The leaves on the trees deepened from tender green to a richer hue; the drizzling spring rain drifted away, and the red blossoms faded in color, as time slipped past the spring season almost before anyone noticed. By late in the third month, willow catkins still drifted over the Qinhuai River, but summer had truly arrived by now, and Ning Yi, Tan’er, and the rest of the family boarded a boat outside Jiangning city, setting off along the waterway back toward the capital.
In the month since returning to Jiangning, there hadn’t been much for Ning Yi and Tan’er to do—beyond paying respects to the family members who had died in last year’s upheaval, all that remained was the simple courtesy of delivering congratulatory gifts to the residence of Prince Kang, which they could handle with a quick visit. However, in the days before the wedding, Zhou Pei herself was not in Jiangning, so on this trip, Ning Yi never got the chance to see this soon-to-be-married female disciple of his.
With the young princess about to marry—meaning she had, in effect, come of age—Prince Kang did not treat Ning Yi, this nominally titled guest-tutor of hers, with much neglect either; the Prince himself came out to receive Ning Yi, accepting Qin Siyuan’s calligraphy and painting along with the substantial gifts sent by the Su family. He didn’t go into much detail, though, about Zhou Pei’s whereabouts, and it was only when Ning Yi later called on Kang Xian that he learned the specifics.
At this point in the Wu dynasty, members of the imperial clan generally enjoyed very little personal freedom—only a handful of exceptions existed, more or less. Princess Chengguo, Zhou Xuan, controlled imperial estates and holdings scattered across the entire realm under her name, and to some extent, these already carried enough weight to influence the political landscape. Now, with both Zhou Xuan and Kang Xian growing old, the time had come to begin choosing successors.
They naturally had children of their own, but when it came to sensitivity toward economics and numbers, none of them could match Zhou Pei. For this reason, once Zhou Pei had shown some genuine interest in this area, Zhou Xuan decided to hand part of these affairs over to her. During this period, Zhou Xuan had decided to make the rounds of the various imperial estates, and had brought Zhou Pei along—partly to let her learn the practical details firsthand, and partly to let the stewards there get to know her face. Zhou Pei showed both real talent and genuine enthusiasm for this work, and Kang Xian mentioned as much to Ning Yi in passing.
Whether or not this counted as a good thing, Zhou Pei had found her own place in the world. On another front, though young Prince Zhou Junwu’s Natural Philosophy Society wasn’t held in much regard by others, it had, bit by bit, taken on some real shape. In the past, he’d simply gathered a group of friends to fool around with it casually; but after Ning Yi had spoken with him the previous year, he’d begun actively seeking out craftsmen, starting with kites—gradually increasing their size, their sturdiness, experimenting with better materials—and by this year, the kites capable of carrying loads had grown considerably larger. Meanwhile, work on enlarging sky lanterns was also underway.
A society like this had started out as mere child’s play, and Prince Kang’s household had simply turned a blind eye to it at first—but once its scale grew, the question of money inevitably had to be addressed. Zhou Junwu, however, proved to be a rather self-aware sort. Starting a few months back, he’d begun looking into the sources of the household’s income, trying to bring a few profitable shops under his own name.
That the young prince had shown an interest in making money and gaining some control—and that he’d done so more or less through proper means, rather than extorting his own friends or, like some other imperial descendants, taking money while ignoring the consequences—struck Kang Xian as a sign of real ambition and drive. When he mentioned it to Zhou Yong, Zhou Yong too was rather pleased. Prince Kang’s household holdings couldn’t compare to those of Princess Chengguo’s residence, of course, but they let him tinker with it as he pleased. So over this recent stretch, young Junwu had managed to extract a few profitable shops from the household stewards and kept them firmly in his own hands, using their income to subsidize the Natural Philosophy Society—muddling along, tight on funds but managing all the same, living out his own modest little life.
