“…The Jurchens have already marched south?”

Beneath the pavilion, swept by the autumn wind, a long silence followed Ning Yi’s question before Lu Qiaoshan finally spoke, though he didn’t directly answer the request.

Ning Yi nodded. “We received word from the north yesterday. Six days ago, Zongfu and Zongbi mobilized three hundred thousand troops and have already crossed into Hebei territory. Li Xizhi won’t put up any resistance — by the time we’re speaking here, the Jurchen vanguard has likely already reached the Jingdong East Circuit. General Lu, you should be receiving this same news soon yourself.”

In the realm as it now stood, the Huaxia Army under Ning Yi’s command placed greater emphasis on intelligence than any other force. At these words, Lu Qiaoshan fell silent once more. That the Jurchens were the true enemy of the whole realm, poised to come crashing down on the Wu Dynasty at any moment, was a shared understanding among everyone capable of reading the times clearly — and yet, now that this understanding had finally been confirmed so plainly and without embellishment, the weight of it settled heavily in the heart, difficult to put into words. Even for Lu Qiaoshan, this was the most urgent reality he now faced.

He looked back toward his troops in the distance, silently turning it all over in his mind. Ning Yi waited.

“I bought you time to turn Liu Yu — this is the last chance for every rebel in the Central Plains, the last chance for the Wu Dynasty itself. Is it really worth spending that hard-won time on internal strife with me? And more to the point… can you even afford it?”

Lu Qiaoshan turned back, that practiced smile returning to his face. “Master Ning…”

Ning Yi’s own smile rose to meet his. “General Lu…” Then the smile faded. “While you’ve been studying me, I’ve been studying you as well. Let’s skip the false pleasantries — the court ordered you to blockade us, to hold back from attacking, hoping to wear the Huaxia Army down to its weakest point and seize whatever slim chance for victory that offered. Anyone would do the same in your position, nothing wrong with that. But that opportunity has already passed. Greater and Lesser Liangshan are stable now, thanks in no small part to the cooperation of Li Xiannong and his people.”

“But what else could I do?” Lu Qiaoshan said with a helpless smile. “It’s the court’s order, with those men watching from behind. When they seized Master Su, it’s not that I couldn’t have saved him — but a crowd of scholars stood in my way, and one more step forward would have made me a traitor myself. Getting him out afterward already meant taking on the risk of an open breach with them.”

Ning Yi shook his head. “Set against the lives and deaths of a hundred thousand people, against Jurchens who will march all the way to Jiangnan if left unchecked, there are plenty of ways to play for time without committing to open confrontation. Even granting that some made noise about it, before it ever came to a real reckoning, the Jurchens would already be here — and you’d have preserved your strength either way. General Lu, stop playing dumb when you understand perfectly well what’s at stake. If you can’t manage that this time, if we can’t reach an agreement, I will treat you as an enemy from here on.”

Ning Yi’s voice dropped lower. As he spoke, he glanced back once more — Su Wenfang had already been carried off on a stretcher, Su Tan’er following alongside him. “When you carry the lives of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people on your shoulders, more often than not you have to choose who lives and who dies. Wenfang came back to us, but six of our people died in this affair, entirely without cause. As for the matter in Liangshan — I could have simply crushed the Mangshan clan outright, but by working the situation the way I did, I may well have put more people at risk than necessary. I understand better than anyone how many will die — but some deaths simply cannot be avoided… General Lu, if fighting breaks out this time, the Huaxia Army will lose even more men than that. If you’re willing to let this go, whatever loss of face that costs us, we’ll bear it.”

Lu Qiaoshan nodded, studying Ning Yi for a long moment before finally speaking. “Master Ning, let me ask you something… why didn’t you simply crush the Mangshan clan outright?”

“A good question.” Ning Yi fell silent a moment, then nodded and let out a long breath. “Because you must secure your own house before you can turn to face outward enemies.”

Lu Qiaoshan laughed, though the smile that crossed his face grew faint — and perhaps this, at last, was his true face showing through. “Indeed. The Huaxia Army has garrisoned the three counties of Hedeng, and now that eight thousand men have marched out, Hedeng may look strong still on the surface, but if it truly came to a direct confrontation with me, your rear would be unstable. I suspected all along you’d move to resolve that problem first. But I genuinely hoped, too, that Li Xiannong and the others might manage to accomplish something real… Blockading Liangshan wears you down a little more with every passing day, and honestly, I hoped that process might drag on longer. But I also knew that in front of you, Master Ning, that little trick of mine was never going to hold for long.”

“Then there’s really only one question left,” Lu Qiaoshan said. “You understand as well as anyone that one must secure the house before facing outward threats — so how could my Wu Dynasty possibly afford not to guard against your Black Banner striking east?”

