The fifth day of the sixth month — no, the sixth day now — Dulong Ridge.

Flames roared, columns of smoke rose like dragons into the sky.

Along the crooked, winding roads outside the manor, wave after wave of fighting raged. To slow Liangshan’s advance as much as possible, Dulong Ridge’s side had set fire to the woods; though the surrounding area had ample water and lush vegetation, so the flames never spread on a large scale, the rising black smoke still hampered the enemy’s charges back and forth, and over these past several days it had become one of Dulong Ridge’s key defensive tools.

Perhaps provoked by Ning Yi’s tactics, Liangshan’s assault that day grew especially fierce from the very morning, pressing forward with the crushing force of a landslide. Dulong Ridge’s defense grew correspondingly difficult, but fortunately, the withdrawal the evening before had given the defenders’ morale a timely boost, and with the advantage of terrain, the manor’s men could still sortie out wave after wave to harass the enemy while releasing prisoners two or three at a time.

By afternoon, the sounds of fighting outside the manor continued, and Liangshan’s commanders even pressed close to the outer walls several times. They had no intention of mounting a full assault, but they were making frequent feints, meant to keep constant pressure on the people inside the manor. If Liangshan had committed only thirty to fifty percent of its forces in earlier days, today it was committing something close to sixty or seventy percent all at once. The winding roads around Dulong Ridge varied in width, but once real fighting began, there was always a natural saturation point beyond which more troops made no difference — the surplus was simply there to keep grinding away at the defenders’ nerves.

By the courtyard where the manor folk rested, Ning Yi tossed a packet of medicine to the physician tending Zhu Biao, watching as the doctor cleaned and bandaged the bloody wound. Zhu Biao, gripping his steel spear, chattered on and on to Ning Yi about the “counter-ambush” he’d just pulled off against a Liangshan unit outside. In his usual fighting, he relied on raw courage and familiarity with the terrain to defeat strong opponents time and again, but when it came to actual tactics, the most he’d ever managed was a simple surprise attack — nothing like today’s technically sophisticated joint effort with his master against several Liangshan units, and he was thrilled about it.

“Brother! I, Zhu Biao, take my hat off to you today — well done! Liangshan’s men were… they were like madmen out there today… and this medicine of yours is pretty good too.”

“A recipe passed down from Mount Lüliang — hard to put together, and I don’t have much of it left. I used it all,” Ning Yi said with a smile. “They’re fighting harder and harder — aren’t you worried the manor will fall sooner because of it?”

“Brother, you’re joking. My temper might be a bit rough, but I’m no fool. As soon as my master explained it yesterday, I understood. The more abnormal Liangshan acts, the more it proves Brother Lei’s scheme is working. The worse they get, the happier I am to fight.”

Zhu Biao was only eighteen or nineteen at this point, proud and hard to tame in temperament, but straightforward at heart. As a young man, he had first fought purely for the sake of his own skill and honor, but with Liangshan’s arrival, a sense of duty to protect his home had been added to that. Over these past days he had fought fiercely, and plenty of Liangshan’s men had suffered at his hands. But behind such valor, seeing how the tide of the battle was tilting, he often fought with bloodshot eyes, his hands not always entirely steady. Now, seeing Ning Yi’s careful scheming, he showed his admiration quite frankly.

“But surely Brother Lei has something else planned after this?”

“Of course I do,” Ning Yi said with a smile. “How’s the prisoner release going?”

“Just like Brother Lei said it would. They’ve assigned people specifically to handle it and manage the fallout, so we just keep sending men scattering across the hillsides. It doesn’t look like it’s causing them much trouble anymore, though. Should we stop releasing the rest? Keep them as hostages instead?”

“There’ll still be trouble — it’s just less visible now, that’s all. We can’t see it for the moment. We still need to keep releasing them; that part’s important, and we need to finish releasing everyone before they’ve fully encircled the manor. But the more chaos and anxiety we stir up in them, the harder they’ll fight — you should be prepared for that, Brother Zhu.”

“Fighting for the manor is my own family’s business.” Zhu Biao nodded. The physician had already finished bandaging him; he sat there flexing his injured arm, thinking it over. “Actually, you know, laying your whole plan out in the open like this, with the enemy having no answer for it — I’ve genuinely never seen anything like it before, Brother Lei. Is there really no counter to it? What would you do, in their place?”

“There is one, and it’s simple, actually.”

“What is it?”

“The same thing they’re doing — tighten military discipline, then fight it out the hard way. If possible, send the returned men somewhere else entirely. But they reacted a little slowly yesterday, and some of these men have already gone into hiding. And since we keep releasing more men, they can’t very well ship people out one by one, batch by batch — so they probably won’t do that right away, it’s just not practical. But by the time it does become a real problem, it’ll already be too late… Honestly, most of these men probably don’t even want to leave in the first place. This is their very first battle since coming down from the mountain — an important one. Who would want to be the one singled out and set apart?”

