The winter spanning the transition from the tenth to the eleventh year of the Jianshuo era had not been especially cold; Jiangnan had seen only a few light snowfalls. But by February of the eleventh year, a rare cold snap arrived abruptly, as if to make up for winter’s absence, descending upon most of the Central Plains and the Wu Dynasty’s territory. It began in mid-February and lasted only a few days, but overnight, thick frost formed beneath eaves and under trees by morning.

Countless flower buds and tree shoots froze to death in a single night.

This unusual late-spring cold snap lasted several days, but in Jiangnan, the pace of the war showed no sign of slowing. On the eighteenth of February, near Danyang southeast of Zhenjiang, Wu Dynasty commander Lu Haifeng assembled over two hundred thousand troops to besiege the fifty-thousand-strong Jurchen elite force led by Xiyin and Yinshuke — only to suffer a crushing defeat and rout.

In the years since cannons became widespread, the shape of warfare had begun to shift. In the past, infantry formed dense squares precisely so that soldiers couldn’t flee during a clash; but once cannons could be massed to fire in concentration, this style of fighting became untenable, and the importance of small, elite units grew more pronounced. Within the Wu Dynasty’s armies, aside from Han Shizhong’s Zhenhai Army and Yue Fei’s Beiya Army, few soldiers remained capable of charging headlong through cannon fire in open field combat; most units could only muster real fighting strength while defending with the advantage of terrain.

Lu Haifeng’s forces, however, were not quite so lacking. The troops directly under his command were among the new armies trained up under Jun Wu’s patronage since the dynasty’s move south. Lu Haifeng ran a strict, disciplined command, favoring training under harsh weather and terrain — heavy snow, driving rain — having his soldiers push forward and fight through Jiangnan’s mud. His troops bore a markedly different character from the Wu Dynasty’s old pampered soldiery of years past.

Since Xiyin and Yinshuke’s elite Jurchen force had arrived, the fighting in Jiangnan had grown even fiercer and more tense. Rumors spread throughout the capital — and indeed across the entire realm — that the eastern and western armies had set aside their old rivalries entirely, determined to crush the Wu Dynasty once and for all. This resolute display, combined with Xiyin’s and various spies’ schemes stirring trouble within the capital, had left the Wu Dynasty’s situation exceptionally tense.

Before this, some might still have held out hope of exploiting the rivalry between the Jurchen eastern and western courts to their advantage. But by now, countless people within the capital were already lobbying various factions or seeking their own way out. Against this backdrop — and out of confidence in his own army’s training — Lu Haifeng launched his offensive against Xiyin and Yinshuke’s forces.

This large-scale offensive proceeded with the approval of the leadership headed by Jun Wu. Compared to the inevitably long task of crushing Zongfu’s main force head-on, if this elite force from the original western army — having marched a great distance, facing certain logistical difficulties, and quite possibly harboring friction with Zongfu and Zongbi — could be broken, the crisis facing the capital might well be resolved at a stroke.

Of course, breaking a force as renowned throughout the realm as Xiyin and Yinshuke’s elite troops would be no easy task. But if they didn’t even dare to attack, then all this talk of ten years spent training the army would amount to nothing but a joke. On the other hand, even if Xiyin and Yinshuke couldn’t be driven back in a single engagement, repeated assaults — two, three times over, with three hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, even a million troops — could grind the enemy down like a millstone. But before any of that, the armies throughout Jiangnan needed, first and foremost, the resolve to fight.

The attack was launched during heavy rain, with the late-spring cold snap still lingering. Two hundred thousand troops advanced through the bone-chilling rain to challenge the enemy. Such weather neutralized the power of all firearms entirely; Lu Haifeng led his own sixty-thousand-strong vanguard to meet the three thousand Tushanwei troops who advanced to meet the challenge without hesitation.

In the pouring rain, even arrows lost their force, and both armies were pulled back into the simplest rules of close combat. Formations of spears and shield-and-blade fighters spread across the darkened sky like a rising tide; the Wu Dynasty’s two hundred thousand troops seemed to blanket the entire landscape, their war cries drowning out even the thunder overhead. Xiyin’s Tushanwei met them head-on without flinching, and the two armies crashed together in the mud.