Once Ning Yi returned, Junwu happily showed off his progress to him, taking him along to see it in person. Remembering what Ning Yi had once told him about giving craftsmen proper standing and respect, Junwu had never once shortchanged the group of craftsmen he’d recruited—if anything, he treated them almost too generously. Ning Yi offered him some feedback on this, suggesting he refine his system of rewards and penalties, aim for greater efficiency, and not be equally generous with everyone regardless of merit. Along the way, he also passed on a bit of practical business experience.
As for what the Natural Philosophy Society might eventually produce, Ning Yi wasn’t particularly inclined to worry about it—a hot air balloon of dubious safety might well be within reach, but even he himself couldn’t realistically expect to build an airplane. What mattered more was that, through all this, Junwu would gain real experience for the road ahead. It was for this reason that, seeing how tightly Junwu was counting every coin of income and expense, Ning Yi made a particular point of advising him: frugality was fine, but many ordinary social expenses were still necessary. Fortunately, having grown up under an excellent education, Junwu understood this well enough, and wasn’t stingy in his dealings with other young nobles and aristocrats—it was only his own personal snacks, theater outings, and the like that he’d cut out entirely. Watching this, Ning Yi couldn’t help but find the young prince a little pitiable.
“From now on, just ask your sister for money,” Ning Yi said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Junwu nodded as though it were only natural. “Right, of course.”
Aside from these small comings and goings after returning home, Ning Yi mostly kept to lecturing at Yushan Academy during this period, without venturing out much otherwise. Jiangning, at this time, was steeped entirely in an air of peace and prosperity—lacking the feverish intensity of Bianliang, yet always carrying that distinctive elegance of the Jiangnan south. The Qinhuai River glowed with lantern light every night, and scholars and men of letters frequently produced fine works celebrating the peace and prosperity of the realm, and the progress of the northern campaign. A number of people came seeking Ning Yi’s company for such gatherings, but he turned each of them down in turn.
Of course, sometimes when the moment was right, it wasn’t only such people who came calling. As the wealthiest man in Jiangning, Puyang Yi, son of the Puyang family, called on him more than once, sometimes bringing along one or two others. The Puyang family had certain connections in official circles and held a share of the salt and tea trade; though their name might carry little weight in Bianliang, in the south they were, in fact, likely among the families implicated in that recent batch of ledgers. His visits to Ning Yi and Su Tan’er were, naturally, business-related, and need not be detailed further here.
…
The imperial-clan girl named Zhou Pei did not return to Jiangning until the fifth month of that year.
Learning that her teacher had returned to Jiangning and then departed again, the girl went to the storeroom and looked over, one by one, the gifts sent by the Su family, showing no particular unusual reaction afterward. The auspicious wedding date had been set for the sixth day of the sixth month, and everything was proceeding according to plan.
As for whatever faint stirrings of feeling the girl might once have harbored in her heart, few people knew of them—not even her younger brother Junwu, close as they were, had any idea of that brief, tender attachment she’d once carried in her more innocent years. The girl finally chose to bury it all away for good. On the eve of her wedding, she privately sought out her betrothed, Qu Zonghui, for a conversation; what exactly was said, no one knew. All that was known was that afterward, the wedding proceeded as scheduled, and the two of them—both equally accomplished—became a young married couple treated with mutual respect and admiration, the envy of many.
Time moved on, the seasons turned. Amid the great tides of the era, the fates of one or two individuals could hardly remain the focus of everyone’s attention. That summer, drought and flood disasters struck frequently; the Yellow and Huai Rivers overflowed their banks, and torrential rains brought disaster in their wake. Certain areas further south, meanwhile, fell into a season of extreme heat, leaving the rice harvest utterly barren.
At the same time, developments in the northern campaign continued to shift and evolve.
Over the past half year, though the Wu dynasty at home had continued celebrating the northern campaign’s supposed success amid an atmosphere of peace and prosperity—with scholars and men of letters eagerly composing essays praising this unprecedented golden age—things beyond Yanmen Pass had begun to grow tense, for reasons stemming from several directions at once.
