Tang Minjie drew a diagonal line across Guanzhong on the map.

Peng Yueyun thought it over. “So we still advance east along the Han River and strike Xiangyang?”

“Attacking out from the Han River and striking Xiangyang, using that to threaten the heartland of the Central Plains including Bianliang — that’s one way of thinking about it.” Tang Minjie drew more lines on the map, filling in the terrain in greater detail. “Of course, before that, we’d need to deal with Cao Silong, and take Bazhong and Zhenba to control the Micang Road. That has to come first.”

“Cao Silong really has been in private contact with us,” Peng Yueyun said, frowning slightly.

“Once the Huaxia Army moves out through the pass, Cao Silong will have no choice but to surrender. Of course, if he’s the one Dai Mengwei picks, it’s precisely because he’s a diehard Confucian — and after more than two years of running Bazhong, the people around him will help ease him out.” Tang Minjie circled Bazhong, then sketched in Bianliang. “But Xiao Peng, what comes after that?”

“After that… we take Bianliang.” Peng Yueyun thought about it. “Crossing the Yellow River from Bianliang to open up the route to Jin territory wouldn’t be bad either. As for Guanzhong, we could just let Zou Xu have it — maybe he’s not actually that close with the Mongols, and once the Mongols take the northwest, they’ll push straight into Guanzhong and end up fighting him themselves.”

“What I mean is — once we break out, going south from Bianliang to cover the two Hu regions, that’s an enormous stretch of land. How many officials, how much logistics would we have to burn through just to hold it?”

Peng Yueyun frowned and fell silent. Off to one side of the room, Cheng Min sat on a stool, watching quietly. Normally she was the one who kept the mood lively, but when it came to discussing matters like this, she held her tongue, watching the two of them with bright, admiring eyes.

Tang Minjie set the chalk down gently on the blackboard.

He stepped back two paces, studied the map for a while, and only then spoke slowly. “It can be managed, of course — if all we’re talking about is holding the realm, there’s no shortage of officials anywhere. But the purity of our ranks, the degree to which discipline is truly accepted — once you scatter that out, you can never call it back. Why did the 521 incident happen, and the others before it? At bottom, it’s because those officers already knew they’d broken the law and would inevitably be dealt with sooner or later, so they decided to gamble everything. As long as the Teacher keeps to a policy of strict rectification, this kind of internal fracturing will never stop happening — and the faster our territory expands in a short time, the more likely it becomes.”

He sighed. “Early this month, the Teacher already reminded you both to put yourselves in Zou Xu’s shoes, to genuinely consider the choices he might make. Xiao Peng, Zou Xu is a man backed into a dead end. He’s not like an official who takes his time, or a warlord vying for the realm in the usual way — he needs to survive, and for that, there’s nothing he won’t do…”

“…He knows we have some soft feelings toward Jin territory, so he’s striking sideways across Guanzhong to cut the two sides off from each other. If we try to force the connection through, whether we send twenty thousand men or thirty thousand, he’ll rally the Mongols and the Jurchens, add his own strength on top, and swallow every one of them whole in Guanzhong…”

“…And if we avoid Guanzhong and don’t take it, then whatever piece of land you want instead, he’ll just hand it over. That’s the reality of the world today — no matter which piece of territory the Southwestern Huaxia Army wants, almost no one can stop you taking it. Dai Mengwei never had any illusions about that from the start, and neither does Zou Xu. So you go and take it — but with that much open land, will your grain supply hold up? Will you have enough officials?”

“…Xiao Peng, in all my time at Institute 223, the Teacher set up forty-three large research institutes across Chengdu just to raise grain yields. On the surface it looks like farm work, but in truth, Chengdu has been drawing people in constantly, and industrial growth has brought enormous grain consumption with it. Sichuan is supposed to be the Land of Abundance, and yet we’re still importing grain from outside. I went through years of official grain-price records — since the Huaxia Army took Chengdu, prices in the city have very nearly doubled. Some people say it’s because the city has developed, that a great many wealthy families with gold and silver have moved in, and that people who won’t settle for anything less than the finest have driven up the price of good rice, while there’s still coarse rice for ordinary folk to eat. But the truth is, industrial growth is bound to push grain prices even higher sooner or later. Right now we’re developing on blood drawn from outside — but the moment we actually fold the outside into the Huaxia Army’s territory, a great many contradictions are going to come to a head…”

“…To save himself, Zou Xu is throwing everything he has into this, testing the Huaxia Army with this move — and the timing he’s chosen is genuinely vicious…”

Back doing government work, Tang Minjie wasn’t a man of many words in ordinary times, keeping his abilities hidden in front of unfamiliar comrades. But honestly, how could a mind like his ever stop turning? Day after day the talk had all been about the situation outside; he’d been reading the newspapers, listening to every scrap of news, and his mind had naturally been sketching out the shape of the whole affair.

