It was nearly the middle of June, right in the scorching heat of the dog days of summer, and the naval camp at Zhenjiang was stiflingly hot.

The Jurchen had already arrived, and Han Shizhong had already crossed to the north bank of the river to prepare for the great battle, leaving Jun Wu to hold Zhenjiang. Though the Crown Prince’s station was exalted, in ordinary times Jun Wu simply rested alongside the common soldiers in camp, making no special exceptions for himself. When the weather turned hot, the great households cooled themselves with ice stored away from the winter, but Jun Wu had merely chosen a house halfway up the hill by the river where there was still something of a breeze, and it was only when honored guests came to visit that he offered iced drinks as refreshment.

It was only just past dusk on the evening of the eighth. He opened the window, but even the wind coming off the river was warm. Jun Wu had prepared a simple meal in the room, along with some shaved ice, to receive his sister, who had traveled all this way.

For many women of noble birth, riding a jolting carriage all day long in such weather was an unbearable ordeal. But Zhou Pei had been through a great deal over the years, and long journeys were nothing new to her. She arrived in Zhenjiang that evening looking somewhat darkened by the sun, her face a little haggard. After washing her face and resting briefly, the Grand Princess’s face soon regained its usual resolve.

Over these years, the burden the two siblings carried had been immense. Jun Wu now wore a beard beneath his chin, hiding the youthfulness his face still naturally carried, while Zhou Pei, with few people to whom she could speak of private matters, had taken to wearing a mask of dignified, austere reserve. Worn long enough, a mask like that often becomes part of oneself. After washing up, Zhou Pei’s face looked somewhat pale, her expression distant and not especially warm — though it softened a little in front of her own brother, the change was slight. Every time Jun Wu saw his sister like this, he found himself remembering how she had been more than a decade ago — back then, though clever and proud, Zhou Pei had also been lovely and endearing. Now, it was hard to find anything endearing about the Elder Princess at all; any man other than himself who looked at her would probably feel only a touch of fear.

Everyone around them could not help but sigh over the tragedy of Zhou Pei’s marriage. But naturally, no one brought it up now. The siblings met only once every few months, sometimes only once every half a year, and though they still pulled together in the same direction, their words to one another had inevitably grown a bit formal.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, dinner was simple — one meat dish, three vegetable dishes. Jun Wu ate plainly, crunching contentedly on pickled radish with his rice. Over these past years, Zhou Pei had held down the fort at Lin’an, rarely traveling unless there was some major matter. With the great battle now imminent, her sudden arrival at Zhenjiang made Jun Wu suspect something important was afoot, but since she had not yet brought it up, he said nothing either. The two finished their simple meal and had a bit of tea, and Zhou Pei — her slender figure set off by a plain white dress — considered her words for a moment before finally speaking.

“No major problems here in Zhenjiang, I take it?”

This was mere courtesy. Jun Wu only nodded and smiled. “No, everything’s fine. General Han has already made preparations for battle. On the logistics side, Xu Guangting is still short eight thousand rounds of artillery shells — I’ve been pressing him on it. Huo Xiang’s thirty thousand men have been crossing the river these past few days, though he’s been moving slowly, so I sent someone to press him a bit as well. Nothing else of consequence.”

Zhou Pei nodded. “I see. Well, it won’t be long now… good to know nothing’s wrong.”

“What brings my sister here so suddenly? I can’t imagine what it could be for.”

“…” Zhou Pei held her teacup and fell silent for a while. “I received word from Jiangning. Ruxin has fallen ill. I hear it’s quite serious.”

Jun Wu’s heart sank at once, and a flicker of darkness crossed his face. But after a glance at his sister, he nodded. “Yes, I know. Actually… other people think the imperial family lives in luxury and splendor, but it’s just like the old saying — once you marry into a great household, it’s as deep and distant as the sea. Since she married me, she’s had few happy days. As for this matter… Imperial Physician Zou is looking after her. We’ll leave it in heaven’s hands.”

Marriages in this era had always been arranged by one’s parents and go-betweens. In small, humble households, husband and wife toiled side by side and relied on one another. But in great and powerful families, it was not at all unusual for a woman, after marrying in, to fall into years of discord and gradually waste away from melancholy, dying young. Shen Ruxin had never come from much of a family to begin with, and once she entered the Crown Prince’s household, she had lived cautiously, careful to follow every rule, under no small psychological strain.

