In the warm days of the third month, new trees in the courtyard had already sprouted; the sudden rain had just cleared, and the green on the branches was so deep it seemed ready to melt into droplets and fall.

“…My grandfather—I remember him as a rigid old fellow.”

“…Born into a family of scholars, he never did anything remarkable in his whole life. Studious as a child, he passed the provincial examination young, was appointed to a real post, entered court service, and then later left the court and returned home to teach. What he treasured most, in ordinary times, were those several rooms full of books he kept. Thinking back on it now, he was like one of those portraits people hang up in the hall—straight-faced all year round, terribly stern. I was still small then, and I never dared get close to that grandfather of mine…”

“…When the Liao people came sweeping in, the army couldn’t hold them back. Everyone who could flee, fled. I wasn’t afraid—I was too young to understand what was happening at all. The whole family gathered together, and I was still running back and forth in front of the hall. The old man was in the main room, talking about scholarship with a bunch of stiff-backed uncles, and everyone was… sitting up straight, properly dressed, scared to death…”

“…I was bawling and crying, and he pointed at me and said, it’s enough if one drop of the family’s blood survives to carry it on. And so, damn it… I ended up surviving along with a group of women. Before we left, my grandfather held my hand… I don’t remember if he was holding my hand or carrying me—he took a torch and set fire to that row of rooms he treasured so dearly… In the end he was skinned alive, his hide hung from the flagpole…”

In the courtyard, in front of the hall, the scholar—who had features almost feminine in their delicacy—held a teacup and poured the tea from it beneath the eaves. Inside the hall, beneath the eaves, the generals and soldiers listened to what he was saying.

“…He didn’t drink wine, so I offer him tea instead… I heard all this later from my grandmother. A bunch of men who couldn’t so much as truss a chicken, and the most careful thing they did before facing death wasn’t sharpening their blades—it was straightening their robes and caps. If someone’s dress wasn’t proper, they’d be scolded for it. Madness…”

“…As for me, from childhood I paid no mind to anything—I did whatever needed doing. I’ve killed men, I’ve eaten human flesh raw. I don’t care if my clothes are a mess; I just want other people to fear me. Heaven gave me this face and nothing else, my family was all women, and when I was at school in the capital, people mocked me, then beat me. Being beaten didn’t matter to me—but with only women left in my family, what was I supposed to do? Whoever laughed at me, I’d bite into them, tear their flesh, swallow them whole…”

“…Later, one day, when I was thirteen, some official in the capital bullied my family for having no men in it and harassed my meek-tempered aunt. I threw myself at him and tore half his face off, gouged out one of his eyes, and chewed it. Everyone around was terrified—they seized me, and I pointed at the lot of them and told them, as long as I’m alive, sooner or later I’ll come to your house and eat every last one of you, old and young, alive… After that I was sent up north…” I have no idea where that man is now…”

He poured the second cup of tea out onto the ground.

“…When I was up north, what weighed on my mind most was always those women back home. Grandmother, mother, aunts, sisters… a whole houseful of people—how would they get by without me? But later I found out that even in the hardest times, they never lost to… ha, never lost to you men…”

“…With a temperament like mine, it would have made more sense for me to join up with that devil Ning and his people. But in the end I never did—and it wasn’t because of my family… Strange to say, when the devil Ning made his move to rebel, my relationship with him was actually quite good, yet he never told me about it, never let slip the slightest hint…”

“…Generation after generation, my Wang family has been scholars, yet from childhood I never felt I’d read much of anything. What I wanted to be was a swordsman, best of all some great villain that everyone feared, so I could protect my family. What were scholars, anyway—dressing up nicely in their robes to go kill the enemy? But, I don’t know why, that pedantic… that whole crowd of pedantic old fools…”

On the ground, he poured out a third cup of tea, and what flickered in his eyes seemed to be more than just the image of that old man from years ago. The sound of distant fighting was already drifting faintly from far away. Wang Shanyue, in his long robe, paused for a moment in his recollection, then raised his head and walked into the hall.

“…Those old fools—and yet I can’t help but respect them…”

He walked to the table at the far end of the hall and picked up the tall ceremonial cap.

“…All of you here are true heroes. These past days, having you take my orders—Wang Shanyue feels shame for it. Where I’ve done wrong, I won’t apologize to each of you individually today. In the ten years since the Jurchens came south, the blood debt owed to us is beyond counting. That my wife and I can stand here and fight alongside all of you—say nothing else, it has been an honor… a true honor.”

He set the tall cap upon his head, slowly and steadily tying the strings beneath his chin, securing it with a long hairpin. Then Wang Shanyue reached out and picked up the long blade from the table.

