The rain poured down in torrents. With the main army suddenly gone—over ten thousand men fewer—the valley looked somewhat desolate in the downpour. Still, down in the settlement, plenty of activity could be seen: people hurrying back and forth in the rain, packing things away, or digging out channels to guide the water into the drainage system. Sentries still stood watch on the towers, and at the dam near the valley mouth, a group of men in straw raincoats kept watch over its condition. Though a great many people had gone off to war, the residents of the Little Cang River valley still carried on with their normal rhythm of life.
The wheat in the valley had been reaped about half; because of the rain, the harvest had stopped again. Some of the farmers with time on their hands had formed patrol teams, wrapped in straw raincoats, making their rounds among the valley’s watchtowers, walking the mountains in the pouring rain, guarding against the chance that another wave of enemies might slip in amid the confusion. Min San, father of Min Chuyi, was among them. A silent, taciturn man, he had plenty of physical strength but could never quite hold his own against anyone—yet this time he had volunteered for the patrol without being asked. So much so that when he headed out the door carrying his pitchfork, his wife had repeated her instructions again and again: “If you run into any of those bad men, you stab them—stab them hard until they’re dead. Don’t you dare back down, not with that temper of yours.”
The Little Cang River was still mostly infantry at this point, and the thing drilled into them most during training was: never step back when in formation. When you have comrades beside you, no matter what happens, only advance, never retreat. This had been said so often that even the farmers and family members who’d joined the patrols had heard it repeated—step back half a pace, and you doom the person beside you.
The silent farmer, gripping his pitchfork, nodded. “I’ll just think of them as wild boars.”
While he trudged along on his difficult patrol up the mountain, his wife sat at home mending clothes. Min Chuyi crouched by the doorway, peering through the curtain of rain toward the courtyard halfway up the mountain, where her schoolhouse was, and the Ning family’s courtyard too. Ever since the day Ning Xi got hurt, when her mother had tearfully slapped her hard across the face—she’d cried her heart out then, though by now she’d mostly forgotten it.
It was only that these past few days, with Ning Xi recovering at home and not coming to lessons, the little girl had grown a bit worried. During class these past days, she’d hesitated over whether to ask Teacher Yuan about Ning Xi’s injury, but every time she looked at Teacher Yuan’s pretty, stern face, the tiny sprout of courage she’d managed to grow would wither right back down again.
So for now, all she could do was crouch there, copying out a few characters Teacher Yuan had taught, sulking quietly to herself.
In the courtyard halfway up the mountain, Ning Xi’s injury had already healed, though her head was still bandaged. She and her younger brother Ning Ji had pulled up little stools and sat beneath the eaves, chins in hands, watching the water. “What a big rain,” she said. By the doorway nearby, Yun Zhu sat holding her daughter, watching the downpour with her. The little girl, born in summer, had at first been frail and easily startled—any thunder, any rain, any sound at all would set her wailing. But this time, hearing the thunder and rain, she didn’t cry at all; if anything, she looked almost curious. Her tiny body was wrapped in swaddling, and every time lightning flashed outside, she’d squint and scrunch her little face up like a steamed bun, then let it smooth out again.
From the room next door, voices occasionally drifted out. But amid the heavy rain, much of what was said came through muffled and unclear; of those outside the door, only Yun Zhu could really make out the meaning of the words.
“…As for abolishing Confucianism, opposing Confucianism—I don’t mean that Confucianism is worthless. Quite the opposite: over these thousand-odd years, Confucianism has played an enormous role. Setting aside the matter of foreign invaders, its refinement is nearly perfect, and it keeps growing more perfect still. But the direction of that perfection has gone astray. You say scholars must understand reason, must read books—what books, then? Why not the Analects? Of course they must read the Analects, must read the Four Books and Five Classics.”
“…But reading dead texts is worse than reading nothing at all. Lord Zuo, ask yourself honestly—are the words of the sages from a thousand years ago, the Four Books and Five Classics from a thousand years ago, really meant to be interpreted the way they are now?”
“…Take the simplest example. Confucius said: repay virtue with virtue, and repay grievance with uprightness. Lord Zuo, how do you square that line with the sage’s own concept of ‘benevolence’? When Zigong ransomed captives and refused the reward, Confucius said, ‘Ci has erred’—why? When Zilu saved a drowning man and accepted an ox as thanks, Confucius said happily, ‘Now the people of Lu will surely rescue more drowning men’—why? Confucius also said the village worthy is the thief of virtue. Yet today, the whole countryside is governed by exactly such village worthies—why is that?”
Amid the thunder and rain, Ning Yi’s voice carried out from the room, fluent and calm. The old man’s words had started out sharp and impatient, but as the discussion continued, even he grew calmer, his tone settling into something steady and forceful.
