The stars wheeled overhead, and the night gradually deepened. In the great camp at Xiangyang, the discussion concerning the Black Banner’s movements in the north had come, for the time being, to a close. Officers and advisors filed out of the central barracks one by one, scattering off into the night as they talked among themselves.
Sun Ge and a few other advisors were still in the room discussing the current situation with Yue Fei; Yue Yinping, having served the men their tea, had already stepped out ahead of the others. The midnight wind blew soft and gentle; she took a deep breath, weighing the significance of all the many matters discussed that night.
The reappearance of the Huaxia Army, the world-shaking upheaval in the north, the traces of the man suspected to be Mr. Ning himself… and the possibility that the Jurchens might soon make their move. Perhaps, truly, war was about to break out again.
She felt no fear at the thought. As Yue Fei’s adopted daughter, Yue Yinping was fourteen years old this year. She had grown up amid the fires of war, and having witnessed, alongside her father, countless scenes of military defeat, of refugees, of desperate flight, and having lost her adoptive mother to illness during their flight south—indirectly, too, because of the vile Jin dogs—she carried a deep well of hatred in her heart. From a young age she had studied martial arts under her father and had built a solid foundation in it.
At first, Yue Fei had not wanted her anywhere near the battlefield, but from the age of eleven, little Yue Yinping had already grown accustomed to traveling with the army, helping to maintain order among the crowds of refugees. By the summer of the previous year, after an unexpected encounter in which Yinping had personally killed two Jurchen soldiers with her superb swordsmanship, Yue Fei had stopped trying to hold her back, willing at last to let her come learn something within the army.
“You are my daughter of the Yue family, and unfortunately, you have also learned the sword and spear. In a time like this, when it seems you must walk onto the battlefield, I cannot stop you. But once you’re there, above all, be careful—do not die without meaning, and cause others grief.”
Having grown up under Yue Fei’s care, Yinping knew her father’s usual sternness and rectitude; only in speaking these particular words did he show a rare gentleness. Still young as she was, of course she didn’t dwell on the deeper meaning behind them; feeling her father’s concern was already enough to satisfy her. And now, knowing that war with the Jin dogs might truly be coming, her heart was, if anything, filled with a fierce and generous excitement.
Taking a couple of deep breaths of fresh air by the doorway, she walked along beside the camp wall, and upon reaching the corner, suddenly spotted a figure crouched not far off, apparently eavesdropping at the base of the wall. Yinping frowned and walked over—it was Yue Yun, two years younger than her.
“Sister, I heard the Huaxia Army made a move up north?”
Twelve-year-old Yue Yun had only just begun to grow, standing a full head shorter than Yue Yinping, but having trained diligently in martial arts since childhood, he already looked like a fairly sturdy and healthy child. Seeing his sister approach, his eyes flashed bright with excitement in the darkness. Yue Yinping glanced toward the main barracks and reached out to pinch his ear.
“Ow, Sister, it hurts, it hurts…” Yue Yun made no move to dodge, his head bent low from the pinch, patting at Yinping’s wrist while murmuring softly.
“So you know it hurts—don’t you know the army’s discipline? What are you doing so close to this place?” the girl said in a low voice.
“Sister, I only just got here—I came to find Father about something, ah…”
“Hmph, Father probably already knows you’re hiding here—just you wait…”
As Yue Yinping spoke, the sound of voices and footsteps came from the barracks—their father had already risen to see his guests out. She knew well enough that her father’s skill in martial arts was formidable; he was, after all, the last disciple accepted by the world’s foremost master, Zhou Tong, and over these years, through utmost sincerity and unwavering purpose, had reached a state of true mastery—though these skills went unremarked on the battlefield, and he rarely spoke of them to others. But a child like Yue Yun sneaking up to eavesdrop at the wall’s corner was hardly something that could escape his father’s notice.
Sure enough, once he had seen Sun Ge and the others off, that dignified figure came walking toward them. “Yue Yun, I’ve told you before, you are not to enter the camp as you please. Who let you in?”
