Voices mingled, the clatter of carts and horses urgent. At Daming Prefecture, the towering ancient walls stood beneath the autumn sun, still carrying the grim air of war from days before. Outside the south gate, pale stone statues stood silent in the shade of the trees, watching the crowds gather and scatter.
A great migration, at the end of that autumn, had begun once more.
Wealthy households drove carts piled with grain; men with pale, panicked faces dragged their families along; old scholars were jostled and staggered by the crowd; stout women hauled bewildered children behind them… Among them too were officials in uniform, escort captains and martial instructors with their blades and spears loaded onto carts, and lightly-armed men of the forest trades. On this day, everyone’s status had been leveled to the same point.
Their destinations were either the prosperous south of the river, or nearby hills, or remote family homes far from the roads. All were equally uneasy, and the dense, chaotic procession stretched for dozens of li before gradually thinning out. Most people headed south, crossing the Yellow River; some also went north, vanishing into forests no one could name.
The world turns and turns again; this scene before them was not the first of its kind over the past ten years. The Jurchens’ repeated southward campaigns, the harshness of the conditions for survival, had forced people again and again to leave their familiar homes. And yet this time felt somehow different from before. Ten-odd years had taught people the ways of war, and had also taught them to fear the Jurchens.
On the twenty-fourth of the seventh month, once Wang Shanyue’s Wu “Guangwu Army” seized Daming Prefecture through inside collusion, this kind of mass flight broke out uncontrollably in similar fashion. In war, whoever is right and whoever is wrong, the common people swept up in it can never choose their own fate — the southward march of three hundred thousand Jurchen troops meant that tens upon tens of millions of people would be dragged into a catastrophe that would crush them regardless, with no help for it.
Some left; others stayed. The towering walls of Daming Prefecture stretched forty-eight li around, and at this hour cannon, ballistae, rolling logs, boulders, boiling oil, and every manner of siege-defense equipment was being hauled up by the labor of countless hands. Amid the endless banners like flame, the effort was underway to forge Daming Prefecture into an even stronger fortress. In the midst of this busy scene, Xue Changgong walked slowly with a long blade at his waist, his mind drifting back to the great battle of ten-odd years before, the defense of Bianliang.
Ten-odd years earlier at Bianliang, looking north toward the Yangtze, under the command of Left Chancellor Li Gang and Right Chancellor Qin Siyuan, the city had for the first time endured the full brunt of the Jurchen spearhead. The Wu Dynasty, heir to two hundred years of national fortune, saw the tens of thousands of loyalist troops gathered outside the city — including the Western Army — scattered and routed by a mere ten-odd thousand Jurchen soldiers, the dead littering the ground. Inside the city, the supposedly finest Imperial Guards of the Wu Dynasty went into battle wave after wave, suffering countless casualties, the city nearly falling more than once. That was the first time the Wu Dynasty had faced, head-on, both the ferocity of the Jurchens and the weakness accumulated within itself.
Xue Changgong had first distinguished himself in that first defense of Bianliang. Later he lived through the Humiliation of Jingping, and followed the entire Wu Dynasty’s flight south, enduring the Jurchens’ later campaign of “combing the hills and searching the seas.” After the southern Wu court finally settled, he grew disheartened, and retired with his wife He Leier to the south. Several years later, when He Leier fell gravely ill, the Crown Prince, Jun Wu, came in person to ask him to return to service. He accompanied his wife through her final days before finally rising and heading north.
During the brutal defense of Bianliang, his wife He Leier had been struck by an arrow. Though her life was saved by good fortune, the child she was carrying was lost, and she was never able to conceive again. Through the turbulent early years and the calmer ones that followed, He Leier had never stopped brooding over this, and had more than once urged Xue Changgong to take a concubine and leave behind an heir — but he had always refused.
In truth, looking back on how the two of them had first come together, there had perhaps been no unshakable, undying passion between them. Xue Changgong, a military officer, had gone to Fan Tower simply to vent and find comfort; and He Leier, in choosing him, likely had not thought him superior to the scholars there — only that in dangerous times, having someone to rely on mattered. It was only later, when He Leier miscarried beneath the city wall, and Xue Changgong was overcome with grief, that this bond between them finally became something real.
