The Bloody-Handed Butcher, Ning Liheng—this name was, of course, one Liangshan’s men had heard before.

In formal discussions, or in idle whispers, whenever people spoke of this or that matter, or mentioned some skilled fighter from some region, this name inevitably came up sooner or later, connected as it was to Liangshan’s current predicament. Xi Junyu’s grudge with the Su family went back a long way, and the incident in Jiangning at the end of March, when Bao Xu, Xue Yong, and others were crippled, and later, the setback along the canal in April when Zhu Wu and the others were humiliated—all of it had some connection to this name.

But even so, few had truly regarded this name as belonging to a genuine martial arts master. Liangshan had no shortage of skilled fighters, and most held a fairly clear-eyed view of Ning Yi’s actual combat ability. On the day of the Jiangning slaughter, perhaps there’d been some astonishment at his opponent’s tenacity, but by the time of the canal incident, what he’d relied on had mostly been the power of the imperial government behind him.

Back at Liangshan, even when the topic came up, these minor setbacks would inevitably be swallowed up by their own soaring momentum. Zhu Wu and the others certainly wouldn’t have overstated just how cunning and terrifying this Bloody-Handed Butcher truly was. The hatred of a destroyed household was indeed unforgivable, but Liangshan’s own hands carried far more than one or two such blood debts—who would dare come all the way to Liangshan seeking revenge? In most people’s minds, he was, at most, someone to be killed eventually—perhaps a bit troublesome, but under Liangshan’s current momentum, hardly something to worry about going forward.

Zhu Wu, Zhang Shun, Yan Qing, Yan Shun, and the others had returned to Liangshan nearly two months ago now. News kept pouring in from every direction, people kept flocking to join, and what lay before everyone now was naturally the many great matters of expanding outward in every direction. No one could have imagined that the very first step of this rolling, unstoppable advance would come crashing to a halt on such a small stone.

The man across from them was the Bloody-Handed Butcher, Ning Liheng… that matrilocal son-in-law from Jiangning…

Song Jiang raised a hand to cover his mouth, rubbing it hard, his expression in this moment impossible to describe.

At the end of March, the Jiangning jailbreak, when they’d stormed the Su household and killed over a hundred people—but lost a few brothers too, that had hardly counted as a major matter. By mid-April, on the Bian River, the enemy had dealt them a humiliating blow—Zhu Wu and over two hundred others sent to handle business there, with only four returning. Just as Liangshan was preparing to expand, attacking Dulong Ridge and Wanjia Ridge, the losses of Lu Junyi and the others had certainly been painful, adding another blood debt to their hearts, but in truth, that hadn’t counted as a major matter either. Yet now, in early June, this same man had suddenly become lodged directly across the entire path of Liangshan’s advance, shaking twenty thousand men to their core.

Looking at the timeline, it was all because of that bloody incident in Jiangning at the end of March—the man had rushed straight up to the capital, handling Zhu Wu’s plot along the way almost in passing, and not long after reaching the capital, had turned right around and come to Shandong. The very first thing he’d set his sights on against them here, he’d struck down just as casually. He hadn’t even bothered to weigh the numbers. Against two hundred men, his revenge had been the same; against twenty thousand men… it had, apparently, been carried out just as immediately, just the same.

This was simply absurd.

“A matrilocal son-in-law, a mere matrilocal son-in-law…” Song Jiang’s hand waved in the air, his finger unable to settle on any direction, jabbing forcefully at nothing. “We are over twenty thousand strong! Over twenty thousand strong! And he… he actually, actually…”

In truth, had they known this name earlier, even accounting for their earlier underestimation of the enemy, Wu Yong and the others might not have dismissed the opposing scheme so completely. But by now, with the Su family incident and the canal affair suddenly connecting to what stood before them, and this man’s name surfacing all at once, the impression it created was simply beyond description as merely frightening.

“Three days!” Song Jiang paced back and forth, roaring the words. Over on the stone wall, once the crisis had passed, the shields regrouped, fired off a scattered volley, and withdrew—never once glancing much toward the hillside here. In this man’s eyes, it seemed, there was hardly any difference between one side and the other.

Li Kui growled furiously, low and seething: “That bastard, I’m going in again! I’ll kill him for sure!”

“Iron Bull, stand down! What good is charging in now out of anger!” Song Jiang snapped. Nearby, Lin Chong had returned carrying Zhang Shun’s body, laying it on the ground and closing his eyes with his own hand. He had truly been driven up to Liangshan with no other path left, and he valued the bonds of brotherhood among the mountain’s men deeply. But in that moment just now, he too had seen the firearm that man atop the wall had used, and the outline of his body. The hatred of a ruined household, and now the enemy had come to strike them here directly—there was nothing more to be said.

