“Move when darkness falls.”

Liren looked at those around him, his eyes carrying a conviction he had never felt before.

“The first danger we face is not the enemy on Yunlai Island — it is the waterway. Men may die traveling the sea route at night.”

Liren paused, then continued. “But we must set out while the sky is still dark. We need to break the main gates before dawn and hold for at least half a shichen.”

He swept his gaze over the group once more. “Lord Wu has given me his word: after this battle, every survivor will be a Lieutenant, and the fallen will receive General’s death compensation.”

He glanced at the hourglass nearby. About two shichen remained until dawn.

“Move out. Board the ships.”

To avoid detection by the island’s defenders as long as possible, they would take a single large vessel out to sea. With luck, all two hundred and forty of them would land safely on Yunlai Island. With bad luck, the whole shipload could be swallowed by the sea.

From the open water to Yunlai Island, small boats alone would have left them exhausted by the time they arrived. But to make landing easier, several small boats were tethered behind the large vessel, and two more hung from either side.

The plan: once the large vessel entered the sea channel and drew close to the island, it would anchor; then they would transfer to the small boats to go ashore.

At the helm was an old fisherman with decades of sea experience — and even he was deeply anxious.

This was the open sea. At night. Without light. They were trusting to chance.

In the darkness, the great ship rolled and swayed across the water. The moon, as if deciding its shift was nearly done and seeing no reason to linger, had already slipped away early.

Every person was tense. The Blade Corps crouched on the deck, gripping whatever they could find. Some murmured quietly under their breath, as though praying for the group.

As the ship moved, it groaned and creaked — whether squeezed by the waves or shoved by the wind was impossible to say — and the sounds were almost unnerving.

In these moments, the mind can’t help but wander: might the hull crack? Would the next instant bring seawater flooding in?

Mercifully, their luck defied all expectations.

Or perhaps the old fisherman, drawing on memory so deeply etched it had seeped into every pore, guided them through the darkness along exactly the right course.

A vast black mass loomed ahead. Yunlai Island.

“Ready yourselves.”

Liren spoke low, and every person drew a simultaneous slow, deep breath.

The large ship halted at a suitable position. They transferred to the small boats to approach the island.

But the small boats were limited; they could not carry all two hundred and forty people at once. Two trips would be needed.

Liren led the first group. When they reached the shallows, the boats had to stop — they could not come to shore. They slipped into the water, produced the thin bamboo tubes they had prepared and bit down on them, then lay back in the shallows to wait for the second group to arrive.

Liren found a reef to shelter behind and carefully peered out, watching the island.

The main gates stood roughly thirty zhang from the shoreline. He could see the rebel sentries’ torches blazing, and no shortage of guards on watch.

It was winter. The Blade Corps lay in the ice-cold seawater, and they could not hold out for long.

But it was winter, and the men on those wooden walls were cold too. They had clustered in twos and threes to chat, with few making any real patrol rounds.

Liren knew that waiting for the second group would leave the first group truly half-frozen.

So he dove beneath the surface and slipped from man to man, touching each one.

Before long, the Blade Corps surfaced one by one, every one of them trembling so hard their teeth rattled.

Soaked through by the seawater and then struck by the cold wind, it was as if they had been pressed into a jar of ice.

“I go first. Follow behind me.”

Liren called out softly for them to make way, then made his approach toward the fortress wall.

For a conventional army storming this position, the terrain was brutal. There was no room to deploy numbers; the sandy ground made movement treacherous; and the defenders above had every advantage shooting down. Without siege equipment, soldiers crossing thirty zhang of open ground could only absorb punishment.

But Liren and his people were different. Aside from the Sacred Blade Sect, there was probably not another jianghu force in the world that could field two hundred and forty blademen of this caliber.

They had trained since childhood. Their swordsmanship — their bladework — was formidable, and they excelled in other areas besides.

Liren crept up to the base of the wall and studied it. The wall was built of hewn mountain stone, so there were many places to grip and climb. Nothing like the smooth face of city-brick construction — there were ridges and protrusions everywhere that could bear weight.

He drew a deep breath, found purchase on a jutting stone, and began to climb. In that moment his greatest enemy was the cold. His hands and feet were half-numb, unresponsive, and one small lapse of concentration could send him tumbling.

And across his body he wore several coils of thick hemp rope — waterlogged, they were heavy.

But the island’s defenders had truly never imagined that on a night as bitterly cold as this, someone might swim through the water and approach. They had never imagined that anyone would dare to sail out to sea in darkness this complete — that was all but offering oneself as tribute to the Dragon King. And they had never imagined that a garrison of tens of thousands would be assaulted by exactly two hundred and forty people.

