Dantai Yajing was staying at Yibin Garden, and no sooner had he returned than he was surrounded by a crowd of those pledging loyalty — the very men who had been so righteously resolute in the hall, now doing their utmost to fawn and flatter.

But the more they carried on this way, the more clearly Dantai Yajing understood: no matter how beautifully these men declared their allegiance, not one of them could be trusted. Not a single one. If real fighting broke out, these men would turn with the wind even faster than they were doing now.

Hundreds of thousands of Chu soldiers in the hands of men like these would never be put to any use at all.

Once he had finally seen the last of these tiresome visitors off, dusk was already falling, but Dantai Yajing decided to go back to the palace.

Better to put his faith in Emperor Yang Jing than in any of them.

He changed his clothes and slipped out through the back gate, avoiding the people still lingering outside hoping to catch his attention, and went to the palace alone.

Outside Yibin Garden, there were still quite a few people waiting for an opportunity. They figured they might be able to get a step ahead — slip General Dantai some gifts, and perhaps he would put in a word for them before the Ning King one day.

Whether there was fighting or not, they didn’t much care. What they cared about was whether they would still have an official post to their name.

Some had even decided not to leave that night. They would wait until everyone else was gone, then knock on the door for a private visit. Who knew — perhaps the General would be in a good mood and let something slip, a small promise, and they would still be wearing their fine robes when the dust settled.

The Palace.

The Emperor glanced at Dantai Yajing and smiled. “You just got through threatening every civil and military official in the hall. Now you come running to the palace. Are you here to threaten me as well?”

Dantai Yajing inclined his head slightly. “Your Majesty, I have come to ask a favor.”

The Emperor said, “You were domineering and aggressive in the hall, and from what I understand, all those officials have probably already made their way to Yibin Garden to swear loyalty to you in person — the full attendance, I’d wager. What more could you possibly need my help with?”

Dantai Yajing ignored the edge in the Emperor’s words. He had no interest in it. He maintained the minimum of courtesy and respect toward the Emperor because that was what his upbringing and his sense of propriety demanded.

In a certain sense, the Dantai clan had never held the Chu Emperor in particular reverence — not Yang Jing, and not the emperors before him. Because in all the years the Dantai family had held the western frontier, the court had never offered a shred of support. Not grain, not supplies, not pay — not even so much as a word of official praise and comfort.

Long ago, Dantai Yajing’s father had told him: they were no longer guarding the frontier for the Emperor. They were guarding it for the people of the Central Plains.

“Your Majesty, on the day we march out, I would like to ask you to issue a decree summoning all those who visited Yibin Garden today to the palace for a council of war.”

Hearing this, the Emperor was visibly surprised.

He picked up his teacup and took a sip, using those brief seconds to quickly think through what Dantai Yajing’s words implied.

“You mean to say…”

The Emperor set down his cup. “You don’t intend to use a single one of them?”

Dantai Yajing nodded. “Not a single one.”

The Emperor said, “Whatever I may think of them, they each command their own divisions. If you don’t use them, the soldiers under them won’t be so easy to deploy.”

Dantai Yajing said, “I only need Your Majesty’s help with this one thing. Everything else, I will handle myself.”

The Emperor gave a nod. “This much isn’t difficult. I’ll do it.”

Dantai Yajing cupped his fists in salute. “Thank you for your help, Your Majesty.”

Seeing that Dantai Yajing was about to leave, the Emperor called after him. “Don’t be in such a hurry. Go back and you’ll just be pestered by those people again. Stay and talk with me a little. Have dinner while you’re at it.”

Dantai Yajing did not refuse. He returned to his seat.

The Emperor asked, “How is the great General?”

Dantai Yajing answered, “Very well.”

The Emperor made a sound of acknowledgment, rose, and poured a cup of tea for Dantai Yajing. “I know perfectly well that if it were not for the Dantai clan holding the northwest, the great Chu dynasty — even with Prince Wu campaigning in all directions — could never have lasted to this day.”

“The Black Wu men are tigers and leopards; the western region peoples are jackals and wolves. More vicious than tigers and leopards, they strike in packs — they would have gnawed the Central Plains down to bare bone without leaving a splinter.”

The Emperor breathed out slowly. “When the peoples of the dozens of western regions brought chaos to the Central Plains, rivers of blood flowed through the land. Those they slaughtered numbered in the hundreds of millions — counting north and south of the Yangtze together, fewer than two in ten survived. In Jizhou alone, a thousand li of empty land, not a soul.”

Dantai Yajing could not tell where the Emperor was going with this, so he said nothing, and simply listened.

The Emperor continued. “Before the Ning King Li Chi had yet risen to prominence in the northern frontier, someone once petitioned the late Emperor to ask whether the Liangzhou army should be recalled to the interior to suppress the Jizhou insurgency.”

Hearing those words, Dantai Yajing’s eyes narrowed.

The Emperor continued. “My father refused. He said that as long as the Dantai clan held the northwest, no matter how chaotic the Central Plains became, it would not fall into western hands. If the Liangzhou iron army entered the pass, the western frontier would be lost, and the Central Plains would fall into real chaos.”

He looked at Dantai Yajing. “Early in my own reign, there were those who urged me too — recall the western frontier armies and the Liangzhou forces to put down the Jizhou rebellion. I refused as well. My father’s words were still in my ear… And you probably don’t know this — at the time, the Youzhou Commander Luo Geng petitioned me three times. He said that at a word from me, he would march south and crush the rebellion. Three times I refused him.”

