The moment Gou Zi took to the sky, the tracking began. It was a tracker capable of driving anyone to despair.
Hearing one cry after another from the sky, Han Feibao instinctively looked upward.
When he saw that some kind of bird — he couldn’t tell what — had been following overhead all this time, rage rose in his chest.
He snatched a hard bow, drew it, and loosed several arrows at Gou Zi in quick succession.
But Gou Zi flew high.
The arrows, by all angles of calculation, should have been on target — they simply couldn’t reach.
He led the Yong Prefecture main force in flight ahead. Behind, Ning Army cavalry pursued without relenting.
If someone had been able to watch from a vantage point above, they might have felt a measure of confusion, perhaps even wanted to laugh.
Because the Yong Prefecture Army ahead still held a tremendous numerical advantage.
And the Ning Army cavalry chasing behind numbered only a quarter of the fleeing Yong Prefecture force.
But by this point — the will was broken, the morale shattered. Numbers no longer meant anything.
The fortunate thing was… Han Feibao was quite familiar with this kind of situation.
It was not the first or second time he had been chased by the Ning Army. His experience in running away was as rich as could be.
As he rode, he ordered his forces to disperse — one group to the left, one to the right, another to improvise on their own.
On horseback, he shed his cloak as fast as he could and had a personal guard put it on, then tossed his helmet as well, and ordered the soldier carrying his banner to take a different route.
Just like that, he actually managed to fool a bird.
Gou Zi had probably never imagined it could be deceived by a human. Those wretches — so brazen.
The Ning Army caught up with the banner that bore Han Feibao’s rank and surrounded the rider wearing his cloak.
Every one of them was a little incensed. The renowned overlord of the northwest — running like this, employing every trick in the book — and somewhere in the mix, there was almost a wistful sympathy for him.
Han Feibao led a unit and fled northwest without pause, running until the horses had no strength left to run before stopping.
He sent men up to high ground to scout, and once he confirmed there were no pursuing troops behind him, he finally let out a long breath.
It was a crushing defeat, yet he still managed to feel a flicker of relief.
When he learned that no pursuers had caught up, Han Feibao sat down hard on the ground, drawing great gulping breaths. Perhaps he was truly spent, because he simply lay flat on the earth.
Yuan Zhen, who had followed him the whole way, looked at the man he had done his best to serve — now sprawled there like that — and the contempt in his heart grew deeper still.
Yet what moved Yuan Zhen most profoundly was the Ning Army’s fighting strength.
He could understand a well-trained army. He could understand battlefield command. He could understand tactics and strategy.
But what he could not understand was the Ning Army’s spirit.
It was as though before the fight even began, they had already won — and they took it as a matter of course.
They carried a kind of absolute self-assurance, on the battlefield, that belonged to those who rule over it. Whether they held the numerical advantage or were badly outnumbered — it did not affect their confidence in the slightest.
The Black Wu Empire’s armies he knew well also possessed this quality — but compared to the Ning Army, there seemed to be something still lacking.
And yet to say the Black Wu Imperial Army carried that kind of commanding presence was because the Empire had stood as the dominant power for hundreds of years.
The Black Wu Imperial Army walked wherever it went with the bearing of those who look down on all beneath them.
This Central Plains was in utter chaos. Why did the Ning Army carry that same presence?
He thought again of Tang Pidi’s assault just now, and Yuan Zhen sighed in spite of himself.
What makes soldiers formidable is not only the most effective and rigorous training. It is also the commanding presence of the one who leads them.
Perhaps every single person under Tang Pidi’s command — soldier or general — simply never considered losing to be among their options.
“Adviser Yuan.”
Han Feibao asked, after catching a few breaths, “What should we do now?”
Yuan Zhen cursed the man thoroughly in his heart, then spoke in a measured, temperate tone: “General Han need not worry. We have not truly been defeated — because we still have the north.”