In a sense, had the Wu Dynasty’s army ten years earlier possessed the resolve and discipline of Lu Haifeng’s troops, the battle for Bian Liang back then would surely have turned out differently. But even so, this did not mean the Wu Dynasty’s current army had reached the standard of the realm’s finest fighting force — the Tushanwei, who had followed Zonghan for years, still carried with them the same proud, unyielding spirit that had once made the Jurchens famous for being “unbeatable at ten thousand strong.”

After an hour of direct clash and struggle, Lu Haifeng’s army broke and routed; within half a day, the entire battlefield had collapsed into a rolling retreat, with the Tushanwei and Yinshuke’s forces pursuing the fleeing Wu Dynasty troops for over ten li, inflicting countless casualties. Lu Haifeng himself refused to retreat during the fighting, ultimately charging into the fray and having one of his arms severed, surviving only because his personal guards fought desperately to save him.

If, in this brutal engagement, Xiyin’s side had shown a bravery no less fierce than in years past, the Wu Dynasty’s own willingness to fight to the death had nonetheless brought something of value as well.

On the nineteenth, as the casualty figures came in, Yinshuke’s face was grim as he spoke to Xiyin: “Just as the Valley Spirit predicted — this young crown prince’s resolve is no trifling thing. If the Wu Dynasty’s armies keep fighting this determinedly every time, it won’t be long before we really do need to head home.”

Xiyin’s expression remained grave and calm. “Even a dying rabbit will bite. In a dynasty as vast as the Wu, there will always be some men like this. This one battle alone will give others plenty to work with.”

On the twentieth, at the Zhenjiang encampment, Jun Wu praised and encouraged Lu Haifeng’s fight to the death, petitioning the court to grant him a noble title and a rank promotion.

“Before us stands the strongest, most ferocious army in this entire realm! There’s no shame in losing to them! I’m not afraid! They destroyed Liao, swallowed the Central Plains, brought our Wu Dynasty’s homeland to ruin, enslaved our people! And now they dare send fifty thousand men into Jiangnan! I’m not afraid of losing, and I’m not afraid of you losing battles! From this day forward, I want you to fight with everything you have! If we must fight every single day, we will! I want them dead — I want not a single one of these fifty thousand to make it back to the Jin state! Every one of you who takes the field, I will petition for your reward—”

Word of Jun Wu’s declaration would soon spread throughout all of Jiangnan. At the same time, Yue Fei crushed the one hundred thirty thousand-strong Han army led by Li Yangzong near Taiping Prefecture, taking over sixty thousand prisoners. Beyond executing certain “ringleaders” who had committed extensive bloodshed during earlier massacres, Yue Fei proposed to the court that the surrendered Han troops otherwise be granted amnesty, sparing all but the chief culprits.

With both sides locked in fierce combat, and given that some of these Central Plains Han troops had committed extensive massacres and looting in Jiangnan earlier, this proposal sparked heated internal debate; in Lin’an, Vice Minister of War Liu Yan and others directly petitioned to impeach Yue Fei. But though these Central Plains Han troops had behaved with extreme brutality once in Jiangnan, in truth their will to fight was far from resolute. Given the suffering endured across the Central Plains these past years, even life as a soldier had grown wretched; if Jiangnan could offer amnesty, or even just a full meal, it was easy to imagine most of these Han troops would surrender at the first opportunity.

Before long, Jun Wu adopted and endorsed Yue Fei’s proposal, offering amnesty on the battlefield to any Han troops willing to return south, so long as they had not personally committed massacres — all past conduct otherwise to be forgiven.

At the same time, in response to Xiyin’s proposed “peace talks” with the Wu Dynasty, before the end of February a corresponding piece of news arrived from the southwest, deliberately promoted, joining the swirling chorus of voices already stirring throughout Jiangnan…

In Jiangning, the sky lay heavy beneath layers of leaden clouds. Wu Qilong and the prefectural secretary Liu Jing took their seats in a bustling teahouse, and before long overheard the conversation at a nearby table.