“The answer is this: I can crush the Mangshan clan outright, but your Wuxiang Army cannot defeat the banner standing behind me.” Ning Yi looked at him. “Under ordinary circumstances, knowing something is a lost cause and doing it anyway — that I would call the mark of a true and honorable man. But with the Jurchens marching south right now, for you to pit a hundred thousand men against me in a war of attrition is worth nothing at all.”

Lu Qiaoshan stepped aside and sat down in a chair, saying quietly, “But that’s exactly what an army is for.”

“What do you mean?” Ning Yi’s voice dropped as well. He sat down too, reaching out to pour the tea. Lu Qiaoshan leaned back against his chair, his gaze drifting to one side; for a moment the two of them looked like nothing more than old friends sitting down for a casual chat.

“Master Ning, for years now people have said the Wu Dynasty is weak, that we’ve lost battle after battle against the Jurchens. What’s the real reason for that? And what would it actually take to win? Ever since taking command of the Wuxiang Army, I’ve turned this over in my mind endlessly, and I’ve settled on two points — they may not be entirely right, but they’re at least my own humble views.”

“I’d like to hear them,” Ning Yi said, pushing the teacup across.

“In this realm, at this court, both civil officials and military generals bear their share of blame, of course. The army’s inability to fight stems, first, from civil officials who know nothing of warfare — men who believe their own learning is boundless, who direct battles from behind a desk with theories on paper and expect others to defeat the enemy by following them. That’s one root of the trouble. But are the generals themselves without fault? Undermining their fellow officers, padding their rosters with phantom soldiers, coveting money and land, indulging in women, currying favor upward while bullying those beneath them — commanders who’ve lost all sense of backbone — are they without blame too? That’s two faults right there.”

Lu Qiaoshan raised two fingers. “How to correct it, I can’t say — Lu here can only govern himself. But after much thought, there’s one thing I’ve come to understand clearly. In the end, this realm is run by scholars and officials. If things are ever truly to be set right, the ministers at court must issue the correct orders, and the generals in the field must do their own duty well. Only when both conditions are met together can things actually turn out well.”

“Just as you say, Master Ning, securing the house before facing outward enemies may well be correct — but perhaps the court was wrong to send only my hundred-thousand-strong Wuxiang Army against your Black Banner. But then again, who’s to say for certain? Perhaps, this time, their decision happens to be the right one after all? Who knows what those scoundrels are really thinking!” Lu Qiaoshan looked at Ning Yi and smiled. “Which leaves only one path.”

“My Wuxiang Army will carry out the court’s orders faithfully and without question. If they turn out to be wrong, then it may look like I’ve thrown my life away for nothing. But I, Lu Qiaoshan, standing here today, am not doing this because it’s worth it or not. I’m doing this because this realm needs to find its way onto the right path. If I’ve made the right call, then all that’s needed is for them to eventually get it wrong themselves, and the realm can still be saved. But if I’ve made the wrong call — then regardless of whether they’re right or wrong — in this particular contest, I will have lost everything.”

“An army exists to follow orders.”

Lu Qiaoshan’s voice rang out steady in the autumn wind.

“In ordinary times, I can trade and deal with your Black Banner freely enough, because you have cannons and we don’t — there’s benefit to be had there, and everything else is a minor matter. But the whole point of gaining that advantage is, in the end, to win battles. Now, with the fate of the nation hanging in the balance, Master Ning, the Wuxiang Army has no choice but to do what is right. Everything else, I leave to the gentlemen at court.”

His voice was calm and steady, no longer carrying the glib, smiling manner he usually wore. Ning Yi’s fingers tapped against the table before him; he had been listening quietly all along, and as the words settled, his tapping gradually slowed to a stop. He looked up and drew a long, deep breath.

“I understand.” There was no longer any note of persuasion left in his voice. Ning Yi rose to his feet, straightened his robe, opened his mouth, then closed it again without a sound, opened it once more, his fingers resting against the table.

“…So it’s war, then,” Ning Yi said.

The wind swept down from the surrounding mountains, rushing across the earth with a low roar. The weathered pavilion, standing there for who knew how long, stood silent, unaware that it had just borne witness to a moment of history. After a simple farewell, Ning Yi turned and walked toward the black banners snapping in the wind, while behind Lu Qiaoshan, the three thousand Wuxiang Army soldiers stood equally straight and tall, as if bearing witness themselves to their general’s unwavering resolve.

