Ding Shengjia stood outside Anyang City calling out at the top of his lungs, urging all the defenders within to make a choice.

He gave the Anyang garrison two days to deliberate — whether to surrender or fight to the last.

If they surrendered, every man would receive a promotion from his current rank, along with rewards.

Never mind the fact that the city had been in turmoil before, with Meng Kedi’s generals at each other’s throats and none willing to yield to any other.

Everyone had wanted to be in charge — to be the one who said the final word.

But when it came to an enemy at the gates, not one of them wanted to be the one who said the final word anymore.

They all shrank back. You looked at me, I looked at you — eyes wide with mutual challenge, each silently daring the other to step forward.

Every one of them was thinking: weren’t you the one who wanted to be in charge? Weren’t you the one who wanted to have the final say? Then go on — you do it.

These men had all served under Meng Kedi. They were used to taking orders and doing exactly as they were told.

Meng Kedi said one — they did one. Meng Kedi said two — they did two.

A group of men accustomed to waiting for someone else to issue commands — even if none of them were raw recruits anymore — could not quite find the steel in themselves.

Under a strongman like Meng Kedi, everyone had long since learned to nod and comply.

Later they had all tried to cultivate that same commanding authority for themselves. None of them could manage it — they only had the posture, not the substance.

These men sat together for the better part of an hour, and not a single one was willing to speak first. From the initial round of meaningful glances, they had arrived at a state where no one would look at anyone at all.

“We might as well fight!”

One of the generals finally couldn’t bear the silence any longer and got to his feet.

He said, “General Meng always said the Anyang Army never had the option of surrender. None of you are saying a word — which means none of you want to surrender. So let’s just divide up the defenses, each man holds a section, and we fight and see what happens.”

Another man said hurriedly, “Easy to say, but General Meng is already dead…”

“And the man who’s come back is General Ding — he’s not exactly a stranger.”

The man seated nearest the door spoke up: “Welcoming General Ding home is a homecoming, not a surrender. There’s no shame in it.”

“The thing is…”

One of them said, “When you think about it, it’s rather unsettling — have you all noticed that everyone who was at odds with General Ding in the past…”

He trailed off at that point, and swept the room with his eyes.

Everyone looked at him, and then nearly in unison, sighed.

The men now gathered in this room were not all the Anyang commanders who had any voice in things.

The Anyang forces numbered tens of thousands. There had been several generals each commanding a full division of over ten thousand men — and below them, the officers from the Senior Fourth Grade down to the Junior Fifth Grade had numbered close to a hundred in total.

Yet from some point a while back, the killings had begun — one person here, one person there, and always the most critical ones.

The general with the strongest faction — one full division of troops, intact after staying behind to defend Anyang when the others had marched on Jizhou — had been on the verge of seizing sole control of Anyang when he was assassinated.

With the most powerful man gone, everyone naturally suspected the second most powerful man had done it.

The second most powerful man wasn’t exactly unhappy about it either — whether or not he’d done it, he stood to gain. So he stepped forward. Former second, now first — his manner of speaking and doing things began to change accordingly.

But before long, that second-ranked man was himself assassinated in a brothel.

And somehow his subordinates became stirred up, insisting that whoever had killed their general must have been the first man’s supporters — resentful that the second man had risen above them, they had simply struck first.

The original first man’s supporters already had their grievances. Now they had even more reason to act. It came to blows.

A full-scale battle inside Anyang City left over a thousand dead.

Eventually someone stepped forward, hoping to seize control of the situation — right in the midst of the fiercest fighting between the two sides.

He did it himself.

He died right there.

Hadn’t even finished speaking before he was shot to pieces by a storm of arrows.

And so it was that the senior commanders in Anyang were now mostly dead or gone.

The ones who remained — senior fourth grade, junior fifth grade — were all men who had spent their careers taking orders. How could any of them dare to make a decision?

More than one of them had entertained the thought: if I step forward now and take control of the situation…

Well. I’d probably die right then and there.

All the same, when someone finally did speak, it was a vast improvement on the suffocating silence that had come before.

After going round and round, these men eventually agreed — better to surrender after all.

If Meng Kedi could hear them from beyond the grave, he would likely be shrieking in fury.

If he could somehow return to life, he would surely have already burst out of the earth.

But a man not in his position simply cannot bear the enormous weight that position brings.

They chose to take Ding Shengjia at his word, and opened the gates.

Even so, they had no intention of simply throwing the gates open outright. They decided to send someone out first to negotiate with Ding Shengjia — to work out the specifics of what each of them would receive in return for opening the city.

This, naturally, brought another problem: among those present, who would go?

Another argument broke out. It got heated. Then it came to blows, and several men ended up with battered, swollen faces.

Such is the beauty of collective deliberation — pure and bracing.

In the end, the fighting didn’t decide who should go either. It came down to the old method: drawing lots.

But even the lottery didn’t work, because the man who drew the short straw simply refused to go, while everyone who hadn’t drawn it kept insisting he should.

The man’s position was immovable: kill me if you like, but I’m not going.

The entire day passed this way — arguing, fighting, sitting back down and composing themselves, then arguing and fighting all over again in an unending cycle.

In the end, every one of them steeled himself to a common resolve: live together, die together.

They decided that the next day, all of them would go out together to negotiate with Ding Shengjia at the city gates.

With that decided, the rest unfolded without much incident.

At the city gates, Ding Shengjia declared that he accepted all their terms.

So Anyang’s generals stood aside, and welcomed the Youzhou army into the city.

—

General’s residence.

Luo Jing settled into the seat that had once been Meng Kedi’s, and surveyed the room. The surrendered generals, not one of them looked at him — every eye was on Ding Shengjia’s expression.

