The setting sun was about to slip away; in the western sky, beyond the far side of the mountains, the last light lingered.

Near the small village, a river wound its way past; the spring floodwaters had not yet subsided, and the river ran high and strong. In the distant fields, a road curved through the land; army horses walked along it, and farmers carrying hoes crossed the road on their way home.

Summer was approaching; the humidity in the air had eased slightly, leaving both body and mind feeling refreshed. It was a peaceful evening in the southwest.

Ning Yi stood by the river, watching all of this in the distance. After the sun had set, points of lamplight began to flicker in the distance, and at some point, someone approached carrying a lantern—a tall, slender figure. It was Yun Zhu.

She stood about a zhang away from Ning Yi for a moment before drawing closer. “Xiao Ke told me Papa was crying…”

Ning Yi took her hand and smiled faintly. “…I wasn’t.”

“Is the news from the front bad?”

“Mm. On Zhu Biao’s end… something’s happened.”

“Zhu Biao, he…” Yun Zhu’s gaze flickered; she could sense the weight of this.

Ning Yi shook his head, looking off into the distance in the darkness.

“I don’t know…” he murmured, then added again, “I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, then that means…”

“The Seventeenth Army… didn’t make it out. Heavy losses—nearly… the whole army wiped out. I was just thinking, whether some things… are worth it or not.”

His voice was calm, dissolving into the air of late spring turning to early summer…

In the north, Daming Prefecture had become a lifeless ruin.

After the fighting ended, the merciless slaughter had also come to a close. The corpses left scattered here, the mass graves, had already begun to give off a foul stench, and the army was gradually withdrawing from the area, though within a hundred-li radius around Daming Prefecture, the manhunt continued without pause.

By the fifteenth of the fourth month, the last troops to withdraw led away batch after batch of prisoners, taking them to various locations on the north bank of the Yellow River.

Starting from the latter part of the fourth month, the residents of one great city after another in the Hebei East Circuit and Jingdong East Circuit—once ruled by Li Xizhi—were left stunned by the scenes of slaughter that followed. From the previous year on, the bandits who had defied the might of the great Jin and rebelled from their stronghold at Daming Prefecture had all now been killed or captured, and along with them, the Black Banner bandit army that had come to their rescue had likewise been destroyed by Wanyan Chang. Thousands of prisoners, divided into groups of condemned men, were transported to various cities to be beheaded as a public warning.

In the fourth month, the summer rains had already begun to fall. Locked inside the prisoner carts were bodies that had barely retained any human shape. Those unwilling to surrender to the Jurchens, or those deemed of no value due to their wounds, had already been subjected to brutal torture. Many had already suffered severe wounds on the battlefield, and Wanyan Chang had his physicians keep them alive on a thread, ensuring their suffering while never allowing them to die—an example to be made, as the price for resisting the great Jin.

The eastern route army’s front had by now advanced all the way to Xuzhou, and the process of bringing the Central Plains under control had already begun. To fund the war effort, harsh and excessive levies had been imposed for half a year now, alongside the brutal repression and killing carried out by officials. Some had resisted, and most of them had died beneath the executioner’s blade. And now, the legend of the Light and Might Army—the fiercest of the resistance forces—and of the Black Banner Army, said to be the only force capable of standing against the Jurchens, had at last, before everyone’s eyes, been shattered.

At Luozhou, when the convoy transporting prisoners entered the city, some among the onlookers lining the road stood dazed, others confused, but a few, who understood what was happening, shed tears by the roadside. Those who wept were dragged out by the Jurchen soldiers standing nearby and executed on the spot, right there in the street.

At Shenzhou, amid a light rain, a sudden ambush struck to free the prisoners. Those who launched the raid were dressed in rags—some were men of the martial world, some ordinary commoners, and among them was even a group of monks. Because Wanyan Chang, after taking over Li Xizhi’s territory, had carried out a large-scale sweep and confiscation, the weapons in these men’s hands were far from adequate. A gaunt, tall man wielded a sharpened bamboo pole, fighting his way through with desperate courage and killing two soldiers before being cut down by several blades. In the fighting around him, this man, covered in blood, his belly slashed open, still pulled himself up against a prisoner cart and shouted amid the chaos.