“…When teaching disciples, of course one uses the direct interpretation, precisely because a disciple can actually study—and before long, one in ten of them will come to understand the principle well enough to spread its teaching further. But ordinary people are ignorant; even if I explain the principle to them directly, eight or nine out of ten still won’t grasp it—let alone village folk. In such cases, one may use the direct interpretation, or one may use the village-worthy interpretation. But if the direct interpretation is applied indiscriminately, contradictions will proliferate throughout the world and inevitably bring disaster—hence the village-worthy interpretation is used instead. Hmph, all this is elementary stuff. Whatever point Liheng wants to make, there’s no need to dance around it like this!”
“Exactly—isn’t that precisely my point? Confucius wrote the Analects to record the fruits of his entire life’s understanding. Later generations, in promoting Confucianism, distorted his words for whatever served their rule. If I want to grasp the true principle, without distortion, why not simply give the direct interpretation?”
“Ha! Give the direct interpretation—you have no idea what it takes to actually educate a single person! During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, through Qin and into the two Han dynasties, people spoke of grievances and vengeance, of paying back debts of hatred in kind—is that the golden age Liheng speaks of? The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods saw endless warfare; the Qin fell after just two generations; the Han, though powerful, saw its feudal lords rise up again and again, with the common people in constant revolt. Whenever the world falls into such strife, the people inevitably suffer, and countless die. Later sages, out of pity for the world, interpreted Confucianism the way they did precisely for this reason. As Liheng himself says, hundreds of years ago the common people lost their fighting spirit—but these past two hundred-odd years of peace, allowing generation after generation to live out their lives in this world, has been no small achievement. Liheng, using your method, one or two generations might rouse the people’s blood and perhaps drive out the Jurchen—but without the restraint of Confucian learning, the following hundred years will surely see endless poison and unceasing war and strife. Liheng, can you see this? Do you accept it? Is a hundred years of suffering worth your notion of fighting spirit?”
“…Honestly, of course I can see it, and of course I accept it. It’s good that you, an elder, can see this much—it shows that in your heart, you’ve already harbored the idea of reforming Confucianism. Isn’t that exactly what I said before? How Confucianism became what it is today, over these thousand years—you can see it, and so can I. Our disagreement was never about that. It’s only about whether we should keep doing things this way going forward—whether governing the people must rely solely on the village-worthy interpretation. On that, you and I simply see things differently.”
“You! What! Else! Could! You! Possibly! Do!”
“…Everything in this world is in a constant state of development and change. Since ancient times, people have gone from slash-and-burn farming to gradually mastering all manner of tools. At first, it took many days just to walk out of a single mountain range; later, as carriages and roads gradually multiplied, connecting one place to another, costs gradually fell, and all sorts of goods and new implements appeared, including the Grand Canal and the flourishing of river transport. In their own way, these things have also continuously reshaped how the court governs and administers.”
“…New changes are emerging right now. But the Confucianism that governs us, because of the rules it settled on long ago, has chosen not to change. That’s because—imagine I draw a line out from within this circle. Either you break that line, or you let the whole circle grow larger than that line. Lord Zuo, imagine these workshops developing further—one man doing the work of fifty. If one man can produce what fifty once produced, then the world’s goods will overflow in abundance. Imagine everyone having books to read, so that literacy is no longer the exclusive privilege of scholars. Then how must this world change? How must the mode of governance change? Can you even imagine it?”
“I can’t imagine it—but you’d act recklessly for the sake of something that doesn’t even exist yet!?”
“I don’t want to either. If the Jurchen weren’t coming, I’d let it develop over a thousand years, and gladly! But as things stand—Lord Zuo, I have some idea of why you’ve come to talk to me about all this. My soldiers can truly fight. If one day they can sweep across the whole realm, then naturally I can apply the direct interpretation of the Analects, and there will be plenty of people to help interpret it. I can promote commerce, promote industry, and in time the social structure will naturally dissolve and rebuild itself. At the very least, I’m not at a loss for what to fill the gap with. And Lord Zuo, I’ve already told you the fundamental flaw at the root of today’s Confucian way. A great age of upheaval lies right before us, and a future in keeping with the Confucian way lies before us as well. Since you speak of the Confucian way, I’d like to ask you a question too.”
The voice from the room continued: “—’On self-reflection, if I find myself upright, I shall go forward even against a thousand, ten thousand men.’ Lord Zuo, how do you interpret that line!?”
Silence fell inside for a moment. Amid the sound of the rain, Yun Zhu, sitting outside, smiled faintly—though there was a touch of bitterness in that smile too. She had studied Confucian texts herself, but she couldn’t work out what Ning Yi meant by quoting that line just then.
