The study.

Cheng Wujie entered and bowed to Tang Pidi. “Grand General, the Bohai envoys have departed.”

Tang Pidi smiled slightly. “Well done.”

He had more or less heard what Cheng Wujie said in the outer hall. Whatever Piao Henmeng brought back and relayed to the Bohai King, Piao Pushan would have to make a judgment.

“Grand General.”

Cheng Wujie sat and asked, “Do you think the Bohai people will agree?”

Tang Pidi set down his book. “If you were Piao Pushan, and Piao Henmeng came back and laid out everything in detail — what would you choose?”

Cheng Wujie, rough-looking as he was, had always possessed a careful and precise mind. He sat in thought for a moment, then said, “If I were Piao Pushan, I would most likely stall.”

Tang Pidi smiled and nodded. “My guess exactly.”

Once Piao Henmeng returned, Piao Pushan’s first reaction would be to rage — but rage would accomplish nothing. After cooling down and thinking it through, he would surely send Piao Henmeng back, telling Tang Pidi that the Bohai King had agreed to the terms.

And then he would drag his feet. The Bohai likely figured that with so many troops stationed at the Yanzhou border, Tang Pidi couldn’t sustain it indefinitely — sooner or later he’d have to pull back. And in the meantime: you want eight hundred thousand young men and women? Fine, we agree. But gathering them takes time. You have to give us that, at least.

Keep the attitude impeccable and agree to everything in principle — but how long the stalling lasted would be entirely up to Bohai.

And if, in the middle of all that stalling, they managed to mend ties with Heiwu — then Bohai could hold its head up again.

“Then…”

Cheng Wujie asked Tang Pidi, “Grand General, there’s no point in us waiting around either. If we’re going to fight, let’s fight. Once we’ve hurt them badly enough, they won’t dare stall.”

Tang Pidi said, “Time it right — the moment Piao Henmeng has left the Bohai border, take your troops and attack.”

Tang Pidi walked to the map and pointed. There lay the Bohai border pass, now renamed Jintang Pass.

The name was Piao Pushan’s doing — the new king had picked up a smattering of Central Plains culture and, taken with the phrase “impregnable as gold and boiling water,” renamed the pass in hopes of good fortune.

Tang Pidi tapped the location. “Bohai has no fewer than fifty thousand troops stationed here. What’s your estimate — how long to take it?”

Cheng Wujie thought it through carefully and said, “Grand General, with my own troops leading the assault, I’d estimate roughly ten days.”

Tang Pidi said, “No need to swear an oath on it. I’m only asking your read. Go and fight without pressure.”

Cheng Wujie saluted. “I’ll go prepare at once.”

Tang Pidi made a sound of acknowledgment and let his gaze drift back to the map.

His reasoning for asking Cheng Wujie to negotiate the terms was this: taking eight hundred thousand young laborers out of Bohai was far more valuable than squeezing a lump sum of silver out of them. At Bohai’s level of wealth, draining them of every drop would still barely yield anything worth counting.

By his rough estimate, the eight hundred million taels of silver he’d demanded at the end — just that alone would likely require the entire kingdom’s resources to scrape together.

But if he could take away eight hundred thousand young laborers in one sweep, Bohai’s vitality would be shattered in an instant.

Bohai people were accustomed to poverty. They weren’t afraid of being poor. At their level of destitution, ordinary households had nothing to begin with. How much worse could it get? At worst, they’d die of poverty — as if dying of poverty were some new fate for them.

But if eight hundred thousand laborers were genuinely taken away from a kingdom already bled dry by years of war, Bohai wouldn’t be able to recover for ten, possibly twenty, years.

And those eight hundred thousand laborers brought to the Central Plains, distributed to rebuild the northern frontier and construct the great roads — the value was immense. It would compensate for the massive loss of manpower in the north from years of war, while letting the Central Plains people quietly get on with their lives.

But Tang Pidi knew Bohai all too well. The reason they feared Heiwu down to their bones was that Heiwu had slaughtered them not once but many times over. Central Plains people had always been, at heart, inclined toward mercy — even in vengeance, they tended toward a kind of settling of accounts. You wronged me, I hit you back. Now we’re even.

Whether that was good or bad was hard to say. It wasn’t exactly wrong — but it wasn’t entirely right either.

Bohai would invade Yanzhou; the Chu army would beat them back. You hit me once, I hit you once, and that’s that. Heiwu was different: whether you provoke us or not, we will bully you, without end. So Bohai feared Heiwu and not the Central Plains — because they’d been neighbors with Central Plains people too long and understood them too well.

In Tang Pidi’s view, if this we’re even mentality persisted, it would be the very shackle that prevented a great empire from becoming a true hegemon. Without it — you strike me, I strike back; you don’t strike me, I may still strike you — that kind of overbearing dominance was what turned a nation into the kind of power that made smaller nations fear it in their bones, the way smaller nations feared Heiwu.

During the Chu era, scholars would proudly declare that the surrounding barbarian nations held Great Chu in boundless awe and admiration. People felt proud hearing it. But was it true? No. Those neighboring peoples never admired Chu. They may have coveted it, resented it, nursed hatred in silence — at best they flattered it. But they never truly admired it.

Tang Pidi believed this carrot and stick approach was one of the root causes of Chu’s failure to manage its neighbors.

In his mind, toward these incorrigible small kingdoms, the empire should never think in terms of carrot and stick. You had to make them remember — branded into their bones — that one act of defiance meant no more goodwill from the Central Plains empire, ever. Only punishment. Either constant, relentless pressure, or one blow to extinguish them entirely.