“I’m Huaxia Army too! I’m Huaxia Army too! I… shouldn’t have left the southwest. I… I’ll die with you…”

That last sentence was, it seemed, meant for the prisoners inside the cart. Right in front of him, a former Huaxia Army soldier—both hands severed, his tongue cut to shreds in his mouth—managed only a few rasping sounds, trying to push his half-severed arm forward.

Behind the man’s back, a soldier had already raised his blade…

At Hejian Prefecture, when the beheadings began, the rain was already pouring down in torrents. Outside the execution grounds, people stood packed together in a dark, silent mass, watching the blade fall again and again. Some wept silently in the rain—at least, in such heavy rain, they didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing their tears…

On the twenty-eighth day of the third month, in the tenth year of Wujian Shuo, outside Daming Prefecture, the Huaxia Army officially launched its rescue of the Light and Might Army. Despite Wanyan Chang already being prepared, the Huaxia Army still split into two forces and launched a surprise assault on the battlefield. Within half an hour of the chaos breaking out, the Light and Might Army’s breakout attempt also began in earnest.

This desperate, all-or-nothing assault immediately put enormous pressure on the two hundred thousand puppet troops encircling the inner battlefield. Throughout the streets and alleys of Daming Prefecture, the ferocious, life-and-death struggle of the ten-thousand-odd Light and Might Army troops at one point drove the puppet forces into a chaotic retreat, with deaths from trampling alone several times greater than those from direct combat at the front. Not long after the fighting began, Zhu Biao led four thousand troops, together with three thousand more left in reserve outside the city, in the most ferocious assault yet, directed straight at Wanyan Chang.

Wanyan Chang responded with calm composure, deploying over ten thousand of his elite troops to meet Zhu Biao’s assault, while using another ten thousand troops together with several thousand cavalry to block off every path leading out of Daming Prefecture. Zhu Biao, in the course of the attack, feinted a breakout several times before counterattacking, but Wanyan Chang never once took the bait.

Even as the front line among the two hundred thousand puppet troops crumbled like a rising tide, the endless stream of fresh reinforcements still functioned like a vast quagmire, dragging everyone down and preventing escape. And the several thousand cavalry originally under Wanyan Chang’s own command held the greatest initiative on the entire battlefield—every strike they launched from the outer perimeter inflicted enormous casualties on the breakout forces.

Throughout this, the defection team led by Yan Qing remained active across the battlefield, persuading several units of puppet troops to quietly hold back, plead on their behalf, or issue threats, and in turn winning the tacit cooperation of some of these puppet units. Even the constantly circulating rumor that Wanyan Chang had already died caused no small amount of confusion on the battlefield.

But none of this could make up, on the brutal scales of war, for such a hopelessly wide gap in strength.

From the night of the twenty-eighth into the early hours of the twenty-ninth, the entire vast battlefield was torn apart by the desperate fighting of the Huaxia Army and the Light and Might Army together. Zhu Biao’s force pushing east and Wang Shanyue’s main body breaking south drew the fiercest concentration of enemy fire; the reserve cadre corps entered the battle that very night, rallying morale and fighting to the very last man. By the time the sun rose on the twenty-ninth, the entire battlefield had been torn open, stretching across more than ten li, and the attackers, at tremendous cost, had pushed their way into the surrounding hills and woodland.

By this point, large numbers of soldiers had already been taken prisoner, either due to severe wounds or broken nerve. The fighting still did not stop—Wanyan Chang, directing operations from his headquarters, organized large-scale pursuit and search operations, while continuing to issue orders and mobilize troops from every Jurchen-controlled city in the area, weaving together a vast encirclement.

On the thirtieth of the third month, the first of the fourth month… battles both large and small continued to erupt in the dense forests, marshlands, and mountains around Daming Prefecture. This encirclement and manhunt continued all the way until mid-fourth month, when Wanyan Chang finally declared this great battle over.

For a long while, few could know just how many soldiers and officers of the Huaxia Army and the Light and Might Army had perished in this brutal assault and breakout. Those captured, including the wounded, numbered over four thousand; most of them, after two months of relentless torture, were transported by Wanyan Chang to various cities and slaughtered to the last man.

There was also some intelligence that could be confirmed with certainty. In the early hours of the twenty-ninth, during the assault and the fighting retreat, one unit of Huaxia Army soldiers found itself deeply encircled. A general wielding twin whips led his men in continuous charges, every swing of his steel whips crushing an enemy’s skull. This general fought on and on, drenched in blood from head to toe like a war god, striking terror into all who saw him. But as the fighting wore on without end, the soldiers around him dwindled steadily, and in the end, surrounded on all sides without limit, this general finally exhausted his last strength and shed his last drop of blood.