In Zizhou, Long Qifei and his fellow scholars gathered together, denouncing in the harshest terms Lu Qiaoshan’s shameful act of pulling Black Banner members out of the prison. The crowd seethed with righteous indignation, longing to put this traitorous scoundrel to death with their own hands — and not long after, word arrived of the formal declaration of war between the Wuxiang Army and the Huaxia Army.

After a brief moment of stunned surprise, the crowd broke into cheers, celebrating the coming war with wild delight.

The very next day after the declaration arrived, a hundred thousand Wuxiang troops formally advanced into Greater and Lesser Liangshan, marching to suppress the Black Banner rebels and to support Langge and the other tribes — though by this point, the Yi peoples throughout Greater and Lesser Liangshan had largely already submitted to the Black Banner, and large-scale slaughter had not yet truly begun. Lu Qiaoshan could only use this window of time to press the various tribes into making their choice through sheer show of military might, while at the same time working to disrupt the Black Banner’s autumn harvest.

The scholars composed poem after poem, celebrating Long Qifei and his companions’ efforts in this affair — for surely, had these righteous men not risked death and taken the reckless gamble of capturing the Black Banner traitor, how could the wavering, hesitant Wuxiang Army ever have been forced into breaking decisively with the enemy? Left to his own weak-willed nature, how could Lu Qiaoshan ever have truly resolved to fight?

This grand advance of the mighty army meant that the Wu Dynasty had at last mounted a formal, resounding campaign against this shameful regicidal rebellion. Should the day come when the rebel’s head was finally taken, the scholars knew their own names would be recorded in the ledger of merit alongside it. In Zizhou, they eagerly awaited a battle worthy of song and legend, rallying the people’s spirits at every turn, and no small number had already set out for the front.

Before long, they would witness instead a crushing defeat.

To the north, a vast army advanced along the winding roads leading south, the Jurchen ranks stretching in magnificent, unbroken lines as far as the eye could see. Before them lay the mountains and rivers of a homeland already brought to submission; across the rolling hills and stretching wetlands, the forces of the already-surrendered Li Xizhi had likewise set out, surging forward, clearing away whatever obstacles remained in their path.

Though the surrender of Liu Yu and his subsequent proclamation calling for allegiance to the south had stirred up many uprisings and sympathetic risings across the Central Plains, within the territory held by General Li Xizhi of the Pacification Army in the East, the will to resist had, so far, shown itself only weakly.

Deep in the heartland of Li Xizhi’s territory, in a stretch of poor, rugged country in Shandong, as night fell, two bands of riders gradually made their way up onto a ridge, and before long, firelight flickered faintly across the faces of the two leaders on either side.

At one end stood a man whose features were more delicate than a woman’s — this was Wang Shanyue, once known years ago as the “Wolf Bandit.” Beside him stood his wife, “Ten-Foot Green” Hu Sanniang.

At the other end, gradually coming into view, was a man with an unkempt, heavy beard that made his age impossible to guess, though his eyes remained sharp and full of resolve. Slung across his back was a long spear that had, by now, become renowned throughout the realm.

This was Zhu Biao, the “City-Burning Spear.”

Ever since Ning Yi’s regicide had plunged the realm into chaos, Wang Shanyue had been swept up in the turmoil and had first returned to Shandong under his wife’s protection, while Zhu Biao had come back during the three-year war at Little Cang River. With Li Xizhi’s power growing ever stronger and his forces closing in to suppress the Black Banner, Solitary Dragon Ridge had, after several engagements, finally vanished from view entirely, and the Zhu and Hu families had gone their separate ways as well, divided by their differing allegiances. Over these several years, this was likely the first time the three of them had come face to face again.

Hu Sanniang, once betrothed to Zhu Biao, regarded the man before her now with deep wariness, but Wang Shanyue paid no mind to whatever danger Zhu Biao might now present. He rode forward with an easy smile, looking straight at Zhu Biao ahead, and said little — the two men had once worked side by side under Ning Yi, and the deep bond of friendship forged between them back then had never truly faded, even after they’d since gone their separate ways over differences in belief.

“What are you two here for?”

“Probably the same thing as you.”

“Then let’s work together.”

“Fine.”

“When it’s done, the credit goes to the court.”

“When it comes to putting on a show, can you two really out-act the Bamboo Records?”

“…Guess we’ll find out.”

Wang Shanyue reined his horse around to stand alongside him, and Hu Sanniang came forward as well, her wary gaze still fixed on Zhu Biao.

The first great strike against the Jurchens — one that would send shockwaves through the entire realm — was about to begin. Moonlight washed pure and clear over the ridge, the starry night silent and still. No one could know how many of those gazing up at the stars in this very moment would still be alive once this great battle had run its course…

But when true annihilation finally came crashing down, all people could do was press forward, one after another, without end…