When the darkness reached its very depths, the memories and feelings of days past surged forth like a breaking dam, carrying with them a suffocating, oppressive weight.

Summer, the blazing images, patches of lotus scattered across the pond.

In the autumn of the third year of Wu’s Jianshuo era, with the false-Qi general Ji Wenkang’s two hundred thousand troops crushed by the Huaxia Black Banner Army as its prelude, the combined forces of the Jin state and the false Qi began a long, three-year siege spanning Lüliang, Xiaocang River, Yanzhou, and other regions.

From that moment on, the fires of war in the northwest never once ceased.

With the Jurchens’ southern campaign having ended not long before, the first wave of attacks was led primarily by Liu Yu’s puppet regime. Under the Jurchens’ urging, a second wave of offense and blockade was quickly organized; after the failure of that first two hundred thousand men, an army of as many as six hundred thousand advanced step by careful step toward the Lüliang border.

This time, the great powers of Tian Hu, Cao Xingnong, and Lü Zheng — nominally under Liu Yu’s banner but in truth already surrendered to the Jurchens — also sent out their troops. That autumn’s end, vast armies advanced under Jurchen supervision toward Lüliang and the northwest, and as this first wave pressed forward, reinforcements continued to gather and march in from across the Central Plains. In the northwest, under the command of the Jurchen general Cibushi, the Zhe clan began to mobilize as well, while other powers such as Yan Zhenguo, who had earlier suffered defeat in campaigns against the northwest, joined in as well, riding on this massive show of force.

This sweeping mobilization carried with it the might of heaven’s own punishment. Though the Central Plains had by now fallen entirely under Jurchen control, several resistance forces still remained in the northwest — yet whether out of an awareness of the Jurchens’ earnest desire to avenge Wanyan Loushi, or out of wariness toward the Huaxia Army’s status as regicides and rebels, the only ones who truly resisted under this overwhelming show of force were the Huaxia Army and the Zhong Family Army, together numbering fewer than a hundred thousand men.

In the northwest, the Zhong Family Army held their cities under siege, while in the mountains around Lüliang and Xiaocang River, the Huaxia Army launched fierce counterattacks against the tens of thousands strong invading force. Relying on the treacherous, continuous mountain terrain of these regions, the Huaxia Army’s tactics were flexible and ever-changing — ambushes, traps, hot-air balloons rising into the sky, artillery formations carefully arranged to suit the terrain. Before winter set in, hundreds of thousands of troops entered the mountains in waves, and time and again, after being struck hard by the Black Banner Army’s initial assault, the false-Qi troops would find the mountain roads blasted apart by fierce artillery barrages, while the Black Banner soldiers atop the ridges pushed down burning oil and bales of hay, sending the crowds surging and fleeing across the slopes and valleys, burning in great masses amid the spreading flames.

With ferocious fire attacks and night raids, especially targeting the grain and supply units struggling through the difficult mountain roads, tens of thousands of men died like a funeral procession within that first month or so alone, the scene too horrific to look upon directly.

Though the forces carrying out this offensive were, at this point, entirely Han Chinese troops, the Black Banner Army showed no mercy — nor could they afford to. And to the Jurchens, these Han troops held no value whatsoever. Liu Yu’s regime continued conscripting throughout the Central Plains, with a small number of Jurchen troops stationed at the rear of the mountain region to oversee the advance of the invading forces; and because of the crushing initial counterattacks, the invading army began advancing more cautiously, cutting roads and felling forests mountain by mountain, advancing slowly and in tight formation, with a ten-to-one numerical advantage.

In the spring of the fourth year of Jianshuo, the false-Qi army first reached the outskirts of Qingmu Stockade, and the fighting for control of the stockade began. That autumn, as Jurchen reinforcements grew, the invading army pressed close to Xiaocang River, and by winter, they had completed the encirclement and division of Qingmu Stockade and Xiaocang River. As for the several cities held by the Zhong Family Army in the northwest, they had already become a sea of blood — the Zhong Family Army had, in succession, lost control of Qingzhou, Bao’an Army, and Huanzhou, holding on with great difficulty in Yanzhou alone.

