Fish-Tail Ridge.

Seven days. The Black Wu had held for seven days. And truthfully, those seven days had felt to them like anguish in hell — not because it appeared at every moment that the Ning troops were on the verge of cresting the ridge, but because throughout those seven days, Ning had maintained unbroken pressure. Sustained, relentless, grinding.

For seven days Kuo Ke Di Yelan had waited each day for good news from somewhere — from the border fortress or from the encircling armies. For seven days, neither had come. The fortress had not fallen. The encircling armies had reported nothing.

A million soldiers. Twenty-odd thousand Ning troops cut off and surrounded. Given those numbers, how could they possibly fail to win?

Even granting Ning’s ferocity, even allowing that they could endure beyond the expected — they could not hold out forever. Unless heaven itself was fighting for them.

A dispatch arrived from the border fortress. The sound of it snapped Kuo Ke Di Yelan upright, eyes alight.

“Is it good news?”

The messenger had nearly died getting here — Fish-Tail Ridge at this moment was ringed by nearly three hundred thousand Ning troops. He knelt on the ground and stuttered.

“It… it is not good news. The General—Great General Kuo Ye Baobao — has fallen in battle.”

“What?”

The color drained from Kuo Ke Di Yelan’s face. He was on his feet in an instant, grabbing the man by the robe. “How dare you spread false rumors to shake our army’s resolve!”

The messenger was close to weeping, his voice trembling. “During the assault on the fortress, the Great General was struck by a stray arrow — through the throat — he died at once.”

“This…”

Kuo Ke Di Yelan’s face looked as if it might split apart — first white, then green, then darkening toward black.

“Fetch Diao Mao! And call for Xie Qinke as well!”

His voice carried a faint tremor.

His people did not dare delay. They ran.

Diao Mao was one of Kuo Ke Di Yelan’s generals, reassigned some years ago to the Southern Garden garrison, a man who had followed him for four or five years. Xie Qinke was his chief strategist — extraordinarily sharp-minded, the most trusted man at his side.

The general and the strategist arrived almost simultaneously, met each other in the corridor, exchanged a glance without speaking. Whatever they each saw in the other’s eyes, it was worry.

If the prince had called only these two — in private — it was not going to be good news. Good news would have brought a summons to the whole army.

“Kuo Ye Baobao is dead,” Kuo Ke Di Yelan said plainly, turning to Diao Mao. “At dawn tomorrow, take a cavalry detachment, break out through the flank, and get to the southern campaign force — before those two hundred thousand men lose their nerve.”

Diao Mao answered immediately, bowing his assent.

Kuo Ke Di Yelan looked to Xie Qinke. “It’s been seven days. No word of victory from any column. Does that strike you as strange?”

Xie Qinke said, “Your Highness may recall — two days ago, I came to speak of exactly this.”

Two days ago, Xie Qinke had sought audience and laid out his concerns carefully. Kuo Ke Di Yelan had dismissed them. At the time he thought Xie Qinke was worrying beyond all reason.

What Xie Qinke had said was this: he suspected, or feared, that the entire battle had been Tang Pidi’s plan from the start.

Kuo Ke Di Yelan had laughed. With the Ning forces already surrounded on all sides — what plan could Tang Pidi possibly have left to run?

Xie Qinke had said: What if he did it deliberately? What if Tang Pidi deliberately split off those twenty-odd thousand Ning soldiers and sent them to be encircled?

Kuo Ke Di Yelan had laughed louder. Did Xie Qinke lose his mind, or did Tang Pidi lose his? Send your most battle-hardened soldiers out to be swallowed up?

Xie Qinke had said: Your Highness, if Tang Pidi needed to buy time — the situation we’re looking at is exactly what he would have arranged on purpose.

He sent troops out in separate groups to be encircled one by one. By all appearances, we seized the advantage — but what actually happened was that Tang Pidi used twenty-odd thousand men to pin down your entire million-strong force.

Kuo Ke Di Yelan had waved him out of the tent, saying he had military matters to see to.

Now, hearing Xie Qinke raise it again, Kuo Ke Di Yelan no longer felt any certainty at all.

“What exactly are you trying to say?” he asked.

“Tang Pidi may have deliberately let those twenty-odd thousand Ning troops be encircled.”

Diao Mao said, “And the reason?”

Xie Qinke said, “Tang Pidi knew he was outnumbered, that he couldn’t meet us head-on in an open field engagement — and yet he intended to fight this battle out here, beyond the border fortress. To win it, he needed to use unconventional strategy.”

“He deliberately sent those twenty-odd thousand Ning troops to be surrounded and divided. The appearance was that we held the advantage — but in reality, Tang Pidi used twenty-odd thousand men to tie up your million. Four-to-one odds, and yet it was not Tang Pidi’s main force you were fighting.”

Kuo Ke Di Yelan shook his head. “He is the most celebrated general in the central plains. He’s led armies for years without a single defeat. A man like that — how could he commit a mistake so elementary?”

Xie Qinke said, “Why does Your Highness call it a mistake?”

Kuo Ke Di Yelan said, “A million soldiers surrounding twenty-odd thousand — Tang Pidi thought his men could hold out longer than we could press them?”

