A soft, lilting song was drifting through the air — verses of a Tang-dynasty poem, written centuries earlier by a father to his daughter on the occasion of her marriage, full of sorrow and tender parting counsel for the road ahead.
In a room shut tight against the wind, a brazier burned, filling the space with a warmth that felt heavy and dim, indifferent to whether it was day or night outside. Beneath thick quilts, a woman’s body stirred, her voice low as she sang the ancient verses. Her tone carried a soft, wistful quality, lending the room a faint tinge of tender pink. Beside her lay a man, his features harsh, his hair unkempt, his eyes closed as though asleep. As she sang, the woman climbed atop him, kissing him gently; once the song ended, she closed her eyes and rested a moment before beginning another poem of her own accord — this one an old ballad of the Tang dynasty, its opening lines carrying the timeless, stirring boast of a soldier proud to ride into danger, though the poem as a whole spoke, more than anything, of the brutal grief of war.
The woman hummed the verses slowly, softly. The man leaning against her listened in silence, then opened his eyes — they were red.
The man’s name was Wang Shitong — the fearsome “Ghost King” who now commanded the starving horde, a force that had swept across half the Central Plains and had, at one point, even driven the Jurchen Iron Pagoda cavalry to avoid Bianliang altogether. The woman was Gao Qianyue, originally the daughter of an official family from Langya, gifted in letters and poetry, and remarkable in both talent and beauty. The previous year, when the starving horde had swept through, all of Langya had been burned to the ground; Gao Qianyue and her family had been swallowed up in the catastrophe. Her fiancé, an officer serving in the army, had died first; her parents soon after. Because of her beauty, she had survived by chance, and eventually found herself passed along into Wang Shitong’s household.
Over the months spanning the end of the ninth year of Jianshuo into the start of the tenth, wherever the starving horde went became a living hell, but Gao Qianyue, kept at Wang Shitong’s side, had fared reasonably well by comparison. The nightmare of her family being devoured, and the constant terror of hunger, had stripped away every trace of the noble young lady she had once been; toward Wang Shitong, this woman who only half a year earlier had still been an unmarried daughter of a proper household had learned every art of flattering compliance. In the end, the starving horde had reached the outskirts of Xuzhou and stopped there.
Deep winter had set in, the mountains locked beneath heavy snow, and more than a million starving souls had gathered in this area. Through the whole winter, they consumed everything edible, and cases of parents trading children to eat became commonplace. Gao Qianyue and Wang Shitong had spent months together in this room; she needed no glimpse outside to imagine exactly what scene lay beyond the walls. Compared to the world outside, this room was, in its way, an isolated paradise.
She entertained the man with her singing, though this particular song carried an ill-omened meaning; as she sang on, seeming to fear he might grow angry, her voice trailed off gradually into silence. Wang Shitong kept his eyes closed for a while longer, then opened them again, staring up into the dim shadows of the ceiling, and spoke in a low voice.
“Don’t you see… the bitterness of battle on the killing field, even now people still remember that old general of the frontier… heh…”
Whether that last sound was one of wistful reflection or bitter mockery, it was hard to say. Just then a knock sounded at the door. “Ghost King, the guest has arrived.”
His gaze sharpened; a fierce, violent air gathered around him at once. He pushed the woman off him, rose, and pulled on a heavy robe stitched together from various furs, then picked up a wolf-tooth club still stained with old bloodstains.
“Stay here. Don’t go out,” he told Gao Qianyue as he left the room.
Over these past months, he said the same thing every time he went out, and not once had Gao Qianyue left this room. After Wang Shitong left, she wrapped herself in the blankets and quietly retreated into a corner of the room.
Outside, night had fallen.
Scattered points of firelight stretched out from this compound of buildings, merging into a vast, chaotic settlement that stretched beyond sight. What had once numbered over a million and was now several hundred thousand starving people had gathered here in an order that was primitive and grotesque; even glimpsed through the darkness, the low makeshift shelters, the faint flickering fires, the stench rising from the dead and from unidentifiable meat, and the strange, wailing cries drifting through the night sky all combined to chill anyone to the bone.
