In the seventh month of the eighth year of Wujianshuo, across the vast expanse of the Central Plains, the Yellow River and the Yangtze still surged onward. As the autumn wind rose, leaves turned yellow and wildflowers bloomed, and the multitudes of ordinary people lived on much like those wild grasses and flowers, taking on all manner of different forms from the lands north of the river to the water-towns of the south.
Happy and content along the Fen River, getting by well enough in southeastern Shanxi… These sayings, once fitting for the days of the Wu dynasty, had by now, after ten long years of war, shifted entirely southward. North of the Yangtze, public order was no longer stable; great numbers of refugees from the north had gathered there, frightened and without support, waiting for relief from the court. The army was the dominant force in this region—any force capable of winning battles, with independent backing, was busy recruiting.
Most of the common people coming south from the north had nothing left to their names; their families needed shelter, their children needed to eat, and for households that still had able-bodied young men, joining the army had naturally become the only way forward. These men had already witnessed the brutality of bloodshed and the sorrow of pointless death on their journey south, and with a little training could at least be sent into battle. They sold themselves to earn their families a first stake of gold and silver to settle in the south, then left their families behind and marched off to war. Over these years, countless moving tales, worth singing of, had quietly taken shape.
As for those who carried south the silver bought with their fathers’ or elder brothers’ lives, along the way they might still have to endure the exploitation of corrupt officials, harassment from bandit gangs and street toughs, and once they reached the south, all manner of exclusion from the southerners as well. Some who came south to seek out relatives, after surviving countless brushes with death to reach their destination, might discover that these relations were not entirely kind people either—and so tales beginning with “don’t look down on a young man just because he’s poor” were already being spun by impoverished scholars.
If the Wu dynasty could still have had a hundred more years of fortune, one could imagine that, in the foreseeable future, people would indeed see these hope-filled stories come to pass, one after another. The general who dies after a hundred battles, the warrior who returns after ten years away—those separated from their families at the recruiting stations would still have their moment of reunion; the young man who endured scorn in the south would in the end rise to the very top of the court, return to the lane of his childhood, and enjoy the fawning respect of relatives who had once looked down on him; the girl who endured hardship in a cold, poor house while remaining pure at heart would at last meet the fine young man of her future…
Such wishes were so simple, so beautiful—how could one call them mere foolish fantasy?
Xiangyang, as night fell.
As an ancient stronghold at the very throat of the Central Plains, this city no longer carried the prosperity it once had. Looking down from above, apart from the torches along the walls on all four sides, this once towering ancient city, formerly packed with people, now showed hardly any light at all. Compared to the great cities of the Wu dynasty’s heyday, whose lights had once stretched on unbroken through the night, Xiangyang now looked more like a fishing village or small town from an earlier age. Under the blade of the Jurchens, this city, having changed hands several times over the past few years, had driven off far too many of its original inhabitants.
Of course, a month after this city had fallen into the hands of the Wu dynasty’s army, no small number of refugees from the surrounding area had, in the end, gathered here upon hearing the news; for a time, this place would remain the best route south for people fleeing from the north.
The army camp extended along the northern side of the city, filled everywhere with barracks, supplies, and half-finished quarters. Patrols returned from beyond the camp, warhorses galloping into the drill grounds. A recent victory had brought the army a spirited morale and vitality, which, combined with this force’s strict discipline, gave even a distant onlooker a sense of something on the rise. Among the armies of Southern Wu, very few had this kind of bearing. In one barracks building at the center of the camp, the lamps were now blazing bright, and horses kept arriving in a steady stream—a sign that the core members of this army had gathered together over some matter.
Soldiers passing by in the distance all looked on with anxious tension.
Though the fall of Xiangyang had lifted this army’s morale, the worries that followed were unavoidable as well. Once a city was taken, supplies from the rear came flooding in, and the army’s craftsmen worked feverishly to repair the walls and strengthen the defenses in every way possible—all of which showed that this city, sitting at the very center of the storm, could face a counterattack from the puppet Qi regime or the Jurchen army at any time. That the various department heads within the army’s upper ranks had suddenly gathered together very likely meant the enemy ahead had made some major move.
But before long, a piece of information that had trickled down from the higher ranks—one that hadn’t been particularly guarded—somewhat eased everyone’s tension.
In the north of the Central Plains, the Black Banner had stirred.
After two years lying low beneath the surface, this great beast, submerged under the water, had finally turned itself over amid the churning undercurrents—and with that single motion, half the power structures of the Central Plains had been overturned. That warlord who had been the strongest of all the puppet Qi’s regional lords had been abruptly knocked from his perch.