Ning Yi thought about it a moment, then added, somewhat wistfully: “Liangshan is only just starting to really spread its wings, with more energy than it knows what to do with. In a state like that, a lot of problems can be papered over — nothing feels like a real problem once everyone’s blood is up. That’s exactly what I’m targeting. But if they truly weather this battle, and afterward carry out a real crackdown and learn from it properly… I’m afraid there won’t be anyone left in all of Shandong who can stand against them.”

This reflection of Ning Yi’s didn’t land with much resonance for Zhu Biao, who was staring up in thought about something else entirely. “This really does sound like something out of the storytellers’ tales — them with their Wu Yong, us with your Brother Lei, the two of you facing off…”

The storytellers of this age, naturally, had their tales of dueling strategists — one scheme against another, back and forth. Zhu Biao wasn’t the sharpest man, but he’d certainly heard stories like that. Ning Yi laughed. “That’s putting it a bit grandly. It’s true they’ve been outmaneuvered once, but for now, they still won’t think much of me — not until the problem grows bigger… Oh, and speaking of which, I’ll need your help with something, Third Young Master. Let’s give them a nasty little surprise.”

At the mention of catching Liangshan off guard, Zhu Biao’s eyes lit up. “Brother, whatever you need — name it.”

The two of them chattered on for a while, Zhu Biao’s expression turning solemn, then, in the afternoon sunlight, breaking into a distinctly wicked grin…

Zhu Family Manor kept releasing prisoners without pause. Even though the trouble it was causing Liangshan wasn’t outwardly visible for now, within Liangshan’s ranks, the effects were being felt keenly enough by those involved.

Most of the prisoners released by Zhu Family Manor were indeed gathered up by Liangshan’s various military inspectors and placed under group supervision, but a smaller number managed to quietly slip back into their units through various channels. For many who considered themselves “shrewd,” this first great battle of Liangshan’s expansion was critically important to their future advancement, and if at all possible, they didn’t want this kind of stain attached to their names — those with real connections did their best to hide it.

Such men were only a small minority, and it wasn’t certain any of them would actually go through with anything harmful to Liangshan. But at the same time, a great many minor, troublesome complications kept surfacing.

First: a large proportion of the men who had come to Liangshan to join the cause were men of the jianghu and the greenwood — not talents on the level of Lin Chong or Lu Da who truly deserved the title of “hero.” Among Liangshan’s forces at this point, close to half were men who had spent their lives running with such circles.

These men of the jianghu all had some skill or another; some had even been feared thugs or local toughs in their home regions, or boxing masters and bullies of some district. They weren’t necessarily tough men through and through — under Zhu Family Manor’s blades and spears, they’d crouch with hands bound behind their backs readily enough — but back in Liangshan’s camp, they had no intention of accepting humiliation. I heard Liangshan was gathering righteous men, so I traveled a thousand miles to lend my strength to the cause — and you doubt me?

Whenever the military inspectors grew a little too vigilant, these men would kick up a fuss on the spot. There was, in truth, a certain guilty defensiveness mixed in with it too — they knew perfectly well they were already under suspicion, and in an army full of self-proclaimed “heroes,” if they wanted to keep climbing, they couldn’t afford to simply swallow the insult. A true hero valued his pride above all — better to get into a fight with someone and then reconcile as fellow tough men than to meekly do whatever he was told. Men who’d made their way through the jianghu and greenwood all had their own particular wisdom for survival.

Second: Suo Chao’s entire unit had been captured as one. As the prisoners trickled back in dribs and drabs, before the full count was in, some of them had no commander on hand who could vouch for their identity, and the military inspectors could only gather them together and keep them under tight watch. And, according to reports, taking advantage of exactly this situation, that court villain calling himself the “Chaos Thunderbolt Hand” Lei Feng had slipped some of Zhu Family Manor’s own men in among them, who assassinated a temporary military inspector and fled.

This particular incident did in fact reach Liangshan’s upper leadership, who understood the full picture — among an army of tens of thousands, one man being assassinated and escaping on the battlefield by an enemy spy was, in itself, no great matter. But once it filtered down to the ranks, it spread quickly, especially among the military inspectors themselves, making them all the more wary of the returned prisoners, and several minor frictions broke out from excessive caution.

Third: that afternoon, someone set fire to a haystack near the camp. As the smoke rose, it genuinely looked, from a distance, as though the camp itself were under attack, and everyone who saw it from afar couldn’t help feeling a jolt of alarm. And out on the battlefield, someone truly did take advantage of the chaos to kill a comrade and flee toward Zhu Family Manor with the head. The battlefield was too chaotic for this to be confirmed, but word spread in a small circle that the man’s family’s whereabouts had become known to the court, leaving him no choice but to act.

