On the hillside, Dantai Yajing stood watching the north. From this elevated position, anyone approaching from that direction would be visible from a great distance.

In his heart there was a faint trace of regret — not for having struck so hard and repaid violence with violence, but for having failed to interrogate the enemy first and gather information.

It was precisely in this moment that something awakened in him — an understanding of why his father always seemed to look down on him.

He had told his father he was already unrivaled. His father had called him a frog at the bottom of a well. The reason might not have been only about his martial ability.

A general needs martial skill, certainly — but far more important is the mind.

He looked sideways to where Tang Pidi was standing not far off, also watching the northern road, though what Tang Pidi was thinking he couldn’t say.

Dantai Yajing cleared his throat and cast about for an opening.

“The mountain wind really is something out here.”

He said it with a little laugh.

Tang Pidi gave a nod. “Because we’re standing on high ground.”

Dantai Yajing suddenly had the feeling that Tang Pidi was quite an irritating person to talk to… was that how he himself used to sound?

“What are you thinking about?”

Dantai Yajing asked.

Tang Pidi pointed toward the road ahead: “The pass down there — the Northern Madman has over a thousand men. They may call themselves horse bandits, but they’ve all been forged in battle. They won’t charge recklessly at us.”

“When the bandits return, they’ll stop at that junction. The Northern Madman will likely send scouts this way first.”

“If we just wait here, a small scouting party will come to probe — ambushing scouts accomplishes nothing. To draw out the main force, someone must go forward and lure them.”

“But if we ambush the scouts first, we tip them off. When the main force attacks, they’ll be on their guard.”

“To lure them effectively, our decoy force needs to be large enough — if it’s too small, the Northern Madman won’t bother coming himself. He’ll just send a detachment. So the decoy can’t be fewer than twenty men.”

Dantai Yajing blinked. Tang Pidi standing there hadn’t only been watching for when the enemy would arrive.

Tang Pidi continued: “I’ve just thought through a plan to divide our force into three groups.”

He looked at Dantai Yajing: “We have a hundred cavalry. I take twenty men — once we spot the enemy, I approach at the right moment, make it look like a chance encounter, then wheel back and fall back.”

“You take twenty men, leave now and take a different road to come at them from the other side. When the Northern Madman splits his force to chase me, you come at them from the other direction and lure away another detachment — force him to split his forces further.”

“Li Chi takes sixty men and holds the ambush here. The three of us each take a role.”

Dantai Yajing was quiet for a moment. “But we only have a hundred cavalry in total. If the Northern Madman comes out in full force, that’s over a thousand men.”

Tang Pidi said evenly: “A hundred cavalry — trained by me.”

Then he turned and descended the hill: “Let’s go divide them up.”

The two of them came down — and Dantai Yajing blinked again. Because Li Chi had already arranged the division.

The hundred cavalry had been split into three groups: two groups of thirty, one group of forty.

When Tang Pidi and Dantai Yajing came down, Li Chi said: “We’ll need to lure them in and force them to split their forces.”

Dantai Yajing stood dumbfounded again. He looked at Tang Pidi, then at Li Chi — his feelings were complicated.

“For the decoy teams,” Tang Pidi said, “I’ll take twenty, Dantai takes twenty.”

“Forty is enough on my end,” Li Chi said.

Dantai Yajing thought privately: *these two are both so…how are they both this confident about everything?*

Tang Pidi thought it over, then nodded. “Alright. Me twenty, Dantai forty.”

Dantai Yajing: “…”

—

Fifteen li away.

Yu Jiuling’s group had fallen back to the mountain valley between the Northern Branch Mountains and the Great Western Mountains — a valley a hundred li wide from north to south.

Where they had retreated to was still far from the entrance to Xiaoyao, because it had taken them five days of eastward travel to reach Xiaoyao in the first place.

“Jiuling.”

Gao Xining called to Yu Jiuling, then looked at the Blade-Hanging Sect’s senior disciple Jia Ruan: “Brother Jia.”

The two of them came forward at once. Both spoke at the same moment: “What is it?”

Gao Xining said: “On the way here I noticed something — about a hundred meters in that direction, hidden in the grass, there’s a cave. Leave ten men — we’ll retreat into the cave, and the two of you take the remaining Blade-Hanging brothers to reinforce Li Chi.”

“A cave?”

Yu Jiuling looked in the direction she pointed and saw nothing.

“There’s a cave there?”

He suspected Gao Xining was saying this only out of concern for Li Chi.

Gao Xining said: “Behind the largest of the three trees on that side, just to the left — that’s where the cave is. Li Chi would have seen it when we passed. That’s why he had us retreat exactly fifteen li.”

Yu Jiuling wasn’t convinced and ran over to look — and was astonished to find that there really was a cave.

But from the angle they had passed, spotting it would have been virtually impossible. How had Li Chi and Gao Xining seen it?

And from Gao Xining’s tone, Li Chi had never told her about the cave — because Li Chi knew she would have noticed it too.

He hadn’t said anything, because there was nothing that needed to be said.

Yu Jiuling felt that compared to people like Li Chi and Gao Xining, he was the one who came across as a fool.

He had no idea that fifteen li away, at this very same moment, Dantai Yajing was thinking exactly the same thing.

Compared to Li Chi and Tang Pidi, he — who had thought himself unrivaled in all of Liangzhou — felt like a fool.

Gao Xining went on: “We’ll conceal the cave entrance, erase the traces of our footprints, and even if enemies come this way, they won’t easily find us. So ten men is plenty.”

Xiahou Yili said: “Besides, it’s not as though I can’t fight.”

