On February 27th, the weather had already begun to turn warm, and in the fields near Zhending, flowers of every color had come into bloom.
The land lay silent. Crows swooped down to peck at the corpses scattered among the wildflowers. The spilled blood had already begun to congeal. It had been a full day since the great battle at Zhending Prefecture had ended. Cavalry had swept across this land, and within a radius of dozens of miles to the south, over a hundred thousand troops were now in retreat and rout.
In mid-February of the second year of Wu Jianshuo, the Jurchens had mustered their forces and set out, opening the curtain on their third campaign south against Wu. On February 23rd, the Jurchen central army, led by Nianhan, had not long crossed Yanmen Pass when it encountered a blockade force of one hundred fifty thousand men under the Wu general Hou Xin.
Ever since the Jurchen army had broken Bianliang and withdrawn north the previous year, the number of troops nominally under Wu Dynasty command, north of the Yellow River and south of Yanmen Pass, had been steadily swelling. On one hand, the numbers of those turning to banditry simply to survive had surged; on the other, several armies already stationed in the region had continued expanding their ranks as a matter of expedient necessity, both to prepare for the wars to come and to secure their own territory.
By the time Prince Kang had ascended the throne and changed the era name to Jianshuo, Zong Ze, responsible for the defense of the north, had tirelessly traveled back and forth, incorporating several irregular forces north of the Yellow River—numbering anywhere from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand—into the regular Wu Dynasty military structure one after another. At this point, the various factions of bandits and troops scattered across the land north of the Yellow River had come together to form the first line of unified defense against the Jurchens.
Hou Xin, styled Wenjing, had originally commanded the Wusheng Army. This time, with the Jurchens marching south, he had chosen not to retreat, telling his subordinates: “With the nation and its homes in peril, a true man has no choice but to face the difficulty head-on.” And so he mustered his forces and set out.
At the time of engagement, seeing that this army’s morale ran high, Zonghan chose not to engage directly. The two sides probed each other back and forth for two days; then, in the early hours of February 26th, Zonghan launched his cavalry in an assault against Hou Xin’s forces.
The Wusheng Army had already been defeated by the Jurchens twice before, in their previous two southern campaigns. Hastily expanded to one hundred fifty thousand men this time, the force itself was of highly uneven quality. When Zonghan struck under cover of night, Hou Xin, though he’d had some preparation, still saw his more than one hundred thousand men break into mutiny once battle was joined. The Jurchen cavalry surged through the Wusheng Army’s defenses like a flood; that night, the bodies of the slain piled up like mountains, blood flowing like rivers. On the 26th, Yinshuke seized the opportunity to capture Zhending Prefecture outright.
By the morning of the 27th, the roads and hills south of Zhending were already choked with routed soldiers. These troops, of highly mixed quality, fled south in a frenzy—some had originally been bandits and outlaws before being pacified and absorbed into the regular army, and under military discipline had shown some initial fighting spirit in the first clashes against the Jurchens. But in the course of their flight, that spirit had finally been wholly extinguished.
In Yuanchang County, some sixty miles from Zhending, the first waves of fleeing troops had crowded in, and order had already begun to break down. A group of several hundred soldiers drove the townspeople before them, warning them of the approaching Jurchens and urging everyone to flee the town. Amid this forced evacuation, they also began plundering what little wealth and grain remained within the town, and incidents of rape against women began to occur as well. The county magistrate, Liu Dongxiu, attempted to put a stop to this chaos; that afternoon, he was killed in the ensuing clash, his body left lying in the county office hall. Not long after, the plundering soldiers scattered like startled birds.
This kind of thing was not confined to Yuanchang County alone. Places like Zhending and Taiyuan had already suffered greatly from the fires of war in earlier fighting, and in a sense, had become almost abandoned lands. The soldiers, in the course of their retreat, had already come to understand that the greater situation in this region was lost. Those who still carried some fervor or attachment fled south to join other armies or righteous militias; more than half, however, began looking out only for themselves, scattering into the mountains or dispersing to distant places. During this period, no small number took the opportunity to plunder nearby villages and enjoy themselves at the villagers’ expense, muddling through however they could.
When peace had held, the pacified bandits had become soldiers; now, with defeat, the soldiers had once again become mountain bandits.
The rout and flight of a hundred thousand men swept up even more people in its wake, and scouts and spies from every direction scattered outward at ever-greater speed. Word of the Jurchens’ fearsome advance spread across the entire realm like a rising tide, carried in just this way.
More armies gathered north of the Yellow River, but having once again witnessed the might of the Jurchen war god Wanyan Zonghan in command, most now began adopting a far more cautious posture, no longer daring to make any rash moves.
