They had pursued with six or seven times the enemy’s numbers, with an ambush already set — and still lost like this.

It wasn’t merely a defeat. Every man who staggered back into camp wore the look of someone who had stared at something they couldn’t quite believe. That was the real damage — not the bodies left in the field, but the fear that had taken root in the living.

They hadn’t withdrawn. Withdrawal still carries a shred of dignity. They had fled. And there is no dignity in flight.

Back inside the wooden tower, Xu Suqing set Wang Huan’s body down, his eyes still red. When they’d ridden out, who could have imagined it would end like this? It was supposed to be a casual outing — ride out, sweep up a few Ning Army scouts, ride back. The kind of errand you handle between conversations. Someone had even joked on the way out that it was almost embarrassing how many men they were sending for such a trivial task.

And now?

Six or seven hundred had ridden out. Fewer than half came back. They hadn’t even dared bring their dead with them. And one of the Holy Generals lay here in the tower, a corpse.

Everyone who had witnessed that moment still couldn’t make it feel real.

That man. That horse. That spear.

The three together — invincible under heaven.

Their leader had gone to engage him personally and accomplished nothing. The Black Wu sword master had gone flying in and come flying back out without ever making contact.

They hadn’t just lost the battle. They’d lost their dignity. And the dignity had suffered worse than the battle.

Xu Suqing stood over Wang Huan’s body without speaking, his expression as dark as the sky before a blizzard.

“We only went out to grab a few scouts. How did it come to this?”

Holy General Nie Zuo knelt beside the body, his hands still trembling — not from fear, but from grief.

Most of them found it simply incomprehensible. How had it happened? And once it started, how had there been no stopping it? The enemy had fewer men. The Blood Butcher side had every advantage. They had been the ones doing the pursuing.

“I want to know who he is.”

After a long silence, Xu Suqing spoke to no one in particular, his voice soft but bitten out through clenched teeth.

“No need to guess, no need to investigate.” Military advisor Xiao Ting murmured as if thinking aloud. “Among the Ning Army, the only man capable of that kind of dominance would be the general they call Unrivaled Under Heaven — Tang Pidi.”

“Tang Pidi.”

Xu Suqing repeated the name.

His mind replayed what he’d seen. At first, watching that man suspended on a chain, deflecting arrows for the soldiers behind him, Xu Suqing had laughed and said the fellow had a bit of cleverness about him. He hadn’t considered Tang Pidi a threat. He’d still had room for jokes.

But once Tang Pidi was on horseback with a spear in his hand, he became something else entirely.

Xu Suqing exhaled slowly. “Pass the word — no one leaves camp until further notice. Not without my order.”

“Yes, sir.”

Xiao Ting answered quickly, and quietly let out a breath of his own. He’d been afraid that after this, like the last time — when Liao Tinglou was killed and the leader had gone charging off toward the Ning border alone — Xu Suqing would do the same. But now Tang Pidi was here, which meant the main Ning force had arrived. The last time, their leader had walked into the border city and come back out again. This time, he would not.

Xiao Ting looked toward Xu Suqing, wanting to say something comforting. Xu Suqing just waved a hand. “Nothing to say. Go handle your business.”

Xiao Ting went. There was much to arrange — Wang Huan’s funeral among other things.

As he walked out, it occurred to Xiao Ting that Wang Huan’s end, compared to Liao Tinglou’s, was almost the better of the two. At least the body had come home. Liao Tinglou was somewhere in that border city, buried in whatever patch of dirt they’d found convenient.

Outside, Holy General Gao Wukan fell into step beside him.

“Master Xiao.”

Gao Wukan caught up and then seemed to struggle with himself. His expression was complicated, his eyes evasive in the way of a man carrying more than he knows how to put into words.

“What is it?”

Xiao Ting waited, then pressed: “You and I — no need to be careful with each other. Say what you’re thinking. Would I blame you for it?”

Gao Wukan let out a long breath, hesitated once more, then said: “I feel like I can’t read our leader anymore.”

Xiao Ting went still.

He didn’t know how to respond to that. Any answer seemed wrong.

After a moment, he could only sigh.

“Master Xiao — you’re the sharpest mind among us, the one who thinks furthest ahead. Surely you’ve noticed something strange in how he’s been acting lately.”

Gao Wukan continued: “He wants revenge, and every one of us would follow him into any kind of hell to get it. Doesn’t matter how. If it meant the Blood Butcher was wiped out to the last man, we’d accept that.”

He glanced back at the wooden tower, then lowered his voice. “But this alliance with the Black Wu — I can’t make peace with it.”

“He has his reasons,” Xiao Ting said. “He’s never led us wrong.”

“I know he won’t lead us wrong. I’m not afraid of dying. What I’m afraid of is dying without understanding why.”

Gao Wukan sighed again, heavily.

