By the time Pei Jinglun came to see Li Chi, it was already noon the following day. He hadn’t expected to sleep so long.

What surprised him even more was that the most restful and unbroken sleep he’d had in the past year and a half — the longest stretch of it — had happened right here, in the enemy’s camp.

So when he woke, he sat in a daze for quite a while, one question turning over and over in his mind: *Had I already wanted to surrender long ago?*

The reason it kept turning over was that it dragged so many other thoughts with it.

If he had wanted to surrender all along, what did that say about him?

It meant his resolve to resist might have been insufficient from the start. It meant his desire to follow Pei Qi and carve out a kingdom had never been strong. It meant he perhaps hadn’t believed in the promises Pei Qi had made him — or perhaps had never truly believed he was meant to be an emperor’s heir.

When he woke, he found a fresh set of clothes laid out beside him. He had bathed the night before and then fallen straight to sleep; what had happened after that, he had no idea. That sleep had been deeper than any drunken slumber — it was as though a small stretch of memory had simply vanished.

After changing and stepping out of the tent, he looked up at Meishan — the mountain he had defended for a year and a half — and had the strange impression that it had snowed.

Nearly half the mountain had turned white.

But he quickly realized his mistake. What snow falls from the foot of a mountain upward?

It was the Ning Army spreading quicklime across Meishan. Only a day and a night had passed, and already they had moved this fast.

*Fast* meant the Ning Army’s logistical support was suffocating in its strength. Both forces had spent a year and a half at this standoff, and yet the Ning Army’s supplies had remained abundant throughout — and they had managed to procure such enormous quantities of quicklime in so short a time. How could one not be astonished? How could one not feel a grudging admiration?

All the more so because the Ning Army’s material consumption over those eighteen months had far outstripped that of the Shu forces in the Meishan camp.

Inside the main command tent, Li Chi stood before a map, discussing something with Xiahou Zhuo and the others. When his guard reported that Pei Jinglun had arrived, Li Chi told him to come in at once.

Before Pei Jinglun even entered the tent, he caught sight of the enormous sand table housed in a covered shelter nearby — a near-perfect replica of the entire Meishan range, rendered in remarkable detail.

Such meticulous preparation moved him.

The Ning Army had never launched an assault on the mountain, and yet they had long since made every preparation for one.

As Pei Jinglun passed the sand table, he paused to look. He could see the attack routes the Ning Army had laid out.

His heart gave a lurch.

Under this arrangement, taking Meishan would not have been especially difficult. And yet the Ning Army had chosen instead to spend a fortune in grain and supplies on a siege, never once attacking.

In that moment, Pei Jinglun suddenly understood.

The Ning Prince, Li Chi, had not ordered an assault. He had kept the mountain surrounded for a year and a half not to slowly starve the Shu forces to death — but because he did not want his own army to suffer heavy casualties.

Pei Jinglun thought to himself: if it had been his father, Pei Qi, would he have made that choice?

“Sit down,” Li Chi said casually, then turned back to his discussion with Xiahou Zhuo and the others.

“I… pay my respects to the Ning Prince.” Pei Jinglun mustered his courage and managed a salute.

“No need for ceremony. I still need a moment here — take a seat.”

Li Chi answered offhandedly and returned to the conversation. They seemed entirely unconcerned about being overheard; the strategy being discussed was aimed at Meicheng, and they showed not the slightest worry that Pei Jinglun might be listening.

Before long, Xiahou Zhuo and the others accepted their orders and departed — signaling that the two hundred thousand Ning troops would march on Meicheng.

Li Chi walked over and sat across from Pei Jinglun, who immediately rose and bowed again.

This was Pei Jinglun’s first time seeing the Ning Prince at such close range — this young sovereign already known and revered across the realm.

That was the truth of it. He had not declared himself Emperor, and yet he was already the true master of the Central Plains.

There were so many stories about the Ning Prince. When Pei Qi had ordered propaganda about him, he had wanted Li Chi portrayed as a brutal and ruthless figure. But someone of Pei Jinglun’s standing — how could he not know the reality?

In Pei Qi’s study, there were volumes of intelligence dossiers on the Ning Prince, Li Chi. Pei Jinglun had read all of them.

It was precisely *because* he understood that he now found something unexpected stirring within himself — he, who had always considered himself self-assured, felt in the presence of a true superior an urge to submit that he simply could not suppress.

The bow, the posture, the demeanor, even the slight inability to speak — all of it was an expression of that impulse. He didn’t recognize it yet, not consciously. Perhaps one day, in some future moment, it would come back to him and he would understand.

“Sit. Speak freely.”

Li Chi sat down and had someone pour Pei Jinglun a cup of tea.

“There’s nothing especially important to discuss,” Li Chi said with a mild smile. “I only wanted to ask what you’d like to do. Return to Meicheng? Go somewhere else? Or stay?”

Pei Jinglun looked up at him, his eyes wide with shock.

“I… I can *leave*?”

The words came out halting.

Li Chi nodded. “You never killed any of my soldiers in battle, and your forces never struck down any of my Ning troops. You have no guilt to account for, and so you are free to go.”

“But…” Pei Jinglun said slowly. “I heard your battle plans just now.”

“No matter,” said Li Chi.

Just two words.

That confidence — so vast it bordered on the unreasonable — struck Pei Jinglun somewhere deep.

After a moment, he couldn’t help asking: “Ning Prince — for Meishan, you chose a siege without assault. For Meicheng, I just heard that you intend to attack directly. Why not lay siege there as well?”

