The Ning Army marched out of Dingxian County’s main camp, advancing in full formation toward the rebel forces.

The moment the great army moved, the Shuntian Sect’s scouts quickly detected it, and the news was swiftly reported back to Ekema.

Prior to this, the rebel troops—who had already been mustered after spotting the Ning Army cavalry—had only just returned to camp.

Now the horn sounded again, its mournful wail drifting far across the land.

The Shuntian Army soldiers inside the camp once more assembled rapidly, forming up outside the main gates.

These soldiers weren’t particularly elite, but by any relative measure, given their quality, this was the limit of what Ekema could train them to be.

Ekema’s methods of drilling troops were brutally harsh—so brutal that he had no regard whatsoever for human life.

His first act as Supreme Commander was to make every man afraid of him.

In the first month alone, he ordered the execution of three or four hundred men.

This was both to make soldiers treat obedience to his orders as second nature, and to ensure every man memorized the military regulations he issued.

He commanded that within three days, every soldier must be able to recite the military code from memory—and that he would personally test them afterward.

At first, the rebel troops’ habit of carelessness and disorder was too deeply ingrained for them to care about any such code.

Besides, within the Shuntian Sect, the most common occurrence was the so-called appointment and dismissal of Supreme Commanders.

The Shuntian Sect had been expanding through the northwestern counties. To win people’s loyalty, Juhe—who had returned from beyond the northern frontier with a force at his back—had devised a strategy.

That strategy was simple: be lavish with rewards, be lavish with titles.

Juhe was the former disciple of Quanyuan the Daoist of the Eastern Ridge Way.

In the battle against Li Chi and his companions, Quanyuan the Daoist had been killed, and Juhe had essentially betrayed his own master to survive.

Li Chi and his people had pressing matters to attend to at the time, and for such a minor figure, they genuinely hadn’t paid him enough attention.

They assumed the man wouldn’t dare return to the Central Plains so easily—yet who could have imagined that this fellow, upon hearing from beyond the frontier that the Yanshan Camp had suffered a great blow, immediately set his heart on returning.

But he didn’t dare come back alone. Only after assembling a force in the northern frontier did he return to the Central Plains.

It was only then that he learned: after sustaining heavy losses, the Yanshan Camp had somehow managed to recover.

Not only recovered—Li Chi had taken Jizhou.

This news infuriated Juhe greatly. He had assumed that once the Yanshan Camp was destroyed and Jizhou descended into open warfare, there would surely be opportunities for him to exploit.

He had even thought that amid the chaos of warlords fighting each other, with no one paying him any mind, he could rise as an unexpected force.

But alas—Li Chi simply hadn’t given him enough time.

Juhe was convinced his strategy was sound. Using the old methods of the Eastern Ridge Way’s missionary work, combined with Li Chi’s own approach to nurturing the people’s welfare—such a combination, he believed, could win hearts and sway public opinion in no great length of time.

When he returned to the Central Plains, Juhe had carried grand ambitions in his heart.

His thinking had been careful, his deductions reasonable.

Juhe had even accurately predicted how the great figures capable of tilting the balance of power would contend against one another.

He simply hadn’t anticipated that the one who would ultimately prevail would be the man he’d considered least worth worrying about—Li Chi.

That mere Yanshan bandit.

When he left, Li Chi was still a Yanshan bandit. When he returned, Li Chi had already become the King of Jizhou.

But of course he wasn’t willing to concede defeat and give up just like that. So he chose the northwest, the region with the greatest prospects for development.

The Yanshan Camp had already gone to Jizhou; the Liangzhou Army couldn’t possibly split its forces to deal with affairs inside the passes. Here was fertile ground for his growth.

And it was precisely at this time that Juhe encountered a man of great talent who had found no worthy outlet for his abilities.

That man was Ekema.

Before this, Juhe had already enfeoffed dozens of Supreme Commanders, and even various kings.

As the Shuntian Sect’s sect master, to win over hearts and minds, he handed out kingships and Supreme Commander titles at the drop of a hat.

Those who had followed him back through the passes from the northern frontier—a handful of bandit chiefs—had all been enfeoffed as kings.

The Shuntian Sect now had twenty-seven kings, known as the Twenty-Seven Divine Kings Who Protect the Faith.

