*Clear skies stretch endlessly, clouds and mist nowhere to be seen;*

*The Great River surges forward — no army can be stopped.*

Yang Xuanji’s Heaven’s Mandate Army was no rabble of disorganized forces.

This force had drawn together nearly every renowned general of the old Dachu aristocratic class. Apart from those under Prince Wu — men Yang Xuanji had been unable to win over — seven or eight in ten of the imperial garrison commanders from all corners of the realm now served under his banner.

Nor was Yang Xuanji some gilded, hollow dandy. He understood how to win more profoundly than any opponent Li Chi had yet faced — how to gather talented men to his side, how to win the hearts of the people, how to contend for the realm.

To obtain these generals, he had offered some generous rewards and high honors. For others, he had helped settle their families so they had nothing to worry about at home. For others still, he had not hesitated to venture in person, moving them with appeals to both reason and feeling.

In this way, the finest warriors within Dachu’s entire garrison system had willingly sworn their service to him.

Yang Xuanji’s misfortune had only been in pressing his advance to Youzhou — and running into Tang Pidi.

Because without that encounter, with the caliber of generals under his banner and an army rooted in the imperial garrison forces, he had every means to sweep across the Central Plains.

The fighting strength of Dachu’s garrison troops, diminished though it was from its former peak, still far exceeded that of any other armed force in the field.

On the Great River, countless vessels covered the surface — dense as peach petals shaken from a tree in wind, falling onto the water, and the sight of them sent a shockwave through the heart.

For this river crossing, Yang Xuanji had truly committed everything at his disposal.

Large and small vessels alike caught the southerly wind heading north. From the smaller boats, horn calls rose; from the great ships, war drums rolled together. This display of force and presence alone was enough to instill deep dread.

To inspire the men, Yang Xuanji had personally boarded one of the warships.

Dachu’s great weakness was its navy. In the early days of the dynasty, plans had once been drawn up to build a naval force — but as Dachu’s developmental priorities gradually consolidated around the inland heartland, the naval program was indefinitely shelved.

That is not to say there were no warships — only that neither in number nor quality was there anything worth boasting of. Some vessels had sat neglected for years and rotted into wreckage. Without exaggeration, even the Dachu Emperor’s own dragon boat had sat unused for so long that it was falling to pieces.

The warship Yang Xuanji now stood upon was one of the sturdier ones — roughly twenty zhang in length, the largest class of Dachu warship, known as the Jianyao.

“My lord.”

Xun Youjiu stood at Yang Xuanji’s side, scanning the Ning Army’s positions on the far bank through a far-seer. After a while, something seemed off to him.

“Advisor, speak plainly.”

Yang Xuanji glanced at Xun Youjiu, his expression entirely mild.

Xun Youjiu pointed toward the far bank: “Tang Pidi’s command has always been highly disciplined, yet his current battle formation seems clearly out of place. His left and right flanks have formed their lines far too far from the bank.”

Yang Xuanji had also noticed this. He gave a nod: “Let me offer my interpretation of Tang Pidi’s strategy first. You may critique it when I am done.”

He too pointed toward the opposite shore: “Forming lines that far from the bank — I suspect Tang Pidi has two intentions. First: Tang Pidi’s sharpest blade is that force of steppe cavalry. By placing his flanking formations far back, he creates room for the cavalry to build their charge, making these two flanks appear to leave open ground favorable to our forces — enough space to form up and charge. But in truth, it is to give his cavalry the run-up distance needed to slam into our men and drive them back into the river.”

Xun Youjiu could not but inwardly admire him. Yang Xuanji — born into the Dachu imperial line, his father’s generation already parceled off to distant Shuzhou, long since removed from the pinnacles of power. By his own generation, he had inherited his father’s title of nobility, with a domain in Shuzhou.

And in the eyes of the aristocrats in Daxing, what was Shuzhou? In their view, Shuzhou was wilderness — ten thousand mountains full of wolves and tigers, dense forests and remote highlands, with untold numbers of uncivilized tribal peoples still beyond the pale of civilization.