Afterward they stayed together until He Leier, gravely ill, passed away. Xue Changgong held his wife’s body and wept bitterly before laying her to rest. In truth, his refusal to have an heir was not only for He Leier’s sake. Having witnessed the Jurchens’ ferocity firsthand, and knowing — as a man who had clawed his way up through the ranks without connections — the many flaws riddling the Wu military, he saw no way to change things. If the Jurchens were bound to fight their way south and swallow the whole of southern Wu, then having an heir would mean nothing more than birthing another slave for the Jurchens.
Now that his wife was gone, he had nothing left to hold him back, and he went north, joining forces with Wang Shanyue at Liangshan. Though Wang Shanyue appeared gentle on the surface, he was in truth a ruthless man who would not so much as blink at eating human flesh if it meant victory. The two of them hit it off at once, and over the following two years worked out a whole strategy centered on Daming Prefecture.
Daming Prefecture, situated on the north bank of the Yellow River, was a key defensive stronghold on the Jurchen eastern army’s southward route, as well as one of the crossing points for the army’s advance over the Yellow River. Back when the Liao state still stood, the Wu Dynasty had established a secondary capital at Daming Prefecture precisely to show its resolve to resist Liao’s advance south. Now, just after the autumn harvest, Li Xizhi’s officials had been aggressively gathering supplies, waiting for the Jurchens to come south and take them over. With the city changing hands, all these supplies had fallen instead into the hands of Wang and Xue — enough to fight a great battle.
The autumn wind blew keen, the banners stretching endlessly. As he walked on, Xue Changgong soon caught sight of Wang Shanyue and his party, standing by the city wall ahead, gazing north. Around them soldiers and laborers were setting up ballistae and cannon. Wang Shanyue wore a red cloak, and in his arms he held his and Hu Sanniang’s eldest son — already four years old, little Wang Fu. The child, who had grown up entirely at the marsh, was clearly fascinated by the sight of this towering city, and Wang Shanyue held him, pointing out the scene ahead.
“…From here on north used to all be our land. But now there’s a group of bad people coming from over there you’re looking at, killing as they go, taking people’s things, burning people’s houses… Father, mother, and all these uncles here are going to stop these bad people. What do you think — is there something you can do to help father?”
“Hit the bad people.”
“That’s right. But you know, we have to grow up first — once we’re grown, we’ll have more strength, and be smarter too… Of course, what father and mother hope for most is that by the time you’re grown, there won’t be any more bad people left, and you’ll be able to read a great many books, and one day tell your friends what became of these bad people…”
As he spoke with the child, Xue Changgong had already come close, passing through the attendants around them. Though he had no children of his own, he understood well how precious this child was to Wang Shanyue. The Wang family had a long history of loyal sacrifice — before the Black Water Alliance, when the Liao invaded from the north, Wang Qisong had led the men of the whole family to resist, and in the end left behind only widows and orphans. Wang Shanyue was the sole surviving male heir of the third generation in that line, and now little Wang Fu was the sole heir of the fourth. A family that had sacrificed so much for the Wu Dynasty — it was not too much to ask that they be allowed to keep this one child.
“I still think you shouldn’t have brought Little Fu here.”
“Little Fu, look — Uncle Xue.” Wang Shanyue smiled and passed the child into Xue Changgong’s arms, briefly dispelling some of the grimness on the general’s face. After a moment he looked out at the scene beyond the walls and said, “Having a child nearby isn’t always a bad thing. Today the town elders came together to see me, asking whether, now that the Guangwu Army has taken Daming, we intend to hold it. What they meant was — if we can’t hold it, we should clear off and not drag them down with us… I pointed to Little Fu, playing in the courtyard, and showed them. I’ve even brought my own child here. The Wu Dynasty will do everything in its power to recover the Central Plains.”
The two of them had gone over this coming battle for Daming Prefecture countless times. In the worst case, it was not impossible that the “Guangwu Army” would be pinned down and destroyed here — though the outcome was nowhere near as certain as Wang Shanyue made it sound. Xue Changgong shook his head.
“Send him away before the fighting starts. Better to leave early than risk it.”
“Then that will be his fate to bear.” Wang Shanyue glanced at his son, smiling — then the smile faded. “The Wu Dynasty’s weakness cannot be undone in a single generation, however much we try. The Jurchens are strong only because, from childhood, they dare to fight, dare to seize, and fight with tenacity. If our generation cannot defeat them, then I would rather my son grow up used to the sight of blade and spear from the start! The Wang family has never lacked backbone, but it has lacked men of true military talent. I hope that, starting with him, that might be different.”
