Northern Campaign Commander-in-Chief Chunyu Hong paced restlessly back and forth in his command tent.

Seated in his tent was a group of deputy generals, staff generals, and battalion commanders, all half-tilting their heads upward, watching Chunyu Hong expectantly.

In the war that had lasted over a year, Tiansheng and Great Yue had alternately gained and lost ground. Overall, Tiansheng held the advantage, driving back Great Yue forces that had previously occupied five Northern Frontier counties. However, since Great Yue committed the military taboo of changing commanders during battle, their momentum had surged instead. The new commander-in-chief, His Highness Prince An Jin Siyu, employed cunning and unpredictable tactics. First, he bribed the Huzhuo tribe’s Jinpeng division to betray military intelligence during the Eastern E Pass campaign, resulting in the near-total annihilation of the Huzhuo cavalry unit responsible for flank reconnaissance and scouting. This led to chaos in Tiansheng’s left-wing army, forcing them to retreat and abandon the already-recovered Qi County. Later, at the Battle of Liu Family Ravine, he deployed surprise troops, causing Northern Campaign Commander Qiu Shangqi to be severely wounded by arrows during the recent Twin River Valley campaign and sent back to the Imperial Capital.

The battle situation was unfavorable, yet Tiansheng’s national policy toward Yue required a necessary victory. Chunyu Hong bore tremendous pressure. Court documents urging battle arrived one after another, but now was not the time for rash attacks. After consecutive defeats, military morale was unstable, and the cavalry responsible for battlefield communications had suffered heavy losses. Another defeat would make the war situation irretrievable.

“Commander! I request to lead three thousand troops to raid Qi County tonight! After successive battles, Jin Siyu actually doesn’t have many troops at hand. He still must maintain the main camp south of the Gedamu Range. The forces allocated to Qi County are limited. Qi County’s current commander, Fang Dacheng, has a violent and impulsive temperament. If we catch them by surprise, we can surely retake Qi County!”

The speaker was very young. Unlike the other generals who had long served in the Northern Frontier with weathered faces, his skin was fair, his clothing and bearing impeccable. Before he finished speaking, people around immediately raised their eyelids, glancing at him with bland indifference. Though no one spoke a word, their eyes were full of contempt.

“Young Master Yao.” Someone laughed perfunctorily. “Though Qi County’s forces are weak, neighboring Qiao County is very close to the northern main camp and surely has heavy troops stationed there. Once they discover Qi County is under attack, they’ll cut through Qianjin Ravine across the southern Gedamu Range to provide relief, trapping you front and back like a turtle in a jar… Haha, Young Master, you haven’t been in the Northern Frontier long. You’re young and hot-blooded, eager for merit—we all understand. But warfare isn’t the same as studying. Relying on mere brute courage alone… haha.”

That person wore a smiling expression, stroking his knee and looking up silently. Though he left the sentence unfinished, everyone showed knowing smiles.

“Staff Commander Yao abandoning literature for military service is admirable. The Grand Secretary’s family tradition is commendable.” Chunyu Hong hastily smoothed things over. “How about this—there’s a group of mountain bandits in the Gedamu Range whose movements are suspicious. We all suspect they’re colluding with Great Yue. Why don’t we ask Staff Commander Yao to lead a battalion to suppress the bandits? That would eliminate our rear concerns.”

Staff Commander Yao was none other than Yao Yangyu, one of the second-generation wastrels from Qingming Academy. After completing a mission to Nanhai, they had indeed all received rewards. Yao Yangyu was originally to be appointed to the Military Merit Bureau in the Ministry of War, but he refused and volunteered for the battlefield instead. He and a group of his former classmates had all come to the Northern Frontier.

In the eyes of veteran generals like Chunyu Hong, these people were all young masters they couldn’t afford to offend yet couldn’t really use—coming to the battlefield to accumulate some military merit for future promotions. How could they truly be given real tasks?

“Suppress bandits!” Yao Yangyu shot up in rage, his pale face twisting ferociously. “Just three or five hundred people, and you want me to take a whole battalion to suppress them? Using a cleaver to kill a chicken? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

He kicked over his small stool, stormed out furiously through the tent curtain, leaving those contemptuous glances behind, and headed straight to a high ridge. Facing the exceptionally vast sky beyond the frontier, he roared: “Ahh—”

His cry shot up to the clouds, startling eagles into distant flight. The Imperial Capital wastrel stood dazed on the grassland ridge, surveying the desolate autumn scenery on all sides—yellowed grass tips, white frost condensed. In a flash, nearly another year had passed since their trip to Nanhai.

One year—seas had transformed into mulberry fields.

Back then, together resisting Nanhai’s civil unrest, crossing the dock disaster, reforming Nanhai’s officials, breaking the Chang clan’s treacherous schemes—everything so tumultuous yet so thoroughly satisfying! Yet in the blink of an eye, that brilliantly talented youth he truly admired had already vanished from the past.

