Before raising his banner in revolt, Prince Yu had set great store by this birthday banquet for his consort. Representatives of every faction had been invited — it was to be the last occasion before the uprising for all these parties to declare themselves, and Prince Yu’s final opportunity to gauge exactly how many hearts he had won.

If all went according to plan, he intended to announce at the banquet that he would be leading his army southward. When he made the announcement, no small number of guests would have pledged their allegiance on the spot.

But now, the hall lay in shambles around him.

Prince Yu sat in his chair, his expression dark and sunken. He had no wish to speak, no wish to see anyone. In truth, his mind had gone entirely blank — after so many years, the first time he had ever emptied his head of all thought, and it had to be like this.

It was then that hurried footsteps came from outside. Military Commissioner Zeng Ling had returned. He had feared arriving too late for the consort’s birthday banquet and had ridden day and night without rest — only to find a scene like this waiting for him.

As Zeng Ling entered, the household staff all looked at him with desperate, pleading eyes. It seemed only the Commissioner could still speak to the Prince. In the state His Highness was in, they were too frightened to draw even a single breath too loudly.

Zeng Ling waved them all out and turned to close the door behind him.

He stepped forward to a respectful distance before Prince Yu and bowed his head. “Your Highness, I have returned… I offer my deepest condolences.”

Prince Yu raised his eyes to look at Zeng Ling and let out a bitter laugh.

“My two women have each wanted to kill the other on the other’s birthday for years. I suppose one of them can finally be satisfied.”

He let out a long, slow breath. “But I never imagined it would be the consort who died.”

Zeng Ling said, “Your Highness — the most pressing matter now — should we not immediately dispatch men to seal off all word of this? We cannot allow this news to reach the capital. If the Yuwen clan were to learn of it…”

Prince Yu glanced at him again, was silent a moment, then said, “My mind is a chaos of tangled threads. Go and make the arrangements yourself. You need not report back to me — whatever decisions are needed, you may make them. And the consort’s… the consort’s funeral arrangements — see to those as well.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Zeng Ling said, “To be safe, I may need to kill certain people.”

“Do as you see fit.”

Prince Yu sighed. “I… right now I only want to go see Xiahou and her son. To think Yili didn’t die — she came back.”

“Your Highness, you must not go.”

Zeng Ling said, “The consort has only just met her end. If Your Highness were to seek out the Xiahou mother and child now, it will invite gossip. And those families who are still weighing their options — they will waver because of this. They will reason that now that the consort has met with misfortune, the Yuwen clan will certainly withdraw their support from Your Highness. If at that same moment Your Highness goes to see the Xiahou mother and child…”

Prince Yu raised a hand to silence him and slumped back in his chair. “I know. Go and see to your affairs.”

Zeng Ling assented with a quiet sound. “Your servant takes his leave.”

He walked out and turned to close the door behind him once more, then exhaled a long breath.

This catastrophe at the Prince’s residence would have no bearing on his own position — if anything, there was something to be gained from it. Before his departure for Youzhou, the Prince had already grown displeased with him on account of the affair with Jiang Ran. He had expected that upon his return, the Prince would still hold him to account for it, and would make a point of cutting the Military Commissioner down to size before the uprising began.

But now — the Prince had no energy left for any of that.

He had barely stepped outside when Luo Jing, the young general from Youzhou, bowed toward him. “Commissioner, His Highness — is he…”

Zeng Ling looked at Luo Jing, and a sudden gleam lit his eyes. Something had occurred to him. He shook his head slightly. “My sincere apologies, Young General. I had intended to present you to His Highness, but in the current circumstances the Prince is unable to receive visitors, so…”

Luo Jing said, “Think nothing of it. I will seek an audience once His Highness’s spirits have recovered somewhat.”

Zeng Ling said, “However — there happens to be a matter at hand where His Highness requires your assistance.”

Luo Jing asked, “What matter?”

