On the eleventh of the third month, Wanyan Zongbi led his forces against Su Prefecture. Miao Cailiang held out with ten thousand men for a day and a night before the city fell; the city was put to the sword. Three days later, fire swept through Su Prefecture, burning half the city to bare ash.
On the fifteenth, Yinshuke led his forces in battle at Liao Prefecture. Huang Kaiqi, the original defending commander of Liao Prefecture, led a band of warriors on a night raid, but Yinshuke saw through the attack, and the raiding force was routed. Huang Kaiqi led his personal guard in a charge straight at Yinshuke; struck by more than a dozen blades, he fought on without slackening until at last he fell dead.
On the twenty-sixth, the great armies of Zongfu and Zongbi took Hejian Prefecture, and Shen, Jing, and Cang Prefectures surrendered in turn.
Between the fifteenth and the twenty-seventh, Luo, Ji, Xiang, and Ci Prefectures surrendered one after another as well.
On the thirtieth, the veteran general Liu Dingwen of Cang Prefecture led over ten thousand righteous army troops in a raid on Hejian, and after half a day of fierce fighting against Zongbi’s vanguard, his force was routed and Liu Dingwen himself died of an arrow. More than three thousand of his men were taken captive, marched outside the walls of Hejian, and put to death to the last man; their heads were piled into a mound of skulls, corpses spread across the ground, and the stench of it, it was said, did not clear for a hundred days afterward.
On the first of the fourth month, Wang Yan of the Eight-Character Army fought Zonghan’s forces at Qin Prefecture and, unable to hold, fell back defeated.
On the sixth, Zonghan attacked Pingyang but failed to take it, and turned his forces eastward instead. On the tenth, Xiyin led his forces to strike Pingyang again, taking it by exploiting the weakness left behind.
On the eighth, Zongfu took Zi Prefecture, and his troops pressed on toward Jinan.
On the tenth, Eliduo, a general of the Central Route Army, attacked Xiang Prefecture, but could not take it after five days. Zonghan’s main force then arrived, and on the twenty-first Xiang Prefecture fell; because its people had resisted so fiercely, the Jurchen slaughtered every last inhabitant of the city.
On the twenty-fifth, Liu Yu, the prefect of Jinan, was lowered from the city walls on a rope and surrendered to Zongfu, after which he lured the gates open for the Jurchen army. Once the army entered the city, every officer and official within it determined to resist, along with their families and clansmen—more than eight thousand people in all—were, over the following month, massacred to the last.
On the twenty-seventh, the great scholar Ou Hongxi, who had gone to the camp of the Eastern Route Army to persuade Zongfu and Zongbi, spoke out passionately before the tents of the two Jurchen princes and hurled curses at them without restraint. Zongbi, driven to fury and shame, cut him down with a single sword stroke, and the body was flung outside the camp. Word of this scholar’s public rebuke of Zongbi to his face spread afterward among the scholarly community as a tale told with admiration.
On the twenty-ninth, the Great Illumination Sect gathered a crowd of a hundred and seventy thousand and attempted to surround and annihilate Yinshuke’s vanguard force in the open country south of Jun Prefecture; the hundred and seventy thousand were routed. Several tens of thousands of them were chased by Jurchen cavalry all the way to the banks of the Yellow River, where the crowd, pressed together in terror, saw a few cut down where they stood while most were trampled underfoot or pushed into the river, drowning by the countless number.
In early fifth month, the Eastern Route Army under Zongfu and Zongbi forced Dongjing and other places into surrender.
On the fifteenth of the fifth month, Zongfu’s main Central Route Army crossed the Yellow River.
In mid-fifth month, the commander Ma Kuo led nearly two hundred thousand men from Wuma Mountain into battle, contending back and forth with Zongfu’s forces for nearly a month.
On the twenty-third, Zhou Yong “went hunting” south to Yangzhou.
In the sixth month, Ma Kuo captured the small town of Qingping, which had by then already fallen into the hands of Zonghan’s forces—a strategic point along the route of the Central and Eastern Route Armies.
In early sixth month, Zonghan attacked Qingping but failed to retake it. On the tenth, Zongfu’s main force attacked Qingping again, and the town fell; the two hundred thousand men were routed and fell back, tens of thousands of them cut down in pursuit along the way, while Ma Kuo led what few remained of his force in retreat southward.
On the twenty-second, Zonghan’s Central Route Army fought once more against the defenders of Bianliang, without success.
At the end of the sixth month, Zongfu’s troops pressed on toward Yingtian…
On the eighth of the seventh month…
On the thirteenth…
…
The winds of late summer carried every sort of smell with them, rank beyond description; the weather was simply too hot, and the dead began to give off the stench of decay within no time at all. Beyond the reek of rotting corpses, there was also the foul odor of bodies that had gone unwashed for far too long, and the smell of waste…
Lin Zongwu sat upon the stone platform, preaching his teachings. Below him sat countless followers in worn and ragged clothing, their eyes pitiable and yet fervent—men and women, all of them wretched souls.