“Father, my little brother—”
“Yinping, you only just found him yourself, you don’t even know the reason—what are you speaking up for!” Ahead of them, Yue Fei looked at the two of them with furrowed brows, his tone calm, yet carrying a stern edge beneath it. This year, at thirty-four, Yue Pengju had long since shed the fiery, unrefined passion of his younger days, leaving only the weight of responsibility that came with carrying an entire army on his shoulders. “Yue Yun, I’ve told you the reason you’re not to enter the camp as you please. Do you still remember it?”
“I remember.” The still-short boy straightened his chest. “Father said, since I am, after all, the commanding general’s son, no matter how modest and self-restrained I try to be, the soldiers will still, out of respect for Father, give me special treatment. Over time, this would corrupt my character!”
“That they let you in today only proves that this is exactly true.”
“That’s not it.” Yue Yun raised his head. “I really do have something to see Father about today.”
Yue Fei’s gaze sharpened. “Oh? A child like you, it seems, already knows of some important military matter, does he?”
“Father, I moved that big rock. You once said, if I could move it, you’d let me join in the fighting. I’m already one of the Beiwei Army’s men now—that’s the only reason those older brothers in the army let me in!”
Yue Yinping blinked, looking at Yue Yun in astonishment. The young boy stood ramrod straight, brimming with spirited confidence. Yue Fei looked at him and fell silent.
As it happened, these two children had studied inner martial cultivation with their father since early childhood, building an excellent foundation. Yue Fei, resolute and upright by nature, had, over these years, witnessed more than his share of the tragedy of a Central Plains fallen into ruin, and his upbringing of his children in this regard had always been quite rigorous. Both children, steeped in this atmosphere since infancy, spoke of charging into battle and slaying the enemy without a shred of hesitation.
After Yinping joined the army, Yue Yun had naturally made the same request; Yue Fei had pointed to a large rock and said that if he could move it, he would grant his wish. After the fall of Xiangyang, Yue Yun had come to him again, and Yue Fei had picked out another rock of roughly the same size. He’d reasoned that although both children had decent skill, this wasn’t yet the time to rely purely on brute strength, and having Yue Yun push rather than lift a boulder would also help him develop the skill of applying leverage without straining his body. Who would have guessed that this twelve-year-old boy had actually managed to push the very rock chosen for him at Xiangyang.
Perhaps he himself had been careless, choosing a rock that was, in fact, too easy to move…
Yue Fei fell silent for a long while, the atmosphere growing awkward. After a moment, he lifted his head. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow. Go rest for now—your sister will take you back in a bit… Yinping, walk with me a while.”
Yue Yun looked thoroughly pleased with himself. “Father, if you have doubts, you could pick two prisoners for me to spar against, to see whether I’m fit for the battlefield, whether I can kill an enemy. No going back on your word!”
“…We’ll talk about it later.” Yue Fei clasped his hands behind his back and turned to leave. Yue Yun, still buzzing with excitement, tugged at Yue Yinping’s sleeve. “Sister, you have to put in a good word for me.”
“You’re not even taller than a horse yet, shorty.”
Knowing full well how awkward this whole situation was for both sides, Yinping frowned and, in a rare moment, said something rather sharp-tongued. Yue Yun didn’t seem to mind at all, waving his hands and grinning foolishly. “Heh heh.”
Yue Yinping turned and hurried after her father.
…
Within the camp, most of the soldiers had already turned in for the night. Father and daughter walked on, one ahead of the other, unhurried. Yue Fei kept his hands clasped behind his back, gazing sideways at the night sky ahead, saying nothing the entire way. It was only as they neared the edge of the camp that he finally stopped. “Yinping, what do you make of today’s events?”
“The Jurchens? If they come, then we fight, that’s all.”