That year, the progress of the combined Jin-Qi forces reduced itself to nothing more than a battle report, simple enough on paper. And yet, in the course of that advance, the level of resistance shown by the Huaxia Army was staggering, even terrifying. In the mountains around Qingmu Stockade and Xiaocang River, the invading army’s advance came at the cost of nearly an inch of ground for an inch of blood; more than once, the deaths of commanders, night raids, and exploded camps triggered mass routs. Most of the false-Qi troops were nothing more than a disorganized rabble; had the Jurchen forces watching from the rear not gone on killing tens of thousands of deserters, their severed heads planted in the ground to form an unbroken forest of the dead, this entire great battle would likely have collapsed before it could ever truly begin.

In the third month of the fourth year, before the flames of war had yet enveloped Qingmu Stockade, and as the false-Qi forces pressed forward inch by inch, the Huaxia Army suddenly broke out from Xiaocang River and, at Wolf Ridge in the northwest, launched a surprise attack that shattered the combined forces of Yan Zhenguo and the Zhe clan, killing Yan Zhenguo and his personal guard on the spot while also routing the Zhe clan’s main army, chasing Zhe Keqiu in a headlong flight of over thirty li. Several of the Zhe clan’s younger sons and nephews were killed by the Black Banner Army in that battle.

In the sixth month, a special detachment of roughly a thousand men infiltrated northward into Jin territory, striking into Zhuling in Shuozhou. This force of just over a thousand took the county seat, seized a nearby Jurchen-guarded horse pasture, plundered several hundred war horses, and set it ablaze before departing in triumph. By the time the Jurchen army arrived, both the pasture and the county office had already been reduced to ash by the roaring flames, every last Jurchen official there beheaded and displayed atop the city walls.

On their way back through the mountain roads to Lüliang, the force left behind, carved in large Jurchen characters upon a boulder, the words: Do not hope to return alive.

— Never think you can go back alive.

This was a boldness no one had ever imagined. For years, the Jurchens had swept across the realm without meeting a match, and even amid the campaigns against Xiaocang River and the northwest, though the Jurchen army maintained its oversight, back within Jin territory, they were still digesting the spoils of their third southern campaign, still, at that point, something like a lazy, coiled serpent — no one had been willing to face the full mobilization of the regular Jurchen army. And yet the Black Banner Army had struck out just like that, carving a savage cut into their very flesh.

Such an attack was not enough to truly wound the Jurchens, but the loss of face was a feeling they had not experienced in a very long while.

Following this incident, more and more Jurchen troops began to move south in succession.

Still, faced with the Black Banner Army’s fierce artillery assaults, the Jurchen forces at this stage still had not stepped onto the front lines themselves, instead using massive numbers of Han troops as cannon fodder, testing the power of the enemy’s artillery and gunpowder through them, gradually seeking a method to counter it.

By the ninth month, however, this same force, seizing an opening created during one of the Black Banner Army’s offensives, broke through the blockade line and burst out through the eastern mountain region, wreaking havoc among the Jurchen camps stationed there. Had the Jurchen general Nagu, in command of the eastern line, not narrowly survived the attack, the offensive at the front might well have been thrown into disarray by this raid. But as the Jurchen army responded swiftly, this force of a thousand men suffered devastating losses on their retreat back to Xiaocang River, pursued and hunted down mercilessly.

In the spring of the fifth year of Jianshuo, the Jurchen general Cibushi led thirty thousand Jurchen troops south into the northwest, crossing over the very stone marker that read “Do not hope to return alive,” while Shuliesu led another thirty thousand troops into the Central Plains. In the second month, upon learning of this, half the forces at Xiaocang River broke out in a fierce assault, beginning nearly a month of bloody fighting, throwing the besieging forces into chaos across the mountains and temporarily reopening the encircled position. This was one of the most brutal battles yet in the course of the invading army’s steady advance; during it, the false-Qi general Ji Wenkang and Liu Yu’s own younger brother, Liu Yi, both among the highest-ranking commanders present, were killed in targeted strikes by the Black Banner Army.

Blood flowed like rivers; corpses filled the valleys.

In the third month, Yanzhou fell. Zhong Lie resisted within the city walls to the very last, dying in battle, and with him, the Zhong Family Army ceased to exist.

