In the last moments before dawn, fire spun wildly across the land.

Mountains, forests, rivers, fortified towns… long columns mobilized through the darkness — the sound of orders being relayed, the sound of marching feet, the neighing of horses — all manner of noise came to a boil in the night, converging together.

In mid-November of the tenth year of Wujian Shuo, northwest of Fancheng, hundreds of thousands of troops were converging toward a single point.

This was the battlefield where Wanyan Zonghan’s Jurchen western army faced off against the Western Army Group, spearheaded by the Beiwei Army — a battle that had already dragged on for over three months.

The western front centered on the twin fortress system of Xiangyang and Fancheng, straddling either bank of the Han River, holding the line along the river. On the Jurchen side, Zonghan’s main southern campaign force numbered some 260,000 men, combined with nearly 400,000 Han troops mustered from the various warlord factions of the former puppet-Qi regime, for a total force scale reaching as high as 700,000 — bearing down on a defensive formation centered on the 140,000-strong Beiwei Army, supported by more than a dozen surrounding units, totaling over 800,000 defenders.

The numbers on both sides no doubt contained some exaggeration, and the actual fighting strength varied considerably, but even discounting nearly half as inflated figures, there were still, all told, close to a million troops packed into the hundred-li radius around the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng, locked in solid, unrelenting combat for over three months.

Measured against the fighting strength and record of the Jurchens in their founding years, a core force of merely 260,000 men would once have been a terrifying power capable of sweeping across the entire realm. But times had changed — for one, having already weathered three prior southern invasions, the Wu Dynasty had by now built up a certain psychological readiness for the terror of the Jurchens. For another, thanks to the efforts of the war faction and Crown Prince Jun Wu, eight years of massive economic growth in the southern Wu territories had allowed half of that accumulated strength to be funneled into war preparations, with the Yangzhou system, the Zhenjiang system, and above all the Xiangyang-Fancheng system as the very highest priorities.

This defensive strength, built up through the pooled resources of the entire nation, had at this point bought the Wu Dynasty a genuine breathing space.

In the years since retaking Xiangyang, Yue Fei had never entertained any notion of simply holding the two cities through dogged, static defense. Relying on the Han River as his anchor, he had built more than twenty fortified strongholds and naval outposts along the riverbanks, in the mountains, and at every strategically vital chokepoint surrounding Xiangyang and Fancheng. During this latest Jurchen southern advance, the western defenders garrisoned heavy troops at each of these strongholds, coordinating with one another — on one hand using the advantage of fortified defense to wear down the Jurchen assault, and on the other, using the Han River to ferry elite troops swiftly between positions, coordinating responses and even launching proactive strikes, targeting the weak points of the Jurchen army and the less capable Han units fighting alongside them.

Over the course of more than three months, the Beiwei Army achieved nine major victories — defeating the main force of the Bronze Wolf Army under Wanyan Saba in one engagement, repelling Balishu head-on in another, and later engaging both Yinshuke and Zonghan directly and withdrawing intact each time. This general, barely past thirty, proved not only bold and decisive in his tactics but also enforced military discipline with an iron hand, strict as mountains: any man who retreated so much as half a step was executed; any man who wavered in formation was executed; any who broke and fled was executed; any who disobeyed orders was executed; any who was slow to obey was flogged eighty strokes and demoted to the vanguard…

In one major battle in August, the flank defense force of sixty thousand men under the general Li Huai collapsed instantly due to a command error. After the battle, Yue Fei had Li Huai dragged to the city wall and executed on the spot. In mid-September, when the Jurchen army concentrated fire on Xiangcheng Stronghold northwest of Fancheng, over four thousand men broke and fled at the first sign of trouble. Yue Fei ordered the Beiwei Army to form ranks and advance to meet the fleeing crowd, cutting them down without mercy — nearly two thousand fleeing soldiers were killed in succession, until the remaining two thousand or so simply froze in their tracks. Many were so thoroughly terrified that they turned to face the Jurchens rather than dare run toward the blades of the Beiwei Army.