Coming from a girl her age, this was a remarkably simple answer, and yet Yue Fei, walking ahead, showed no disappointment at it—if anything, there was even a hint of approval in the glance he gave her. After weighing his words for a moment, he said, “Indeed—if they come, there’s nothing to do but fight. It’s a pity that such a simple truth still eludes so many grown men…” He sighed. “Yinping, over these years, there are three people I have held in the deepest reverence in my heart. Do you know who they are?”
The girl thought for a moment. “Grandmaster Zhou Tong must be one of them.”
“Indeed.” Yue Fei was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “My master lived his whole life upright and honest; whenever a cause was right, he devoted himself to it wholeheartedly, and yet he was never rigid or pedantic about it. He roamed the world his whole life, and in the end died attempting to assassinate Nian Han. As a man, he stood at the very pinnacle of chivalry—for your father, he is a peak I can only look up to, though our paths have diverged. Of course, in his later years, when he took me as his disciple, what he taught me was mainly archery, horsemanship, and the tactics of breaking enemy lines—perhaps that, too, reflected something he had come to feel by then.”
“The second one…” Yinping thought for a moment. “Could it be the elder Zong Ze?”
A smile spread across Yue Fei’s face. “Indeed—the elder Zong Ze. I never knew him well myself, and yet, after the humiliation of Jingping, he held Bianliang alone, planning and scheming tirelessly to the very end, and on his deathbed cried out ‘Cross the river!’—those two words have been what your father has longed for these past eight years, thought of and dwelt on without ever once fading. That elder devoted his whole life to his country and his people, much like that other elder I mentioned before…”
“The third person Father speaks of… could it be Lord Li Gang?”
She saw a complicated smile cross her father’s face.
“This third one, you could say is one person, or you could say it’s two…” A look of deep remembrance came over Yue Fei’s face. “Back before the Jurchens had ever marched south, there were already many people working diligently to guard against it, and later, once the Jurchens did invade the south, this elder and his disciple did a great many things in the effort against them. During the first defense of Bianliang, in the scorched-earth campaign, in maintaining the logistics and supplying every army with what it needed—though it went unnoticed at the front, their contribution in that regard can never be erased. And then came the battle at Xiacun, where Guo Yaoshi’s great army was defeated…”
He paused here. Yinping, quick-witted, had already realized who he meant.
“Father means the Right Chancellor, Qin Siyuan, and… that Black Banner man, Ning Yi?”
“You do know quite a lot.”
“I was still very young at the time, but I vaguely remember Father once working alongside that Ning Yi. And afterward, you never spoke ill of the Black Banner, even though you never mentioned it to anyone else either.”
“A grave mistake was made, and it’s done now—there’s no use speaking of it.”
“Only… that Ning Yi, defying his ruler, defying his own father—it truly was…”
Yue Yinping frowned, hesitating over her words. Yue Fei glanced at her and nodded. “Indeed, that was, without question, a grave wrong on his part. And yet, over these years, whenever I recall those times, it’s precisely Ning Yi and the Right Chancellor’s household whose handling of affairs was so orderly and clear—no matter how tangled or complicated the situation, once it reached their hands, it would be sorted out cleanly. When the Jurchens first marched south, if not for their work in the rear, the Chancellor’s organization within Bianliang, Ning Yi’s scorched-earth strategy the whole way, and, in the most desperate moments, his efforts to rally the routed troops and lift their morale—without the delay bought at Bianliang, there would have been no great victory at Xiacun, and the Wu dynasty might well have already fallen.”
He let out a sigh. “At that time, the humiliation of Jingping hadn’t yet happened; no one could have imagined that our vast Wu empire would ever be brought down to what it is today. The Central Plains fallen, the people scattered and homeless, millions dead… Yinping, that was, after the war between Jin and Wu first began, the moment your father felt most hopeful. It was truly remarkable—if not for what came afterward…”
Yue Yinping didn’t know how to respond. Yue Fei took a deep breath. “Setting aside his treasonous act, if one considers only Bianliang, Xiacun, and later the Huaxia Army and the three years at Xiaocang River—in the way he handled things, in what he accomplished, there is almost no one who can match Ning Yi. I have spent ten years training my troops, and have taken Xiangyang; yet once the Black Banner made its move and killed Tian Hu, in terms of sheer scope and vision alone, your father doesn’t come close to matching even a fraction of what the Black Banner has achieved.”
