The mountains rose and fell around them. The fierce clash of attack and defense continued unabated. At the Black Banner Army’s signal, more than two hundred Huaxia Army soldiers on the mountain paths below Xiaohuiling had already formed ranks, preparing to launch their charge. Helmets, steel blades, powerful crossbows, armor — over their years living and building in the southwest, the Huaxia Army had devoted itself to refining its arms and raw materials, and the equipment of even its small detachments was now of exceptional quality. Yet, sensing the Huaxia Army’s intent to counterattack, the Hengqing clan’s warriors showed not the slightest trace of fear ahead on the battlefield. Instead, they let out a unified roar, and at the sound of the war horn, a great mass of Hengqing warriors, blood already staining their bodies, surged forward brandishing blades and spears, their howling cries merging into a terrifying tidal roar.
Surviving in these vast, rugged mountains, the ferocity of the Yi people was beyond question; compared to the formation of just over two hundred Huaxia Army soldiers, the sheer mass of several thousand Hengqing warriors, their raw howls and displayed strength, was enough to set anyone’s blood racing, their hearts pounding. The terrain of Lesser Liangshan was rugged and complex; earlier, the Black Banner Army and the other chieftains’ guards had used the terrain to their advantage to hold the area below Xiaohuiling, preventing the Hengqing clan’s advance from achieving full success — but now, at last, came the moment of direct confrontation.
Amid the drifting gunpowder smoke, the advance of thousands threatened to engulf the entirety of Xiaohuiling.
Chieftain Shimeng had already hoisted his great blade. Li Xiannong’s heart pounded with excitement.
“Let’s see just how formidable this legendary Black Banner Army really is!”
Ever since the Jurchens had come south, the weakness of the Wu Dynasty’s soldiers had become an accepted fact in the minds of scholars — corrupt generals, cowardly soldiers unwilling to risk death, unable to stand against the Jurchens. And yet, compared to the frozen wastes of the north, the fierce, untamed warriors of the southern barbarians could still, when set against the mightiest armies of the realm, hold their own in a real fight. This was one reason for Li Xiannong’s confidence in this scheme, and he couldn’t help blurting out these words in the moment. A man who treated the realm as his chessboard, maneuvering and scheming across it, ought to feel exactly this way. Chieftain Shimeng let out a triumphant “Hah!”
That feeling was cut short in the very next instant.
A distant crack rang out, and something splattered across Li Xiannong’s face. That massive frame, right after its triumphant cry, collapsed to the ground.
The sky hung heavy and gray, wind blowing in dull, oppressive gusts, the roar of battle still ongoing. The Hengqing clan’s warriors had already surged forward in an overwhelming tide, unleashing fierce blows at breakneck speed. In an instant, the more than two hundred Black Banner soldiers were swallowed within the enemy’s front line — some blades struck armor, some iron shields smashed aside heavy clubs, fierce sword-strokes cutting down unarmored tribesmen where they stood. The Black Banner soldiers, clustered into groups of eight or nine, or a dozen or so, met this onslaught of ten times their number head-on.
“Waaaaahhh—!” One tribal warrior, drawing on instincts honed through years of savage fighting, dodged the first wave of attacks, rolling into the crowd, his steel blade spinning as he fought forward with fearless, roaring ferocity!
A short distance behind, at the edge of the forest, Li Xiannong had only just lowered the telescope from his eye when the wind blew past him, and he stood there, frozen, unmoving. The men around him were equally still — among them were the great heroes of Jiangnan who had accompanied Li Xiannong, and the guards attending Chieftain Shimeng — all momentarily stunned, utterly unable to comprehend what had just happened. Just as Chieftain Shimeng had let out his laugh, from the forested hillside to one side, a bullet had traveled over a hundred zhang and struck him square in the throat.
The powerful man’s windpipe was shattered instantly; blood burst forth, and he collapsed along with his great blade, thundering to the ground. Before anyone could react, Li Xiannong’s ambitions, still lost in the fantasy of treating the world as his own chessboard, had just laid down his opening move, already contemplating the exchanges to follow. His opponent had just called check.
Down at the front line below, a fierce and bloody struggle had begun in earnest — more than two hundred Huaxia Army soldiers had already plunged into that tidal wave of attackers, and at the very heart of the slaughter, the Black Banner stood unbroken, cutting through wave after wave. The Yi warriors, too, fought with the same unyielding ferocity — no one had yet noticed what had just happened at the rear.