In the original alliance between the Wu dynasty and the Jin people, it had been agreed that after jointly conquering the Liao, the Wu dynasty would recover the previously lost Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun. Now that Yanjing had been retaken and the Sixteen Prefectures had indeed changed hands, negotiations over their return to Wu control had, since the previous year, grown remarkably difficult.
To the Wu court officials involved in these negotiations, the Jin people were no longer the modest, accommodating band they had once been at the start of their uprising. Having forgotten how the Wu military had once helped hold the Liao in check, they had grown arrogant on the strength of a string of victories. And for the Jin, the Wu dynasty’s sluggishness throughout the northern campaign, along with its consistent string of defeats, had gradually shifted their bewilderment into open contempt. Though some among the Jin core—men like Wanyan Xiyin—still held the Wu dynasty’s underlying strength in some regard, most of them had, by this point, stopped taking this southern court seriously at all.
Of course, the Jurchen people themselves were not especially numerous, and having rapidly swallowed the better part of the Liao territory, they had already begun slowing their pace somewhat, content to enjoy what they’d gained. They had little real need to go to war with the Wu dynasty—but when the Wu dynasty came asking for the return of the Sixteen Prefectures, they were perfectly free to simply refuse.
This ongoing delay left the majority of pro-campaign officials at the Wu court growing increasingly anxious. At the end of the previous year, Tong Guan and others had taken it upon themselves to buy back Yanjing along with six prefectures—Zhuo, Yi, Tan, Shun, Jing, and Ji—by offering an increase of a million strings of cash in annual tribute. Praise and rewards continued pouring down through the court even now, but the negotiations that followed had already stalled into deadlock.
As for the remaining prefectures, the Jurchen had grown thoroughly unwilling to hand them over at all—to the point that a certain notion had begun circulating among them: you couldn’t even beat the Liao, and ended up paying them tribute instead; why not let us square off along the border and settle it by force this time? If we win, you raise the tribute further; if you manage to win, you can take the tribute back—how about that?
To keep up appearances of continued victory, Tong Guan and others had by now raised over fifty million strings of cash, gradually using it to buy back cities from the Jurchen one at a time, while proclaiming to the south: “This is what we conquered ourselves.” On one hand there was Tong Guan’s carefully maintained record of “victory”; on the other, the Jurchen’s repeated reneging on their word. Emperor Zhou Zhe began issuing orders from the capital, expressing his displeasure and demanding a “firmer stance” against the Jurchen—which left everyone working in the north caught hopelessly in the middle.
But the ones truly caught in a difficult position weren’t senior officials like Tong Guan—they still had money, and whether the cities they bought were empty shells or half-ruined remnants, they could simply keep buying more. It was Guo Yaoshi and the others now stationed in the north who genuinely began running into friction with the Jurchen. The root of this friction lay in the agreement made before the handover of the six prefectures.
In order to secure credit for himself first, the agreement Tong Guan and the others had signed with the Jin stipulated not only the million-string annual tribute the Wu dynasty owed the Jin, but also that, in handing over the six prefectures, the Jin would be permitted to carry off all the gold, silk, women, and wealthy households across those territories—Tong Guan cared nothing for whether the territory handed over still had any people left in it, so long as the land itself was in hand, the credit was his.
The Jurchen, short on manpower themselves yet limited in how much force they could actually deploy, began sweeping through the region’s officials, gentry, and wealthy households, prioritizing wealth first and then rounding up some able-bodied men as well. Meanwhile, Guo Yaoshi, even before returning to the capital to receive his rewards, had already recognized the importance of having enough troops under his command, and during the handover process had instructed his men to begin conscripting commoners from all directions into his army. Over the following months, what unfolded along this blurry border line between Wu, Jin, and Liao became a grim, living illustration of the old saying: rather die than retreat past Yanmen Pass.
