The broadsword was far too wide and far too heavy. It had passed clean through Tan Qianshou’s body horizontally, cutting through roughly two-thirds of his torso, with nearly half the blade emerging from his chest.
In just a brief moment, without time to say more than a few words, Tan Qianshou stopped breathing.
Liu Mu had fallen and was sitting there on the ground, watching as Tan Qianshou collapsed face-down before him. As he went down, the broadsword was slowly pushed back through his body, until the blade stood straight up from his back with the hilt pointing skyward.
It was a blade entirely typical of the Heiwu Sword Sect’s style. The great swordmaster who had founded the Sect centuries ago was famed for exactly this kind of weapon — the blade wide enough to span a full foot, the sword of immense weight, which was why the sword techniques practiced by Sword Sect disciples were so strange. Sometimes the person was wielding the sword, and sometimes the person was moving with the momentum of the heavy blade and launching attacks that way.
To hurl such a massive sword with a casual flick of the wrist and kill Tan Qianshou outright — one could only imagine the terrifying physical strength of whoever had thrown it.
As Tan Qianshou lay face-down on the ground, he was still straining to tilt his head up to look at Liu Mu, and Liu Mu watched as Tan Qianshou, in his final moments, used his last reserves of strength to open his mouth and try to say something. By the shape of his lips, it seemed like only one word… *go*.
But that word never made it out. The sword wound was simply too horrific, and it took his life too quickly.
Li Chi had warned Tan Qianshou to be on guard. When Tan Qianshou had relieved Xiahou Zuo’s shift, Li Chi had already told him the Heiwu forces might send elite warriors to raid in the night. Tan Qianshou had simply forgotten to pass the warning on to Liu Mu.
The one thing worth being grateful for was that Liu Mu had been sharp enough to detect the infiltrators when only a handful of Heiwu elites had climbed up. Had he discovered them any later, when dozens or even a hundred had made it over the wall, perhaps by now at least a quarter of the wall’s length would have been under Heiwu control.
Liu Mu’s early discovery had cost him: his personal guards had lost more than ten men, and he himself had been gravely wounded. But the Chu soldiers farther back had continued surging forward in waves, pressing the Heiwu infiltrators back to one end of the wall. Those Heiwu fighters were highly skilled, but once the Chu forces recovered and began coordinating with bows and crossbows, no amount of individual prowess could hold against that kind of assault.
The Heiwu elite who had run Tan Qianshou through stood on the city wall and looked down for a moment, seemingly contemplating retrieving his sword. But the Chu counterattack surging toward him was too fierce, and he had no choice but to abandon it. His silhouette flickered to the outer face of the wall, and without an instant’s hesitation, he leaped off — catching one of the ropes tied to the battlements in midair and sliding swiftly to the ground below.
The Chu soldiers on the wall hurled torches down, using their light to loose arrows at the retreating Heiwu fighters. Four or five of those who had jumped were too slow to escape and were shot down where they fell, becoming stationary targets for the Chu archers, and within moments they resembled pincushions.
In the torchlight, the Chu soldiers also discovered that the Heiwu army had already almost reached the base of the city wall. They had wrapped cloth around their feet to muffle their footsteps, and covered their weapons to prevent any moonlight reflection. Had those Heiwu elites been able to hold even a fraction of the wall for just a short time, the Heiwu army would have come surging up in force.
At the sound of the warning horns, Li Chi and Xiahou Zuo and the others who had been resting came rushing over. By the time they reached the ramp leading up to the wall, the gravely wounded Liu Mu had already lost consciousness. He lay on the ramp while the physician tended to his wounds — and one of his hands was stretched out, gripping Tan Qianshou’s hand in a vice-like hold.
The two men’s hands were locked together. The physician had just tried to pry them apart and couldn’t.
Xiahou Zuo’s chest clenched painfully at the sight. He looked at Li Chi, and Li Chi’s eyes too were full of guilt and remorse. He had given the warning — and yet he still blamed himself. If he had stayed on the wall the entire time, perhaps this would never have happened.
But the rotation had already been decided, and their stamina was not without limits.
Xiahou Zuo raised his hand and patted Li Chi on the shoulder, then with a wave of his arm led his people up the wall to reset the defenses. The Heiwu raid had failed, and the Chu forces were now ready for a major battle, so the Heiwu army outside began to slowly withdraw.
The night grew far harder to endure.
Li Chi sat with his back against the city wall and had not spoken in a very long time. This was the first time he had ever felt that his own failure had led directly to someone else’s death. The guilt had no outlet, and he had no desire to give it one.
“It’s not your fault.”
Xiahou Zuo returned from his inspection of the defenses and crouched beside Li Chi. “You gave the warning. You even made a point of telling Tan Qianshou specifically — that if the Heiwu elites meant to raid at night, they would certainly try to come up from the section of the wall closest to the cliffside, where ordinary men couldn’t climb but skilled fighters could manage with ropes and iron claws…”
Li Chi shook his head and let out a long breath. “I should have said it twice. Or when we went down, I should have had someone light more torches at both ends of the wall.”
Xiahou Zuo said, “It wasn’t even dark yet when we rotated down.”
Li Chi glanced up at him and then looked back down. He murmured as if to himself, “Yesterday when we settled the shift assignments, General Liu Mu wanted me with him. I didn’t agree.”
Xiahou Zuo fell silent.
But was that Li Chi’s fault?
He wanted to say — what does any of that have to do with you? On the battlefield, a soldier’s fate rests on three things: the will of heaven, the hand of the enemy, and their own strength.
