Though Boertiechina watched the chieftains bow and submit before him — one after another without any visible flaw — the sight of their faces brought Tang Pidi’s words flooding back to his mind.

“Winning people over is not the only tool, and it can only bring the timid to heel. You cannot win over strong opponents. Cast away the weak, destroy the strong — only by doing that can you subdue the steppe quickly.”

Tang Pidi had told Boertiechina: “If all of them express compliance — and they do so pleasantly and amiably — then that compliance is certainly false. One poke and it collapses. “

Boertiechina had asked Tang Pidi: “Brother Tang, what should I do?”

Tang Pidi had replied: “Simple. Keep them all under your protection — but don’t let them unite. Make them truly dependent on you, truly needing you — not merely offering hollow obedience.”

Those words were easy for Tang Pidi to say, and he could have carried them out easily enough himself.

But Boertiechina understood that for him, this would be a real challenge.

He had spent his years following Tang Pidi in campaign after campaign, never participating in strategy. He only needed to follow orders.

Tang Pidi’s finger would point somewhere, and Boertiechina would lead the Naran cavalry in that direction. Simple as that — no need to use his head.

Though Tang Pidi had always been deliberately cultivating him, Boertiechina knew his own natural abilities were not remarkable.

Then again, anyone who spent enough time beside Tang Pidi came to doubt their own abilities — because no matter how capable or talented they were, they were still utterly outmatched.

When the Iron Crane had launched their southern invasion of Naran territory, Boertiechina had employed Tang Pidi’s tactics and barely held the line against five hundred thousand Iron Crane cavalry.

Now he was here — in the Iron Crane royal court — and before him stood a group of people who looked as though he had frightened them into compliance, but who might turn on him at any moment.

Holding Tang Pidi’s words in his mind, Boertiechina forced himself to think — to think clearly and calmly.

How could he ensure they were all under his protection, dependent on him, unable to survive without him — and yet unable to unite against him?

He stared at these people, and something suddenly clicked.

They were not united to begin with. The only reason they needed to unite was because not a single one of them could stand against the Naran cavalry alone.

So there was no need to manufacture divisions. He only needed to widen the divisions that already existed.

One thought, and the path was clear. Boertiechina smiled.

He had the Iron Crane royal court prepared for a banquet in honor of all the tribal chieftains, going around personally to toast each one.

When everyone had drunk a good deal, Boertiechina claimed a headache and excused himself early.

Then he called his trusted men and had them quietly slip word to a few of the smaller tribal chieftains to meet with him in secret in the main hall late that night.

The next day, the chieftains who had met privately with Boertiechina all found excuses to leave the royal court early.

The rest were kept behind by Boertiechina, who announced that to celebrate the alliance of the steppe’s many tribes, he intended to hold a grand gathering at the court.

The few chieftains who had left returned quickly to their respective territories, then mustered every fighting man they had, joined forces, and launched a surprise attack on one of the larger tribes.

When word reached the royal court, the chieftain of the tribe that had been struck was furious and immediately demanded to leave.

But there was little he could do even if he went back — his tribe had already fallen. Everyone had been taken prisoner.

The messenger reported that the allied small tribes had taken all the cattle, sheep, and valuables — and had carried off many of the women as well.

His tribe was defeated and his people captured. He had no power to fight back.

So he had no choice but to appeal to Boertiechina.

Upon hearing what had happened, Boertiechina was also furious.

He immediately summoned the small tribal chieftains responsible, calling them to the royal court to settle the matter face to face.

All parties arrived. Boertiechina berated the small tribe chieftains thoroughly — but since they had acted on his instruction in the first place, they simply played along, feigning appropriate terror and remorse.

In the end, Boertiechina demanded they release all the prisoners. But as for the cattle, sheep, gold, and silver they had taken — the chieftains flatly refused to return them, their attitude resolutely stubborn. Of course, that stubbornness too had been coached by Boertiechina.

So Boertiechina declared: if you will not return the goods, then you must compensate in another way.

This led naturally to the question of who this wronged tribe’s enemies were.

And so Boertiechina decreed: the small tribes would join forces — together with the very tribe that had been attacked — to go and destroy the wronged tribe’s enemy.

Under the arrangement, all cattle, livestock, and valuables of the destroyed tribe would go to the tribe that had originally been victimized.

The prisoners would all be divided among the smaller tribes, to serve as slaves.

This way, every party involved felt they had come out ahead — some more, some less.

The one who fared worst was the destroyed tribe — but what could be done about that?

The destroyed tribe had allies among the other chieftains, and those chieftains stood up and demanded an explanation from Boertiechina.

So Boertiechina divided the destroyed tribe’s grazing lands equally among those few chieftains who had spoken up for it.

The destroyed tribe’s chieftain had been counting on his friends to stand together and pressure Boertiechina.

But to his dismay, his friends — upon receiving the slain tribe’s grazing lands — were absolutely delighted, and didn’t spare him another thought.

At this point, the original small tribes stepped forward again — still on Boertiechina’s instruction.

