Li Chi looked toward Cheng Wujie and asked: “Did Li — no, did Master Xuanyuan say anything else to you before he left?”
Cheng Wujie said: “Nothing. I asked Master when he would come again, and he said the golden-thread fish in Little Immortal Lake tasted just about average, so he wouldn’t be coming back.”
He sighed: “He ate here for three days straight, thoroughly enjoying every meal, yet when he left he said the taste was just average.”
Li Chi smiled slightly.
Master Li had eaten for three days straight, until he’d grown tired of it, until he’d had enough, until he never wanted to eat it again — so naturally he truly wouldn’t come back.
From the time Li Chi first developed his own thoughts and perspectives until now, Master Li was the only person he’d ever met who could truly keep himself in hiding. Master Li’s manner of hiding was even compulsively so. This compulsion was somewhat difficult to understand at first, but once you understood a little of it, you couldn’t help but feel a pang of sorrow for him.
Take the fish in Little Immortal Lake, for instance.
He had probably heard that these golden-thread fish were delicious — the finest delicacy in the land — and so he wanted to come try them.
For someone like Master Li, there were actually very few things left in this world that could attract his interest.
And food was certainly still one of the things that could attract Master Li.
His compulsion to keep himself in hiding was expressed precisely in this way.
He liked fine food, he wanted to eat it, so he came. By eating it three days in a row, he consumed his fill in one go — even to the point of revulsion — so that he would never want to come back again.
Why wouldn’t he come back?
Because a person like Master Li probably felt that the world outside was fraught with danger. It was the same reasoning as when he concealed himself in the Book Forest Tower of the Four-Page Academy — if he could hide, he hid; if he could retreat, he retreated.
As Li Chi thought about someone like Master Li, he wondered how many dangerous things the man must have encountered to have left him with such a bone-deep, heart-carved fear.
At the root of it all, Li Chi suspected, Master Li always felt that someone was trying to harm him.
And yet, for a man of Master Li’s abilities to spend his days hiding east and west like that — how formidable must this person who sought to harm him truly be?
It was in this very instant that a surge of heroic resolve rose in Li Chi’s heart.
His achievements of today were, in no small measure, bound up with Master Li — and so he thought: once I am someday unrivaled under heaven, I will come and protect Master Li. I’ll bring Master Li to my side and guard him, and we’ll see who dares lay a hand on him.
Cheng Wujie noticed Prince Ning had fallen into a daze. After waiting a moment he asked: “Prince Ning, shall we head back to Jizhou now?”
Li Chi shook his head: “We’re not going back to Jizhou. We continue northwest.”
He smiled and said: “We’re going to fight!”
Cheng Wujie’s eyes lit up at those three words, and excitement surged through him at once.
“Take me with you, Your Highness — take me along to fight!”
He finished saying this and then turned to call out to the brothers behind him: “Prince Ning says he’s taking us to fight!”
Those twenty or thirty brothers stood up and looked toward him in a blank daze.
Quickly, that blankness gave way to doubt, unease, and even resistance.
“Big Brother… we don’t want to go fight.”
One of the men walked up to Cheng Wujie and said with a somewhat apologetic expression: “You like to fool around and we’ll go along with you. It doesn’t matter that people mock us for being a hospitality militia — there’s no malice in the mockery, and everyone knows we’re not actual mountain bandits.”
“But Big Brother, going to the battlefield isn’t fooling around anymore. People die there… Your ancestors were great generals, and our ancestors were all soldiers under your ancestors, so…”
Cheng Wujie’s expression shifted — he nearly lost his temper, but just as quickly let it go.
He smiled and said: “It’s all right. You all stay home and live your lives well. Without me around, you’ll be able to settle down. These past year-plus, you’ve been causing trouble alongside me — you’ve worked hard.”
“Big Brother, I’ll go with you.”
Little Six grinned broadly: “I’m an orphan. There’s nothing keeping me at home.”
“Big Brother, I’ll go too.”
Little Nine said: “I’m the same as Little Six. Neither of us has had parents since we were small — it was you, Big Brother, who looked after us both. Wherever you are, we are.”
