After those war drums sounded, the spirit of the Ning Army underwent an instant transformation.

The Mandate Army soldiers who had just stormed the riverbank thought they had glimpsed hope — but in that moment they came to their senses: what they were looking at was not hope. It was the gates of hell.

From the moment the sun had just risen to midday, the Mandate Army had left behind mountains of bodies along the riverbank and had not advanced a single step further.

This killing ground was one that would have drained the color from the face of even the infernal judges of the underworld.

In the end, the Mandate Army’s forces were held at the seven bridges — not this time by boulders raining from the sky, but by a Ning Army defensive line that was unyielding as iron walls.

Their numbers could be fed in endlessly, yet they could barely gain an inch — that “endless supply” was nothing more than theory on paper. The Ning Army had shown them what it meant to stand against a wall of bronze and stone.

From midday to dusk, the Mandate Army still could not push the battle line forward. The slaughter operated like some vast, indifferent grinding machine.

Xiahou Zuo was waiting. Waiting for the sun to begin its farewell to the world.

The Mandate Army soldiers on the bridges had been pinned there for an entire day. In a battle charge like this, no one carries rations on their back — so every soldier on all seven bridges was now both hungry and exhausted.

Xiahou Zuo glanced sideways at the sun to the west. It had already shifted from gold back to red — the morning’s progression reversed. The day was ending.

He turned and looked back toward the high ground.

According to their agreed plan, Li Chi should at this moment be giving the order to sound the horn and launch a counterattack. The reason Xiahou Zuo looked back was that something had suddenly told him things were not quite right.

On the high slope, Li Chi spread his arms wide. His personal guard helped him into his armor — that set of jet-black plate. In the last glow of the setting sun, Li Chi in that black armor looked like a statue of some divine warrior.

Xiahou Zuo knew right then that something had gone wrong. But there was no longer any way to stop it.

A powerfully built man took the drumstick from Li Chi’s hand and set it against the great cowhide war drum, driving it forward with a crack that resounded like thunder, the sound arcing across the sky like a rainbow.

Li Chi reached out and took the blade his guard offered him. With his personal guard company, he walked at a measured pace toward one of the bridges.

Xiahou Zuo saw it. Dantai Yajing saw it too.

Both men were far apart, each commanding their respective forces in holding back the Mandate Army’s assault — yet both turned to look at the same moment.

Just that one look, and both men knew: no amount of fines, no summoning Gao Xining, no calling those three elders — none of it mattered now.

“We’re going to cross and offer our personal thanks to the Mandate Army’s commanding general.”

Li Chi leveled his black blade at the bridge ahead: “Tell him — we thank him for building us a crossing.”

“Kill!”

With that, Li Chi surged forward, and behind him, the entire personal guard company drew their blades as one. They were like a pack of tigers bursting from the forest without warning, throwing themselves without a moment’s notice into the middle of a flock of sheep.

Li Chi’s personal guard company was not something ordinary Mandate Army soldiers could withstand — not just withstand, they could barely even receive the first blow.

The sudden appearance of a pack of tigers caused the Mandate Army, which had still been grinding forward just moments before, to collapse all at once.

Seeing this, Xiahou Zuo knew it was already too late to try and talk Li Chi out of it. He immediately shouted an order:

“All generals to lead their forces — attack on all seven bridges simultaneously! Push across!”

Li Chi on one bridge, Xiahou Zuo on one, Dantai Yajing on one, Liu Ge on one, Zhuo Qinglin on one — and the two commanding generals among the twenty-thousand-plus battle troops Dantai Yajing had brought, one bridge each. Seven bridges, seven simultaneous assaults.

Yet just moments before, it had been the Mandate Army pressing the Ning Army.

And in the blink of an eye — no one could quite say how — it had turned into a full-scale Ning Army push forward.

The speed of that reversal was so fast that the Mandate Army simply could not process it.

By this point, the Mandate Army had been attacking all day. The support troops had meanwhile extended all seven bridges to reach the far bank.

If they hadn’t finished, Li Chi’s side wouldn’t have been attacking either.