Though there was genuine affection between her and Jun Wu, the burden on his shoulders was simply too heavy — that he could spare a thought for her at all was no small thing, but attending to her with real care and attention, in ordinary times, was more than he could manage. This, too, was simply the way of the age. When the matter of Shen Ruhua had come to light and been dragged out into the open, the investigation and trial had dragged on for two months. Shen Ruxin, in the Crown Prince’s household in Jiangning, had not dared plead for mercy on her brother’s behalf, and the strain of it, body and soul, had finally broken her — she had coughed up blood and collapsed, and had been confined to bed ever since. Jun Wu, stationed at Zhenjiang, had not even had time to go back and see her.

“I heard about all this, and I felt I had to come.” Zhou Pei held her teacup, her face betraying little emotion. “That so-called pure scholar Yao Qifang, the one who exposed Shen Ruhua’s affair to begin with — he’s not without problems of his own. As for the Dou and Chen family members who committed similar offenses before Shen Ruhua, I have ways of dealing with them too. As for Shen Ruhua — if you want to spare his life, put him in the army first. As for what happens in the capital, and what people down below say about it — I’ll handle that.”

The corner of Jun Wu’s eye twitched, and his face genuinely darkened. Over all these years, under all the pressure he had endured, he had never expected his sister would come all this way for exactly this. The room fell silent for a long while. The night breeze drifted in through the window, already carrying a faint coolness — but it was a coolness that chilled the heart rather than soothed it. Jun Wu set his teacup down on the table.

“Sister, Ruhua… has to be dealt with. I just never expected that you’d come… for this…”

Zhou Pei looked at him, her gaze unchanged. “I came for you.”

“I’m fine. Over all these years, I’ve withstood so many things — I’ve already made whatever enemies I needed to make. With the great battle coming…” He paused. “As long as I get through it, that’s enough.”

Because of the emotion churning inside him, Jun Wu’s tone came out somewhat harder than he intended, and Zhou Pei stopped speaking for a moment. She sat there holding her tea. Outside, in the camp, troops were moving about, and the wind stirred the torchlight. Zhou Pei sat in cold silence for a long while, then suddenly smiled, just for an instant.

“Shen Ruhua doesn’t matter. But Ruxin matters a great deal. Jun Wu, all these years… you’ve done well. Our dynasty favors civil officials over military men, and to let the army decide matters for itself in wartime, you’ve protected a great many people and weathered no end of storms. You’ve been hard as iron these past years, shouldering the pressure — Yue Fei, Han Shizhong… this whole enterprise in the south, all those refugees who fled down from the north — a great many of them are alive today only because someone in your position was willing to stand firm against everything. I stopped telling you years ago that rigidity breaks too easily — if making enemies is what it takes, then so be it. But with this matter of Ruxin, I’m afraid that one day you’ll come to regret it.”

Jun Wu was startled and said nothing. Zhou Pei sat quietly for a moment, holding her teacup in both hands, gazing out the window.

“…In these years since we crossed south, both our hearts have grown much harder, you and I. Other people find it frightening, but really, it’s simply something we had no choice about. Little brother, you know I haven’t been happy since I married. I never loved my husband. Later, I had him dealt with, and people said my heart had turned to stone, that all I cared about was power, that I meant to end up alone and childless, another Wu Zetian. When I dealt with Qu Zonghui, I showed no mercy, and even today, I don’t feel there was anything wrong with that. But as time has gone on like this, there have been many moments when I’ve wished I could have a family of my own… In this life, I never will.”

A flicker of desolation crossed the corner of her eye as she smiled, gone in an instant, and then she added with a smile, “Of course, I don’t mean Father, or you, little brother. The two of you will always be my family.”

The room fell silent again. Jun Wu, too, was gradually coming to understand why his sister had come. Of course, the matter itself could be seen as either enormous or trivial, depending on how one looked at it — hard to weigh either way. These past days, even Jun Wu himself had struggled to think it through clearly.

He was silent for a long while, then managed only to say, “Ruxin married into the imperial family. She can endure this. And even if… she can’t…”

He gave a faint smile. “Sister, in the end, she’s only someone close to me. Over the years, there have been no small number of people close to me that I’ve ordered executed with my own hand. I can’t, at this point, throw all of that away… What would people think of me?”

“Maybe this isn’t as big a thing as you think it is. Maybe…” Zhou Pei lowered her head, considering for a moment, her voice dropping very low. “Maybe… you’ve been too hard on yourself all these years. It’s enough… I know you’ve been trying to become like him, but not everyone can become that man. If you can take one step back before you push yourself to the point of regret… people will understand…”

These words came only with great difficulty from Zhou Pei, because she did not entirely believe them herself. And yet Jun Wu understood the feeling behind them well enough — his sister had already gone to the extreme, with no way left to step back, and even though she understood there was no other way to do things, before the war began, she still hoped her brother might have some path left open to him, some chance not to regret. Jun Wu sensed, faintly, this conflict within her — it was the first time in years that his sister had shown him such a hesitant, uncertain heart.