Perhaps none of those men could have imagined that Yang Xuanji and his father, across two generations, could have built up such formidable strength.

Yang Xuanji continued: “Second: Tang Pidi’s forces are insufficient, and this arrangement was made out of necessity — a feint designed to mislead. He knows that both you and I can see the strangeness in such an obvious formation. He deliberately arranged it this way to make us worry about hidden troops, and thus dare not attack his two flanks — forcing us to press the center instead.”

After hearing all of this, Xun Youjiu bowed deeply: “My lord’s perception surpasses mine — this subject cannot match it.”

“Ha ha ha ha.”

Yang Xuanji laughed aloud, turning to Xun Youjiu: “Does Advisor have a way to counter it?”

Xun Youjiu said: “My lord’s strength so greatly exceeds Tang Pidi’s — your troops are seasoned and your morale is high. There is no need to concern yourself with whatever stratagems Tang Pidi may devise. Simply hurl everything at his center. When the center breaks, the flanks will come to its relief. At that moment, my lord gives the order and the full army surges forward — Tang Pidi has no path to victory.”

Yang Xuanji nodded: “Advisor speaks well.”

With so overwhelming an advantage, there was truly no need to worry about clever tricks. Press forward with the force of mountains and seas, and what scheme could hold?

Yang Xuanji looked to the attendant at his side: “Go tell Vanguard General Jing — direct all attacks at Tang Pidi’s center. Ignore the flanks.”

“Yes!”

The attendant acknowledged immediately, descended from the warship, leapt into a small boat, and with a dozen oarsmen pulling hard, set off in pursuit of the forward crossing force.

Flanking this great Jianyao warship on both sides were over a hundred smaller vessels serving as escort — though they appeared to be crossing as well, their pace was extremely slow.

There are times when leading from the front and standing with the army is simply something one must be seen to do.

—

On the bank.

Tang Pidi watched the vast enemy formation drawing near the shore, raised a hand — and held it there, not yet moving to the next step. The signal trooper stared intently at Tang Pidi’s raised hand, grip tightening on the horn, palm barely damp with sweat.

When the very first boat grounded against the bank, Tang Pidi’s hand swept down.

*Wooooo — wooooo — wooooo…*

The horn call sounded immediately.

At the front line, a bank of heavy crossbows and volley crossbows unleashed their power simultaneously.

The heavy crossbows fired flat and level, cutting through the air with a cold, ruthless force — and the Heaven’s Mandate troops who had only just disembarked were ripped to pieces in a torrent of blood.

Against such a heavy crossbow’s force, not just men — even warhorses could be split apart.

One vessel was disgorging Heaven’s Mandate soldiers leaping down from both sides — one man still in mid-air when a heavy crossbow swept through, punching clean through his midsection. His body was severed in midfall.

The blood and viscera came down, drenching the soldiers below; a length of intestine struck one man full in the face and slid slickly downward.

Compared to the sheer power of the heavy crossbow, the volley crossbow was somewhat lighter — yet its lethality was actually greater.

A single volley crossbow could release six arm-thick bolts simultaneously in a sweeping arc. Nothing in its path could withstand that.

The river water near the bank was quickly changing color. Corpses floated on the surface, drifting and colliding with one another.

Yet this was a situation that had been anticipated. The Heaven’s Mandate Army would not abandon its assault because of this level of resistance.

—

On the great ship.

Yang Xuanji surveyed the battle. Even as it all unfolded as expected, Yang Xuanji felt a gnawing frustration and fury at the sight of the Ning Army’s weaponry.

A gang of common rabble — so why did they possess weapons of such terrible power, and in such enormous quantities?

He had never in his life worried about money. So he could not comprehend how Li Chi — who fretted constantly about money, yet precisely because of that fretting — had poured everything he had into arming the Ning Army, and felt a ferocious pride in it.

What had Li Chi been doing all these years?

Scraping for money. Scraping for money. And scraping for more money.

He had not hesitated to make enemies of nearly every great clan and noble family in Jizhou and Youzhou. He had given up the support of the powerful. The money he wrested from them flowed into only two places.

