The Mobei Khanate loomed over the north like a great fortress, a perpetual threat at the heartland’s throat. In the past, Li Ming had had his own calculations — he had refused to strike a fatal blow deliberately, choosing to sustain the Hu as a counterweight to strengthen his own position.

But Li Gu had no such use for that strategy. Moving north to eliminate this powerful enemy was only a matter of time.

North first or south first was merely a question of sequence.

From Chen Liangzhi’s perspective, moving north first was not the optimal choice. Under the current circumstances, a period of recovery followed by a southern campaign was the more sensible course: consolidate the heartland first, then reach outward.

But when Li Gu said it, both Li Weifeng and Chen Liangzhi thought of the events of the previous night, and both minds turned simultaneously to Xie Yuzhang, far away in Mobei.

Both men drew a quiet breath, dimly beginning to guess at something.

Li Weifeng opened his mouth to speak. Chen Liangzhi put his foot firmly on Li Weifeng’s.

He said: “I’ll see what I can do.”

After leaving Zichen Hall, Li Weifeng asked: “Why did you stop me from speaking just now? And why didn’t you even try to argue against it?”

Chen Liangzhi said: “Did you also think of the one up north?”

Li Weifeng said: “What else would I think of? Yesterday was inexplicable. Today he suddenly talks of going north, and none of it makes sense. But if you bring that person into it, everything suddenly falls into place.”

Chen Liangzhi said: “If both of these things truly come down to Princess Baohua, then there is no point in arguing.”

Li Weifeng asked: “Why not?”

“Can’t you see?” Chen Liangzhi sighed. “It has become an obsession.”

Li Weifeng said, frustrated: “He had clearly let it go — he had children with Cui Shi and Deng Shi. How did this suddenly flare up again? Who was the fool who provoked him?”

He could guess it was one of the twelve, but not which one.

He could only hope that fool was not the woman he was now obliged to marry.

Mobei.

Xie Yuzhang summoned Wang Zhong and Li Yong and told them: “When the Khan sets out to campaign against the Chulo Khan of the northern border, our people are not going.”

Wang Zhong and Li Yong did not ask why. They simply said: “Understood.”

Xie Yuzhang said: “Starting now, organize all men — ten years of age and above — to drill during the agricultural off-seasons.”

Both men assented.

Over these past years, Xie Yuzhang had steadily been selecting the brightest and strongest boys from among the youth for training, and she had also been purchasing robust slaves and folding them into her guard.

The young had far greater capacity for learning than adults, and many of those slaves had once been warriors of defeated tribes. The results were far better than the days when she had grimly tried to turn a company of slack-spirited foot soldiers into cavalry.

By now, her five-hundred-strong guard was at full strength.

Beyond that, there were reserves among the slaves and the general population. Men were expected to drill during the agricultural off-seasons. While she could not achieve the grassland standard of a fully militarized populace — where any man could drop a whip, mount a horse, and raise a blade — she would not allow her people to be the sort who could only flee in panic at the sight of weapons, legs turning to water.

But these forces were what Xie Yuzhang kept for self-preservation.

Wuwei was marching north with sixty thousand troops to strike the Chulo Khan. Her few hundred would not be enough to fill the gaps between his teeth.

She had lived on the grasslands for six years now, and she felt clearly that this life she was living in this world was approaching a turning point. Every one of her cavalry was a precious asset, not to be squandered on a battlefield already destined for defeat.

She said to Yuan Yu: “Those carts — we can begin assembling them slowly, and let people gradually grow accustomed to their presence.”

Over the past years, she had been quietly collecting timber and having carpenters build carts.

Not the comfortable, ornamented carriages of the nobility — but wide, simple, sturdy carts that could carry many people or large quantities of goods.

Since Ashina Silibo had led his tribe back to their ancestral lands, the temperatures there had remained entirely normal, and there had been no need to relocate. Her people had experienced only that one migration since arriving on the grasslands — and that had been barely a year after their arrival. Now, years had passed; their numbers had grown, their felt tents were packed with the belongings of settled life, and their pens were full of cattle and sheep.

Her people had grown accustomed to six years of stability. They did not know that once the Khanate shattered, Wuwei would be forced to lead them in a flight — a migration to escape a powerful enemy.

Xie Yuzhang had long been preparing carts for that future. With enough carts, the people would be spared a great deal of hardship.

The carpenters, paid by Xie Yuzhang, had no need to farm or tend herds. Year after year, day after day, they shaved wood into wheels. The blacksmiths did the same. They moved through every market, collecting ironware wherever possible, casting components and fittings. But the finished parts had never been assembled into complete carts.

They sat quietly stored in Xie Yuzhang’s warehouses.

Now it was time for them to appear in finished form — slowly, unobtrusively, drawing no particular attention.

