In January, as scattered figures from the greenwood made their way north toward the Yangtze, far more people fled in desperation westward and southward, escaping the war zones.
The triangular region stretching over a hundred li east from Jiangning to Zhenjiang, and more than four hundred fifty li south to Lin’an, was gradually being swallowed by the flames of war. Since the Wu Dynasty’s move south, this had been the most prosperous stretch of land in the entire realm, encompassing the wealthiest towns near Lake Tai and radiating out to major cities like Changzhou, Suzhou, and Jiaxing — a region with a total population exceeding ten million.
Once the Jurchens came, every corner of this land became ground that had to be defended, yet even with the full manpower of the Wu Dynasty, it was impossible to garrison every city with heavy troops and guarantee it would hold — in fact, during the so-called Mountain-and-Sea Search campaign of the second year of Jianshuo, Wuzhu’s army had already swept through many of these towns in Jiangnan once before.
Fortunately, this campaign differed from that one in certain respects. This fourth southern expedition, aimed at crushing the Wu Dynasty, gave the Jurchens no resources to spare for a prolonged siege. Once Wuzhu’s forces reached Lin’an, the Wu Dynasty mobilized roughly one hundred seventy thousand troops previously garrisoned at Jiaxing, Suzhou, and elsewhere to relieve the capital, which, combined with the two hundred thousand Imperial Guard already stationed there, formed the core of this great battle.
The other core, naturally, was the Yangtze war zone centered on Jiangning and Zhenjiang. After crossing the river, Zongfu’s eastern army main force focused its assault on Jiangning, gradually spreading toward Zhenjiang and the smaller cities to the south. With Liu Chengzong’s forces to the north drawing off part of the Jurchen army’s attention at Xuzhou, Zongfu’s main force — after accounting for losses — numbered still close to two hundred thousand, and together with several hundred thousand Han troops from the Central Plains, pressed the assault on Jiangning on one front while dispatching elite troops on another to push the front line as far south as possible.
The distance between Jiangning and Lin’an was over four hundred li — at full speed, little more than ten days’ travel. For the Jurchens, the current strategic options were essentially twofold: either crush the resistance forces led by Crown Prince Jun Wu along the Yangtze, or gradually advance south, taking cities one by one, and together with Wuzhu’s elite cavalry, press Lin’an into forcing the Wu Dynasty’s surrender.
These two strategic directions could also proceed simultaneously. In mid-January, Zongfu split off roughly thirty thousand additional troops under commanders Dabei and Alubao, sending them south and southeast, while over one hundred thousand Han troops led by warlords Lin Baoyue and Li Yangzong from the Central Plains had already pushed the front line down to the Taiping Prefecture, Danyang, and Changning line — during which several small cities had their gates broken open, with the Han troops looting and slaughtering freely within, casualties beyond counting.
On the Wu Dynasty’s side, allowing Zongfu’s forces to continue pushing south was naturally out of the question. Beyond the one hundred thousand-strong Wulie Battalion already garrisoning Jiangning, Han Shizhong personally led fifty thousand of the main Zhenhai Army to hold Jiangning, with another seventy thousand Zhenhai troops pushed forward to Changning, together with nearly three hundred thousand additional Huaiyang and reinforcement troops, firmly blocking Zongfu’s southward advance.
By mid-to-late January, once Yue Fei’s Beiya Army and the Tushanwei forces led by Xiyin and Yinshuke reached the battlefield, the Jurchen commander Alubao feinted toward Changning with his thirty-thousand-strong force before wheeling northeast toward Zhenjiang, coordinating with Xiyin’s troops to launch a surprise assault on the Zhenjiang area — and by this point the entire Jiangnan region had become a tangled, crisscrossing mess, forces from both sides intermingled in chaotic confusion.
The situation at Lin’an was, if anything, even more complicated.
After Wuzhu’s cavalry launched their initial assault on Lin’an in early January, they ceased attempting to storm the city outright, instead roaming the surrounding area, burning and killing, occasionally clashing with the Wu Dynasty relief forces under Shen Cheng and Xu Liejun. Rationally speaking, fifty thousand troops attempting to breach a great city defended by two hundred thousand was no easy task — even though the Jurchens had achieved more spectacular feats before — but the complicated, roiling sentiment within Lin’an itself behaved more like the fluctuations of a stock market in later ages, shifting unpredictably with every new piece of news from outside, rising and falling with each report of victory or defeat, beyond the open cries for resistance and death-defying slogans on the surface, all manner of hidden calculations intertwined and surged beneath it.
