Within Anyang City.
Yu Wenshang Yun stood atop a high wooden tower, coordinating the entire army — yet the longer this battle dragged on, the more strangely powerless he felt.
In all his years of leading troops, he had never felt this kind of powerlessness before.
Every deployment that should have given them complete and decisive advantage had, once the fighting began, lost all its usefulness.
The forces lying in ambush along both sides of the main streets never even caught sight of the true Ning Army before thousands of fire-horses came crashing into them.
In an instant, what was meant to be an ambush became an open, face-to-face slaughter.
Tang Pidi first shattered the Chu forces in ambush with a fire-horse formation, and only then led the Ning Army in their assault into the city.
From that moment onward, the situation reversed in an instant.
The Chu Army’s original plan had been to lure Tang Pidi inside, then sever his connection to the rear Ning forces, seal the city gates, and trap those who had entered — hemming them in until they were dead.
But now it was Tang Pidi’s Ning Army that held the city gates in a desperate defense, while the Chu Army found itself having to pour everything into battering through.
Once the Ning Army secured the city gates, Yu Wenshang Yun was not convinced that Dantai Yajing’s forces from south of the river could actually cross in time — but as a supreme commander, he could not afford to neglect the possibility.
Fortunately, the Ning Army’s numbers were genuinely inferior to the Chu Army’s.
And yet — with just over thirty thousand soldiers, the Ning Army held the northern gate by sheer stubborn force, refusing to press inward into the city, standing firm in pure defense.
Using the opening that Yu Wenshi Jing had earlier promised — that the gates would be left uncontested — they had climbed the ramps flanking the gatehouse and seized firm control of that entire section of the wall.
“No matter the cost!”
Yu Wenshang Yun bellowed: “This battle must annihilate the Ning Army! Pass the order — every unit, give everything you have!”
Among his men, the most ferociously battle-hungry was his cousin, Yu Wen Yingxiong.
At that moment, Yu Wen Yingxiong was leading his troops in relentless assault against the northern gate. Watching his men charge again and again, only to be driven back each time, his eyes had gone red.
“Are you all damned useless?!”
Yu Wen Yingxiong roared: “Bring up every single crossbow cart we have and blast that gate!”
The crossbow carts were being hauled up from the rear — but with troops packed solid through every street, it was far easier said than done.
The original plan had called for an ambush. Now it had turned into an assault, and the streets were choked with Chu Army soldiers.
Outside the city.
Li Chi gazed up at the top of the city wall, where signalmen were relaying information through flags.
This flag-signal system was something Li Chi had devised himself, drawing on references in his teacher’s writings.
No one outside the Ning Army could read it.
“Chu forces are twenty yards from our front line.”
Li Chi turned and called out: “Archers!”
Behind him, dense blocks of formation after formation were made up entirely of archers.
“Volley fire!”
At Li Chi’s command, the archers loosed their arrows in one disciplined wave.
The arrows climbed into the sky, tracing arcing trajectories over the city wall, and fell into the Chu Army’s ranks.
Immediately, the signalmen on the wall began waving their flags again.
Li Chi turned and called out: “Adjust a fraction higher than before — loose!”
A second volley of arrows flew into the sky — a black torrent of rain, pouring down into Anyang City.
The Chu Army troops charging toward the Ning Army were blanketed in an instant by that black downpour.
“Report!”
Scouts came galloping back from the rear, riding hard to Li Chi’s side, dismounting and clasping their fists: “Your Highness — the Chu Army forces in the south of the city have indeed split off and are moving this way. They will reach the northern city before long.”
Li Chi gave a single nod, then turned and called out: “Rear units — prepare to receive the enemy.”
The Ning Army forces outside the city; the rear guard immediately wheeled around to face the new direction.
In roughly a quarter of an hour, the battle cries of the Chu Army reached them — the troops themselves had not yet arrived, but already those shouts were pouring into their ears.
Chu Army commander Song De Jing rode forward relentlessly, his long saber thrusting ahead: “Cut through them! Pin the Ning Army here and seal them in!”
His two-ten-thousand Chu Army troops, drawn from Yu Wen’s forces, swept forward under the moonlight like a flood — surging toward the Ning Army.
