Tang Pidi raised his spyglass and observed the enemy. This was his first time facing the Yong army directly.

Li Chi had spoken of Han Feibao to him often — but neither he nor Li Chi had imagined the man’s audacity could reach quite this far.

The decisive battle between Tang Pidi and Prince Wu could be called the decisive battle between Ning and Chu. Both sides would inevitably pay an enormous price. That being so, anyone who arrived in time, if the moment was right, truly might profit from their exhaustion.

And yet nothing was absolute — everything had two sides. The Yong army had arrived at an opportune moment, but they had been marching without a moment’s rest.

An exhausted force that dared to attack directly: who could say with certainty how it would end?

Han Feibao looked eager to act — burning to settle his score with Li Chi. But he was no fool. A man who had killed his adoptive father and carved out his own power base in Yong Prefecture was not a reckless hothead without calculation.

“Han Feibao won’t necessarily attack us directly,” Li Chi said to Tang Pidi. “But he will absolutely pose as if he might at any moment. He knows that if he can pin down part of our forces, the outcome of our battle with the Chu forces becomes more uncertain.”

Tang Pidi nodded. His read on the Yong army’s immediate aggressive posture matched Li Chi’s.

Any commander with experience knew that attacking now would most likely mean delivering a gift of thousands of heads to the enemy.

But as long as Han Feibao posed the threat of attacking, the Ning army could not ignore it — and with tens of thousands of Yong soldiers, any Ning response would require a massive diversion of forces.

So the apparent effect was that Han Feibao had aided Prince Wu — but in truth, it was about draining both the Ning and Chu armies.

The harder Ning and Chu fought, the more savage and costly the bloodshed, the more pleased Han Feibao was.

The Ning forces were stronger than Chu? Then Han Feibao would tie down the Ning forces and give his own men time to rest.

The battlefield shifts in an instant. Nothing is fixed. And if Ning truly ignored the Yong army and focused entirely on Prince Wu, then Han Feibao would just as readily send his men crashing into the Ning rear.

Li Chi turned to Tang Pidi. “You go and command the final battle against Prince Wu. I’ll hold here — we don’t need both of us in the same place. Besides, I know Han Feibao better.”

Tang Pidi gave a sound of agreement. If all they needed was to hold the line, there was no reason for both of them to stay.

“Very well,” Tang Pidi said. “I’ll go check on the situation in the rear, and come back the moment the fighting there is done.”

Li Chi nodded, then said: “Luo Jing should have already engaged. Prince Wu is also in the Chu rear — you’d better pull Luo Jing back and bring him here with you.”

Tang Pidi: “I understand.”

He left the defensive line, took his personal guard, and rode back toward the main battle with the Left Martial Guard.

“Report!”

Before he had even reached the front, a messenger came riding to meet him — sent by Grand General Shen Shanhu.

“Grand General, General Shen reports: General Luo Jing has broken through the Chu defensive position. The Chu forces are now attempting to break out toward General Shen’s flank.”

Tang Pidi acknowledged this and pressed on toward Shen Shanhu’s position.

The Chu forces had apparently spotted the divided Ning flanks and chosen to push through there. With Luo Jing’s fresh, undamaged, high-morale force holding the front, the Chu breakout attempt naturally chose the already-depleted flanks.

He rode hard to Shen Shanhu’s position and arrived to find the fighting absolutely savage. The Chu forces had gone berserk, throwing themselves against a single direction with everything they had.

By rights, Luo Jing’s Ning forces should have been pressing the Chu rear. But there was no sign of Luo Jing’s banner.

Tang Pidi sent someone to inquire. It took a while before the messenger returned: General Luo Jing had heard that Prince Wu was with the rear guard. He had left the bulk of his forces to continue the attack and taken the Tiger-Leopard cavalry toward Mangdang Mountain himself.

Tang Pidi frowned. He turned to his personal guard officer: “Wang Ji — take my Grand General’s command token and a full company of guards. Find Luo Jing and tell him: no rash advance. Order him to immediately lead his forces to reinforce the Ning King.”

Wang Ji answered at once, took the token, and rode off toward Mangdang Mountain.

Tang Pidi turned back to the battle, dispatching and redirecting forces, pulling most of his troops from the line to send them sweeping southward.

Now — the Chu rear guard.

General Wu Suohai was gravely wounded, barely clinging to consciousness. Prince Wu had placed him across the saddle in front of him — one hand steadying Wu Suohai, one hand gripping his iron spear, alert for any threat.

They had briefly shaken off the Ning encirclement and taken shelter in a small wood. The Ning forces were just outside the tree line.

Of the ten thousand Chu rear guard soldiers and the relief force Prince Wu had brought, fewer than four thousand now remained. After continuous brutal fighting through an entire night and half the morning, every man was pushed past his limit.

“The Ning forces gathering ahead keep growing,” said Cui Yuansheng, Prince Wu’s personal guard general. He looked toward the front, his expression heavy. “Your Highness… I don’t think we can break through.”

He was right. Even what they could see with their own eyes was far beyond what this shattered remnant could force a passage through. There was no telling how many Ning troops lay between them and Zhao Chuanliu’s center force.

“Select some of the best men,” Prince Wu said to Cui Yuansheng. “From the personal guard. Send them to find Zhao Chuanliu. Tell him: if a breakout is possible, break out — don’t wait for us. If it isn’t possible, fall back into Mangdang Mountain.”

Cui Yuansheng selected a dozen elite soldiers and sent them off — telling them to swap into Ning uniforms if they passed Ning bodies on the road, and do whatever it took to get word to General Zhao.

“We fall back to Mangdang Mountain,” Prince Wu said once they were away. He turned his horse: “Follow me.”

The ragged survivors followed Prince Wu back up the route they had descended, into Mangdang Mountain.

They were nearly at the mountain entrance when the sound of horn calls rose from behind — Ning forces had spotted them.

Prince Wu looked back. In the distance, all cavalry. Not a large number, from the look of it.

He raised his spyglass. The banner said 罗.

*Of course.*

“Since you’ve come this far to find me,” Prince Wu murmured, “I’ll give you what you came for.”

He ordered: “Leave all the wounded at the mountain entrance.”

Every man around him went still.

Cui Yuansheng immediately protested: “Your Highness, we can’t — what if the Ning forces cut them down?”

“Leave them at the entrance. There’s a chance of survival. If we take the wounded with us into the mountain, they have no chance.”

And there was something Prince Wu did not say aloud.

Leave the wounded at the entrance, and Luo Jing — that arrogant young man — would see it and assume he was panicking, abandoning them in his desperation to escape quickly. Which meant Luo Jing would come fast.

Prince Wu didn’t say it. He didn’t want his men to think he was using the wounded as bait.

Cui Yuansheng and the others could not disobey the Prince’s order. The wounded were left at the entrance, and the rest plunged into Mangdang Mountain with Prince Wu.

Luo Jing arrived with the Tiger-Leopard cavalry. He saw the hundreds of wounded Chu soldiers at the mountain entrance, and let out a sharp laugh. “The old bastard has lost his nerve! He left his own wounded behind — his men have abandoned him. How does he think he’s escaping? After him!”

He drove the Tiger-Leopard cavalry into Mangdang Mountain.

—