Heaven and earth were like a great furnace.
And history turned on, unceasing.
In the eleventh year of the Wu Dynasty’s Jianshuo era, the three colossal powers of this world finally collided head-on — millions upon millions locked in slaughter and bloodshed, small fragile lives rushing hurriedly and violently through their brief span. The origins of this catastrophic war traced back to a single day more than ten years before, and if one wished to dig deeper into cause and consequence, the threads running through this world would surely stretch back further still, into depths beyond reach.
Even a god, if such a thing existed, could hardly grasp everything within this world; and we, dull as mankind is, can only seize upon small, tangible fragments of it, hoping to glimpse through them some truth or metaphor about the world itself. And yet even these small fragments, to us, are already colossi beyond imagining…
In the spring of the eleventh year of Jianshuo, January at Liangshan was cold and barren. The stored grain had already run out by the start of the previous winter, and the men, women, old and young on the mountain did what they could to fish, scraping by. The two hundred-odd thousand Han troops outside the mountain launched occasional attacks or sweeps, and as the weather turned colder, exhausted fishermen abandoned their small boats and leapt into the water, many of them dying there. On days when the enemy struck from outside, with no fish to be had, those on the mountain went hungrier still.
The old died through the winter; the young grew thin as skeletons from hunger; even the children spent most of their time enduring hunger’s torment. The fewer than ten thousand troops of the Huaxia Army and the Guangwu Army held a stalemate against the uneven quality of the forces outside the mountain, relying on the terrain — though in truth, the situation beyond the marsh was, at this point, even worse.
The Shandong region, known for its fierce local temperament and frequent banditry, had never been a rich grain-producing area to begin with, and now that the Jurchen eastern army had come south, consuming what little material resources remained, there was simply no food left outside the mountain either. Grain had been “requisitioned” by Jurchen troops in autumn before it could even be harvested, and long before deep autumn had arrived, vast numbers of common people had already begun starving to death. To avoid starving, young men enlisted as soldiers — but soldiering here meant little more than preying on one’s own countryside, and once the countryside had nothing left to give, the days grew exceedingly hard for these Han troops as well.
The two hundred thousand troops Wanyan Chang had driven to assault Liangshan had, since deep autumn, been struggling under these same harsh conditions. Too many had died outside the mountain, and in deep autumn a plague had broken out across Shandong as well — entire villages wiped out one after another, towns left with scarcely a living soul walking their streets. Even the troops were not spared infection; the sick were quarantined and left to die in plague camps, their bodies burned afterward. In the course of the assault on Liangshan, some of the diseased corpses were even loaded onto large boats and sent drifting toward the mountain, which for a time affected those on Liangshan as well.
Once winter set in, the plague’s spread paused for the time being, but the Han troops had by now received no pay of any kind; soldiers fished in the marsh waters, and when two different units happened to cross paths, fighting would sometimes break out between them over it. Every so often, commanders would order their men to paddle crude rafts toward Liangshan in another assault — if nothing else, this served to thin their own ranks efficiently, whether the men died in battle or simply defected to the Black Banner or Guangwu armies; either way suited the commanders fine.
Resources had run entirely dry, and cannibalism outside the mountain had become commonplace; no one could feed any more mouths than necessary. When Zhu Biao, Wang Shanyue, and the others occasionally led soldiers out of the mountain on raids, these utterly powerless Han troops would kneel down in droves, begging for mercy, even asking to join the Liangshan forces, wanting only something to eat — and Zhu Biao and the others, themselves half-starved, could only send them scattering back on their own.
Before long, they turned these raids into smaller-scale decapitation strikes, targeting only the mid-to-high-ranking commanders among the Han troops — the rank and file were already starving to death, and only the mid-to-upper commanders still had any rations left on hand. Watching and seizing these officers usually yielded some food. But before long, these commanders too grew wary, and on two occasions deliberately set ambushes that nearly turned the tables and trapped Zhu Biao and his men instead.
Hunger — mankind’s most primal and most brutal torment — had turned this war at Liangshan into a bleak and bitterly ironic hell. Every day, when the bodies of the elderly who had starved to death on the mountain were carried out, Zhu Biao, watching from a distance, felt a helpless fury he could never quite dispel — the feeling of wanting to scream with all his strength, only to have every breath choke in his throat. The several hundred thousand “Han troops” outside, driven on by Wanyan Chang, were being worn down here to the death against Liangshan, and in the eyes of others — and even in their own eyes — their lives had become utterly worthless. They knelt before everyone, and yet dared not resist.
