Mount Qiling.

The Tianming Army camp.

Yang Xuanji had been staring blankly at the bowl of steaming hot noodles set before him for quite some time now — hard to say what he was thinking about, though from the look on his face, whatever it was, it was likely nothing pleasant.

Today was his birthday. His thirty-sixth birthday.

Yet though he was only this age, he felt in recent days that he was increasingly becoming like an old man — prone to melancholy, given to inexplicable fits of rage, his emotions slipping out of control suddenly and without warning.

“My lord.”

His foremost strategist Zhuge Jingzhan looked toward Yang Xuanji, sensing that his lord was likely once again distracted by the matter of the battles against the Ning Army.

“Eat first.”

Zhuge Jingzhan offered the gentle counsel.

Yang Xuanji lifted the bowl of noodles and spent some time earnestly talking himself into it before he finally began to eat. Yet he truly could not manage it —

Since the fighting began, his Tianming Army — which had once won every battle — had not taken a single victory against the Ning Army.

That young man called Tang Pidi seemed to have been sent down from heaven specifically to counter him — to vex him, to torment him, to cut him down.

“Has any news come from the Yuzhou side?”

Yang Xuanji asked as he ate his noodles.

Zhuge Jingzhan shook his head. “No letters have come. I suspect with seven or eight parts certainty that it ended in defeat.”

Yang Xuanji’s chopsticks stopped in mid-air. He could not help but let out a long sigh.

“On the main front, we have fought the Ning Army under Tang Pidi in more than a dozen engagements large and small, and never once come out ahead. I had hoped to launch a surprise attack from behind Tang Pidi’s position — yet that too has come to nothing. Did I place too high an expectation on those people?”

Yang Xuanji looked toward Zhuge Jingzhan. “From the day we marched out of Shuzhou, never until now have I been at such a total loss.”

He set down his chopsticks and spoke almost to himself: “If there is a remarkable talent in this world who can help me defeat Tang Pidi, I would be willing to enfeoff him as a marquis over ten thousand households — no, a founding duke — even enfeoffment as a prince of a commandery would be possible.”

Zhuge Jingzhan counseled: “Those people were never capable enough for the task. If they could have accomplished it, they would have done so when Prince Ning’s Li Chi first sent Tang Pidi to campaign against Yuzhou — why would they have waited until now?”

Yang Xuanji suddenly seized Zhuge Jingzhan by the hand. “Master Zhuge — do you have any brilliant stratagem for breaking the enemy? I beg you to teach me.”

Yang Xuanji’s greatest virtue was that he was genuinely deferential to men of talent. If he found someone capable, even without a ready position for them, he would keep them in his household and see to their needs.

It had been so in Shuzhou, and here now he had upward of four or five thousand such guests lodged in his care.

Zhuge Jingzhan was in truth feeling a measure of urgency himself. The Tianming King’s great enterprise had, at this stage, met a genuine obstacle.

Before encountering Tang Pidi, the Tianming King had carried all before him — so effortlessly that it seemed beyond belief, as though everything he attempted had the aid of some divine hand.

Once, Zhuge Jingzhan had believed that the Tianming King’s greatest obstacle on the path to the throne was Prince Wu Yang Jiju. When they marched their forces to attack Jingzhou, they were indeed blocked by the prince — for Yang Jiju was far superior to Yang Xuanji in commanding troops, and far superior to the many generals under Yang Xuanji. The result was a stalemate, neither side gaining the upper hand.

Just as Yang Xuanji was growing somewhat anxious, Prince Wu Yang Jiju was compelled to divide his forces and leave. The man he left behind to hold Jingzhou —

Outwardly strong but inwardly hollow. Yang Xuanji had barely needed to exert himself. He simply bribed this man’s own subordinates, incited him into meeting the Tianming Army in open battle outside the city — and the result was a sweeping victory.

From that moment, Yang Xuanji swept through Jingzhou like a storm, taking the whole of it in barely half a year.

At this juncture, Yang Xuanji faced a choice: should he march directly into Jingzhou and strike at the Dachu capital in a direct advance, or should he wait and let others strike first — let someone else gnaw through the hardest bone — while he took Yuzhou and other territories?

Zhuge Jingzhan’s counsel was to hold off. Dachu, though it had crumbled this far, still maintained enough forces in the capital to hold firm.

And of course there was a far more important consideration — Yang Xuanji was of the Dachu imperial bloodline, closely related to Yang Jing.

If Yang Xuanji himself destroyed Dachu and killed the Emperor of Chu, the name this would leave behind was truly unsavory. No matter how it was dressed up, there was no way to conceal it.