“…Speaking of how things stand out there right now, our Crown Prince really is something fierce — anyone would have to tip their hat to him… That General Lu lost, sure, but our men weren’t afraid. I heard Changzhou’s mobilized another hundred-thousand-odd troops now, to join up with the Zhenjiang army and surround Xiyin… We’re not afraid of losing. What we’re afraid of is those Jin dogs making it back alive…”

“…There’s fierce killing going on in the greenwood too, you know. The Jurchens are stirring up trouble in the chaos, killing plenty of people on the sly. I heard that half a month ago, there was a string of clashes in Xuanzhou — several hundred dead — and the local strongman Song Dakun’s whole family got wiped out, with a note left behind claiming it was a traitor purge. But actually, it turns out that was the Jurchens’ own lackeys doing the killing… Later, old master Fulu led men over to ambush and kill the Jin dogs responsible — that part’s absolutely true. Plenty of people died in Xuanzhou over those few days…”

“…Actually, if you want to talk about who really deserves killing, you’ve got to look at the southwest. I heard that at the end of January, the southwest put out a roster — clearly naming who’d done what evil, who needed killing. The Huang family in Changsha, you know, had a fellow named Huang Shichu who served two years as Minister of Personnel — while in office, he lined his pockets shamelessly. He got removed eventually, but by then he’d built up a whole network of cronies over those years, and these last few years he’s even been passing intelligence to the Jurchens, secretly urging people to surrender. Absolute scum, the whole rotten family…”

“…He owns countless fertile fields around Changsha, with over a thousand servants and retainers in his household — a real local tyrant. Once the southwest’s traitor-purge order went out, he knew something was wrong. I heard he set up a whole defensive perimeter around his estate, on edge day and night — but by the end of January, the Black Banner Army showed up, over a hundred of them… I’m telling you, that night, once the traitor-purge notice went up, everything fell apart. They didn’t even last long enough for the local garrison to arrive…”

The crowd in the teahouse huddled together, the speaker lowering his voice as though sharing some great secret, everyone else murmuring along in the same hushed tone.

“…Say what you will, that man in the southwest may be a rebel against heaven and earth, but when it comes to matters like this, he really is a proper man. You all know — that beast Xiyin tried to get us to surrender to him earlier, wanting us to cede everything west of Xiangyang all the way to Sichuan, so Nian Han could march on Chengdu and hit the Black Banner Army. Well, heh, it didn’t take long before word of it reached the southwest — I heard that just a few days ago, this Master Ning wrote directly to Nian Han, and the letter said simply: wait for you to come, because you’ll be buried here for good. Tsk, tsk…”

“…If those two really go at each other, who even knows how that would turn out…”

Amid this buzz of conversation, Liu Jing smiled at Wu Qilong. “You think there might be Black Banner people among them?”

“Hard to say.” Wu Qilong cradled his teacup, shaking his head with a smile.

Jiangning was the birthplace of that demon in the heart, Ning Yi, and also the former residence of Prince Kang, Zhou Yong. In years past, people in Jiangning had avoided speaking openly of the man now in the southwest, but ever since Zongfu crossed the river to attack Jiangning at the start of this year — nearly two months ago now — the city’s residents had come to view this notorious rebel rather differently, his name coming up in conversation more and more often. After all, in this world as it now stood, the only people who could truly stand their ground against the Jurchens were, it seemed, those fierce rebels from the southwest — and so Ning Yi, a son of Jiangning himself, along with a number of other admirable heroic figures, was often invoked now to raise morale.

Among those likewise mentioned was Princess Chengguo, who had died in the previous fall of Jiangning, along with her husband Kang Xian.

“I’ve heard, Brother Wu, that you had some old dealings with this Ning Yi? I wonder if what people say about him matches what you actually experienced?” Secretary Liu Jing, who had come from elsewhere and had usually treated the subject of Ning Yi with some caution, finally asked. Wu Qilong fell silent a moment, glancing toward a table and chairs by the window.