Yinping said, “And yet the Black Banner only succeeded through scheming and cunning…”
Yue Fei waved a hand. “If something works, one ought to acknowledge that it works. The Black Banner held off the Jurchens directly, head-on, at Xiaocang River for three years, and crushed well over a million troops of the puppet Qi. And here I am, having only just taken Xiangyang, still worrying over whether we could even win if the Jurchens sent troops. The gap between us is simply the gap between us.” He raised his head to look at the banner fluttering in the night wind not far off. “The Beiwei Army… Yinping, when he first rebelled, he had a conversation with your father, in which he gave your father the name for an army.”
“The name…” Yue Yinping’s eyes went wide; she couldn’t help but speak up. Yue Fei smiled and nodded.
“Indeed—Beiwei… he said it meant one who carries a mountain upon his back as he walks, and also refers to an army that must bear a weight as heavy as a mountain. I’ve thought about it—climbing the mountain, descending among ghosts, bearing the weight of the highest peak, a life already pledged to the nation, this body itself already become a ghost of duty… Over these years, your father has always worried that this army might fail to live up to that name.”
“…” The girl furrowed her brow, thinking it over. Over these years Yue Fei had often spoken with his family about the meaning and weight behind this name, and Yinping was, naturally, already quite familiar with it—only today, hearing her father speak of the reasoning behind it all at such length, she found herself genuinely shaken. After a moment, she finally said, “Father, why are you telling me all this now…”
At this question, her father’s expression ahead of her turned strange. He hesitated a moment. “Actually, this Ning Yi’s greatest strength has never truly lain on the battlefield. Strategy, the handling of men, managing all manner of matters behind the lines—that is where his real strength lies. True combat on the field of battle is, in many respects, a lesser skill by comparison…”
Having said this much, his expression turned troubled, and he said no more. Yinping stood there stunned for a good while, then suddenly burst out laughing. “Father, your daughter… your daughter understands now. I’ll be sure to help talk some sense into my brother…”
“Ai, what I meant… that’s not really…”
“Pfft—” Yinping covered her mouth, and after a moment, forced her expression back into something more solemn. Yue Fei looked at her, his eyes carrying embarrassment, difficulty, and even a touch of apology all at once; after a moment, he looked away, and then he too broke into laughter. “Heh heh… ha ha ha ha… ha ha ha ha ha ha…”
That laughter, carried on his internal energy, spread out through the night air, and for a moment seemed to press the whole surrounding wilderness into silence, like a great echo rolling through an empty valley. After a while, the laughter died down, and on the face of this thirty-some-year-old general, who carried himself with such rigid propriety, there also showed a complicated expression. “Since I’ve already let you go onto the battlefield, your father really shouldn’t be saying all this. Only… a twelve-year-old child still doesn’t know how to protect himself—let him choose again once more. If he were a bit older… well, a boy ought to go into battle and fight the enemy, of course…”
“Yes, your daughter understands.” Yinping held back her laughter. “Your daughter will do her best to talk him out of it—only… Yue Yun is such a single-minded fool, I can’t be sure I’ll really manage to sway him.”
“Go on, then.”
Not wanting to embarrass himself further in front of his daughter, Yue Fei waved a hand. After Yinping left, he stood there, gazing out at the darkness beyond the camp, saying nothing for a long, long while. To a young child, war could seem like a game—but for an adult, it carried an entirely different meaning altogether. At thirty-four, Yue Pengju, so formidable and shrewd to the outside world, so iron-willed and stern within his own household, still, in his heart, carried certain things he couldn’t quite let go of.