“Volley fire!”
One round.
“Level fire!”
Two rounds.
“Concentrated fire!”
Three rounds!
After just three volleys, the Chu cavalry was nearly upon them.
“Shift formation!”
At the commanders’ orders, the archers began pulling back swiftly, and behind them, row after row of spearmen pressed forward.
Every spear in their hands was approximately ten feet long.
The spearmen formed a tight defensive array — the definitive counter to a light cavalry charge.
The spear formation took shape like a dense forest, every spear angled outward.
Song De Jing understood exactly what was at stake, so he drove forward savagely, pushing his cavalry on with everything he had.
In truth, this battle marked the first genuine head-on clash between Li Chi’s Ning Army — representing the peak combat power of the Jizhou forces — and Yu Wenshang Yun’s troops — representing the peak combat power of Dachu’s garrison armies.
As for each side’s knowledge of the other, it might seem the Ning Army would know less about the Chu Army.
After all, Yu Wenshang Yun had spent several months in Jizhou and was quite familiar with how the Ning Army trained.
But in reality, the Ning Army understood the Chu Army’s methods of warfare intimately.
Dachu had stood for several hundred years. The Chu Army’s training methods had been in continuous use throughout — without change.
And when Li Chi had first trained the Ning Army’s formations, he had used Dachu’s garrison army training methods as his foundation.
It was Tang Pidi who later refined those methods, building upon the Chu garrison training until the Ning Army had developed their own wholly unique tactics.
Song De Jing saw three volleys of arrow-rain and assumed the charge was headed into an Ning Army archer formation.
By the time his light cavalry were nearly upon them, he realized — it was a spear formation.
Thwuck. Thwuck. Thwuck. Thwuck.
The sound came without pause.
The cavalry charged in, and in an instant, each man was impaled by four or five spears.
Horses’ hooves trampled over Ning Army soldiers at the front, bowling them over.
The very instant the two forces met, the first two or three rows of Ning Army spearmen were smashed into disorder.
But the losses ended there. Once the front rows were broken and scattered, the Chu cavalry’s charge was stopped cold.
Without momentum, and still mounted, their sabers were far shorter than the Ning Army’s spears.
Those riders on horseback were simply targets for the spearmen.
Spear after spear thrust forward, Chu Army soldiers toppling from their mounts one by one.
The sensation of a spear-tip punching into human flesh — and the visual impact of it — would send an ordinary person shaking with horror.
Some new recruits early in their training had not understood why a tuft of red tassels would hang just below a spearhead.
When veterans told them the truth, these new recruits would think it through — an image forming in their minds — and shudder.
When a spear-tip enters a human body, without a tassel to act as a barrier, blood surges outward. The shaft becomes slick, the grip impossible to hold firm.
That red tassel is not merely decoration. It is there to stanch the blood.
Many of the soldiers had actually died before they even fell from their horses, each with more than one spear wound.
The Chu Army troops at the rear were halted. Without their speed advantage, the cavalry became utterly helpless.
A stopped cavalry in front of spearmen knew only grief.
But Song De Jing had gone savage — he would not order a retreat, desperate to cut the Ning Army off and seal them in place.
And so, great numbers of elite light cavalry had no choice but to dismount and fight on foot. But that changed nothing. Their weapons were simply too short.
This kind of battle — two lines grinding against each other at close range — was the most brutal of all. Blood splashed freely, and before long the very ground beneath that furious melee had turned to mud.
“Report!”
At the city gate, a soldier shouted toward Tang Pidi: “The rear guard is under attack from Chu Army forces — shall we draw men from here to reinforce them?”
Tang Pidi glanced back, but had no intention of worrying whether Li Chi could hold — and absolutely no intention of diverting troops rearward.
“Sound the horn — advance fifty paces into the city!”
At Tang Pidi’s order, the horns rang out. The signalmen on the wall hurriedly waved their signal flags, and the Ning Army archers outside immediately halted their volleys.
The Ning Army began pressing forward. Every step cost countless lives — the ground was thick with bodies, Ning and Chu alike, tangled together.