In October, Peng Hai, nephew of the Minister of War Peng Guangyou, delayed critical military operations through drunken indulgence. Yue Fei had the officers who had been drinking that night dragged together onto the execution platform, drew the sword Jun Wu had personally requested from Zhou Yong, and executed every one of them who had delayed the operation.

In the past, though Yue Fei had enjoyed Jun Wu’s trust and had spent years developing Xiangyang and Fancheng, and though his military discipline was strict — even to the point of seeming coldly unfeeling — most in the other armies had only ever heard of this by reputation. In ordinary dealings on major matters, Yue Fei was by no means severe or aloof with other generals; people had simply assumed his iron grip on discipline was a matter of him minding his own turf.

Who could have known that once Jun Wu placed the entire western front’s forces under Yue Fei’s unified command for this campaign, that same military law would come crashing down squarely onto the heads of others as well.

Li Huai, commanding sixty thousand troops, was himself a senior Wu Dynasty general — by rank, Yue Fei’s equal, and in seniority, even his superior. Yue Fei, who had always been notably humble and deferential toward him in ordinary times, had him seized and beheaded outright over a single command failure.

Enforcing military law on the battlefield was, of course, standard practice for any army — but that day at Xiangcheng, with defeat already looming, the Beiwei Army had cut down men from a unit that wasn’t even under Yue Fei’s own command without the slightest hesitation — itself already something of a serious breach of custom. And when four thousand men broke and fled, and the Beiwei Army methodically killed half of them outright, it became plain to everyone watching that had the remaining two thousand not stopped, Yue Fei would have been entirely capable of wiping every last one of them out on the spot. That level of ruthless resolve was enough to make anyone’s scalp crawl.

Peng Guangyou, the Minister of War, had countless connections throughout the army, and Yue Fei had always maintained good relations with him personally. After Peng Hai’s downfall, the most senior and respected veteran general also fighting in the Xiangyang-Fancheng theater, Liu Guangshi, sought Yue Fei out to plead on Peng Hai’s behalf. Yue Fei drew out the emperor’s own sword and offered it to Liu Guangshi with both hands: “If you wish to save Peng, then use this sword to kill me first.” The words lodged in Liu Guangshi’s throat; he had nothing left to say, and in the end simply turned and left, sleeves swept behind him in anger.

To say nothing of the several hundred thousand troops mustered from elsewhere — in these past months, even within the Beiwei Army itself, many soldiers had suffered under such strict military law. After all, even in training an army, sheer numbers were never the point in themselves. Over the years, under the mounting pressure from the north, the Beiwei Army had swollen to a hundred and forty thousand strong, though it was doubtful even half of them could truly be called elite troops.

Over the course of these three months, Xiangyang had turned into a vast slaughterhouse. The death toll on both sides alone had already surpassed one hundred thousand, and casualties continued climbing higher by the day. Yet many could already see clearly — without such uncompromising military discipline, without the Beiwei Army’s constant activity throughout the theater, the Han River defense line along the Xiangyang-Fancheng front would likely have already broken.

Since the war began, the strength of the Jurchen offensive had been staggering.

As one of the veteran officials who had followed Aguda since the very founding of the dynasty, and long the single greatest general within the Jurchen army, once Wanyan Zonghan committed to an all-out effort, the Wu Dynasty forces along the Xiangyang-Fancheng front found themselves facing crushing, overwhelming pressure.

Much as Lu Qiaoshan had once experienced on the southwestern front, the emergence and widespread deployment of new weapons like cannons had brought sweeping changes to the battlefield. Infantry formations that had once relied solely on square battle arrays now suffered devastating losses in the face of massed cannon fire; if forced merely to stand and absorb the punishment, an infantry formation could collapse outright within a short time.

Though in the early stages of cannon warfare some had believed cavalry was now at a disadvantage, the limitations of cannon positioning and the slow pace of relocating them soon brought high-mobility offensives and flexible tactics back to the forefront of military priority. Whether cavalry or infantry, troops lacking in morale, training, or basic quality — mere “placeholder soldiers” — retained some use only when sheltered behind city walls; on the open battlefield, they had already become essentially meaningless.