“If he ever set his sights on you, he really would take a layer of skin off you, that much is true.”

“Oh? Brother Wu was targeted by him?”

“His wife married into a cloth merchant family, and I’m a cloth merchant too — we had our conflicts, though fortunately never to the point of life or death.” Wu Qilong smiled. “Cost me more than half my family’s fortune, though.”

Hearing this, Liu Jing across from him raised his eyebrows with growing interest, pressing him for more. Wu Qilong obliged, recounting bit by bit the old affair of the imperial merchant appointment — how the two families’ rivalry had led him to partner with the ambitious steward of the Su family, Xi Junyu, and how that had eventually led to the assassination attempt against Su Boyong. All manner of small and large affairs, which, looking back on it now, couldn’t help but stir a certain wistful sigh — though against the backdrop of this world-upending war, even these old stories had taken on a certain entertaining quality.

“Honestly, thinking back on it now, that Xi Junyu was far too ambitious — some of what he did, I never would have guessed at. If my family hadn’t only wanted the money, and hadn’t gotten so deeply entangled in the whole affair, I doubt it would have ended with just losing half our fortune…”

“So… how exactly did you end up losing half your fortune?” Liu Jing asked, his face full of anticipation.

Wu Qilong continued the tale of the imperial merchant affair — how they’d taken the formula, seized the imperial merchant title, and infuriated Ning Liheng enough that he’d written a scathing poem about it. “…And then, later, one day, the cloth just started fading.”

Hearing this, Liu Jing blinked, then his face lit up with understanding. “…Ruthless. And then what? How did they deal with you two after that?”

“…Later, one day, right here in this very teahouse — see, over there, that spot — he was sitting there reading. I went over to greet him, testing his reaction. He seemed distracted at first, then suddenly seemed to snap back to attention, looked at me and said: ‘Oh, the cloth’s faded, has it?’ At that moment… well, Brother Liu can imagine… I wanted to kill him…”

Both men glanced toward that window; the sky had turned overcast, looking as though rain might fall soon, and now two thin men sat drinking tea in that same spot. Wu Qilong, his hair streaked with gray now, carrying a scholarly, refined air, seemed almost able to see that afternoon from more than ten years ago — bright sunlight outside the window, Ning Yi flipping through the pages of a book — followed shortly after by the carving-up of the Wu family’s fortunes.

Wu Qilong had been just past thirty then, facing the greatest setback of his life; the Wu family, once Jiangning’s foremost cloth merchant, had nearly collapsed entirely. But not long after, Ning Yi, having gone north, joined forces with Jiangning’s merchants to expand into the capital, and later, through disaster relief efforts, Wu Qilong came into contact with the Qin faction’s influence; later still he earned the favor of Princess Chengguo and her husband, Consort Kang Xian — both being from Jiangning themselves, Kang Xian had treated the Wu family rather well.

At the start of the third year of Jianshuo, when Wuzhu broke through Jiangning, that old man had refused to abandon the city he’d lived in his whole life, and died when the enemy troops entered; the Princess Chengguo’s estate was burned to the ground shortly after. Not long after that, Wu Qilong brought his family back to Jiangning, rebuilt the Wu household, and eventually secured most of the court’s military uniform contracts. When the Jurchens came south, he donated more than half his family’s fortune to support the army — and even now, the Wu family’s holdings still exceeded what they’d once had, by several times over.

Much of what happened in between, of course, he had no need to share with Liu Jing — but thinking of it now, time seemed vast and endless, flowing past like fine threads before his eyes. Compared to the present, those earlier days had, in truth, been more peaceful still.

Even now, in the southwest, this man capable of standing against the entire realm — Ning Yi — probably found himself missing, more than anything, those quiet days once spent reading in this very teahouse.

So Wu Qilong thought to himself.

Before long, a great tremor rolled in from the direction of the city wall, followed by a surge of chaotic, panicked shouting…