“…Hunting down spies and purging the Black Banner’s internal presence has been something every faction has been doing continuously since two years ago. Liu Yu, cooperating with the Jurchen army, has even had his subordinates carry out several massacres—but the result… no one knows whether they actually killed the right people or not. Because of this, the north has long since fallen into a state of jumping at shadows over anything to do with the Black Banner army…”
In the brightly lit central barracks, the one speaking was a middle-aged scholar who had come up from Tian Hu’s territory. After Qin Siyuan’s death, the Secret Investigation Bureau had temporarily fallen apart, with part of its legacy nominally divided up among Tong Guan, Cai Jing, Li Gang, and others. It was only after Ning Yi killed the emperor that the true remnants of the Secret Investigation Bureau were pulled back together by Kang Xian, later coming under the charge of the siblings Zhou Pei and Jun Wu. The portion of the bureau that Ning Yi himself had once overseen had leaned more toward the martial world and trade networks; he had thoroughly reshaped that side of the organization, which was later further tempered through the scorched-earth campaigns and the defense of Bianliang. By the time he killed Zhou Zhe and turned to open rebellion, it was precisely the most steadfast members of that branch who had followed him away—though naturally, not everyone could be swayed, and many of those in the middle had stayed behind, becoming, by now, the most usable intelligence apparatus in the hands of the Wu dynasty.
This middle-aged scholar had narrow, slitted eyes and a wispy mustache that gave him the look of a shrewd, cunning, timid clerk—perhaps that was simply his usual disguise—but here in the great camp, he showed instead a genuinely grave expression and a clear, sharp logic.
“According to what we know, the situation in Tian Hu’s court in the north has been extremely tense since the start of this year. Tian Hu, though a hunter by origin, has, through more than a decade of careful management, become the strongest of all the puppet Qi’s regional lords, and he has also found it hardest of all of them to tolerate Black Banner spies lurking within his own court. After more than a year of restraint, he was finally ready to act—we anticipated that the Black Banner side would surely resist, and had also arranged people to investigate. On the twenty-ninth of the sixth month, both sides made their move.”
The scholar placed marker after marker on the large map before him. “Joining forces with the Black Banner were Wang Juyun, Tian Shi, and Yu Yulin… In Tian Hu’s territory, Fenyang, Weisheng, Jinning, Gaizhou, Zhaode, Zezhou… and other places all rose up simultaneously, with only Zhaode failing to succeed. All the rest changed hands overnight. We’ve confirmed the Black Banner was the main force coordinating this operation, but at Weisheng, which we were watching most closely, the forces that actually rose up were mainly those of Tian Shi and Yu Yulin, with Lou Shuwan’s invisible influence also playing a part behind the scenes. We’ve since confirmed that the true command center planning this whole operation for the Black Banner was Zezhou. According to our intelligence, a group suspected of being led by the rebel Ning Yi appeared in Zezhou, and the highest-ranking figure involved in the planning on the Black Banner side went by the code name Black Sword.”
The room was crowded with many people, with Yue Fei at the front, along with Wang Gui, Zhang Xian, Niu Gao, Li Dao, Gao Chong, Sun Ge, Yu Peng, and many others—some military officers, some staff advisors, forming the initial core of what was now the Beiwei Army. In an inconspicuous corner of the room, there was even a young woman in military dress, slender in build though clearly still quite young—it was hard to say whether she’d even reached sixteen—a fine sword at her waist, listening to all of this with excitement and curiosity.
Seeing the scholar pause, Zhang Xian, among the gathered men, spoke up: “What’s this ‘Black Sword’?”
The middle-aged scholar frowned slightly. “The year before last, when Black Banner remnants moved south, unrest stirred in Bianzhou, Zizhou, and other areas, and those who tried to block their advance ended up plunging several of those places into chaos. Several cities in Jinghu were breached; county and prefectural officials there were all seized, and the Military Commissioner of Guangnan, Cui Jingwen, nearly lost his life. The one who led the troops out in southern Hunan was Chen Fan; the one who oversaw the whole operation across Bianzhou, Zizhou, and elsewhere went by the code name ‘Black Sword’—this person is one of Ning Yi’s wives, formerly the ‘Tyrant Blade’ of Fang La’s forces, Liu Xigua.”