Along the Yellow River defense line, Zong Ze swiftly gathered what limited forces he had on hand, reinforcing the defenses at Bianliang and along the riverbank. Even as he wrote to steady the resolve of the several righteous armies north of the Yellow River, he also sent a petition to Yingtian, hoping the current emperor would resolve to resist firmly, in order to raise the morale of the troops.
In Yingtian, meanwhile, the golden hall was filled with a flood of reports and arguments. Emperor Zhou Yong, utterly stunned, had only ascended the throne half a year earlier, and already the invincible Jurchen army was marching south once more. This time, Wanyan Zonghan himself led the central army straight toward them, with Taiyuan now left with no natural defenses to hold; meanwhile the Jurchen princes Wanyan Zongfu and Wanyan Zongbi, leading the eastern army, struck toward Shandong, proclaiming their goal was nothing less than the destruction of the Wu Dynasty and the capture of Zhou Yong himself. Though the northern defense line had swelled to its greatest troop strength yet, it remained unwieldy and poorly coordinated—no one at court, high or low, felt any confidence that it could hold against the Jurchens.
During this time, Left Chancellor Li Gang continued to advocate for holding firm along the Yellow River, waiting for reinforcing armies to break the Jurchen advance. In Yingtian itself, popular sentiment ran high in favor of resistance against the Jurchens; academy students Chen Dong, Ouyang Che, and others rallied daily, calling for resistance.
But after two prior failed attempts to resist the Jurchens, the voices calling for peace at court had grown louder as well. Unlike before, when figures like Tang Ke, who had favored avoiding war, had been openly condemned, this time the faction advocating flight to the south—led by Right Chancellor Huang Qianshan and Military Affairs Commissioner Wang Boyan—had already gained real traction. Not a few now believed that if the Jurchens truly proved too powerful to contain, it might be best to retreat south first, trading space for time, using the terrain of the water-crossed south to check the Jurchens’ cavalry advantage.
After all, it had been barely a year since Emperor Jingping had been carried off to the north—still the greatest humiliation the Wu Dynasty had ever suffered. Should the newly enthroned Jianshuo Emperor be captured as well, the Wu Dynasty would very likely truly be finished.
Rationally speaking, over the coming years, this rapidly rising Jurchen army, showing no signs yet of decline, appeared unstoppable and unmatched under heaven—though there had once, it seemed, been one force that might have been an exception. Yet for the assembled ministers of the court at this moment, that force was one they could hardly bring themselves to consider, for its leader had once, standing in the golden hall itself, looked down on them all and called them, disdainfully: “A pack of worthless fools.”
Had that man merely beaten Tong Guan to death and killed Zhou Zhe, perhaps it might have been let go. But that single remark had, in fact, revealed something more—that in his eyes, everyone else was no different from the corrupt officials and treacherous ministers he so despised. This was something even men like Li Gang found especially unbearable.
Now, the situation in the northwest, where that man was, had become utterly impossible to gauge.
Xiaocang River, too, had suddenly grown tense.
Training for the soldiers was underway every single day. Great quantities of supplies, gathered in from outside wherever possible, moved constantly in and out of the mountains—including, among other channels, exchanges with Qingmu Stronghold.
By the riverbank, a training session had just wrapped up. Luo Ye left the soldiers behind, nearly collapsed with exhaustion, and hurriedly washed his face in the river before striding quickly toward the barracks, grabbing his notebook and charcoal pencil. As he made his way toward the cluster of buildings halfway up the mountainside, he encountered two soldiers hurrying along, their expressions grave. Both belonged to the Secret Investigation Division of the Bamboo Records network; Luo Ye knew them and caught hold of one. “What’s going on?”
Word of the Jurchen invasion south had reached them, and the mood throughout the entire Xiaocang River valley had turned tense and grim. The intelligence handlers were probably being pestered with questions dozens of times a day, everyone hoping to get a jump on outside news. The man, well acquainted with Luo Ye and a fellow member of Huayan Society, glanced around, looking troubled. “It’s not about outside events. This time it looks like there’s going to be disciplinary action.”
“What happened?” Luo Ye frowned. “Did you two do something wrong?”
“Up north—it’s about Manager Lu. You know how it is—someone told his family, and today his mother, Mingfang’s mother, went to cry to Mr. Ning, hoping for a definite answer.”
He spoke quickly. Luo Ye nodded—he too had already heard the news. Originally, under the Wu Dynasty, the office of the Right Chancellor had maintained its own Secret Investigation Bureau, part of which had since been folded into Bamboo Records; after Ning Yi’s rebellion, the intelligence network within Bamboo Records still operated under the name of Secret Investigation. One of its three heads was Manager Lu Yannian—the previous year, it had been Manager Lu who first opened up the trade route to the Jin state in the north, ransoming back a number of craftsmen who had been seized by the Jurchens. His son, Lu Mingfang, cheerful and quick to laugh, got along well with Luo Ye too; not yet twenty, he had always worked alongside his father, Lu Yannian.
