On the main road, Li Chi’s northbound convoy was pressing forward. The wind moved through the deep-red battle banners overhead like fire-clouds drifting above the column.
Inside a carriage, Li Chi sat reading the intelligence in his hands, his mind turning over plans for how to handle the situation in Yanzhou.
Based on what the agents had sent, Hu Buyu didn’t appear to be a particularly mysterious figure.
This man had spent some time at the Four-Page Academy as well, and the Academy’s director, Gao Yuanzhang, knew him fairly well.
But when this man had left the Academy, his departure had apparently resembled Mu Fengliu’s departure from Jizhou in its manner.
So there was a fair chance he had been one of the Mountain and River Seal’s people from quite early on.
Gao Yuanzhang’s assessment of the man was actually not especially high — he had said that during his time at the Academy this man had been the same as everywhere else: sharp-tongued, terrible with people, no friends to speak of, a loner through and through.
As for what abilities he actually possessed, his time at the Academy hadn’t revealed anything particularly remarkable.
The reason Tang Pidi even knew of him was because of certain things Hu Buyu had done while in Youzhou that had made people sit up and take notice.
Part of why he had fared so poorly in Youzhou, beyond his own personality, was a specific incident that had left Luo Geng deeply displeased.
At the time, when the Youzhou army had marched south, Hu Buyu had voiced his opposition, arguing that the southward march would accomplish nothing and they would do better to tend quietly to their own strength.
Luo Geng ignored him, which irritated Hu Buyu, so he had gone ahead and said it directly to Luo Geng’s face.
He said: *If you suffer a defeat, don’t say I didn’t warn you. The way you’re going about this, you’ll lose Youzhou eventually and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. This campaign — Prince Wu will probably outmaneuver you completely, and you’ll end up half-dead with fury.*
Whether Prince Wu would enrage Luo Geng was something for later. In any case, Hu Buyu’s words enraged Luo Geng plenty at the time — though Luo Geng couldn’t exactly punish him for it in front of his subordinates. After all, even Luo Geng had to project the image of a man who welcomed wise counsel, if he wanted more talent to come his way.
And then Luo Geng was indeed outmaneuvered by Prince Wu, was sent spitting blood with rage, and went home to Youzhou to recuperate.
Hu Buyu then went around telling everyone who would listen: *You see? I said so, didn’t I? The moment he went south it was inevitable — he’d lose, and he’d come back half-dead from fury.*
When Luo Geng heard about this, he flew into a rage and wanted the man dealt with. Hu Buyu, learning of this, feared Luo Geng would have him killed, and promptly fled back to Yanzhou.
“If this man truly has talent, and no one in Yanzhou can match him, I fear that within a year or two he could help the Mountain-Sea Army become the undisputed dominant power in Yanzhou.”
Li Chi looked at Dantai Yajing. “What do you think we should do?”
“In principle, striking early is best,” Dantai Yajing said. “The longer we wait, the stronger the Mountain-Sea Army becomes. But right now our forces in Jizhou are thin — we can’t move many men. And over there they have terrain advantages they can press. Coming from afar with fewer troops against more — that’s simply not wise.”
Li Chi nodded. “So this matter still has to rest first on the Tingwei office and the agents.”
“I could take a detachment and ride northeast to link up with Zhuang Wudi,” Dantai Yajing said, “and set up a forward defense position with our combined strength.”
“We’ll plan it out carefully when we get back to Jizhou,” Li Chi said. “If I split troops to give you, I’m afraid I could only cobble together one army’s worth.”
Dantai Yajing smiled. “One army will be more than enough. If Zhuang Wudi and I, with over twenty thousand men between us, can’t hold the pass, then we really would be a sorry pair of generals.”
Li Chi also smiled. “My worry about the Mountain-Sea Army is the trouble they’ll cause down the road. If it truly is Lü Wuman and Mei Wujiu, they know how to find every gap and crack.”
“You’re worried,” Dantai Yajing said, “that if the northern forces come south and Xiahou Zuo can’t pull his troops away — and Jizhou’s forces are stretched thin at the same time — the Mountain-Sea Army will seize the opening.”
Li Chi gave a sound of agreement. “If things go that way, it would genuinely be a headache.”