*You hadn’t built your bridges up to my doorstep yet — I wasn’t going to come grab them from you.*

On one bridge, Li Chi was the spearpoint — plunging in an instant into the soft underbelly of the enemy formation.

That blade was unstoppable, unavoidable; it could not be fought off or run from.

It had been said these new bridges were roughly twice as wide as the pontoon bridges of the previous assault. But twice as wide was still not very wide — less than one zhang across.

In a fight on that kind of width, it came down to who was more capable, who was more courageous, who feared death less.

On one side, the Mandate Army in grey uniforms; on the other, the Ning Army in black armor. Two long serpents — one grey, one black — locked together on the river in a struggle of tooth and claw.

People were falling into the water without a moment’s pause, with no gap between. Every single breath saw more bodies going in — and certainly more than one or two per breath.

Some had already died before they fell; others had not even made contact with the enemy before they were jostled off the edge.

In this moment, Li Chi’s blade became a demon in the eyes of every man before him — as though exuding a black aura while scattering red blood.

One stroke of the blade, and a man had been cut open from eye level upward. Both eyeballs were sliced through, and the upper half of the skull flew free, brain matter mixing with blood as it ran down. The half-skulled remains dropped onto the bridge surface — stepped on once, stepped on twice, and someone slipped on that half-fragment of bone and went down, only to be stepped on and on again, just like the skull itself.

The Ning Army’s assault was ferocious. Their advance was visible to the naked eye.

If one could have looked down from high above at that moment, all seven bridges would have shown their differences in pace.

The force Li Chi commanded advanced fastest. Dantai Yajing’s came next. Then Xiahou Zuo and Liu Ge’s forces together.

Viewed this way — Li Chi in the center pushing fastest, the flanks slightly slower on each side — the shape of the Ning Army’s advance across the water looked like a massive arrowhead.

Even if it were one bridge that couldn’t hold, or two, or three — Xie Di’s expression wouldn’t have grown so dark.

All seven bridges. Not one was holding.

The Ning Army only pressed forward. Whether the Mandate Army died or fell into the water — that was for heaven to decide.

“Commander.”

A general ran over drenched in sweat: “The bridge in the center — our men have fallen back by more than half. I urge the commander to give the order immediately.”

Xie Di let out a long sigh deep within himself.

Give the order immediately? What order was there to give?

The battle conditions on the bridges were perfectly equal. The width was the same for both sides, and the number of men who could be deployed side by side was identical. All things being equal, the Ning Army was attacking and the Mandate Army defending — and even so, they couldn’t hold. What order could he possibly give?

The Ning Army wasn’t yet within range of the Mandate Army’s arrowfire, and the follow-up troops couldn’t squeeze onto the bridges.

So all he could do now was wait.

Everyone knew what they were waiting for: waiting until the Ning Army drew close to the southern bank — at which point the Mandate Army’s numerical advantage and arrow barrage would push them back.

“Send the battle police forward. Block the retreat off the bridges. They are not permitted to fall back further — push them forward.”

In the end, Xie Di gave that order.

But the order sounded both merciless and useless.

They had been pushing forward all along — they simply couldn’t push through.

And now the Ning Army’s approach began to drive Xie Di absolutely mad once more — the same maddening, infuriating, helpless feeling all over again.

This tactic should have been obvious to anyone — yet the Mandate Army was just slightly behind the Ning Army in thinking of it.

After the Ning Army had seized a portion of the bridge, the troops behind them began to pass long bamboo poles forward in a relay.

These poles had been cut on Tang Pidi’s orders during the last engagement, when the Mandate Army’s advance was being held back — when he’d ordered the bamboo groves cleared.

Such excellent material couldn’t be used once and discarded. Now it was the perfect moment to put it to use.

The relayed poles were long — and once they reached the front, the Ning Army soldiers there began charging ahead with groups of men gripping each pole together.

Enemy spears couldn’t reach them at that range; certainly not the three-foot short blades either.

The poles thrust forward. Mandate Army soldiers fought desperately to push the poles off to one side toward the river. Others hacked at the bamboo with their blades in a frenzy.

So men were going into the water on both sides, continuously.

The men already in the river were grappling with each other down below. The bridge was a battlefield; the river was a battlefield too.