The Emperor paused. He lifted his teacup but did not drink — he held it at his lips, then set it back down.

“In his first memorial, he wrote that the north was on the verge of chaos, and he wished to lead the northern frontier army south to quell the rebels, pledging to hold Jiangnan against all threats. I wrote back to him: hold your post at the frontier. The quelling of rebellions is Prince Wu’s affair.”

“In his second memorial, he wrote that the north could be abandoned, Jizhou could be abandoned — Jiangnan was what truly mattered. And from that moment, I did not like him. I stopped liking him from then on.”

Dantai Yajing frowned slightly, thinking back. The reason Prince Wu had been able to scheme against Commander Luo Geng was probably, in part, because the Emperor had already soured on him.

At the time, Luo Geng had been arrogant, certain that with his Youzhou cavalry and his one hundred thousand border troops, he could force the Emperor to grant him a princedom.

Had the Emperor agreed to Luo Geng’s proposal, and the border army completely abandoned the northern frontier, both Jizhou and Yanzhou would very likely have fallen to the Black Wu people.

Luo Geng’s calculation was probably to bring one hundred thousand elite soldiers south while Prince Wu campaigned east and west — leaving him to hold Yuzhou, or even garrison Jingzhou, and from there become second only to the Emperor.

He may not have harbored ambitions for the throne himself, but he had almost certainly thought of paving the way for his son Luo Jing.

Luo Jing, for his part, had no understanding of what his father had truly been planning — because Luo Geng was mercurial by nature and never let his son inquire into his affairs. From the time Luo Jing was small, Luo Geng had raised him as he raised soldiers: follow orders and ask no questions.

This had resulted in Luo Jing doing exactly as he was told in all things. When told to follow Prince Feather south, he went. When called back, he came. He never knew his father’s final scheme; never knew why his father was always filled with a smoldering discontent; never knew why the Emperor had moved against his father the way he had.

The Emperor lifted his teacup again, drank, and this time kept it in both hands, warming his palms.

“I lost. And now I have accepted that loss. But it is not as though I had no other options.”

The Emperor said, “Rather the realm fall than the frontier armies be recalled — this was the ancestral injunction passed down through the Yang line.”

Dantai Yajing knew the Emperor was not wrong. Even now, if all of Chu’s frontier armies were counted together, the dynasty was still no small military force. The eastern, southern, and western frontier forces — setting aside the northern frontier forces the Emperor could no longer command — still amounted, by any reckoning, to a considerable number of battle-hardened soldiers. Perhaps not a million, but several hundred thousand, easily.

“You said you wanted me to do you a favor.” The Emperor looked at Dantai Yajing. “I can help — I’ve even given away the realm itself, so what is there I can’t help with? But I hope you will also do me one favor.”

Dantai Yajing said, “Please speak, Your Majesty.”

“I… did not mean to shortchange the frontier soldiers. It was simply that by the time the realm came to me, there was nothing left to give them…”

The Emperor lowered his head; his voice trembled slightly. “I have truly wanted to say sorry to every frontier soldier. The chance will probably never come. When the Ning King ascends the throne, I ask only that he treat them well. They held the frontier, and in so doing, they helped the Ning King claim the Central Plains. They have earned it.”

Dantai Yajing was unmoved by the Emperor’s manner. Those who had lived through enough blood and death were not to be swayed by a few spoken words.

“Your Majesty, in how to treat the frontier brothers, the Ning King has always done better than you — even when he had nothing.”

The Emperor looked up, his expression complicated.

Dantai Yajing continued. “Your Majesty says the frontier brothers also helped the Ning King win his victory. The Ning King will remember. The people will remember. And if the people cannot see it on their own, the Ning King will remind them — he will ask them to remember.”

He cupped his fists. “I’ll take my leave. Thank you for your help, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor made a soft sound of acknowledgment. “All right…”

After Dantai Yajing left the palace and stood alone on the street for a long while, the Emperor’s words, though they had not moved him, had still left a mark.

The greatest kindness the Yang family had ever shown the people of the Central Plains was summed up in four words: *do not move the frontier armies.*

He had always thought Yang Jing a pitiable man. After this conversation, he found him more pitiable still.

But what occupied his thoughts most was a sense of injustice on behalf of Luo Jing. His father’s death was in part the fruit his father himself had sown. The great General Luo, who had once made even the Black Wu people fear him, had spent his final years consumed by the hunger for power — and that was where the tragedy had begun.

Back at Yibin Garden, Dantai Yajing gathered all the commanders he had brought with him and held council through the second half of the night before they finally dispersed.

He set the date: in seven days, he would lead the army out of Dazing City and advance from south to north against the Yongzhou forces.

Whether he could lead those hundreds of thousands of demoralized Chu soldiers well in the battle seven days from now — that would be the crux of it all.

The next morning, he sent a rider out of the city to report the seven-day battle plan to the Ning King. Standing atop the walls of Dazing City and looking north, he could see the Yongzhou army’s encampments stretching into the distance like a series of massive mounds.

Perhaps others saw those as a range of unbroken mountains. In Dantai’s eyes, they were nothing but earthen graves.

“The Lord said this realm and its people cannot be handed to them.”

Dantai Yajing brought his hand down hard on the parapet.

“The only way to keep the realm from their hands is to make sure they are no longer in this world.”

—