The Yanshan Camp was thrown into chaos. The vast majority of the men had no idea what was happening, but the leaders of each division were already crying out for them to take up their weapons.

Soldiers accustomed to following orders assembled as commanded, still bewildered even as they readied themselves to charge.

They began rushing forward at the command, engaging the men ahead of them in decisive combat at the command — but only when they stood face to face did they realize: it was Yanshan Camp killing its own.

Huangjia’s forces held the numerical advantage, and the mountain stronghold of Xilizi had also gone up in flames, so Xilizi’s side collapsed before long.

Of several thousand men, only six or seven hundred managed to fight their way out with him. With no other recourse, he had no choice but to flee Yanshan and seek a new place to take root.

Huangjia appeared to have won a great victory, yet a good portion of the mountain stronghold had burned — several of the fortresses reduced to ash — and he had also suffered losses of over a thousand men.

A perfectly intact Yanshan Camp, reduced to such a battered state.

Yet Huangjia felt no regret. On the contrary, he was quite pleased.

After tallying the numbers, the Yanshan Camp’s fighting strength still stood at sixteen or seventeen thousand. His starting position was already far superior to what Yu Chaozong had begun with.

This force of ten thousand and more did not even include the troops currently garrisoning Daizhou Pass and Xinzhou Pass — those two garrisons combined amounted to over thirty thousand.

Calculated that way, the Yanshan Camp’s total strength was now close to fifty thousand. It remained a formidable power.

So Huangjia did the arithmetic and was filled with satisfaction. From this day forward, he was the Yanshan Camp’s supreme commander, and these tens of thousands of soldiers were all his to deploy.

Someone advised him that the generals currently at Daizhou Pass and Xinzhou Pass were not his men — he ought to devise a scheme to recall them, then have them killed.

Huangjia ultimately decided to wait. He was worried the stronghold was still unsettled, and that killing people now would make it impossible to bring back the tens of thousands of crack troops stationed at those two border passes.

Night.

Zhuang Wudi and his two companions rode hard to the south. Zhuang Wudi turned his head from time to time to glance back toward the mountain stronghold, where the glow of flames still painted the sky red.

The complexity in his eyes — no one could understand it.

The three of them rode on at a stretch for several dozen li before finding a place to take turns resting and discussing how to get back to Jizhou as quickly as possible to rejoin Li Chi.

Early the next morning, Li Chi and his group were also on the road. They had rested less than three hours through the night before setting out again.

Li Chi’s worry was that Zhuang Wudi might have been caught in someone’s scheme. On the surface he showed nothing, but inwardly he was tormented.

Fortunately there was only the one main road, otherwise they might have passed each other entirely. After Li Chi’s group had traveled north for eight days, they encountered Zhuang Wudi and his companions.

At the sight of Zhuang Wudi in such a state, Li Chi’s eyes went red in an instant.

And when Zhuang Wudi heard that Yu Chaozong had not died, his eyes went red in an instant too.

“Since the Yanshan Camp has already come to this, we might as well take it.”

Li Chi said: “Rather than let them squander everything Elder Brother Yu built with his own hands, we should be the ones to claim it—”

He turned and looked at Yu Jiuling: “Ninth Sister, there’s an important matter I need to entrust to you.”

The moment Yu Jiuling heard “important matter,” his heart seized with dread. He thought: surely this isn’t another job like luring enemies out in the open?

Just recently, outside the walls of Gao County, he had paraded around shamefully to draw those horse bandits out, while Li Chi and the others used the opportunity to slip into the city.

He guessed Li Chi probably wanted to do it again — have him go and make a spectacle of himself outside Yanshan Camp while Li Chi and the others snuck inside.

What Li Chi actually told him was… to go back to Jizhou.

Li Chi said: “We’ll rest here for the time being. You and Zhang Yuxu and Peng Shiqisan — the three of you get back to Jizhou as fast as you can. When you arrive, explain the situation to everyone: Jizhou is no longer a safe place to stay. Tell them all to leave the city.”

Yu Jiuling was stunned.

He asked: “With the way Jizhou City is being watched right now, how are we supposed to get out?”

