Summer was gradually settling in. Across the Jiangnan region, still caught in the flames of war, May felt as though a sudden, unexpected winter had descended upon everyone all at once. The state of the realm felt like some fantastical illusion; within the span of just a few days, everyone, one after another, felt first astonishment, then disbelief, then shock… and finally, a despair that sank bone-deep and cold.

On the first day of the fifth month, at Danyang, Jun Wu woke from unconsciousness, feeling something much like this same emotion. That day, the sun blazed fiercely. When he woke, his body still bore his wounds, yet he felt his whole body coursing with boiling-hot blood. His wife came to attend him as he washed and drank porridge; he then prepared to summon Yue Fei and the other generals, but the first to arrive was an envoy from the inner palace, who had rushed from Lin’an and had already been waiting a full day.

By this time, behind the lines, Emperor Zhou Yong, his sister Zhou Pei, and the others had already boarded the dragon ship on the Qiantang River. Affairs in the capital were now overseen by a group of ministers, and what was currently underway was the peace negotiation with the Jurchens.

Orders instructing the various front-line armies to cease all confrontational actions were now being dispatched one after another to the front. The force of over a hundred thousand troops previously sent from Changzhou toward Zhenjiang under General Chen Shao had now halted its advance against Xiyin’s forces, while Xiyin’s Mountain-Razing Guard, along with the forces under Sulaosu, had ceased their slaughter within Zhenjiang and were slowly turning to march south.

Jun Wu, his abdomen still aching from his wound, stared in blank astonishment; it took him considerable effort to gradually understand everything unfolding before him.

In Lin’an itself, the first round of negotiations was already underway. Wushu’s cavalry had originally intended to assault the city, but with Emperor Zhou Yong already aboard ship on the Qiantang River, the court’s ministers had proposed that the Jurchen forces halt their advance before negotiations could continue. The Jurchen peace envoy Wanyan Qingjue, in turn, demanded that all Wu Dynasty forces cease hostilities and provide the Jurchen army with grain and other supplies in exchange.

On this basis for peace, the court dispatched envoys to every front to issue orders for a ceasefire. On the Jurchen side, Wushu kept his cavalry stationed outside the city without attacking, and also relayed word to Zonggan at the Jiangning front—though it appeared Xiyin had no intention of honoring such terms.

The court’s peace negotiations continued nonetheless. After the situation had been explained to him, the inner-palace envoy began urging Jun Wu to return to the capital. Jun Wu sat by his bed in a daze for a long while, then, clutching his stomach, rose with great difficulty. His wife came to his side, but he waved her away.

Trembling, he drew the sword hanging by his bed and walked toward the eunuch, the gleaming point pressed against the man’s chest.

“Say one more word, and I’ll kill you.” The eunuch’s urging fell silent at once.

In the bright light of this May day, what came through the window was not only sunlight, but a silence so quiet it felt almost like an illusion, a faint ringing in the ears. Jun Wu lowered the sword and sat back down, remaining silent for a long while before finally speaking softly. “Please ask Mr. Wenren to come in.”

His wife went out and summoned Wenren Buer. Jun Wu sat with a hand pressed to his forehead, and it was a long while before he spoke, his voice weak and hoarse. “Brother Wenren, you already know everything that’s happened?”

“…Yes.”

“My mind… feels somewhat scrambled, as if I woke from sleep and found nothing was as it should be anymore,” Jun Wu said. “What should I do?”

“For now, the only course is to persuade His Majesty to withdraw his decision. Your Highness’s own words might carry some weight.”

“My father… has been frightened out of his wits, and has already gone off aboard the dragon ship on the Qiantang. How is he to be persuaded? If it could be done at all, my elder sister… she…”

He trailed off. Wenren Buer stepped closer and spoke a few quiet words into his ear. Jun Wu understood.

“Since my sister has already… I don’t know how to persuade Father anymore. Brother Wenren, might I trouble you to draft a letter on my behalf, laying out the stakes plainly for Father, and have this official deliver it. Brother Wenren…” His stomach pained him again; he pressed a hand to it for a moment. “Things having come to this—if Lin’an sues for peace, does that mean… Jiangnan is finished?”

Wenren Buer’s lips moved slightly; he weighed his words for a moment. “I fear… the whole realm may be finished.”

