In the thirteenth year of the Jinghan era, in the latter part of the eleventh month, heavy snow fell over Bian Liang.

Compared to the heavy snow, the Jurchen siege was the greatest calamity facing all of Bian Liang—indeed, the entire Wu Dynasty. For months now, the Jurchen’s sudden southern advance had struck the people of the Wu Dynasty like an overwhelming catastrophe. Zongwang, leading fewer than a hundred thousand men, had swept through everything in his path, crushing an army several hundred thousand strong outside Bian Liang—a feat that, in a sense, had delivered a fierce and merciless lesson to a people grown old and weary in their decline.

For a long time, beneath the surface show of peace and prosperity, the people of the Wu Dynasty had not, in fact, neglected military affairs. With scholars in command of the army and vast sums of money poured into it, what had come of it, more than anything, was a flourishing of every conceivable military theory. There was, in truth, no shortage of men who understood how battles ought to be fought, how logistics ought to be secured, how schemes both open and hidden ought to be employed. And so, unable to defeat the Liao, they could buy victories with money; unable to defeat the Jurchen, they could sow discord, use one barbarian to check another. But by this point, none of it mattered anymore.

Wanyan Zongwang’s campaign, over these past months, had crushed every last hope the military theorists had held. Every move he made was decisive and resolute; the boldness and fierce spirit of a founding dynasty’s army was enough to overwhelm nearly every scheme set against it. Especially after launching the full assault on Bian Liang on the twenty-second of the eleventh month, the Jurchen army had come crashing forward like wildfire; every strike of Zongwang’s seemed to cut decisively into some vital point of the Wu Dynasty, with almost no wasted feints.

And what Bian Liang could muster to match him was, in the end, only the accumulated depth of two hundred years built up at the level of the state itself.

Two centuries of rule by scholars had, after all, accumulated something that could genuinely be called depth. Loyalty to the sovereign, love of country, the willingness to sacrifice oneself for righteousness—combined with truly personal, immediate self-interest as a driving force—Bian Liang had, in the end, still managed to mobilize great numbers of people in a short span of time, throwing themselves at the defense of the city like moths to a flame.

If Zongwang’s every strike targeted the vital points of Bian Liang, then this bloated, militarily weak colossus that was Bian Liang, unable to dodge, could only respond by filling the gaps with sheer numbers of lives. From the twenty-second to the fall of night on the twenty-fifth, when Zongwang delivered the heaviest blow yet against Bian Liang—the night several hundred Jurchen soldiers broke into the city—the number of soldiers and civilians who died retaking the wall and clearing out the Jurchen who’d breached it, near the New Suanzao Gate alone, had already exceeded six thousand; the wall and the ground beneath it had become a mountain of corpses, a sea of blood.

There was no time to ponder the meaning of life and death; in fighting like this, soldiers and the great mass of mobilized civilians alike threw themselves one after another into the abyss of death. Whether people ought to be moved by this, or ought to reflect on it in sorrow, was hard to say. But at least in this moment, the old men responsible for defending the city were, in truth, discharging their duty to hold the line at the cost of their very lives. Li Gang had, at one point, personally taken up a blade and led troops charging up onto the wall; and behind him, Qin Siyuan, upon learning the scale of the casualties, had sat in his chair holding those numbers, his hands trembling for a long while, unable even to speak.

When a nation has lost its strength, all that remains is to burn through lives instead.

Along this line at Bian Liang, absorbing the Jurchen’s massive expenditure of lives—outside the city, the many forces already battered and terrified had little capacity left to break the siege, or even the courage to face the Jurchen’s main army. And yet, at dusk on the twenty-fifth, the sudden eruption of fighting at the Jurchen’s Moutuo Ridge camp was likewise resolute and fierce. In a sense, after over three hundred thousand troops rallying to the crown’s aid had already been crushed by the Jurchen, this sudden offensive launched by a mere four thousand-odd men was resolute and sharp to a degree that left one stunned.

Even as Zongwang led his main force in delivering blow after blow against Bian Liang, the hidden watchers lurking in the shadows had finally struck as well, delivering an equally resolute blow against the Jurchen’s own vital point—their rear!

From the very appearance of these four thousand men, with heavy cavalry leading the charge, it had been an unexpected, powerful blow to the Jurchen forces garrisoning Moutuo Ridge. This style, utterly unlike that of ordinary Wu Dynasty troops, left the Jurchen forces somewhat stunned—but it did not, for all that, frighten them. Despite suffering a certain degree of losses, the Jurchen army, under the skillful command of its officers, continued to maneuver against this attacking Wu Dynasty force outside Moutuo Ridge.