From time to time the crowd broke into cheers.
When Lin Zongwu finished preaching, he turned and stepped down. Back in the room behind, a faint ripple crossed his gaze; he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, that gaze had returned to stillness.
Now and then he still found himself recalling the battlefield at Jun Prefecture, the people charging the Jurchen forces, fervent and fearless—and then, before long, the force collapsing, the Jurchen killing their way in from every direction in sight, until bones piled into mountains and blood ran in rivers. His followers had turned and fled as well, scattering like headless flies, and by then even he could no longer command them.
He himself did not much care about the dead—over the course of his life, the men Lin Zongwu had killed with his own hands already numbered a mountain’s worth. What weighed on him more was that defeat itself. And the one thing that made it easier to bear was that this had not been his failure alone.
The whole realm was losing, whether it was the armies of the court, the righteous armies, or the mountain bandits who had charged the Jurchen head-on—over this entire summer, everyone was losing, everyone was dying. Along every route the Jurchen came down, bones piled up, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, even the millions; men had died, families had been broken, old people and children had starved to death, houses had been burned to ash. And those who had not yet lost had, for the most part, already declared their surrender to the Jurchen—cowards, every one.
The world was collapsing, and these followers of his were the clearest proof of it. In days past, most of the people in this crowd had still worn decent clothes, and there had been no small number of prosperous, well-off households among them; now fewer and fewer dared come dressed in such clothing at all. The Jurchen’s rampage had swelled the numbers of refugees, and famine and plague were said to have already broken out north of the Yellow River. Even here, on the still-unconquered southern bank of the river where he now was, people had grown ever more terrified and destitute. At Jun Prefecture he had lost well over a hundred thousand followers, yet after returning, before long, a great multitude had gathered around him once more.
Cult Master Lin, ordinarily so composed and magnanimous, found himself, at this moment, unsure even whether this was a good thing or not. Every ambitious schemer longs for a chaotic age, because only in chaos can one gather the hearts of the people—and yet, looking at the state of his followers, Lin Zongwu found himself thinking that this, too, was perhaps not entirely a good thing.
The enemy truly was… far too powerful.
He thought this over for a moment in the quiet, then let out a breath at last: so be it, then.
This one shall find the way, in the end, to save this realm!
A moment later, someone came walking this way. Lin Zongwu closed his eyes. The man, standing outside the door, reported the news in a low voice: Yingtian had fallen.
On hearing this news, he opened his eyes, and after a moment, the man outside the door heard the Cult Master let out a sigh that sounded almost like a prophecy.
“Demons run rampant, and dance in their triumph—the realm… is about to fall…”
The realm was peeling apart. In the ancient city of Yingtian, flame and blood filled every street; the same slaughter and plunder that had once played out within Bianliang’s walls now returned to this old city that had briefly served as capital. Leaves on the trees crackled and popped as they burned, plaques and signboards crashed down one after another, and people screamed in terror, cried out in agony, begged for mercy; women ran without stopping, men were run through and left dying on spearpoints, children were flung to the ground…
There was resistance. All along the way from north to south, acts of resistance great and small kept springing up, one after another, only to be crushed, one after another, in the collision. Common folk of courage and skill banded together, forming bands devoted to hunting down and killing lone Jin soldiers wherever found. People whose families had been destroyed, or stood on the edge of destruction, hated the men of Jin so bitterly they could have eaten their flesh and slept upon their skins—yet this was, in the end, the most violent collision between two nations.
After Yingtian, the two armies drove south once more, and the countless armies of Jiangnan that surged up to meet them were broken and routed.
Yangzhou, that stately old city, was likewise gripped by an atmosphere of helpless panic. The court had moved here along with Zhou Yong, and yet the Jurchen’s advance had not stopped. By now, Zhou Yong had already sent several pleading letters to the Jurchen army, lowering himself again and again—he had already seen clearly that this time, the Jurchen were dead set on carrying him off to the north, and he had perhaps even begun to regret ever having become emperor at all—but none of it had the slightest effect.
The court of the once-mighty Han dynasty had gathered together every talent the realm had to offer—those spirited officials who had once held forth grandly on the affairs of the world, and those figures active beyond the court as well—and this time, not one of them could turn back the tide.
“I’ve had some men prepared, a few bands of them…” Standing on the palace wall, gazing far off at the palace beyond, Jun Wu said to his sister beside him. “If the Jurchen come, they can escort us away.”
“Away to where?”
Zhou Pei’s eyes were hollow as she asked the question offhandedly. Jun Wu paused. “What about the northwest, then?”
Zhou Pei closed her eyes, unwilling to look at him while he talked nonsense. Jun Wu gave a small laugh. “I was joking.”