“Because Pei Qi is not you,” said Li Chi.

Pei Jinglun didn’t immediately understand what the Ning Prince meant.

Li Chi rose, walked to the writing table to one side, and returned with a thick stack of dossiers, which he set on the table before Pei Jinglun.

Pei Jinglun instinctively opened one and looked inside — and his expression changed.

Everything recorded in it was about him.

“Before I decided on a siege without assault,” Li Chi said, “these dossiers were already spread before me. What I learned about you made me judge that you might surrender out of compassion for your soldiers — though in the end you didn’t. But the other reason for the siege, the more important one, was that I did not want my own men to suffer too greatly.”

He turned and gestured toward another thick stack of dossiers on the table. “Those are about your father, Pei Qi.”

Pei Jinglun was so shaken he couldn’t find words. He supposed he should have expected this — and yet, having it laid out before him, the shock was still impossible to suppress.

His father had been doing the same thing. In Pei Qi’s study, the dossiers on the Ning Prince were no fewer than these — perhaps even more. And yet the shock was there all the same. He didn’t quite know why.

“Your father will not surrender. And if I chose another siege, it would take roughly three years before Meicheng exhausted its provisions. At that point — what do you imagine your father would do, to ensure his soldiers still had the strength to fight?”

Pei Jinglun could have answered that without much thought, but he did not want to. He did not dare.

Because the answer was too cruel.

He wouldn’t even need to wait for the provisions to run out. His father would have ordered that food no longer be distributed to the city’s civilians long before that. Even if every last commoner starved to death, Pei Qi would reserve the grain for his army — to hold on one more day, and then one more.

“There is one more thing,” Li Chi said, his tone level. “Given who I am now, I can stand at a height from which to pass judgment on him. Do you understand?”

Pei Jinglun understood. When the ownership of the realm had become clear, the victor was naturally entitled to stand at such a height and judge the defeated.

Li Chi didn’t need to spell it out any further. Someone as sharp as Pei Jinglun would understand.

In that judgment, Pei Qi was not only the loser — he was a man of cruelty and malice, a great villain. Every death from every battle Pei Qi had ever fought, soldiers and civilians alike, would be laid at his feet.

Such a man had to be subdued by force. That was the only fitting verdict.

“I…”

Pei Jinglun opened his mouth, but found he did not know what to choose. The Ning Prince had just said he could leave — but for a moment he had no idea where to go.

Back to Meicheng?

No. He would not go back. He would have no way to face anyone there, and then be forced to live through another defeat.

Li Chi was in no hurry. He simply waited in silence.

A long while passed, and Pei Jinglun still hadn’t answered the question of what he would choose. Instead he asked the question he most wanted to ask.

“Ning Prince — why did you not kill me? The fact that there was no battle is no reason to spare me.”

Li Chi rested a hand on the dossiers. “What is recorded here tells me that you are a man who regards the common people as worth something. In your Meishan camp, there was not a single conscripted laborer. And when you knew the provisions could no longer hold, you ordered all the craftsmen and rivermen in your river encampment to be released.”

Li Chi drew one dossier from the stack, opened it to a page, and handed it to Pei Jinglun.

“In your youth, you were known for acts of generosity. The people you helped were always the poor and the destitute.”

“You were originally from Zhongzhou. By the time you were ten or so, the local people already held you in high regard.”

“It was only later that Pei Qi took you in as his heir — but you returned to Zhongzhou once or twice a year, to see your birth parents…”

He looked at Pei Jinglun. “I have great need of many people like you — to bring peace and governance to the people of Shu.”

Li Chi rose and paced slowly about the tent.

“I employ people without regard for their origins. I look only at character and ability — character before ability, ability before birth. You were an enemy general, that is true. But you could just as well become a local official who brings real benefit to the people of Shu.”

“Zhongzhou has already been taken by my general, Tantai Yajing. That region is in desperate need of officials who can govern…”

He had barely finished the sentence before Pei Jinglun was already on his feet. “I will go!”

Li Chi looked back at him. “Because your parents are in Zhongzhou?”

Pei Jinglun nodded. “Yes.”

Li Chi smiled.

A man with more calculation in him, in this moment, would have given a far more impressive answer. Something like: *Not only for my parents — I wish to do something for the people as well.*

But Pei Jinglun’s answer was a single word.

“I can release you unconditionally,” Li Chi said, “because you caused no great losses to my army on the battlefield. But to appoint you as an official — that I have conditions for.”

Pei Jinglun bowed. “Please speak, Ning Prince.”

Li Chi stepped forward, and said slowly and clearly: “I give you two years. When this time next year comes around again — no, when the year after that comes — I will send someone to Zhongzhou to make discreet inquiries. If by then the people of Zhongzhou cannot be said to have every household with money in reserve and grain in store, you will be put to death.”

Pei Jinglun was silent for a moment. There seemed to be a flicker of hesitation.

But quickly, he clasped his hands before him. “I accept.”

Li Chi gave a brief sound of acknowledgment. “Choose three hundred men from your own troops to serve as your personal guard. Once you’ve selected them, make for Zhongzhou to take up your post.”

“I… I can take my own men?”

“Would you rather take mine?” Li Chi gave a slight smile. “You couldn’t afford their pay.”

In that moment, Pei Jinglun’s eyes went faintly red. He thought he was beginning to understand why it was the Ning Prince who would ultimately possess this realm.

He stepped back two paces, dropped to his knees, and swept his robes aside.

“This subject swears to give his life in service, without reservation!”

—