And the attacking Wu Dynasty force, with the same degree of resolve, swiftly launched its assault against the outer wall of the Moutuo Ridge camp. After a brief period of maneuvering on both sides, the two light cavalry forces outside the camp clashed together once more.

At the same time, the heavy cavalry and infantry that had paused briefly in front of Moutuo Ridge launched a charge at the Jurchen camp, and in the blink of an eye, pushed the entire battle to its climax.

Given the numbers involved at this moment, a hundred-odd heavy cavalry represented an enormous strategic advantage. They were not unstoppable, but this kind of unit—built up through the accumulation of vast strategic resources—could only be countered, in a direct confrontation, through an equally massive expenditure of resources and lives. Jurchen cavalry were, for the most part, light cavalry, precisely because heavy cavalry are meant to strike at points the enemy must save at all costs; on open ground, light cavalry could easily wear down heavy cavalry over time. But here and now, Pulu’s force of over a thousand infantry became the first to be sacrificed.

The camp behind them could, of course, provide support with arrow fire, but arrows posed almost no threat to heavy cavalry. Even against infantry, if the enemy was willing to disregard casualties, the losses inflicted by arrow fire alone would, for a time, be far from unbearable.

Before Moutuo Ridge, the iron hooves formed into ranks, thundering forward like rolling drums, while behind them, nearly two thousand infantry began advancing with a roar. In the formation at the front of the camp, Pulu turned to look back at Shuliesu atop the wall, but the order that came back was close to hopeless. He turned back and bellowed: “Hold this position for me!” The Jurchen infantry under his command, staring at that wall of black heavy cavalry bearing down like a great cliff, turned paler than the snow at night. At the same time, the rear gate of the camp began to open, and the last five hundred light cavalry in the camp charged out fiercely—he meant to circle around the heavy cavalry and strike the rear of the infantry with a surprise assault!

On the other flank, nearly four thousand cavalry were locked in a tangled clash, sweeping the battle line this way!

Amid the swirling snow, the battle lines crashed together like a tide, waves of blood surging forth. The equally formidable Jurchen cavalry tried to avoid the heavy cavalry, seeking to tear through the enemy’s weaker points—but even the relatively weaker light cavalry and infantry here possessed considerable fighting will. The young officer Yue Fei led eighteen hundred infantry, wielding spears and blades and shields, to meet the charging Jurchen light cavalry, while trying to link up with their own cavalry to squeeze the Jurchen cavalry’s room to maneuver. Ahead, Han Jing and the others, leading the heavy cavalry, had already carved through Pulu’s infantry formation amid the waves of blood. At one point, he turned his gaze toward the sky behind the Moutuo Ridge camp wall.

Shuliesu turned his head as well.

It seemed the sounds of commotion and slaughter were drifting over.

Behind the camp, firelight and pillars of smoke were rising.

“Brothers—!” In the wind and snow before the camp, someone let out an excited, half-crazed roar, a chilling frenzy in his voice. “Follow me—follow me and kill them all—”

“Waaaah—”

In this moment, like a pot of old broth finally brought to a full boil, the wild, frenzied atmosphere that usually belonged to the Jurchen army when routing an enemy reappeared amid this boiling, bloody melee.

The light cavalry, though resolute in will earlier, had still lacked seasoned battle-hardness—but now they threw themselves forward like a pack of wolves gone mad. And among the infantry, Yue Fei, originally young but level-headed, had likewise grown excited, as though drunk on wine, his eyes flushed a deep red. Gripping his spear, he laughed loudly: “Follow me and kill—” organizing his spearmen into a forest of blades, driving fiercely into the cavalry ahead. The instant his spear point pierced into a warhorse’s body, what flashed through his mind was the image of the old man Zhou Tong, who had died attempting to assassinate Zonghan—his master…

The muscles knotted across both his arms seemed to erupt with fire; the Jurchen cavalryman hesitated for just a moment, and the whole body of horse and rider was flung into the air by this young officer and the men beside him. With a thunderous crash, the warhorse screamed, snow churned up in a swirling storm, and thick, hot blood sprayed across the faces and bodies of the soldiers ahead. All around, horses fell, men were knocked flying, and countless killings reached a white-hot pitch…

A little earlier, as darkness had fallen, over a hundred figures had crossed the frozen lake, heading straight for the rear of the Jurchen camp.

Though the Jurchen guarded the front of the camp closely, their defenses along the three sides surrounding the lake were, in fact, not lax either. Even before the lake had frozen over, the Jurchen had kept a fair degree of watch in these directions; once it froze, they increased their patrols even further. The towering camp walls also had watchtowers, keeping an eye on the nearby lake surface.

But at a time like this, with heavy snow falling, night descending, and soldiers grown accustomed to months of relative calm, there were, in the end, still blind spots.