Had this been the first defense of the eastern capital over a decade earlier, the million-strong loyalist army that had gathered around Bianliang would, without question, have been utterly crushed before a mere hundred thousand-strong Beiwei Army.

Over three months, the Beiwei Army had won nine major victories, yet around Xiangyang and Fancheng, Zonghan, Xiyin, and the others pressed forward with relentless assaults, steadily clearing out the outlying strongholds one by one. By November, the majority of these strongholds had either been abandoned or fallen. On the night of the thirteenth of November, near a fortified position called Funiu Fortress along the Han River, the Wu Dynasty general Shi Yunpeng, commanding forty thousand troops of the Wuhui Battalion, encountered Jin forces during a repositioning maneuver. Contact was made after nightfall, and both sides halted their movements, engaging in small-scale skirmishes while each simultaneously dispatched forces requesting reinforcement. Behind Shi Yunpeng, Funiu Fortress held Liu Guangshi’s main force of sixty thousand, with over a hundred thousand more troops that could be mobilized from further afield.

On the morning of the fourteenth of November, as the first pale light of dawn split the eastern sky, nearly four hundred thousand Jin and Wu troops had already converged near Funiu Fortress. Yue Fei led forty thousand elite Beiwei troops onto the field, while Xiyin, Yinshuke, and the rest of the Jurchen elite forces arrived in succession as well.

The great battle erupted that very morning, and over the following days nearly two hundred thousand more troops arrived from various directions, marking the opening of the largest engagement fought around Xiangyang and Fancheng since the war had begun. The battle raged along the Han River for over ten days. Yue Fei directed his forces in a continuous series of formations and defensive lines, gradually shifting the battlefield toward the area around Funiu Fortress, using the advantage of terrain and numbers to hold his ground against the Jurchen forces in a prolonged standoff of attack and defense. On the seventeenth of November, Zonghan personally led his thirty-thousand-strong personal guard, the “Mountain-Slaying Guard,” into the fray; the Beiwei Army fought them while covering the withdrawal of the rest of the forces.

This Mountain-Slaying Guard was Zonghan’s most elite personal force, cultivated over many years — over thirty thousand men, among the very bravest of Jurchen soldiers, some of them even past forty years of age. Though their physical strength had declined somewhat with age, both their battlefield instincts and their courage had reached their absolute peak. Yue Fei led the Beiwei Army in fierce combat against them for half a day before finally being forced to withdraw, narrowly defeated.

Afterward, the Wu Dynasty forces held Funiu Fortress, coordinating with the navy in defense, while the Jurchen army’s siege engines pressed closer still. By the end of November, both sides had accumulated enormous casualties; the stronghold was eventually taken by the Jurchens, and Wu Dynasty forces retreated back to Xiangyang and Fancheng proper, though they still retained control over the Han River.

Amid this brutal, stubborn tug-of-war at Xiangyang, several major events likewise erupted across the realm in this same late November.

In the southwest, at Zhang Village, the nerve center of the Huaxia Army, Ning Yi met with a Wu Dynasty envoy who had come furtively seeking him out, and upon hearing the man’s outlandish proposal, found himself momentarily stunned into blankness.

This secret envoy, sent covertly, was named Cao Ji — refined in appearance, though his eyes carried a certain sly, calculating liveliness. He had come representing Emperor Zhou Yong of the Wu Dynasty, extending an offer of goodwill. According to what he relayed, in Zhou Yong’s own thinking, the two sides had dealt with each other before, even met in person — back in Jiangning. Since Ning Yi was, after all, teacher to both Jun Wu and Zhou Pei, that made them practically family. Now, with the Jurchens at the height of their power and the Wu Dynasty in dire peril, hadn’t the Huaxia Army itself once proclaimed in its own manifestos that in times of crisis all should stand united against the outside threat, rather than turn on one another? Zhou Yong hoped the Huaxia Army might send troops to jointly resist the Jin dogs, in fulfillment of that promise.

