A desolate autumn wind blew across the open fields. Black columns of smoke from burning corpses rose into the sky, and the stench of death spread in every direction.

Jiangning, after the great battle, was shrouded in a haze of death.

The lantern-lit festivity and the beating of drums within the city could not mask the pall of grief that hung over the fields outside its walls. Not long before, a million-strong army had clashed and scattered here; countless people had died amid the roar of cannon and the chaos of slaughter, and the survivors had scattered in every different direction.

Some officers led their remaining soldiers back to submit once more to the Wu Dynasty’s new ruler.

Some officers or leaders took the men from their own hometowns with them toward relatively prosperous but out-of-the-way places.

Some soldiers, having already lost all their courage in the great battle, once stripped of their units, dragged their hungry, exhausted bodies down the long road home alone.

This scattering of people was more than anything else a symbol of a world thrown into chaos. Over the following days, the roads and hills stretching hundreds of li outside Jiangning were filled with the sight of routed, fleeing soldiers.

Having been kept like livestock under Jurchen control, the soldiers had long since run out of any means of living, and after the bloody battle at Jiangning, the fleeing men could trust neither the Wu Dynasty nor the Jurchens. On the road, killing for the sake of food broke out quickly.

Men consumed by desperate obsession fell dead along the roads; starving soldiers with formidable skills hid among the hills, hunting their own kind. Some groups of soldiers eager to flee the war zone quickly swallowed up the scattered stragglers around them. In the midst of all this, who knew how many wretched, unspeakable things occurred.

Most of the soldiers who had newly submitted to the new ruler were not properly settled for the time being either. The siege had lasted months and had caused them to miss the autumn harvest; the grain stores within Jiangning were also running low. Jun Wu, Yue Fei, and the others had charged out with the desperate resolve of an army with its boats already burned—in truth, this had already been a counterattack born of utter despair. Even now, before the joy of victory had fully settled in, new problems were already crashing down upon them.

More than four hundred thousand former Wu Dynasty soldiers—and the number was still growing—were defecting and surrendering to this side. The first thing they reached out for was vast quantities of grain, military supplies, and medicine. But in such a short time, Jun Wu’s side could not even scrape together housing for so many people.

And after eleven years and nine months of the Jianshuo era of grinding warfare, corpses had piled up outside Jiangning’s walls, and plague was already spreading. In the encampments where crowds had gathered before, the Jurchens had even repeatedly massacred entire wounded-soldier camps and then burned them to the ground. After the earlier fighting, even the collection and cremation of corpses in the following days had become a problem. Supplies within Jiangning meant for epidemic prevention, such as lime, had quickly run out within two or three days after the battle ended.

All of this was still the lesser trouble. In the truly harsh reality, the biggest problem lay in Wanyan Zongfu’s army, defeated but having fled to Taiping Prefecture.

Although the Jurchen army had suffered heavy losses and fled in disarray under the fierce counterattack of the Zhenhai and Beiwei armies during the mutiny and counterattack of a million men, Wanyan Zongfu himself had not died, and the core of the Jurchen forces had not been broken. Once Zongfu, Zongbi, and the others regrouped and struck back—and if they no longer treated the surrendered Wu Dynasty troops with such inhuman brutality—then Jiangning, bitten again, would likely lose forever the chance to break out with a million men risking everything.

Worse still, the several hundred thousand troops who had newly defected would become a heavy burden on Jun Wu’s side. In the short term, these men could produce no combat strength whatsoever, and even bringing them into the city was a gamble—these men had already starved outside the walls for two months, and were not natives of Jiangning; once inside, still half-starved, it would not be long before they turned on each other within the city, or even sold the city itself for a mouthful of food.

Black smoke rose without pause, sun rising and moon setting, as several hundred thousand people churned about amid the wreckage of the battlefield. Old tents and makeshift shelters were rebuilt into camps once more. Jun Wu, a white cloth tied around his forehead, moved in and out of the city day after day, resting only briefly, while the officials under him were even busier still.

In the first moments after the great battle’s victory, envoys had already been sent out to persuade various parts of the Wu Dynasty. After that came matters of treatment, comfort, reorganization, distribution… The people within the city needed to be rallied and even celebrated with, while outside the walls, the daily expenditure on gruel and medicine flowed out like running water.

Three days after this great victory, the advisors, who had already begun turning their gaze toward the future, gathered their various views and reported them up. Jun Wu’s eyes were bloodshot, red and swollen. By the evening of the eleventh day of the ninth month, Shen Ruxin came up to the city tower to bring Jun Wu his meal, and found him standing silently in the crimson glow of the setting sun, gazing off into the distance.

