The wind blew past. Even in the dry season of winter, the channel of the Yellow River still looked wide, and the tall embankment rose here like a small mountain, making the people standing among it seem especially small.
Since the Wu Rui Camp had been scattered, they had been settled in this area for some time now, and Ning Yi had already come to this stretch of the Yellow River embankment more than once or twice. After giving his general instructions, he made his way down from the earthen slope; it was already past noon, and the wind carried a bitter chill. Tian Donghan came over wanting to support him, but Ning Yi waved him off.
Of the two, Tian Donghan was nearly forty years old, while Ning Yi was only just past twenty. Judging by that alone, Ning Yi was hardly the one who should need support. But ever since that disastrous night, gathering the scattered troops in this area, carrying out all manner of persuasion and psychological guidance, and finally managing to lift morale within this small pocket of men — all of it had been directed by the young man before them. At the same time, Bamboo Notes was still carrying out its scorched-earth evacuation work across several hundred li, and all of this, too, was being overseen by him.
In the early hours of the twenty-fifth of the ninth month, after the Jurchen broke through the camp at Qi County, they also seized the grain stores. At the time, the rear-guard troops of the Wu Rui Camp had already lost their nerve, and with the Jurchen killing their way through again and again, they had grown somewhat careless. Ning Yi led several dozen men in a covert infiltration, burned the grain stores, and fled — the Jurchen cavalry pursued them the whole way. Though they eventually managed, by good fortune, to break free, most of the survivors among those several dozen men carried wounds, whether light or severe.
After that incident, they immediately threw themselves into searching for Qin Shaoqian, gathering the scattered troops, and continuing the scorched-earth evacuation work; Ning Yi’s body recovered only very slowly. Though in theory, as the one directing things, he only needed to oversee the overall picture, in practice, during these days, he was often unable to find time to sleep at night. After the Jurchen took Qi County, the Ministry of Finance’s various intelligence records could not be moved in time and had to be burned, resulting in the loss of a great deal of information. Combined with the limited means of communication in this era, the small teams that Bamboo Notes had sent out needed to receive orders and exchange information through coordination at Qi County. With that base gone, the entire framework had been shattered, and rebuilding it from scratch was no easy task.
Moreover, since the armies in the surrounding region had all been defeated, Bamboo Notes’ efforts to urge the people hiding in the wild mountains and forests to relocate were even more constrained in their means.
In the first few days after the great defeat, Ning Yi spent nearly all his time on a stretcher or in bed. Fortunately his mind remained clear — ordinarily, after suffering such a crushing defeat, the vast majority of people would fall into despair for some time, but Ning Yi alone, even while gravely wounded, was already actively working out responses: searching for places nearby that might be able to take in scattered soldiers, seeking out any officials who still retained some functioning authority, searching for Qin Shaoqian, preparing arguments for rallying the scattered troops, trying to reach Bamboo Notes members who might be dispersed in various places, reorganizing the Ministry of Finance’s records, filling in the gaps, and so on and so on.
Too few people, most of them badly wounded, exhausted in spirit, under crushing psychological pressure — these troubles weighed on nearly everyone at first. And in such chaotic circumstances at the time, no matter how clear the instructions were, most of them were difficult to bring to any result. And yet Tian Donghan and the others — including the several hundred soldiers who had scattered alongside the Bamboo Notes group that night — were, almost without exception, driven and stirred into action by this stubborn, near-fanatical attitude, powerful almost to the point of madness.
At a time when everyone was utterly exhausted, what the young man before them chose was, surprisingly, not comfort and rest, but to push everyone to their limits.
“If complaining did any good, I’d curse for three days and three nights straight starting right now…”
“If you fall into the snow with no clothes on, the first thing you have to do is get yourself moving — hesitate and you die…”
“Not everything can be given up on. Once things have come this far, I don’t care how hard it is for you, whether you deserve pity, whether you want to cry — no one is going to pay attention to that! A person’s whole life is like this — ahead of you is a crack in the mountain, and all you can do is squeeze forward! Even if your bones break, you still have to squeeze through. You only have two paths: either you squeeze through, and everything now becomes your capital for the future, or you die here, and no matter how pitiful you are now, no one will feel sorry for you! So if there’s a part of your mind dwelling on how fearsome the Jurchen are, how useless you all are — get that thought out of your head and go hang yourself! All you need to remember is: now! No matter how hard it is, do only what you’re capable of doing! Don’t think about what you can’t do, because if you can’t do it, you’ll be dead!”
That was how the young man on the stretcher was at the time — issuing precise orders on one hand while rallying everyone’s spirits with the other. The severely wounded were beyond helping themselves. At first, naturally, it was the lightly wounded members of Bamboo Notes who were able to get moving; at that time, conditions outside remained chaotic, and even though the orders given were clear, few of those sent out managed to accomplish their goals, whether reaching fellow Bamboo Notes members or finding any officials who still had a functioning organization. In the confusion of the flight and relocation, a great deal of household registration data had also been lost, and filling in those gaps could only rely on the memories of those involved — which made the problem all the more of a headache.