Of course, as for the actual details of how such troops might be deployed, Zhou Yong himself had no real plan to speak of — he merely said that if the Huaxia Army were willing, the Wu Dynasty would fully cooperate. As for what form that cooperation might take, Zhou Yong’s own ideal vision seemed to be that Ning Yi might simply produce someone to help mediate at this difficult juncture, and with enough publicity, all he needed was some face-saving way to step back from his position, and he’d gladly take it… and so on, and so forth — that, more or less, was the gist of it.

After questioning the envoy repeatedly, Ning Yi finally confirmed that neither Jun Wu nor Zhou Pei had any part in this whatsoever. Given the fierce fighting currently underway, Ning Yi consulted with several members of the General Staff, then composed a letter in reply to Zhou Yong, candidly explaining the sheer difficulty of what he was proposing, and stressing that if Zhou Yong genuinely wished to pursue such an idea, he ought to hand the entire matter over to Zhou Pei or Jun Wu, so that everyone involved could sit down and discuss things openly and honestly.

In December of the tenth year of Jianshuo, this whole affair struck Ning Yi as something like a strange joke — every time he thought back on it, he couldn’t help laughing, while also finding it saturated with an odd, ironic, almost surreal quality, like some biting and amusing fable. Of course, neither he nor anyone else involved in the matter had yet any inkling of the nightmarish consequences it might eventually bring about.

That December, the south saw little snow, though the world grew unusually bitter and cold.

Within the imperial palace at Lin’an, Zhou Yong — a man growing gradually thinner, his temples turning gray, his features increasingly haggard — received the reply from the southwest. It was in Ning Yi’s own hand, its wording anything but formulaic, warm and courteous in tone, and it began to thaw something within Zhou Yong’s heart.

At this moment, the desk in Zhou Yong’s study was piled high with battle reports arriving from every front; he had even had a great map hung on the wall, marking out the state of the war in each region in a way he himself could understand. In all his years as emperor, Zhou Yong had never before applied himself so diligently to matters of state — but over these past six months, day after day, he had pored over these reports without fail. They left him feeling cold, colder even than the warmth he found in that letter from the southwest.

What chilled him most, in truth, was not these battle reports at all — it was something even his own children, closest to him, had never known.

Tucked away in a chest in the corner of his study lay records concerning the Humiliation of Jingping, concerning his cousin Zhou Ji, taken captive to the north, and concerning every horror the Jurchens had inflicted over the years. Some regarded him, as ruler of the Wu Dynasty, as incompetent and ignorant. His abilities were, admittedly, limited — but was he truly so ignorant?

In his earliest days as emperor, he had merely thought the Jurchens formidable; only later did he begin to grasp the reality he would eventually have to face. He had fled to Yangzhou, believing himself far enough away, drowning himself in decadent pleasure within his temporary palace — only for the Jurchens to come charging after him soon enough. He had fled out to sea, and in his terror had even abandoned his own child; by the time the Jurchens withdrew and he returned to shore and made his way to Lin’an, he appeared foolish and incompetent on the surface, but in truth, whatever he wished to know or see of the outside world, he had, in the end, always managed to learn.

He knew full well how formidable the Jurchens were. From the reports that arrived from the north year after year, he had also come to understand exactly what the Jurchens would do to him — the wretched, subhuman existence his cousin Zhou Ji endured in the north; the horrors his relatives, the imperial princes and princesses, had suffered during the Humiliation of Jingping. If it were merely a story to hear told, one might grit one’s teeth in outrage and let it pass — but this was his own future.

Even if he hid behind the thickest city walls, surrounded by thousands upon thousands of soldiers, what good would it do? They couldn’t defeat the Jurchens.

If the enemy truly broke through, if the day of true defeat truly came, there would be no escaping it for himself.

Zhou Yong had once been a dissolute prince — he had lived a life of idle pleasure, oppressed the common people — but even he could never have brought himself to commit such depraved atrocities. And now, these very horrors were about to fall upon his own head. Millions of soldiers? Tens of millions of common people? It sounded like a great many, but if true defeat came, within a matter of months he himself would be on the road north as a captive.

He had no idea that his own son, over these very years, had likewise read those reports on Zhou Ji year after year, gritting his teeth in boundless shame and fury. But over these years, Zhou Yong too, in some dark corner of his own mind, had read those same accounts year after year, and felt a fear that came from deep within his very core.