Wang Shanyue’s words were calm. Wang Fu could not really follow them, and asked, puzzled, “Different how?”
Xue Changgong said, “Your father wants you to become a general one day.”
This was clearly not the first time the boy had heard such hopes voiced as he grew. He seemed to grasp it now, and nodded firmly. “Mm.”
Xue Changgong smiled, and Wang Shanyue smiled too. Around them the walls bustled with activity, though the afternoon sun still felt cold and indifferent. North of Daming Prefecture, beneath a vast open sky, Li Xizhi’s one hundred and seventy thousand troops, split into three columns, had already crossed Xingzhou, a hundred li away — their banners filling every inch of the horizon, dust rising to blot out the sky. Meanwhile, ten-odd li to the west, a Jurchen force of over ten thousand was racing at top speed toward the bank of the Yellow River.
Li Xizhi, the “General Who Pacifies the East” of the Great Qi, was forty-three that year — long-faced, bright-eyed, with a high-bridged nose. He was one of the generals who had surrendered along with the Qi family during the Jurchens’ second southern campaign, and had won considerable favor from Liu Yu, later becoming the representative of the Qi-Liu faction north of the Yellow River. The Central Plains north of the Yellow River had been under occupation for ten years now, and the old notion that the realm belonged to Wu had gradually loosened its hold. Li Xizhi could see an empire rising — it was time, he judged, for a change of dynasty.
The rise of the Jurchens was the great trend of the age, an irresistible tide. But even so, being merely a lackey’s lackey was not his ambition — especially after Liu Yu fled south to Bianliang and Li Xizhi’s own power swelled, until the territory under his control approached a quarter of the puppet Qi state, larger even than the combined holdings of Tian Hu and Wang Juyun. He was, in every practical sense, already a regional power in his own right.
To hold onto that position as a regional lord, he could afford to show Liu Yu less and less deference — but the will of the Jurchens was not to be defied.
This time the Jurchen advance south was no longer the sporadic harassment of before. After years of recovery, this new empire meant to formally annex the lands to the south. The Wu Dynasty was already a sun setting; only those who bent with the trend of the times could hope to survive this great war.
With such considerations in mind, before the Jurchen advance, Li Xizhi had already sent trusted agents everywhere to enforce discipline harshly — ever since the three-year war at Xiaocang River, this kind of internal purge had become almost routine within the various puppet-Qi factions. And yet, despite it all, word came through that Daming Prefecture had fallen swiftly through inside collusion. Li Xizhi, after flying into a rage, could only follow the contingency plans and rush troops to its rescue.
Time is a weapon slow as water yet powerful enough to grind down anything in its path. During the Jurchens’ first southern campaign, resistance in the Central Plains had been widespread; by the second, the Humiliation of Jingping, there had still been many righteous armies struggling and active across the Central Plains. But by the time the Jurchens finished their campaign of combing the hills and searching the seas across the south, organized resistance in the Central Plains had already dwindled to almost nothing. Though every band of hill bandits still claimed the banner of “resisting Jin,” in practice they survived on drugging, waylaying, killing, and plunder — and their victims were, more often than not, unarmed Han civilians rather than Jurchens. When the Jurchens truly grew angry, these self-styled “men of righteousness” rarely dared move at all.
Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimp — this was simply the way of the world, and few managed to break free of it. So when the Jurchens marched south, Li Xizhi cared little about the scattered bandit groups around him. But he knew his own domain best of all, and there were two forces within it that he had always kept a wary eye on. Wang Shanyue’s mischief at Daming Prefecture had come as no surprise; the strength of the “Guangwu Army” made him wary. But beyond even that, there was one power that had always made him uneasy, even fearful: the shadow that hung over everyone’s shoulders — the Black Banner Army.
No one wanted to end up like Liu Yu, beaten senseless in his own palace in the dead of night.
If, after the war at Xiaocang River, people could still comfort themselves that Ning Yi, the demon haunting their nightmares, had been beheaded, then last year, when Tian Hu’s territory suddenly changed hands overnight, people across the Central Plains had truly come to feel the crushing weight of the Black Banner Army again. And later, the news that Ning Yi was not dead after all felt like the whole world being mocked in the loudest possible terms: you were all fools.