But this relentless attitude turned the work everyone was responsible for silent and methodical — at the very least, there was now a great deal of work waiting to be done. The soldiers who had scattered together with the Bamboo Notes group at the start moved along with them, and once some of the severely wounded members of Bamboo Notes began to recover, and the tendrils sent out from this side found nearby Bamboo Notes teams, those soldiers too began coming to ask what tasks needed to be assigned to them.
More and more people were sent out, found others who could be gathered together, and returned — like gears clicking into place one after another, setting off a chain reaction. They settled in a small mountain village along the Yellow River whose population had already been relocated. Every day, people gritted their teeth and carried on with the work — going out to search for people, digging trenches and setting up barricades in front of the valley, gathering information about the surrounding area. Everything seemed to be held together by some invisible giant hand, and Ning Yi, still in bed, personally inquired into nearly every single matter. In those days, each new batch of arrivals could lift everyone’s spirits; every time necessary medicine was located, it brought a sense of ease; and whenever someone’s condition improved, people could almost feel their own strength growing along with it.
Looking back on it afterward, even without doing things this way, given enough time, most of the scattered soldiers would probably have found their way back to some unit eventually, and some Bamboo Notes members could still have been reached. But there was almost no other method that could have achieved this near-“tempering” effect, plunging everyone into a fever of urgency. And all of it had been accomplished by the young man’s own hands, at the cost of his wounds refusing to heal for days on end.
After that, contact was finally made with the scattered troops led by Qin Shaoqian. In the fighting that night, Qin Shaoqian had led the elite of the Wu Rui Camp charging on the front line, and he too had suffered severe wounds, passing out several times during the retreat. But the desperate fighting of these men had ultimately carved out a path to survival; he led several thousand men through a winding retreat, and afterward fought his way through two more engagements. By the time he was found, this force was likewise gathering up scattered soldiers, and had amassed roughly four thousand men. Only then did the two groups begin to merge.
Of these four thousand-odd men, roughly a thousand were Qin Shaoqian’s own direct elite troops, and about three hundred of them had trained at Dulong Ridge. Though their loyalty was by no means necessarily to Ning Yi, once they had come over, they became manpower that could be put to use.
When the two forces first began to merge, problems started to appear. Ning Yi had no legitimate authority when it came to commanding troops — the matters he was responsible for had never truly been military command. Before Qin Shaoqian arrived, because Bamboo Notes had taken the lead, everyone had been swept up and had submitted to Ning Yi’s direction. But once the four thousand-plus men were mixed in, some of the officers of the Wu Rui Camp — and even officers from other units gathered up along the way — began, upon seeing how orderly the work had become, to question the whole arrangement.
At the time, Qin Shaoqian was himself still recovering from severe wounds. Ning Yi went to see him and spoke with him over the course of about a cup of tea; afterward, Qin Shaoqian took up his broadsword, and the two of them went out and beat down these several officers and their personal guards. In truth, by this point, the influence of Bamboo Notes’ rhetoric had already spread among the soldiers with extraordinary speed. After a defeat of this magnitude, everyone’s hearts were filled with resentment and unease, and during the earlier work, people had constantly discussed these matters among themselves. To the soldiers at the bottom, all of this could naturally be traced back to the cowardice of those above them, their scheming for power, their mutual distrust, and so on.
At this time, the corruption within the Wu dynasty’s armies was plain for all to see — the padding of payrolls, the taking of bribes — everyone knew of it, and some had even taken part in it themselves. But this crushing defeat, combined with Bamboo Notes’ pragmatic approach and its rhetoric, had severed the connection between the nature of these two things.
“We’re all going to die — the Jurchen are coming, Bian Liang is going to be lost, even the whole Wu dynasty might die, and if we don’t do something real, our whole families are really going to be wiped out…” — this was the message Bamboo Notes had been subtly spreading through its actions, and Ning Yi’s attitude and methods, passed along by word of mouth, had won nods of agreement from many. By this point, the private grumbling of a few officers had inevitably become held up as the very model of scheming and self-interest, and when Qin Shaoqian, as the ranking officer, struck them down like this, he immediately received everyone’s support.
In the armies of the Wu dynasty, soldiers did not know their officers, and officers did not know their soldiers; Qin Shaoqian had passed through many postings as an officer, and even with all his effort, he might not have been able to truly hold the Wu Rui Camp firmly in his grip. But at this moment, the crushing defeat had already begun to sever these officers’ control over the rank-and-file soldiers as well. Qin Shaoqian’s nominal status as the commanding officer of the Wu Rui Camp proved useful here. This show of force tore apart, brutally and directly, the bonds between the lower and middle ranks among these four thousand-plus men — apart from a few officers’ personal guards, almost no soldiers stood on their side. Even those personal guards were now looked upon by everyone with the eyes reserved for “traitors to the nation” and “collaborators.”