Xie Yuzhang and Lin Fei worked alongside the accountants, tallying their cattle, sheep, horses, grain, and slaves.

In the minds of the Hu people, the Zhao princess was an extraordinarily wealthy woman. She had cattle and sheep beyond counting.

“Beyond counting” was no exaggeration — the Hu people’s arithmetic was genuinely poor. At the markets, it was common to see people running out of fingers and pulling off their shoes to count on their toes.

For most of the Hu people, the nobles’ cattle and sheep could not be counted. Only the nobles’ stewards could count them, and even the nobles themselves often had no idea of the full extent of their own wealth.

Lin Fei produced a final set of estimates.

“Maintaining these numbers will sustain a basic equilibrium,” she said, handing the figures to Xie Yuzhang.

Xie Yuzhang said: “This won’t do. We still need to account for every kind of loss — theft, disease, raids. For safety’s sake, keep one tenth more.”

Lin Fei said: “Understood,” and revised the estimates accordingly.

Livestock was the most essential wealth on the grasslands. A substantial portion of Xie Yuzhang’s assets came in that form. But if she was to leave the grasslands, this portion would have to be converted into things that held meaning and value in the Central Plains.

Xie Yuzhang therefore directed Yuan Yu to use this figure as the lower threshold and gradually exchange the cattle and sheep in hand for gold and for gemstones from the Western Regions.

Those gemstones, once transported to the Central Plains, would sell for tens of times the price.

The Hu nobles knew this perfectly well, of course. The maddening thing was that Central Plains people only permitted their own merchant caravans to come to the grasslands — they did not permit the grassland people to travel to the Central Plains to trade. So the grassland people could only sell those gemstones at low prices, exchanging them for the Central Plains merchants’ grain and goods.

Xie Yuzhang offered a better rate than the Central Plains caravans, and the Hu people were glad to trade with her.

So it was that over the past year or two, when Central Plains merchant caravans arrived in Mobei, they found themselves unable to acquire any top-quality gemstones.

“Why is there only this caliber of goods?” they complained.

The Hu people said: “The good ones were already traded away.”

The merchants assumed a rival caravan had gotten there first. Grumbling, they drove the prices down even further.

Xie Yuzhang waited patiently. Several months later, Wuwei returned in defeat. The defeat at Tianshan became the pivotal turning point in the fate of the Mobei Khanate.

This great defeat left Wuwei deeply despondent. The string of small victories over recent years had built up his confidence — and now it was all shattered.

The Chulo Khan at the foot of the Tianshan mountains had once been defeated by Ashina Silibo. And Ashina Wuwei had now been defeated by the Chulo Khan.

Wuwei drank himself thoroughly drunk and came stumbling into Xie Yuzhang’s tent to hide. He showed no sign of a drunken rampage — he simply collapsed and fell asleep almost at once.

But Xie Yuzhang looked at his face and found a handprint on it.

She asked Wuwei’s personal slave: “Where did he go before he started drinking?”

The slave bowed his head: “To Consort Zhadayali’s tent.”

Xie Yuzhang gave a quiet, cold laugh.

She had the female slaves look after Wuwei, then lifted the felt curtain and stepped out. Lin Fei was standing there, watching her.

“Is it our turn now?” Lin Fei’s eyes were bright.

Xie Yuzhang curved her lips.

“Come then,” she said. “Let all of this happen faster.”

The defeat at Tianshan, ugly as it was, had not actually struck at the Khanate’s foundations.

What truly wounded the Khanate at its roots was the fraternal strife and the internal fracture of the Ashina clan itself.

Xie Yuzhang had lived on the grasslands for years. The undercurrents between Wuwei and his brothers were something she had long since read clearly, and she also understood how to widen the cracks between them.

She could no longer afford to wait patiently for these brothers to let their tensions boil over on their own over the course of a year or two.

Suddenly, the royal court was flooded with rumors.

The rumors spread from nowhere, without a traceable source, yet they drove into the hearts of Wuwei and Tuqitang like blades. The atmosphere around the royal court grew taut, as if on the verge of ignition.

Lin Fei said: “The effect is significant. Lately, when they move through the encampment, both of them have substantially increased their guards.”

Xie Yuzhang said: “So we are taking a risk.”

Lin Fei said: “Whether to do it or not is your decision.”

She said: “Pearl, I have no objection to spending a few more years on the grasslands with you.”

Xie Yuzhang looked at her, then said: “No. I want to bring you back to the Central Plains sooner.”

Lin Fei sighed: “Have you truly thought this through? If it comes to light, what becomes of you?”

Xie Yuzhang said: “That would be very bad, of course. But…”

Xie Yuzhang folded her arms and said with a cold smile: “This is your punishment for not listening to me. Who told you not to stay peacefully in Yunjing and insist on coming to the grasslands?”