He raised a hand and pressed it to his temple. “Jizhou has had years of continuous war — we were already short on fighting-age men. The qualified new soldiers we’ve recruited over the past two or three years don’t even add up to eighty thousand… Yanzhou is a different story. It hasn’t had any major battles. No northern incursions, either. The Bohai people are no serious threat. Its population is far larger than Jizhou’s.”
“We should try whether we can eliminate them quietly,” Dantai Yajing said. “First, it removes the future threat to Jizhou. Second, it avenges what happened to Miss Shen’s brother.”
Li Chi looked out the window. “Not easy. Those two were specialists in exactly that kind of work.”
Every covert network north of the southern Pingjiang river was connected in some way to the Mountain and River Seal — and the Cloud Mist Map in particular controlled every top-tier assassin operating in the shadows.
The difficulty of assassinating two such men was almost beyond imagining.
“Which is exactly why,” Dantai Yajing said, “we need someone of exceptional ability to go to Yanzhou first — to read the situation and move accordingly.”
He finished speaking, then looked off into the distance — at Yu Jiuling, who was in the middle of a conversation with someone, laughing happily.
Li Chi sighed. “In terms of quick thinking and adaptability, Ninth Brother is a top-tier choice no matter how you look at it. But going to somewhere like Yanzhou, quick thinking alone isn’t enough — you’d need very strong martial ability too…”
Dantai Yajing smiled. “Or perhaps…”
He raised a hand and pointed at himself. “Me?”
Li Chi blinked, then broke into a grin. “You’re a field general. If it weren’t for the fact that Jizhou might face an attack and I needed you back, I’d have left you in Yuzhou to fight rather than bring you home — and now you want to slip off to Yanzhou to do assassination work?”
“Give me two of the Tingwei office’s senior agents,” Dantai Yajing said, “plus Yu Jiuling to coordinate with the Yanzhou agents. I just might pull it off.”
Li Chi shook his head. “No.”
“The right tool for the right task, the right talent for the right job,” Dantai Yajing said. “This isn’t using a cannon to swat a fly. Getting things done quietly before they come to a head — that’s worth a thousand times more than sending armies of soldiers to die for it later.”
Li Chi looked at Dantai Yajing. “You genuinely want to go?”
Dantai Yajing nodded. “I do.”
Li Chi considered for a while longer, then nodded. “Two things. Promise me both, and you can go.”
“What things?”
“First: don’t lose sight of what’s important. And what does ‘important’ mean? You are more important than the enemy. Throwing your life away to kill someone — that is losing sight of what’s important.”
He paused for a moment, then continued: “Second: make an oath. Swear to your father.”
Dantai Yajing: “…What?”
His eyes went wide.
“You’ve misunderstood,” Li Chi said. “I mean — you might not listen if it’s just me saying it. So swear an oath to General Dantai. He has only you as a son. If you swear to your father—”
Dantai Yajing: “…”
“Look at you,” Li Chi said. “You’re making it sound like I’m trying to take advantage of you.”
Dantai Yajing’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you sure you’re not?”
“Of course not!” Li Chi said with all dignity. “Look at me — is there a single thing about me that looks like someone who takes advantage of people?”
“Looking at you from head to toe,” Dantai Yajing said, “there isn’t a single thing about you that doesn’t look like someone who takes advantage of people.”
“Is everyone’s impression of me really this bad?” Li Chi said.
“Is your impression of yourself really always this off?” Dantai Yajing replied.
—
Two months later. The convoy returned to Jizhou.
Dantai Yajing began selecting his team and preparing to depart for Yanzhou to investigate the Mountain-Sea Army. He wasn’t in a rush to leave Jizhou yet — he was waiting for Li Chi to muster troops to send northeast with him, to be garrisoned at the pass inside the border.
After about ten days, Li Chi put together a mixed force of veteran and new soldiers — roughly five thousand experienced troops and seven or eight thousand recruits, assembled into one army.
Dantai Yajing chose a select group to accompany him into Yanzhou, including Yu Jiuling of course — Yu Jiuling’s own assessment being that he was a universally indispensable all-purpose talent who could be deployed anywhere.
Though he also sensed that Dantai Yajing bringing him along was probably related to another area of his particular expertise.
Even if Dantai Yajing didn’t say it, Yu Jiuling could see the waves of yearning reflected in the man’s eyes.