As the others fell into an uneasy silence, Wu Yong spoke from beneath the tree. “Brother Gongming, I fear we should withdraw now.”

“How can we retreat at this point?”

Lin Chong too spoke sharply: “Morale is already in disarray. If we hold our ground, we can at least keep formation intact—if the enemy breaks first, victory is still possible. But if we retreat now, who goes first, who goes last? The moment the order is given, mutiny is sure to follow! If the enemy pursues us in retreat, how many of our brothers will we lose? Strategist, do you understand the stakes here?!”

For the normally mild-mannered Lin Chong to speak this way meant he’d truly grown angry. Wu Yong let out a bitter laugh and pointed to the messenger who’d brought word earlier. “Tell everyone what you just reported to me.”

The scout hurriedly repeated it: “A little over half a shichen ago, the Wuru Battalion appeared near Jishan and captured every one of the brothers we’d sent out this morning. Also, I’ve received word that Chieftain Zheng’s two hundred-odd men, out sweeping the area, were surrounded by the Wuru Battalion last night as well—by now they’ve likely all been wiped out!”

“How many men do they have?”

“Not certain, but I heard… thousands upon thousands…”

Only upon hearing this did everyone’s faces truly change. Demon King Zheng’s two hundred-odd men had been out trampling various small stockades in the area—being discovered and surrounded by the Wuru Battalion wouldn’t have been so alarming on its own. But Jishan’s location was quite close to Dulong Ridge. This morning, the moment Wu Yong had learned of the full situation, his first move had been to have all the released prisoners escorted away, keeping them as far from the decisive battle as possible. That these several hundred men had now been surrounded and wiped out by the Wuru Battalion meant the Wuru Battalion itself was already nearby.

Wu Yong leaned against the tree and slumped to the ground, sighing. “I should have known, I should have known… this man’s schemes link together in an unbroken chain, of course he’d have contingencies like this prepared…”

Someone growled low: “But how can we retreat now!”

“We’ll have no choice but to retreat! Right now it might still look like we’re just locked in a stalemate here! But the moment the Wuru Battalion shows up, our ten-thousand-plus men won’t even be able to flee—we’ll collapse instantly! If we’re caught between two forces here at Dulong Ridge, we’ll all be finished on this spot! Getting out now might still leave us a chance at survival!”

The roads through Dulong Ridge were narrow and winding; if they were blocked in on this kind of complex terrain, given the current state of morale, it truly would mean total annihilation. Beneath the slope, everyone hesitated a moment.

“Then we’ll just have to notify each chieftain, tell them all to be careful, and begin the withdrawal…”

Easy enough to say, but no one truly felt confident about it. And just then, a young soldier came running with news: that vicious woman from Hu Family Manor nicknamed Ten Feet of Green had led five hundred men charging out of the estate, bearing down on them.

Amid the chaos, few had the composure to notice a large sky lantern rising from the forested slopes beside Dulong Ridge, gradually drifting across the smoke-filled sky…

……

Inside Zhu Family Manor, it was Luan Tingyu who first noticed that Liangshan had suddenly shown signs of a collapsing retreat.

Though Ning Yi had also fought hard, climbing the wall to observe and so on, he still had trouble reading the broader flow of the battle. When Luan Tingyu suddenly came to tell him Liangshan’s men seemed to be withdrawing, Ning Yi, having just survived an assassination attempt and still in a highly alert state, immediately asked whether it might be a trick.

“They can’t pull off a trick like that anymore! Given their current state of morale, even if they tried to fake this, it would turn real within the blink of an eye—it wouldn’t even take a quarter hour before they themselves fell into disorder, unable to hold it back!”

Ning Yi was mildly stunned—he’d expected Liangshan to hold out a while longer. Thinking back to the assassination attempt on the wall just now, he guessed the enemy might already know his real identity, and thought to himself: could it really be that simple—that the moment they learned my name, they got so scared they turned tail and ran? The thought was rather gratifying, but also somewhat absurd. Just as he was about to say something, out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of that sky lantern floating up into the sky outside the estate, and understood what might be happening.

“That’s perfect timing.” He broke into a smile. “They must have spotted the Wuru Battalion nearby and gotten scared out of their wits! Instructor Luan, what should we do next?”

“Now’s obviously the time to charge out and finish them!”

“We still have men for that?”

“We can scrape together one or two thousand, easily!”

“You’re in charge—let’s get everyone ready to shout!”

Ning Yi excitedly began organizing the men with megaphones, and moments later, they began shouting: “Song Jiang has already fled!” “Wu Song has run!” “They’re going to abandon you! Look! They’re running——” “The Wuru Battalion reinforcements have arrived, you’re finished!”