Li Xiannong, his mind moving with agonizing slowness, finally came back to himself. He glanced once at the fallen chieftain’s body beside him and opened his mouth. The roar of battle and slaughter filled the air all around; he said, “Block him…” When the men around him failed to understand, he said again, “Block him — don’t let anyone see.”
Only then did the swordsmen from Jiangnan who had come with Li Xiannong understand what he meant, and they moved to step forward, but Shimeng’s own guards rushed up first, blades drawn, blocking these swordsmen back.
Li Xiannong’s face turned first yellow, then pale, his mind buzzing with a dull roar. Seeing the standoff form, he turned and fled at once, the swordsmen around him following close behind. The group hurried across the forest at a quick pace; a whistling signal arrow shrieked past overhead through the trees, and the chaotic noise beyond the forest’s edge was clearly swelling — on the far side of the woods, another burst of fierce fighting had erupted as well. Before Li Xiannong and his men could clear the trees, they saw a small group ahead already cutting its way toward them.
This sudden betrayal by the Hengqing clan at the Xiaohuiling council had scattered many of the chieftains’ guards to the outer edges of the battlefield, unable to break through to help. What now appeared before them was a Black Banner detachment of twenty or thirty men, led by a one-armed swordsman — none other than “Heaven-Piercing Blade” Du Sha, one of the most feared figures within the Black Banner Army. Under normal circumstances, Li Xiannong might have realized at once that this sudden flanking attack could hardly be a coincidence — but in this moment, all he could do was flee as fast as his legs would carry him.
The swordsmen around him charged forward, trying to hold back this elite strike team, only to be met by a hail of crossbow bolts whistling and crossing through the air. Li Xiannong, who had originally tried to maintain some semblance of composure as he fled, now gritted his teeth and sprinted in earnest — whether tripped by someone or by a tree root, he suddenly pitched forward and went sprawling to the ground. He scrambled a few times, trying to rise, when a foot came down on his back, his belly slamming against a rock on the ground, the pain twisting his entire face.
“Tie him up!”
The distant sounds of fighting rolled in wave after wave, while the fighting nearby had already reached its final moments. Li Xiannong’s arms were wrenched behind his back and bound with rope. Through his blurred, swimming vision, he saw the swordsmen around him either already fallen or scattering in flight; the charging “Heaven-Piercing Blade” Du Sha paid little attention to what was happening here, leading the bulk of his men onward in the direction Li Xiannong had come from.
With his hands and feet bound, unable to move, Li Xiannong felt his heart sink into cold despair. After a moment, he began to dimly grasp what this group of men was actually here to do. The Black Banner’s counterattack, that single well-placed shot, and the sudden appearance of this detachment were all clearly linked together. Had Shimeng not been killed by that shot, this group would obviously have been moving to strike his rear guard as well. The thought flickered through his mind, stirring some complicated tangle of feelings he couldn’t quite name. Looking around, he saw only three Black Banner men guarding this spot, with the fighting still raging on in the distance, and a faint flicker of hope rose within him: perhaps the Hengqing clan could still crush the Black Banner Army in open combat after all; perhaps, given a little more time, Langge, Lianniang, and the others would arrive, and he might yet be saved.
But that hope, in the end, sank away once more.
The distant sounds of fighting, shouting, and war drums gradually grew more orderly, a sign that the battle had begun tipping decisively to one side. This was hardly surprising — however fierce the Yi warriors of the southwest might be, their entire system revolved around the chieftain as its head; with Shimeng dead, either a new chieftain would rise to sue for surrender, or the whole clan would collapse into ruin. And clearly, that was exactly what was now unfolding.
Before long, the shouting gradually died down, replaced increasingly by the sounds of slaughter and marching feet. Someone was calling out loudly to maintain order, and after a while longer, Li Xiannong saw figures approaching — he had expected to see Ning Yi among them, but he did not. What approached instead was merely a small Black Banner detachment come to relay news of victory, followed by others carrying bamboo poles and wooden staves, who bound Li Xiannong and his companions like pigs upon these poles and carried them off toward the great square of the Hengqing settlement.
Consumed by utter humiliation, Li Xiannong struggled fiercely just as he was about to be bound to the pole, shouting, “A gentleman may be killed but not humiliated! Bring Ning Yi to face me!” The soldier, blood-spattered, casually struck him across the head with a stick, and Li Xiannong dared not speak again after that. He was then gagged with a strip of cloth and carried off, hoisted up in the center of the great square.