Zeng Ling leaned close to Luo Jing’s ear and spoke several quiet words. Luo Jing listened, thought for a moment, then nodded. “Commissioner need only tell me who, and nothing more. As for the rest — the Commissioner may await my report in peace.”

Zeng Ling clasped his hands in salute. “Then I am in your debt, Young General.”

Not long afterward, the military garrison forces of Jizhou City received orders from Military Commissioner Zeng Ling: all six city gates were to be sealed immediately, with no one permitted to enter or leave under any circumstances — not even personnel of the Prince’s own household.

The gates had barely swung shut when a column of riders arrived at one of them. Jizhou City, the largest city in the northern frontier, had six gates in total — two on the north face, two on the south, and one each on the east and west. These riders had come to Yuhua Gate, one of the two southern gates. The man at their head saw the gate already closed and his expression darkened at once.

He spurred his horse forward. Strangely, there was not a single guard to be seen at the gate itself. He looked upward — soldiers lined the battlements above, all leaning over to peer down at him. Faintly, he could make out the glint of bows in their hands.

“I am a man of the Prince’s household, bearing urgent orders from His Highness to conduct business outside the city! Open the gate at once!”

The leader shouted up at the wall.

A voice from above called back.

“The Military Commissioner has issued orders that no one is to leave the city. Violators will be executed on the spot. Fall back immediately, or we will loose arrows!”

The rider’s expression shifted. “You have some nerve!” he snarled. “Blocking even men of the Prince’s household — if you do not open this gate, don’t blame me for the slaughter that follows!”

“Arrows!”

A roar from the battlements. The garrison soldiers seized their bows and leveled them downward in unison, poised to unleash a torrent of bolts at any moment.

The hundred-odd riders were penned in at the gate, every face grim. The leader looked back over his shoulder; his men were all looking to him.

“What do we do, sir?”

someone asked.

The leader was silent a moment, then pointed at the gate. “Go and force it open. We break through.”

The words had barely left his mouth when the sound of hoofbeats rose from behind them. Everyone turned to look — from the broad avenue at their backs, a column of armored cavalry was advancing slowly toward them, too numerous to count, cutting off their retreat as well.

At the front rode a young man in iron armor. He looked young, his features handsome and his bearing cold and imperious. In his hand he held an iron spear.

“Are you Jing Yanli?”

the young general asked.

Jing Yanli wheeled his horse around to face him. “And who are you? I don’t know you.”

The young general said, “Luo Jing, General of the Tiger-Leopard Cavalry from Youzhou.”

Jing Yanli scoffed. “I don’t care who you are. I am a man of Prince Yu’s household, acting under the Prince’s orders. If you dare obstruct us, when the Prince holds you accountable—”

He got no further. Luo Jing had already raised the iron spear in his hand.

“I have heard you are a renowned warrior of the western regions, so I have no desire to order you all shot down with arrows. Come and fight me.”

Jing Yanli’s men were thrown into a panic. Hemmed in on all sides, they had nowhere to go.

After the consort’s death, Jing Yanli had urged Prince Yu to detain everyone — the Prince had turned and struck him across the face for it. In that instant, Jing Yanli had grasped the truth: Prince Yu was likely going to have him killed. The consort was dead, and this news could not under any circumstances be allowed to reach the Yuwen clan. Prince Yu, ruthless and decisive as he was in such matters, would leave none of them alive.

Jing Yanli glanced at the regulation Dachu cavalry saber hanging at his horse’s left side, then unhooked it from the saddle and was still for a moment before letting it drop to the road. The blade struck the ground with a ringing clang.

Everyone assumed he was about to surrender — but instead, Jing Yanli reached to the right side of his horse and drew a curved blade.

He drew it from its scabbard and leveled it at Luo Jing from across the distance.

Luo Jing’s eyes brightened. He spurred his horse forward.