As the shouts rose one after another, people began turning back to survey the situation, and sure enough found some men already retreating, others already leaving—the momentum of collapse took shape in an instant. Just as Luan Tingyu had said, once a rout like this began, there was no way to rein it back in—no one could explain to the soldiers that this was a strategic repositioning rather than a retreat. But for Wu Yong and the others, there was no longer any real choice left either—hesitate any longer, and once the Wuru Battalion arrived, given the terrain around Dulong Ridge, it truly would mean total annihilation. In the current situation, they had no choice but to cut their losses and sacrifice the limb to save the body.

No one could say exactly when it started, but countless men had already begun shouting and fleeing. The louder the collapse sounded from the rear, the more frantic those at the front became; with the vanguard fleeing too fast, the whole formation broke apart and scattered within moments. Some generals might still manage to command their closest men, but even they could only clear a path for their own trusted followers to escape as quickly as possible. Dulong Ridge’s roads were narrow to begin with, and as those behind pressed forward, a crush formed instantly—some were pushed into water, into ditches, into fields.

On the western road, the force meant to block Hu Sanniang collapsed at the first contact, while here, both gates of Zhu Family Manor swung open with a thunderous crash. Luan Tingyu and Zhu Biao each led five hundred men charging out—first rescuing the prisoners Liangshan had left outside the estate, then beginning the pursuit.

Numbers no longer mattered here as a measure of victory or defeat. Three forces pursued relentlessly, cutting down the fleeing soldiers like harvesting melons, mowing grass. The occasional small group that tried to hold a rearguard action under a chieftain’s command was simply crushed straight through. By now the shen hour was more than half spent—around four in the afternoon—and the bright daylight had begun taking on a dazzling glow. Amid the smoke of battle, the setting sun drew ever closer, and everywhere—mountain roads, forest paths, riverbanks, fields—the scene was one of Liangshan’s army in total disarray and flight.

Ning Yi and the others too joined the pursuit with crossbows in hand, shouting out various rumors as they went. Once outside the estate, amid the chase, he called over one of the guards who’d followed him from the capital and pointed toward a distant grove of trees, where the sky lantern had likely been launched.

“Go there quickly. Wenyu is in that grove—have him send word. Tell him, no matter how many men the Wuru Battalion has brought, Liangshan has already collapsed—tell them to cut these men off ahead!”

This appearance of the Wuru Battalion had indeed been part of his plan, but it hadn’t been calculated quite this precisely by design. From the start, he’d never really counted on these government troops for much—he’d only obtained intelligence regarding Zheng Biao, and had Su Wenyu deliver money to the officers at an opportune moment, while also coordinating with Qin Siyuan’s orders to have them deploy at least some men. Once the fighting at Zhu Family Manor had gone on for a while, they were to move in and capture Zheng Biao’s group, meant to serve as a warning shot to shake Liangshan. That it had arrived at exactly this moment turned what was meant as a small gesture into genuine, timely aid delivered right when it was needed most.

Amid this ongoing slaughter, as the two forces converged, someone suddenly noticed a column of thick black smoke rising from Hu Family Manor. This was the extreme danger signal from within Hu Family Manor. Hu Sanniang, who had been pursuing the enemy the whole way, let out a grief-stricken cry and wheeled her horse around, charging back. At the same moment, in the midst of the scattering Liangshan forces, Wu Yong and the others received word that Huyan Zhuo and Zhu Wu had arrived.

It turned out that Huyan Zhuo and Zhu Wu’s group had come down from Wanjia Ridge two days earlier—sending men to transport money and goods back to Liangshan while also dispatching scouts to gather intelligence on the situation here, and bringing two to three thousand men to reinforce Dulong Ridge.

Partway there, they’d heard how things stood here and, sensing something was wrong, had picked up their pace. Zhu Wu, however, understood that morale here had already been shaken, and wasn’t eager to rashly merge forces. Arriving in the afternoon, they’d headed straight for Hu Family Manor. Not long after Hu Sanniang had led the villagers out to fight, Hu Cheng, seeing the situation from a distance, had also led men out of the estate hoping to press the advantage further—having heard that Liangshan’s morale was wavering and on the verge of collapse, they’d grown somewhat careless. Seizing their moment, these two thousand-plus men had suddenly burst out, cutting off the retreating column in an instant, seizing the estate gate, and charging in amid the chaos.

This sneak attack, launched at just the right moment, was genuinely well-executed. But by now, the signs of defeat on this side had already fully set in, with tens of thousands of men scattered and fleeing, everyone fighting simply to find a way out. Wu Yong and the others cried urgently: “Forget the fighting, just go! Tell Chieftain Huyan to withdraw his troops at once! The Wuru Battalion has arrived! If he doesn’t leave now, he’ll drag everyone else down with him too—he’s the only one among us still capable of fighting right now, tell him to hurry and clear us a path out!” The retreat horn was blown frantically, and the messenger, receiving the order, hurried off at once…