More members of the Hengqing clan had already been made to kneel there. Some wept and cursed, pointing at Li Xiannong, but with soldiers standing guard all around, none dared act out of line. Among the Yi peoples, a slave system still held sway; the defeated held no rights whatsoever. Given that the Hengqing clan had schemed so recklessly against all sixteen clans this time, the assembled chieftains, once able to muster their own followers, had very nearly wiped out the entire Hengqing clan in retaliation — only the Huaxia Army’s intervention had halted a massacre that had already very nearly begun.
More members of the Hengqing clan were dragged out and made to kneel in dense rows at the front.
Li Xiannong, propped up at the front for all to see, had gone entirely numb inside. After a while, someone came forward to announce that the Hengqing clan now had a new chieftain, and that only a handful of the chief instigators of this affair would be executed — there would be no indiscriminate slaughter. The crowd wept and bowed in gratitude; several of Shimeng’s closest confidants were dragged forward and beheaded on the spot.
Once this matter had been settled and things had calmed somewhat under the new chieftain’s order, Ning Yi and the others came into view from the far side, the chieftains of the other fifteen clans following behind him. Bound to his pole, Li Xiannong stared wide-eyed at Ning Yi, waiting for him to come over and mock him — but none of that happened. Upon his arrival, the new chieftain of the Hengqing clan came forward to kneel and beg forgiveness; Ning Yi said a few words, after which the new chieftain announced that those found innocent could return home for now, to take stock of their supplies and begin repairing homes damaged or destroyed in the fighting. The Hengqing clan’s people expressed their gratitude again and again — for them, the failure of this rebellion could well have meant enslavement for the entire clan, and the Huaxia Army’s handling of the matter genuinely felt like being granted a new lease on life.
By now it was already afternoon, the sky still overcast and gloomy. Ning Yi and the chieftains of the sixteen clans withdrew into a side hall nearby to continue their discussions. Li Xiannong could well imagine what the Huaxia Army stood to gain from this council. The meeting had only just begun when, from outside, the sound of an alarm finally rang out.
Langge and Lianniang’s forces had arrived.
What awaited them would be a crushing blow delivered head-on. And at the very same moment, several thousand garrison troops from Hedeng were closing in from behind as well!
…
The Mangshan clan’s forces arrived exactly as expected, without disturbing the meeting still underway in the hall. With the affairs of the Hengqing clan settled, the various Yi tribes able to muster around Xiaohuiling now numbered several thousand strong, and the ambush laid in advance meant that Langge and his men were met with a crushing blow the moment they arrived.
This was the most agonizing stretch of Li Xiannong’s entire life, as if sinking slowly into an endless mire, with no way to struggle free at all. The men of the Mangshan clan arrived, only to begin retreating soon after; Ning Yi didn’t even come out to so much as glance at them. Li Xiannong remained bound and hung there, with people around him pointing and murmuring — an unspeakable humiliation, the likes of which he had never known in his life. He wished he could simply die on the spot.
Time crept on, the sky gradually darkening. Bonfires were lit, and another Black Banner detachment arrived at Xiaohuiling. From the scraps of conversation he had no heart to listen to, Li Xiannong learned that the Mangshan clan’s losses this time hadn’t been especially severe — but what did that matter now? The Black Banner Army clearly didn’t care in the slightest.
His gaze fell upon the hall where the meeting was taking place. After this council, the Mangshan clan would find itself with nowhere left to stand in all of Greater and Lesser Liangshan; what awaited them now was nothing but the eventual annihilation of their entire clan. It wasn’t that the Black Banner Army lacked the strength to accomplish this — but what Ning Yi truly wanted was for the many Yi clans to affirm, through exactly this kind of shared trial, their mutual bonds of loyalty and support; from this point forward, the Black Banner Army would have genuinely broken open the situation in Greater and Lesser Liangshan.
That it had been his own tireless scheming that had delivered this very opportunity into Ning Yi’s hands struck Li Xiannong as an almost unbearable irony — though beneath that irony lay something far greater: sheer terror at what horrific fate might now await him.
The bonfires burned for a long while. At some point, the meeting in the hall finally broke up, and Ning Yi and the others emerged one by one, still laughing and talking among themselves. Li Xiannong closed his eyes, unwilling to look upon their laughter, but after a while, someone approached. The middle-aged man in gray robes was none other than Ning Liheng himself — his features showed no particular signs of age, yet he carried about him a natural, commanding presence. Ning Yi looked him over for a moment and said, “Untie him.”