The girl was eager and itching to join the battle — if she weren’t worried about her mother, she would far rather be up front fighting alongside Li Chi.

Yu Jiuling looked at Jia Ruan — but Jia Ruan said nothing, his expression seeming conflicted, clearly wrestling with something.

Gao Xining began: “Li Chi promised you he wouldn’t have you take part in dangerous—”

Before she finished, Jia Ruan said with grave sincerity: “Actually, you could all wash your hands of this. Does Li Chi not know the danger he’s walking into?”

“On the road back, my junior disciple asked me — why does Li Chi go into danger like this when he could simply avoid it?”

Jia Ruan said: “And in my heart I had only one answer: *a true man has things he must not do, and things he absolutely must.*”

He looked at his fellow disciples. “All of you, remember that. We have not followed the wrong person.”

He looked at Gao Xining: “We disciples of the Blade-Hanging Sect are not ignorant of what it means to be righteous. We are not ignorant of what a man should do. I have been reluctant to send my brothers into danger because for a long time I have felt — this rotten world has nothing that is worth dying for.”

He exhaled slowly: “But what man has no dream in his heart?”

“Senior Brother!”

The youngest disciple, Zhen Gen, broke into a smile as he looked at Jia Ruan, eyes shining bright.

Jia Ruan shook his head: “You’re not going. None of you are.”

Zhen Gen’s face fell at once.

“I’m going,” Jia Ruan said. “Myself.”

He looked at Gao Xining: “Forgive me, Miss Gao. Before my master passed away, I swore to him that I would protect every last one of these disciples. I knelt and swore to him — not one of them could be lost.”

Gao Xining nodded: “I understand.”

Jia Ruan called out to his brothers in a loud voice: “Stay here and protect Miss Gao. If you still call me senior brother, you’ll do as I say.”

“If one day I die, then you can all go do as you wish — but remember this one thing: if a man of the Blade-Hanging Sect cannot act righteously, he might as well go on being a turtle hiding in his shell.”

He exhaled one more long breath and said quietly: “Who doesn’t want to be a hero…”

Then he raised his head and looked at his youngest disciple Zhen Gen: “Before Master passed, he left me a saying. I have never told all of you the full version. Let me tell you now: Master’s final instruction was two words — *live*.”

“But his actual final instruction was nine words.”

He paused, then said: “*Live — or live greatly.*”

Master had left that choice to him. For Jia Ruan as senior brother, what a burden it was to choose.

He smiled: “Senior Brother goes first to live greatly. You all be good. Master put you in my care — so you have to listen. Senior Brother has authority.”

Then he looked at Yu Jiuling: “Let’s go.”

Yu Jiuling answered: “Let’s go.”

—

At the mouth of the pass.

Tang Pidi saw dust rising in the distance and confirmed that the Northern Madman’s column was on its way back. He raised his hand — and set out with twenty men.

Twenty men on horseback, each one dragging behind his horse one of the bandit corpses that had just been reburied.

If the Northern Madman saw that, he would have to be made of iron not to go into a fury.

On the other side, Dantai Yajing waited with forty men for the signal.

Li Chi stood on the high ground watching the scene unfold. The moment the Northern Madman split his forces to chase Tang Pidi, he would give the signal, and Dantai Yajing would bring his men in from behind to harass.

If he had been going alone to settle accounts with the Northern Madman, he would have felt no anxiety at all — but now, with forty soldiers under his command, his heart was oddly uneasy.

In this moment, he understood his father’s words to him.

The Liangzhou general Dantai Qi had said: *You think because your martial arts are decent you can lead soldiers into battle? You don’t yet know what responsibility means. Only when you understand the duties of a general will I hand you a force. I will not carelessly entrust the lives of any of my soldiers to you.*

At the time, Dantai Yajing had thought: *with my ability, however many men you give me, how could I ever harm them? You simply don’t think enough of me.*

He had imagined that leading troops, he would win every battle without exception, that none of his father’s worries would ever come to pass — his father had simply underestimated him.

Now, with forty cavalry in his charge, he finally understood what it meant to bear the duties of a commander. The lives of forty men were pressing down on his shoulders like a mountain. What would it feel like with ten thousand soldiers — or a hundred thousand?

*What it means — to have soldiers’ lives entrusted to you.*

He breathed deeply, looked down at his lance.

Old Yellow had gone with Miss Gao to find safety, and he should be fine — and thank goodness for Xiahou Yili and her medical skill.

“When we charge — all of you fall in behind me.”

Dantai Yajing suddenly said.

He blinked, surprised at himself.

Because right up until the moment before he spoke, he hadn’t been thinking about saying it. Even as the words left his mouth, his mind might not have fully caught up.

In that moment, the words had come out naturally, without thought.

He turned to look at the soldiers. The soldiers were looking back at him — not one of them doubted his words, not one of them doubted his ability.

From the moment these forty men had followed him, they had — as soldiers — chosen to place their unconditional faith in their general.

“Don armor and take up the spear…”

Dantai Yajing murmured those four words to himself, then raised his hand and pressed it against his own chest.

He told his father, in his heart: *Father, I understand now.*

—

On the official road ahead, Tang Pidi rode with twenty cavalry, dragging the bandit corpses behind them, talking and laughing as they went.

At this moment, at the junction, the Northern Madman raised a spyglass and peered toward them.

That spyglass had been seized from a small county magistrate’s office when he had led his men into a small county town years ago — there was only the one.

He saw those several dozen men approaching. He saw the bodies being dragged behind their horses.

In an instant, the Northern Madman’s blood surged.