He stopped speaking.

Xie Qinke looked at him and said nothing. He could tell the prince had finally seen it.

“Tang Pidi — he predicted I would hold Fish-Tail Ridge to block his advance. And he had no intention of going to relieve the encircled troops at all. He came to Fish-Tail Ridge to fight me?”

Kuo Ke Di Yelan was on his feet now, pacing rapidly back and forth across the tent.

“He was willing to sacrifice those twenty-odd thousand Ning soldiers — just to buy time to capture me alive? Or kill me?”

He kept pacing, muttering to himself.

“But then—” He looked at Xie Qinke. “Since yesterday afternoon, the Ning troops have stopped their assault. It’s now past midnight and they still haven’t attacked. What does that mean?”

Xie Qinke said, “Tomorrow. I fear tomorrow Ning will throw everything they have into a single final push. The reason they did not attack today was to let their soldiers rest and gather their strength.”

At those words, Kuo Ke Di Yelan’s expression worsened further.

“Diao Mao!” He turned. “Don’t wait until dawn — go now. While Ning isn’t attacking, take a cavalry detachment out through the flank. Ride hard and get to the southern campaign force. Bring those twenty thousand back here and hit Tang Pidi from the rear.”

Diao Mao answered at once and turned to go.

Xie Qinke quickly added: “General, take every care. Yuan Zhen’s letter warned that Tang Pidi uses unorthodox tactics and reads minds with terrible precision. Watch for ambushes on the road back. Do not be complacent.”

Diao Mao nodded. “Understood.”

He left the tent at a near-run, went back to his own camp, handpicked over a thousand of his finest light cavalry, three days’ rations per man, two horses per rider, and set out immediately.

They descended the back of Fish-Tail Ridge, swung out in a wide arc, then turned south.

The journey was nerve-wracking throughout. They encountered Ning scouts, but the scouts did not engage — too few of them to risk it.

They pushed through day and night without rest. A little over two days later, they reached the southern campaign force.

But the southern campaign force was gone.

When they arrived, the battle was not quite over yet — far ahead, in the distance, chaos, smoke rising to the sky.

Diao Mao led his thousand cavalry at a gallop, trying to understand what he was seeing.

But as he drew closer, he saw: on a high slope in the distance — Tang Pidi’s battle standard.

For a moment Diao Mao thought his eyes had failed him. He looked again and again before he dared trust it.

And at that same moment on the slope, Tang Pidi glanced at the small force of Black Wu cavalry riding in from the north and felt no particular interest. Not worth a second look.

He had spent seven days of fierce assault to lull Kuo Ke Di Yelan into false comfort.

In truth, he had never really thrown himself into a seven-day frontal assault at all. On the fourth day of fighting, he had taken half the Ning force and slipped away in the night. In terms of appearances, the numbers on the ridge still seemed close to the original strength — the flags and formations still read thirty thousand, even though barely fifteen thousand remained.

By the time the rider sent to report to Kuo Ke Di Yelan arrived at Fish-Tail Ridge, Tang Pidi had already circled back here with his main force.

That engagement lasted two days and two nights: fifteen thousand Ning soldiers, driving straight into nearly twenty thousand Black Wu southern campaign troops in an all-out assault. Then, when Li Chi personally led his forces out of the border fortress to attack from the other side, the Black Wu force was swallowed whole.

Killed: over a hundred thousand. Captured: seventy to eighty thousand.

“Grand General — shall we take care of that Black Wu cavalry force as well? Since we’re here?”

A Ning general asked.

Tang Pidi said in an even tone, “Take care of them.”

Several thousand Ning cavalry came down the slope and swept in from both flanks to close around Diao Mao’s thousand riders.

Tang Pidi turned to his personal attendant: “Go tell His Majesty that I have no time for a proper farewell — I am setting out immediately. Please ask His Majesty to forgive me.”

The attendant answered and spurred his horse toward the border fortress — only to find, before he had ridden very far, that His Majesty was already riding out toward him.

When Li Chi reached the slope, he found Tang Pidi changing clothes, an attendant helping him into Black Wu military uniform.

Li Chi reached back to take something from his personal guard and held it out. “I knew you’d be in a rush. These are fresh-from-the-steamer buns. Take them for the road.”

Tang Pidi finished buckling the Black Wu armor and accepted the buns with a grin. “My thanks, Your Majesty!”

Li Chi said, “Her Highness the Empress made them herself.”

Tang Pidi stumbled slightly. “Perhaps I could—”

“No you couldn’t,” Li Chi said. “You dare not eat them?”

“I calculated for everything,” Tang Pidi said, “but I did not calculate for this.”

Li Chi smiled. “I won’t hold you up. Go ahead and lead the relief. I’ll handle what comes after.”

Tang Pidi clasped his fists. “Your servant obeys.”

He swung into the saddle and addressed his officers: “Pass the order down — the army moves north within half a shichen. Any soldier not yet changed into Black Wu armor gets left behind.”

“Yes!”

The herald answered and scattered outward to relay the order to every part of the battlefield.