Just then, looking at that crude map, Peng Yueyun felt his scalp prickle faintly.

Then a thought struck him. “Actually… there’s another line of thinking in the army too — mostly people from the Presidium’s office saying we should just close the passes and not go out at all, wait until the land reform is finished, then march out of Sichuan all at once and sweep the whole realm. Who could stand against that…”

“If we probe like this and the Southwest still doesn’t move, focusing entirely on land reform, Zou Xu would be delighted.” Tang Minjie shook his head. “So right now I see two choices. First: stay on good terms with the Southwest — you carry out your land reform, I’ll take my realm, and we do as much alliance-building as possible, reaching some kind of pact within a few years with every power under heaven to resist outside aggression, maybe even restore some of the old institutions of the Wu Dynasty. Then we drive out the Mongols, strike the Jurchens, and after a few more years, when you march out of Sichuan, there’ll be no legitimate grounds left for you to attack anyone — either you join this alliance, or you become the very cause of chaos under heaven. And by then, even once the Huaxia Army has completed its land reform, it’ll be on the back foot everywhere.”

“As for the second choice — you think land reform is going to be that easy? Around Hanzhong, a large number of merchant ships have already been getting held up along the route. At first it might still look like idle bickering with a smile on the face, but after that, they’ll cut off every trade route into Sichuan entirely…”

“He wouldn’t dare!” Peng Yueyun stood up.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Tang Minjie sneered. “Xiao Peng, if I were Zou Xu, I’d be fighting for my life. I’d play along and stall when stalling served me, and when it came time to make the hard call, I’d make it even if I couldn’t win. I wouldn’t just cut off the roads into Sichuan — I’d breach the dikes on the Han River and the Yangtze, send out roving river bandits, make sure not a single grain of rice made it into your Chengdu. I’d force your Huaxia Army out into the open, then hand you the whole of the Central Plains — Xiao Peng, you’re an army of benevolence and righteousness, and there’s this vast realm full of famine-stricken people who’ve suffered through endless war. Won’t you take them? Their families broken, their infants crying for food — won’t you take them in?”

“You see, back when Dai Mengwei took countless Han slaves off Xiyin’s hands, he thought we’d lose our temper. We didn’t take them — we threw the problem right back at old Dai. Now, in turn, Zou Xu is going to throw the problem back at us. These past years, the realm has never known peace from war. While Liu Guangshi was alive he did manage a little rebuilding, but Dai Mengwei had him killed off almost immediately. From the two Hu regions to Bianliang, from Bianliang to Guanzhong — which single stretch of land out there is actually in good shape? Xiao Peng, I wouldn’t feel the least bit of pain giving up any of those places, because the Teacher’s base here is the only thing that truly matters…”

“Land reform isn’t finished, the internal rectification hasn’t stopped — hand over a huge stretch of territory, and you undermine internal oversight, you feed the ambitions taking root in the lower and middle ranks of our own forces. In the end, the contradictions inside our own ranks turn back against the Teacher — that’s the only way anyone could possibly defeat the Huaxia Army and shatter it from within. At least, no matter how hard I rack my brains, that’s the only path back to victory I can find for him…”

In the dormitory room, the oil lamp’s flame flickered, its light none too bright, yet even standing in that dim glow, Tang Minjie’s silhouette as he spoke seemed like a black hole that swallowed light. Peng Yueyun listened with his heart pounding, chilled to the bone.

“If… it’s like that… maybe he’ll pick the first option…”

“If he really does pick the first option, it might prove there’s still a shred of mercy and hope left in him — and maybe the Teacher would even be willing to sit down and talk with him about the old grievances between them. But do you think that’s likely? Think about the Huaxia Army, think about the Teacher — would they really lock the army away in this one corner of Sichuan and let Zou Xu toy with the whole realm as he pleases for two or three years?”

Tang Minjie sighed. “…He can’t choose it.”

It was a summer night; outside came the faint murmur of voices, of people going about their business. The dormitory room fell quiet for a long while. Tang Minjie stared at the blackboard — this was perhaps the first time he’d shown any real attempt to fathom Zou Xu’s mind — and after a while, he sighed softly again.