Incident after incident, friction large and small — none of it was truly unprecedented in an army camp. After Wu Yong’s decision the night before, the commanders had all issued orders down the chain, and for the moment, everything remained suppressed, confined to hushed conversations between close friends. None of it affected fighting strength, nor did it reach the upper leadership’s attention in any serious way. For Wu Yong, what truly stung that day was the matter of Lin Chong’s ambush being turned back against them.

Past noon that day, Lin Chong and the other commanders, following Wu Yong’s plan, sent the prearranged signal to Zhu Family Manor’s men and gathered their forces, preparing to close the encirclement. But no one came. Luan Tingyu and Zhu Biao, taking advantage of the moment while Liangshan’s men were gathering, instead struck at the thinly-defended “Red-Haired Devil” Liu Tang nearby. Liu Tang was a formidable fighter with brave men under his command, and he held out for a good while, but Luan Tingyu’s blows were seasoned and precise — before Lin Chong and the others could arrive, he had already landed a solid strike with his staff on Liu Tang’s shoulder, tearing the flesh badly and leaving him gravely wounded. What would come of it remained uncertain, but at the very least, he would find it hard to wield a blade again in this fight.

Everyone knew this turn of events had come from Wu Yong’s own scheme; though no one said as much aloud, Wu Yong himself went and sincerely apologized to Liu Tang and the others. But turning back to face the situation, it genuinely felt like a slap across the face. Once the story spread, the commanders’ impression of that court villain named Lei Feng deepened another notch — just as Zhu Biao had said, it really did feel like something out of the old tales, two strategists trading blow for blow.

Of course, this was only whispered privately. On the sixth day of the sixth month, Liangshan’s assault didn’t let up until deep into the night — the fighting itself was, after all, the true heart of the matter, and even if the enemy’s private little schemes had genuinely caused some trouble, without being able to truly translate into anything on the battlefield, it ultimately meant nothing.

That night, at Zhu Family Manor and Hu Family Manor, people spoke of the new “strategist,” of his arrangements, of Wu Yong’s embarrassment, and used it to bolster the manor folk’s spirits. Within the Liangshan camp, meanwhile, the friction kept growing — the two hundred-odd isolated soldiers had already clashed repeatedly with others, and people murmured among themselves about the unfolding situation, about that fellow named Lei Feng who had orchestrated it all. That night, several more small disturbances broke out, and someone was killed again — a soldier trying to flee the camp with a severed head was discovered, and in a fit of hysteria wounded two men before finally being surrounded on all sides.

“My wife, my children, my old mother — they haven’t made it up the mountain yet! They already know who I am! I had no choice!” the surrounded soldier shouted, then turned his blade on himself. “My name is Geng An! My name is Geng An! Tell him I’ve done what he asked! Remember to tell him! My name is Geng An!”

And then this soldier named Geng An killed himself in front of everyone.

With several hundred men captured, some were bound to be recognized, and some were bound to have families not yet safely on the mountain — that someone might be driven to such a desperate act had already been anticipated.

This incident, in truth, had no real effect on the next day’s fighting strength. Wu Yong held firm in the main tent, overseeing the battle in an orderly, methodical way, refusing to let himself be distracted by anything else — as long as the army pressed straight forward, all of the enemy’s tricks would come to nothing but smoke.

As for the talk about Lei Feng and his methods, by the seventh day of the sixth month it had already spread through nearly the entire lower ranks of Liangshan — after all, the whole situation was plainly visible to everyone. This lower-level chatter didn’t amount to a serious wavering of morale in itself, with all its scattered little frictions — not enough to change the overall course of the battle. But the rumor spread astonishingly fast, so fast that even Wu Yong and the others couldn’t quite understand why.

The battle, of course, remained the battle. Though there was plenty of talk at the lower levels for now, for it to actually spread far enough to affect or reverse the entire course of the fighting at Dulong Ridge was, for all practical purposes, impossible. This side matter, outside the fighting itself, had become something every commander couldn’t help but pay attention to as a curiosity — none of them had ever seen or even heard of a method of warfare quite like this, where the enemy seemed to lay out every single move in plain sight, visible and known to all, and yet no one could find a way to stop the situation from steadily worsening.

Given enough time, some thought, this really might deal Liangshan a serious blow. And with that thought in mind, everyone naturally wanted to bring the fighting to an end all the faster.

But the truly potent catalyst of malice, hidden beneath that transparent surface, would not fully reveal itself until the eighth day of the sixth month. And it was only on the seventh, in fact, that someone first vaguely sensed what was coming — not Wu Yong, but Xi Junyu, currently responsible for logistics within the army. Unfortunately, by then, whatever should or shouldn’t have spread had already spread throughout the entire camp, and it was only on the eighth day that the truly transparent, exposed scheme would finally… reveal its full, terrible shape.

Sometimes, one senses the malice, and yet finds there is no longer any road left for retreat…