Ding Shengjia was insufferably pleased with himself. And wasn’t he entitled to a little satisfaction? He had taken Anyang without a single battle — wasn’t that worth gloating over?

Luo Jing found the sight unpleasant. Being the man he was, how could he possibly stomach Ding Shengjia’s self-congratulatory smirk?

The very next day, Ding Shengjia was pulled away by those surrendered generals to a banquet in his honor — and not one person came to invite Luo Jing.

The day after that, Ding Shengjia killed a man on the spot with his saber because the man had said something inadvertently offensive at the previous night’s drinking party.

By the fourth day, Ding Shengjia was conducting a sweeping manhunt throughout the city for anyone who had been close to Meng Kedi.

When Meng Kedi had wanted him dead, Ding Shengjia had fled — but many of his subordinates and friends had been killed in his stead.

Now he was back. He wanted vengeance.

Over the following two days, Ding Shengjia ran amok through Anyang. Everyone he dragged in was executed on the street.

He did all of this without consulting Luo Jing. And Luo Jing appeared to have no intention of interfering.

—

The tenth day after taking Anyang.

Luo Jing was drinking with his men. Ding Shengjia had too much and got to his feet, slamming his hand on the table. “What kind of person was Meng Kedi, that I should serve him for so many years — and then he tries to have me killed!”

“I risked my life to make him the master of Anyang, and he repaid me by forgetting every bit of it. A man like that — rotten to the core.”

“Now I’m back. Whoever I support, that man becomes the master of Anyang. Look at Meng Kedi — abandon your loyal men, and see where it gets you.”

Luo Jing’s brow tightened. He set down his cup.

And then, unbelievably, Ding Shengjia — buoyed by his own swelling sense of importance — actually pointed at Luo Jing as he spoke.

He jabbed his finger at Luo Jing and said, “General Luo — it is because he had my assistance that he was able to take Anyang. He’s a far better man than Meng Kedi ever was. He knows he needs me. So…”

Some in the room were genuinely drunk. Others were merely pretending. But whether drunk or not, when everyone saw Ding Shengjia actually point his finger at Luo Jing, every face went white with shock.

Luo Jing didn’t appear angry. He simply smiled mildly and said, “It’s fine. A man who’s had too much — that’s normal. A man who goes wild after too much — that’s normal too. I’ll wait until he’s sobered up and have a word with him then.”

The next morning, Ding Shengjia’s bodyguards recounted the events of the previous night, and the color drained from Ding Shengjia’s face.

He had assumed the position of first-merit champion and cultivated a certain arrogance to go with it — but he still knew exactly how dangerous what he had done was.

So he immediately rushed to the entrance of Luo Jing’s residence to request an audience. The men at the gate told him the General had gone to the training grounds to drill the troops.

Ding Shengjia sprinted to the training grounds, and when he arrived he knew at once that something was wrong.

Across the training ground stood a row of wooden posts. Most of these posts had men bound to them, being flogged in turn with leather whips.

He walked forward with a pounding heart, and as he drew close, he recognized the men bound to the posts — every one of them had been in his circle these past ten days or so.

In those ten days, he had accepted no small number of gifts, and kept people on to serve in his own force.

When Luo Jing saw Ding Shengjia arrive, he smiled and said, “You’ve come at the right time. I’m administering military law on your behalf.”

He pointed at the men being flogged and said, “These men drank inside the army camp — bad enough — but after drinking they went out of control, violated military discipline, and behaved as they pleased. You are the commanding officer of these men. How do you think this should be handled?”

Ding Shengjia dropped to his knees in terror, prostrating himself on the ground. “They violated military law — they should be punished. Severely punished.”

Luo Jing said, “They are all your men. You took Anyang for me and earned the first merit. Naturally, for your sake, I would never issue truly harsh punishment — but a show must be made.”

“An army cannot function without discipline. We tell our soldiers every day how to conduct themselves — yet if those in command refuse to model that themselves, what will the soldiers make of it when they see it?”

“So the performance must be thorough. The soldiers must know that anyone who commits a wrong — general or foot soldier — will be held to account.”

Ding Shengjia said fearfully, “I have made errors as well. I should be punished too.”

Luo Jing said, “Without you, I could not have taken Anyang. How could I bear to punish you? Countless people have told me you have no respect for rules, that you’re overbearing and reckless, that you haven’t put me in your eyes at all — I dressed every one of them down, and never once raised the matter with you.”

Ding Shengjia was terrified, bowing his head to the ground again and again in frantic apology.

Luo Jing said, “Very well. If you also submit to punishment, the soldiers will see that our military discipline is strict and impartial.”

He told Ding Shengjia, “There’s no cause for worry — I’ll have my men go through the motions, make a show of it, and that will be that.”

So Luo Jing’s personal guards bound Ding Shengjia to a post as well, and the whips came down on him in a merciless rain.

There was nothing show-like about it.

From morning until midday, every man was flogged until flesh hung off their bones. Not one survived, including Ding Shengjia.

Beaten until there was nothing left that resembled a human shape — nothing but a bloody mass.

That evening, Luo Jing hosted another banquet for the Anyang Army’s generals. They came, every one of them, trembling with fear.

Luo Jing looked at them all with an expression of deep regret. “You all saw what became of General Ding — he knew he had drunk too much and made a mistake, so he punished himself. But he punished himself so harshly that he beat himself to death.”

Luo Jing sighed. “Gentlemen — when it comes to drinking, never let it get out of hand. If you want to gather and drink together, come to me — I’ll arrange it myself and drink alongside you. I won’t arrange it, and you can still drink at home on your own. But do not gather to drink in the ranks.”

He swept them with a look and said, “Drinking can get people killed.”

—