Lin Fei fell momentarily silent.

“Fine, fine.” She pressed a hand to her forehead and said. “Let’s do it. No matter what happens to you, I can’t run anyway — whatever comes, we face it together. Live or die together.”

Xie Yuzhang said: “Ugh, I only want to live together with you.”

The event that finally caused Tuqitang and Wuwei to confront each other and break apart was an assassination attempt.

The assassin failed. Before being captured, he took his own life.

When the covering cloth was pulled from his face, the features beneath had been obliterated by burning — there was no way to determine his original appearance. His tall build gave no indication of age.

The matter was not without suspicious elements, but once someone called out “it must have been Wuwei’s doing,” the situation slipped beyond Tuqitang’s ability to control.

Or perhaps the assassination itself was simply a detonator — regardless of whether this man had truly been sent by Wuwei, the event caused the conflict between Tuqitang and Wuwei to finally erupt.

A violent clash broke out in the royal court.

After the National Teacher Abazha and his men suppressed the fighting, both sides exchanged furious accusations and condemnations, and finally broke apart irrevocably.

Tuqitang took his warriors, his people, his slaves, and his cattle and sheep, and departed the royal court with a great procession. He found a suitable place to settle and declared himself the Lieyang King.

In his wake, the two great princes Zhanshilu and Dangdang followed the example, leaving the royal court to establish their own domains — styling themselves the Chiri King and the Jinlun King respectively.

Three kings now stood side by side. The Mobei Khanate, which had once ruled the grasslands, shattered into pieces in an instant, and the illusion of its power dissolved.

Wuwei, once again, drank himself into a stupor and retreated to Xie Yuzhang’s tent to hide.

The confidence in his brow had vanished, replaced by the familiar air of desolation that Xie Yuzhang had known so well in her past life.

She settled Wuwei in for the night, then went to the outer tent.

The attendant women brought grape wine in crystal cups. Xie Yuzhang lifted a cup to her lips — then stopped.

She carried the cup and walked out of the great tent. Above her, the moon on the grasslands was larger by one full measure than any moon seen in the Central Plains.

The grape wine caught the moonlight and scattered into silver.

— A toast to that young man.

The assassin had been tall. With his face destroyed, there had been no way to determine his age. But in truth, he had been only a boy.

The boy had refused to tell Xie Yuzhang his name.

“Having become a slave has shamed my ancestors’ bloodline. I no longer have the right to speak that name,” he had said.

The boy still had a mother and three younger sisters. He was the only man left in the family.

When Xie Yuzhang had seen him at the slave market, he had been savagely flogged, already near death. But she had watched him open his eyes and look at the one who had beaten him — and in those eyes was a ferocity like a wolf’s.

She asked what had happened. The slave trader said angrily: “He bit one of my overseers to death.”

The overseer had been defiling his youngest sister in one of the tents. The boy had heard his sister’s cries and rushed in. Bound with his arms tied, he had clamped his teeth around the overseer’s throat and refused to let go — bit through the blood vessel, and drank, and drank, until the man was dead.

Xie Yuzhang had wanted that boy.

In a dim little tent the slave owner provided, she said: “You are a man who should have died today, and I need someone to die for me. I wish to buy your life. What is your price?”

The boy said: “My price is the safety of my mother and sisters.”

Xie Yuzhang said: “That price I can pay. But whether you will trust me, and whether you are worth trusting — that is the question.”

The face was covered in blood. Beneath the blood, if it were wiped away, would have been the sharp-featured, handsome face of a young man.

The boy crawled forward and kissed the pearls on Xie Yuzhang’s shoe. Blood dropped onto the exquisite embroidery. He raised his face — blood had gotten into his eyes, and he could only keep one open to look at her.

“Beautiful Zhao Princess, you are more beautiful than the songs that praise you. I have heard of your name for kindness. I believe you.”

“A man should protect women. I am the last man of my family. I protect my mother and sisters with my life.”

“Please — trust me.”

Xie Yuzhang then asked his name, and was refused.

“My name is too long — a Central Plains person couldn’t pronounce it,” he said. “Having become a slave has shamed my ancestors’ bloodline. I no longer have the right to speak that name.”

A person with a surname, and with such a long name, could only be of the nobility. His mother and sisters, though dressed in rags, all had fine skin and handsome features.

Until his death, Xie Yuzhang never learned his name. But he must have once been a prince. He had a tall build, brown hair. That face, before it was destroyed, had also been very fine.

A toast to you, prince.

You gave your life. I will keep my promise.

I will take your mother and sisters away from this bloody, savage grassland. I will take them to see the most magnificent city in the known world.

That place is called Yunjing.