Deep in the night.

The elite garrison soldiers of the Left Imperial Guard crept silently toward the Luo army camp in the darkness, like countless lost souls rising up from the earth.

In this world, to this day, no army had a combat record that could compare to the Left Imperial Guard.

Not among Dachu’s enemies — including the Black Wulin — and not anywhere else in the Dachu army itself.

Even Tang Pidi, for all his confidence, could not have claimed that the forces he had trained were superior to the Left Imperial Guard.

For nearly thirty years, since Prince Wu took command of this army, it had represented the highest fighting strength in the Central Plains.

The Left Imperial Guard — every soldier bore upon their person the imprint of supreme honor.

Every victory, every achievement, every glory that an army could ever claim — they had claimed it all.

Their strength lay not only in their combat power, but in a belief that surpassed the ordinary.

Belief is something that resists clear description — it cannot be made tangible.

Yet an army with belief and an army without are simply not in the same category.

The pride of the Left Imperial Guard’s soldiers — to this day, nothing could match it.

And for the sake of victory, they could give up everything.

In the darkness, advancing forward — every man had removed his shoes and wrapped his feet in cloth.

Not even the things that might make the slightest sound had been brought. They moved in silence.

Including their iron armor.

All the generals who were entitled to wear iron armor had left it in their camps.

They were the same as their soldiers — cloth single-layered garments, feet wrapped in cloth.

Every man’s long saber had likewise been left without its scabbard, to prevent collision and sound. To keep the moonlight from reflecting off the blades, every saber had been wrapped in cloth.

They advanced across the wasteland. How many had had their soles pierced, yet not a single man made a sound.

The unit assigned to the assault mission in particular had shed almost all of their load. No leather armor, no battle boots, no shields — not even repeating crossbows or bows and arrows.

Every man’s sole weapon was the standard-issue Dachu saber at their hip.

A Luo army patrol of perhaps several dozen men passed by. They all looked thoroughly exhausted. They had endured many nights like this, and every one seemed exactly the same as the last. They walked along chatting idly, not noticing that only a few tens of zhang away, countless Left Imperial Guard elites lay flat against the ground.

Once the patrol had passed, the Left Imperial Guard soldiers resumed crawling forward.

Standing on the wooden palisade wall, a sentry looked out into the distance. Out on the plain beyond the camp, there was not a shadow to be seen.

The sentry sighed, wondering when this kind of life would finally end.

“Left Imperial Guard!”

At that very moment, someone called out loudly from a dozen or so zhang beyond the palisade.

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

“Kill!”

The Left Imperial Guard elites rose from the ground and sprinted forward with full force.

At that distance, the Luo army soldiers on the palisade — whether asleep, or staring blankly into space, or busy chatting — had no time to loose a single arrow.

A group of Left Imperial Guard soldiers rushed to the camp gate and hacked at it with their long sabers in a frenzy, sparks flying in all directions. The iron chains fastened to the gate were hewn through by brute force alone, and the gate was knocked down. Several thousand advance troops, like tigers and leopards, poured into Guan Feicheng’s encampment.

Just as Prince Wu had anticipated, Guan Feicheng’s vanguard was the most severely depleted unit. Fifty thousand men — now barely eleven thousand remained.

It was precisely because this unit had suffered such catastrophic losses that Luo Jing had stationed them in the northernmost position to stand guard.

From the river crossing battle onward, Guan Feicheng’s forces had been charging in the vanguard all along — they had fought more engagements than any other unit on their side.

And so, precisely because of this, they were the most exhausted, the most war-weary. They had fought enough; they were tired of fighting. Few of them had any desire left to go back onto a battlefield.

“General!”

The bodyguards rushed into the command tent and roused Guan Feicheng from deep sleep: “General, get up quickly — Dachu forces have broken into the camp!”

“What!”

Guan Feicheng shot upright. He’d risen too fast — his head rang with a sudden reverberation, and everything spun dark for a moment.