Cutting a hole in the ice at a distance, several white-clad figures slipped silently into the water, then reappeared soundlessly on the shore, moving swiftly—cutting the throats of three patrolling Jurchen soldiers, one after another. They changed into the dead men’s uniforms, pushed the bodies into the water, then drew crossbows and ropes wrapped in oilcloth from within their robes, shot down the Jurchen soldiers manning the nearby watchtower behind the camp wall, and climbed up to take their place.

Over a hundred men in white infiltrated the Jurchen camp, one after another, within moments.

This group, trained by Mount Lüliang, had already undergone extensive training in infiltration, sabotage, concealment, and assassination. In a sense, the martial world’s underworld had always produced many skilled at this sort of operation—it was only that most of them acted without organization or discipline, preferring to work alone. With Ning Yi having Lu Hongti, a true master of this craft, as his advisor, and with everything systematized under her guidance, this had become the prototype of what might be called special forces in this era. With their most elite operatives deployed this time, and Hongti herself leading them, in the blink of an eye they had paralyzed the outer defenses at the rear of the Jurchen camp.

In ordinary times, with the bulk of the Jurchen army stationed here, such an operation would have been all but impossible. But this time, with nearly five thousand Jurchen having already left through the gate to engage in fierce combat with Qin Shaoqian and the others outside, and the northern camp wall being the top defensive priority, Shuliesu and the others would gladly have thrown even the craftsmen into service if they could—the manpower that could actually be spared for rear defense was, in truth, not very much at all.

After all, had it not been for Ning Yi, no one else, even organizing a large body of troops, could have managed to infiltrate so silently. And one or two skilled martial artists from the underworld, no matter how cleverly they schemed their way in, would have accomplished little of real significance.

They then located the Jurchen’s food and supply depot; as Hongti led her group in to infiltrate it, Ning Yi doubled back with several others and found the barracks where the Jurchen held their Han Chinese captives. The defenses here were considerably weaker; they killed a few guards, and Ning Yi cut through the great lock on the barracks gate, then threw the bodies and weapons of the dead Jurchen soldiers down before these prisoners, who had already suffered torment for so long.

“Listen outside—the Jurchen have gone to attack Bian Liang, and the imperial army is attacking this place right now. Anyone who can still move, pick up a weapon and follow me to kill—take more weapons! Otherwise you’ll just wait here to die.”

At this time there were several thousand prisoners held in the camp; this first batch still hesitated. But Ning Yi paid them no mind—he pulled out bamboo tubes filled with fire oil from inside his clothes and poured it around, then set the barracks alight right where they stood.

The entire camp was thrown into chaos in an instant, and on the other side, the Jurchen’s supply depot burst into raging flame, small-scale fighting breaking out. By the time Wanyan Amu led a small force of elite troops rushing over, half the camp had already erupted into chaos; fire had already begun spreading through several of the supply depots. Most of the Han Chinese captives had been freed—some organized themselves into a desperate slaughter, others scattered and fled in every direction, and many, too afraid to resist or flee, simply hoped to survive. But mixed in among them were the hundred-odd infiltrators, and there was little these captives could do to control how things unfolded.

A quarter of an hour later, the main gate of the Moutuo Ridge camp had fallen; both inside and out, the ground had already become a river of blood…

…

Night had fallen deep now; in Bian Liang, at the New Suanzao Gate, things had finally quieted down a little.

Shishi stood before that heap of burned ruins, embers of firelight drifting past her eyes.

Her face was covered in ash, her hair singed and curling slightly at the ends, faint tracks of moisture on her cheeks—whether from melted snowflakes or from crying, it was hard to say. Even her footsteps had grown unsteady, stumbling.

After half a night of slaughter, the Jurchen had temporarily withdrawn. Beneath the towering wall near the New Suanzao Gate, people were doing everything they could to treat the wounded and gather the dead; the stench of blood hung thick in the air, mixed with the smell of charred, burnt things.

So many, many people had died.

She felt so tired…

Li Yun came rushing over from the Fan Tower. When he found her, she was sitting in a corner beneath the wall, staring blankly ahead, lost in some unknown thought. Her appearance was desolate, her eyes vacant, one of her shoes missing entirely—Li Yun was so frightened he thought for a moment she’d been violated, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

“I can’t move anymore, I’m so tired…” she murmured, sobbing softly. “I want to rest a while… I’m so tired…”

Li Yun crouched down and, heartbroken, wrapped his arms around her…

…

Moutuo Ridge.

The fighting had finally stopped; blood was everywhere, along with vast scorched traces left by fire.

Shuliesu stood atop the ruins, longsword in hand, the blade covered in blood; below, a fire still burned, its light flickering across his face.

“Do you know who did this?”

He asked, his voice cold.