The Jin began by stripping the wealthy households, while the Ever-Victorious Army mostly conscripted from the poor—in some sense, this was Guo Yaoshi’s own deliberate strategy to avoid friction. But regardless, wherever the two sides came into contact, friction was bound to arise. The Jin provoked them on several occasions—though they had no real intention of actually going to war with the Wu dynasty at this stage—and Guo Yaoshi’s side, for its part, endured it time and again. Negotiations were still ongoing, and Wu officials continued pressing the matter of returning the Sixteen Prefectures, though the Jurchen couldn’t be bothered to pay it much mind. Whenever the Jin side grew irritated over some friction, civil officials led by Wang Anzhong would have to go over and negotiate, mediate, and apologize on the Wu side’s behalf. As for the common people, ruin and broken families were everywhere, and life had already become unbearable.
Many people in the south were well aware of this state of affairs, including Qin Siyuan, Ning Yi, and others of their circle. In the end, the Secret Investigation Bureau’s position on the matter was straightforward: give Guo Yaoshi full support. Whenever Guo Yaoshi asked the Wu court for money, weapons, or logistical backing, the Chancellor’s residence provided it in full, and Guo Yaoshi’s constant conscription and expansion of his forces did, in fact, give a fair number of the conscripted at least some chance of survival, in their own way.
As for the civil officials, Wang Anzhong and the others were similarly frustrated. The Wu dynasty had always operated under the principle of civil officials restraining military ones, yet here, not only did they have to defer to Guo Yaoshi’s every whim, they had to apologize to the Jin on top of it—leaving a “parent official” like himself, amid all this chaos, in an extremely awkward position.
As officials capable enough to be sent to a post like this, they weren’t entirely lacking in either integrity or ability—as the “parent official” of a region, protecting the land and its people was, naturally, their duty. But under his jurisdiction now, resentment ran sky-high, and he lacked even the power to properly intervene—Guo Yaoshi’s Ever-Victorious Army itself was a further source of trouble for men like him. In Wang Anzhong’s eyes, Guo Yaoshi was arbitrary and domineering, utterly ruthless in his conscription of able-bodied men, and constantly extracting wealth and goods to bribe various officials—though Wang Anzhong himself, receiving such gifts, could hardly refuse them either, which only deepened his resentment toward the man: a petty schemer, building factions through profit and coercing others with self-interest!
In the end, perhaps it all came down to this: he had no real means of restraining Guo Yaoshi, this man so favored by fortune at present, and still had to maintain a smiling face toward him regardless. As a civil official, he had originally come north hoping to build a name for himself and achieve something of note—but now… this posting had turned out to be utterly without meaning!
By the sixth month, against this backdrop, a wave of tension swept through the region.
Ever since the fall of Yanjing, the Liao state had already fallen into a state of mere survival, clinging to what little remained. Emperor Tianzuo had fled into exile, and pillars of the Liao state like Yelu Dashi had either scattered or fled westward. In the first month, just as Guo Yaoshi went to the capital to receive his rewards, the Northern Court’s Grand King, Xiao Gan, declared himself emperor, gathering the remaining Liao populace to found the Great Xi state. Xiao Gan was a man of extraordinary talent and ambition, having repulsed the Jin forces on the battlefield several times over—and if he could hold his own against the Jin, resisting Wu forces was, needless to say, hardly a challenge for him at all. Guo Yaoshi’s original Resentment Army had, in fact, once been under his command, and it had been Xiao Gan who had turned the tide at the battle for Yanjing, nearly costing Guo Yaoshi and the others their lives—leaving him with a considerable shadow of dread toward the man. By the sixth month, running short on provisions, Xiao Gan finally turned against the Wu dynasty again, marching his troops out toward Lulong Ridge and swiftly, almost effortlessly, breaking through Jingzhou before pressing on toward the Wu forces directly.
A grim, murderous mood hung in the air.
At this point, though the Wu dynasty still carried the banner of its northern campaign, the forces it could actually field capable of real fighting were, in truth, none too many—especially against a commander like Xiao Gan, who could stand toe-to-toe with the Jurchen themselves. Everyone’s hearts were uneasy. The Ever-Victorious Army had by now expanded to fifty thousand men, but was still very much in the process of training, while its subordinate militia—able-bodied civilians who could be mobilized—was said to number as many as three hundred thousand. Under pressure from all sides, in the middle of that month, the forces under Zhang Linghui and Liu Shunren, fellow officers under the Ever-Victorious Army alongside Guo Yaoshi, marched out to meet Xiao Gan in battle.