Just before the Jurchens marched south this time, a sudden purge of southern spies had begun in the north. After several days of silence, members of Bamboo Records who had managed to flee back south brought word that the intelligence team led by Lu Yannian had been the first to be caught—ambushed in Yunzhong, Manager Lu Yannian was likely already dead, and the rest of his team were in grave danger as well. This time, the Jurchen leadership’s actions had been particularly swift and merciless; to coincide with the army’s southward march, they had unleashed a terrible bloodbath across the sixteen prefectures of Yanyun, and anyone Han even suspected of wrongdoing was slaughtered outright.
The people of Bamboo Records, though they had contingency plans in place for such situations, still suffered heavy losses amid an atmosphere of slaughter that treated the Han people as less than human. Only afterward did news arrive of the Jurchen army’s full-scale southward advance.
Luo Ye thought it over for a moment. “Aunt Huo is a reasonable, understanding woman. She shouldn’t cause Mr. Ning too much trouble, surely.”
“It’s not about that…” The man sighed, glancing off to where another companion was already waving him over urgently. He shook his hand. “Ah, you’ll find out soon enough. Don’t spread this around—don’t even mention it to anyone.”
He hurried off. Luo Ye caught himself. “Understood.”
In the courtyard halfway up the mountainside, Su Tan’er sat comforting the weeping wife of the Lu household, offering what gentle words of consolation she could—though, in truth, for any woman facing the possibility that both her husband and son might already be dead, comfort could do little.
In another room, where matters were being discussed, the mid- and upper-level members of Bamboo Records’ intelligence division had already gathered. Ning Yi looked at them coldly. “…You think there’s no problem within this valley. You think the friends around you are all loyal and trustworthy. You yourselves decide what counts as a big matter and what counts as small, and so you let your guard down on the small things. Do you understand what it is you do? You’re in intelligence work!”
“You may not fully grasp your own importance yet, even though I’ve told you again and again! You are the single most critical piece in matters of war and survival—foreseeing the enemy’s moves before they happen! Foreseeing the enemy’s moves—do you understand what that means? Do you understand what kind of enemy you’re facing?”
“The Jurchens are already marching south. No one can stop them—not even we can. Xiaocang River and Qingmu Stronghold together don’t even amount to fifty thousand people—not even enough to be a mouthful for them! You think the people around you can all be trusted, but who’s to say some coward afraid of dying won’t sell you out to them one day! Your trust means nothing, your assumptions mean nothing—only discipline means anything. Every lapse on your part, every extra achievement, could mean the difference between hundreds or thousands of your comrades living or dying. If you believe they’re trustworthy, believe they can be relied upon, then you owe them the strictest discipline in return.”
“Aunt Huo is a reasonable woman, but reasonable or not, Manager Lu probably isn’t coming back. If you all were better at your jobs, you might have caught wind of the Jurchens’ move before they made it. Is there room for you to improve? I think so. Let’s start by working on our own weaknesses. From now on, anyone found to have discussed undisclosed information with people around them will face disciplinary action! Any objections?”
When he finished, the room responded with a chorus of: “No.”
Ning Yi rapped the table a few times. “The Jurchens are coming. Whether we’ll be caught up in it is hard to say, but it’s very possible—and however much preparation we’ve made, it’s probably not enough. Defeating Western Xia wasn’t necessarily a good thing—we’ve already drawn attention to ourselves ahead of schedule, and that’s about the worst possible situation. You all…”
Before he could finish, someone at the door reported in—it was Xiao Hei, responsible for relaying messages to him. He walked over and said a few words. Ning Yi paused, then looked around at everyone in the room:
The worst had, after all, come to pass.
That day, few in the room heard the full content of what was said, and even those who did kept it to themselves. And yet, that very evening, most people in the valley came to learn what had happened all the same. An envoy sent by the Jurchen army had arrived in the valley, delivering a final ultimatum to Xiaocang River.
On hearing this news, the valley reacted with a mixture of indignation, excitement, and anxious unease. Without waiting for orders from above, Luo Ye and the others spontaneously gathered the soldiers, holding meetings to rally morale and steel their resolve. But of course, the real decision still rested with Ning Yi.
No one knew what Ning Yi discussed with the envoy that night. The next day, after finishing their training, Luo Ye and the others attended their scheduled lessons as usual, gathering together to discuss the unfolding situation of the Jurchen advance south.
By now, word of the Jurchen troop movements had already become clear throughout the valley. The central army under Zonghan, and the eastern army under Zongfu and Zongbi, were bearing straight down on Yingtian—no need to worry over those. The real threat to the northwest lay with the Jurchen western army—a force made up of barely ten thousand Jurchen troops, but led by a commander who could not be taken lightly in the slightest: Wanyan Loushi, one of the most accomplished generals in the entire Jurchen military.