If you had to call it carrot and stick, then the carrot was simply: I haven’t thought of hitting you lately. That’s the carrot.

That was Tang Pidi’s ideal posture toward a kingdom like Bohai.

Bohai was different from other neighboring states — remote and desperately poor. Conquering it right now served no purpose. Elsewhere was another matter: the Marquis of Guanting had founded the Southern Yue Kingdom, and the Prince of Ning had promised not to attack him for now. But the future generations of the Ning dynasty? They could still take it back whenever they pleased. That land was a region of water and grain — worth having.

Thinking along those lines, the Great Ning that Li Chi was building might one day grow into something of incomparable might. At that point, attacking Bohai wouldn’t be a question of whether it was worth it — it would simply be: you have no right to exist. So you cease to.

The Bohai land itself might not even be worth keeping. It could be made into an exile zone — a place to send convicts. That would do.

All of that was part of why Tang Pidi held toward Bohai an aversion that could not be diminished.

So regardless of whether Piao Pushan intended to hand over the eight hundred thousand laborers or not — even if he did so immediately and without complaint — Tang Pidi would still take a swing at them.

A lowlife picks a fight with you. You beat the lowlife. Then you reason with him — you shouldn’t have provoked me, and I shouldn’t have hit you, but if you apologize and swear you’ll never do it again, I’ll let it go. You’re struggling? I might even toss you a meal. Do you think that lowlife will be moved? Of course not. Because a lowlife is a lowlife — a decent person might respond differently, but a lowlife never changes.

That same lowlife provokes you, and you hit him. The next day you see him, you hit him. The day after, you hit him again. Before long, even when you want to see that lowlife, he becomes rather difficult to find — because he’ll be hiding from you.

So, seven days later, the Ning army began its assault on Jintang Pass.

Fourteen days later — seven days after the attack began — Cheng Wujie’s forces broke through Jintang Pass and captured Piao Henyong alive.

Grand General’s central command tent.

Piao Henyong was shoved through the entrance and stumbled forward, dropping to his knees with a thud.

“Grand General…”

Piao Henyong glanced up at Tang Pidi, then quickly lowered his head again.

“Grand General… what is the meaning of this? Were we not in negotiations? We were doing our utmost to find a way to meet your conditions — how could you launch a sudden attack on Jintang Pass?”

Tang Pidi looked at him and replied in a few words.

“Had nothing better to do.”

You attacked my pass because you had nothing better to do?

Had Piao Henyong truly lived up to his name, he might have leapt to his feet and jabbed a finger in Tang Pidi’s face — you’re a real piece of work. But Piao Henyong was not, in fact, very fierce. Far from daring to jump up and curse the man, he couldn’t even bring himself to hold Tang Pidi’s gaze for long.

Cheng Wujie looked at Piao Henyong and said, “Let me explain how our Ning army operates. We can’t sit idle for more than seven days. Seven days is the limit — then we have to find something to do.”

He crouched down in front of Piao Henyong. “Seven days for Jintang Pass. Next, we rest for seven days. If your Bohai King has shown no meaningful gesture of sincerity by then, the next city gets attacked.”

Cheng Wujie rose and looked at Tang Pidi. “Grand General, what do we do with this one?”

Tang Pidi looked at Piao Henyong. His voice was flat.

“Let him go.”

Piao Henyong couldn’t believe it. He stared at Tang Pidi, dumbfounded. “Grand General — you’re releasing me?”

Tang Pidi didn’t bother to speak again. He simply waved his hand.

Cheng Wujie gestured for Piao Henyong to get up and go. Piao Henyong still couldn’t quite believe it — he half-expected to walk out that tent flap and immediately lose his head. But he stepped outside, and no one moved. The Ning soldiers nearby didn’t so much as glance at him.

Never mind in Tang Pidi’s eyes — even in the eyes of ordinary Ning soldiers, this man wasn’t worth a second look.

“General Cheng — you’re really just letting me walk away?”

Piao Henyong still couldn’t quite trust it, and asked, quietly and carefully.

Cheng Wujie smiled. “The Grand General released you. Of course you can go.”

Piao Henyong thought about it. Could it be that Tang Pidi is trying to win me over?

The moment the thought surfaced, he went rigid with nerves, his mind spinning in an instant.

It was as though two people had sprung up inside him and begun to argue at once. One said: you cannot betray the Bohai King. The other said: the Ning army is offering you rank and wealth — why wouldn’t you take it? One side was loyalty, kinship, duty. The other was fortune, freedom, a life of comfort and ease.

The inner war came fast and hard.

Cheng Wujie watched him standing there, not speaking, not moving, face cycling through expressions. Curiosity got the better of him.

“Why haven’t you left yet?”

Piao Henyong ventured carefully, “General Cheng — the Grand General releasing me like this, is it because… he wants me to do something for him?”

Cheng Wujie blinked, then understood exactly where this man’s mind had gone.

Cheng Wujie smiled. “So you’re that curious about why, and that desperate for an answer? Very well — since you asked, I’ll tell you.”

He said, “The reason the Grand General let you go is simply that you’re useless. Keeping you here, not killing you, wastes our rations. Letting you go — even if you go back and lead troops again — is nothing to concern ourselves with.”

He patted Piao Henyong on the shoulder. “But I’ll offer you one piece of friendly advice: make sure there is no second time you end up in the Grand General’s hands.”

At that moment, whatever bone of stubbornness Piao Henyong had in him surfaced. He looked at Cheng Wujie and said, “General Cheng, that’s a bit much to say, surely… Think about it — what if there is a use for me? Guiding the army, for instance. I’m actually quite good at that.”