Of course, the Wu Dynasty had cultivated its scholar-officials for over two hundred years, and talk of surrendering to the Jin or colluding with the enemy would never be spoken openly. But over the course of that month, the various rumors circulating through Lin’an grew ever more tangled. There were several different versions alone of the story concerning Zhou Yong’s falling-out with his officials — one claiming Zhou Yong had wanted to make peace with the Black Banner and was then placed under house arrest by the assembled ministers — and precisely because this version was half true and half false, it proved all the more convincing.
Beyond this, ever since the Huaxia Army issued its declaration and dispatched its traitor-purging squads, debate raged throughout the capital over who exactly counted as a traitor, who had already defected. Students turned their scrutinizing gaze toward every suspicious minister at court, and some of the small tabloids that had sprung up in the capital since Li Pin’s newspaper began circulating started, in pursuit of sales, secretly compiling and selling pamphlets detailing the family backgrounds and private connections of various court and military officials, for public reference. Among those involved were scholars who had repeatedly failed the imperial examinations, eager to hold forth with grand pronouncements to attract attention.
As for discussions of how the war across the realm might turn, what the odds of eventual victory might be, and the countless proposed methods for turning defeat into triumph, such talk had never once ceased since the fighting began. Those anxious for the fate of the nation moved about privately, and petitions filled with lofty advice flooded daily into the court and the Princess Imperial’s estate like snowflakes.
On the fourth of February, a scholar in his sixties calling himself “Old Man of the Autumn Cottage” even had a small print shop produce large quantities of pages containing his “wise counsel for governing the realm,” distributing them widely throughout the city in imitation of the Jurchen spies’ earlier tactics. When the city patrol arrested him, the old man loudly demanded to see the prefect of Lin’an, the chancellor, the Military Affairs Commissioner, the Princess Imperial — anyone of note.
The prefect of Lin’an, Luo Shuwen, had little choice but to grant him an audience, and upon questioning him closely about his supposed wisdom, found it amounted to little more than demanding the emperor make use of a great talent such as himself, and immediately execute a number of court officials he deemed problematic — his basis for judging these officials problematic drawn mostly from various rumors circulating through the capital’s back channels. The old man had spent his entire life chasing after honor and rank, having achieved in truth only the status of a licentiate; by now his family fortune was entirely spent, with only an elderly wife left to scrape by picking through vegetable scraps in the market or begging in the streets each day, and he had even used up what little remained set aside for his own coffin to print these pamphlets. Prefect Luo, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, in the end simply handed him two taels of silver and sent the old man home.
Far more treacherous scheming lay hidden beneath this vast, chaotic swirl of public discourse.
On the eighth of February, a poetry gathering was held at an old estate called Simplicity Garden in western Lin’an — trees budding, peach blossoms about to bloom, the first breath of spring just arriving. Amid the clinking of wine cups, a middle-aged scholar past thirty, sporting a goatee, drew a crowd around him; he had brought a map of the entire Wu Dynasty and was tracing lines across it with his finger, his argument clear and persuasive, drawing the attention of everyone present.
“…Looking at the state of our Wu Dynasty, most everyone assumes the crux of it all lies trapped here in Jiangnan — and that’s certainly reasonable enough. If Lin’an holds, and the Yangtze line manages to hold out, tying down both Jurchen armies, then the siege on the Wu Dynasty will inevitably break — that’s the conventional view, and if it can be achieved, there’s nothing more to consider… But if we look only at that, we miss something. In the world as it stands today, there remains another crucial point — to the west, at Xiangyang…”
He tapped his finger on Xiangyang’s position on the map, then swept it further west.