Beyond enfeoffing kings, Juhe’s obsession with power also manifested in his appointment of Supreme Commanders.

There weren’t as many as kings, but he had still appointed twelve Supreme Commanders—and the fastest any of them had been appointed and then dismissed was in a single day.

For instance, the Supreme Commander who had been leading the forces in this region had been here for less than a month when Juhe happened to encounter Ekema.

After speaking with him, Juhe recognized immediately that this man was a talent—someone with genuine insight and experience in training troops.

So he dismissed the current Supreme Commander on the spot, and to soften the blow, also enfeoffed him as a king by way of compensation.

After Ekema arrived, he killed several hundred men to enforce military discipline, then began an extraordinarily strict regimen of troop training.

When he drilled troops, he had no regard for whether the soldiers lived or died.

Those who couldn’t keep up—killed.

Those who were careless and slack—killed.

Those who feigned illness or injury—killed.

Those who defied military orders—killed.

Those who displeased him—killed.

From the moment he assumed command, he killed several hundred men in the first month, and several hundred more in the second.

From that point on, his authority within the army was firmly established.

Just as Cheng Wujie had predicted, how could Ekema possibly respect a crooked cult like the Shuntian Sect? He intended to use the Shuntian Sect as his stepping stone—when the time was right, he would naturally dispose of Juhe and the others.

This was also why he had always avoided actually engaging the Ning Army in battle. He could see how formidable they were.

Now the scouts came to report that the Ning Army was advancing in great force with what appeared to be an intent to fight a decisive battle, and he couldn’t help but feel a measure of unease.

This force—he had only just finished training it. It represented all his effort and toil.

If it was wiped out in a battle against the Ning Army, all his hard work would come to nothing—and his plans along with it.

He knew that a man like himself had no hope of entering the contest for the realm without a stepping stone.

“Relay my orders to all units—defensive square formations.”

After issuing this command, Ekema turned and gave another order to his subordinates: “Send men immediately to the Holy Shrine. Request the Sect Master to dispatch reinforcements. Tell him the Ning Army has brought up additional troops and the situation is critical.”

“Yes!”

His subordinates immediately turned and ran out.

And truly, how could they not be afraid?

Whether the Ning Army was skilled in battle or not—only those who had fought them knew. In recent days, their scouts had clashed with the Ning Army’s scouts countless times, and not once had anything come of it except their own scouts being utterly crushed.

The messenger departed the camp quickly, galloping westward.

Ekema’s mind churned through a thousand calculations. He had no choice but to consider what his odds of victory would be if it truly came to a decisive battle.

In these brief moments, he ran through several tactical formations in his head—yet every calculation yielded the same result.

Certain defeat.

The Ning Army hadn’t attacked before not because they feared losing, but because they hadn’t wanted to kill so many people.

The Ning Army needed to protect King Ning Li Chi’s reputation for benevolence and righteousness. What they were wary of wasn’t the Shuntian Sect’s military strength—it was their standing in the eyes of the common people.

It was now obvious that this sudden large-scale Ning Army assault was directly connected to Cheng Wujie and the other two’s visit here.

With that thought, Ekema turned and looked back. In the open ground some distance away, the bodies of Xiao Liu and Xiao Jiu were still lying where they had been left.

He exhaled slowly.

“Bring those two bodies over here.”

Ekema gave the order: “Bind them to wooden frames and set them at the front of the formation. I want to see whether the Ning Army’s commanding general dares order an arrow attack.”

His subordinates looked at him with complicated expressions.

Weren’t these two men the Supreme Commander’s blood brothers, who had grown up with him from childhood?

Yet now, he was going to use their corpses to obstruct the Ning Army’s advance.

But these men didn’t dare defy Ekema’s military order either. Immediately, men ran over to retrieve the bodies of Xiao Liu and Xiao Jiu.

They erected cross-shaped wooden frames at the front of the formation and bound the two corpses to them.

And by this time, the dark mass of the Ning Army had already pressed to within less than two li of the Shuntian Sect’s battle lines.

The two great armies thus faced each other in a standoff.

Ekema called out loudly: “Send someone forward to call out in front of the formation—let them know whose bodies those are.”

At the Ning Army’s battle line.