Li Chi asked Cheng Wujie: “Before you agreed, you should have at least gone home to discuss it first…”
Little Six looked toward Li Chi: “Prince Ning, you may not know — our Big Brother’s family only has him…”
Li Chi was taken aback.
He looked at Cheng Wujie and had not yet opened his mouth to speak when Cheng Wujie gave a wry smile and said: “What of it… In a world like this, Your Highness, you could walk into any village at random and see — how many orphans are there? How many widows? How many solitary, suffering elders…”
Li Chi nodded: “I know.”
Yu Jiuling let out a sigh and looked at Cheng Wujie: “Prince Ning is an orphan too. So am I. So is Little Zhang Zhenren…”
Dantai Qi’s heart lurched.
He had never once thought about this before, and only now, as Yu Jiuling brought it up, did he realize — of the four of them, he was the only one who was not an orphan.
“What a wretched world this is!”
Yu Jiuling spat on the ground.
He spoke with teeth almost clenched.
“At least you all know who your parents were and where home was. Prince Ning doesn’t know who his parents are. Little Zhang Zhenren doesn’t know who his parents are either.”
Yu Jiuling cursed: “Count back twenty years from now — uprisings, the Black Wulin marching south, famines… the dynastic fortune of Dachu has long since failed to shelter this heartland.”
Cheng Wujie was startled: “You mustn’t say such things recklessly — the court would have your head for talk like that…”
Then he caught himself. In Jizhou, wasn’t Prince Ning the highest authority around?
He was embarrassed again.
Li Chi slowly exhaled and said: “Being an orphan isn’t something to be afraid of. What’s frightening is that in the future there will be even more people like us. And some things, when you think about them more carefully, are even more frightening — we’re orphans and we survived, either through luck or through some ability of our own. But what about those orphans with neither luck nor ability?”
He looked at Cheng Wujie: “We may not be able to make it so there are no more orphans under heaven — no one can — but we can do our utmost, so that there is a little less suffering under heaven.”
“Good!”
Cheng Wujie said loudly: “Then I’ll follow you, Prince Ning — if only so that children in the future will all have their fathers and mothers by their side to watch over them!”
“Let’s do it!”
Little Six and Little Nine raised their arms in unison.
Cheng Wujie and the others began speaking of the various disasters and upheavals they had witnessed in Dongguo County, and the more they talked the heavier the mood became.
“Let’s fish for a bit.”
Dantai Qi apparently felt the atmosphere was truly too oppressive, and shifted the subject.
He glanced toward the spot where Little Six and Little Nine had been fishing earlier: “Your fishing rods are gone.”
—
Late in the third month.
Anyang.
The battle in which the Luo family army forced a crossing of the Nanping River was brutal — but they got through.
In that river crossing alone, nearly twenty thousand men had died on the Nanping River. The bodies were so numerous they almost covered the surface of the water. Drifting downstream with the current, corpses were visible everywhere. The entire river was a scene of devastation — shattered boats, bodies bloated and white from soaking in the water, and fish gnawing at the dead.
For a full day, the Luo family army fought their way onto the south bank of the Nanping River. On their position on the southern bank, Prince Wu’s great army held firm for another night and half a day before the pressure finally became too much and they withdrew.
While they were still holding, it was manageable — but the moment they retreated, they exposed their backs to the Luo family army. Because the river crossing battle had been pressed so savagely by Prince Wu’s forces, with casualties so severe, every man in the Luo family army now carried a seething, ferocious killing spirit. They gave chase at the heels of Prince Wu’s forces for tens of li in a single breath.
Prince Wu’s great army reestablished their defensive line forty li from the Nanping River, at a place where they had long since dug extensive fortifications — a countless number of trenches, a countless number of horse-trapping pits, a countless number of traps and snares.
With all of that in place, Luo Jing’s most elite cavalry found it difficult to bring their strength to bear. Infantry assaults meant another grueling close-quarters battle.
This battle lasted four days. After the Luo family army suffered between twenty-six and twenty-seven thousand casualties, they finally broke through the defensive line.
Prince Wu’s forces withdrew again, falling back to a county seat more than fifty li away.