He raised his hand and pointed northward. “The Iron Crane Tribe’s hundreds of thousands of cavalry are still fighting on the Nalan Grasslands. Now the General should gather his forces, set out from here northwest, and coordinate an inside-and-outside assault with the Iron Crane cavalry.”
The Nalan Grasslands lay to the northwest, and entering through the passes was not easy. Chu’s founding Emperor, though he had conquered those grasslands, had always feared a backlash. So he had reinforced the pass fortresses at the entry points into the grasslands and kept them garrisoned with heavy troops at all times.
Those fortresses now all belonged to Li Chi. The Ning Army had positioned forces at them as well.
So even if the Iron Crane Tribe seized the entire Nalan Grasslands, storming into Ji Prefecture would require breaking through those fortresses.
The Iron Crane Tribe’s cavalry were fierce fighters — but they had never been adept at siege warfare.
That was why Yuan Zhen had devised this strategy.
The Yong Prefecture Army had been beaten, but gathering up the scattered remnants, the force was still not negligible.
Move with all speed northwest, strike the pass fortresses from the inside to break them open, and receive the Iron Crane cavalry entering through the gates.
With that, the combined army of Han Feibao and the Iron Crane Tribe would still have a substantial chance of taking Ji Prefecture.
Han Feibao listened, considered for a moment, and nodded. “Then I’ll follow the Adviser’s plan.”
In truth, he wanted to go back to Yong Prefecture.
Only — thinking that the road northwest was the direction he needed to go anyway, and that attacking the fortresses had a chance of winning, and if it worked, there might still be hope for a foothold in the north…
And mainly because Yong Prefecture was truly too exhausted, truly unable to sustain a large-scale military force anymore.
And as long as he wasn’t fighting Tang Pidi, he felt there wasn’t much to fear.
So Han Feibao ordered scouts to be dispatched, to round up the scattered and routed soldiers and bring them back.
—
On the Ning Army’s side, after a great victory, the prisoners alone numbered nearly seventy to eighty thousand.
Though the Ning Army had swept the Yong Prefecture forces away like cutting through rotting wood, Tang Pidi’s force had in fact only amounted to several tens of thousands.
So the number of enemies killed was actually fewer than the number captured. Most of the Yong Prefecture Army had simply been frightened out of their wits.
And yet — several tens of thousands breaking hundreds of thousands, sweeping through like a scythe through weeds — a battle like this deserved to be recorded in the history books in the heaviest of ink.
A general walked quickly to Tang Pidi and clasped his fist. “General, the prisoners are all gathered and under guard. Awaiting the General’s orders on their disposal.”
Tang Pidi looked back. In the distance, a black mass of men knelt on the ground, stretching beyond sight.
“No survivors.”
Tang Pidi said these two words in a flat, even tone.
“Hm!”
The general responded and turned to run back toward the prisoners, calling as he went:
“General’s order — no survivors!”
And so this place became a slaughter ground.
The Ning Army had not yet counted the prisoners precisely, only estimating around seventy to eighty thousand. The actual number was likely higher.
So many lives — yet Tang Pidi’s heart held not a trace of mercy.
Only because… these enemies had been besieging the Prince of Ning.
Li Chi jumped down from his horse and walked to Tang Pidi. He glanced toward the distance first — over there, the Ning Army was busy at a frantic butcher’s work.
“All of them?”
Li Chi asked.
Tang Pidi said: “On any other battlefield, these prisoners might have been spared. But they were the ones besieging you — the ones trying to kill you. They cannot be left alive.”
Li Chi nodded. “Whatever you say.”
Tang Pidi looked Li Chi over from head to toe, slowly and carefully, because Li Chi was covered so thoroughly in blood.
“None of it’s mine.”
Li Chi smiled.
Tang Pidi gave a quiet hum. He said, seemingly as calm as ever: “Good.”
But in his eyes, the flicker of worry had faded away.
Behind them, on the slaughter ground, that terrible, bloody work continued.
