The Ning army’s capture of Qingmian County was effortless — because Pei Qi had withdrawn all its garrison troops in advance.

Abandoning a county seat meant little to Pei Qi at this point. He had already lost Kaoshan Pass; why would he care about a small county town? The fall of Kaoshan Pass was tantamount to throwing open the gates of Shu Province — Qingmian County was nothing more than a grain of sand.

When the Ning army moved into Qingmian County, they found it a wasteland.

Before withdrawing, the Yong Province army had destroyed nearly everything they could, unwilling to leave even a single plank of wood behind. Every house had been burned to the ground. Not a living soul remained in the city.

Li Chi ordered his men to search for the bodies of the Tingwei soldiers — the two hundred Tingwei officers who had perished there.

But the city had been reduced to this state of ruin, and nothing could be found.

Fang Biehan said the bodies had been buried in an abandoned courtyard in the eastern part of the city, but he hadn’t been present at the time and didn’t know which courtyard.

Everything was now ash. Finding them would be exceedingly difficult.

Yet Li Chi issued the order: dig up every courtyard in the eastern district until the remains were uncovered.

For two full days, six thousand soldiers were mobilized. At last, the bodies of the Tingwei officers were found.

Though much time had passed and the corpses had long since decomposed — impossible to identify individually — the marks on the bones told their story. Every one of them had suffered tremendous torment before death. From the wounds carved into their skeletons, it was clear that the vast majority of those who had fallen in battle had been hacked to death, their very bones riddled with scars.

The bodies were placed in coffins and reburied outside the city. A black Tingwei banner was draped over each casket. With Gao Xining at their head, the Tingwei soldiers stood at attention and rendered a military salute as the coffins were lowered into the earth.

One day later, on the city wall.

Li Chi rested his hands on the battlements and gazed into the distance. Xiahou Zhuo stood at his side.

“When our enemies begin burning their own homeland to stop us,” Li Chi said, his hand patting the parapet, “their fear has already seeped into their bones.”

“Send men out in all directions. Spread word among the populace: any Shu Province civilian who hangs a red cloth from their door when their city falls will be spared.”

When he finished, Li Chi looked to Yu Jiuling: “Have the Guiyuan Division send agents as deep as they can go — scout not only the direction of our advance, but every other direction as well.”

Yu Jiuling acknowledged the order and turned to leave.

Xiahou Zhuo said, “The two hardest places to crack will be Xiushan and Hubi Pass.”

Li Chi nodded. He had already thought carefully about both.

Hubi Pass sat astride a vital chokepoint. If the Ning army was to push further into Shu Province, it had to fall. To the east of Hubi Pass rose Xiushan — the very mountain where Pei Qi had once tried to make use of Han Feibao.

Xiushan was not particularly tall, nor especially rugged. It sat upon the earth like an enormous steamed bun.

Yet any force stationed on that mountain could rain blows from on high upon the Ning army marching along the road below — and such terrain made it fiendishly difficult to assault.

Xiushan had no sheer cliffs, it was true. Its rounded shape made it susceptible to attacks from all sides. But the price of taking it would be catastrophic.

On such terrain, defenders could dig ring after ring of trenches, concealing themselves within to shoot downward with arrows — perfectly sheltered. Meanwhile, the Ning attackers charging uphill could barely see the Yong Province soldiers hunkered in those trenches.

With sufficient food and weapons, even a force of ten thousand could hold this ground against the entire Ning army.

“Send for Fang Biehan.”

Li Chi called over his shoulder.

A moment later, Fang Biehan — vice commander of the Wolf Ape Battalion — came sprinting up the city wall and jogged to Li Chi’s side.

“My lord.”

He bowed.

“Do you know the terrain of Xiushan?” Li Chi asked.

Fang Biehan nodded. “Well. The road from Qingmian County to Meicheng passes through it — I’ve traveled that way many times.”

“Can you sketch Xiushan’s terrain?”

“I can.”

Fang Biehan accepted a stick of charcoal, crouched down, and began drawing right there on the stone floor of the wall.

As someone who had qualified — and by some reckoning more than qualified — to become a Central Staff Officer in the command tent, Fang Biehan had been shaped by his training and experience into a man of many capabilities. Mapmaking was one of the most basic.

“Xiushan is essentially one enormous fortress,” he said as he drew. “It looks like we could assault it from all four sides, but even if we succeeded, the casualties would be unacceptable.”

He marked out the defensive positions he considered most viable.

“If it were me, I’d deploy here — and here. We could hold out until they gave up, or until we fought to the last man.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Li Chi asked.

Fang Biehan nodded. “I do.”

Both Li Chi and Xiahou Zhuo looked at him, waiting.

“Had this been a month ago, this place would have been a nightmare regardless,” Fang Biehan said. “But it’s late autumn now.”

He met Li Chi’s gaze. “In Shu Province, half the region stays mild even in winter — trees and grass stay green year-round. But here, where we are now, in late autumn, most of the grass has already dried and died.”

At these words, Li Chi and Xiahou Zhuo almost simultaneously curled the corners of their lips.

“Tomorrow we go see the terrain for ourselves.”

Li Chi turned to Fang Biehan. “Get some clothes — make sure no one can tell at a glance that we’re not from Shu Province.”

Fang Biehan gave a quick nod. “Leave it to me.”

