The Black Wu forces fell back like a receding tide, retreating swiftly into their camp, leaving the open battlefield behind — and only the stones still trailing black smoke.
Li Chi stood on the wall, looking at the scene. For a moment, it felt somehow not quite real.
In the end, what had made the Black Wu recoil was what they took to be heaven-sent meteors — and this left Li Chi feeling, if he was honest, slightly dreamlike.
But it did nothing to diminish his joy. The Black Wu had retreated, no matter the cause. The garrison soldiers would take no more casualties. That was worth celebrating — worth celebrating more than he could say.
Every one of them deserved to be called a pillar of the Central Plains and the people within it. Every one who fell was a loss to the nation.
“The Black Wu will withdraw in a slow and orderly fashion. There will be no more attacks.”
After reaching this judgment, Li Chi immediately turned and said: “Xiahou — arrange the most elite scouts. Tonight they go over the wall in baskets, get close to the Black Wu camp, and assess the situation. Keep the numbers small so the Black Wu don’t notice.”
Xiahou Zuo immediately answered: “I’ll go select the men now.”
Li Chi placed both hands on the wall and looked toward the distant Black Wu encampment, his gaze drifting.
“Have someone…”
He said only two words before stopping. After a long pause, he turned back: “Have someone prepare firecrackers — no, prepare plenty of firecrackers!”
“Long live!”
“We won!”
“We won!”
On the wall, cheers erupted like thunderclap after thunderclap, so loud the white clouds drifting overhead seemed as though they might be scattered apart.
That day, the Black Wu army decided to withdraw.
Not because they had no strength left to fight — their siege towers and ramps, built over months of preparation, were still mostly intact. The Ning Army had only destroyed three siege towers in total, which, relative to their full complement of siege equipment, was not a significant loss.
But the Black Wu soldiers had lost the will to fight.
Nor was it solely the falling stones — what Li Chi had called heaven-sent meteors — that had broken their nerve. There was also the winter that had arrived.
If neither the gods nor the weather stood on the Black Wu side, what courage did the Black Wu have left? And beyond that, the six months of continuous assault had already consumed most of the Black Wu’s fighting edge.
How long does a war have to last before the soldiers grow weary and begin to resist?
That depends on how the war has gone.
If they had been winning all along — if the Black Wu had broken through North Mountain Pass in ten days and pushed deep to Jizhou City in two months — even half a year of besieging Jizhou after that wouldn’t have bred this kind of resistance. But gains that never come — persistence for nothing — grind a person’s will to dust.
That night, the Black Wu began packing up. They weren’t worried about the Ning Army striking while they prepared to withdraw, because the Ning Army was not that foolish.
Even with half a year of failure to take even one border pass behind them, with over one hundred thousand casualties — the Black Wu still outmatched the handful of Ning Army soldiers that could emerge from the city.
There were still the two hundred thousand Iron Crane cavalry who had never entered the battle. Out in the open, two-plus tens of thousands of Ning Army fighters would be ground to paste by two hundred thousand Iron Crane cavalry.
Even setting aside those two hundred thousand, Li Chi was not so foolish as to, on the very day victory had finally been earned after all this endurance, lead two-plus tens of thousands of men in an attack against nearly five hundred thousand Black Wu.
The elite scouts Li Chi had sent over the wall only edged carefully close to the Black Wu camp to observe whether the Black Wu were truly preparing to leave.
Roughly one hour later, the scouts returned with word: the Black Wu were packing through the night, dismantling the camp — they appeared to be genuinely withdrawing.
Li Chi did not sleep that night. He did not leave the wall all night, watching the Black Wu camp the whole time.
When morning came, and the sun rose lazily above the horizon, the Black Wu camp was already somewhat empty.
The main body must have begun withdrawing shortly after retreating from the battlefield the day before. A portion of troops had been left behind to dismantle the camp and gather the remaining supplies.
It was clear the men commanding the Black Wu army had also reached their limit — not willing to remain a single breath longer.
Li Chi did not rashly send more forces out of the city. Because the posture the Black Wu were now maintaining could very possibly be a trap.
The Black Wu had not yet lost the chance to reverse the situation. On the battlefield, one moment of inattention — one moment of complacency — could bring total catastrophe.
If the Black Wu were feigning retreat while secretly laying an ambush somewhere, and Li Chi couldn’t resist going to inspect the Black Wu camp or seize the supplies left behind, he could find himself surrounded.
They had endured this long already. What were a few more days?
And so they watched from the wall, spyglasses trained on the Black Wu camp. By the third day, the troops the Black Wu had left behind had nearly finished dismantling it. They took only the tents, then put the remainder to the torch.
Even seeing this, Li Chi still did not send anyone out. The Black Wu burning their own camp could also be a trap.
Only when the fires had burned down and the last flames were gone did Li Chi send more scouts out to survey the surroundings.
Two more days passed. The scouts returned with word: the Black Wu had genuinely withdrawn. No Black Wu forces were to be found within fifty li in any direction.
Only then did Li Chi dispatch a cavalry unit out of the city. Their first order of business was to burn the siege towers and ramps the Black Wu had left standing in the open.
These could not be transported into the city. Taking them apart and hauling them in would yield nothing more than a large pile of timber — and timber was the last thing the northern frontier was short of.
When those siege towers and ramps came crashing down in the flames, the soldiers on the wall of North Mountain Pass erupted in cheers once more.
It was the release of half a year of suppression. Everyone roared until their voices gave out, then kept roaring.
Firecrackers rang out across North Mountain Pass — as dense and rapid as a rainstorm landing on a lake.