This man had an illustrious record of battle honors within the Jurchen army; it was he who had once personally captured the Liao Emperor Tianzuo and Yelu Dashi alive. During both of the Jurchens’ southern campaigns against Wu, he had won countless victories around Taiyuan and the Guanshaan region, excelling at using Jin troops as a core force while incorporating surrendered soldiers and irregulars to expand his own ranks—the men under his command tended to grow larger the more they fought, and he possessed extraordinary skill in both politics, military strategy, and tactics. Even amid the constellation of rising Jurchen talent at this time, he was likely, at the tactical level, the single strongest among them.
Just as Ning Yi had said, even as they defeated Western Xia, Xiaocang River had already fallen under the gaze of the Jurchens ahead of schedule. If the Jurchen envoy’s arrival signaled the intentions of the Jin state’s leadership toward this region, then the army of Xiaocang River stood a very real chance of having to face off against this unrivaled Jurchen general. The Black Banner Army may have had the achievement of seven thousand men defeating a hundred-thousand-strong Western Xia force to its name, but on the other side, the enemies Loushi had defeated over time likely numbered in the millions, and battles fought at troop ratios worse than one to ten were far from rare for him.
A group of people were in the middle of their discussion when voices gradually became audible outside the door—among them, Ning Yi’s voice, along with a few oddly accented words of the Han tongue. Everyone stopped talking. At the doorway, Ning Yi appeared, alongside a figure dressed in Jin official robes.
There was a collective gasp, and everyone in the room, looking toward the door, rose to their feet at once. The Jin envoy visibly startled for a moment. Ning Yi glanced around at everyone in the room: “This is an envoy from the Jin state, Envoy Fan Hongji. Mr. Fan, these are the young men and women of my army.” He spread his hands. “Let’s be on our way.”
Fan Hongji looked around the room, then smiled. “Truly, heroes and men of remarkable talent, no wonder you’ve achieved such feats. Oh, right, there’s one more thing I nearly forgot.”
“Oh?”
“Before leaving Yunzhong, the Valley Spirit and Priest Shi asked me to bring two items for Mr. Ning to see. Since so many are gathered here, perhaps we might as well look at them together.”
As Fan Hongji spoke, the two guards trailing behind him stepped forward, carrying two large boxes that had been slung at their sides, and made to walk into the room. Chen Fan came over with an easy smile, and Ning Yi spread his hands as well, smiling: “Are these gifts? Perhaps we should step aside to have a look.”
“No need, no need.”
The two guards were tall, powerfully built men, clearly Jurchen warriors of some skill. Chen Fan restrained them; in the brief scuffle that followed, one of the boxes was knocked open with a crack. Fan Hongji seized the moment to lift the lid fully, and some lime powder spilled out. He picked up what was inside with his bare hand. Ning Yi’s gaze narrowed slightly, though his smile did not waver—but by then, many of the others in the room had already seen it too.
It was a human head.
A silence fell over the room, inside and out. Somewhere, the faint creak of a clenched fist could be heard. Ning Yi’s voice broke the quiet: “What do you mean, bringing something like this here?” His tone had already flattened, calm now, and he made no further move to stop the man. This envoy, Fan Hongji, smiling still, carried the salt-preserved head through the doorway and set it down upon the table. Another guard followed with the wooden box, setting it down and opening the lid.
In the room, everyone watched calmly. Fan Hongji’s gaze met theirs, sweeping across the room with a smile.
“It’s nothing much. Not long ago, some people caused a disturbance in Yunzhong. These are two of them. They tried to buy Han slaves in Yunzhong to send back to the central plains—something our Jin state does not permit. But these two were brave men; however they were tortured after capture, they refused to reveal who they were, and in the end took their own lives. The Valley Spirit was moved by their courage, and said this might be some of your own people—he asked me to bring them along so you might identify them, and give them a proper burial, if so.”
Fan Hongji smiled, his gaze calm and level. Ning Yi’s expression, too, remained calm, still smiling faintly; and the crowd in the room, too, wore expressions of matching calm—though at the corners of some mouths, the faint trace of a smile had begun to form. It was an eerie stillness, taut to the extreme, killing intent seeming to brew and spread through the air. Yet Fan Hongji feared no one; he was the envoy of the single strongest army under heaven, and he needed to fear neither man nor circumstance.
On the table, Lu Yannian’s eyes lay open, staring emptily ahead, hollow and lifeless.
Even as the Jurchen army swept toward the entire realm, in this corner of the northwest, time, for a brief moment, seemed to stand still.
A small interlude…