Into the governance and welfare of the people. And into the Ning Army.

Li Chi had once said: if good weapons could reduce the Ning Army’s casualties, it was worth spending any amount on weapons.

Li Chi had also once said: all weapons and equipment are worthless compared to a soldier’s life.

And yet he had exhausted every ounce of his ingenuity for the sake of those things he called worthless.

A man so parsimonious that it had reached an extreme, who as Prince Ning would not waste a single tael of silver carelessly — and yet his attitude toward his own troops was: *Don’t you dare hold back. Use whatever you have, use as much as you need. If a battle is lost because weapons and equipment fell short, that is not your responsibility. That responsibility is mine alone.*

Those who did not know Li Chi well would never understand just how tight-fisted he truly was.

The magnificent robes he wore were all seized as spoils of war and remade to fit.

Most of the time, he wore plain cloth clothing and plain cloth shoes. Most of the time, he ate by mooching off others.

He never bought anything extravagant for himself. If he came across something extravagant, his first thought was probably how much he could sell it for.

As Prince Ning, he would not discard a pair of worn-out socks — he would mend them himself and keep wearing them.

And it was precisely this Prince Ning who gave the soldiers of the Ning Army the confidence to believe themselves invincible in every battle.

The crossbow bolts swept through in wave after wave — this style of fighting where one never needed to spare the ammunition was something Li Chi had squeezed out of his own penny-pinching.

Tang Pidi raised his far-seer and saw that more and more ships were drawing close to the bank. He looked toward his signal trooper: “Send the signal — give the order to Gao Zhen.”

At Tang Pidi’s command, one after another, clusters of fireworks burst open in the air above.

In the daylight they were not as dazzling as they would have been at night — but the altitude was sufficient, and for a signal, sufficient was enough.

Upstream, Gao Zhen saw the signal and immediately gave his order.

His soldiers pushed the felled trees they had been cutting into the river. Every trunk had been stripped of its branches and the ends axe-cut into points.

The largest required two men to wrap their arms around; the smallest, a single man might still struggle to embrace. These great logs were dropped into the current and went drifting downstream.

—

Downstream, the Heaven’s Mandate vanguard general Jing Yangshu could see the forward units were backed up and pressed for time, so he shouted continuously for his soldiers to push ahead.

The Ning Army had placed a dense array of chevaux-de-frise along the bank, preventing small boats from running directly aground. Soldiers were jammed up against these obstacles, unable to push through.

The cunning Tang Pidi, intent on mass casualties, had deliberately left gaps in the chevaux-de-frise placement — openings perhaps a few zhang wide each. When Heaven’s Mandate troops rushed ashore and charged forward, they naturally funneled through these openings — which had been made into killing grounds for the Ning Army’s sweeping crossbow fire.

The Heaven’s Mandate soldiers piling up at the bank’s edge grew ever more numerous, the density of the crowd staggering to behold.

It was at this moment that the battering logs from upstream arrived.

Soldiers in small boats upstream caught sight of them first — eyes going wide in an instant.

“Watch out!”

“Logs — there are logs!”

Cries of alarm rose one after another, frantic and desperate. Yet they could do nothing to stop it, nowhere to flee.

For the density of vessels packed together on the water was not much less than the density of soldiers crowded on the bank.

A massive log punched straight through a small boat. The vessel pitched wildly, soldiers tumbling into the river in all directions.

Troop transport vessel after troop transport vessel was struck and sunk. Soldiers leapt into the water, clutching planks of wreckage or the logs themselves, fighting to survive.

In this way, the entire battle situation descended instantly into chaos.

Jing Yangshu knew that if things continued like this, the men bottled up here would be nothing but targets for the Ning Army. The longer the blockage lasted, the worse the situation became.

So he bellowed the order: “Loose arrows!”

It was the only way he had to force his men to break free from the bank and charge forward.

In the river, corpse after corpse spun and drifted downstream. Some face-down, some face-up — no one knew where they would stop, where they would finally rot away.

When war begins, it is hell that holds its celebration.