And yet the world these two men stood in seemed impossibly quiet.
With a single sentence, Tang Pidi sent nearly a hundred thousand surrendered soldiers into hell — only because they had besieged Li Chi.
He wanted all under heaven to know: you fight me, and there may still be a road out.
You touch the Prince of Ning — you die. No exceptions.
He had to make every soul under heaven engrave this into their bones — that the Prince of Ning’s person was inviolable.
The wailing in the distance merged into one unbroken sound. The Yong Prefecture soldiers had already been disarmed and stripped of their armor.
They tried to resist, but what was the point? Being slaughtered by a Ning Army armed to the teeth, they had no path to survival.
Slaughter can turn men into demons. But on the battlefield, when an army earns the name of demon-army, the battle is already half-won before it begins.
In the distance, Gao Xining’s face was stricken with grief, for the Black Cavalry’s losses had been devastating.
Her guard Han Shanjie, along with four Qianban officers — all severely wounded. Whether they could be saved depended on fate.
Of the twelve hundred Black Cavalry who had charged into the enemy, more than eighty percent were casualties. Those still alive were nearly all wounded.
Stretchers carried the gravely injured past one after another, each one passing before her eyes.
Qianban officer Yu Hongyi lay on a stretcher. When it carried him past Gao Xining, he still managed to squeeze out a smile.
“Chief Tingwei — we didn’t bring shame to the Tingwei府.”
He made a great effort to raise his hand and give her a thumbs up.
Gao Xining nodded, firmly.
Every one of them bore more than a single wound. Medical officers ran alongside the stretchers, binding and treating them wherever they could.
The total casualties from this great battle were also devastating.
Of the forty thousand Ning soldiers defending the mountain town, in just a few days, over ten thousand had died or been wounded. They had killed perhaps seventy to eighty thousand Yong Prefecture soldiers.
The worst of the casualties came in the final two days of close combat, once the ramp was complete. Holding that gap had been done with human lives as the mortar.
In those last two days, the Ning Army suffered several thousand casualties each day. The Yong Prefecture forces lost over twenty thousand per day.
The Ning Army had not fought a battle this brutal in a very long time. And yet not one of them felt a shred of fear afterward.
As for the Yong Prefecture Army — after relentless assaults, their losses numbered at least seventy to eighty thousand. In the opening days, several thousand died per day; in the final two days, that number more than doubled.
After Tang Pidi’s arrival, the Yong Prefecture forces killed directly numbered roughly forty thousand, and the prisoners executed — seventy to eighty thousand.
Of the Yong Prefecture Army’s four hundred thousand, half had been killed.
Of the remainder who had scattered and fled, perhaps fifty percent. Han Feibao, even working to gather them back, probably couldn’t recover all of them.
So Tang Pidi estimated that Han Feibao, retreating while collecting his remnants, might patch together a force of around a hundred thousand or more.
That force would flee northwest. Thinking of what was happening on the Nalan Grasslands, Tang Pidi calculated that Han Feibao would make for the border fortresses.
He looked at Li Chi. “You go back and wait for me in Shu Prefecture — you can begin the siege. I’ll take the cavalry and pursue Han Feibao. He must be dealt with before he reaches the northwest.”
Li Chi nodded. “I’ve already sent word ahead to Ji Prefecture. Lord Lian’s forces will intercept from the northwest. And Tang Anchen — he will bring troops to block as well.”
Tang Pidi gave a quiet hum, then looked back at the slaughter ground.
Killing seventy to eighty thousand prisoners was not a quick affair.
The scent of blood on the wind poured into the nose, and would not leave for a long, long time.
He said, still in that utterly flat tone: “In Yong Prefecture, I’ll likely need to kill even more. Otherwise it won’t be enough to break their will.”
In truth, the precise way to put it was not that it wouldn’t be enough to break their will — it was that a lesser killing would not be enough to make men’s bones go cold with fear.
—