Or perhaps that ringing came from the words: “Dachu forces have broken into the camp.”

“How is this possible?!”

Guan Feicheng strode outside, forgetting he hadn’t dressed properly and was without shoes.

“The Dachu forces appeared outside the camp out of nowhere and have already broken in — get to the main command post, quickly.”

“Sound the horn — sound the horn for battle!”

Guan Feicheng shouted as he ran out. When he reached the doorway, he could already see fires burning in the distance within the camp.

A Luo army soldier who looked no older than sixteen or seventeen was wailing as he ran, looking back over his shoulder as he fled.

He was terrified — truly terrified — and the sobbing that had been wrung out of him by sheer extremity of fear was distorted, shaking, the kind that made anyone who heard it feel a creeping dread.

“Don’t kill me!”

He screamed at the Dachu soldier chasing him from behind — a voice full of begging and despair, which did not move the pursuer even slightly.

“Don’t kill me! You can’t kill me — I don’t want to die!”

In the midst of that anguished wailing, one of the Dachu soldiers took several great strides to catch up from behind, leaped up, and drove a kick into the young man’s back.

The young man pitched to the ground. The Dachu soldier pounced on him and pinned him down.

With all his strength the young man flipped over, throwing the man from his back.

But before he could scramble up and run again he was pulled down once more, the Dachu soldier yanking him by his clothes.

The young man pulled and struggled desperately. He felt a sudden cold on his abdomen — the Dachu soldier had plunged a knife into his belly.

In the instant the young man froze with shock, the Dachu soldier had already pinned him beneath him again.

Only then did the young man react. He shook his head over and over, pleading without stop, palms pressed up against the Dachu soldier’s forearms.

His hands pushing up against the man’s arms — the sound of flesh against flesh, like soaked rope twisted together.

Sweat dripped down onto the young man’s face, mingling with his own.

“It’s not working… I’m begging you, don’t kill me… it’s not, please, don’t…”

Both men were giving everything they had. That grinding, rubbing sound became the sound of ropes twisted together straining under load — the sound of a rope that was about to snap.

The blade pressed down against the young man’s neck. He was still pleading.

With a soft sound, the knife cut into his neck.

The young man stopped pleading. His mouth hung open — opening again and again, trying to draw breath — but from the wound in his neck, blood came bubbling out with every effort.

A moment later, the Dachu soldier got up and charged on.

The young man lying on the ground seemed to be looking at the sky, but his eyes held only terror. He was dead, and he had not taken the terror with him.

“Report!”

A soldier rushed before Guan Feicheng and cried out urgently: “Dachu forces have reached the outer perimeter of the main command post — General, go quickly!”

“Go?!”

Guan Feicheng, who had only just thrown on his coat, went red-eyed.

“If I run now and the camp is taken, the Dachu forces will be able to strike at both flanks. Come with me — fight them back!”

He grabbed a long saber and charged forward with his bodyguards.

On the other side, the young general Gao Zhen — only sixteen years old — had woken the moment he heard the shouts, and had already fought his way through one engagement and back with his bodyguards.

But no matter how valiant he was, he could not hold back a Dachu army that came on like a flood.

“General Gao!”

Someone called to Gao Zhen: “There are encircled troops to your left front.”

“We break through to them!”

Gao Zhen leveled his long spear and spurred his horse forward.

He led over a hundred bodyguards into the Dachu forces, and saw ahead of them several hundred Anyang army soldiers who had been surrounded.

After cutting through the Dachu forces, Gao Zhen pulled those men out of the encirclement and led them all in continuing to fight.

“General Gao!”

Soldiers breaking out from the forward line shouted out: “General Guan is trapped ahead — we can’t get in!”

Gao Zhen spurred his horse: “I’ll go!”

And so led his forces charging back into the Dachu ranks once more.