Jing Yanli bellowed, “Since we cannot ride home to the western regions alive, we will die fighting! Let these men of the Central Plains see our blades!”

His men flung away their Dachu sabers one and all, drew their curved blades, and leveled them at the Dachu cavalry across the way.

At this sight, Luo Jing’s eyes grew even brighter.

“Kill!”

Jing Yanli drove his horse forward at full gallop; more than a hundred men followed him in the charge. But Luo Jing pressed his hand downward: “No one moves without my order.”

“Yes, sir!”

The Tiger-Leopard Cavalry behind him answered as one.

And Luo Jing, iron spear in hand, charged alone into those hundred-odd men.

On the first pass, Luo Jing deflected Jing Yanli’s curved blade with a single sweep of his spear and plunged through the horsemen at Jing Yanli’s back — and within only a few breaths’ span of time, he had cut a path clean through more than a hundred men and emerged the other side.

He reached the city gate and wheeled his horse around, then drove back through them again.

On the second pass, Luo Jing deliberately avoided engaging Jing Yanli directly. He swept aside his curved blade once more with a single stroke and killed only Jing Yanli’s men — and when he broke through a second time, a full third of the hundred-odd riders had already been unhorsed.

The speed at which cavalry charged past each other was tremendous; the exchange was measured in instants. To have skewered thirty-odd men in that fleeting moment of contact gave some measure of the speed with which Luo Jing’s spear flew.

After two passes, a faint disappointment had settled across Luo Jing’s face. The anticipation he had felt before the fighting began seemed to have been worn away entirely by the feeble combat strength of these western-regions men — feeble, at any rate, by his reckoning.

Luo Jing raised the iron spear for the third time. Jing Yanli’s face had gone as pale as paper.

He had made quite a name for himself in the western regions. From youth he had been called a warrior of ten-thousand-man might, and after coming to the Central Plains he had indeed found no worthy opponent.

The last time he had faced someone who had forced him to take notice had been Li Chi.

But this time, it was not merely a matter of taking notice. He already knew he was no match for this young general.

“The legendary number one martial master of Dachu’s northern frontier,”

Jing Yanli said, looking at Luo Jing. “You are the first Dachu commander I have ever looked up to.”

Luo Jing shook his head slightly. “You have yet to reach the level where I might look up to you. Before we fought, I believed you might be my equal. Now I see that these so-called warriors of the western regions are nothing remarkable after all.”

Jing Yanli’s fury surged up. He knew he was outmatched — yet he had been cornered, and he resolved that if he was to die, he would take this arrogant man down with him.

He drove his horse forward in a charge. But this time Luo Jing did not ride to meet him — he sat his horse exactly where he was.

When Jing Yanli was nearly upon him, Luo Jing raised his hand and hurled the iron spear. Jing Yanli saw it coming clearly — and could not dodge it.

Too fast. Too fierce. Too merciless.

Jing Yanli tried to evade, but there was no time. The iron spear punched through his body with a dull thud — so fast that Jing Yanli barely even reacted before the spear had already passed clean through.

The spear did not slow in the slightest. It drove through and took down several more western-regions warriors who had been riding behind Jing Yanli, each one run through in turn, before finally slamming into the city wall with a resounding crack. The city bricks, thick and solid as they were, cracked under the impact. The spear lodged itself in the wall and the shaft hummed with vibration.

Though Jing Yanli’s body had been run through, neither he nor the horse beneath him showed any sign of it. The horse still charged forward.

It carried him all the way to Luo Jing, and Luo Jing reached out and took him by the throat, plucking him from the saddle with effortless ease, as though simply picking something up — then let him go. He did not even throw him down; he simply opened his hand.

Jing Yanli hit the ground. His eyes did not close.

Luo Jing looked down at the fallen body, his gaze heavy with disappointment.

He pointed idly at the remaining western-regions men. “Kill them.”

“Yes, sir!”

The Tiger-Leopard Cavalry spurred their horses forward.

—