In truth, even had they wished to resist, neither the Huaxia Army nor the Guangwu Army had any food to offer them either. The once-mighty Wu Dynasty, the vast Central Plains, had now been trampled down to this — the lives of Han people counted for no more than ants before the Jurchens. It was a fury that left one unable to breathe.
The other front lay in the Jin region, where conditions were slightly better. Tian Hu’s decade of governance had left the usurper Lou Shuwan and the others with a modest surplus. After the fall of Weisheng, Lou Shuwan and the others had retreated to the western Jin region, holding a foothold there by relying on treacherous passes and mountainous terrain. The assault led by the surrendered forces under Liao Yiren had been ongoing throughout, and the prolonged fighting and chaos in the occupied territory had killed many — though the horror of parents exchanging children to eat, as had happened in Shandong, had never occurred here. Most people were killed rather than starved, which, in a certain sense, might count as a kind of ironic mercy.
Since the onset of winter, what the common people at the bottom ate had usually been little more than porridge cooked from musty, moldering grain. Lou Shuwan, who had overseen civil administration under Tian Hu, had kept careful account of the entire region’s grain stores; this land had never been especially fertile or rich to begin with, and after Tian Hu’s death, Lou Shuwan had worked hard to build up civilian livelihoods — but that effort had only sustained things for a little over a year, and by the spring of the eleventh year, with the war dragging on, spring planting seemed unlikely to resume in time.
They probably wouldn’t make it to autumn of the eleventh year without resorting to cannibalism… With this grim calculation in mind, Lou Shuwan had, since the previous autumn, ruthlessly cut food expenditures for both the army and the civil administration, enforcing strict austerity. To set an example, she herself often ate moldy food or grain mixed with chaff and husks; by winter she had fallen ill twice amid the exhausting work — once recovering in just three days despite those around her urging rest, which she refused to heed; the other time dragging on for ten days, during which she suffered violent vomiting and diarrhea, unable to keep down water or food. Once recovered, her already weak stomach was badly damaged, and by the time spring arrived, Lou Shuwan had wasted down to skin and bone, her facial bones jutting out like a skull, her eyes sharp enough to be frightening — she seemed to have lost, entirely, the face and figure that had once still counted as beautiful.
In her private notes she wrote: “…I find myself more sensitive to the cold this winter, and white hairs have begun to show; my body wearies more by the day — I fear my life may not last much longer… Of late I have not dared look into a mirror. I often recall my years in Hangzhou, when though shallow in learning, I was full and lovely to look at, with men often praising my looks — no less, I think, than Su Tan’er. That such a thing is no longer the case now is not entirely without its uses…” Amid this wistful sentimentality, she also wrote: “…When I die, I will see to it that the entire Liao clan goes before me.” Such a line, filled with the quiet intent to wipe out an entire family, carried a sudden, chilling edge of ruthlessness.
Over the years she had often read the official documents and letters written by Ning Yi, and little by little, without noticing, her own phrasing had come to echo his in careless, offhand ways. Sometimes she wrote something and threw it away; sometimes others kept it. As spring arrived, the surrendered forces under Liao Yiren began losing their edge, with the core officials and commanders in his ranks growing more focused on securing their own future comfort and stability. Yu Yulin and Wang Juyun seized the opportunity to strike, winning several victories and even seizing some of the enemy’s supplies. The pressure on Lou Shuwan’s heart eased somewhat, and her health slowly began to recover.
In mid-January, the escalating Second Battle of Xuzhou became one of the focal points drawing everyone’s attention. Liu Chengzong and Luo Ye led over forty thousand troops back to attack Xuzhou, repeatedly crushing more than sixty thousand puppet-Qi Han troops along the way.
By this time, the bulk of Wanyan Zongfu’s eastern army had already crossed the Yangtze, pressing the Wu Dynasty’s defenses around Jiangning and Zhenjiang on one front while eyeing the battle for Lin’an on the other. Liu Chengzong’s forces cutting resolutely back put everyone’s nerves on edge; the Jurchen eastern army commander Nieer Bojin and others hastily gathered nearly one hundred fifty thousand troops from across the region south of the Yangtze to face off against this Black Banner detachment at Xuzhou.