“…Some of you may disagree — Xiangyang is certainly an important stronghold, but it lies over fifteen hundred li from Lin’an; whether it holds or falls bears no real consequence on our situation here. But there’s an old, tired argument worth revisiting here — the so-called rivalry between the Jurchen eastern and western courts. In the past, when we spoke of exploiting that eastern-western rivalry, sowing discord between them, it was dismissed as mere scholarly talk, armchair strategy with no bearing on reality. But now that the Jurchens have actually come, that old argument takes on a different weight…”
“…For you and me, if we think of the Jin state as a single unified body, then this southern campaign obviously aims to destroy our Wu Dynasty. But after that, what comes next?” The scholar moved his finger further west, tapping it down again. “The destruction of the Black Banner!”
“Gentlemen, to put it bluntly, the true source of anxiety for the Jurchens right now likely isn’t even our Wu Dynasty at all, but rather this Black Banner Army, risen from the southwest, which has already cut down Jurchen commanders like Loushi and Cibushi. And at this moment, the two Jurchen armies hold quite different degrees of concern for the Black Banner… From what we’ve seen, Zonghan and Xiyin’s forces truly regard the Black Banner as their principal enemy, while Zongfu and Wuzhu’s forces are more focused on destroying our own dynasty and breaking Lin’an first… Ideally for them, the two armies would join forces, crush the Wu Dynasty first, then turn the full strength of the realm against the southwest to wipe out the Black Banner. But here, we ought to consider — what if they settled for less than the ideal?”
“…In years past, we spoke of exploiting tensions between the Jurchen eastern and western courts as though it were an empty fantasy with no substance behind it — after all, how domineering has Zonghan been in his conquests across the realm? Would he really risk internal conflict with Aguda’s line over some petty scheming from the sidelines? But think about it now — if Zonghan and the others were presented with a choice like this: allow us here in Lin’an to hold out longer, tying down Wuzhu, even forcing the Jurchen eastern army’s southern campaign to end in failure — but in exchange, let the western army gain enormous advantage, even driving straight into the southwest to confront the Black Banner Army directly, wiping it out and killing that demon-Ning himself — do you really think Zonghan and Xiyin wouldn’t be tempted?”
“…What I’m about to say may sound rather improper, but it’s only a thought, only a possibility, should such a thing come to pass…”
The middle-aged man lowered his voice, and everyone leaned in closer to listen. Before long, some at the gathering fell into thought, others expressed admiration, and still others raised objections… The new shoots on the trees in the courtyard swayed gently, and before long the figures and their various opinions were swallowed up entirely by the cool spring air of the garden.
By the time the gathering ended, it was already afternoon; small groups scattered and dispersed. The middle-aged man who had spoken earlier said his goodbyes to the other scholars and turned onto the streets of Lin’an. With war looming, the city’s mood was tense and grim, few people about. The man turned through several alleys, sensing something amiss behind him, quickened his pace at the next turn, and upon entering an empty side lane, tried to scramble up over the wall of a nearby house — but lacking the strength, fell back down.
As he pulled himself up from the mud, several shadowy figures were already closing in on him from all directions.
A sack was thrown over his head, and he was dragged out of the alley and tossed into a waiting carriage. The carriage wound through several long streets before entering the Lin’an prefectural jail. Before long, Tie Tianying arrived from outside; someone led him back to the cells, where the man — in his thirties — had already been bound in the interrogation chamber.
The man slowly regained consciousness and saw the old chief investigator heating an iron poker over a flame. He struggled against his restraints. “You— you— who are you people!? Who are you!? I am a provincial graduate, a licentiate from the thirteenth year of Jinghan! What do you want with me!?”
Tie Tianying looked up at him. “If you don’t even know where you are, what’s the use talking about being a licentiate? If bandits had kidnapped you, would your scholarly rank save you?”
“I— I— I can guess. The dynasty has decreed that punishment shall not extend to men of learning — you cannot execute a man for speaking his mind, you—”
“Who told you to say these things? Who taught you to say them?”
“No one! No one taught me anything! When the realm faces ruin, every common man bears responsibility! I am a subject of the Wu Dynasty, a licentiate — the nation faces great calamity, and I sought only to share the burden! To share the burden of the nation! And I merely discussed this with others, I did nothing else besides—”
The man struggled against the wooden frame, shouting in panic. Tie Tianying watched him quietly for a moment, then set aside his bulky outer robe and picked up the instruments of interrogation.
“I’ve had my eye on you for more than a day or two now. Everyone serves their own master, in their own way — so I’m afraid I’ll have to be rude.”