Shen Ruxin came forward to pay her respects. Jun Wu remained silent for a long while before he seemed to come back to himself. A servant set up a table on the tower, and Shen Ruxin laid out a simple meal. Jun Wu sat in the sunlight, staring blankly at the bowl and chopsticks in his hands and the few small dishes on the table, his eyes growing redder still, his jaw clenched, unable to speak.

The faint sound of celebratory gongs drifted from within the city.

Shen Ruxin said, “Your Majesty, we’ve won the battle after all, and you’re about to ascend the throne and set the reign title. Why is it that—”

Jun Wu’s hand, holding his chopsticks, swept out. “Ascend the throne, ascend the throne, ascend the throne! What kind of emperor am I! What right do I have to be emperor!”

His reaction startled Shen Ruxin, and she hurriedly rose to pick up the fallen chopsticks, asking quietly, “Your Majesty, what’s wrong?” For the first two days after the victory, Jun Wu had been exhausted but also happy. Now, though, it was as though something had finally crushed him.

“…We’re going to abandon the city.” After a long silence, Jun Wu finally set down his bowl and spoke this single sentence. He rose, swaying, and walked unsteadily to the doorway of the tower room, his tone forcibly even. “There isn’t enough food.”

“…After defeating the Jurchens, was nothing at all taken?” Shen Ruxin asked quietly.

“Several hundred thousand men charged out like starving ghosts—whatever could be seized was either already divided up or burned by the Jurchens themselves… Even if we could keep Zongfu’s supply lines, it wouldn’t do much good. The more than four hundred thousand people outside the walls are nothing but a burden. If the Jurchens come again, there’s nowhere we can go. To the southwest is Taiping Prefecture, held by Zongfu. To the east, Zhenjiang is already ruins. To the south we’d only run straight into the Jurchens. To the north, across the Yangtze, we don’t even have enough boats…”

Jun Wu went on, “We’re three months too late. The Wu Dynasty’s prestige is gone. Most of Jiangnan has surrendered. Even where there might be loyal hearts left, we cannot stay in this region for long. The Jurchens hold the advantage of the autumn harvest, their momentum is unstoppable. General Yue and the others all say the same—I can only flee, I must never again let myself be besieged by the Jurchens, or wherever I try to hold, I’ll only be waiting for the Jurchens’ momentum to grow ever stronger… I risked my life, won the battle, and yet all I can do is run. Ruxin, do you know what will happen to the people of Jiangning once I flee?”

He walked out through the doorway. From the high watchtower, one could see the walls below, and the close-packed rooftops and houses of Jiangning within. The walls, having endured a year of bloody war, looked especially majestic in the setting sun; the soldiers standing atop them wore worn armor, yet carried about them an air of boundless weariness and boundless resolve.

“I grew up in Jiangning since I was a child. During my ten years as Crown Prince, I lived here most of the time too. I fought to the death to defend Jiangning, and the people here treat me as one of their own—some of them trust me the way they’d trust their own child. So these past few months, no matter how hard things got in the city, they never spoke a word of complaint. We’ve burned our boats, fought to this point, and now… I have to ascend the throne before their eyes… and then run away?”

As he said this, his gaze turned sorrowful, and Shen Ruxin already understood fully. She could not weigh such matters herself; for her too, this was an impossible nightmare to decide. “Truly… there’s no way to hold it?”

“There’s no grain in the city. Perhaps, by resorting to cannibalism, we could hold out a year or so. In the past, people said that if Wuqimai died, there might be a sliver of hope. But the fighting has reached this point now—once Jiangning is besieged, even if Wuqimai died, they wouldn’t easily withdraw.” Jun Wu closed his eyes. “…All I can do is try to gather as many boats as possible, and get people across the Yangtze, to flee for their lives, each on their own…”

He stood there on the watchtower for a while as the sun set, its last light lingering only a moment more. Lights came on across the city, illuminating its silhouette, the cold glint of armor upon the walls, the antique, elegant houses within the city, the flowing water and small bridges of the Qinhuai River—all the places he had grown up in, the places young Ning Yi had once looked upon with fresh wonder.

“I know… what’s right, and I know what I should do…” Jun Wu’s voice came from his throat, slightly hoarse. “Back then… my teacher spoke to his men at Xia Village, and said: you’ve risked your lives once, won one victory, and that’s hard enough—but don’t think that means you’ve won. You have to win ten times, a hundred times, endure a hundred, a thousand hardships before this is over… On the seventh, I thought that once I’d risked everything, it would be over. But now I understand, Ruxin—winning was the hardest part, and ahead of us lie a hundred, a thousand more hardships still… I understand it in my head…”

“But even understanding it…” he clenched his jaw, “…they’ve already suffered so much.”

Jun Wu remembered the arrow that had flown at him outside Zhenjiang, the moment it pierced his stomach, when he had thought, “is this all there is.” He had thought that from then on he would fear nothing, grieve over nothing. But of course that wasn’t how it was. Having crossed one hardship, he could now see the hundred, the thousand obstacles still ahead. This evening was, perhaps, the first time he had wept as a ruler.