Besides Yu Jiuling and a unit of agents, the party also included two young senior agents from the Tingwei Army: Yü Hongyi and Zaoyun Jian.
Once the group was organized, they departed Jizhou and set out northeast. Even at a steady pace without delays, reaching their destination would take at least two months.
The journey passed without incident. The army reached the northeastern pass of Jizhou — a place called Dragon’s Head Pass, at the border between Jizhou and Yanzhou.
This was a position easy to defend and hard to attack — whoever held this pass had the advantage of controlling the divide between the two territories.
The pass had originally been in the hands of the Yanzhou army. After the Yanzhou military commissioner and the Baishan Army’s combined defeat against the Jizhou forces, Luo Geng had dispatched men to seize the pass and garrisoned twelve hundred troops there.
From that point on those twelve hundred had remained, and in time had legitimately been folded into the Ning Army’s ranks.
Zhuang Wudi had been waiting there. He had received word and ridden through the night, having spent roughly two years holding the eastern reaches of Jizhou alone. He had missed his old friends.
The moment they met, a long-absent smile broke across Zhuang Wudi’s face.
“Dantai!”
Zhuang Wudi came striding out to meet him.
Dantai Yajing quickened his pace. “Big Brother Zhuang.”
The two men’s reunion was warm and genuine.
“Didn’t Li Chi — that is, Prince Ning — come?” Zhuang Wudi asked, a trace of self-consciousness flickering across him.
“He can’t get away for now,” Dantai Yajing explained. “The troops have all been sent to Yuzhou, and Jizhou’s forces are thin — he needs to recruit new soldiers urgently.”
Zhuang Wudi sighed quietly. “Right… the Mountain-Sea Army in Yanzhou is getting stronger by the day. If Jizhou has no soldiers to spare, things could get dangerous. The big picture comes first. The big picture comes first…”
The way those words came out — one after the other — made both Dantai Yajing and Yu Jiuling feel a quiet pang.
Zhuang Wudi cared so deeply about the brotherhood between him and Li Chi, yet the two of them hadn’t seen each other in at least two years.
Worried that Zhuang Wudi was feeling low, Yu Jiuling quickly stepped forward to say hello. Zhuang Wudi looked up to see Yu Jiuling coming and immediately brightened again.
He opened his arms wide. “Oh, you little wretch — you came too.”
Yu Jiuling: “…”
Inside Dragon’s Head Pass, Zhuang Wudi went over the intelligence on the Mountain-Sea Army in Yanzhou once more in careful detail.
According to what had been heard, both the King of the Mountain’s Roar and the King of the Sea’s Surge were fighters of truly terrifying ability, unstoppable on the battlefield.
Beyond those two, they had dozens of formidable commanders under them — and Hu Buyu as their strategist — which was why the Mountain-Sea Army had already established itself as the dominant power throughout Yanzhou.
Hearing that Dantai Yajing and Yu Jiuling intended to go to Yanzhou themselves, Zhuang Wudi had some concerns.
“From what I hear, the Mountain-Sea Army has absorbed a large number of skilled fighters from the martial world. And given the Mountain and River Seal situation the chief mentioned in his letter — I’d guess there are plenty of top-tier assassins embedded in the Mountain-Sea Army as well. Trying to quietly eliminate those two will be extraordinarily dangerous.”
“It’s fine,” Dantai Yajing said. “Big Brother Zhuang, don’t you trust me? Or at least trust Ninth Brother?”
Zhuang Wudi couldn’t help laughing. “Fair enough — Ninth Brother’s out there… that alone should be revolting enough to do the job.”
Yu Jiuling: “Big Brother Zhuang, can you please be a little more serious — you’re the cold-faced killing star, remember? If you keep making fun of me like this, don’t blame me when I drag you along to a pleasure house.”
Zhuang Wudi straightened his expression. “A pleasure house… do you think I need you to drag me?”
Dantai Yajing burst out laughing.
Then the laughter died as the mood shifted. He glanced at Yu Jiuling, and saw Yu Jiuling let out a little sigh and say: “Even Big Brother Zhuang doesn’t need dragging — but a certain person’s courage, now…”
He raised his hand and pinched three fingers together. “Just that tiny little bit.”
Zhuang Wudi chuckled. “And that *one tiny little bit* — is that really so tiny?”
The three of them looked at each other and burst out laughing again.
—