“…Everyone, it seems Daming Prefecture can no longer be held. We’ve tied these men down here for half a year—what needed doing has been done. Whether we can get out, I dare not say. Right now, all I want is to settle, with my own hands, the blood debt of these past ten years with the Jurchens—”

The cold gleam of the blade flashed across the hall. In that moment, Wang Shanyue, in his snow-white robe and cap, wore on his seemingly refined, scholarly face an expression of bold and stirring resolve.

“Brothers, the Jurchens are too strong, and the road has run out. I don’t know how far we’ll get, I don’t know if we’ll make it out alive, and even if we do, I don’t know how many more years it will take before we can reclaim this blood debt from Jurchen hands. But I know—I’m certain—that one day, people like you and me will restore our Huaxia, and set our robes and caps right again… If any of you here survive, then go and see that day for us.”

He smiled. “…Now, let’s go collect what’s owed.”

Voices rose in answer, echoing among the footsteps of the men.

On the twenty-third day of the third month, in the tenth year of Wujian Shuo, the outer walls of Daming Prefecture were breached, and the entire city fell into fierce street fighting. After half a year of siege and defense, the attacking soldiers who finally entered the city discovered that it had already been laced with dense defensive works—explosives, traps, and a maze of interconnecting tunnels—so that the troops, having let their guard down slightly after breaking in, were met first with a brutal counterstrike.

Still, with the walls lost, the defense had been weakened far too much regardless. Wanyan Chang, the Jurchen general commanding at Daming Prefecture, was skilled in domestic administration and logistics, and his military tactics were known for their caution. He directed over two hundred thousand Han troops into the city to sweep it clean, advancing cautiously step by step while digging in at every turn, and at the same time launched a large-scale campaign to induce surrender among defenders who were willing to give up or had reached a dead end. By the third day after the breach, small units or individuals had already begun surrendering, aiding the Jurchen advance in unraveling the city’s defensive lines.

Some units also attempted to break out of the city, but the over thirty thousand elite Jurchen troops under Wanyan Chang’s direct command took on the task of blocking any breakout, their superior cavalry working together with hawks to sweep and pursue—almost no one managed to escape the confines of Daming Prefecture under such conditions.

Having been struck by surprise by Wang Shanyue’s forces and then tied down for a full half year by them, the Jin army was determined that this group led by Wang Shanyue must be wiped out entirely.

Even as he pressed the assault and swept the city, Wanyan Chang kept a close watch on his rear. Over the past month, the Huaxia Army, having won its battle at Linzhou, had, after a brief period of rest and reorganization, come sweeping in from the northwest—its purpose needing no explanation.

Riding on the momentum of its crushing defeat of Shulisu, this army’s movements had struck fear into the garrisons of quite a few cities along its path. The Huaxia Army’s tracks had appeared several times near a number of key grain-storage towns north of Daming Prefecture, and just a few days earlier they had even seized a gap in the defenses to strike the northern granary town of Sufang. With most of the forces once under Li Xizhi’s command now redeployed to Daming Prefecture, urgent dispatches from every direction were pouring in to Wanyan Chang.

But Wanyan Chang paid them no heed.

By the twenty-eighth of the third month, half of Daming Prefecture had already been swept clean. By this point, the Jurchen army no longer accepted surrender; the remaining defenders inside the city had been driven to a fighting spirit born of desperation, resisting with stubborn ferocity. But Wanyan Chang paid this no mind either. Over two hundred thousand Han troops advanced into the city from every direction, launching the most furious assault yet against the ten-thousand-odd remaining defenders inside, while the thirty thousand Jurchen troops stationed outside the city held their position without moving, no matter how many died within.

He was waiting for the Huaxia Army to arrive—though it was also possible that army would never come at all.

No force could emerge from a clash of thirteen thousand against Shulisu’s thirty-five thousand without being badly weakened. If that army did not come, he would first finish off everyone in Daming Prefecture, then turn his superior numbers to swallow up the remnants of the Black Banner. And if they were reckless enough to come, Wanyan Chang would swallow them too, in one bite, and thereby settle the war north of the river once and for all.

…

Two days earlier, north of Daming Prefecture, in the small town of Sufang.

Having seized the town’s grain stores, the Huaxia Army units that had transferred here after the brutal battle at Linzhou were given a period of rest and recovery, eating their fill for the first time in several days.