But if someone else first stormed Daxing and killed Yang Jing — and Yang Xuanji then defeated that person — the name left behind would be entirely different. That would be avenging the Emperor of Chu, slaying the traitors.

And then, with the identity of the Dachu imperial lineage, to proclaim himself emperor — everything would fall into place naturally.

Besides all this, inside Daxing there were sixty thousand Imperial Guards, at least fifty thousand garrison troops, and no fewer than ten thousand patrol soldiers under the thirteen gate commands. These roughly one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers were troops that even as Dachu’s territories collapsed all around him, Emperor Yang Jing had never dared to deploy lightly.

Daxing’s fortifications were the strongest in the realm under heaven.

With one hundred and twenty thousand troops defending the city, plus the coordinated defense of the great families within, and the participation of the common people — taking it would be no easy matter.

Zhuge Jingzhan counseled Yang Xuanji: it would be better to hold off for now. Let the southern marauder Li Xionghu be the one to gnaw through that hard bone.

In order to push Li Xionghu into attacking Daxing first, Zhuge Jingzhan had also sent men to scheme and manipulate — bribing court officials, cutting off the grain supply to Prince Wu Yang Jiju, and even fabricating crimes to be laid before him, impeaching him at court one time after another.

If Emperor Yang Jing had been a man of easily swayed judgment, Prince Wu might well have already been ruined by these petty and sordid machinations.

“My lord.”

Zhuge Jingzhan deliberated at length, and finally resolved to make a journey to Yuzhou himself.

This was Yang Xuanji’s decisive moment — and his own decisive moment as well. He had staked his entire life’s learning and his very existence on Yang Xuanji. If Yang Xuanji’s great enterprise succeeded, he might become the prime minister of a new dynasty. If Yang Xuanji fell, he would have no further chance to display his ambitions.

Zhuge Jingzhan called out, and then said: “From among my lord’s household guests, two thousand elite fighters may be carefully selected. From the army, three thousand more armored troops may be chosen. These men will be broken into small groups and infiltrate Yuzhou separately.”

He rose and clasped his hands: “I am willing to go to Yuzhou in person and devise strategies for my lord. Once in Yuzhou — if key ministers under Prince Ning can be assassinated, they will be assassinated. Granaries that can be burned will be burned. And not only granaries — when the summer grain ripens in a few months’ time, fires will be set in the fields all across Yuzhou, burning the standing crops. The aim is not to achieve swift, obvious results, nor to target large cities — only to strike, simultaneously across many points, at the loosely defended areas of Yuzhou, advancing on all fronts at once. If this plan succeeds, in half a year Yuzhou will be in turmoil, their forces insufficient to deal with it everywhere, exhausted from running to every fire — and Tang Pidi will certainly be forced to make concessions.”

Yang Xuanji’s expression brightened.

He seized Zhuge Jingzhan’s hand and said: “This is a brilliant plan, master. As long as one fire burns the Ning Army’s summer grain, the Ning Army can be defeated without a battle.”

He grew excited — and then felt uneasy. “Yet, master — Yuzhou is fraught with danger at every turn. I cannot be separated from you for even a moment. If something should happen to you, what would I do?”

Zhuge Jingzhan counseled: “My talent, in truth, does not lie in the art of military battle array. Every skill has its area of mastery. I cannot lead an army and defeat Tang Pidi in open battle on the field. Yet my heart for planning may serve as counsel to my lord.”

Yang Xuanji gave a deep nod. “All the soldiers under my command and all the household guests in my residence — master may select any he wishes.”

Zhuge Jingzhan bowed: “I am grateful for my lord’s trust.”

—

Approximately ten days later, Zhuge Jingzhan had selected over five thousand men and told them to enter Yuzhou from different directions in dispersed groups, bypassing the Ning Army’s defensive lines.

To draw the Ning Army’s attention, Yang Xuanji decided to launch one fierce assault as cover for Zhuge Jingzhan’s forces.

The hundreds of thousands of Tianming Army soldiers began preparing for a large-scale offensive.

—

Another ten days later. Fengzhou.

Zhang Tang led his Tingwei Army black cavalry into Fengzhou city. Looking upward, one could see corpses hanging from the city walls.

Those were the corpses of rebel soldiers. There were many wooden frames along the streets as well, and corpses of rebel soldiers hung from those too.

From this one could see how great was Xu Ji’s rage against Yin Ke’s rebel forces.