This was a lifelong warrior who had once fallen in with the outlaws of Liangshan, but had, in the end, returned to the righteous path—”Twin Whips” Huyan Zhuo.

Near dawn on the twenty-ninth, “Golden Spear” Xu Ning, while holding off Jurchen cavalry to cover the retreat of his comrades, was killed at the edge of the woodland near Daming Prefecture.

Huaxia Army regiment commander Nie Shan, as dawn approached, led several hundred death-defying volunteers in a counterattack against Wanyan Chang’s own headquarters. These few hundred men drove forward like a blade of steel, striking terror into the defending Jurchen generals and drawing the attention of numerous units across the entire battlefield. In the end, every one of these several hundred men perished; not a single one surrendered. By the time regiment commander Nie Shan died, there was not a single unbroken spot left on his body—drenched in his own blood, he had walked to the very end of his own bitter road, and in doing so had won, for the comrades behind him, a sliver of a chance, however faint, at survival.

More than half of those who attempted the breakout were left on the battlefield that first night, and this number continued to grow in the days that followed. By the time Wanyan Chang declared the initial conclusion of the entire campaign in mid-fourth month, the entire organizational structure of both the Huaxia Army and the Light and Might Army had, in effect, been shattered. Though a portion of men would eventually survive that vast net, for the time being, both armies had, to all appearances, been annihilated…

In Jurchen reports, generals such as Zhu Biao, Guan Sheng, and Wang Shanyue were all declared dead, their heads displayed for all to see.

The carriage rolled slowly onward, passing through the night.

“Sometimes I wonder if we chose the wrong color for our banner…”

“Didn’t you once say black was the most steadfast color, my lord?”

“But after every single battle, it ends up dyed red.”

The carriage came to a quiet stop by the side of the road. Not far off was the entrance to a village. Ning Yi took Yun Zhu’s hand and helped her down; she looked around, somewhat puzzled.

“I keep wondering, sometimes, whether it’s worth it or not… Bold words, grand talk—we used to say such big things so easily. But the more I see, the heavier it all feels, almost unbearably so. Zhu Biao… Wang Shanyue… Tian Shi… and so many more who are already gone. Maybe everyone is just chasing some three-hundred-year cycle. Maybe that’s already good enough. Maybe… the ones who died simply wanted to live—they were all people who deserved to live…”

In the darkness, Ning Yi’s words came slow and even, like a murmured whisper. He led Yun Zhu along the small path through this nameless village, and when they passed a dim stream, he picked her up without thinking and stepped precisely on each stone to cross—clear proof that this was not his first time coming here. Du Sha followed silently behind them.

Yun Zhu did not answer Ning Yi’s murmured words; she knew his low musings needed no answer. She simply walked hand in hand with her husband, slowly making their way through the village. Not far off stood a few earthen huts, lit from within. They approached out of the darkness, climbed the stairs quietly, and made their way up to the loft space beneath the roof of one of the huts. The tiles on this hut’s roof had cracked in places, letting the night sky show through above the loft. Ning Yi drew her down to sit beside the earthen wall—on the other side of that wall, in the room below, lamplight burned bright, and voices could be heard talking about “the four classes of people,” about matters concerning the three counties of Hedeng.

Ning Yi sat quietly there, gesturing to Yun Zhu with a finger, silently shushing her, and the two of them settled close together, gazing up at the sky visible through the broken tiles.

“Reform and enlightenment… a process spanning a thousand years… this so-called freedom… in truth, not many people really care about it… People are such strange creatures—what we want is always just a little more than what we already have, just a little better. History spanning more than a hundred years is beyond most people’s grasp… a slave, given just a little improvement, feels as if he’s ascended to heaven… even the sharpest minds, given just a little improvement, still won’t feel satisfied…”

His words came out softly from his throat, carrying a faint note of a sigh. Yun Zhu listened, and also listened to the voices and discussion coming from the room on the other side, though in truth there was nothing particularly remarkable happening over there—back in the three counties of Hedeng, too, quite a few people would gather at night to discuss new ideas and opinions, and among them were probably no small number of Ning Yi’s own students.