The great battle at Linzhou had, in the end, defeated Shulisu, but the losses suffered by this Huaxia Army force, once tallied, came to nearly half its total strength. Of that half, some had died, some were severely wounded, and this did not even count the lightly wounded. In the end, only about six thousand four hundred men remained able to continue fighting, and it was only with the addition of the Linzhou garrison forces under men like Shi Guang’en that the army’s numbers were brought back up to roughly thirteen thousand. But while the newly added men had plenty of fighting spirit, they could not, in actual combat, be expected to match the earlier force’s hard-won tenacity.

There had been extensive debate within the army over whether to continue on to relieve Daming Prefecture. Under the original plan, the Huaxia Army would reinforce the land of Jin, help the Prince of Jin’s territory establish a relatively solid anti-Jurchen alliance, and then, once there was some breathing room, borrow troops from the Prince of Jin to strike at Daming Prefecture and assist Wang Shanyue in breaking out—this had been the ideal scenario. Now, of course, that was no longer possible.

Thirteen thousand men facing Shulisu had already been an extremely close call; in this battered state, to launch a surprise attack against Daming Prefecture, defended by thirty thousand Jurchen troops and over two hundred thousand Han troops, would amount to little more than suicide. During this time the Huaxia Army had launched repeated harassing attacks in the surrounding area, exhausting every effort to provoke a reaction from Wanyan Chang, but his responses only confirmed that he was exactly the kind of dignified general who was impossible to deal with unless caught by surprise.

Against a commander like this, one couldn’t even hope for a lucky decapitating strike.

Not going to the rescue meant watching everyone in Daming Prefecture die. Going to the rescue meant everyone being bound together and dying as one. For every single person, this choice was an agonizing one.

But that night, the decision was made regardless…

…

On the twenty-sixth of the third month, near the drill grounds outside Sufang town, a series of bonfires were lit.

Within the Huaxia Army, there had always been regular assemblies for tightening military discipline or boosting morale, and after the influx of new members, such meetings had become even more frequent. Even the newer members of the Huaxia Army were, by now, familiar with such gatherings. The venue was organized by regiment, and this day’s rally looked, on the surface, no different from those of previous days.

At one gathering site on the eastern side, staff officer Li Nian entered alongside Shi Guang’en, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, began his “lecture.”

“…From the days of Xiaocang River all the way to the present southwest, there has been a term of address in use within the Huaxia Army: ‘comrade.’ What does ‘comrade’ mean? Friends who share the same aspirations address one another as comrades. No one is forced to use this term, but it is a very formal and solemn form of address.”

“…What is the Huaxia Army’s aspiration? Our ancestors, generation after generation, were born and raised on this soil for tens of thousands of years. Our forebears did many things worthy of praise. Some say China is called Hua for the beauty of its ceremonial dress, and Xia for the greatness of its rites and propriety. We have created good things, we have fine rites and a fine spirit, and so we are called Huaxia. The Huaxia Army is built upon these good things—those good people, that good spirit, just like all of you standing here now, like the rest of our Huaxia Army brothers. Facing the ferocious onslaught of the Jurchens, we will never submit. At Xiaocang River, we defeated them! At Linzhou, we defeated them! At Xuzhou, our brothers are still fighting even now! In the face of the enemy’s trampling, we will not stop resisting—this spirit, this can be called a part of Huaxia.”

“…There are many other virtues in this world as well. Even within the Wu dynasty, a civil official who truly devoted himself to the nation’s affairs, a general who died in battle—these too can be called part of Huaxia. In ordinary times, if you work for the common people, if you care for the old and the weak, this too is Huaxia. But there are filthy things as well. Back during the first Jurchen invasion of the south, Chancellor Qin gave his utmost for the nation, Qin Shaoqian held Taiyuan to the last, and in the end, countless sacrifices bought the Wu dynasty a sliver of a chance at survival…”

“…But because of political infighting and scheming at court, no relief was ever sent to Taiyuan, and after a year of desperate holding, the city was finally broken. The entire population was massacred. Governor Qin Shaoqian’s body was hacked to pieces by the Jurchens, his head hung above the city gate. In the capital, Chancellor Qin was thrown into prison, exiled three thousand li, and finally killed along the way. Master Ning slew Zhou Zhe right there in the throne hall!”