Neither Xiahou Zuo nor Li Chi knew that if Tan Qianshou, on his way down, had remembered and passed the warning on to Liu Mu — or if Tan Qianshou, shortly after hearing Li Chi’s words, hadn’t lost them to a wandering mind, had arranged for more torches to be lit — none of this would have happened. He’d gone up and leaned against the wall letting his thoughts scatter in all directions — worrying that the Jizhou army hadn’t come, wondering whether the Heiwu forces would launch a massive assault in a few days — until he had thought of everything except the one thing Li Chi had told him: that the Heiwu forces might send elites to raid the wall at night.
So many things that seem inevitable, in hindsight, could have been avoided.
Xiahou Zuo ultimately said none of this. The dead deserve respect, and Tan Qianshou had already fallen on the walls of this frontier pass. What would be the point of saying any of it now?
“I’m going to check on Liu Mu.”
Li Chi pushed himself to his feet against the wall. He wanted to hear what the physician had to say. When he’d seen Liu Mu earlier, the man was covered head to toe in blood — he had no idea how many wounds he’d taken, only that there had been so much of it.
“Go.”
Xiahou Zuo was quiet for a moment, then said, “But Li Chi — now you understand, don’t you? This is the battlefield. This is war. And this is why I wasn’t willing to bring you and Yu Jiuling to the northern frontier right away. I told you roughly the same things nearly two years ago, but you weren’t ready. You didn’t truly understand what war was.”
Li Chi stopped walking. After a long moment, he turned to look at Xiahou Zuo and said, “Now I understand a little.”
Xiahou Zuo shook his head. “What you’ve seen today is no more than a drop in the ocean of what war truly is. Death is the most ordinary thing on the battlefield. Perhaps tomorrow it will be you who dies, or perhaps it will be me. If you’ve truly begun to understand, then you’ll start to look at life and death on the battlefield with a little more distance.”
Li Chi fell silent again.
“We have no time to grieve.”
After saying that, Xiahou Zuo turned away. He still had the defenses to inspect. No one could know whether the Heiwu forces would strike again precisely when the Chu troops felt certain they wouldn’t — and that, too, was part of why he had said they had no time to grieve: because the enemy would not grant them time.
Li Chi walked down the ramp from the wall. At the bottom, he found his feet would carry him no further. He slid down to sit with his back against the wall, then raised both hands and buried his face in them. Inside his head, countless voices screamed and wailed, and from all those voices a single image formed… death.
Yu Jiuling crouched beside him and said nothing. He knew that right now, there was nothing to say, and that anything he said would be meaningless.
Li Chi had thought of the warning. But he hadn’t been able to stop what happened. Sometimes, human power simply runs out.
Li Chi sat there until dawn. When he felt light warming his skin, he came back to himself. In the moment he raised his head and looked toward the sunlight, something suddenly came to him.
He looked at Yu Jiuling and said, “If the nations of the Central Plains cannot grow strong enough to make every enemy fear them, then this kind of war will never stop — it will happen again and again, until our nation falls once more, and the cycle repeats without end. The only way out is to become strong enough to make the enemy afraid, or… strong enough that there are no enemies left.”
Yu Jiuling watched Li Chi. In those bloodshot eyes, he saw something that could only be called resolve.
“The only path forward is to tear down this Dachu, already rotting from within, and build a new and powerful nation in its place. Dachu can no longer accomplish that goal.”
Li Chi let out a long breath. He thought of Yu Chaozong — a man of integrity, of righteousness, with a clear and defined purpose. A man like that could perhaps build an empire truly worthy of the name.
Meanwhile, at Xinzhou Pass.
The arrival of tens of thousands of Yanshan Camp soldiers had given the Xinzhou Pass garrison a surge of hope — and, simultaneously, a surge of unease. Their rescuers were rebels, which left them feeling both reassured and deeply unsettled at the same time.
But that unease didn’t last long. Not long after the Yanshan Camp army arrived, Yanshan Camp’s second-in-command, Bi Datong, declared that Yanshan Camp was taking control of Xinzhou Pass, disarmed all the Chu soldiers, and drove them off the city wall.
This was one of the rare occasions when Bi Datong and Yu Chaozong thought along the same lines. Bi Datong, too, felt that taking Xinzhou Pass was more gain than risk. With this border pass providing direct access to the steppes, even if things went wrong with Prince Yu in the future, they would have a way to flee the Central Plains and take refuge elsewhere.
When Yu Chaozong learned that Bi Datong had disarmed and expelled the Dachu border troops, he expressed no opinion on it — because he had been thinking the same thing. Bi Datong had simply acted more directly.
After Yanshan Camp seized control of Xinzhou Pass, the city’s defenses grew immeasurably stronger. Years of careful management had left Yanshan Camp with powerful soldiers, well-equipped, with ample weapons stockpiles, plentiful provisions, and most importantly enough troops.
After ordering the Chu troops expelled, second-in-command Bi Datong changed into a set of Chu military armor and climbed to the top of the city wall, looking rather eager about it. When Yu Chaozong turned to look at him and saw what he was wearing, his eyes narrowed slightly.
Bi Datong walked over to Yu Chaozong with a broad grin, patting the armor on his chest. “Now this is some fine armor,” he said.
Yu Chaozong gave a short hum and said offhandedly, “It suits you.”
Bi Datong laughed heartily. He looked out at the Heiwu encampment stretching beyond the walls, fell silent for a moment, then stopped laughing. Suddenly he clutched his stomach and said, “Big Brother, my stomach is really acting up on me. I need to find a privy.”
Yu Chaozong knew perfectly well he was afraid to engage the Heiwu forces. He nodded and said, “Go ahead.”
Bi Datong hurried off and turned away down the wall. He thought to himself: that dark mass of soldiers out there — how would you even fight them? Who could guarantee that an arrow wouldn’t find him once the fighting started? As he descended from the wall, he was already working out how to head back to the Yanshan Camp early.
Yu Chaozong watched him go, a trace of contempt on his face.
—