After the Nanhai expedition, it seemed no one remained their former selves. Even His Highness, after returning to the capital from Nanhai, seemed privately to have changed his nature—his romantic flair gone, becoming taciturn and withdrawn.

A trace of melancholy appeared in Yao Yangyu’s eyes as he reflected that the happiest days of his life thus far were the days at that person’s side. Yet with that person’s disappearance, everything had become irretrievable.

Footsteps approached from behind. A pair of hands clapped heavily on his shoulder. Yao Yangyu didn’t turn around, knowing it was his Qingming Academy classmates Yu Liang and others who had enlisted together.

Like him, they seemed cherished but were actually deeply ostracized in the Tiansheng camp, frustrated and unable to fulfill their ambitions.

“Tell me,” Yao Yangyu stood dazed for a long moment, then suddenly said, “Do you remember something Lord Wei once said?”

“What?”

“When the Yan clan ancestral hall had that incident in Nanhai, Lord Wei ordered Young Lord Helian and me to open the granary in the neighboring county. Young Lord Helian asked, what if they definitely refuse? What then?” Yao Yangyu’s cheek muscles bulged as he said coldly, “Lord Wei said, ‘That one can be killed.'”

Behind him, Yu Liang, Huang Baozi and others couldn’t help but smile.

“Now, I also want to say—they won’t let me fight. What then?”

He turned around abruptly, laughed heartily, and strode down the ridge.

“That one can be fought!”

“Yangyu, you must be careful—”

“Yangyu, disobeying military orders is a capital offense—”

At the camp gate, fully armored in soft armor, Yao Yangyu bent down from his horse, grinning at his classmate friends: “How have I disobeyed military orders? I’m told to suppress bandits, so I’ll go suppress them. As for accidentally running too far while pursuing enemies during bandit suppression—that can’t be blamed on me, right?”

“You’re taking just one thousand battalion troops to retake Qi County?” The quick-witted Yu Liang guessed his meaning, eyes widening.

“I said nothing!” Yao Yangyu raised his whip, leading his troops out the camp gate in rolling clouds of dust.

Behind him, Yu Liang and Huang Baozi exchanged glances, then resolutely mounted their horses and followed.

That night, Yao Yangyu entered the Gedamu Range, chasing that group of two or three hundred bandits in all directions, gradually pursuing them beyond the bandits’ territory, heading straight for Qi County.

Once the cleaver was drawn, it would never be satisfied merely killing chickens.

Yao Yangyu had natural talent as a general. He didn’t rush into Qi County, but instead took advantage of the night to dig many cooking pits at several-hundred-meter intervals around Qi County’s perimeter, extending all the way to Qianjin Ravine twenty li outside Qi County.

Qi County had only recently been taken from Tiansheng’s hands. Now with Tiansheng intensively deploying troops and both sides preparing for major battle, Qi County considered itself not the main battlefield. Moreover, neighboring Qiao County had heavy troops for support, so naturally they rested easy. The entire city lay tranquil beneath moonlight. Sentries on the city walls propped their spears half-asleep. The symbolic outpost sentries deployed outside the city were silently assassinated by Yao Yangyu’s men.

The siege proceeded smoothly and quickly. The night-raiding Tiansheng troops silently scaled the city walls. The city’s forces were already insufficient and scattered throughout. By the time Commander Fang Dacheng rushed out hastily, Yao Yangyu had already occupied the city tower and led men to the city commander’s residence where he was stationed.

Fang Dacheng hastily assembled his personal guards and fought his way out of the commander’s residence, hoping for relief forces from Qiao County—but no reinforcements ever came. The Qiao County commander reached Qianjin Ravine, saw countless traces of cooking fires, feared an ambush ahead, and withdrew halfway.

Fang Dacheng’s personal guards fought desperately to help him escape Qi County. By this point, Yao Yangyu had essentially achieved great victory. Yu Liang and others advised him not to pursue desperate enemies, but young and hot-blooded Yao Yangyu thought that beheading an enemy general in battle would be true merit, so he led a hundred men in pursuit.

Seeing they were nearly at Qianjin Ravine, Yao Yangyu felt some hesitation. However, Fang Dacheng’s panicked fleeing appearance ahead boosted his confidence. Besides, he himself had come through Qianjin Ravine and knew there were no problems, so he pursued in one determined effort.

Qianjin Ravine’s terrain was narrow, with steep cliffs rising on both sides. Moreover, the mountain terrain was peculiarly abrupt—turning past one bend revealed another, with layer upon layer of mountain walls blocking forward vision. When Yao Yangyu pursued past the third mountain wall, he suddenly looked up to discover ahead, before the mountain cliff, was a flat area where many soldiers in bright armor stood in dark masses. The foremost person wore blue soft armor with a white cloak, looking over with a warm, gentle smile.

Above his head, on the fluttering great banner, was a huge character: “Jin.”

Yao Yangyu knew trouble had come and immediately ordered retreat. But the person beneath the banner merely raised his hand lightly and slowly.