Jun Wu pressed a hand to his abdomen and rose to his feet, walking toward the door in a daze, his wife coming to support him.

What flashed before his eyes still seemed to be the charge and the hot blood of the moment just before he lost consciousness. He felt the arrow wound in his abdomen, saw again the soldiers and common people charging toward the Jurchens—that surging, overwhelming moment had been the one he had longed for most in nearly ten years. But waking from that dream, he found his father fleeing, turning his back on it all.

He walked out in a daze; in the distance, off to one side, stood the walls of Danyang, and here, a great military camp built around a scattering of small houses; farther still, the sprawling refugee camps stretched out densely in every direction. His wife spoke a few words beside him—this was the Zhenjiang army, that the Beiwei Army, and so on. Jun Wu’s mind drifted back more than a decade, to Bianliang, to the moment after the first siege had ended, when he had watched Qin Siyuan thrown into prison—his teacher’s feelings then, and perhaps Wenren Buer’s feelings now, might well have been just like this.

He needed to lead this great army back to Lin’an, to keep his father there.

As this thought crossed his mind, he stopped short. Outside Lin’an, Wushu’s great army had already made camp; in truth, no one could get through that stretch in between.

Send men back, persuade every faction he could, rescue his sister, keep the dragon ship from sailing, do what he could and leave the rest to fate… all manner of thoughts flickered through his mind. He walked slowly this way until he reached a slope beside the buildings, and sat down beneath a sickly-looking tree, half its branches hacked away, casting uneven shade in the afternoon sun. Jun Wu sat on a stone, watching the summer sunlight spill across the land before him.

Before long, his wife spoke beside him: “General Yue has arrived.”

Jun Wu straightened up and had him come forward. Yue Fei, still in his armor, came to pay his respects. Jun Wu smiled faintly. “General Yue, what’s to be done now? This realm… can’t hold much longer.”

“This subordinate has come precisely for this reason.”

“Have you an idea, General?”

“For now, our first priority must naturally be to stabilize the situation in Lin’an. We should send a small contingent to make contact with those in the Grand Princess’s household, doing everything possible to keep His Majesty in place—or failing that, to at least keep the Princess herself there. The crown prince should also write, first and foremost, urging His Majesty to reconsider…”

Having said this, Yue Fei cupped his hands and paused. “And yet, if even the Grand Princess herself has been unable to stabilize the situation in Lin’an, I fear Your Highness’s own intervention may accomplish little more. Your Highness must consider what comes next, should the situation prove truly beyond saving… Given our current state, if His Majesty flees, the hearts of the army and the people across the realm may well be lost entirely. Gentry and officials in every region, faced with the Jurchens, will find themselves in no position to fight. The fall of the entire realm may be imminent—yet the one remaining sliver of hope still lies with Your Highness.”

“General Yue means to say…”

“If His Majesty leaves, half the lords and nobles across the realm will kneel before the Jurchens. But there will certainly be another half, perhaps even the greater half, of loyal and righteous men who, out of long-standing loyalty to our dynasty, will refuse to defect to the Jurchens. Even so, our dynasty will have lost its legitimacy, and stand little chance against the Jurchens in battle. Men of divided loyalty, such as the one who brought down Zhenjiang while Your Highness held it, will likely appear again and again without end. What matters most now is to put our own house in order, so that Your Highness may still command troops capable of fighting. So long as we retain even that capacity, then even if Lin’an kneels and the realm falls, we, south of the Yangtze, will still hold the people’s hearts, and still have room to maneuver, whether to fight on or to withdraw.”

Yue Fei’s words rang out firm and resolute, cutting straight to the point. “Over these past eight years, Your Highness has worked to bring discipline to the armies of the realm, but has, in reality, been forced again and again into concessions and compromises among the various high officials, powerful ministers, and generals. With millions of troops under arms, discipline could never be unified, enforcement could never be made strict—and it was precisely this that allowed Xiyin to exploit the gap in the south. And so this subordinate begs Your Highness, in your capacity as crown prince, to summon whatever high officials can still be gathered, and to seize military authority, tighten oversight, and enforce strict military discipline!”

“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.” A light flashed in Jun Wu’s eyes; he had already risen to his feet. “But if I do this, I fear it will mean a final break with Lin’an, and with the hearts of most of the gentry across the realm.”