“…Over these years, whether at Xiaocang River or here in the southwest, many people have said that even if we had to rebel, there was no need to kill Zhou Zhe—that if we hadn’t, the Huaxia Army might have had more room to fall back on, a wider road to walk. It sounds reasonable enough. But experience has proven that those who think they have a fallback can never accomplish great things! Over these years, the Wu dynasty’s road has grown narrower and narrower, while we, the Huaxia Army, fought our way out of the desperate straits of Xiaocang River, and we have only grown stronger and stronger! It is we who defeated Shulisu! In the southwest, we have already taken the entire Chengdu Plain! Why—”

Li Nian swept his hand through the air. “Because we do what is right! We do what is excellent! We advance without hesitation! We fight for our lives first, and negotiate after. And those who negotiate first, and only think of fighting once negotiations fail, will be cast aside by this world! Just imagine—when Master Ning witnessed so many disgusting things, saw so much injustice, if he had simply swallowed it, endured it, let Zhou Zhe go on being emperor, living comfortably forever, how could he ever have shown people that he was willing to risk everything for those meritorious men who died wrongfully! No one would have believed him! But he killed Zhou Zhe—this road was hard to walk, but without staking everything, there is no road at all in this world worth walking—”

“…Coming south this time, everyone here more or less understands what we’re about to do. Just to the south, Wanyan Chang, leading over two hundred thousand spineless troops, is attacking Daming Prefecture. They’ve been attacking for half a year already! There’s a group of heroes there who knew full well there was no relief force anywhere near Daming Prefecture, who knew that once they went in, it would be nearly impossible to come out whole—yet they staked everything they had and held out there for half a year regardless. Wanyan Zongbi brought three hundred thousand men and tried to break them, and failed… They are remarkable people.”

The crackling firelight lit up the faces around him. “…But to save them will not be easy. Many say we might end up burying ourselves at Daming Prefecture too. Let me tell you—Wanyan Chang is waiting for us to come, waiting to swallow us whole at Daming Prefecture, to wash away the shame of Shulisu’s crushing defeat! So which is it—do we take the safe road and watch that whole group of people die at Daming Prefecture, or do we take the risk of venturing into that death trap, and try to save them…”

“…Many of that group lost their families in the course of the Jurchen invasion of the south. Many lost brothers, sisters, parents, all because they resisted. They already have nothing left, and that’s why they threw themselves in without hesitation. That General Wang Shanyue—every single man in his family has already died in the resistance over these past years. He is the last remaining seed of the Wang family, and yet he stayed at Daming Prefecture. Last year, in the course of taking Daming Prefecture, this General Wang said there was no need for the Huaxia Army to come rescue him again…”

“Just two days ago, the walls of Daming Prefecture were breached. Right now, the last street fighting is taking place inside the city…”

The wind swirled across the drill ground. Li Nian’s voice paused there, hanging in the air, his gaze sweeping across the crowd.

“We are going to save them.”

He said.

“—Because this is the right thing to do. This is the spirit of the Huaxia Army. When these heroes have given up everything they have to resist the Jurchens, there must be people who go to save them! Even if it costs us dearly, even if we must face danger, even if we must give up our blood, even our lives! Because to crush the Jurchens, we alone are not enough—we need more and more comrades, because one day, when we ourselves fall into just such a desperate strait, we too will need countless people of Huaxia to come to our rescue—”

“This world is a very narrow road! Only by staking your life can you walk it through! When these vermin block our path, we will hack them apart with our own blades, tear them apart with our own teeth. Everyone… my comrades! We are going to Daming Prefecture to save people! This will be a hard battle, an extremely hard battle, but no one can stand against us head-on—we have already proven that at Linzhou.”

His voice had dropped, but it was not subdued—it was calm and resolute. Among the crowd, those who had only recently joined the Huaxia Army could barely restrain themselves from shouting aloud; the veterans stood steady and composed, their gazes cold and hard. Amid the firelight, Li Nian’s final words rang out: “Get ready. We move out in half an hour.”

He waved a hand, handing the floor to Shi Guang’en, the acting regiment commander. Shi Guang’en blinked, his lips parted slightly, still caught somewhere between exhilaration and shock. In the earlier command meeting, this staff officer named Li Nian had laid out any number of unfavorable factors, and the overall conclusion of that meeting had been that this mission faced genuine odds of near-certain death, leaving Shi Guang’en’s spirits considerably dampened. He had never expected that, the moment they stepped outside, this same Li Nian, assigned to coordinate with him, would deliver a speech like this. His blood was surging with excitement now; he wanted nothing more than to charge straight at the Jurchens and give them a taste of what was coming.

What a remarkable man, Staff Officer Li, Shi Guang’en thought to himself amid the vigorous applause—once this battle was over, he’d have to learn a thing or two from Staff Officer Li about how to give a speech like that.

But that chance never came.

On the twenty-eighth of the third month, one hour after the relief of Daming Prefecture began, staff officer Li Nian was killed in the ferocious fighting. Years later, having fought through many more campaigns with the Huaxia Army, Shi Guang’en would still remember that early rally he had taken part in—that optimism and resolve that had persisted even with a clear-eyed grasp of just how dire the situation was, and the utterly brutal, all-consuming rescue mission that had followed…