Liu Yu had been terrified half out of his mind right there in his own palace, and the Jin state had taken a heavy slap in the face for it — yet with the Jin in the northeast and the Black Banner in the southwest, there was nothing to be done about it openly. On the surface they swallowed their anger, though who knew how many had been punished internally behind closed doors.
Beyond this, the other powers of the Central Plains could only feign calm. Li Xizhi tightened internal discipline further. In Zhending, in Hebei, the aging patriarch of the Qi family, Qi Yan, was so frightened he woke repeatedly in the night, crying out that the Black Banner had come to kill him — while secretly he offered a bounty of untold millions in cash for Ning Yi’s head. No one could say how many wandering swordsmen had gone west chasing that fortune, or how many scholars Qi Yan had persuaded to travel to the Wu court to lobby against the Black Banner.
As the saying goes, when a thousand fingers point at a man, he dies without illness — and yet this Ning Yi, from the very start, had defied every convention under heaven, from the moment he slaughtered Zhou Zhe on the throne like a chicken in the golden hall. Since then, every move he made had been dangerous, offending the Wu Dynasty, offending the Jin state, offending the Central Plains, offending Western Xia, offending Dali… After he had offended the entire realm, men like Li Xizhi had no choice but to admit: once a man that dangerous had you in his sights, no matter who you were, you would not escape without losing a layer of skin, even if you survived.
Old Patriarch Qi in Hebei had his name entered on the register of traitors to the Chinese nation. And in the years Li Xizhi had governed Jingdong and Hebei, he knew there was a Black Banner force lying in wait around Liangshan — one meant specifically for him, and for the Jurchens. Through years of small-scale friction, this force’s outline had gradually become clear. Its leader, known as “City-Burning Spear” Zhu Biao, had followed Ning Yi from the moment he wiped out Song Jiang’s faction on Liangshan, and had long been one of Ning Yi’s most trusted right-hand men — formidable in skill, ruthless by nature, one who had been personally trained by the demon himself.
With a group like that embedded nearby, trouble was bound to come sooner or later — and yet Li Xizhi did not dare stake his forces on wiping out the Black Banner. The times had changed beyond recognition: the once-mighty Liao state had fallen; the Wu Dynasty, weakened, clung to its last strength on two hundred years of accumulated legacy; the Jin state had risen meteorically, a true favored son of the age; and as for Ning Yi’s so-called Chinese Army, it was the strangest, most monstrous force this chaotic age had spawned.
When the gods fight, it’s the mortals who suffer — Wang Shanyue’s so-called “Guangwu Army,” standing in the path of the Jurchen advance south, was bound to happen sooner or later. Even letting them take Daming Prefecture, since the whole length of the Yellow River still lay in Jurchen hands, there would surely be a way to deal with it eventually. Only that Black Banner gave him pause — Li Xizhi could only hope the Black Banner and the Guangwu Army would prove to be allies in name only, or that the Chinese Army, tucked away in the far south, still felt some caution toward the Jurchens and would not act rashly before the Jurchens had secured the south. If the Jurchens got through safely, then this whole mess would no longer be his problem.
“…The two Jin princes have raised armies to march south. Wang Shanyue’s so-called Guangwu Army has taken Daming Prefecture — bold on the surface, but reckless and without real strategy! I have already discussed this Guangwu force at length with Lord Wanyan Chang of the Great Jin. These three or four myriad men have held the Liangshan Marsh as their base; to try to encircle and destroy them there would cost twice the effort for half the result. But now that they have dared to come out and seize Daming, this is our chance to wipe them out. And so — in this battle, better slow than hasty! Our first step will be to work them down gradually, pinning their entire force at Daming, surrounding and containing them! If they truly prove as formidable as rumored, I will turn Daming into a second Taiyuan — better to leave it a wasteland than let a single one of them slip through in armor. Cut the weeds, dig out the roots, and be done with this trouble forever!”
Fourteen years into the Jinghan era, the eldest son of the Qin family, Qin Shaohe, had led the people of an entire city in a year-long, desperate defense of Taiyuan, which finally fell when no relief came, and the whole city was put to the sword. Qin Shaohe himself was killed while fleeing, his body hacked to pieces by the Jurchens — one of the most horrific episodes of the Jurchens’ first southern campaign. Even now, more than ten years later, the once-formidable walled city of Taiyuan remained a field of ruins.