Inside the carriage, Cao Lie let out a quiet sigh. “Such a killing intent.”

Zhang Tang smiled. “Without this — how would he wash clean the suspicion and clear his name?”

Cao Lie nodded. He understood.

Zhang Tang said: “Back when we were in Liaoyang City, I had only just heard how the rebel forces of the great brigand Zhang Ting had been eliminated in Liaoyang City back then — and who would have thought that so soon afterward, this same sort of thing would happen in Fengzhou.”

Xu Ji had hosted the city’s gentry and elders at his home, inviting more than a thousand of them.

Afterward, he went to Yin Ke and said he had yet another scheme — one that could bind the people of the city and Yin Ke’s forces into an inseparable unity.

He said: the people of the city feared that once the Ning Army broke through, there would be reprisals. That was why they dared not draw close to their forces.

But if more of the people could not be mobilized to assist, they could not guarantee that when they feigned surrender to Luo Jing, they would be able to wipe out all twelve thousand of those battle-hardened Ning soldiers in a single stroke.

Therefore: they could have the soldiers disperse throughout the city, carrying gifts, going door to door to demonstrate goodwill.

He had also already come to an arrangement with the men of standing in the city. These men would go out and speak to the common people, saying: the entire city would host Yin Ke’s forces to a banquet.

This way, the forces and the city’s common people would be bound together as one.

Yin Ke was not young, but he was in truth not a man suited to great undertakings. He was simply a merchant.

Had his son Yin Xin’an still been alive, the man would certainly have seen through Xu Ji’s scheme at a glance.

But Yin Ke was actually talked around by Xu Ji. He gave the order for his men to open the granaries, take the grain, and disperse their forces across the city, going house to house to distribute and present gifts.

And in gratitude, the people of the city invited the rebel soldiers into their homes for a meal.

This business —

Was simply this absurd.

Inside the carriage, Cao Lie turned this scheme over in his mind — there were very few people in the world who could have devised something like it.

The people of Liaoyang City had been able to do it because of Liaoyang City’s unique circumstances. A single word from Mazi Wu, and everyone in the city fell into line — because the people of Liaoyang City knew that if they did not, Mazi Wu would make them suffer for it.

What manner of man was Mazi Wu? Xu Ji and Mazi Wu were not remotely alike.

And so neither Cao Lie nor Zhang Tang had anticipated that Xu Ji too could have pulled off something of this kind.

Xu Ji had first feigned counsel to Yin Ke — using the strategy of feigning surrender to launch a surprise attack on Luo Jing’s Ning Army.

This was in truth nothing more than a lie to fragment Yin Ke’s attention — keeping Yin Ke’s thoughts fixed on the feigned surrender — while Xu Ji then guided him step by step, until Yin Ke believed his reasoning.

Zhang Tang asked Cao Lie: “As for Xu Ji — what do you think Prince Ning will do with him?”

Cao Lie thought for a moment and said: “Most likely he will be transferred back to Jizhou.”

Zhang Tang could not hold back a burst of laughter: “It’s true as I thought — Prince Ning was right to say that whatever happened, Cao Lie must not be killed.”

Cao Lie pursed his lips: “And you think that’s because he sees me as talented?”

Zhang Tang smiled but said nothing.

What had happened in Fengzhou they now both knew in full. On the day the chaos erupted, a force of barely a hundred men had suddenly appeared — and, seizing the moment when the guards were dispersed, had taken the city gate in a single stroke. The gates opened. Luo Jing led his troops into the city. And then came the slaughter.

The common people did not know whose force that hundred-or-so men belonged to. But Zhang Tang and the others now knew.

It was the newly appointed Grand Commander of the Intelligence Guards — Gui Yuanshu.

What was interesting about this man was that, in Zhang Tang’s view, he was almost uncannily similar to himself.

After Yin Ke’s forces were routed, Gui Yuanshu had suddenly appeared and asked General Luo Jing to let the remnants of Yin Ke’s forces go.

Luo Jing had actually agreed — and so Yin Ke escaped Fengzhou with a few hundred men. Gui Yuanshu, however, had quietly followed in pursuit.

Cao Lie saw that Zhang Tang was only smiling and saying nothing, and so he asked: “What are you thinking about now?”

Zhang Tang smiled and asked: “I am wondering — does Fengzhou have a great deal of money?”

Cao Lie let out a long sigh. “You have probably just now understood yet another reason why Prince Ning absolutely would not kill me, haven’t you?”

He looked at Zhang Tang and said: “Whether there is or there isn’t — it would be better if I said it myself from now on.”