…
The early spring sunlight sank away, day giving way to night.
Before dawn on the ninth of February, Zhou Pei rose, threw on her robe, washed and dressed, then boarded her carriage and passed through the city.
Just past midnight, the city still lay quiet — but the further north they traveled, the more a faint humming sound could be heard rising into the air. As they neared the northern Heningmen gate, the sound grew steadily clearer — the noise of a great crowd in motion.
On the afternoon of the eighth, thirty thousand troops under Xu Liejun had been ambushed and crushed during a redeployment by twenty thousand elite Jurchen cavalry sent by Wuzhu, suffering several thousand casualties; Xu Liejun had since dispatched tens of thousands more to drive back the attacking Jurchen cavalry, and now large numbers of wounded were being brought into Lin’an.
Once the wounded were brought into the barbican, they underwent a screening process; several physicians went in to provide emergency treatment to the most severely injured. Zhou Pei climbed the city wall and looked down at the barbican below, filled with groans and cries of anguish. Cheng Zhouhai was already there, and came over to bow to her.
“Another defeat — who knows how many more people will start whispering behind closed doors now,” Zhou Pei said quietly.
“Just stay calm about it. There’s never been a battle where someone doesn’t start scheming on the side,” Cheng Zhouhai said.
“Ten-odd years ago, people didn’t yet believe the Wu Dynasty could really lose the Central Plains — even if some schemed quietly back then, they still assumed, deep down, that the dynasty would hold. Now, people’s talk has shifted to preparing for the ‘worst case’ — and in that worst case, everyone still hopes to secure themselves a comfortable life…” Zhou Pei said quietly, craning her neck to look out into the darkness beyond the outermost wall. “Master Cheng, were the walls of Bian Liang this high, this thick, too? Sometimes when I stand below and look up, I think a wall this towering ought to stand forever, unshakeable — but these past years have taught me that breaking through it isn’t so difficult after all.”
Cheng Zhouhai was silent for a moment. “…What did His Majesty say yesterday, when he summoned Your Highness into the palace?”
Zhou Pei gave a faint smile, then her expression turned grave; glancing around, she lowered her voice to speak to Cheng Zhouhai. “Father asked me, rather indirectly, whether — if the situation in the capital grew critical — we could bring General Han Shizhong’s Zhenhai reinforcements back in time to swap out with the Imperial Guard… Father knows the men below are restless, and he doesn’t trust the Guard either. He’s even considering… removing General Yu Zihua from command of the Guard.”
“Recalling the Zhenhai Army would be a desperate move born of panic. As for General Yu…” Cheng Zhouhai frowned. “General Yu rose up through the Wulie Battalion — he’s one of His Majesty’s own trusted men.”
Zhou Pei hesitated a moment, recalling what her father had said the day before, a mocking smile crossing her face. “…Indeed. The Wulie Battalion once garrisoned Jiangning, and Yu Zihua knew Father from those days, which is how he came to command the Guard. But right now… Master Cheng, Father knows better than anyone what sort of company Yu Zihua kept back then. He only kept him around because he had no one else to use, someone to bully lesser men and drink and carouse with — Father trusted them more than anyone in peacetime, but now that war is upon us, he trusts them least of all…”
“And yet General Yu has, in fact, genuinely turned over a new leaf these past years, holding himself to very strict standards.”
“Father doesn’t believe that, and all I can do is… try my best to talk him out of it,” Zhou Pei said, rubbing her temples. “The Zhenhai Army cannot be summoned, and General Yu cannot be lightly removed — well, let’s hope Father can hold himself steady. He’s taken to summoning Lord Qin Hui into the palace often lately as well; Lord Qin, being seasoned and prudent in matters of state, seems to have had some restraining influence over Father’s impulses — when Father wanted to recall the Zhenhai Army, Lord Qin talked him out of it too… These past few days, I’ve been thinking of paying Lord Qin a personal visit, to speak with him openly and honestly…”
The two of them lingered on the tower a while longer before departing. The carriage pulled away from the wall, rolling through the dark streets, and as they neared the Lin’an prefectural jail, Zhou Pei, still rubbing her temples, remembered something. “Chief Investigator Tie seems to have caught some people yesterday. Let’s go take a look at the jail.”