In the sixth month, with Shuliesu’s forces joining the assault, Xiaocang River, after more than half a year under siege, saw its dam breached, and the forces of Qingmu Stockade and Xiaocang River broke out in a fierce assault, throwing the mountains into chaos. Ning Yi led a force of over twenty thousand in a lightning strike on Yanzhou; Cibushi led his main army to face him in a standoff, while the Black Banner Army made use of tunnels the Zhong Family Army had dug earlier to infiltrate the city, breaking it from within and without together. The Jurchen general Cibushi was captured in the chaos of battle and subsequently beheaded by the Black Banner Army atop the city walls.

Qin Shaoqian led another branch of the Black Banner Army south, then east, striking into Central Plains territory, capturing several cities in succession before pushing all the way to the outskirts of Taiyuan. It was said that Qin Shaoqian paid tribute to his fallen elder brother beneath the walls of Taiyuan before, not long after, turning back west once more.

Meanwhile, after retaking Yanzhou, the Black Banner Army marched straight for the Zhe clan’s territory, feinting an attack on Fuzhou, luring out and crushing the Zhe clan’s reinforcements before using inside collaborators to break Linzhou. Afterward, they turned back east into the great mountains once more, shaking off the pursuing Jurchen elite cavalry that followed close behind…

By this point, the Black Banner Army’s sweeping movements across the western Central Plains and the northwest had turned the whole region into an utter killing field.

Whether to the west, south, or north, people watching this great war unfold might not have given it much thought at first, but by this stage, its emergence and progress could no longer be ignored by anyone. By the second year of the great battle, the Central Plains had already mobilized nearly the entirety of its strength into the conflict. Under Liu Yu’s regime, harsh taxes soared, Han refugees fled south in great numbers, and the people’s lives grew ever more miserable, sparking uprisings to rise once more.

The Jurchens, too, expended enormous forces on suppression. Along the route from the Central Plains toward Xiaocang River, the armies of Liu Yu and Tian Hu sealed off every path, until Qin Shaoqian’s force broke through, briefly shattering that blockade.

No one could know just how desperate those caught up in this war truly were. Black Banner Army soldiers captured on the battlefield were cruelly tortured to death, and the Han troops forced onto the front lines had long since lost their nerve — at times, cowardly soldiers could even be seen kneeling before the battle lines, begging the Black Banner Army to surrender, pleading with them to hurry up and die — they could see no possibility that the Black Banner Army might survive, and so dared not throw themselves into that death trap either. The Black Banner Army, in turn, showed them no mercy either.

By the latter half of the fifth year of Jianshuo, the Jurchens’ own cannons had gradually begun to be deployed within their ranks as well; elite Jurchen troops mixed into the army would launch surprise attacks on the Black Banner Army once the cannon fire ceased — for by this point, the Black Banner Army’s gunpowder had grown scarce, while the Jurchens, drawing on their endless supply chain, could still afford to squander vast quantities of it.

The reports sent south always seemed simple enough, and yet every clash within these mountains might well have been horrific beyond words. Amid the large-scale slaughter, there were smaller-scale confrontations too — small units of the Black Banner Army besieged within the mountains, left to starve to death; others ambushed and cut down to the very last man in some hopeless, isolated spot. People would find, amid mountains of corpses, black banners still standing upright. In the harshest environments, in the most desperate of death traps, every single charge made by the Black Banner Army’s soldiers was enough to chill the blood…

How could anyone who had not lived through it possibly imagine such a thing?

Through all this time, Jiangnan had stabilized and continued to develop; drawing on the refugees fleeing south from the north, workshops both large and small found themselves with an abundance of labor. Having lost all means of livelihood, these refugees begged only for a full meal, and the merchant households of Jiangnan thus gained access to vast quantities of cheap labor. Officials began singing their own praises at court, claiming it was their own resolve, born of shame, that had caused this — a symbol of the Wu Dynasty’s rise. As for the war in the north, no one spoke of it; no one dared speak of it; no one was permitted to speak of it.