“Say we accept the Black Wu alliance. If he wants it, fine. But look at what’s happened. Liao Tinglou — dead, without explanation, without his body brought back. Wang Huan — dead now, same way. Five brothers we started with. Two are gone. And we died badly. We died with nothing settled.”

By the time he finished, the tears were running freely down his face.

Whatever they had become — however the world judged them now — those five men had spent over a decade surviving together in the northern wilderness. The bond between them was not something that could be reasoned away.

What tore at Gao Wukan was this: they had come all this way for revenge, and the revenge was still undone, and already two of them were dead. At this rate, they might all be dead before they ever set foot in the Central Plains again.

“I’ll speak to him again,” Xiao Ting said, putting a hand on Gao Wukan’s shoulder.

Gao Wukan nodded, wiped his face. “Let me help you with the funeral arrangements.”

The two men walked away side by side, talking quietly. Behind them, in the doorway of the wooden tower, Xu Suqing stood watching until they were gone, his own eyes distant.

After a long moment, he said to no one: “I only wanted revenge. Was that wrong?”

—

At the border city, Tang Pidi returned and gave Li Chi a full account — including that he’d crossed blades with both Xu Suqing and the Black Wu sword master. Li Chi’s expression grew serious at once.

“How were they?”

“Which one?”

“Both of them.”

Tang Pidi said evenly: “Hard to say. You know how it is on the battlefield — when it’s a mounted charge, no one can match me. In a different place, different circumstances, it would be harder to judge.”

“How much harder?”

“Fighting both at once? That would be a real struggle.”

Li Chi glanced at him sideways.

“Xu Suqing was known in the jianghu as Unrivaled in the North. His skill isn’t something a battlefield brings out fully, but even so, he managed to exchange blows with you while mounted.” Li Chi paused. “You were performing just now, you know that? It’s still insufferable.”

“You still haven’t gotten used to it?”

Li Chi declined to answer.

“Xu Suqing must die. Every man of the Blood Butcher must die — if not for the Ning border soldiers they slaughtered, then for the alliance with the Black Wu alone. But of the two, I want the sword master dead more urgently right now.”

Tang Pidi agreed. “Chu may have fallen from Black Wu hands, but it’s still Central Plains territory. A Sword Sect operative running loose up here — in the past we couldn’t see them, so we couldn’t deal with them. Now that we’ve made contact, we can’t let him leave alive.”

Li Chi nodded. “Leave that to me.”

He looked toward Yu Jiuling. “Where is Master Chu?”

Yu Jiuling shook his head. “Haven’t seen him. Not since we arrived at the border. I went looking earlier, asked around — no one’s seen him.”

Li Chi thought for a moment, then glanced instinctively northward, something puzzled moving through his eyes.

—

Out on the steppe.

Chu Xiansheng stood in a bare, leafless tree, watching the Blood Butcher riders at a distance as they collected their dead.

He had been there during the entire exchange between Tang Pidi and the bandits. He had not moved to intervene — not because he was unwilling, but because it was never necessary. Those men were no threat to Tang Pidi. With a warhorse under him and an iron spear in his hand, Tang Pidi needed no help, not even counting the hundred-odd cavalry behind him. Even alone, those men could not have held him.

Chu Xiansheng had stayed back to watch. Because he needed to see carefully.

Even in the capital, in the years before all of this, he had heard Xu Suqing’s name. The difference between them was simple: Xu Suqing was famous everywhere, while Chu Xiansheng had always kept to himself. His reputation extended no further than the jianghu circles of the capital. Xu Suqing’s name was spoken from the northern wastes to the Jiangnan rivers.

Back in the capital, people had asked Chu Xiansheng the obvious question: if he and Xu Suqing were to fight, who would win?

His answer had been unequivocal: he would lose.

Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of raw ability. What gave him no confidence was experience. Xu Suqing had more combat experience than anyone in the Central Plains — possibly in the entire jianghu world. His rise had been built on continuous challenge, continuous refinement. Every opponent had sharpened him. He never stopped fighting, never stopped improving.

Chu Xiansheng rarely fought. Were it not for the Chu royal blood running in his veins compelling him to deal with certain assassination attempts, he would have had no reason to engage anyone at all.

If both men were operating somewhere above the highest threshold, the one who fell in a real encounter would be Chu Xiansheng. He had always believed that. Xu Suqing losing would have been the unreasonable outcome.

That was why, when Li Chi sent him out here, he didn’t move immediately. This was the first opponent in his life he had faced without being certain of victory before the engagement began.

But now, having watched Xu Suqing and Tang Pidi exchange blows — something felt different.

Xu Suqing was not the same man.

Even though these past years he had kept fighting, kept killing — perhaps more than ever — his skill had declined.

The heart, Chu Xiansheng thought. A cultivator’s inner state determines the ceiling of their ability. The difference it makes is immense.

He watched the bandits carrying their dead for a long time. Then he exhaled slowly, shifted his weight, and vanished.

—