Li Chi said: “Tell everyone to be ready. When someone comes to escort them, they leave the city immediately. All gold and silver are to be stored in the underground vault. Bring only what is absolutely necessary — no supplies, no luggage.”

Yu Jiuling still couldn’t make sense of it, and he couldn’t help but ask again: “And you’ll all come back to escort us out?”

Li Chi said: “Ninth Sister, would you let me finish speaking… After you arrive, go see General Liu Ge. Before I left Jizhou, I had already given him his instructions. He knows what to do.”

Yu Jiuling still didn’t understand. Yes, Liu Ge had several thousand crack troops under his command — but they were inside Jizhou City too. How were they supposed to get out?

But judging by Li Chi’s expression — assured, unhurried — it was clear he had arranged everything long in advance. Not daring to delay any further, Yu Jiuling, Zhang Yuxu, and Peng Shiqisan immediately turned back toward Jizhou.

“Where do we go?”

Zhuang Wudi asked Li Chi: “Just wait here?”

Li Chi said: “The rest of you wait here. I need to ride to the frontier to find Xiahou Zuo. We can take the Yanshan Camp, but Daizhou Pass and Xinzhou Pass matter far more. The moment Huangjia moves to seize those two garrisons, the frontier will be left vulnerable, and outside forces will exploit the opening. I’ll go find Xiahou Zuo as quickly as I can and have him secure the troops at both passes.”

Zhuang Wudi said: “I’ll go with you.”

Li Chi shook his head: “The round trip to Xiahou Zuo is even farther than the trip back to Jizhou. If everyone manages to get out of the city safely and arrives here to find no one, they’ll inevitably panic.”

Zhuang Wudi thought it over and could only accept staying behind. The people from the caravan agency were not particularly well-acquainted with Chen Dawei and Gang Gang — those two staying here might not be enough to put anyone at ease.

Li Chi also worried the two of them would slow his journey, so he brought neither of them along. Taking only a few horses, he set off alone toward the northwest.

Several days later. Jizhou City.

Yu Jiuling and his two companions rushed back, relayed Li Chi’s message to Changmei the Daoist and the others. Changmei said not a word in response — he immediately had everyone begin packing.

Mister Yan went to find Shen Rujian. Without Li Chi and the others around, the medical hall’s people had no security remaining in Jizhou.

After Mister Yan finished explaining, Shen Rujian thought for a moment and then slowly shook her head. “All of you may go. I cannot.”

Mister Yan was taken aback. “Why?”

Shen Rujian said: “Once everyone is gone, there will be no one left inside Jizhou to serve as an inside contact. If my reading of the situation is correct, Li Chi will move against Jizhou sooner or later.”

Mister Yan said: “But if you stay, and something goes wrong, there will be no one to help you.”

“If worst comes to worst, there’s still the underground vault, isn’t there?”

Shen Rujian’s smile was calm and unhurried. “When you go out and find Li Chi, you may relay my exact words to him.”

Mister Yan said: “Say whatever you like.”

Shen Rujian said: “If I leave the city with everyone else, heading to Yanshan with the group, the most I could contribute would be logistics — tending to the sick and wounded. For someone like me, that’s too little value. I am a merchant, and I do not choose to do things of too little value.”

“If I remain in Jizhou as an inside contact, and Li Chi returns to retake the city in the future, I will be the one who earned the first and greatest merit in securing Jizhou. That value far exceeds anything I could accomplish running supply lines at the rear.”

Mister Yan stared at Shen Rujian with an expression of utter astonishment.

Shen Rujian smiled: “Mister Yan, simply relay my words faithfully. If Li Chi hears them, he’ll understand me.”

Mister Yan urged her for a long while, but Shen Rujian’s mind was made up. Nothing would convince her to leave the city with the others.

When everyone had gathered, they discovered that Jiang Ran and his people were also absent.

Mister Yan inquired. Changmei the Daoist shook his head: “I went to find them. Jiang Ran said Li Chi had given him separate instructions before departing — he was to stay in Jizhou and would not be leaving with us.”

Mister Yan was profoundly shaken. When had Li Chi made all these arrangements? Could it be he had planned everything while hiding in the underground vault?

Shen Rujian was staying. Jiang Ran and his people were staying. Everyone else had finished packing and needed only to wait for Liu Ge to come escort them out.