The Jingping Emperor, kept penned up in the north like some kind of dog, sent his yearly edicts and paeans of praise to the Jin emperor, while the imperial house continued to seal off news of the war in the northwest. Those in the upper ranks who knew of these matters could not speak of them; Zhou Pei, too, had no way to voice or even to dwell on any of it — she simply received report after report of the brutal news from the north, and would rebuke her brother Jun Wu whenever his emotions showed openly on his face. As for those reports, each one enough to make her heart tremble, she did her best to press them down, quietly, again and again.

Feelings suppressed for long enough eventually become an automatic reflex, and so she no longer felt much of a shock at those brutal reports — after all, every single one was brutal — and amid the peaceful, prosperous atmosphere of Jiangnan, she would sometimes find herself dazedly wondering whether all of it might be fake. She would read them quietly, file them away quietly, quietly… only in the most relaxed moments of deep night, in dreams, would the nightmares come unbidden, reminding her of those mountains of corpses, those rivers of blood, those fluttering banners, and that most fierce of struggles and cries.

Amid the Jurchen invasion, with tens of millions unable to resist, it was that furious regicide, that rebel, who, in the most impossible of circumstances, had planted himself firmly in a position where survival should have been impossible, and, facing an overwhelming, unstoppable assault, had held fast to the throat of that nearly unbeatable enemy through three years of brutal fighting, never once wavering.

In this collapsing world, no one had ever achieved anything close to this.

Over three years, Zhou Pei had come to understand her brother’s feelings; she could even fully imagine what men like Yue Fei — who had once crossed paths with that fiend — must have felt upon receiving those messages, one after another, of Zhong Lie’s martyrdom at Yanzhou, of the Black Banner Army beheading Cibushi atop the walls, of Qin Shaoqian charging through Taiyuan.

It was not only these men in the upper ranks — among the scholars with access to news from higher up as well, talk of this great battle in the northwest had become a kind of high-level topic of conversation, people cursing that regicidal demon even as they spoke of these events, with the most subtle and complicated of feelings churning in their hearts. All of this, Zhou Pei understood in her heart perfectly well — she simply… could not let it move her.

In the sixth year of Jianshuo, the war continued without pause, with more Jurchen forces arriving in succession, and the situation in the northwest grew ever more brutal. The land had nearly been beaten empty of people; the Central Plains grew ever more desperate; the Black Banner Army’s losses grew ever heavier — how they had managed to hold on across that land, even Zhou Pei found it hard to know. But… perhaps because it was him, there would always be more ways to manage.

After all, that regicidal demon… was a demon who truly made people’s blood run cold.

Jiangnan grew ever more stable, and she had very nearly grown used to it all.

When would you fall? She had thought of this before, too, but every time, she had never been able to carry the thought any further.

In the sixth year of Wu’s Jianshuo era, on the eighth day of the sixth month, the combined armies of the Jin state and the false Qi surrounded the Black Banner Army’s main force at Yellow Head Slope in the northwest. On the thirteenth, Ning Yi, leader of the Black Banner Army, along with countless of his followers, was killed; the army’s personnel confirmed his body and had it torn apart, his head sent north to be presented before the Jin emperor’s throne.

It was a sight that, even in her deepest nightmares over all these many years, had never once appeared before…

That towering figure, who had risen from the humblest of beginnings — she had watched him, over the years, gradually grow, watched his refined elegance, his wit, his tenacity, his ferocity… they had never been fated for each other. She still remembered, at fifteen, that reunion in the courtyard, that starlit night, that wind — she had thought, that very night, that she had suddenly grown up. And yet, somehow, even when they never met, he always seemed to appear somewhere in her life, so that her gaze could never quite turn away from him.

She had held too many feelings in her heart, too many fantasies, and yet she had never once imagined that one day, he would fall.

How could this be — he had killed the emperor, he had even killed the emperor — wasn’t he trying to save this world…

In the courtyard, the heat lay like a prison, and all its prosperity and peace felt like an illusion.

Fake… she thought.

In the northwest, the chaotic flames of war still burned in their final throes. Not long before this, that figure who had stirred such enormous turmoil, dragging every place he touched into hell, making every enemy taste the bitterest of consequences — that demon — seemed, at last, to have fallen…