“…Reform, freedom—heh, it’s just like most people exercising their bodies. When the body grows weak, you exercise it a bit; once it’s strong again, you forget all about it—a cycle spanning thousands of years… Once people have enough to eat, they think they’ve already reached the pinnacle of achievement. As for reading a bit more, why bother? How many people can even understand it? Too few…”

Ning Yi’s words went on, nothing more than a sigh, a faint sigh. Yun Zhu listened, and yet she knew that her husband was not, in truth, confused or lost over the things he was speaking of. Just then, a different voice began speaking in the room below; at one point, Yun Zhu heard that person say:

“…What our Huaxia Army’s story has already proven is one simple truth: everyone in this world is the same! Why should those who till the fields be considered lesser people? Why should landlords and local gentry sit up high above everyone else, and be called ‘benevolent households’ just for doling out a few scraps? Why are they benevolent, in the first place? Because they’ve seized more than everyone else—their sons and grandsons can go to school, can sit for the examinations and become officials, while a farmer’s son is always just a farmer! A farmer’s child is born, opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a world where he’s already considered lesser. This is injustice from birth! Master Ning has explained a great many things, but I don’t think Master Ning’s words go far enough…”

“…Because Master Ning’s own family were merchants to begin with. Though he married into another household, his own family was quite wealthy, and as I understand it, Master Ning eats well, dresses well, and is quite particular about his food and clothing… I’m not here to speak ill of Master Ning—what I mean is, isn’t it possible that this is exactly why Master Ning never came out and plainly declared that everyone is equal!”

“…Look at the farming households, especially those who don’t even own their own land—they live the most miserable, exhausting lives, and get the least in return. Isn’t that unfair? We need to think about these things. Much of what Master Ning has said isn’t wrong, but it could be made more right. What’s more right is this: everyone in this world is equal, one and the same. We’ve even killed the emperor—we should have the most equal world there is. We should make sure everyone knows that they are, from birth, no different from anyone else. If our Huaxia Army wants to succeed, we must equalize wealth and poverty! Establish equality—”

Many of these words were ones Ning Yi himself had once used, but spoken now in this context, they carried a considerably more radical meaning. Below, the noisy discussion continued; Yun Zhu drifted for a moment, distracted, because beside her, Ning Yi’s own words had stopped as well. She turned her head to look; her husband was leaning against the earthen wall, his face carrying a quiet, mysterious smile—a smile as if he had glimpsed something impossible to put into words, tinged also with some hint of bitterness and sorrow, altogether complicated beyond simple description.

“…Sometimes I wonder—is this worth it, or not, in the end…”

He murmured this last line and said nothing more. The voices from the next room continued on. Ning Yi and Yun Zhu both looked up; in the night sky, countless stars turned overhead, the boundless Milky Way stretching out, cast down through that small broken gap in the roof tiles above them…

Beyond the roof lay the vast earth, where countless living beings were colliding against one another.

On the twenty-seventh day of the third month, in the tenth year of Wujian Shuo.

The Huaxia Army, racing toward Daming Prefecture, had circled around a long stretch of road. As evening approached, Zhu Biao stood atop a hill, looking off in one direction, as the column of troops, banners fluttering, wound its way along the road below.

Guan Sheng came up from below. “What are you looking at?”

Zhu Biao gazed into the distance, his eyes uncertain, and after a good while, he finally set aside the posture of studying the map and spoke. “I was wondering if there’s a better way.”

“Did you find one?”

“…No.”

“You pig-brained fool, I figured you wouldn’t. Heh, but speaking of which—you, Zhu Biao, the man who burns cities and fears neither heaven nor earth, getting all soft and hesitant today.”

“…I really don’t want to run headfirst into a tortoise like Wanyan Chang.”

“…” Guan Sheng was silent for a moment. “Neither do I.”

Zhu Biao smiled. “So I was thinking—if that fellow surnamed Ning were here, would he be able to come up with some better way to beat Wanyan Chang and save Wang Shanyue? After all, that man… aside from being useless with women, he really does have a sharp mind.”

“All I know is, the man surnamed Ning would never fail to save Wang Shanyue.”

“Yeah…”

The two of them stood there, looking off into the distance for a while, and then Guan Sheng spoke. “Figured it out?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go.”

The two figures—one laughing, one nodding—soon disappeared into that surging tide of men.

…

Above the ruins, tattered banners still fluttered in the wind, blood and black soot mingling together.

…

In the fifth month, Weisheng fell.

Not long after, Xuzhou fell as well.