Wang Shitong followed a refugee leader named Tu Jifang along a muddy road still streaked with patches of snow, arriving at a large hall not far off. This had once been the village’s ancestral shrine, now converted into the great hall where Wang Shitong handled military affairs. The two men passed through the guarded main gate; inside, a man dressed in rags similar to the refugees, his face wrapped in cloth, rose from where he had been sitting. Once Tu Jifang closed the door, the man removed the cloth from his face and bowed in greeting.
“Li Zheng of Liaodong, greeting the Ghost King.”
Wang Shitong did not return the bow. He fixed the man with a gaze reddened from blood and stepped forward until he stood right before Li Zheng, staring him down. After a moment, once Li Zheng had begun to show some visible discomfort, Wang Shitong finally turned away and walked to the seat at the front of the hall. Tu Jifang started to speak, but Wang Shitong raised a hand. “Get out.”
“Ghost King, this time the Jurchens are showing real sinc—”
Wang Shitong said nothing, only turned his gaze, and a fierce, threatening air immediately settled over Tu Jifang. Tu Jifang hastily retreated and left the room. Within the world of the starving horde, there was little room left for human sentiment; Wang Shitong’s moods were unpredictable, and ever since he had killed his own closest confidant, Yan Hong, the previous year, he had taken to killing on a whim, without needing any reason at all. Even with tens of thousands of men under his own command, Tu Jifang did not dare act carelessly here.
Once the door had closed, Wang Shitong let his hands fall to his sides, his gaze drifting blankly across the empty space of the room, as if lost in thought for a moment. Then he looked toward Li Zheng and asked, his voice hoarse: “That whelp Zongfu… what did he send you here for?”
Li Zheng’s brow furrowed slightly.
But before he could answer, Wang Shitong broke into a smile of his own accord. “…To feed me?”
…
In Xuzhou, in a small room, four men had just finished talking.
The four figures stood divided into two groups — one alone, the other three together. The three were noticeably thin and small in stature, though all wore Huaxia Army uniforms, and carried about them a distinct air of vigor and resolve.
All four rose and exchanged salutes. The one who appeared to be their commanding officer was about to speak when a knock sounded at the door. He went and opened it a crack, glanced outside, then pulled the door fully open.
Standing there was Liu Chengzong, the highest-ranking Huaxia Army officer of this expeditionary force to Xuzhou. He stepped inside, glanced at the three thin soldiers, returned their salute, and asked quietly, with a smile on his face, “Have you gone over everything they need to know?”
“All done,” the officer answered.
“You all understand the situation out there — this is nearly a suicide mission,” Liu Chengzong said. “If anyone doesn’t want to go, speak up now. A task like this, done half-heartedly, won’t end well.”
The three thin men stood ramrod straight, chins raised. Liu Chengzong nodded and smiled, then picked up several bowls from the table and poured plain hot water into them.
“You’re about to head out — no drinking allowed. So water will have to do… when you come back alive, we’ll share a real cup to celebrate.”
He raised his bowl with the three men, and they each clinked bowls together. After a few more words of advice, he left. In the darkness, the three slight Huaxia Army soldiers changed into refugee clothing that had been prepared in advance, disguised themselves, and then rode a cart toward one side of the city wall.
Ever since Liu Chengzong had led eight thousand Huaxia Army soldiers into Xuzhou at the end of the previous year, Wang Shitong, upon learning of it, had brought the main force of his starving horde surging toward the city as well. Xuzhou’s walls were sturdy and thick; when Li Anmao declared his resistance against Qi and the Jurchens, the forces he rallied, together with those raised afterward, numbered more than fifty thousand — enough that even a million starving refugees could never hope to breach the city. But being besieged like this by the starving horde meant that, once the Jurchens arrived, Xuzhou would have little chance to seize the initiative on the battlefield.
To address this, Liu Chengzong selected a number of Huaxia Army soldiers skilled at agitation and persuasion, capable of blending into the starving crowds, and sent them out of the city in successive groups, to guide the refugees outside into abandoning their siege of Xuzhou and turning instead to attack the Jurchen eastern army, which had not fortified any strongholds of its own.
Events proved that refugees plagued by hunger and cold were easily stirred into action. Since the end of the previous year, one group of refugees after another had been guided toward the Jurchen forces, causing considerable trouble for both the Jurchen main force and its supply lines. Among the million-strong starving horde that Wang Shitong had led to Xuzhou, some had likewise been incited to leave — though by now, of course, most of them had already perished in the deep snow.