These past years, Southern Wu had strictly forbidden discussion of Black Banner affairs; although everyone in the room now was of the army’s upper ranks, they hadn’t had much exposure to such matters before. Hearing the name Liu Xigua, some couldn’t help but laugh, while others quietly grasped just how formidable that name was, their expressions turning grave.
The great upheaval in Jinghu two years earlier had been publicly attributed to unrest among refugees, but in truth it had been the Black Banner striking out. The armies stationed in Jinghu and Guangnan had kept mostly to the south, rarely fighting the Jurchens or marching north to defend the throne; but when word came that the Black Banner had been badly mauled up north, some of the great men at court had wanted to seize the opportunity for themselves—only for that young general named Chen Fan, leading the Black Banner’s southern Hunan branch, to take city after city, crushing two armies numbering in the tens of thousands, and then, because of the disturbances in Bianzhou and Zizhou, to forcibly quash Southern Wu’s ambitions before they could go any further.
At the time, though these men were all military officers and knew nothing of “Black Sword,” they’d at least come to understand that the Black Banner also maintained a force in the south, and that this general named Chen Fan had originally been a rebel who joined the Yongle uprising, the personally trained disciple of Fang Qifo. In the Yongle uprising, Fang La had become known to all through his reputation, but it was his sworn brother Fang Qifo who possessed the true talent for both scholarship and strategy—and now, at last, everyone was seeing the power of his direct teachings passed down.
Of course, for those who truly understood the martial world, or who had actually seen Chen Fan in person, that string of battles two years ago was what had truly left them stunned.
Over these years, the image Chen Fan presented to the world had always been that of a chivalrous warrior of great strength above all else—sunny and forthright to his own people, and to the outside world, a grandmaster of formidable skill. During the Yongle uprising, Fang Qifo had only ever used him as a vanguard fighter to break enemy lines; only gradually did he grow, eventually even killing Sikong Nan together with his wife, shocking the entire martial world. When he followed Ning Yi, Xiaocang River had gathered together countless masters, yet the only one truly able to surpass him in skill was Lu Hongti alone—even the “Tyrant Blade” Liu Xigua, who had grown up alongside him, was likely a hair’s breadth behind him in this regard. He had always presented himself through sheer physical prowess, and throughout his time following Ning Yi, his role had mostly been that of a bodyguard.
No one had expected that the first time he took command of an army in battle, he would perform like a pot of soup slow-simmered to perfection—every element of the march and the fighting executed without a single flaw. Facing an enemy numbering in the tens of thousands, he had led fewer than ten thousand men out with complete composure, crushing his enemies one after another, seizing cities and counties along the way, precise and unhurried the whole time. By now, the Black Banner held several territories, and the easternmost of them—the Miao villages of southern Hunan—was under his guard; in two years, not a single soul had dared move against it.
“If that’s so, then could it be that this upheaval within Tian Hu’s territory was actually orchestrated by Ning Yi himself?” Seeing the others either murmuring among themselves or lost in thought, the staff advisor Sun Ge spoke up.
The middle-aged scholar shook his head. “We can’t say for certain at this point. Over these past two years, rumors that Ning Yi isn’t dead have surfaced from time to time, mostly deliberate misdirection sown by the Black Banner itself. This time, in bringing down Tian Hu in the north, there may well be an element of a show of force involved, and so it’s entirely possible they’ve deliberately wanted to stir up such speculation. Because of this great upheaval, we did identify some individuals who helped coordinate and stir up the trouble, suspected to be Black Banner members—but since they have ties to both Wang Juyun and Tian Shi’s factions, it seems, for now, there’s no way to move against them.”
The scholar paused. “Three days after this great upheaval, all of Tian Hu’s relatives who had once run rampant across the north—apart from Tian Shi’s own line—were arrested and thrown into prison; some who resisted were beheaded on the spot. By the time I set out south from Weisheng, Tian Shi’s faction had nearly finished taking over; they’d clearly been prepared in advance, carrying out a swift and merciless purge of all the various factions once connected to Tian Hu’s relatives, retainers, and hangers-on. Most people outside are applauding it, and it should likely stabilize before too long.”
“Tian Hu originally submitted to the Jurchens, while Wang Juyun raised troops to resist the Jin; the Black Banner, meanwhile, is a thorn in the Jin’s side more than anyone.” Sun Ge said. “Now that the three of them have joined forces, what is the Jurchen attitude toward all this?”
“By the time I came south, the Jurchens had already sent men to reprimand Tian Shi—apparently Tian Shi submitted a memorial admitting fault, publicly promising to stabilize the situation as quickly as possible, so as not to let it drag on and harm the common people.”