After a moment, the old man’s voice rose again. “Fine! Then let me explain the Confucian way to you…”
Outside, the rain poured on, lightning occasionally splitting the sky. The argument in the room continued for a long while. At some point, the tea in the room ran out, and Ning Yi opened the window and leaned out to call for more water. Zuo Duanyou shouted, “I don’t need any!” By then Ning Xi had already run off toward the kitchen. By the time she came back into the study carrying water, Zuo Duanyou stood there, red in the face from arguing, hair and beard bristling, while Ning Yi tidied up the papers scattered by the open window. Ning Xi, who had rather taken to this stern old man, walked over and tugged at the hem of his robe. “Grandpa, don’t be angry.”
Zuo Duanyou snorted, ignoring her, and spoke only to Ning Yi. “Hmph. I did learn today that your army broke Jila Saile’s fifty-thousand-strong force and took Yanzhou. That’s no small feat. But I say again—your army is not truly enlightened. They cannot go on living like this for the rest of their lives. Men like that, once they lay down their blades, will become nothing but a scourge—and that won’t be their fault. It will be yours, for having raised them this way!”
“Lord Zuo, one might just as well say the fault lies with the world itself. We rebelled, staked our lives, precisely so there might be a right world, a right order of things. So they needn’t worry about any of that.”
“Bold words indeed. Let me ask you this, then—you’ve taken Yanzhou but don’t intend to hold it. What exactly are you planning?”
Ning Yi answered him.
“What?”
Ning Yi repeated himself.
Before long, Zuo Duanyou threw the door open and stormed out; his servants hurried up, raising an umbrella over him, and the old man strode out into the rain, cursing over his shoulder as he went.
“Absolutely beyond foolish—”
Leaning on his cane, sheltered and supported by the servant holding the umbrella, he strode out of the courtyard in long steps, walking farther and farther into the pouring rain. When Ning Yi had first spoken those words about rebelling against the whole world, Li Pin had left, but the old man had stayed behind to see how things would unfold. Who could have known that only two days later, word would come that Yanzhou had fallen that very afternoon.
Debates over the Way were serious matters, but they wouldn’t touch the real world anytime soon. On the other hand, the Wu Dynasty had never fielded a fighting force like this one. Torn between grief and anger, he had finally decided to come and debate Ning Yi, trying to save this wayward child. But then, hearing about the Black Banner Army’s movements, and hearing Ning Yi’s answer, he had finally understood, with total certainty, that everyone in this entire valley had gone mad. Even that Qin family boy had gone mad too.
The old man wanted nothing more to do with actual lunatics.
Still, after sulking through the night, the next morning Yun Zhu was in the courtyard soothing her daughter when she looked up to see the white-haired old man striding briskly back this way again. He arrived at the courtyard gate without so much as a greeting and pushed the door open and walked in—the guard nearby moved to stop him, but Yun Zhu waved him off—and Ning Xi, reading beneath the eaves, stood up and called out, “Good morning, Grandpa Zuo!” Zuo Duanyou strode across the courtyard, glancing sideways at the comic book in the child’s hands without acknowledging her, and pushed straight into Ning Yi’s study.
Ning Yi, sitting at his desk writing, turned his head to look at him, wearing an expression of utter innocence, then spread his hands. “Lord Zuo, please, sit. Have some tea.”
Before long, the arguing in the room had started up again.
…
While the days at the Little Cang River valley had grown so idle that all there was left to do was sit and debate philosophy, the situation in Yuanzhou was shifting rapidly.
Lou Shuwan and her attendants stood atop a hill, watching the Western Xia’s great army break camp and head northeast. Tens of thousands of men on the move, dust rising to fill the sky, banners snapping in the wind—the killing intent hung so thick it seemed almost to press against the clouds above.
“My lord, where are we headed?”
Among her attendants, only one maid was female; the rest were all men. But all of them treated Lou Shuwan with the utmost respect, not daring to show her the slightest disrespect.
“…To Qingzhou.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“I keep feeling…”
“Hm? My lady, feeling what?”
Lou Shuwan started to say something, then stopped. One of the officers accompanying her, under the command of the Tiger King, asked again, but after a moment the woman only shook her head. What was on her mind wasn’t something easily spoken aloud.
Originally, the Western Xia army had been stationed north of Yuanzhou in order to strike out and destroy the remnants of the Western Army under Zhong Lie. But with the sudden battle report from Yanzhou, the Western Xia king had flown into a rage. The Level Mountain Iron Kite Cavalry had already ridden out ahead, with the main body breaking camp behind them, leaving only some ten thousand elite troops pushed deep into Huanzhou to deal with Zhong Lie. They meant to crush, with overwhelming force, these Wu Dynasty bandits who didn’t know their place.
All because, after taking Yanzhou, that Black Banner Army had not paused for even a moment—reportedly taking only a few days’ worth of grain before charging straight west.
