That night, on top of the city wall.

Tang Pidi rested his hands on the parapet and looked out at what lay beyond, silent for a long while.

Hearing footsteps behind him, Tang Pidi turned and looked — it was Li Chi coming over. He immediately smiled and said, “We’re going out soon. You should be making use of the time to rest.”

Li Chi shook his head. “Can’t sleep.”

Tang Pidi took the flask Li Chi passed him, tilted his head back and gulped several mouthfuls, then laughed out loud. “Our liquor still tastes better. The mare’s milk wine of the steppe — I’ve grown somewhat used to it, but it really is quite thin in flavor.”

Li Chi asked, “You said you’ll bring the others back and then come back yourself — do you have a plan in mind?”

Tang Pidi shook his head. “I wouldn’t say I have a specific plan. My father says Dachu treated us unjustly, so we might as well spend our lives on the steppe. But I can’t help thinking — no matter how good the steppe is, it’s not home.”

He looked at Li Chi and said, “In the end, I always have to come back.”

He asked Li Chi, “And you? What are your plans?”

Li Chi answered, “I plan to find a worthy lord to serve. Dachu has treated us unjustly — but it’s not our common people of the Central Plains who have been unjust. You’re right: this place is still our home.”

Tang Pidi asked, “Have you already chosen someone?”

Li Chi said, “Yu Chaozong of Yanshan Camp.”

Tang Pidi committed that name to memory.

“If I come back someday and can’t find you, I’ll go look for you at Yanshan Camp. If we’re destined to meet again, we will meet.”

Tang Pidi raised his head, looked at the sky, and said, “It must be past midnight. We should be setting out.”

Li Chi made a sound of agreement. “I’m afraid there won’t be a chance to say goodbye when you actually leave, so let us say goodbye now.”

“We will meet again — I’m certain of it!”

Tang Pidi clasped his fists toward Li Chi. Li Chi returned the gesture.

Two young men — one barely past fifteen, one not yet fifteen — standing on the wall of this frontier city, making their promises about the lives that lay ahead. There really are people who are different from others — different from the very beginning.

A quarter of an hour later, Tang Pidi and Li Chi led a cavalry column of several hundred, quietly opening the city gates and slipping out. The horses’ hooves had been wrapped in cotton cloth. Weapons had been wrapped in cloth as well. The column moved at a walk, not a gallop.

Tang Pidi kept his voice low: “In a moment I’ll lead my men in a battle cry and charge — the Black Wu will move to block us, but that’s a feint. After we draw their attention, you come in from the left flank. I observed their camp carefully before — the left flank is where their grain and supply depot is, heavily defended. But not far from it there are vast numbers of cattle and sheep with very few guards. Once you break in, throw open the enclosures and drive the cattle and sheep into the Black Wu camp. The Black Wu will be thrown into chaos.”

Li Chi nodded. “I’ve got it all.”

The two of them barely knew each other, yet both felt an inexplicable understanding between them — no need for many words; they simply grasped each other’s thinking.

Tang Pidi, still not quite satisfied, added one more thing: “Don’t get caught up in prolonged fighting. Our numbers are truly too few — we’re just here to make a nuisance of ourselves. Burn their grain if you can; if not, releasing the cattle and sheep is still a great victory.”

After they had gone a bit further, Tang Pidi clasped his fists toward Li Chi: “If we meet again someday, let’s accomplish something together.”

Li Chi asked him, “Why do you smile so much?”

This caught Tang Pidi off guard. He thought for a moment and then answered, “If you can smile, why would you walk around with a long face? In this world, just staying alive is already a gain. If you’ve already gained that, why not smile a little more for it?”

He turned his horse. “Brothers — let’s go home!”

More than a hundred steppe riders answered as one, and charged off after Tang Pidi.

Tang Pidi led those hundred-odd men flying toward the Black Wu camp. While still a good distance away they raised a roar of battle cries, loosing fire arrows into the Black Wu encampment as they galloped. Before long the sounds of horn after horn came from within the Black Wu camp.