Mindful of Ning Yi’s earlier record during the northwest campaign, when the Black Banner Army had used a hidden passage to breach a city and kill Cibushi, the Jurchen forces conducted several repeated searches around Xuzhou, hastily clearing out areas still left in ruins from earlier fighting before finally settling their minds at ease. Meanwhile the Huaxia Army’s forces camped outside the city and, in mid-to-late January, even launched two fierce assaults, coiling around Xuzhou like a cobra, keeping it under constant threat.
Lin’an, at this time, was going through much the same ordeal as Xuzhou. On the eighth of January, Wuzhu attacked outside the city, withdrawing on the tenth, after which he continued maneuvering around the outskirts of Lin’an. Though Wuzhu had certain shortcomings at the grand strategic level, on the battlefield itself he still fought according to his own well-honed methods; the several relief forces sent by the Wu Dynasty from outside Lin’an gained no advantage against his flexible yet decisive assaults, suffering two minor defeats and one severe rout over the course of January.
Pressure was mounting within the city of Lin’an. In a city of over a million souls, officials, wealthy gentry, soldiers and commanders, and common people alike struggled each in their own way to survive; more than a dozen court officials were dismissed and imprisoned, and a number of assassinations and violent clashes broke out within the city. Compared to the first defense of Bian Liang more than a decade earlier, when the Wu Dynasty side had at least managed a semblance of unified resolve, this time far more complicated schemes and secret dealings churned and intertwined in the shadows.
Even so, throughout this January, the more than one hundred thousand Imperial Guard troops kept the entire city of Lin’an sealed tight, and those defending the city managed to suppress the restless stirrings simmering throughout. Toward Jiangning, Wanyan Zongfu pressed his main force hard against the city while dispatching detachments to repeatedly attempt a southward push, hoping to link up with Wuzhu’s forces near Lin’an; Han Shizhong’s troops held the southern route firmly, even managing several notable victories along the way.
In mid-January, Yue Fei led the Beiya Army eastward along the Yangtze at high speed, driving swiftly into the Jiangning battlefield; by late January, the somewhat slower-moving forces of Wanyan Xiyin and Yinshuke, relying on naval transport capacity assembled the previous winter, advanced along the Huai River and the Grand Canal toward the Jiangning-Zhenjiang battle zone.
An even larger chaos was erupting across the Wu Dynasty’s territory. In Fujian Circuit, uprisings led by Guan Tianxia, Wu Heilong, and others had seized several prefectures and counties; in Xuanzhou, refugees from the Central Plains led by Cao Jinlu rose up and broke through the prefectural city walls; in Dingzhou, Hu Yun’er rose in rebellion under the banner of Manichaeism… As anti-Jin uprisings gradually spread across the Central Plains, within the Wu Dynasty’s own territory, the various tensions suppressed over the past decade or more — the oppression of northerners by southerners chief among them — began erupting all at once now that the Jurchens had arrived.
Against this backdrop, in late January, small Huaxia Army teams dispatched from various locations began carrying out their missions one after another. In Wu’an, Changsha, Qimen, Xiazhou, Guangnan, and elsewhere, organized assassinations carrying evidence of collaboration and letters denouncing traitors broke out one after another, along with planned counteractions against such acts and a wave of copycat killings disguised as the same. Some Huaxia Army teams moved covertly, quietly making contact with and issuing warnings to wavering factions and great clans.
During this time, a team of one hundred twenty Huaxia Army soldiers led by Zhuo Yongqing departed from Shu territory, traveling along relatively safe routes to visit and persuade, one place after another, various factions that had previously done business with the Huaxia Army. Along the way, two loosely organized skirmishes broke out — local gentry hostile to the Huaxia Army rallied “righteous men” and “militia” to intercept them, one numbering around five hundred, the other reaching a thousand; both were crushed after assembling by a second team secretly shadowing Zhuo Yongqing’s group, using decapitation tactics.
To support the movements of these special teams away from home, in mid-January thirty thousand Huaxia Army troops from the Chengdu Plain marched out from Zhang Village, advancing to the eastern and northern border with rival territories, entering a state of war readiness.
The spread and fermentation of all these developing events, and the news of them, still needed time. Amid this world already coming to a boil, in mid-January, a piece of news, carried on the tongues of traveling merchants and storytellers moving from place to place, gradually began spreading through the underworld and marketplaces across the Wu Dynasty’s territory.