Beside him, Du Sha drew his blade and, with a single swift stroke, cut through the ropes. Li Xiannong crumpled to the ground, wracked with pain; as he slowly rolled over, Du Sha had already cut the bonds at his hands and feet as well, and someone helped the now numb-limbed Li Xiannong to his feet. Ning Yi looked at him, and Li Xiannong forced himself to meet his gaze in return.
“Do you know about monkeys?”
Ning Yi’s opening question was, unexpectedly, entirely calm. Li Xiannong blinked in confusion, briefly wondering whether the man was mocking him by calling him a monkey — but then he sensed this wasn’t quite it.
“There’s a rather outlandish theory that’s come up recently in the Huaxia Army’s research — that human beings are descended from monkeys,” Ning Yi said, his tone even and measured. “A very, very long time ago, monkeys came down out of the trees and had to face all sorts of enemies — tigers, leopards, wolves. The monkeys had no sharp fangs like the tigers, no claws like the great beasts; their own claws were no longer sharp enough for that kind of fight. They could only be preyed upon by these creatures. But slowly, one day, they picked up sticks, and found a way to protect themselves.”
“Without caves, they built houses. Eating raw meat too often made them sick, so they learned to use fire. Monkeys with sticks still couldn’t beat a tiger, so they learned to cooperate. And eventually, these monkeys became human beings.”
Li Xiannong listened as though hearing some fantastical tale from another world. Ning Yi smiled faintly.
“Everything in heaven and earth grows stronger through overcoming its problems. I was your problem; the Jurchens are your problem. That you couldn’t defeat me means you weren’t strong enough. And not being strong enough means you took the wrong path — you must find the right one.” Ning Yi said. “If you don’t, you’ll die.”
Countless retorts rose up in Li Xiannong’s mind, yet his mouth was too dry to give voice to any of them — whether from fear or simply from having nothing left to say, he couldn’t tell. Ning Yi paused for a moment.
“When you go back, whether it’s teaching students or continuing to rally others to your cause, either way — find the way to grow stronger. We need not only the wisdom to find our enemy’s weaknesses, but the courage to face and correct our own flaws as well, because the Jurchens won’t spare you. They won’t spare anyone.”
“…go back… let me go…” Li Xiannong stood there dazed for a long moment. The Huaxia Army soldier beside him released his grip, and he took a small, tentative step backward. Ning Yi pressed his lips together and said nothing more, then turned and walked away.
A messenger approached from a distance to report something to Ning Yi. Li Xiannong glanced around blankly; beside him, Du Sha had already waved the others back. Li Xiannong staggered forward a few steps, and seeing no one moving to stop him, staggered forward a few more, gradually making his way toward the edge of the square. One of the Huaxia Army soldiers stepped aside, apparently with no intention of blocking his path. At that very moment, Ning Yi, over by the square, turned and looked this way. He raised a hand, hesitated for a moment, but then finally gave a nod. “Wait a moment.”
Li Xiannong froze again, and for an instant even considered breaking into a run. The soldier beside him exchanged a glance with him, and the moment hung there, thoroughly awkward.
The instant their eyes met, the young soldier threw a punch straight at him.
Li Xiannong crumpled to the ground in pain, though he didn’t lose consciousness. As his gaze swung toward Ning Yi, he saw that scoundrel’s hand still hanging awkwardly in the air for a moment before he finally spoke: “Not now… in a few days, we’ll send you out.”
Li Xiannong had no idea what had just happened. Ning Yi had already begun walking off to one side, and from the angle of his profile, Li Xiannong sensed, faintly, that the man seemed somewhat angry. The entire contest of wits among the Yi peoples of Greater and Lesser Liangshan had unfolded exactly according to his scheme — Li Xiannong had no idea what could possibly be making him angry now, or, for that matter, just how significant a matter it must be, if it was capable of stirring anger in a man like him even now.
“…Mobilize Jishan, prepare for battle. Send word to him — tell him to stay alive. In three days… I’ll go speak with him myself.”
The night’s autumn wind carried the words faintly away; the smell of gunpowder smoke still lingered in the air. The next day, throughout Greater and Lesser Liangshan, the various Yi clans began their campaign against the remnants of the Mangshan faction, one after another.
In the southwest, this chaos was still only a gentle prelude — merely the first corner of the curtain being lifted on the vast upheaval about to engulf the entire realm…