These chieftains made an uproar before Boertiechina, saying the battle was theirs to fight, the destruction theirs to carry out — so why had the grazing lands gone to someone else?

If there was no fairness in this, they would go to war.

And so Boertiechina made a ruling: those who had received grazing land must each hand over three hundred head of cattle, to be divided equally among the aggrieved parties, as compensation. With that, the matter would be closed.

The other chieftains were still inclined to argue. Boertiechina simply said: if you won’t listen to me, I’ll join forces with the others and destroy you.

At that, the chieftains — who had only been making a show of protest on his orders — immediately backed down, saying they could accept these terms.

When this was all done, Boertiechina had successfully made something clear to the tribes of the outer steppe.

The Naran cavalry could not destroy every tribe on the steppe — but they could join with some to destroy any individual tribe that wouldn’t cooperate.

And in that moment, anyone who stuck their head up as that uncooperative tribe was going to come to a very bad end.

So all factions had no choice but to depend on Boertiechina. This created a hostile balance of power across the steppe — a balance that suited him perfectly.

When all of this was done, Boertiechina felt a little impressed with himself. He thought: turns out I’m not as dim as I thought.

Of course, the reason he had always underestimated himself was entirely because of Tang Pidi.

With all this accomplished, Boertiechina moved to the second part of his plan — the part that was actually aimed at the Iron Crane people.

He issued an edict: any tribe found to be sheltering or harboring Iron Crane people would have the steppe alliance’s combined army brought against it and would be wiped out, all spoils divided equally among the tribes who participated.

Conversely, anyone who actively turned over Iron Crane people — or who informed the Naran cavalry of where Iron Crane people were hiding — would receive generous rewards, all drawn from the plunder of the Iron Crane royal court.

The first part of the plan had been laying the groundwork — setting the tone. The second part was the genuinely ruthless move.

The tribes of the outer steppe had no great true alliances to speak of. If this edict meant your rival tribe might suffer annihilation, you would absolutely act on it.

And if Iron Crane people were sheltered within someone else’s territory, their rivals would inform on them — because they couldn’t afford to give their enemies an opportunity.

And so every tribe began to move. No one dared give their rivals a chance, and every tribe was eager to find an opportunity to destroy a rival.

A hunt for the Iron Crane people began across the outer steppe — one that could only be called merciless beyond measure.

Every tribe was searching. Anyone with any connection to the Iron Crane people was dragged out and killed.

Once this plan was set in motion, there was no longer any possibility of the Iron Crane people ever rising again.

The fewer than thirty thousand Iron Crane cavalry still in existence — even if they returned — would find no one left who feared them.

The entire steppe, hundreds or even thousands of tribes, had all become their enemies.

Those who had been ruthlessly oppressed by the Iron Crane for years — who had seethed but dared not speak — now not only dared speak, they dared act.

Through this chain of moves, Boertiechina had swiftly ensured the Iron Crane people had no place left on the steppe to stand.

And at that very moment, those twenty-some thousand Iron Crane cavalry — harassed constantly by Ning cavalry — could barely move.

When they finally reached the border of the outer steppe and were about to come home, the Liangzhou iron cavalry was waiting in ambush.

In one fierce battle, the Liangzhou cavalry killed over ten thousand Iron Crane troops. Despite their overwhelming numerical advantage, the Iron Crane forces didn’t dare to press the fight, and scattered in panic onto the steppe.

They thought that once back on the steppe, all their misfortune would be over. They had no idea that greater misfortune was waiting for them in the steppe they had ruled for decades.

As these Iron Crane cavalry came riding back, they were met head-on by the steppe alliance under Boertiechina.

After one great battle, barely thirty or forty thousand of the original two-hundred-thousand-plus Iron Crane cavalry escaped — fleeing the steppe in disarray, back into the northern wilderness.

Dantai Qi and Dantai Yajing, father and son, were waiting there with the Central Plains cavalry. In a pincer attack, those thirty or forty thousand too met their end.

From that battle forward, the Iron Crane tribe — who had dominated the outer steppe for so many years and been its largest tribe — was completely and utterly wiped from the world.

Yet at its root, the Iron Crane’s destruction was inextricably linked to their own miscalculations.

Had the Iron Crane people not launched two southern invasions into Naran territory, they would not have reduced themselves to only thirty thousand cavalry that could still be called fit for battle.

Each of those two incursions, they had ridden south with four or five hundred thousand horsemen — and both times were nearly entirely destroyed.

Those two catastrophic defeats and the devastation they brought were the fundamental cause of the Iron Crane’s annihilation.

Their abject subservience to the Black Martial people was another.

Had they not sent their forces into the northern wilderness for this campaign, Tang Pidi and Boertiechina would never have found the opening they needed.

Without those wars, the Iron Crane would still have been the tribe that could casually field sixty or seventy thousand battle-hardened cavalry, the unchallenged master of the outer steppe, and that sovereign position would still have been theirs.

But in this world, there are no “what ifs.”

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