Over the course of that winter, more than three months, the hunger and cold suffered by the refugees camped outside Xuzhou’s walls in the heavy snow defied any full accounting. In an environment where people turned on each other for food, even the Huaxia Army agitators sent out among them faced no small risk of starving to death themselves. And amid that snow, with people dying by the millions — freezing, starving, or cut down while charging the Jurchen forces — no ordinary person could easily bear to witness it.
Every single day, countless people died in an environment where the gap between life and death was measured in hair’s breadths; each life was like a speck of dust, and yet also like an entire epic. Millions of people, dying of starvation in the flesh, with almost no way to save them. And even accepting that they could not all be saved, there remained something deeply unspeakable in the act of efficiently inciting them toward their own deaths — even soldiers who had lived through the three-year bloodbath at Xiaocang River found themselves under tremendous psychological strain in an environment like this.
But this work still had to be done. Spring was approaching, and if the problem of the starving horde wasn’t dealt with, the situation at Xuzhou could grow far more difficult in the time ahead. That night, under cover of darkness, three men were once again quietly lowered from the city wall. And at that same moment, on the other side of the wall, amid the makeshift shelters where the refugees had gathered, another figure was also moving quietly forward.
Fearing that the Huaxia Army might shatter the core of his starving army with a single strike, Wang Shitong kept his central command several li away — but even right beneath Xuzhou’s walls, plenty of refugees had gathered, indifferent to whatever army might come charging out. This particular figure slipped into a patch of darkness, glanced around for a moment, then quietly drew a bow and fired an arrow, wrapped with a message, toward a section of the city wall where several torches burned.
Once the message had been delivered, the figure quietly turned back and melted into the refugee camp. But before long, a commotion had broken out, centered on this very man.
…
“…In the realm as it stands today, the Wu Dynasty has lost the Way, and the hearts of the people are utterly lost with it. As for this so-called Huaxia Army — they chase after fame and reputation, wanting nothing more than power over the realm, with no regard for the common people. The Ghost King understands this well. If not for that Ning Yi murdering the sovereign of the Wu Dynasty, how could the great Jin state ever have found the opportunity to breach Bianliang and take the entire Central Plains?… The southerners scheme and squabble among themselves, caring for nothing but their own petty politics — the mandate of heaven belongs to the Jurchens… I know the Ghost King doesn’t care to hear this, but consider — in taking the realm, have the Jurchens ever stooped to the kind of shameful, underhanded dealings so common among the Wu Dynasty and this Huaxia Army? Whatever ground has been won on the battlefield — at least here in the north, there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.”
In the room, the man from Liaodong, Li Zheng, stood before Wang Shitong, delivering this impassioned speech.
“…And yet, among the southerners, there are also those worthy of respect. A hero like the Ghost King, for one — my own side holds you in real regard. Does the Ghost King know that this winter, our Commander Zongfu and Prince Zongbi have spoken of you often? Though fortune has not favored you, among all the southerners, only you, Ghost King, fight for the sake of the common people. Your methods may be violent, but you have shouldered a burden that the court and its many officials could never bear!”
“…Famine struck the north, and the Ghost King had no other choice but to lead everyone south. I’ve heard that when you passed through Zezhou, you encountered that so-called Huaxia Army — they claim to stand for benevolence and righteousness, and you wished to entrust your people to their care. Yet this Huaxia Army, which proclaims benevolence to all under heaven, refused to acknowledge these people of Huaxia as their own, leaving you to go on carrying them alone… All the way south, no one has been able to stand in your way, and even through this winter, with a million dead, it is only under the Ghost King’s protection that several hundred thousand still survive. Why is that? Because you, Ghost King, have sheltered them, no matter the circumstances. Commander Zongfu says you are a man worthy of respect — a man who fights for the sake of all the common people.”
“If the realm as it stands today were not already rotten through and through, the Ghost King would never have arrived where you are now — you would surely have found a broader road to walk.”
Li Zheng raised his thumb toward Wang Shitong, paused a moment, then pointed a finger in the direction of Xuzhou. “And now, the Huaxia Army sits right there within Xuzhou’s walls. Ghost King, I know you wish to kill them — Commander Zongfu feels exactly the same way. The Jurchens are marching south, and this time there will be no room for compromise. Ghost King, even if you led these several hundred thousand people all the way to the Jiangnan region, forgive my bluntness, but the south will never welcome you either. Commander Zongfu has no wish to fight you… If you would simply clear the road through Xuzhou, he will grant you ten cities to the west. You could be granted a noble title and high office under the great Jin — and your people would live.”