From the hour of Zi onward, he had been fighting for more than a full shichen. Gao Zhen had charged back and forth across the battlefield multiple times, and had rescued over a thousand men in the process.

After more than a shichen, he finally located the trapped Guan Feicheng.

He led his forces cutting through the encirclement — but Guan Feicheng was already barely clinging to life. Only a few dozen men remained at his side, driven back against a wall.

Gao Zhen cut through the siege and leaped from his horse, supporting Guan Feicheng: “General Guan, I’ll get you out.”

“Gao Zhen!”

When Guan Feicheng saw Gao Zhen, his eyes flickered with a momentary light.

His blood-soaked hand gripped Gao Zhen’s arm: “Go, quickly — quickly, go find the young general. Go now.”

In his dying moments, he seemed to have forgotten that Luo Jing had been enfeoffed as King of Ji — he only remembered that Luo Jing was his young general.

“I’ll get you out first.”

Gao Zhen began to lift Guan Feicheng. But there was not a trace of strength left in Guan Feicheng’s body. When Gao Zhen raised him upright, his intestines were already spilling out.

The moment he was lifted, they hung down — slick and glistening.

“Just go — go now…”

Guan Feicheng shook his head: “Tell the young general for me — tell him Guan Feicheng could not hold the camp. I have failed him. I have failed the old general.”

With those words spoken, Guan Feicheng’s head dropped, and he died.

“Ahh!”

Gao Zhen let out a roar.

Guan Feicheng had asked Luo Jing for him, and had treated him extremely well — like an elder brother. Gao Zhen, too, regarded Guan Feicheng as his own elder brother.

Now, watching Guan Feicheng die before his eyes, Gao Zhen’s expression was full of grief and fury.

“I will take you out of here. I won’t let the enemy dishonor your body.”

He crouched down, tucked Guan Feicheng’s intestines back inside, tore off a strip of his clothing, and bound the wound. Then he directed his men to strap Guan Feicheng’s body to his own back.

With a dead man on his back, Gao Zhen mounted his horse once more: “Follow me! We fight out of here!”

This young general led his men and charged straight into the enemy.

Another half a shichen passed. In the darkness, fighting and fires raged everywhere, and Gao Zhen had long since lost his sense of direction. The force he led had gone from over a thousand men at the start to only three or four hundred.

Dachu forces kept pouring in from the south without end. Every attempt he made to link up with Luo Jing was beaten back.

After several failed attempts, he looked back at the body still strapped to his back, and Gao Zhen let out a roar.

The young general ordered a turn to the north, and led those few hundred men clear of the fighting.

By the time daylight came, they stopped in a small grove of trees. Gao Zhen set down Guan Feicheng’s body.

“Big Brother Guan, I can only bury you here. I have no way to bring you to the King of Ji. Burying you here at least means the enemy cannot dishonor your body. I still have to go back to rescue the King of Ji.”

He dug the earth himself, in the grove of trees, and buried Guan Feicheng.

“You need not follow me — I’ll go back alone.”

Gao Zhen looked at his men — those faces, worn to the bone with exhaustion and dishevelment.

“The King of Ji has shown me great kindness, and I must go back and repay it. Your martial skills are not equal to mine — going back would only mean throwing your lives away. Head north now, and return to Anyang City to seek reinforcements. If relief forces come, this battle may still be turned around — it need not be a complete defeat.”

His men tried to dissuade him. He only shook his head.

“Follow my military order. Get back to Anyang as quickly as possible. On no account say that the King of Ji is trapped — say only that at the critical moment of battle, troop strength is insufficient. If you say the King of Ji is surrounded, those people may not come.”

Gao Zhen shouted: “Whether reinforcements arrive or not — I am placing that in your hands. And there is one more thing I entrust to you: if you return and learn that I have already died, please take the trouble to go and inform my family.”

He brought his fists together in salute.

Then he wheeled his horse around and charged south.

In the morning light, the young general’s silhouette was tall and upright.

—