On the first day of the eighth month, after the army passed Xingzhou, Li Xizhi, in a council of war, settled on the strategy of pinning Wang Shanyue’s forces at Daming Prefecture. Barely a moment after this council ended, a scout arrived, having ridden four hundred li, bringing news that left no room for turning back.
“The Black Banner has taken a city — striking out from Zengtou Market!”
Li Xizhi sat in his command tent a long while before speaking. “So you’re telling me — Wang Jiya’s twenty thousand men are gone?”
Ever since the Wu Dynasty’s founding, many parts of the Jingdong circuit had suffered from poor order, with local strongmen springing up everywhere. Zengtou Market, in particular, had long been a lawless, self-governing place, though nominally there were officials and a garrison stationed there. When Li Xizhi took over the Jingdong circuit, to guard against Black Banner incursions, he had stationed twenty thousand troops around Zengtou Market, commanded by his fierce general Wang Jiya — a man skilled in combat, meticulous in temperament, and brutal by nature. Wang Jiya had taken part in the great war at Xiaocang River in his early years and held a deep grudge against the Chinese Army. Since he had taken command at Zengtou Market, working in coordination with the Jinan Prefecture garrison, he had for a time managed to subdue most of the surrounding strongholds, keeping the bandits from acting rashly. Who could have known that when the Black Banner finally mobilized, it would strike Zengtou Market first of all.
On the twenty-eighth of the seventh month, eleven thousand Black Banner troops launched a surprise assault on Zengtou Market, seizing the eastern wall first. Once the city fell into chaos, street fighting broke out. Wang Jiya rallied his forces to hold the southern part of the city, even personally leading three separate counterattacks. On the third such charge, he was ambushed by the Black Banner Army, and after several exchanges of blows with “Great Blade” Guan Sheng, was beheaded. The Black Banner general who led that assault was none other than Zhu Biao.
Having crushed Wang Jiya and taken Zengtou Market with ease, the Black Banner Army had already sent word that it intended to march straight against Li Xizhi at Daming Prefecture. The scout who delivered this news looked somewhat cowed as he spoke, and after Li Xizhi barked at him twice, he finally produced a leaflet that had been fired into a nearby town along the way.
The message on the leaflet was crudely scrawled, and read: Little Li Twig, the grown-ups are about to fight — you kids get out of the way!
“This is beyond insolence!”
There was a loud crack as Li Xizhi slammed his palm on the table and rose to his feet. He was a tall man, and standing now, hair and beard bristling, the whole tent filled with murderous rage.
But from here on, there was no more room for false hope. Facing the southward march of three hundred thousand Jurchen troops, this Black Banner force of little more than ten thousand men had chosen not to lie low, but to plant itself directly at the front. To Li Xizhi, such reckless behavior was the most senseless — and the most terrifying — thing imaginable. When the gods fight, even the mortals find nowhere left to hide.
No one had anywhere left to hide.
Strangely enough, as the curtain rose on the Jurchens’ southern campaign, the fiercest fighting in the realm had begun not in the north but far to the “peripheral” southwest, unfolding at the hands of the Black Banner. The Jurchens’ three hundred thousand troops had not yet crossed the Yellow River when, in the southwest, at Small Liangshan, on the twenty-first of the seventh month, Lu Qiaoshan met with Ning Yi for negotiations. On the twenty-second, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth, one hundred thousand troops moved steadily into the Liangshan region, first making contact with the Mangshan Yi tribes and others, working to intimidate and persuade the surrounding tribal communities.
For this battle, countless parties held their breath in anticipation — including the Gao clan of Dali to the south, the Resentment Army of Tibet to the west, Confucian scholars such as Long Qifei of Zizhou City, various Wu warlord factions of the time, and even the Jin general Wanyan Xiyin, a thousand li away — all had sent spies and agents to await the sound of the first cannon shot.
On the twenty-sixth of the seventh month, at the mountain pass of Xiufeng in Liangshan, the main Black Banner forces of the Heden and Deng counties, silent for years, struck the first blow against the hundred-thousand-strong army entering the mountains.