After seizing control, command over these rank-and-file soldiers finally returned directly into Qin Shaoqian’s hands. The greatest cost of it, however, was that Qin Shaoqian was once again confined to bed for several days due to his wounds worsening.
Dividing up blame, telling people “it wasn’t your fault,” telling people that this was a fresh start, that the past should be forgotten, winning over the majority while striking down a small minority, and turning guilt and frustration into fanatical zeal… in a certain sense, all of these were techniques of manipulation and deception, methods of political struggle. But by this point, Ning Yi felt no guilt over any of it in his heart, because there was no other path left to take.
With Bian Liang possibly on the verge of falling, everything had already reached its most dangerous point — for every extra measure of control he could gain over the forces before him, that extra measure was worth taking.
As for Tian Donghan, in all these matters — rebuilding the framework for the scorched-earth strategy after everything had been shattered, still firmly pushing forward the operation of the whole enterprise, the propaganda and control exerted over these scattered soldiers that had brought order to everything and produced an entirely different atmosphere from before — everything the young man before him did, though sometimes it seemed cold and ruthless, genuinely filled him with reverence. “Respect” no longer even seemed an adequate word for it. In the past, watching Bamboo Notes carry out disaster relief and match wits with various figures of the martial world, this proprietor’s methods had already impressed him — but what showed itself now, from within that even somewhat frail body before him, was a will hard enough to crush almost anything in its path. Even a man of the martial world like himself, one accustomed to seeing ruthlessness, could not help but feel a shiver at it.
Making his way down from the embankment, the village at the bottom of the valley — originally called Xia Village — now held gathered within this stretch of the valley roughly fourteen thousand soldiers or more. Around the valley, layer upon layer of trenches and anti-cavalry barricades stretched outward; because the scattered soldiers had been gathered in such haste, and there were so many of them, living conditions were extremely poor. As Ning Yi approached the row of shelters where he was staying, he saw a young woman brewing medicine outside — it was Juan’er.
The Su family had originally just been cloth merchants in Jiangning — neither especially large nor especially small a business, one that occasionally had dealings with underworld affairs on the side. Among his wife Su Tan’er’s three maidservants, Juan’er had a relatively calm and steady temperament, and in the past, such matters had often been handled by her. Later, once he began managing part of the Covert Investigation Bureau himself, and Tan’er also became involved in it, Juan’er had likewise come into contact with these affairs through her. This time, with the Jurchen advancing south, Ning Yi had had Tan’er and the others relocated, but Su Tan’er, unwilling to let matters in the north spiral entirely out of control, had assigned Juan’er to a position on the edge of the battlefield to provide support. After the defeat of the Wu Rui Camp, by the time Ning Yi encountered the maidservant who had made her way to him through many twists and turns, he no longer had the energy to complain. In the end, during this whole stretch of time, Juan’er had both looked after him and handled a great many matters on his behalf, giving him tremendous help.
The young woman brewing medicine, seeing his figure, moved to run over and support him, but Ning Yi again waved her off, pointing instead toward a nearby room — the place where Qin Shaoqian, still recovering from his wounds, was staying.
Entering through the doorway, Qin Shaoqian sat on the bed, reading a tattered military treatise he carried with him. As the second son of the Qin family, though he had always been a general leading troops, his temperament had a certain flamboyant, unrestrained streak to it. Now one of his eyes had gone blind, but in bearing, he had become even steadier and more solid.
A true man is, more often than not, tempered through hardship.
“Your wounds still haven’t healed, and you’re out walking around again.” Qin Shaoqian set aside his military treatise. “Sit.”
“It looks worse than it feels — I’m actually all right.” Ning Yi sat down in a chair by the bed. “I’ve had a thought recently.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Ning Yi laid out what he had in mind. Qin Shaoqian listened, his brow furrowing slightly, and by the end, his gaze had turned extremely grave. He mulled it over for a long moment. “Is there any chance it could actually work?”
“I don’t know. The details can still be worked out — all I can do is give it my best effort. In the past, whenever I talked about other people’s schemes and conspiracies, I’d laugh at them as small-time tricksters. But when you don’t have enough leverage, everyone ends up being nothing more than a small-time trickster.” Ning Yi said, “I’m no different now.”
Qin Shaoqian thought it over for a while, then raised his head. “I’ve always trusted your judgment. This is your call to make — I’ll support you.”
“Mm.” Ning Yi nodded, and stood up.
After taking his leave and stepping out of the room, he walked toward where Juan’er was pouring out the medicine. Halfway there, he paused, stretched out his hand slightly, and raised his head.
That winter, in the thirteenth year of Jinghan, the snow came later than usual — but at this moment, thousands upon thousands of snowflakes began drifting down from the sky…