“Reporting to Your Highness, if His Majesty flees, I fear the hearts of the realm’s people can no longer be fully relied upon in any case. The only thing Your Highness can still count on is whatever remains within your own grasp.”

Yue Fei’s words, by this point, had become utterly frank, and Jun Wu understood their meaning well enough. Over eight years, the front-line armies he had painstakingly built up had, in practice, been governed most strictly of all under Yue Fei’s own Beiwei Army—so strictly, at times, that it drew criticism—but when the great battle began, this same Beiwei Army had proven the most capable fighting force of them all.

The other forces, such as Han Shizhong’s Zhenhai Army, had likewise managed to shield themselves from much outside interference only by leaning on the crown prince’s authority and Han Shizhong’s own reputation. This time, the more than a hundred thousand troops he had personally led in defending Zhenjiang had still ranked among the elite of the Wu Dynasty’s forces—yet it had taken only one or two traitors within to collapse a defensive line more than a hundred thousand strong, even to shatter the very foundations of the entire Wu Dynasty. The thought of it was almost too painful to bear.

In the past, as crown prince of the Wu Dynasty, even when he managed, through great effort, to preserve the morale of one or two armies under his direct command, he had still, faced with a nation of tens of millions and the countless competing factions within it, been forced into endless compromise and concession. To gain even the slightest additional edge toward victory, he had executed his own brother-in-law, nearly driving his own wife to death from grief. And in the end, it had all proven futile regardless.

Now, though—if his father fled Lin’an, the entire realm would collapse regardless. The whole tangled mess, the countless competing interests of every vested party, was simply beyond his ability to hold together; it would come to ruin one way or another. He no longer needed to bend himself into compromises to hold it all up.

The increasingly fierce sunlight of early May filtered down through the crooked, twisted branches of the tree. Jun Wu pressed a hand against the wound at his waist, his gaze gradually sharpening, hardening into resolve.

“Good.” A killing intent radiated from him. “Time to start killing.”

He strode forward, down the slope.

“General Yue, even if this realm collapses into chaos… you and I will never surrender, even in death.”

Yue Fei cupped his hands. “This subordinate obeys.”

Summer deepened as the days went on, and the mood across the realm began to shift as well.

On the second day of the fifth month, at Danyang, Jun Wu summoned the assembled generals of the Zhenjiang defense force and, with the thirty thousand elite troops of the Beiwei Army as his core, began seizing back military authority and enforcing strict discipline. At the same time, he sent letters persuading the various armies throughout Jiangnan, laying out the current situation and its stakes, hoping that even in the face of such crisis, every faction would put the interests of the Wu Dynasty first, hold firm to their principles, and stand united against the Jurchens.

The purge and reorganization at Danyang began in the most severe form imaginable. At the same time, Xiyin’s and Yinshuke’s forces, ignoring the preconditions of the peace talks, pushed rapidly southward. In the Lin’an court, Wanyan Qingjue, citing that “the negotiators are Marshals Zonggan and Zongbi, who cannot control Xiyin’s forces,” agreed to send an envoy to try to delay or halt the southward advance of Gushen’s troops—though in practical terms, this was, of course, once again nothing more than empty words.

Zhou Yong, having already boarded the dragon ship, showed little concern for the Jurchens’ continued advance southward, and dispatched ceasefire orders in every direction. Over the following days, the various factions centered on the Princess’s household, the crown prince’s household, the Huaxia Army, and the city’s other war-faction forces continued making repeated attempts to intercept and rescue Zhou Yong and Zhou Pei; for a time, Lin’an descended into unrestrained chaos, fighting breaking out everywhere.

On the fifth day of the fifth month, the Dragon Boat Festival commemorating Qu Yuan’s drowning, with confirmation that Xiyin’s forces were drawing steadily closer to Lin’an, Zhou Yong ordered the dragon-ship fleet to set sail, heading out to sea and away from it all. Qin Hui, summoned aboard the dragon ship by Zhou Yong at this moment, thus became one of those who fled the capital. Meanwhile, the negotiations left behind in the capital were entrusted to a group of ministers led by the peace-faction leader Li Nanzhou, whom Zhou Yong hoped could withstand the Jurchens’ pressure “without any further worries weighing on them,” and secure terms of surrender satisfactory enough for the Wu Dynasty.