“Maybe it’s because… when I was up north, every day what I thought about was the enemy’s cunning and cruelty, thinking about how to cut down our own losses. Since coming back to the Southwest, there’s one thing that keeps troubling and worrying me — lately in the army there’s this reckless confidence, everyone always saying, wherever the enemy is, however many of them there are, we just charge in and finish it… No matter how formidable an enemy they face, people say it’s nothing a single wave of Dijiang can’t solve. I know part of that comes from Zonghan’s track record, and part of it comes from the Teacher himself…”

“…Back in the day at Xiaocang River, the Teacher used to joke that once you’d truly learned his methods, a single all-out charge at the end would settle anything… but a joke is just a joke. Strong confidence brings high morale, that’s a good thing — but when confidence runs this high, is it still a good thing? When we break out, will we end up paying for it… Zou Xu understands us. Now that he’s made his move, shouldn’t we assume he’s already prepared some means of making us pay, even of defeating us? If we don’t think this through, I’m afraid that when we go out this time, we might just take a very hard fall…”

Speaking of his experiences up north, Tang Minjie’s words came low and slow, and his expression grew faintly distant. Peng Yueyun thought for a long while. “I understand. Zou Xu has set us a huge problem too… Brother, if it were you, how would you solve it?”

“Not going to try solving it yourself first?”

“I have my own Zhuge Liang right here.” In front of Tang Minjie, Peng Yueyun flatly refused to rack his own brain, entirely unashamed of it. “Besides, I can’t even leave this room — how am I any different from Adou?”

“I actually do have one somewhat wild idea…”

Tang Minjie looked toward the blackboard ahead of him, then walked over to the desk to one side and pulled out a newspaper from among the papers, handing it to Peng Yueyun.

“…This is from last month. Land reform has progressed to the point where it’s basically been completed in over three thousand villages. There have been all sorts of problems internally, but by the end of May, more than three thousand activists selected from the various villages had finished their training — in theory this process should keep speeding up… The Teacher takes land reform very seriously, hoping to see it completed step by step in a stable environment, but the world hardly ever works out that neatly… Since Zou Xu insists on setting us this problem, the way I see it, then we break out, fighting as we go, reforming as we go. It’s fitting, really — war itself brings sweeping change to every place it touches. We go from Xiangyang, carrying out land reform all the way to Bianliang…”

Tang Minjie drew more lines on the map, his speech gradually speeding up.

“…Bring the land-reform work teams, bring the activists from every locality — keep absorbing and training more activists as we go through the land reform, push a route through to Bianliang, drive straight for the Yellow River… Xiao Peng, Bianliang was the old capital of the Wu Dynasty, it carries political weight. Carrying out large-scale land reform in the region around it will let the whole realm know the Huaxia Army’s resolve… Of course, that will also hand Dai Mengwei and Zou Xu legitimate grounds to oppose the Huaxia Army — a great many landlords and gentry will start opposing us. All the better…”

He drew a line north of the Yellow River.

“…And it’s perfect timing, because the Jurchens are marching down from there right now — of everyone under heaven, they’re the ones with the deepest blood debt owed to us over these past ten-odd years. Zou Xu wants several armies to fight a decisive battle in Guanzhong. We won’t go there — we go straight to Jin territory instead, combine with the armies of Jin and Shandong, concentrate our rocket-artillery firepower, and use our very best troops to pin them down and wipe them out in that stretch of land. We slaughter a hundred thousand Jurchens, make sure not a single one of them makes it back through Yanmen Pass alive — let the whole realm see who the true core of resistance against outside aggression really is. That will do the most, in the widest possible measure, to reduce the whole realm’s resistance to land reform. Two symbolically legitimate victories, for the liberation of the whole realm and for land reform, both at once.”

Tang Minjie’s chalk tapped here and there on the blackboard. All night his tone had stayed level, only growing agitated when the words “slaughter a hundred thousand Jurchens” left his mouth. Cheng Min rose from where she sat. “Can we really kill a hundred thousand Jurchens?”

“Jin people. They’re Jin people.” Tang Minjie corrected his own slip of the tongue in his excitement. “You should know how the Jurchens structure their armies on every southern campaign… and this time… in theory it should certainly add up to a hundred thousand, and going by the current balance of forces…”

He explained the makeup of the Jin army to Cheng Min at the edge of the blackboard, then went on rambling about the feasibility — and the necessity — of wiping out a hundred thousand Jin troops. Before long, Peng Yueyun had joined in too, and after a while he asked, “Can I write up today’s conversation as a report to submit?”

Tang Minjie said, “The General Staff has no shortage of talented people — an analysis like this has probably already been submitted by someone else long ago. What I’m curious about is why the Teacher had this idea back in March, and yet still hasn’t made up his mind, even now…”

Through the window, the lights of Chengdu shimmered faintly in the distance. Conversations much like this one were, perhaps, taking place in many other places this same night.

Some two hundred li from Chengdu, in Zhang Village at night, the number of people still moving about had thinned considerably. Ning Yi stepped out of the courtyard, crossed a small hillside, and quietly wandered along the little river that ran around the edge of the village.

Lately his insomnia had grown fairly severe. There was so much he needed to think through.