Li Chi sat astride his horse, studying the Shuntian Army formation that had already fully arrayed itself across the field. Even from the enemy’s formation, it was evident that this Ekema genuinely had the talent of a commander.

Unlike the rebel forces he had encountered before—all scattered and disorganized—this army’s formation was tightly arrayed, and its disposition of troop types was well-balanced.

“Your Highness.”

Liu Ge pressed his fists together in salute: “This subordinate requests permission to lead the assault.”

Li Chi’s attention was fixed on those two cross-shaped wooden frames, his eyes narrowing slightly.

When Li Chi was angered, he wore exactly this expression.

At that very moment, several cavalry burst out from the rebel formation, galloping toward the Ning Army.

The leading rebel soldier called out at full voice as he spurred his horse forward: “The men bound to those frames are the envoys you sent to persuade us to surrender. Our Supreme Commander says—you Ning Army people pride yourselves on benevolence and righteousness, yet you sent men here to their deaths. Now you come to attack. Let’s see whether you dare loose arrows at your own people.”

These men rode forward but dared not come too close, shouting at the top of their lungs from just beyond arrow range.

Liu Ge’s face had gradually gone pale.

“I never imagined there could be such a vicious man in this world. Those two were brothers who grew up with him from childhood.”

Liu Ge said in fury: “Killing men and then binding their corpses—how could anyone do such a thing!”

Li Chi was silent for a moment, then urged his horse forward.

He moved forward alone, and the Ning Army immediately advanced in tight formation behind him.

The army’s momentum was overwhelming—like a mountain range collapsing, like a sea surging forward.

At this movement, those few rebels who had come to shout were so frightened that they wheeled their horses around and fled without a moment’s hesitation.

Seeing the Ning Army pressing forward with complete disregard for the two bodies, Ekema’s expression also shifted.

*So this so-called benevolence and righteousness really is just a facade,* he thought.

He called out: “Archers!”

The archers immediately raised their bows, arrow tips angled toward the sky.

Once the Ning Army entered their volley range, shafts would fly in a sweeping arc.

Li Chi turned back and looked at Liu Ge: “You all stay here. No need to follow me.”

Liu Ge started, about to protest—but Li Chi had already spurred his horse forward.

When that celebrated steed from the grasslands moved, it was with the force of one trampling mountains and seas.

Li Chi charged forward. How could Liu Ge not follow? Before he’d even moved, Dantai Yajing and Yu Jiuling had already flanked him on left and right.

Ekema saw that only a handful of riders were galloping forward, and raised his hand to signal the archers to hold.

He didn’t want to lose the initiative in terms of bearing, so he too brought a few bodyguards and rode out from the formation.

He pulled up about a dozen zhang from Li Chi, narrowed his eyes to look—and did not recognize this man.

“Who are you?”

Ekema called out in a loud voice.

Before Li Chi could answer, Yu Jiuling shouted: “Our King, Li Chi!”

Ekema’s heart lurched sharply. He had never imagined that Li Chi himself would come in person.

He dipped his body slightly—something like a bow, after all, the man across from him was the lord of Jizhou.

“King Ning.”

After straightening, Ekema asked: “I wonder what brings the King Ning here in person.”

Li Chi glanced at him, then looked toward the two bodies bound to the wooden frames, studying them carefully.

Ekema followed Li Chi’s gaze and looked back, then smiled. He asked: “Is King Ning here to take these two men back? Then please, King Ning, withdraw your army first. Only once your great army has retreated will I personally dispatch men to escort their bodies back.”

Li Chi merely glanced at him without reply.

Beside Li Chi at this moment were three men: Liu Ge, Dantai Yajing, and Yu Jiuling.

Li Chi turned back, and in a tone that sounded perfectly calm, asked: “Have you all memorized what those two righteous men look like right now?”

All three answered at once: “We have!”

Li Chi said in a loud, clear voice: “Relay my orders to all units. Of the enemy before the formation—those bearing arms, kill. Those who resist, kill. Those who do not kneel, kill. Whatever state those two righteous men are in right now, that is exactly the state they shall remain in after this battle. Should so much as a single additional mark be added to them, every last rebel soldier shall be killed—slaughtered to the last man.”

He wheeled his horse around and rode back, urging it forward.

“Attack!”

“*Hu!*”

—