The bound Han Chinese captive shoved before him wept and shook his head frantically.

“Spare me…”

Shuliesu kicked out viciously, sending the man tumbling into the blazing fire pit below; the most agonized scream then rang out.

“You don’t know! It was those people who got you all killed! You’re the ones who sought death—”

His face, once handsome and manly, was now twisted with cruelty. His voice rang out over the camp, and then another man was shoved down into the fire.

In the earlier battle, once the rear of the camp had caught fire, the more than four thousand Wu Dynasty soldiers in front had unleashed a most astonishing burst of fighting power, directly routing the Jurchen soldiers outside the camp, and even seizing the camp gate in turn. But if one truly weighed the forces at hand, Shuliesu’s side, all told, still numbered over ten thousand men; the enemy, having routed the Jurchen cavalry, could not possibly have achieved total annihilation—they had merely, for the moment, ridden high on morale and gained the upper hand. In truth, Shuliesu’s forces still held the advantage.

But this time, it hadn’t been a matter of victory decided on the battlefield.

The moment he’d seen the supply depot burst into flame, Shuliesu had known he’d already lost.

The camp had descended into chaos amid the fierce fighting; the captives originally held there had all been set free, and the Wu Dynasty infiltrators had mixed in among them. In the end, those Wu Dynasty soldiers had held the camp’s main gate for a long time, and managed to rescue roughly a third of the Han Chinese captives. Most of these captives were weak, and many were women. After they’d left, Talai gathered up all the remaining cavalry—aside from the wounded, roughly twelve hundred still fit to fight—and proposed to Shuliesu that they pursue the enemy from behind. But Shuliesu knew there was no point; if the enemy had also set an ambush, he might well lose part of these twelve hundred men as well.

“Send scouts to follow them, and see who they are.” he ordered.

As for the Han Chinese captives remaining in the camp, many had already been killed in the chaos; roughly a third were still alive. In his present state of mind, Shuliesu wanted to leave none of them alive, and prepared to kill them all.

“If you hadn’t resisted, you wouldn’t have died. All of you were harmed by those Wu Dynasty men.”

So he said, and then had them all killed.

At that same moment, outside Bian Liang at the Jurchen main camp, Zongwang, having failed to take the city, had already heard the full account of the attack on Moutuo Ridge. He sat in his seat, terrifyingly still.

At last, in this moment, someone had struck him where it hurt.

“How much of the grain and supplies remain?”

“We—we don’t know the exact figures yet, the main camp is still taking stock, not everything was burned, there’s still… still some left…” The messenger who had come to report was already thoroughly frightened by the look on his commander’s face.

“Who did this?”

“Unknown—we’re already tracking them.”

“Where is Guo Yaoshi?”

“Er… General Guo has gone to find the Western Army…” This much Zongwang already knew; he wasn’t sure if the scout even understood he was being asked rhetorically.

“I said—why hasn’t he struck yet. Someone, go—send orders to Guo Yaoshi, tell him to defeat the Western Army quickly! Seize their supplies. And find me these people—I want them torn to pieces.” He drew a breath. “Scorch the earth, burn the grain, breach the Yellow River… I think I know who this is…”

In the contest of wits at the highest levels, the Wu Dynasty’s Emperor was a fool. The few old men in Bian Liang facing off against him could only be said to have fought with everything they had left, blocking his assault—no small feat in itself—but they could exert no real pressure on him in return. Only this once did he feel something like real pain.

Four thousand men…

Had defeated Shuliesu…

Thinking of this, he slammed a fist down on the table before him.

“…Tomorrow, we continue the assault on the city!”

…

Night, wind and snow, a long column of men.

There were quite a few wounded, and behind them followed many ragged, shivering civilians—all captives who had been rescued. But taken as a whole, this column’s morale remained remarkably high, because they had just defeated the strongest army under heaven—well, at least, that’s how it could be told now.

From behind, a mounted scout came riding up in pursuit; the man was wounded, tumbling off his horse, a severed head still gripped in his hand. A martial artist within the column skilled in treating blade wounds and injuries hurried over to bandage him.

“Jurchen scouts have been trailing us the whole way—I took down one, but… cough… I doubt we’ll shake them off anytime soon…”

“They won’t let us go…” Ning Yi turned to look back into the distant wind and snow; in truth, everything back there was pitch black. “Send word to Wenren Buer—we won’t be heading back to Xia Village for now. We’ll settle down in that town we passed before. Send out everyone who can scout—on one hand, to test their mettle against the pursuers; on the other, to keep a close watch on Guo Yaoshi and the situation at Bian Liang. When they come for us, we’ll move on.”

He paused, then after a moment asked, “Has word already been sent to Bian Liang?”

…

The next morning, when she woke, Shishi heard that news…