He only shook his head.

Zhou Pei stopped trying to persuade him. “I understand… I’ve had the finest medicines taken from the palace and sent to Jiangning already. Having you here at the front — that’s no small thing in itself.”

The siblings said no more on the matter. After a while, the night’s heat lingered on unchanged. The two of them left the room and walked along the hillside to catch the breeze. Jun Wu thought of Shen Ruxin back in Jiangning — the two of them had met during the flight of the “Search the Mountains, Comb the Seas” campaign. They had been married eight years now, spending far more time apart than together. For a long time, Jun Wu had told himself there were great matters he had to attend to, and that before such great matters, the affairs of the heart were nothing more than an ornament. But thinking of it now, he could not help the sorrow that welled up within him.

His sister’s coming here was meant to remind him of exactly this.

“Not everyone becomes that man. Step back, and people will understand…” After walking a while, Jun Wu spoke again. “Sister, that man you’re speaking of said something like this too, once — that the people of Bianliang suffered as they did, and everyone understood. But not everyone understands — and that doesn’t mean the terrible things won’t happen.”

A flicker of sorrow passed through Zhou Pei’s eyes, and she only nodded. The two of them stood at the edge of the slope, watching the scattered lights on the river.

“All these years, I’ve often looked over the reports coming down from the north — every year, the edicts the deposed Emperor Jingping is forced to write, praising how well the Jin emperor treats him. There was a stretch of time when the Jurchen kept him in a well, without even clothes to wear, and made him watch as they humiliated his empress in every way imaginable right in front of him, and still he had to smile and kneel and beg the Jurchen for scraps to eat. The various consorts and palace maids, too, lived worse than common prostitutes… Sister, back then, even people within the imperial family were vain — the ones in the capital looked down on the idle princes out in the provinces. Do you remember what those cousins were like? Back then, I remember when you went with our tutor to the capital, you met Zhou Qing, the county princess from Prince Chong’s household, and she even invited you and our tutor to visit, and our tutor even wrote a poem for the occasion. During the Humiliation of Jingping, Zhou Qing was taken north by the Jurchen. Sister, do you remember her? A couple of years ago, I found out what became of her…”

Zhou Pei looked at Jun Wu, and Jun Wu gave a bitter, ashen smile. “The Jurchen took her to Yunzhong Prefecture, subjecting her to every kind of abuse along the way. By the time they arrived, she was pregnant, and then they sold her into a brothel in Yunzhong. She was six months along when they beat her and she miscarried. A year later, somehow, she was pregnant again, and this time they forced drugs on her to end the pregnancy. Two years after that, a group of young Jin nobles came to the brothel, and in the course of some drunken game to see who had the most nerve, they pinned her down on a table and cut off her ear. She lost her mind after that. Later they broke one of her legs as well. She died three years ago… she was one of the ones who lasted the longest…”

Jun Wu spoke of it as calmly as he could manage. “People outside talk about the imperial family, about the struggles at court, and say we’ll stop at nothing — Empress Lü of Emperor Gaozu of Han, out of jealousy, was said to have had a rival’s hands and feet hacked off — how cruel, they say. Sister, can you even imagine what County Princess Zhou Qing must have felt while all of that was happening to her? Those same things are on our doorstep again now. The Jurchen are already here…”

“I know.” Zhou Pei answered. Over the years, though there had always been some limit to how widely news of what happened in the north spread among the common people, for those in their position, anyone with the will to know could learn the truth of it clearly enough.

Jun Wu looked out at the distant river. “All these years, I’ve genuinely been afraid. As a person grows up, they gradually come to understand what war really is. If a man charges at you meaning to kill you, and you pick up a blade to fight back, then even if you beat him, you’re sure to lose a hand or a foot in the process. If you don’t fight back, you die. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to lose a hand or a foot either, and I don’t want Ruxin to die like this — if she dies, there will come a day I’ll regret it. But of all these years, there’s one thing that has frightened me more than anything else, something I’ve never told a single soul. Sister, can you guess what it is?” He shook his head. “It’s not the Jurchen…”

Zhou Pei simply looked at him.

Jun Wu was silent for a long while, then pointed toward the river. “The second year of Wujian. The army escorted me in flight to the riverside, and we could only find one small boat. My guards put me aboard it, and then the Jurchen came charging in. That day, Shulisu led his men and slaughtered thousands upon thousands of people straight into the river. Some fought desperately to swim, some drowned dragging others down with them, some had whole families in tow… There was a woman holding her small child up above the water — the child was swept away by the current, and I could hear her screaming even from where I stood on the boat. Sister, do you know what I felt in that moment?”