Liren gritted his teeth and hauled himself up. He pressed against the wall’s edge and listened. The voices were not far away.

But he had no other choice.

Both hands seized the top of the wall and he launched himself up. In midair, his hand reached back behind him.

The next instant, in the firelight of the wall’s torches, a blade of white light unfurled.

Thup. The nearest guard fell to Liren’s single stroke. The next instant, a second rebel’s head left his shoulders.

After cutting down two guards, Liren immediately tore the ropes from his back, looped them around the nearest parapet as fast as he could, and hurled them over the edge.

He had barely thrown down the first coil of rope when rebel fighters were already bearing down on him.

In that moment, Liren drove the bladework passed down by the Sage to its absolute limit.

The Sage had possessed the Sacred Blade, never drawn from its sheath — and so the world called it the blade of greatest benevolence. Yet the Sage had forged the most murderous swordsmanship in the world. His blade never left its sheath, but in the long process of quelling rebellions and stabilizing the heartland, his disciples’ blades — every stroke they swung — had not flowed with anything but blood.

Without those strokes that ran with rivers of blood, there would never have been the Sacred Blade of the Sage that stayed forever sheathed.

Dozens closed in around him. Liren’s back to the wall, his single blade moved like a demon unsealed — every cut aimed to kill.

He cut down a number of men, then seized an opening to bind the second coil of rope to a parapet and fling it down.

In the moment he was throwing the rope, a crossbow bolt struck him in the back. He felt as if he’d been shoved — but almost no pain.

In that instant, Liren assumed it was the cold that had deadened his nerves.

He turned and cut down the enemy closing in, then shifted to a two-handed grip on the blade. He knew there was no chance left to throw down the third coil of rope.

The rebel fighters pressing in had grown too numerous to count, and still no Blade Corps soldiers had made it up.

“Kill!”

Liren roared.

He split the skull of the man before him, and in the moment the hot blood splashed across his face, it was as if his whole body was finally thawing.

He didn’t know why, but with his blood surging, a line broke unbidden into his mind.

To carry forward the learning of the sages past — to open enduring peace for all the world!

The ring-pommel saber clenched in both hands was the sacred weapon that would open such peace.

A single man holding two adjacent parapets, letting no one cut the ropes.

The blood on Liren’s body grew more and more, until it ran freely down him in streams.

“For enduring peace for all the world!”

Behind Liren, the first Blade Corps soldier to haul himself over the wall roared — a sound like thunder cracking open the predawn sky.

The first. The second. The third…

They surged to Liren’s side, their bodies forming a thin wall — but this wall was a wall of blades.

“Before their main force gets up here, we have to push forward!”

Liren bellowed, and threw himself ahead.

What a sight this was.

A line of Blade Corps soldiers, every one gripping their saber in both hands, cutting open body after body, advancing together through a storm of blood and flesh.

That thin wall of blades drove the dense mass of rebels back — step by step.

“Throw me a rope!”

Liren called out.

A coil of rope flew in from behind. Liren let his men hold the rebel line while he sprinted to the inner face of the wall, lashed the rope to a parapet, then slid down.

One man dropped into the interior of the gate.

The rebel fighters inside hadn’t expected anyone to slide down from the wall, and before they could react, Liren had cut down three or four of them.

Liren drove into the gate tunnel, took one look at the closed city gates.

The next instant, a thunderous shout detonated inside the gate tunnel.

“Open!”

One stroke of Liren’s blade fell.

The gate bar — as thick as a man’s thigh — was cleaved clean in two.

Behind Liren, six or seven Blade Corps soldiers had also slid down on the ropes, forming a wall at his back.

“You open the gate — we’ll hold them!”

Someone shouted to Liren.

Liren drove his long saber into the ground, seized the gate with both hands, and heaved it back with all his strength.

By then, the sun had risen.

In the light of the first dawn, the blood soaking each Blade Corps soldier blazed with startling vividness, and from each of them rose a thin column of heat.

Blood-red figures — and in the sunlight, even that rising heat seemed to take on a red hue.

They had become crimson gods of slaughter.

After Liren dragged the gate open, he seized his ring-pommel saber and returned to stand with his Blade Corps.

Before them surged an oncoming tide of rebel fighters.

A storm of arrows flew over. Liren’s people grabbed the corpses on the ground to use as shields.

Within moments the bodies before them had become porcupines — white-feathered shafts bristling from every surface.

A rebel general commanding the archers, seeing there were only a handful of men holding the gate, roared an order and led his soldiers charging forward.

When they closed to melee range, their archers had to cease fire.

Liren shoved the bodies aside and gripped his ring-pommel saber.

“Glory and achievement — this very day!”

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

—