Xiao Gan defeated Zhang Linghui and Liu Shunren at Shimen Town, and in the blink of an eye, captured Jizhou as well.
This was, by now, truly a matter of grave military crisis. Great General Tong Guan had already returned to the capital to receive his rewards, and repeatedly sent dispatches censuring Wang Anzhong and Guo Yaoshi. At the same time, they reached out to the Jin, attempting to persuade them to defeat Xiao Gan and hand him over to the Wu dynasty afterward. Word of this proposal, once it reached Jin circles, briefly became something of a joke among them.
By mid-seventh month, autumn had arrived, though the lingering summer heat had yet to fully fade. In the capital, many high officials were preoccupied, busy dealing with the flood and drought disasters plaguing north and south alike—yet amid these brief lulls, in casual conversation, many found their gaze drifting northward all the same, Qin Siyuan, Ning Yi, and Yao Zunian among them.
At that very same moment, in a place called Yaopu, within the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, the great army under Guo Yaoshi’s command had finally arrived, and his vanguard forces had begun facing off against Xiao Gan’s.
Guo Yaoshi sat astride his horse, gazing from a distance at Xiao Gan’s flaming crimson banner, his expression having settled into something silent and resolute. What came to mind was the feeling he’d had, more than two years before, the first time he’d laid eyes on Xiao Gan.
The founding of the Resentment Army had, in truth, taken place seven years earlier. At the time, when Gao Yongchang of the Bohai state had risen in rebellion, the Liao’s campaign against him had gone poorly, and their forces had been defeated by the Jurchen who came to Gao Yongchang’s aid. Emperor Tianzuo had then ordered Prince Yan, Yelu Chun, to recruit famished refugees from the Liaodong region into the army, meaning for the name to signify vengeance against the Jurchen—thus it was named the “Resentment Army.”
Those Liaodong men, at the time, had only enlisted for the sake of a meal to survive on, but by then the Liao state itself was already in steep decline, and treated this army abominably. In the end, the Resentment Army never achieved much in the way of victories, and instead rebelled repeatedly. Two years earlier, when the Resentment Army’s leader at the time, Dong Xiaochou, and others rose up after a string of military failures, Yelu Yudu and Xiao Gan had come to put down the rebellion. Knowing full well the Resentment Army was no match for them, Guo Yaoshi killed Dong Xiaochou and the others himself and accepted terms of surrender—that had been the first time he laid eyes on Xiao Gan.
At the time, there had been rumors circulating privately that Yelu Yudu, hoping to resolve the matter of the Resentment Army’s rebellions once and for all, had discussed with Xiao Gan simply slaughtering the entire Resentment Army on the spot, to be done with it forever. But Xiao Gan, being a man of open and upright character, had argued that “there may well be loyal, righteous men among them who were merely coerced by others for a time—how could we possibly kill them all?” It was Xiao Gan’s intervention that had spared Guo Yaoshi and the others’ lives, and once word of this spread, everyone had come to feel a deep debt of gratitude toward him. The first time Guo Yaoshi saw Xiao Gan, he had sensed at once the man’s noble, commanding bearing—the true aura of someone born to rule, an heroic spirit that feared no challenge and looked out over the world unbowed.
And yet, in his own heart, Guo Yaoshi had felt no urge to submit. What he’d felt, instead, was only fear, and a sense of his own insignificance.
In the eyes of men like Xiao Gan, the Resentment Army barely counted as human at all. Back when they’d recruited this band of starving refugees as soldiers, it had been done in the spirit of tossing them a scrap of mercy, sparing their lives out of charity—and these men themselves had only wanted, originally, to survive. Yet even after enlisting, they’d continued to suffer just as badly. In truth, how much genuine ambition could men on the brink of starvation really be expected to have? If it hadn’t been for the constant withholding of pay and provisions, if their standing within the army hadn’t been lower than that of dogs, how many among this band of nearly-starved men would have truly harbored some innate rebellious streak, some real desire to revolt?