An old man named Fulu, carrying the final garments and cap of his former master, had reappeared in the martial underworld, traveling east along the Yangtze toward Jiangning and Zhenjiang, where the great war now raged.
News of the old man’s reappearance spread, and wherever it was heard, silence fell first, followed by whispered murmurs. As the sun rose and set, day after day, some people began packing their bags, others arranged for their families’ care, and set off north — among them were elders long since retired from fame who now came down from their mountains again, middle-aged performers who had wandered the streets scraping a living, and even numb, wandering beggar children caught up among the crowds of refugees…
In Yizhang County, the notoriously vicious underworld figure Jin Chenghu threw an unusual open banquet.
Jin Chenghu, in his forties, fierce of face and built like an iron tower, was one of the underworld strongmen who had carved out his own territory in this region through sheer ruthlessness since the Wu Dynasty’s move south. After ten years of hard fighting, he had, with great difficulty, amassed a fortune; in others’ eyes, he was very much still in his prime, and for the next decade, Yizhang would likely remain his domain.
On the sixteenth day of the first month — with no wedding or funeral to mark, nor any housewarming — Jin Chenghu insisted on holding this open banquet, and his reasons genuinely baffled many. Even his old rivals feared he might be using some pretext to stir up trouble again, wondering things like “the Lantern Festival’s passed, time to start killing people” or similar.
The open banquet ran for three days on the small drill grounds of Yizhang County. At noon on this particular day, snow began falling abruptly from the sky. Jin Chenghu, having had a fair amount to drink, climbed onto a high platform, looked up at the snow for a moment, and began to speak.
“Fellow villagers, elders, brothers all — I, Jin Chenghu, was not always called Jin Chenghu. My name was Jin Cheng. Up north, I was a… bandit!”
He raised his wine bowl. “The stronghold I belonged to was Great Tiger Fortress, in Hedong Circuit! My chief was named Peng Dahu! He was no good man, but he was a real man! He did two things I will remember my whole life! In the eleventh year of Jinghan, there was a grain famine in Hedong. Master Zhou Tong came to Great Tiger Fortress demanding grain — he demanded two hundred sixteen dan of grain, taking away the fortress’s own stores of food, and our chief handed it over without a word of complaint! We told our chief, that Zhou Tong was only three people, master and two followers — we had over a hundred men, why should we fear him! Our chief said then: Zhou Tong takes from us for the sake of the realm, not for himself! Our chief led us, and we handed over two hundred sixteen dan of grain, with no tricks played whatsoever!”
“The second thing!” He paused, snowflakes falling on his head, his face, into his wine bowl. “In the thirteenth year of Jinghan, autumn! The Jin dogs marched south! Master Zhou Tong, without a word, went to assassinate Nian Han! Many followed at his side — my chief, Peng Dahu, was one of them! I remember that day, he told us happily that Master Zhou’s martial arts were unmatched under heaven; the last time he’d visited our fortress, our chief had begged Master Zhou to teach him his skills, and Master Zhou had said, once you are no longer a bandit, I will teach you. Our chief said, Master Zhou will surely teach me now!”
“My chief was one of the righteous men who followed Zhou Tong to assassinate Nian Han!” He nearly shouted this line, tears in his eyes. “That year, he disbanded the fortress, telling us: I must follow Master Zhou now, all of you scatter. I was afraid — when the Jurchens came, I was afraid! After the fortress broke up, I came south. My name was Jin Cheng. I changed it to Jin Chenghu — not to sound fierce with that character for ‘tiger’ in it. What that name really meant, I’ve spent more than ten years thinking about. Nearly all the righteous men who once followed Master Zhou to assassinate Nian Han are dead now. This time, with the elder Fulu come out again, I’ve finally understood.”
Amid the falling snow, Jin Chenghu swept his gaze across the followers gathered below the platform, across the several concubines he had taken over the years, then raised his wine bowl high with both hands. “Fellow villagers, elders, brothers all! The time has come—”
“—Let us disperse!”
His whole body was corded with muscle, built like an iron tower, his face usually fierce enough to frighten — yet standing there now, he showed not the slightest trace of dashing grace. Across the realm, heavy snow was falling.
Across a distance of more than ten years, a single figure had cast an influence through the long passage of time that had never quite faded. His life and his death had both left deep marks on people’s hearts. His spirit, years and even more than a decade after his death, still ran through and continued to reshape the lives of many.
Zhou Tong. Zhou Tong.