Cheng Zhouhai nodded in agreement.
The group arrived at the jail, where a deputy had already reported on what Tie Tianying was doing. As they approached the interrogation chamber, the smell of blood reached them; Tie Tianying, having given his face and hands a cursory wash, emerged from within, his clothes still stained with blood. In his hands he held a stack of interrogation transcripts, and he led Zhou Pei and Cheng Zhouhai to look inside — the middle-aged scholar bound to the wooden frame was by now barely recognizable as human.
“Was this confession beaten out of him?” Cheng Zhouhai asked, frowning.
“No.” Tie Tianying shook his head. “This man’s contact with the Jurchen side has already been confirmed — the letters, the go-between, the Imperial Guard who smuggled messages in for him, all confirmed. Of course, he insists he was only acting on the instructions of a great clan, lobbying on behalf of certain southern families’ interests — but he’s been involved in spreading several previous rounds of confirmed Jurchen-linked rumors as well… It seems the Jurchens have begun a new line of scheming.”
“The same one you reported on earlier?” Cheng Zhouhai asked.
Tie Tianying nodded, then looked over at Zhou Pei along with Cheng Zhouhai. “Allow me to report on this matter. Does Your Highness wish…” Tie Tianying gestured between the interrogation chamber and a relatively clean side room. Zhou Pei glanced at the bloodied man in the cell, his fingernails all torn out, then turned and walked toward the smaller room.
Tie Tianying and Cheng Zhouhai followed her in, spreading the map out on the table. “This matter has already been discussed in small circles for several days now — it sounds rather heretical at first hearing, but on careful reflection, it isn’t entirely without merit. The general direction of it goes something like this…”
Tie Tianying paused, then set his palm down on Xiangyang’s position on the map, sweeping it westward across the marked region. “If the capital’s situation grows dire, with no way out — cede Xiangyang and Fancheng, and everything west of them, north of the Yangtze, to Marshal Zonghan of the Jurchen western army.”
As he finished speaking, Zhou Pei’s arm pressed down on the table, her entire face darkening.
Cheng Zhouhai spoke up quietly beside her. “There’s talk, privately, that this demand came secretly from Wanyan Xiyin himself, the Jurchen commander currently near Zhenjiang, put forward to the city in secret. In early January, the Black Banner side sought to negotiate right-of-passage terms with Sichuan defender Si Zhongxian at Jiange — Jiange being the vital route out of Shu — and this was clearly Ning Yi applying pressure and intimidation against the Jurchens. The Jurchens’ response with a demand like this is plainly a counterstrike against the Black Banner Army.”
He pointed at the region on the map. “From Xiangyang to Jiange stretches a thousand li of territory, and it commands the routes into Sichuan besides. Once ceded, the Jurchen western army would have achieved enough to claim victory, with no further need to press south against the Wu Dynasty — and the eastern army’s failure to achieve results would only be welcomed by them all the more. Once they control this territory, Zonghan and Xiyin could march a powerful army straight into Chengdu, and Zonghan and Ning Yi would be forced into direct confrontation ahead of schedule. Mutual destruction for both sides isn’t impossible either…”
“Cede a thousand li of territory? How can such a thing even be proposed?” Zhou Pei’s voice had gone dry.
“If Lin’an is in mortal danger, then it becomes quite easy to propose indeed…” Cheng Zhouhai said. “And besides, if we look at the broader picture, the Jurchens — at least Zonghan and Xiyin’s faction — fear the Black Banner Army even more than they fear our own dynasty. Swallowing the Wu Dynasty first and then destroying the Black Banner would certainly be ideal for them, but failing that, I sometimes wonder if they’d rather settle for destroying the Black Banner this time around instead…”
Having said this, he watched Zhou Pei quietly. Zhou Pei’s body swayed slightly. Some of this, at first hearing, did indeed sound like pure fantasy — and yet if it truly came to pass, with Zonghan leading a great army into the southwest, Ning Yi and the Huaxia Army would surely not retreat either; these two mightiest armies in the realm clashing head-on would surely not turn out as miserably one-sided as the current struggle in Jiangnan against the Wu Dynasty…
Zhou Pei thought it over for a while, then finally shook her head and turned to leave. “This is talk meant to throw our hearts and minds into chaos. Root them out, and have them all executed on an appointed day!”
