How does one describe the beginning of a war?

It is like the ordinary, endless life you have always lived—on some day within that long, nearly tedious stretch of existence, you have almost grown accustomed to simply possessing everything as your due. You walk, talk, eat, drink, till the fields, harvest, sleep, make repairs, chat, play, brush past your neighbors—in this day-after-day existence, you see the same unchanging scenery that seems as if it has always been and always will be…

Then someone suddenly wrenches you out of that taken-for-granted world.

There is no way to be mentally prepared for it—that, of course, is something no amount of advance preparation could ever provide. You feel anger, rage… and then what you see is your neighbor’s severed head and crimson blood. Your mind, your very soul, cannot yet accept or contain what has happened. In your long life, one that seemed to carry within it the eternal principles of heaven and earth, the most blood you had ever seen was the aftermath of neighbors shoving each other in a fight, or perhaps the cheering crowd at a county execution of some bandit killer. Does such evil truly exist in this world? Why has it arrived on this particular day? Why must it be you, born into this world, who encounters it?

To fully comprehend all this requires a long passage of time…

…

Zhou Yuanpu was a minor landowner living on the outskirts of Qingchuan County, west of Jianmen Pass. The Zhou family had lived in Qingchuan for generations; an ancestor had once passed the imperial examinations, and the family, living in this small locale, owned several hundred mu of fine farmland—by the standards of the surrounding area, they could be considered a family with a tradition of scholarship.

Though close to the formidable Jianmen Pass, the southwest region had gone two hundred years without experiencing war. The terrain leaving Jiange toward Sichuan was rugged, and occasional bandit trouble occurred in the mountains, but never on a large scale. In recent years, both the interest groups trading with the southwest and Si Zhongxian, guarding Jianmen Pass, had deliberately maintained order along this route, making places like Qingchuan as peaceful and untroubled as some paradise beyond the world.

Zhou Yuanpu, now twenty-four, had inherited a reasonably prosperous family estate, taken a wife and a concubine, and had one son and one daughter—the daughter six years old, the son four. Life had proceeded smoothly and happily all along.

None of this had been lost gradually.

In the preceding days, people in the surrounding villages and counties had occasionally spoken of that seemingly distant war—some spoke of the Jurchens’ cruelty and considered whether to flee; others said that no matter who took control of the land, wouldn’t they still need people to stay and grow grain?

Such discussions were only scattered and sporadic, not enough to provoke overreaction in most people. Zhou Yuanpu, too, only gave the matter serious thought a few times in passing.

On the deep night of October 17th, he was suddenly dragged from his bed in a groggy half-sleep. Most of the bandits who burst into the courtyard still looked like Han soldiers, except for a few leading figures dressed in strange foreign garb. By this time, the village outside was already filled with wailing and crying; these men apparently believed Zhou Yuanpu, given his relatively well-off household, was worth bringing the Jurchen “lords” along to plunder.

Zhou Yuanpu, along with his wife, concubine, children, and servants, was dragged out of the house. The Han man leading the group asked him where his stored grain was, where the family’s money and valuables were hidden. Zhou Yuanpu, still dazed and confused, hesitated—but the foreigners said little; they dragged out one of the household’s servants, hung him from a tree, and cut open his belly with a knife right there. The bloody scene terrified everyone present.

Zhou Yuanpu then revealed where the household’s stored grain was hidden, and where the paintings, antiques, gold and silver were kept, weeping as he said: “I’ll give you everything, just don’t kill anyone.” As the men went to search and plunder, the foreigners dragged his wife toward the house.

His wife screamed and struggled; one of the foreigners slapped her hard across the head, and the woman’s skull struck the stone steps—blood spilled from her mouth, and her eyes immediately went blank and unfocused. Seeing her mother in this state, his daughter rushed forward, clinging to the man’s leg, trying to bite him; the foreigner killed the little girl with a single stroke of his knife, then dragged his concubine inside.

The concubine, not daring to resist, was taken by several foreigners in succession, then by others who took their turns as well. His wife lay convulsing on the ground, her eyes still seeming to register something. Zhou Yuanpu tried to go to her but was knocked down; he clutched his four-year-old son tightly, the boy already completely unresponsive, and his mind could only think: could this possibly be some nightmare from the night?