He understood the reports on his desk that arrived day after day — the comparisons of numbers, the defensive line pulling steadily southward day by day… His daughter, alone and resolute, had already hardened her heart completely; his son had thrown everything he had into the fight up at the front, hoping to spare his father, the emperor, any worry. All of this, he understood perfectly well.

And so he had sent an envoy, secretly seeking contact with the southwest. Of course, the whole affair was exceedingly difficult — he had no idea, in truth, how the grave crime of regicide against Ning Yi could ever simply be set aside. But the other side’s gentle, measured tone left him feeling that, at the very least, this opening hadn’t gone badly. If he, the emperor himself, could be killed and yet things could still move forward, then surely nothing else could prove too great an obstacle.

Zhou Yong dared not tell Zhou Pei about any of this. That winter, he tried probing his daughter obliquely on the matter twice more, and each time her words grew ever harder and more resolute, until Zhou Yong concluded there was simply no way to reason with her.

It seems, he thought to himself, that as emperor, I might as well be the one to extend goodwill to the southwest first. The thought took firmer root the more he turned it over in his mind — he was, after all, the emperor, his word carried absolute weight; once he set things in motion, his ministers would find it impossible to suppress it entirely, and as for the southwest, that clever fellow Ning Yi would surely see the opening and follow through naturally…

And so it was that the seeds of disaster began to take root in Zhou Yong’s mind.

At the very same time, Wanyan Zongfu’s army forced a crossing of the Yangtze, seizing the docks near Jiangning and engaging the Wu Dynasty’s navy and army in a massive battle, with casualties on both sides. At Zhenjiang, Jun Wu was drafting his New Year memorial to the court, detailing in full the balance of strength between the two sides, their respective advantages and weaknesses, while pointing out that Wuqimai of the Jin state had now lain bedridden for nearly a year, his health steadily declining; that the Han River and Yangtze defensive lines had not yet been broken; and that several of their own elite forces had already proven capable of trading blows evenly with the Jurchens. In the coming year, he argued, they need only hold the Jurchen forces at bay — even if the fighting momentarily favored the enemy, so long as they dragged the Jurchens into a war of attrition, the Wu Dynasty would ultimately prevail, and the Jurchens would inevitably be defeated.

Such a memorial, admittedly, contained a degree of exaggeration, yet the overall strategic thinking behind it could hardly be called wrong — it represented, in fact, a genuinely attainable vision of the future laid plainly before everyone’s eyes. On the sixteenth of December, before the memorial could even be sent south, with the battle at Jiangning still ongoing, urgent military intelligence arrived from the east, delivered to Zhenjiang.

On the fourteenth, Wushu had forced a crossing of the Yangtze at Jiangyin.

Jun Wu rose from his seat, and before long burst out through the door.

“…Cut him off.”

That was the only thought echoing through his mind. Of course, in that instant, he only sensed, on instinct, that something was terribly wrong — he had not yet begun to grasp just how enormous a chain reaction the whole affair would trigger.

Southeast of Jiangyin, light snow was falling.

A massive cavalry force skirted around the city, advancing south. Wushu stood upon a hilltop, his gaze carrying its usual ferocity and grim severity.

The most elite cavalry unit of the eastern army — over fifty thousand strong — was entirely under his command here.

Tucked in his sleeve was a sealed letter from Xiyin, its characters already nearly smudged illegible. Ordinarily, Xiyin disliked him, and he in turn held no fondness for Xiyin — yet on matters of true consequence, Wushu could never deny Xiyin’s foresight and wisdom. In this southern campaign, Xiyin had shown little hostility toward the eastern army; early on the two sides had coordinated and strategized together, and since the Yunzhong Massacre, Xiyin had continued sending urgent warnings and advice.

Zongfu and Wushu had heeded that advice.

The Wu Dynasty’s young crown prince wanted to drag the decisive battle out at Zhenjiang, in the heart of Jiangnan — but the true decisive battlefield did not lie there.

In December, Wushu’s cavalry bypassed the decisive engagement entirely.

Straight for Lin’an.