That night, he remembered his teacher’s existence and summoned Wenren Bu’er, asking after his progress in finding members of the Huaxia Army. Earlier, in the surrendered-soldier camps outside Jiangning, the men secretly organizing and inciting rebellion had clearly noticed the activity of another force at work. When the great battle began, a great many people of unknown identity had taken part in persuading surrendered officers and soldiers to turn.

After the battle, Jun Wu had arranged for someone to make contact with them. He had originally thought that, now that he had ascended the throne, many things would be different, and contact would surely go smoothly. But strangely, after several days had passed, he still had not managed to reach his teacher’s men from “Zhuji.”

It was not until the evening of the thirteenth of the ninth month that Jun Wu finally received, at his residence, a lean, gaunt man brought in by Wenren Bu’er. This man’s name was Jiang Yuan, originally a mid-level member of the Huaxia Army operating in this region.

In conversation with him, Jun Wu learned that because the Wu Dynasty’s collapse had come so swiftly and abruptly, Zhuji had already risked exposing its own identity in order to protect some of its people. Especially during this great battle at Jiangning, Ling Zhiguang, who had originally been sent by Ning Yi to handle affairs in the Lin’an region, had already died, and Ying Hou, another person in charge on the Jiangning side, was also gravely wounded and unconscious, with no telling yet whether he would wake. The rest of the surviving members had, after gradually reestablishing contact with one another, decided to meet with Jun Wu.

Jun Wu nodded, and from the man’s seemingly simple account, he could guess at how much had happened behind it.

“…Originally, when Mr. Ning issued the order to root out traitors early this year and sent us out here, it was in hopes of firming the resolve of the people of the Wu Dynasty to resist the Jurchens. But as it turns out, we failed in our duty, and instead were exploited by men like Wanyan Xiyin…”

As Jiang Yuan spoke, Jun Wu waved a hand. “This is not your fault. Your mobilization earlier this year, and old hero Fulu’s, helped us a great deal—morale in the army surged, and that is no idle claim. It’s just that success requires everyone pulling together, while ruin can be brought about by only a few rats. The Wu Dynasty brought this failure upon itself; none of it can be blamed on you.”

“Your Majesty is understanding and fair—this is the Wu Dynasty’s good fortune.” Jiang Yuan, expressionless, cupped his hands in thanks.

“…Your Mr. Ning in the southwest taught me many things in the past too. Now that… I am about to ascend the throne, there’s much we can discuss. I’ve already sent someone to fetch medicine. However many of you there are here, if there’s anything else you need help with, please speak freely. I know you sent many people out earlier—if you need food, we still have some…”

“…We have enough food.” Jiang Yuan cupped his hands, his eyes trembling slightly. “There just aren’t many people left.”

His words were short and cruel. Jun Wu opened his mouth but could not speak. Then he saw the previously expressionless Jiang Yuan force a smile and explain, “Actually… most of our people left for Changsha at the end of May to prepare for battle. The two teams that stayed behind to assist Your Majesty here… we have enough to eat.”

Jun Wu nodded. By the end of May the Wu Dynasty had already shown clear signs of decline, and by June it had begun collapsing across the board. After that, Chen Fan had launched a surprise attack on Changsha, and the Huaxia Army was already preparing for full-scale war with the Jurchens. He had summoned the Huaxia Army members before him harboring some faint hope—hoping his teacher had left some hidden resource here, that he might not have to choose to abandon Jiangning, that there might be some other way forward… But now, Jun Wu pressed his fists tightly against his knees and suppressed the thought before it could leave his lips.

The oppression in his heart eased, strangely, all the more for it.

At this moment, with the realm collapsing, who could afford such luxuries? These Huaxia Army men before him, his teacher in the southwest—which of them had not walked out of utter desperation?

“I ascend the throne at fifteen… but Jiangning has already become a graveyard. I will stand with General Yue and the others to hold off the Jurchens as long as we can, and try to evacuate everyone we can from the city. All of you have helped a great deal—when the time comes… please, take care of yourselves. If possible, I will arrange carriages and boats for you to leave. Do not refuse.”

On the fifteenth of the ninth month, Jun Wu ascended the throne within the city of Jiangning and set the reign title as “Zhenxing.”

With the new ruler enthroned, Jiangning’s streets were a sea of people, festival lanterns like winding dragons. Jun Wu rode past on the imperial carriage, along streets he had long known by heart, watching the crowds cheering by the roadside. He reached out and gripped his dragon robe. Beneath the sunlight, his heart was awash with a sorrow that cut like a blade…

At the same time, in the cities large and small around Changsha, the first round of slaughter had already turned into rivers of blood.