“He’s stalling for time. Once the situation settles and internal threats are cleared out, Tian Shi and his people will actually be stronger than Tian Hu ever was. And since his territory is largely mountainous, difficult for the Jurchens to conquer, so long as he nominally submits, they’ll very likely turn a blind eye… A clever gamble on his part.” Sun Ge analyzed, then paused. “And yet, there are those among the Jurchens skilled at long-term planning as well. Will they really hand the Central Plains such an opportunity?”
The room fell silent; in truth, everyone present had already arrived at the same thought: what if the Jurchens sent troops?
For everyone in Southern Wu, this was a question that struck close to home, one they lived with every single day; the faction at court favoring peace talks had arisen precisely because of it. We’re attacking Xiangyang—what if the Jurchens send troops because of it? We’re taking an aggressive posture—what if the Jurchens send troops because of it? We’re walking too loudly today—what if the Jurchens send troops because of it? Some of these worries were, admittedly, spineless in the extreme, but all too often, they were also a very real and immediate threat.
If those who had taken Xiangyang could still count themselves fortunate, this move by the Black Banner was, clearly, yet another sensitive signal.
Sun Ge rose to his feet, stepped forward, and pointed at the map, drawing a circle to the southwest. “The Black Banner is here now. Though they fought the three-year war at Xiaocang River, after retreating, most of the territory they now hold is fairly poor land. These past two years, our Wu dynasty has done its best to blockade them, refusing to trade with them; Dali, Liu Yu, and others have likewise taken a stance of exclusion and blockade. The northwest has become a wasteland, hardly anyone left there; the war with Western Xia nearly wiped out that entire nation. Wherever the Black Banner turns, they run into one dead end after another. And so, after two years of this, they’re seeking a way out.”
“Tian Hu endured for two years and finally couldn’t hold back any longer—he made his move, and, as it happens, ran straight into the Black Banner’s hands. Within this territory, Tian Shi and Yu Yulin were already plotting to rebel from within, while outside, Wang Juyun was watching hungrily from without. The two sides clashed once, and he was simply steamrolled by the Black Banner—no injustice in that defeat. The Black Banner plays for high stakes too—drawing in both the Prince of Jin’s forces and Wang Juyun’s power in a single stroke, they’ve now cleared this route through the Central Plains. We all know Ning Yi’s talent for making deals—so long as there’s someone on the other side willing to cooperate, that middle stretch… Liu Yu is nothing to worry about. Honestly, given how the Black Banner has positioned itself, if they wanted to kill Liu Yu right now, it probably wouldn’t take them much effort at all…”
Sun Ge drew another circle on the Prince of Jin’s territory. “Here in Tian Hu’s domain, the one maintaining the people’s livelihood is a woman named Lou Shuwan. She was one of the earliest to do business with the Green Wood Stronghold on Mount Lüliang and with Xiaocang River as well; under Tian Hu, she’s also placed the greatest emphasis on relations with every faction. The reason this region is now the most peaceful in the entire Central Plains is that, even after the fall of Xiaocang River, they’ve continued maintaining trade with the Jin state—in the early years they even tried to secure the blue salt trade from Western Xia. Once the Black Banner army connects with this territory, they’ll be able to reach straight into the Jin state with a single turn… After that, there’ll be nowhere in this world they can’t go.”
“Our Beiwei Army isn’t worth worrying about to them yet, but the moment the Black Banner breaks through here, even the Jurchens will have a headache on their hands.” Sun Ge looked at the map. “But a game of chess isn’t something where, once you’ve made your move, the other side simply sits and waits. I can see this much of the Black Banner’s scheme laid out plainly enough—but whether the Jurchens will actually play into their hands, gentlemen, that’s another matter entirely…”
As Sun Ge spoke, some in the room wore expressions of calm indifference, others frowned in thought, and still others—Gao Chong among them—had already broken into fierce, eager grins. “Then there’ll be a battle to fight.”
This was something everyone present could already see coming. Once the Jurchens truly sent troops, they would never stop at simply flattening a single region in Shanxi. Over these years, every time the Jurchens had marched south, it had been a world-shattering catastrophe, a slaughter of the innocent. The Xiaocang River campaign had bought Southern Wu six or seven years of recovery and rest, and even large-scale fighting since then had been nothing compared to the brutality of Wuzhu’s “combing the mountains and searching the seas” campaign back then.
Now, with this news arriving, everyone present understood one thing: perhaps the world once again stood on the brink of a new catastrophe…