He understood the desperation that had driven Dong Xiaochou and the others, and he understood, too, the desperation behind killing them with his own hands. When they knelt before Xiao Gan and the others as men who had turned their coats and rendered a service, when Xiao Gan and the others praised their accomplishment, what he felt, still, was fear.
Those above them were tigers, and they themselves weren’t even dogs—perhaps no better than cockroaches. The other side could casually discuss whether or not to slaughter their entire force of tens of thousands, and just as casually spare the lives of those same tens of thousands, as a display of their own magnanimity. While others felt fortunate, he, watching Xiao Gan’s noble, commanding figure, felt only fear.
A tiger stretches out a claw, idly nudges the cockroach before it, yawns, and lets it live another day.
In the several encounters with Xiao Gan that followed, even this man who had survived countless battles felt nothing but fear each time.
This feeling hadn’t been especially strong at first. But once the Jin and Wu forces joined together against the Liao, Xiao Gan and the others had grown increasingly distrustful of any troops outside the core Liao system—and given the Resentment Army’s history of rebellion, it became clear that Xiao Gan, who had once spared them, now truly intended to move against them. Only Guo Yaoshi, quick-witted above all, sensed it in time and rallied the others to defect to the Wu dynasty first. Events later proved this decision to have been the right one.
That day, Guo Yaoshi suddenly realized: he no longer had to be a cockroach, nor a dog. He could, to some degree, become a man.
He had gone on to plan the campaign to take Yanjing—but the Wu dynasty’s own forces had proven simply too incompetent. When Xiao Gan returned, he came crashing down on them like a nightmare given form. Guo Yaoshi had once thought to make a desperate stand on the battlefield, but the speed of the Wu army’s collapse threw all such plans into disarray, and in the end, he never even got the chance to fight to the death. He could only flee in disgrace, swept along by the handful of brothers still around him.
Aside from a single furious outburst back at the camp that day, he never voiced any complaint against the Wu military. All he did, from then on, was expand his forces and press-gang more men, steadily building up strength. Using his position, he extracted vast sums of money—partly to look after his own men, partly to bribe officials of the Wu dynasty on every side, because Wu officials, it turned out, all loved this sort of thing.
Once they were pleased, he could ask for grain, weapons, and other support in return, and could get them to look the other way regarding his conscription methods. He knew that some disgruntled civil officials had submitted memorials to the court accusing him, and so he simply sent them even more money in turn. As the Ever-Victorious Army grew larger, some of his own men had begun to grow arrogant; in the frictions with the Jin, it was he himself who stepped forward first, holding back everyone’s resentment: “Without victories to our name, none of you amount to anything! Bear it, all of you!”
This time, with Xiao Gan marching south, he too had held back for a long while, enduring pressure from every direction—first letting Zhang Linghui, Liu Shunren, and the others probe the enemy’s true strength, then quietly waiting for the right moment, until now…
Clouds drifted overhead, brilliant sunlight spilling down—beneath this sky still belonging to summer, that crimson banner looked like the very concentrated flame of the great Liao empire itself, and beneath that banner stood the mountain of a hero, now, on this battlefield where tens of thousands faced each other, closing in from the other side.
Guo Yaoshi sat quietly astride his horse, watching that direction like a rock, unmoving. Only the warhorse beneath him seemed to sense some unease, shifting slightly; he reached out and patted its neck, murmuring something silently to himself, though his expression only grew colder, more composed.
The killing intent had already begun to spread.
Along the Yellow River in the south, every spring, the carp swim upstream against the current to leap the Dragon Gate Mountain, where heaven’s fire burns their tails from behind and transforms them into dragons.
Ahead of him now—that was his own Dragon Gate…