The darkness grew ever thicker; the wailing and crying outside gradually grew faint. Zhou Yuanpu never saw his concubine again after that. His wife, blood still on her head, lay beneath the courtyard eaves, her gaze seeming to look at him, and at their young son as well. Zhou Yuanpu fell to his knees weeping, begging—before long, he was dragged out of this bloody courtyard. He clutched his young son tightly to his chest; the last thing he saw was his wife lying beneath the cold eaves. He never saw his concubine inside the house again.

Mist rose along the long mountain road; people were bound with rope and driven together. Along the way forward, others were killed by the roadside.

All of it felt utterly unreal.

In the daze of the days that followed, the thought crossed Zhou Yuanpu’s mind more than once: was his daughter dead? Was his wife dead? Images flashed through his mind of people being disemboweled—could such scenes possibly belong to this world of men?

Hadn’t they said—no matter whose territory this became, people would still be needed to stay and grow grain?

He had given them grain, given them treasures, given everything he had saved. Why wasn’t it enough?

The mist in the mountains came and went. He carried his son along the slippery mountain paths, occasionally given some watery gruel like pig slop. The child seemed to have been frightened into a stupor, and did not cry much.

They followed the army onward, and at some point—he couldn’t say when—strange things began appearing before their eyes: the low, ancient walls of a county town, rows of trenches on the hills outside, the endless black rows of military banners. They were herded together, kept under watch for a day or two, and then someone began driving them forward.

…

Huangming County town.

Watching the enemy position across from him begin to stir, Pang Liu’an, standing atop the city wall, lowered his telescope.

The entire Huaxia Fifth Army’s Second Division, having marched from Zizhou, had now completed its defensive deployment here. Over the past several days, Jurchen forces had arrived in successive waves; among the forest of banners visible across the way, it was clear that the veteran Jurchen general Balishu’s core force was responsible for pressing the assault at the Huangming County battlefield.

The open ground and hills in front of Huangming County town could not accommodate too large a force; as Jurchen troops arrived in successive waves, trees on the surrounding hillsides were felled, quickly transformed into defensive works and palisades. Hot air balloons rose on both sides, each watching for the other’s movements.

While observing from the city wall, Pang Liu’an could also faintly make out enemy generals patrolling the slopes across the way. Both sides were mobilizing for battle; the Huaxia Army soldiers responsible for defending the positions inside and outside Huangming County town went about their preparations in silence, while in the enemy camp across the way, occasional formations of fierce warriors could be seen gathering and roaring.

Siege equipment and catapult carts were also, visibly within range, being rapidly assembled.

The direct confrontation with the strongest main force of this era’s most formidable army was now formally coming into view.

On the morning of October 25th, Balishu issued his order within the camp.

“Test them.”

The civilian population serving as cannon fodder was then driven forward.

Pang Liu’an lowered his telescope, clenching his fist. “Damn it.”

The gun ports atop the wall adjusted their angles slightly. War drums sounded.

…

On the battlefield where the two armies faced off, people began to wail and scream.

Zhou Yuanpu, holding his son, found himself, without realizing it, pushed to the very front by the crushing crowd. On both sides, the sound of grim, battle-ready voices rang out.

Zhou Yuanpu’s mind cleared somewhat.

“Let my child go—”

He lifted his four-year-old son high, screaming with all his remaining strength before the two armies. But countless others were screaming too, and his voice was instantly drowned out.

Before long, the four-year-old child was trampled to death in the crush and chaos.

In the space of a fleeting moment, the distance between one’s fate and another’s could span heaven and earth. Within less than half an hour of the Battle of Huangming County beginning on October 25th, the entire family that Zhou Yuanpu had once served as the pillar of had utterly vanished from this world. There was no restraint, no mercy shown toward women and children.

This was but a microcosm of what thousands upon thousands of families and individuals near Jianmen Pass experienced; even those who happened to survive would find this experience utterly transforming the rest of their lives.

And yet, no matter how immense the anger, none of it would stir even the slightest ripple on the battlefield before it. Beneath this sky, people carrying the interests, allegiances, and wills of countless families from every corner of the realm were now colliding head-on.