On the eighth, Xiyin’s forces arrived at Lin’an and began, without fanfare, setting up siege equipment. The negotiations descended into chaos; Wanyan Qingjue pressured Li Nanzhou, who now held the imperial seal in the emperor’s stead, into drafting an edict, and dispatched envoys to summon Han Shizhong away from Jiangning.

On the eleventh day of the fifth month, the envoys heading toward Jiangning were intercepted partway by men dispatched by Crown Prince Jun Wu. At the same time, the army that had just completed its initial reorganization at Danyang began moving toward Jiangning. After ten years of cultivation, Jiangning had become, in effect, Jun Wu’s true stronghold. Zonggan’s army of several hundred thousand lay across the path between them, and the two sides settled into a standoff south of Jiangning.

Meanwhile, orders continued pouring out of the court, forbidding Crown Prince Jun Wu from taking any further military action, prohibiting him from provoking new hostilities with the Jurchens. Jun Wu left behind his own written response, declining to reply otherwise.

Throughout the long middle stretch of the fifth month, across the vast expanse of the Wu Dynasty’s territory, countless people, countless wills, were secretly forming their own alliances behind the scenes. When news of the ceasefire reached Xiangfan, Liu Guangshi looked up to the heavens and let out a long sigh, tears streaming down his aged face—yet he had already resolved to fight to the death rather than surrender. Around this time, news of the internal strife and split within the Huaxia Army, spreading from the southwest, added, to some degree, further weight to the bargaining chips in Jurchen hands.

By late May, every faction’s nerves were stretched to their absolute limit. On the evening of the twenty-sixth of the fifth month, in Lin’an, Wanyan Xiyin had already completed full preparations for the assault on the city; deputy commander of the imperial guard Niu Xingguo and others, in a state of utter desperation, launched a mutiny.

By this point, every humiliating clause of the treaty selling out the realm had already been drafted throughout the court; the city gates of Lin’an stood ready to be opened, while a hundred thousand Jurchen troops outside the walls stirred restlessly, eager to move. The first batch of women rounded up under Jurchen pressure to “comfort the troops” was already being prepared for delivery outside the city—another most brutal repetition of the Jingping humiliation was about to begin.

To mutiny and leave the city meant certain death before a hundred thousand Jurchen troops; to remain within the walls, waiting for the Jurchens to march in unopposed, meant death all the same. The “rebels” of Lin’an, at last, chose to strike one final, desperate blow.

That evening, the two city gates to the west and south of Lin’an were thrown open, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians surged out through them; Jurchen soldiers pursued in hot chase. As night fell, roaring flames engulfed the city of Lin’an. Niu Xingguo and the other generals led their imperial guard troops in an attempt to hold the line outside the city against the pursuing Jurchens, but were soon scattered by Wushu’s cavalry; some soldiers and civilians, carrying explosives and gunpowder, launched suicidal charges against the Jurchen forces.

People scattered and fled under cover of darkness, and a small number of soldiers and civilians managed to survive this way. Along the banks of the Qiantang River south of Lin’an, great masses of people, driven to the water’s edge by their pursuers, plunged into the river; some, having prepared in advance, floated on wooden crates, cabinets, beams, and bamboo rafts, and thereby managed to preserve their lives—but tens of thousands more were swallowed by the waves.

Far more people perished in the slaughter. The forces of Xiyin and Wushu breached the city gates and formally took control of what remained of the Wu Dynasty’s realm, now that Zhou Yong had fled. A humiliation and a massacre even more brutal than the disgrace of Jingping erupted within the walls of Lin’an.

Thus tolled the great collapsing bell that marked the fall of the vast realm of Jianshuo.

That summer, throughout the entire city of Lin’an, tragedies beyond anyone’s ability to fully recount unfolded one after another. Li Nanzhou and the other ministers of the peace faction gathered up the city’s treasures, women, and craftsmen, handing them over to the Jurchen army as repayment for the “debts” of war—a scene much like the earlier disgrace of Jingping, save that this time, there remained few imperial relatives or nobility left in the capital for the Jurchens to humiliate and toy with.

The people of the capital, in this war, lost husbands, lost wives, lost mothers, lost children… After ten years of peace, this unspeakably tragic scene proved to be but a small beginning of the greater catastrophe the whole realm was about to endure.