Cheng Zhouhai allowed himself a faint smile, and once they had left the jail, he spoke seriously. “However elegantly such things are phrased now, their only purpose is to sow confusion within our own ranks. Wanyan Xiyin lives up to his name, Valley Spirit — his scheming, open and hidden alike, is no less than that demon-slayer Ning’s in the southwest. Even though we can see through it ourselves, I fear many within the city will still be tempted by it — and then there’s His Majesty’s side to worry about… I hope Your Highness will remain especially cautious.”
Zhou Pei nodded, and before long the carriage carried her away.
A few days later, similar rumors began spreading and fermenting throughout the city: that the Jurchen western army had put forward its demand — cede everything west of Xiangyang and Fancheng, north of the Yangtze, and they would withdraw. And alongside this, it was said the Jurchen eastern army had made its own demand as well: that the Wu Dynasty recognize the great Jin as its father-state, remain its vassal in perpetuity, paying tribute and homage year after year, and, at the same time—
—execute Han Shizhong, to appease the hearts of the Jin people!
…
In February, at the encampments around Zhenjiang, frost and mud mingled among the barracks. Stepping out of his tent, Jun Wu could see the comings and goings of troop rotations and supply transport, wounded soldiers occasionally brought in, carrying with them the scent of gunpowder smoke and blood.
War showed itself, above all, in iron and slaughter, and over these past six months Jun Wu had grown almost accustomed to this rhythm. Before him lay the assault of Jurchen commanders renowned throughout the realm; behind him lay the aftermath of what had already become hundreds of thousands, even into the millions, of military and civilian casualties.
East and south of Zhenjiang, the forces of Xiyin, Yinshuke, and Alubao had captured several small cities and were cautiously extending the front line southward, while across the wider region, Wu Dynasty forces were sealing off the southern routes layer by layer. Every few days brought one or two more skirmishes.
Xiyin’s Tushanwei, the most elite force under Zonghan’s command, remained difficult to halt in direct confrontation even against today’s Beiya Army. But the Wu Dynasty forces gathered around it wore down its momentum bit by bit — even if they couldn’t stop its advance outright in any single engagement, they could certainly seal off its retreat, forcing it into caution and preventing it from pushing south for a long, long time.
Compared to the front-line soldiers fighting and bleeding, and the generals directing strategy from behind, the Crown Prince’s role here was more that of a steadying anchor and a symbol of good fortune — his presence and his unwavering commitment to the cause of resistance were, in themselves, enough to fulfill his duty. Jun Wu felt no discouragement over this; every day, no matter how exhausted, he made sure to present himself well — growing out a beard, keeping his bearing composed — to appear more mature and resolute, and to better inspire the troops’ morale.
The various scheming and unsettled sentiments occasionally reported from Lin’an sometimes drew a scornful laugh from him, sometimes a sigh; meanwhile, the deeds of resistance fighters arriving from outside, standing defiant before the Jurchens, stirred and encouraged him — most of these accounts were brave and tragic in equal measure, but if only the whole realm could act with such resolve, how could the Wu Dynasty ever have lost the Central Plains in the first place?
On the twelfth of February, a Jurchen envoy arrived at the camp near Zhenjiang, demanding that Crown Prince Jun Wu and the entire Wu Dynasty court surrender — the terms included recognizing vassal status, ceding everything west of Xiangyang and Fancheng north of the Yangtze, and severely punishing anti-Jin commanders, among other outrageously excessive demands. Jun Wu read only the opening lines before throwing it aside.
“Xiyin and his men are surrounded right now by a million of my troops — let’s see if he even makes it back before we discuss this further. Drag him out and kill him—”
The envoy was dragged away, shouting as he went: “You do not kill envoys between warring armies! You do not kill envoys between warring armies! We can negotiate! We can negotiate, Your Highness—” He was dragged out to the drill grounds and beheaded with a single stroke.
Before long, Wanyan Xiyin, encamped southeast of Zhenjiang, received the envoy’s severed head in his own camp. He smiled faintly and remarked to those around him: “This young crown prince has quite the fierce spirit — rather different from the rest of the Wu Dynasty’s people…”
“A pity,” he sighed.