Early the following morning, Fang Biehan sourced a set of clothes from nearby villages and brought them to Li Chi. Once everyone had changed, Li Chi led his personal guard battalion westward. When they were still a few dozen li from Xiushan, they left the main road.

The column moved through the open country, guided by Fang Biehan so they wouldn’t lose their way.

Drawing close to Xiushan, they halted in a grove of trees to rest. Li Chi and Xiahou Zhuo took a handful of men out of the grove and made their way on foot to a nearby rise.

They lay flat at the top of the slope, using the dry grass for cover, and peered up at Xiushan.

“I don’t know who’s leading up there, but they’re a troublesome sort — mind like a razor.”

Li Chi muttered to himself as he watched.

Fang Biehan’s idea had been this: Xiushan was nearly treeless, but choked with wild grass. If the Yong Province army were holding the mountain, fire attack would be the natural approach.

But when they arrived, they found the mountain stripped bare — dark, scorched earth still visible in patches. The Yong Province army had burned off all the wild grass themselves before establishing their defenses.

“Not entirely fruitless,” Xiahou Zhuo murmured. “On a slope like this, they can’t set up any heavy defensive weapons — they’re limited to bows and arrows.”

Siege crossbows couldn’t be mounted on that kind of incline.

“Look over there.”

Li Chi pointed.

Xiahou Zhuo followed his gaze and felt his heart sink.

A massive stockpile of logs had been gathered in that direction. On a slope like Xiushan’s, rolling logs would be brutally effective against an attacking force.

No fire attack. A direct assault would be devastating. It was, indeed, a headache.

Li Chi studied the mountain for a long moment, then waved his hand, signaling the group to pull back from the slope.

“Hard to gauge their numbers. The trenches must already be dug.”

“Shall we circle around to the back of the mountain?” Xiahou Zhuo asked.

“No need,” Fang Biehan said. “This place looks nearly the same from every angle. If the defenders are already in position, the back is just as ready.”

Li Chi gestured toward the grove. “Back in. We’ll talk there.”

They returned to the trees and waited for nightfall before setting out, retracing their steps along the way they had come back to Qingmian County.

—

The general commanding the Yong Province forces on Xiushan was Yao Zhiyuan — a renowned Shu Province commander whom Pei Qi had stationed to defend Hubi Pass. Pei Qi had dispatched him to Xiushan instead.

The man had joined the army in his teens, driven there simply by poverty — soldiering meant three meals a day.

He had little schooling in his youth, yet his capacity for learning was staggering. In the barracks, he found literate men to teach him and needed to be shown things only once. Later, when he sought out scholars for discussion, they all looked down on him at first — until they discovered that his observations and insights were remarkably acute.

He was also exceptionally driven. When he enlisted, he knew nothing of martial arts — only that he was sharp and quick. Even without any foundation in combat training, he could hold his own against seasoned veterans, and eventually win.

After joining the army, he trained relentlessly. Within a single year, he had become the strongest fighter in his entire battalion.

In his early twenties, he was noticed by Gao Guangxiao — another celebrated Shu Province general — who elevated him to serve as a personal bodyguard.

Later, when Gao Guangxiao led an expedition to suppress a group of bandits, he sent Yao Zhiyuan with a scouting team to reconnoiter. To everyone’s astonishment, Yao Zhiyuan took it upon himself to raid the bandit camp that very night. With only a few dozen men, he routed a mountain bandit force several thousand strong.

Gao Guangxiao was so impressed he bent the rules and promoted Yao Zhiyuan to the rank of colonel, giving him command of over three hundred soldiers.

After the collapse of the Great Chu, Shu Province had not always been Pei Qi’s domain alone. When the great noble houses saw the dynasty crumbling, they all began raising their own armies with ambitions of carving out kingdoms.

Pei Qi, watching this, ordered Gao Guangxiao to march. Yao Zhiyuan was the vanguard commander.

The campaign lasted three years. In those three years, Yao Zhiyuan fought battle after battle without a single defeat. In three years, he brought every rival faction in Shu Province to heel — and thus secured Pei Qi’s absolute dominance over the region. All those great families who obeyed Pei Qi’s every word: Yao Zhiyuan’s contribution was indispensable.

He could have remained in command at Hubi Pass. But he knew that without a senior commander on Xiushan, the garrison’s morale would collapse — they would feel abandoned, as though no one cared what happened to them.

But if the commanding general stationed himself there in person, it would lift the spirit of the Yong Province troops. And Yao Zhiyuan’s reputation in Shu had weight — soldiers throughout the army had heard his name.

The summit of Xiushan had been leveled by Yao Zhiyuan’s men to create a flat clearing several dozen zhang across. That was where the command post stood — a handful of wooden sheds serving as the headquarters.

He never slept in those sheds. Rain or wind, he lived in the earthen dugouts alongside his soldiers.

Those dugouts weren’t merely for shelter. The mountain had been extensively excavated — trenches and burrows enough to withstand even a barrage from the Ning army’s trebuchets.

Yao Zhiyuan was not overly concerned about trebuchets. The trenches and dugouts he had ordered dug were deep enough to protect the men from their projectiles.

Now, at this moment, at the summit of Xiushan, Yao Zhiyuan stood gazing eastward.

By his reckoning, the Ning army’s main force would arrive within a matter of days.

Everyone in the realm knew the Ning army was undefeated. Yao Zhiyuan — who had never tasted defeat himself — found that he genuinely wanted to test them.

—