Wang Shitong looked at him for a long moment. “Zongfu… afraid to fight me? We’re nearly all dead as it is.”
“The Ghost King sees clearly. In all these years of war, the Jurchens have never feared any opponent. But, first, there’s no wish to fight a battle without purpose; second, there is genuine respect for you as a man, Ghost King; and third… the realm is about to change, and by the turning of fortune’s wheel, these people too are subjects of the great Jin state. If they can be allowed to live, our Commander would rather spare them needless death and injury. Ghost King, if you would only calm yourself and think it through, this truly is the best course…”
Li Zheng was still speaking, meaning to continue further, when a commotion suddenly erupted outside. A moment later, Tu Jifang came knocking at the door with several men in tow. “Ghost King! Ghost King! We caught him! We caught him!”
“Caught what!” Wang Shitong roared.
“The Huaxia Army…” Tu Jifang said, already pushing the door open as he spoke.
Wang Shitong shot to his feet. The moment Tu Jifang entered, several of his trusted men behind him dragged in a figure — a man dressed in filthy rags, so emaciated that his bones showed through his skin. He had clearly just been beaten; his face was streaked with blood, his hands bound behind his back, and two of his front teeth had been knocked out. He looked utterly wretched.
Tu Jifang shut the door, glanced at Li Zheng, then at Wang Shitong, and said in a low voice: “One of my own men, Ghost King. We finally caught him — it’s this bastard who’s been spreading word among the brothers that since we can’t take Xuzhou, the closest thing to do is go raid the Jurchens for their army grain. Someone saw with their own eyes as he sent a signal over to Xuzhou — ha ha…”
Everyone among the starving horde had long known of Wang Shitong’s bone-deep hatred for the Huaxia Army. Ever since the previous winter, some among them had been incited, group after group, to go toward the Jurchens, dying either along the road or beneath enemy blades. There had been suspicions within the horde, but the rank and file were, at bottom, a disorganized mob, and no solid proof had ever been caught — until now. Tu Jifang, thrilled beyond measure at finally catching someone, had hurried the man over at once.
Wang Shitong’s gaze flicked toward Li Zheng, then swung back to settle on the captured Huaxia Army agent. After a moment, he let out a short, mocking laugh. “You — how long have you been hiding among us? Weren’t you afraid of being eaten alive?”
The Huaxia Army agent, still being held up and gasping for breath, said nothing. Tu Jifang drove a fist into his chest. “Speak, damn you!” The agent coughed twice, then looked up at Wang Shitong — he had been caught nearly red-handed, tracked and watched for some time already, with no way to talk his way out of it now — and he laughed instead. “Eating people… ha, and only you get to do that, do you?”
He lowered his head and spat out a mouthful of bloody froth. “Do you know — do you know a man named Wang Shanyue…”
“Hm?”
“He’s… he’s the grandson of Wang Qisong of the Wu Dynasty. Before the Heishui alliance, the Liao people came, and every man in the Wang family went off to fight — all of them died, leaving only Wang Shanyue behind. Nothing but women left in his household. He was frail from childhood, and his family was bullied for it, but he was the only man left, and to protect them, do you know what he did?” The agent lifted his blood-streaked face. “He ate people. Devoured them raw and alive. His enemies feared him — and so he was able to protect his family…”
“Ha, eating people… why do you eat people, then, who are you protecting? What’s so glorious about that? Does human flesh taste good? Some ‘Ghost King’ — not man, not ghost, nothing at all… Do you know, that man-eating Wang Shanyue has been holding Daming Prefecture with his troops from last year right up to now? Wanyan Zongfu and Wanyan Zongbi, with three hundred thousand men, still haven’t been able to break him. And this scum standing next to you — who is he, some northerner? Ghost King, selling your own ass to them, ha ha ha ha…”
“You Black Banner scum, I’ll roast you and eat you today myself!”