Some of the men carried strings of firecrackers up onto the wall. They lit them and tossed them over the edge. Seen from a distance, the wall looked like a waterfall of crackling fire and sound.
All of North Mountain Pass was immersed in a joy that was difficult to put into words. The exhilaration on every face burned fierce and bright.
Li Chi came down from the wall. In this moment, if he was honest, he simply wanted to find somewhere quiet to rest for a while.
Half an hour later, in the straw of the quartermaster camp, the missing Prince Ning was located.
Lying in the dry straw, the Prince Ning was deep asleep.
No one woke him. No one would have disturbed him at a time like this.
Not far from Li Chi, Gao Xining lay down on the straw as well. For the first time, she felt — inexplicably — that lying in a haystack was so comfortable, more comfortable than lying in a bed.
Xiahou Zuo. Dantai Yajing. Yu Jiuling…
One by one they lay down in other haystacks nearby, and before long, the quartermaster’s straw yard was filled with overlapping, layered snores.
A victory of this scale demanded a feast of celebration without question.
Because what they had held was not merely one border pass — it was all of Jizhou, and beyond that, the entirety of the Central Plains.
A victory of this scale, no celebration would be too much.
Though at this moment, there was nothing in North Mountain Pass that could make for a particularly lavish banquet.
They also needed to hold back enough supplies to guard against the Black Wu making a sudden return when the Ning Army’s guard was down. So the victory banquet consisted of just one thing — meat buns. Meat buns everyone had been thinking about for a very long time.
The kind that leaked broth down the side of your mouth with every bite.
There was wine for everyone, but only one bowl each.
Not because Li Chi was stingy, but because they still could not assume the Black Wu threat was entirely gone.
After the banquet, the troops would go back to their normal rotations — shift by shift, hour by hour, not a single moment of carelessness.
“Before us, the ancestors of our Central Plains nation also held the Black Wu outside our borders, time and again.”
Li Chi held his wine bowl, standing at a high point, looking down at the rows of Ning Army soldiers below him, and spoke at full volume.
“We can, in one sense, take no particular pride in this — because what we have done is what our grandparents and great-grandparents once did before us.”
“We can, in another sense, take great pride in this — because what we have done is something our grandparents and parents could not do. They did what they did — but we did it better!”
Li Chi raised his bowl high: “We held off a Black Wu force of a million with our handful of men — and cut down over a hundred thousand of them!”
Li Chi shouted: “To the heroes!”
“Hoo!”
The Ning Army soldiers raised their bowls and answered together in one voice.
Li Chi shouted: “Drain this bowl — and we are all heroes!”
“Drink!”
Tens of thousands of men drained their bowls at once.
After Li Chi finished his wine, he called out once more: “Don’t smash the bowls — we still need them. Let’s not be the sort of people who have that habit!”
The soldiers all burst out laughing.
Li Chi said: “Eat. I can’t let you drink freely today — because we still need to be ready in case the Black Wu make a sudden return. And if the Black Wu really do come back with a counterstroke — we’ll break that stroke for them, grind it to dust, shove it back in their mouths, and tell them: we’re still here!”
Li Chi threw up a hand: “Open the damn food. No free drinking today, but eat your fill!”
In the distance, Xiahou Zuo leaned back against a wall, watching Li Chi.
His eyes held a light — a very bright, very steady light.
“What are you looking at?”
Dantai Yajing asked.
Xiahou Zuo smiled: “When we were at the Four-Page Academy in Jizhou, I never once imagined that the slightly unusual young man I had come to know would one day be Prince Ning — with the weight of the entire Central Plains on his shoulders.”
Dantai Yajing said: “It’s fortunate it’s him.”
Xiahou Zuo paused for a moment, turning those four words over carefully. Then he smiled — more freely, more fully, than before.
“Yes… fortunate it’s him.”
Dantai Yajing smiled and asked: “Did you drink your bowl?”
Xiahou Zuo nodded: “Drank it.”
Dantai Yajing reached into her sleeve and produced a small flask, holding it up for Xiahou Zuo to see: “I still have some.”
Xiahou Zuo’s eyes lit up: “How do you still have wine?”
Dantai Yajing said: “I was the one who offered to pour wine for everyone.”
Xiahou Zuo asked, genuinely curious: “So?”
Dantai Yajing said, with unmistakable satisfaction: “Every bowl I poured — yours, Prince Ning’s, Little Ninth’s, all you generals — I poured each one just the tiniest bit short. Just a mouthful less per bowl. That’s how I saved up a full flask.”
Xiahou Zuo: “You absolute—!”
Dantai Yajing: “Say one more word and I won’t share.”
Xiahou Zuo: “You magnificent genius.”
Dantai Yajing: “You were swallowing an insult just now, weren’t you.”
Xiahou Zuo: “Certainly not. Am I someone who would tell a lie just for a mouthful of wine?”
Dantai Yajing turned this over in her mind, then glanced sideways at him.
She sipped from the flask and said: “You know what I’m most proud of in this scheme of mine?”
Xiahou Zuo: “Most proud that you’re shameless… that you can be proud of this is proof enough of your shamelessness.”
Dantai Yajing grinned: “Even Little Ninth — who is so shameless — never thought of this.”
Just then, they both noticed Yu Jiuling creeping over furtively. The two of them immediately tucked the flask out of sight.
Yu Jiuling held up a jar of wine and waved them over: “Quick, come here — I stole a whole jar!”
This absolutely delighted both Xiahou Zuo and Dantai Yajing, and the two of them trotted right over.
Xiahou Zuo asked with a grin: “Where’d you steal the wine from?”
Yu Jiuling lowered his voice: “Your room.”
Xiahou Zuo: “…”