If only he had a silver tongue like Ning Yi’s, he thought to himself—perhaps things would be a good deal easier right now.
…
Later that night, Yinping found Yue Yun still in their father’s quarters, sitting in meditation, pretending to be composed. The two of them left the camp together, meaning to return to the temporary home their family had set up nearby, outside the camp. Yue Yun kept asking his sister how things had gone, while Yinping, brow furrowed, considered how she might manage to hold this single-minded little brother of hers back, even for a moment.
At this time, a section of Xiangyang’s city wall, damaged in the fighting, was still under repair. To make it easier to keep watch, the house where Yue Yun and the others were temporarily staying stood beside the wall. The craftsmen repairing the wall had already gone to rest, and the road ahead had little light along it. With little Yue Yun carrying a lantern, the two of them chatted idly on and off as they walked. Just as they were making their way forward, a figure appeared, walking toward them from ahead.
That figure was tall; as it drew closer, Yinping’s words trailed off—the approaching man had a massive, imposing build, and as he walked, his frame seemed to grow larger still—shifting from something harmless-looking to something dangerous. This was the mark of a martial-world master letting his true presence show; anyone less than a genuine master could not even manage to conceal his aura to this degree in the first place.
“You two would be the young masters of the Yue family…” As the figure drew close, the torchlight revealed a face, black-skinned and covered all over with knife scars.
Yinping grabbed Yue Yun’s shoulder. “Who are you?”
In a single step, the massive man had already reached out and grabbed at them.
In Yinping’s hand, her sword Piaoying flashed out like a streak of white silk, and at the same moment she flicked open the cap on a signal flare in her other hand; beside her, twelve-year-old Yue Yun sank his stance as steady as a mountain and, with a great shout, launched a heavy, crushing punch. The two of them could, after all, be called direct disciples of Zhou Tong’s lineage—even as a young girl and a child, they were more than a match for any ordinary master of the martial world. And yet, in that same instant, the dark-skinned giant’s massive hand, like a great seal covering the heavens, closed around the gathering storm of wind and thunder, pressing it down!
—Before long, a great alarm rang out; a man, covered head to toe in blood, came rushing into the camp to report to Yue Fei: masters of the puppet Qi, or perhaps the Jurchens, had infiltrated the city and seized Yinping and Yue Yun, breaking out over the city wall.
Not long after, Gao Chong, Niu Gao, and others led the army’s finest fighters racing out in pursuit—
…
Meanwhile, elsewhere, another thread of the story unfolds.
Ever since the affair at Zezhou had concluded, Ning Yi and Xigua had traveled south along with their group, already well on their way back home. Along this road, the two of them, accompanied by Fang Shuchang and a group of guards and attendants, sometimes traveled together, sometimes split up, spending each day gathering information on the livelihoods and circumstances of the people along the way, along with all manner of intelligence, stopping and starting as they went. They crossed the Yellow River, passed through Bianliang, and gradually, drew near Dengzhou and Xinye—not far now from Xiangyang.
Ning Yi had no wish to rashly enter the Beiwei Army’s territory, and so planned to take a route around it. Though this journey looked leisurely on the surface, there was, in truth, still a great deal of work to be done, plans that needed thinking through. One night in mid-July, husband and wife made camp in the wilderness with their carriage; Ning Yi, mulling over matters until the middle of the night, slept only lightly, and quietly slipped outside for some air, sitting on the grass by the dying campfire. Before long, Xigua came out to join him.
“You’ve been sleeping poorly these past two days—worried about the Jurchens, or worried about Wang Shitong?”
“You’ve got me figured out—I’ve been worried about Wang Shitong.” Ning Yi smiled.
“These past days, you’ve made quite a few arrangements on his behalf—how could that possibly escape my notice?” Xigua stretched out her legs, reached down to grip her toes, folding and unfolding her body across the grass. Ning Yi reached out and stroked her hair.