Flying reins and rushing hooves, clouds of dust, arrows falling like rain, people tumbling endlessly—in an instant, half of Yao Yangyu’s meager forces had fallen.

By this point, it was obvious they’d fallen into a trap. Evasion was impossible. Yao Yangyu no longer tried to retreat. With a low roar, he swung his long blade and charged forward first.

Spears rising and falling, blades swinging and cleaving, countless weapons tangled chaotically together. Blood and flesh were scattered across the vast Qianjin Ravine. Humanity’s killing instinct was infinitely stirred by the intense battle cries. Driven to desperate straits, each person hacked and slashed almost maniacally, severing those once-vibrant limbs, supple muscles, fine heads, bright eyes—one by one—beneath cold weapons of various kinds, sticky with fresh blood.

The enemy-allied force disparity was too great. Half an hour later, the ground was strewn with fallen Tiansheng troops lying every which way. Just a few personal guards swayed unsteadily, protecting Yao Yangyu. Covered in sticky blood, Yao Yangyu propped himself up with his blade, back-to-back with Yu Liang and Huang Baozi, panting continuously. All three were wounded, even their eyelashes sticky with fine bits of flesh.

That cultured, gently smiling man beneath the great banner had never moved from his position, watching with somewhat bored yet somewhat interested eyes as that remnant army struggled on its last breath.

“I want them alive.”

He suddenly raised his hand, pointing at the three of them—Yao Yangyu, Yu Liang, and Huang Baozi.

His voice carried clearly. Yao Yangyu closed his eyes, instantly understanding why the enemy commander had personally led a large force to ambush here for the sake of his single battalion—it was entirely because of his identity. Once the current Tiansheng Chief Minister’s son was captured alive by Great Yue, it would deal an even heavier blow to Tiansheng’s already insufficient morale.

Merit not achieved, he’d instead become a handle to threaten Tiansheng—bound hand and foot and paraded onto the battlefield between the two armies, bargained over under the gaze of ten thousand soldiers, forcing Tiansheng’s great army to withdraw unwillingly. If a man truly fell to such a state, what face remained to continue living between heaven and earth?

With a bitter smile, Yao Yangyu gripped tightly the blade in his exhausted hand that was about to drop.

“Brothers.” He said slowly, “I was too eager for merit and dragged you down. We—”

The words caught in his throat, tears glinting in his eyes. Yu Liang and Huang Baozi, like that day, silently patted his shoulder, quietly finishing the sentence for him.

“See you in the next life.”

The three exchanged smiles, simultaneously raising their blades.

As the cold blade edge approached his throat, a thought flitted hazily through Yao Yangyu’s mind: “If only Lord Wei were here now…”

Then he smiled bitterly. Truly, when death approaches, even dreams become absurd.

The blade flashed bright, reflecting desperate yet calm eyes.

The enemy troops opposite seemed not to have expected these three legendary wastrels would refuse to cling desperately to life. In great alarm, they spurred their horses forward.

*Clang—*

The clear sound of broken steel struck by pebbles. A light stone came skipping like a water skipper, somehow simultaneously breaking all three blades. The flying broken blades seemed to have eyes—they spun around, whistled upward, and charged directly at Great Yue Commander-in-Chief Jin Siyu who was galloping forward.

Jin Siyu had been fully focused on the three about to commit suicide and was unprepared for the cold edge facing him. The three broken blade sections stood upright in mid-air, simultaneously attacking his head and vital points. In the midst of chaos, startled but not flustered, he leaned backward and his long spear had already deflected the broken blades.

But just as the broken blades were deflected, suddenly a rider approached from the opposite direction—black clothes, black horse, white arrows, white crossbow. Five fingers pinched, five arrows on the string, laughing lightly: “Watch my chain arrows!”

Jin Siyu was shocked again. At this moment, his body was leaning backward. If the enemy’s reinforcements had an expert in chain arrows, he definitely couldn’t escape. With a cold snort, he slapped once with one hand and flew up from his horse, retreating without looking back.

When he retreated to the ground and was caught by his personal guards back beneath the banner, he saw that somehow his priceless steed, along with the originally surrounded Yao Yangyu and his two companions, had already been snatched back. The one who claimed to shoot chain arrows still sat smiling on his horse, fanning out the five arrows in his palm like a fan, opening and closing, closing and opening, while playing and murmuring: “How do you shoot chain arrows?”

“…”

From Great Yue’s commander-in-chief down, everyone’s faces turned iron-blue. But that person had already raised his head.

Beneath the moonlight, his features were delicate, a pair of eyes misty like water, as if separated by clouds and mist of Penglai—impossible to see through, beneath the four seas, how much red dust.

Having lost his horse, Jin Siyu stood on the ground, looking up from afar at that youth, only feeling those eyes look over crystal-clear, making this day’s moonlight dim and the sky full of cold wind penetratingly chill.

And infinitely joyful shouts had already burst forth from the silent ravine.

“Magistrate Wei!”