In the darkness, Li Chi and his men watched as the torches on the far side gathered into what looked like a sea of flame. He raised his hand: “Let’s go make a nuisance of the Black Wu.”

Several hundred men followed Li Chi charging toward the left flank. The other side was already a cacophony. Li Chi and his men made straight for the cattle and sheep without hesitation — the grain depot side was fortified like a stronghold, but here the guards were far fewer. That Tang Pidi had been able to observe such detail in the heat of the earlier battle — how could one not admire that?

Li Chi’s men reached the edge of the camp, lit the firecrackers they had brought and hurled them into the cattle and sheep enclosures. In an instant the animals erupted in a frenzy, their cries rolling together in one unbroken wave.

They threw out their iron hooks, pulled the enclosure fencing apart, and without a second look, turned around and left.

The cattle and sheep poured out of the enclosures and scattered everywhere — but nowhere near as fast as Li Chi’s men.

Before all this, the Black Wu had never been in the habit of building a wooden palisade around their camp — completely unlike the armies of the Central Plains. Because Dachu lacked cavalry, even the pointed log obstacles outside Black Wu camps were sparse.

Most importantly, since the Black Wu Empire was founded, there had never been a single instance of Dachu troops daring to raid a Black Wu camp. In the battles between the two armies, Dachu fought with its infantry as the main force, employing a complete set of infantry battle formations. With so few cavalry of its own, how could Dachu possibly raid a Black Wu camp?

After Li Chi and his men broke out and got clear, they looked over toward the other direction. Over there, the battle cries were crashing like a clap of thunder — there was no telling whether Tang Pidi and his men had managed to slip away yet.

This brief meeting and swift parting — it left something in one that was hard to let go of.

Li Chi’s column returned to the gates of Daizhou Pass and called out the agreed-upon signal. Xiahou Zuo immediately had the gates opened. But Li Chi’s mind kept running over Tang Pidi’s approach to leading troops in battle — the more he thought about it, the more remarkable it seemed.

This way of fighting also gave Li Chi a great deal to think about.

The Black Wu had always been militarily dominant. For centuries they had never taken any opponent seriously. For centuries it had been them on the attack and Dachu on the defense. The one time Dachu had launched a northern campaign, it was the kind of joke no one could laugh at — twelve thousand elite troops lost, the foundations of Dachu shaken.

By comparison, Yanshan Camp was like Li Chi and his men right now, with the imperial court in the role of the Black Wu. The court had rotted and decayed to such a degree — yet Dachu’s regular troops were still peerless in infantry battle. And so Tang Pidi’s approach of raiding and harassing might well prove enormously useful in the days to come.

Xiahou Zuo saw Li Chi standing there in a daze and walked over to give him a kick in the backside.

“Lose your soul out there?”

Li Chi snapped back to himself and said with a laugh, “Tang Pidi really is a rare talent. Remarkable.”

Xiahou Zuo gave a snort and said, “He’s nothing special, as far as I can see.”

Li Chi laughed. “Suddenly there’s a distinctly sour smell in the air.”

Xiahou Zuo said, “Pah!”

He was silent for a moment, then gave a nod. “That kid — genuinely a rare talent.”

At that same moment, out on the dark plain, over a hundred steppe riders were howling and whooping as they charged into the distance. They had made fools of the Black Wu once more, and that pride and exhilaration could only be vented with these howls.

Zhebei rode tight on Tang Pidi’s heels. While riding flat out he asked, “How did you know the Black Wu wouldn’t dare chase too hard?”

Tang Pidi burst into laughter. “There doesn’t need to be a reason for everything. They don’t dare, they don’t dare.”

Zhebei was quiet a moment, then asked again, “Tang Pi — are you going to leave the steppe?”