As the agent’s insults grew wilder, Tu Jifang suddenly drew his blade and pressed it to the man’s throat. The agent, his mouth full of blood, laughed and threw himself forward onto the blade’s edge. Tu Jifang jerked the knife back in alarm, and Wang Shitong bellowed, “Stop!” The two of Tu Jifang’s men holding the agent yanked him back hard as well, but the agent lunged again — and with a sharp clang, he had already drawn a dagger from one of the men’s own belts. In that instant, the emaciated figure twisted and thrashed, snapping the ropes binding his hands; with a swift slash he cut the throat of a nearby Tu Jifang loyalist, then, dagger in hand, lunged like a tiger straight at Li Zheng!
“Die—”
“Ah—”
The agent lunged at Li Zheng, and Tu Jifang’s blade cut across at the same instant. As one of the starving horde’s leaders, Tu Jifang ate well enough to keep his strength up, and the agent, having thrown every ounce of remaining force into a single strike, was caught by a flash of steel and sent tumbling into a corner of the room, a deep gash torn across his chest, blood pouring out. Yet he rose again at once, seemingly ready to keep fighting; Tu Jifang roared, “I’m going to eat you.”
Wang Shitong’s eyes, too, had gone bloodshot; he closed in on the agent. As the distance narrowed, Wang Shitong caught a flicker of complicated emotion cross the blood-streaked face of this Huaxia Army agent — an expression he had seen countless times over the past half-year. Fear, mingled with longing.
“Scum.”
The agent spat this single word, then swept the dagger across in one motion and slit his own throat — the cleanest, most decisive stroke Wang Shitong had ever witnessed. The body remained standing for a moment before blood erupted outward, spraying across Wang Shitong’s face and head.
Everyone in the room froze.
The body toppled to the ground. Wang Shitong wiped a hand across his face, and it came away entirely crimson. Tu Jifang stepped forward. “Ghost King, you were right — none of the Huaxia Army are any good. This winter they came here to stir up trouble, took away a good many of our people. But since we can’t take Xuzhou by force, maybe we could—”
A whistling gust of wind cut the air! Wang Shitong seized his wolf-tooth club and, in a single sudden motion, swung it around. A dull, ringing crash of metal on metal sounded through the room, and Tu Jifang — wearing only a thin layer of light armor — was sent flying, crashing violently into a desk on the other side of the room, splinters of wood and scattered objects flying everywhere. Tu Jifang’s body rolled along the floor, then twitched, as if trying to rise, blood pouring from his mouth in great mouthfuls.
Wang Shitong swung the club again, smashing it down.
“You—”
Crack!
“—eat from one hand—”
Crack!
“—and betray with the other—”
Crack!
“—you filthy thing!!!”
Crack!
Tu Jifang’s body was beaten out of shape, blood pooling across the floor. Wang Shitong stood there, breathing heavily, wiped a hand across his nose and mouth, then turned his bloodshot gaze toward Li Zheng at the side of the room.
“Someone — drag him out. Eat him.”
Men entered from outside and moved toward Li Zheng, whose face had already gone pale with terror. “You… Ghost King, do this and you’ll come to a bad end, think this through carefully, Commander Zongfu will not let this go, you…”
“Ha ha, let that pup Zongfu come, then! This world… this world has been reduced to this state by dogs like you Jurchens… I’m not afraid of him! I’ve nothing left to lose, and a man with nothing to lose fears no one who still has something to protect! He’s the one who should fear me — I’ll eat him too, I’ll eat him… ha ha ha…”
Li Zheng was dragged out still shouting, and Wang Shitong kept laughing to himself. He glanced over at the dead Huaxia Army agent lying on the other side of the room, laughed a couple more times, then fell briefly into a blank, distant silence before calling out again.
“And this one too… there’s nothing left to eat around here anyway — string him up in front of Xuzhou! Ha ha ha, hang him up, let them see — this is what happens to every last one of the Black Banner Army, ha ha—”
Covered head to toe in blood, he laughed on with a manic edge, then went to bathe. Not long after he returned to the room where Gao Qianyue waited, someone came to report that Li Zheng, after being taken away, had suddenly turned violent, wounded one of his guards, and escaped. Wang Shitong gave only an idle “Oh,” and turned back to hold the woman in his arms.
The next day, atop Xuzhou’s walls, people saw the corpse that had been strung up outside the city.
“Time for war, then…”
Luo Ye looked down from the wall, a flicker of killing intent crossing his eyes…