Jun Wu’s eyes widened. “In my heart, I felt… relieved. I was alive. I didn’t have to die.” He said it plainly.

The night wind blew across the hillside.

“All these years, at night, I still see their eyes. I was terrified out of my wits, watching them be slaughtered — and what I felt wasn’t anger, sister, I… I only felt that they were dead, and I was alive, and I was grateful for it. They were the ones who put me on that boat… All these years, I’ve executed a great many men under military law. I’ve told Han Shizhong, told Yue Fei, told countless others — that we must defeat the Jurchen. I’ve stood beside them, and every man I’ve had killed, I told myself it was for the great cause of resisting the Jin. Yesterday, I brought Shen Ruhua here, and told him I had to kill him, that it was for the sake of resisting the Jin… Sister, all these years I’ve spoken these bold, righteous words, and every single night, I lie awake thinking about what I’ll have to say the next day, practicing it alone, and the whole time I’m terrified… I’m afraid that one day someone will jump up in front of everyone and ask me — if resisting the Jin means they have to die, if the men on the battlefield have to bleed and fight to the death, then what about you?”

“Everyone who died that day is watching me. They knew I was afraid. I didn’t want to die. There was only one boat, and I got on it as though it were nothing at all — why was it me who got to climb aboard? So many years have passed now, and I’ve spoken so many grand words, and every night I ask myself — when the Jurchen come again, will you be able to hold your ground? Will you be able to grit your teeth through it? Will you dare to bleed? Sometimes I pick up a blade, and I think about cutting my own arm with it!”

As Jun Wu spoke, he drew a dagger from his waist and made as if to strike at his own left arm. Zhou Pei’s expression changed at once, and she closed the distance in two steps, grabbing hold of Jun Wu’s left arm and pulling back his sleeve.

There was no scar on his arm. Jun Wu began to laugh. “Sister, I’ve never once had the nerve to do it… I’m afraid of the pain.”

“You— you…” Zhou Pei’s expression was a tangle of emotion as she looked into his eyes.

“What I’m most afraid of is that one day the Jurchen will come, and I’ll find that I’m still afraid of pain, still afraid of dying. I’m afraid that another day will come when tens of thousands of common people are pressed with me toward the riverbank, and I climb onto that boat, and in my heart, I’m still relieved that I got to live. I’m afraid that after executing so many people in the name of righteousness, when it finally comes to it, I’ll show special mercy to my own brother-in-law. I’m afraid that after righteously executing my own brother-in-law, when the Jurchen finally come, I’ll still turn out to be a coward. I’ve never told anyone this — but sister, every single day, I’m afraid…”

“I’m afraid of everything…”

As he said this, his gaze grew desolate, his eyes rimmed red, his jaw clenched tight. And indeed — who in this world is not afraid? He was, after all, nothing more than a pampered young man born into the imperial family. Afraid of bleeding, afraid of sacrifice, afraid of defeat, afraid of living through all the horror of it. And before the true test of reality actually arrives, no one can know what they will really turn out to be.

That night, the siblings talked long into the evening. The next day, before Zhou Pei left, she sought out Wenren Bu’er and instructed him that if the fighting at the front ever turned dangerous, he must pull Jun Wu off the battlefield no matter what. She then left Zhenjiang and returned to Lin’an, while the weak-hearted Crown Prince remained by the riverside, continuing, day after day, to wall his heart in iron.

At noon on the tenth, eighteen-year-old Shen Ruhua was beheaded in public in the city of Zhenjiang. In the Crown Prince’s household in Jiangning, the fourth lady, Shen Ruxin’s condition continued to worsen, as she struggled on the border between life and death — just one small, insignificant rise and fall of fate amid the vastness of the mortal world. That night, Zhou Junwu sat alone by the river at the edge of the camp and did not sleep the entire night.

At this same time, to the north, the vanguard of Wanyan Zongbi’s Jurchen eastern army had already left Xuzhou and was advancing toward Xuyi, less than three hundred li from the Yangzhou front.

Around Yangzhou — at Tianchang, Gaoyou, Zhenzhou, Taizhou, Zhenjiang — an army of more than eight hundred thousand men, centered around Han Shizhong’s forces and including a hundred thousand-strong navy, stood ready and waiting.

On the twenty-third of June, in the tenth year of Wujian, the great battle for the south of the Yangtze broke out.