Wanyan Xiyin walked into the ravaged Golden Bell Hall. Wushu sat upon the imperial throne, toying with a group of Han officials kneeling before him on the floor; seeing Xiyin arrive, he waved a hand, dismissing the officials.

“The great matter of the Wu Dynasty is settled. It’s time to carry out what we agreed upon before.”

Before Wanyan Xiyin, Wushu did not dare remain seated to face him, and so came down from the throne. “The Wu Dynasty’s emperor still lives, the crown prince has not yet been eliminated, and my elder brother is still fighting at Jiangning. This place is three thousand li from the southwest—how is this to be done?”

Wanyan Xiyin’s gaze narrowed slightly, growing cold.

“Little Four, say your thoughts again… once more.”

Wushu spread his hands, stepping back slightly. “Jiangning is still fighting—my brother’s troops can’t simply withdraw from there just yet. The Wu Dynasty emperor has gone out to sea, and their navy is still being pursued for surrender. Once we go after him, I’ll need to intercept him by land as well. Gushen, my brother and I discussed this before—we’ll help you take the southwest with everything we have. Whatever you need, you can have it. The whole realm is ours now, and the people of the Wu Dynasty are already submitting to us. So—here’s how it will be: it’s all yours. Whatever troops, equipment, and supply lines you can bring to bear, take them all—that should be enough to overrun the southwest.”

Xiyin stared at him; Wushu felt a chill under that gaze. “My brother and I destroyed the Wu Dynasty, you and Nianhan will destroy the southwest—all the troops in the realm are now yours. What more do you want? Are you afraid I’ll cause trouble behind your back? I, Wushu, swear on the name of our ancestors—this time, I will absolutely not act against you from behind!”

“…The Mountain-Razing Guard took losses at Zhenjiang. Give me three of your cavalry divisions.”

Having said this, Xiyin turned and left. Wushu stood stunned for a moment behind him.

“…Very well. I wish Gushen a swift and total victory—may the little southwestern rebels be crushed in a single battle!”

…

The realm was falling.

As summer wore on, countless people, amid this chaos, chose which side to stand on. In June, with a traitor’s betrayal, Zonghan broke through the Xiangfan defensive line; Liu Guangshi led a large body of scattered troops southward, establishing a small pocket of resistance. That same month, Chen Fan, astride his white horse and wielding his silver spear, broke through the walls of Changsha, planting the black banner atop the city.

At Jiangning, after more than ten days of standoff, with a two-pronged assault from the Beiwei Army and the Zhenhai Army, Jun Wu broke through the flank of Zongfu’s defensive line and returned to Jiangning, beginning yet another round of severe purges. By this time, the court had already issued a series of edicts stripping Crown Prince Jun Wu of his formal authority—but with the world already plunged into chaos, such edicts no longer carried any meaning.

The Jurchens’ will now swept across the entire realm.

…

Southwest.

The first to arrive were negotiators and envoys urging surrender, dispatched from Zonghan’s army in accordance with Xiyin’s wishes. They carried with them a document, likely drafted by Xiyin himself, listing numerous demands, and arrived at Zhang Village. The document laid out various requirements—that the Huaxia Army submit as vassals to the Jurchens, hand over all its various technologies, surrender the specific craftsmen and technical personnel responsible for them, and order the Huaxia Army to voluntarily cripple itself across every field of technology, among a dizzying array of other demands. In this era, such a “civilized” letter urging surrender was a rare thing indeed.

Ning Yi received the envoy and read through the demands one by one with evident amusement. “Tch, that Xiyin of yours has learned quite a bit from me. Getting more imaginative all the time.”

“Among all the heroes of this present age, only Gushen and Mr. Ning truly understand one another as kindred spirits. Gushen speaks often of Mr. Ning in the southwest, saying that had circumstances placed the two of you within the same nation, you would surely have become the closest of friends. Now that our Jin state has destroyed the Wu Dynasty and unified the realm, only the Black Banner remains in the southwest, a lone pillar unable to support itself alone—and I hear there has recently been internal strife as well. Now, the Wu Dynasty’s million-strong army has joined forces with Marshal Nianhan’s western column, both already sharpening their blades, poised and ready. Gushen, mindful of the common people’s welfare throughout the realm, has therefore left room for negotiation, and hopes Mr. Ning will make the correct decision.”

