last three walls. Tell Gao Tian to launch a counterattack.”

“Yes!” The order went out immediately. General Gao Tian, who had been waiting in the rear, rose as it arrived. As he stood, the dense mass of Ning soldiers crouching behind him all rose together.

*Hu.* In the darkness, a forest of blades and spears rose from nothing.

“Forward!”

Gao Tian led two Ning ten-thousands crashing forward. Their mission: to make Wu Prince understand that the Ning army’s will to hold this position was absolute.

With the Ning counterattack pressing in, the speed of the Chu advance was crushed to a sudden halt.

Both sides fought in the open ground between the earthen walls. In a struggle like this, there was no counting time, no counting the dead.

From above, Tang Pidi asked again: “How long?”

His aide had already turned the hourglass once. He checked it. “Over two full hours now. The second watch has passed.”

Tang Pidi gave a quiet acknowledgment, then said, “Send word to Tang Ancheng — he has held long enough. Have him feign defeat and let the Chu forces through.”

The words had barely left him and the aide had not yet moved when the shape of the torchlight ahead changed.

Tang Pidi raised his spyglass immediately. He watched the Ning torches begin withdrawing rapidly, then quickly scattered into disorder.

Tang Pidi felt admiration stir within him. Tang Ancheng’s judgment of the moment, his reading of the battle — he had not fallen short.

Tang Ancheng’s judgment and Tang Pidi’s judgment: there was almost no difference between them.

On the Chu side, Wu Prince watched the Ning counterattack push forward and then pull back. He immediately called out and led the advance.

But only a sparse response came from around him. Wu Prince was momentarily still.

He looked around and realized: the death-soldier battalion of more than twenty thousand men he had personally led — was gone. Only a few dozen personal guards remained at his side, and nearly every one of them was wounded.

“Sound the horn — have the center dispatch troops here!”

Wu Prince commanded.

The signal officer raised the horn and blew with force — and because he was wounded, each time he gathered breath to blow, blood ran from his mouth and nose.

Breaking through those fifteen layers of earthen walls had already consumed more than half the death-soldier battalion. The fighting afterward had thrown the rest in as well.

But they had barely opened this single gap, and Wu Prince could not let the advance slow.

If they slowed now, the Ning reinforcements would pour in like water through a low spot, and swiftly drown the Chu forces in that depression.

Before long, the fresh troops dispatched from the center arrived. Wu Prince had men again, and he led them immediately forward.

“Those who follow me are all death-soldiers — you should understand that following me is far more dangerous than staying in the rear. But you know my character: when I charge, I never fall behind anyone.”

Wu Prince called out, then raised his hand. “Forward again!”

They had already left the mountainside far behind. Down at the foot, they had fought several li across open ground. They had fought and killed the whole way — the exact distance to the outer perimeter, no one could say precisely.

But counting roughly, it had to be at least ten li.

When still on the mountain, Wu Prince had looked at the fires in the south and estimated that the Princess of Wu Wang’s relief column was less than fifty li from Mangdang Mountain.

If it had been only forty or fifty li then, the two forces were even closer now — thirty or forty li between them.

For an army, thirty or forty li is not a great distance.

But that was marching, not fighting. Through layers of encirclement, those thirty or forty li might be the size of a graveyard.

After Wu Prince pushed forward another seven or eight li, he was stopped again by Ning forces that had reformed and closed off the path.

Tang Ancheng was fighting personally, leading his troops in a defensive line formation on the open plain. This was the darkest hour before dawn.

“Fight with me one more time,” Wu Prince declared aloud. “When light comes, we break through!”

“Kill!”

The Chu forces, who could see hope ahead, eyes gone red, charged after Wu Prince once more.