The sun set anyway. The Ning Army crossed over anyway.

In the darkness, the Ning Army was less than seventy zhang from the southern bank — but within those seventy zhang, packed densely, were Mandate Army soldiers.

So after several moments of hesitation, Xie Di still had not given the order to fire.

Sixty zhang. Fifty zhang…

“Release!”

In the end, Xie Di could not wait any longer.

At the command, the Mandate Army archers on the bank sent a volley of arrows arcing high, tracing their curves through the air and falling toward the distant Ning Army.

The Ning Army was approaching what would be its hardest moment.

The Mandate Army had suffered terrible losses when they stormed the northern bank — and so Xie Di had waited for this moment. He knew that no matter how formidable the Ning Army was, they would face exactly the same thing coming up onto the southern bank.

Because the Mandate Army was equally well-supplied with weapons and equipment. Their arrow stockpiles and bolt-thrower numbers were comparable to the Ning Army’s — no less capable.

What Xie Di could not have anticipated was this: at the very moment he judged the tide of battle turning in his favor, a river of fire came surging in from the southeast.

A fire river that appeared without any warning — as though it had torn open the night sky and come plunging down from the stars.

Of course it was no actual fire dragon — it was an army that had appeared out of nowhere, each soldier holding torches aloft.

Yuchi Guangming.

He had been walking for so long. He had finally arrived.

According to the original plan, they were to circle around the Mandate Army and find an opportunity to cross the river, entering Yuzhou from the southeast. No matter which route they took, they should never have ended up here.

Even if they had appeared at the Ning Army’s rear, joining the push against the Mandate Army would have made more sense than materializing suddenly behind the Mandate Army itself.

Such is the unpredictability of events.

Yuchi Guangming had devised a plan: using the pretext of pledging allegiance to the Mandate King Yang Xuanji, he marched his troops northward.

And as luck — or misfortune — would have it, he genuinely ran into the Mandate Army’s main force. Not a small contingent — six hundred thousand strong.

Yuchi Guangming attempted to circle around the Mandate Army and cross the river several times, and failed every time. The reach of six hundred thousand troops was simply too vast, and once they became aware of his presence, his own force of over twenty thousand would not even be enough to fill the gaps between their teeth.

Behind him, the court’s pursuit forces were closing in — Prince Wu himself had mobilized the Dachu garrison troops. Against those battle-hardened veterans, the recruits under Yuchi Guangming’s command were lambs among wolves.

With no other option, Yuchi Guangming led his men to do the opposite of what was expected — swinging west in a wide arc, skirting around the Mandate Army’s flank and shaking off Prince Wu’s pursuit force.

Before his army arrived, his scouts had already detected the battle here and rushed back to report.

Yuchi Guangming took several men himself and crept quietly close to the battlefield to observe — while his main force waited dozens of li back.

He was like a lover of theater who had stumbled upon the most extraordinary, most technically demanding performance of his life. Crouching in the grass, he watched with complete absorption, forgetting himself entirely.

The Ning Army’s defense — if written into a military manual, it would still draw astonished admiration hundreds of years from now. Any commander could learn from it.

But what he could never have imagined was that the Ning Army would launch a counterattack.

As the sun set, when he watched the Ning Army charge onto the bridges, Yuchi Guangming’s heart quickened and his eyes went wide.

This kind of counterattack — he was absolutely certain he would never have dared to attempt it himself.

That defense, the kind that deserved its own chapter in the military canon, was already more than enough. This sudden counterattack — if written into a military manual, it would probably invite outright skepticism.

People would say it was impossible. Absolutely impossible.

Yet the Ning Army had done it. Without warning. Without logic.

It was precisely at the moment the Ning Army launched its counterattack that Yuchi Guangming suddenly understood: their moment had come.

He immediately sent men back to bring up the troops waiting dozens of li behind.

In the darkness, how would the Mandate Army know that a force had materialized on their flank? They assumed it was Ning Army ambush troops who had somehow already crossed the river at some earlier point, and were now lying in wait on their flank.

With this, the Mandate Army’s psychological defenses shattered — and the physical defense line built from flesh and blood collapsed along with it.

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