“Several years ago, at Xiaocang River, that envoy of yours named Fan Hongji wasn’t nearly as good at this sort of talk as you are.” Ning Yi looked at the envoy before him with a smile, then wrote a few characters at the bottom of the thick document and tossed it back. “Do you know why?”

The envoy took the document, casually flipping through it, saying, “Mr. Ning…” Then he saw what Ning Yi had written, and his words trailed off.

At the back of the document were nine characters, casually scrawled.

—None of this is acceptable. Take it back and revise it.

Ning Yi had already walked over, patting him on the shoulder. “That’s because the Huaxia Army is no longer the Huaxia Army it was back at Xiaocang River. Wanyan Xiyin sending you here was only ever meant to test my resolve—you yourself don’t matter in the slightest. What can’t be won on the battlefield can’t be won at the negotiating table either… I had hoped the Wu Dynasty might hold out a while longer, but I see now that’s not to be—so I’ll handle this myself. As for your million-strong army sharpening its blades—go back and tell Nianhan and Xiyin to come themselves. If their western column sets foot in the Chengdu plain, I’ll bury the lot of you.”

He finished speaking these words with perfect calm, and had already left the room. The light of late summer streamed in through the window.

…

Out at sea, it was now the very end of summer. With Zhou Yong’s heart having softened somewhat, Zhou Pei was at last permitted to come out, walking the deck of the dragon ship to clear her mind. At first, the guards around her had kept close watch, but gradually, faced with this silent Grand Princess, they had grown less wary.

On the twenty-fourth of the sixth month, seagulls wheeled overhead. Zhou Pei tilted her head back to watch them, the sea beneath a sky washed clean and blue.

Zhou Yong walked over from not far away, coming to stand beside her. He waved off the nearby attendants, let out a soft sigh, and seemed about to say something.

Zhou Pei rose to her feet, and suddenly ran toward the ship’s railing.

She leapt up, high into the air. A seagull flew past before her eyes, and her body fell toward the deep blue sea below.

A single tear fell through the air as she dropped…

…

In Yunzhong, Tang Minjie finished reading through the various reports arriving from the south, then closed his eyes. Across his stern, unfeeling face, something flickered like light.

“A second Jingping…”

He clenched the paper in his hand, teeth gritted, each word deliberate.

…

Xuzhou.

With the collapse of the Jiangnan defensive line, Liu Chengzong’s forces no longer needed to threaten the Jurchens’ line of retreat, and having already fought for months, now turned north of the Yangtze toward Shandong.

The land of Jin.

The forces of Lou Shuwan and Yu Yulin, under extremely difficult circumstances, launched several counterattacks, and amid the flagging morale of the various factions across the land of Jin, managed to expand their territory somewhat, gaining a brief moment to catch their breath. But by this point, the reserves accumulated during the eras of Tian Hu and Tian Shi had been nearly exhausted, and even harder times lay ahead.

…

At the end of June, in some small, unnoticed corner of the realm that no one was paying attention to, something was already beginning to happen.

In the northwest, ever since the Battle of Xiaocang River, the Jurchens had carried out an utterly merciless massacre across this land, so that for years afterward, plague ran rampant and the land lay bare for a thousand li.

This state of affairs was gradually being forgotten by the world.

At Fuzhou, under the rule of She Keqiu, once the Huaxia Army and the Jurchens had both departed, this greatest gathering place of the northwestern people had, amid the fierce battles raging across the realm, gradually become a relatively peaceful haven, like some hidden land of refuge.

On this day, the sky-swallowing glow of sunset was about to fade. At Wushu Ridge, a post station west of Fuzhou, the old soldier on watch stepped out from his quarters; the warm evening breeze was stirring up the barren sand, when suddenly he felt an ominous tremor.

The old soldier pressed himself to the ground, listening, a look of confusion gradually dawning on his face. A moment later, he saw, at the far edge of the earth, a surging tide of cavalry splitting the ground as it came!

He turned to hurry back the way he had come, but from behind, a figure who had arrived ahead of him leapt high into the air, swinging down a cavalry saber.

A wave of blood surged forth, blossoming open—