“We’ll go south, and further south, and further south still. However many hundreds of thousands of men they have, how long can they keep chasing? Whatever happens, keeping ourselves alive is the only way to keep any chance of a future. That’s what Master did too, out there in the northwest.” He paused. “This time, for our Han dynasty… I’m afraid…”
Jun Wu did not go on. Zhou Pei kept her eyes closed, letting the evening wind pass through her hair. For the first time in a long while, she did not object when Jun Wu used the word “Master.” Before this, she had already learned in detail what had become of the noble ladies carried off north in the humiliation at Jingping.
Violated, abused, and once taken north, reduced to slaves and prostitutes, with no release for the rest of their lives. If, going forward, she too met with capture, the only way out for her, she feared, would be to take her own life.
When spring comes, before I speak first, what insect would dare make a sound.
This time, fully prepared, the Jurchen who had killed their way here all the way from the north bore down, head-on, to crush the entire realm beneath them!
In the northwest, a place that drew far fewer eyes, the overall situation was not much better than that of the Central Plains, which had already become a living hell.
In the fifth month, while the Jurchen’s Central and Eastern Route Armies drew every eye in the realm with their unstoppable advance, Wanyan Loushi led his main force of over ten thousand Jin troops across the Yellow River. Before long, he crushed Fan Zhixu’s army of a hundred and sixty thousand at Chaoyi, then broke through at Tonghua, and went on to defeat tens of thousands more heavily armed troops at Tong Pass.
In the sixth month, he laid siege to Jingzhao Prefecture, using the tactic of besieging the city to draw out and destroy relief forces, wiping out the tens of thousands of troops sent to reinforce Jingzhao at Changle Slope and elsewhere, before calmly taking Jingzhao Prefecture itself. He captured the Military Commissioner Fu Liang alive, and afterward brought Fengxiang and Long Prefectures to submission, truly driving the pressure home into the northwest.
In the seventh month, preparations for war were proceeding vigorously at Yan Prefecture and elsewhere. Not long before, Zhong Lie had already refused the surrender urged upon him by Jurchen envoys. The Zhong family had guarded the northwest for generations, and now, though even his ancestors’ graves had been dug up, for a man of Zhong Lie’s stern, unbending nature, surrendering to Jin still remained no option at all.
Since retaking Yan Prefecture and the surrounding territory, he had had little time to build up his strength. Not long before, he had sent a letter to Xiaocang River, hoping to join forces against the enemy with the Han Army, known for its principle of never surrendering its own people to foreign powers—but the other side had frankly declined.
The Han Army was, after all, a force that had killed its own emperor and risen in rebellion; though they shared the same enemy, their positions still differed, and with no history of cooperation between the two sides, who could say whether one might suddenly turn on the other? Better, until the situation became clearer, not to join forces at all.
The refusal had its reasons, and Zhong Lie had no way to argue against it. On the twenty-third of the seventh month, within the walls of Yan Prefecture, he waited for news to arrive from the south.
Not long before, he had sent thirty thousand troops to reinforce Fengxiang.
The battle that might already be breaking out at Fengxiang could well be the largest assault the entire Han court’s forces in the west had yet launched against this Jurchen Western Route Army of barely ten thousand men. This was the result of discussions among the various parties, after word came, not long before, that Fengxiang, which had fallen into Jurchen hands, was preparing to rebel back over to their side. Among them, the Wuwei Army was sending fifteen thousand troops, the Jinning Army ten thousand, the Western Army thirty thousand, with several righteous armies each contributing forces as well, all agreeing on a set date to launch a joint assault on Fengxiang.
In the afternoon, word came.
The instant he had read the message through, Zhong Lie felt a wave of dizziness in his seat. He set the message down and, knowing full well the question was pointless, asked with great difficulty anyway: “Is this report true?”
The travel-worn, wounded rider gave him his answer.
On the twenty-first of the seventh month, Wanyan Loushi, besieging Fengxiang and striking down the relief forces, crushed the hundred-thousand-strong Jinning Army, then turned back and took Fengxiang city itself. On the twenty-second, his force of over ten thousand Jurchen split into several columns: at dawn they crushed the thirty-thousand-strong Western Army at Wugong; at noon they defeated a thirty-thousand-strong righteous army nearby; and that night, Wanyan Loushi personally led several thousand of his own direct command and crushed the hundred-fifty-thousand-strong Wuwei Army at Weinan.
—Wugong and Weinan lay nearly two hundred li apart.
Zhong Lie walked out through the door.
At this hour, all manner of preparations for war should still have been under way throughout Yan Prefecture, but here at the prefect’s residence, none of that activity outside was visible. Beyond the courtyard the autumn sky was high and clear, and yet he found it hard to draw breath at all—darkness was closing in on him.
“This realm… is it truly finished, then…”
At Xiaocang River, in a room where slanting sunlight streamed in and motes of dust danced in the air, a group of officers who had just received the same news likewise fell silent.
“…Damn it all.” Someone let out a soft, weary sigh. “…What good does having so many men do, in the end.”
In the eighth month, Wanyan Loushi’s main force pressed on toward Yan Prefecture…