Luo Jing judged that his army’s morale was at its peak right now — though these two engagements had cost them close to fifty thousand men, they had also broken through two of Prince Wu’s defensive lines in succession.
He calculated that Prince Wu’s manpower was insufficient, and that as long as he broke through the county seat, Prince Wu’s forces would have lost more than half their strength — possibly even two-thirds or more.
Brutal though it was, Luo Jing remained convinced: one more victory and Prince Wu would be completely stripped of his capacity to resist.
So Luo Jing ordered a ferocious assault on the county seat.
What no one expected was that this obscure little county seat would become a massive graveyard.
Every day they attacked; every day Prince Wu’s forces held firm.
The second day, the third day, the fourth day… the days went on one after another, and the Luo family army’s soaring morale was ground away in the endless killing.
After ten days, the Luo family army had still not broken through this small county seat that should never have become an obstacle.
Counting from the river crossing up to now — half a month — the Luo family army’s total losses had already reached seventy to eighty thousand men.
A scale of casualties like this, without having seen the battlefield with one’s own eyes, was simply beyond imagination.
Luo Jing kept rallying his subordinates, telling them that Prince Wu was on the verge of running out of grain and couldn’t hold on much longer.
But then another ten days passed with no progress.
Luo Jing personally led multiple fierce assaults and still could not advance.
By now twenty days had passed since Luo Jing’s army had surrounded this county seat, and by rights Prince Wu’s forces should have long run out of provisions. Yet Prince Wu just kept holding on — and from all appearances, could hold on still longer.
Luo Jing promptly changed strategy: he ordered all units to seal the county seat off completely without launching further assaults, intending to exhaust Prince Wu’s army’s grain and fodder through this method.
Nearly a month — every inch of soil here had likely been soaked through with blood.
—
About a hundred li north of Anyang.
Tang Pidi commanded a force of two armies here — he could go no further south. Advancing further south would invite misinterpretation.
At this point Luo Jing’s great army was all on the south side of the Nanping River. If he led his Ning army into Anyang, the Luo family troops left behind to garrison Anyang would instantly suspect he was seizing the opportunity to take the city for himself.
Luo Jing might not believe it, but the men holding Anyang certainly would.
So Tang Pidi’s understanding of how the battle was going came entirely from scout reports.
“General.”
A scout returning from the river’s south bank came before Tang Pidi and bowed: “General — Luo Jing’s forces have besieged Prince Wu for twenty days and still have not broken through Prince Wu’s defensive line.”
“Twenty days.”
Tang Pidi’s brow furrowed.
He paced back and forth in his command tent, growing increasingly uneasy.
Prince Wu’s way of fighting was plainly designed to wear down Luo Jing’s strength.
This elder who was renowned as Dachu’s God of War had brought the application of battlefield tactics to an absolutely consummate level.
If he had chosen to hold the Nanping River to the last, Luo Jing could never have fought his way to the south bank in a day or two. But Prince Wu had not done that — instead he inflicted massive casualties on the Luo family army and then immediately ordered a retreat.
Had he held on too stubbornly, Luo Jing would have suffered too great a setback and lost any will to continue pushing south.
He hurt them badly without destroying them outright, and successfully drew Luo Jing across to the south bank of the river. That’s right — it wasn’t the Luo family army that forced the crossing on their own merits; it was Prince Wu who deliberately let them through.
The second defensive line was fought the same way — identical in method to the defensive battle on the Nanping River. Once again: hurt them badly, do not destroy them outright. He was simply giving Luo Jing hope — making Luo Jing feel that next time would surely bring total victory.
“Luo Jing may be walking into a trap.”
Tang Pidi returned to the writing table, took up his brush, and wrote a letter before handing it to the scout: “Deliver this at the fastest pace possible to the south bank of the river. It must be handed directly to Luo Jing.”
The scout acknowledged this and turned to leave.
Tang Pidi’s brow remained faintly creased. He thought to himself that if only Luo Jing weren’t so proud of himself, if only they could combine their forces, perhaps this battle would still be winnable.
But in the current situation, the moment his forces moved further south, the Luo family garrison left in Anyang would surely stir. If an actual fight broke out, the lives lost would all be their own people’s.
—