At this point the wheat in the fields still hadn’t all been harvested; along the line from Yanzhou through Qingzhou to Yuanzhou, it wasn’t only Yanzhou’s routed soldiers fleeing in scattered disarray—much of the wheat still stood waiting in the fields to be gathered in. And here was this enemy, with nothing to lose, bearing down on them—whether their true target was the grain or the poorly defended rear at Qingzhou, to the Western Xia king it amounted to the greatest possible act of contempt, a slap in the face delivered with brazen disregard.
By all analysis, this force that had leapt from the mountains was most likely making a desperate gamble to link up with Zhong Lie’s Western Army and throw the Western Xia’s rear defenses into disarray. And yet, precisely because of that, the Western Xia king found the matter deeply troubling. Especially since, once Qingzhou fell, its vast stores of grain and military supplies would be lost as well—Yanzhou had merely been Jila Saile’s central command post, but Qingzhou was the forward base for the westward advance. If it truly took a hit and something went wrong there, no amount of effort afterward could make up for the loss.
Everything was unfolding at breakneck speed—the intelligence arrived fast, the enemy moved fast, and the Western Xia army’s response was equally fast. A force of nine thousand men charging, seemingly like fools, straight at an army of seventy thousand—how should the seventy thousand even respond? There wasn’t really much to say about it.
Surely they couldn’t just turn around and flee.
Only Lou Shuwan, amid all this speed, sensed a faint thread of unease. When various parties had earlier moved to seal off the Little Cang River, she had felt there was no hope left for it—yet deep down, she had still believed that man could never be so simple. When the news from Yanzhou arrived, a thought of “just as I expected” had risen unbidden in her heart. That man named Ning Yi was ruthless and utterly resolute; he was not one to simply endure such circumstances passively.
To have taken Yanzhou must have required painstaking planning, battles fought at the very edge of life and death. The Little Cang River’s crisis had been resolved—but an even greater danger was now approaching. How could the Western Xia king possibly swallow such humiliation? Even if the grain crisis at the Little Cang River had been temporarily resolved, once the Western Xia’s great army struck back, the Little Cang River would surely be unable to withstand it—taking Yanzhou had merely been drinking poison to quench thirst, a move born of having no other option. And yet, when she heard that the Black Banner Army was now charging straight for Qingzhou, a faint sense of foreboding began to stir within her.
Had that man, after taking Yanzhou, pushed on simply to relieve pressure on Zhong Lie? To cause trouble for the Western Xia? She sensed, faintly, that it couldn’t be that simple.
She gazed off into the distance, silent, her heart pounding—already burning with the faint possibility that had begun to take shape in her mind…
It couldn’t be that—surely that was nothing but a fool’s fantasy… but for that man, if it truly were so…
As the third party in this great conflict, Zhong Lie’s Western Army, clinging to survival while hurriedly gathering grain in Huanzhou, only learned of the Western Xia’s withdrawal the following day. After some investigation, he came to a rough understanding of the situation. Within the Western Army’s ranks, a debate then broke out over whether to act immediately in support of this force, which might well be an ally. But no resolution was ever reached, because the ten-thousand-odd Western Xia troops left behind in the area had already begun pressing forward against them.
Only days later did they receive further news—by which time the whole world had already changed its complexion.
From the Jurchen’s second southward campaign, to their collusion with the Western Xia, to the Western Xia’s formal mobilization and annexation of the northwest—the entire process had already unfolded across this land for half a year. And yet, in this late summer, this sudden battle that would determine the fate of the entire northwest struck exactly as it had begun: swift as thunder, fast as a shooting star, fierce and violent, splitting everything apart within the span of a few days, faster than the ear could catch!
“Move! Faster—”
“Go, go, go, go, go—”
Across the mountains and rivers, black banners stretched on in an unbroken line, columns of soldiers running through the hills, heading west. Qin Shaoqian rode his horse, his gaze cold yet burning, watching this river of men flowing through the mountains, turning over in his mind the words Ning Yi had spoken during their many earlier war-planning sessions.
“…Whenever a new technology emerges, only its first use has the greatest destructive impact. To make the most of that destructive power this time, we should choose the single most cost-effective force and, with everything we have, deal the Western Xia army a crippling blow in one strike! And in theory, the force we should choose is…”
The army passed through the mountain ridge, and Qin Shaoqian’s horse crested the high ground; ahead, the view suddenly opened wide, plains and hills unfolding before him. He looked up—the sky had turned faintly overcast.
“Don’t let it rain…” he murmured under his breath. Behind him, more warhorses laden with long crates were still crossing the ridge.
A hundred-odd li away, the strongest cavalry under heaven was sweeping through Qingzhou, bearing down on them. Before long, the two armies would meet, and collide, in brutal force—