Yet none of them could figure out how Liu Ge and his several thousand troops were supposed to escort them to safety and then smoothly exit the city.

No one expected what happened next: that same day, Liu Ge’s soldiers emerged from the underground vault and came directly down the main street — exiting through the entrance at Shen’s Medical Hall, stepping out onto the avenue, and marching in neat formation all the way to the caravan agency.

More than three thousand men, advancing down the main street in broad daylight, openly and without any attempt at concealment. Not even Changmei the Daoist or the others had anticipated this.

The unit was flying the battle standards of the Yuzhou Army. Only then did Changmei the Daoist remember: when Li Chi and Tang Pidi had gone out after the battle to scavenge, they had gathered up all manner of things — including a considerable number of battle flags.

Liu Ge led the unit directly toward the city gate. Patrol squads they encountered along the way stepped aside to give them passage without so much as a flicker of suspicion.

It was a kind of psychological blind spot. Who would suspect a force of several thousand men? Everyone in Jizhou knew perfectly well that the Jizhou Army had been utterly annihilated.

Even if Pan Nuo had witnessed it with his own eyes, his first thought would have been that one of his subordinates had mobilized troops without authorization — never that these were soldiers of the Jizhou Army.

The whole scheme rested on those winter garments.

The Yuzhou Army had been issued the Jizhou Army’s winter coats. Li Chi and his people also had a good supply of those coats — they had not been idle hauling things out of the supply depot during their time there.

They marched into the open and reached the city gate. The garrison soldiers moved to block them — until Liu Ge lashed one of them across the face with his horsewhip, leaving a mask of blood in its wake. After that, no one dared stand in their way.

Not long after the unit left the city, Jizhou’s Military Commissioner Pan Nuo received word. Something immediately struck him as wrong. He urgently sent men to demand which commander had marched out with his forces — but all his generals were accounted for.

His first move was to rush to the main camp for an inspection, only to discover that not a single unit was missing. The soldiers who had left were not from the camp.

Only then did he grasp what had happened. By the time he led men in pursuit, it was already too late.

After leaving the city, Yu Jiuling’s heart refused to stop hammering in his chest. The whole thing felt unreal — they had just strolled out, like it was nothing but a game?

Yu Jiuling thought: there was no way Li Chi had already figured out, while he was hauling supplies out of the depot, how those winter coats would eventually be used.

But once you had those things in hand, you could dream up a scheme this audaciously bold.

In truth, what Li Chi had discussed with Liu Ge was actually the second option — a contingency plan.

Li Chi’s first choice had always been to escort Yu Chaozong back to the Yanshan Camp. No matter how chaotic the Camp had become, Yu Chaozong only needed to recover and return — the moment he appeared, every man in the Yanshan Camp would fall back into line.

The reason was that Li Chi’s intended approach was still to combine pressure from inside and outside; with Liu Ge and his three thousand troops hidden inside the city, attacking Jizhou from within Yanshan Camp’s forces when the time came would be effortless.

But circumstances had forced a change, and Li Chi had no choice but to fall back on the second option.

Liu Ge led his troops out of the city and immediately ordered a forced march. They were all cavalry — when Liu Ge had first led his men into the underground vault, he had brought the Jizhou Army’s warhorses with him.

In a carriage.

Gao Xining turned to look back at the slowly fading shape of Jizhou City, knowing this time she had truly left it. She had no idea when she would ever return.

She glanced at her grandfather. Even Gao Yuanzhang’s face was etched with reluctance.

Had it not been for Gao Xining, nothing in the world would have driven him from Jizhou. He would have died there if need be — because his academy was there.

And yet people always come to their moment of letting go.

And when that moment comes, when letting go means protecting what matters more — then it is the best arrangement of all.

Pan Nuo led his men to the north gate, unable to make any sense of where that unit had come from. It was as though a ghost had passed through.

The story spread through Jizhou City before long. The common people all said: in broad daylight, a company of Jizhou soldiers killed in battle — ghost soldiers — had marched out of the city.

The tale grew more outlandish with each retelling, until it had become this: a great calamity was about to befall Jizhou, and the ghost soldiers had departed because they no longer wished to protect it.

For a time, the entire city of Jizhou was seized with unease.

—