From his high tower, Yu Wenshang Yun saw the Ning Army suddenly begin to push back and understood at once.
“Order maximum assault. Song De Jing has brought his troops around — the Ning Army is expanding their foothold inside the city to clear space for their rear units.”
With the Chu Army’s horn signal, soldiers flooded from every street like a surging torrent — pouring forward with renewed ferocity.
“Battle drums!”
Someone suddenly shouted.
Yu Wenshang Yun tilted his head to listen. Faintly, distinctly, the sound of coordinated drumming reached him from beyond the city.
But that was impossible — his troops had come rushing from the south side at full speed to encircle the Ning Army. They would never have brought battle drums.
Because that was not battle drums.
It was the Ning Army.
Behind Song De Jing’s Chu troops, the Ning Army reinforcements had arrived.
A formation of staggering power advanced, rolling forward — Ning Army soldiers marching with long, confident strides, beating their chestplates as they came.
Not battle drums. But more rousing than any battle drum, more galvanizing than anything else could be.
Each strike of fist against breastplate was the authority of thunder itself.
And each of those strikes bore down on the Chu Army outside the city with immense, crushing pressure.
“Ning Army on the left flank!”
“Ning Army directly behind us!”
“General — Ning Army on the right flank too!”
Their voices tore raw with the screaming of it. Song De Jing’s face drained pale as chalk.
“Impossible!”
Song De Jing howled: “General Yu Wen Jing has the Ning Army locked down hard at Nanping River! Where are all these Ning soldiers coming from?!”
But what did refusing to believe it matter?
Thoom. Thoom-thoom.
Thoom. Thoom-thoom.
The sound came from far away and drew steadily closer, the pressure it placed on the Chu Army growing with every beat.
In the darkness, the Ning Army battle soldiers appearing at the Chu Army’s rear gave no battle cries. Only the sound of fist striking breastplate.
And that silence was more frightening than any war cry.
“Report!”
A cavalry rider came galloping in, pulling up before Dantai Yajing’s main command: “Reporting to General Dantai — Commander Cheng sends word that the left flank forces are in position!”
“Reporting — General Gao sends word that the right flank forces are in position!”
Dantai Yajing gave a single nod, glanced back at the army behind him, and leveled his long lance forward.
“Attack!”
“Hu!”
Three Ning Army columns, covering the sky and blotting out the ground, overturning mountains and reversing the sea.
The eastern sky began to lighten. Quickly, a brilliant crimson sun climbed above the horizon.
The speed of dawn seemed in some moment to outpace the retreat of the darkness itself — as though all the shadows, caught before they could flee, were left cowering behind houses, behind walls, beneath trees, trembling.
The shadows that remained in the light were darkness with nowhere left to hide.
“Supreme Commander!”
A man ran to Yu Wenshang Yun, his voice hoarse and broken: “Supreme Commander — General Yu Wen Yingxiong has been defeated. He… he has fallen in battle.”
Yu Wenshang Yun’s body lurched. Both hands gripped the railing of the wooden tower — only barely steadying himself.
“How could he be defeated?!”
“A large force of Ning Army reinforcements came from outside the city. General Song outside the walls — it seems he has also been defeated…”
The moment those words landed, Yu Wenshang Yun felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest — as though a hand had reached in and seized his heart.
It could barely beat, and every struggling beat was agony.
“Report!”
Several riders came charging beneath the tower, calling up from below: “Supreme Commander — the Ning Army has seized the entire northern city. The Supreme Commander must retreat immediately.”
“Retreat?”
Yu Wenshang Yun let out a long, heavy breath. “Retreat to where…”
Northern City.
Boer Tietengge came running to Tang Pidi, beating his own breastplate: “Brother Tang Pidi — the brave warriors of Nalan request to fight!”
Tang Pidi smiled: “Storming a city in street-by-street combat is no place for cavalry. Take the Nalan warriors outside the city and sweep the perimeter — any Chu Army troops trying to escape, intercept and kill them.”
“Yes!”
Boer Tietengge immediately acknowledged and turned to run out.
Tang Pidi pulled down his face visor and raised his spear.
Beneath his feet, there lay a tattered, broken Chu Army battle flag.
—