Tang Pidi fell silent. After a long moment, Tang Pidi looked at Zhebei and answered, “I always have to go back in the end. If you were out somewhere enjoying yourself — wandering mountains and rivers — and you suddenly heard that the roof of your house had been washed away by a great rain, you’d feel it in your heart too. You’d want to go back and see, and if there was a way, you’d want to save it.”

Zhebei said, “But with only your strength alone — how could you ever save Dachu?”

Tang Pidi smiled, “I’m not here to save Dachu. I’m here to save the Central Plains… and besides — if you think that way, and he thinks that way, and I think that way too, and not one person stands up — then there are no heroes in the world. I, Tang Pidi, intend to be the greatest hero under heaven.”

Zhebei nodded vigorously. “I believe you. You will absolutely be the greatest hero under heaven.”

After a while he asked again, “You’ve always said you want to go back — don’t you feel even a little attached to the steppe?”

Tang Pidi said, “Zhebei — you’re my brother. No matter where I go, you’ll always be my brother.”

Daizhou Pass.

Deep in the night, a scout came galloping back to the city at full speed, covered from head to foot in travel dust. Once inside the city, the scout rushed to find Xiahou Zuo and reported that Prince Wu’s army was less than a hundred li away — at the latest, two days before they arrived.

Xiahou Zuo immediately woke Li Chi and the others, who had only just lain down. After a brief discussion among everyone, they decided to leave that very night. The brothers who had come from Yanshan Camp especially — they absolutely could not still be here when Prince Wu’s army arrived.

What Li Chi did not know was that by leaving that night, he narrowly missed the person Yu Chaozong of Yanshan Camp had sent to find him. They left that night; the very next morning Yu Chaozong’s envoy arrived, and learning that Li Chi had already gone, all of Yanshan Camp’s people were bewildered. They also didn’t dare to give chase for fear of running into Prince Wu’s army, and could only return with regret.

On the official road, Li Chi lay in the horse-drawn carriage with his eyes closed, a blade of grass hanging from the corner of his mouth — the very image of Xiahou Zuo. He lay there but couldn’t sleep. He was no longer thinking about the battle at Daizhou Pass. With Prince Wu’s great army arriving, holding Daizhou Pass would no longer be in question. And now that Prince Yu knew Xiahou Zuo was at Daizhou Pass, Prince Yu would certainly race here with every last Jizhou soldier he could muster.

There was just one thing on his mind right now. One person, to be precise.

That girl, Gao Xining.

If she gave him grief when he got back — how was he supposed to explain himself?

He was probably worrying over nothing, really. He just didn’t want to make Gao Xining unhappy.

Yu Jiuling, who had fallen asleep, rolled over and threw one leg across Li Chi. He smacked his lips a few times. Li Chi didn’t stand for it — he turned onto his side, facing Yu Jiuling, and made a concerted effort to produce a fart. The result was underwhelming in scale, but at least the response was timely. And it was more than adequately pungent.

A moment later, Yu Jiuling’s nose twitched. He opened his eyes in a daze, only to find Li Chi looking at him with an expression of pure disgust.

Li Chi said, “How can a fart from you smell this bad?”

Yu Jiuling said, “Are you sure it was me?”

Li Chi said, “Mister Yan and the others are in the carriage up ahead. There are only the two of us in this one. If it wasn’t you, was it me?”

Yu Jiuling said, “So what if it was me — I was dreaming when I farted. It has nothing to do with me; that was a matter for the girl in my dream, not me… but it really is foul. I was having such a good dream — I dreamed of a beautiful girl, lovely as a goddess, who said she liked me and dragged me off somewhere private, said she wanted to kiss me, she really was stunning — but then she opened her mouth and I smelled something foul, and I kicked her right out.”

Li Chi frowned.

He thought back to Yu Jiuling tossing his leg onto him just now in his sleep.

“You… you were really only kissing in the dream?”

Yu Jiuling’s face turned red. “You’re disgusting! You — you shameless wretch!”

Li Chi: “Hmm?”

—