That winter, in the final year of the Wu Dynasty’s Jianshuo era, the great battle that erupted among the mountains of the southwest, deciding the fate of the entire realm, was at once a dirge sung for an empire that had endured for over two hundred years, and the sound of a new era unfolding amid the very eruption that gave it birth. Like a great river flowing from afar, it surged forward turbulently, yet remained steady and substantial.

People knew that all the accumulation, all the silence, would be laid bare here.

For this battle, the Jurchens had made every preparation.

With Wanyan Zonghan’s order given, armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands began advancing methodically forward. By this point, the first waves of engineering troops had already surveyed and constructed the roads, and the vanguard forces, with Jurchen elites as their core, had already occupied key positions along the way.

The two roads from Jianmen Pass to Huangming County town and to Yushui Creek each stretched over fifty li; these mountain paths, neither particularly long nor short, had previously borne only the traffic of merchant caravans, but under the weight of hundreds of thousands of troops, they immediately proved fragile and inadequate.

Just three days after the army formally broke camp, the vanguard forces led by Balishu and Elili had each reached their designated engagement positions and begun selecting sites to establish camp. Countless troops stretched into a long dragon winding through dozens of li of mountain roads; the winter mountain air was cold and damp, and the once reasonably solid mountain paths quickly turned to mud—but generals like Han Qixian and Gao Qingyi had long since made preparations for exactly this.

Engineering troops, together with the better-integrated elite Han forces, quickly filled in earth, repaired roads, and compacted foundations. At relatively open points along the dozens of li of mountain road—places like Shili Ji, Canghuo Post Station, and Huangtou Cliff, where people had originally settled—Jurchen forces established camps, then set the Han troops to work felling trees, leveling ground, and setting up checkpoints.

Even if the Huaxia Army truly proved fierce and resolute, and the front lines temporarily failed to achieve victory, these checkpoints at key nodes, manned by elite troops, would still be sufficient to hold back a hastily retreating, lower-quality army, preventing any catastrophic rout that might roll back like a collapsing curtain. And with the support of these nodes, the relatively more elite Han troops held in reserve could then be pushed forward, allowing them to exert whatever strength they were capable of.

In the twenty-some years since the Jin state’s founding, Wanyan Zonghan had achieved countless victories against superior numbers; the generals beneath him had likewise long grown accustomed to staking everything in a single ferocious assault, watching the enemy collapse and flee like a receding tide. To adopt such a measured, cautious posture in actual combat might, for Zonghan, be something of an unprecedented first—but considering the fates of Loushi and Ci Bushi, few within the Jurchen ranks found this excessive.

Fighting in the mountains meant that only a limited force could be deployed at any one time; the Huaxia Army’s insertion of forces at several key nodes in the mountains meant they would not, in the short term, face being crushed by overwhelming numerical superiority. Yet as long as the supply routes remained largely secure, the Jurchen elite forces could be pushed forward wave after wave—an onslaught so ferocious that, at present, no one under heaven was thought capable of withstanding it. At least for now, this remained the consensus across the entire realm.

Carts rumbled, horses neighed; the soldiers’ figures stretched across the mountain slopes like columns of ants, banners of every kind fluttering like a dense forest. Massive hot air balloons rose intermittently into the sky, and above the dense woods, gyrfalcons occasionally wheeled and soared. An army numbering in the hundreds of thousands poured forward like floodwaters pouring into a narrow channel—once they broke through the blocking points ahead, what lay before them would be open, level ground.

Or, at the very least, half of victory.

In late October, the first probing assault on the front lines emerged at the mountain pass exit near Huangming County town, on the eastern battle line. This day was October 25th.

But as early as three days prior, in the extremely complex mountain ranges extending from the Huangming County–Yushui Creek confrontation line toward Jianmen Pass, the intricate scout warfare had already, without any coordination between the sides, begun to escalate.

Throughout history, in any army, those entrusted with scouting duties have always been the most trusted and elite among its ranks.

In an age where the consciousness of modern military organization had not yet awakened, this principle was self-evident: those who took pay and risked their lives for it were, by nature, considered lowly and base—without any sense of individual initiative, even driving ordinary soldiers forward on the battlefield required the most severe enforcement of military law. To release soldiers to operate independently, unsupervised, and still expect them to complete their mission—such soldiers could only be drawn from the most elite ranks within the army.

Only the personal bodyguards of commanding generals, the retainers of great noble clans, or specially cultivated fierce warriors—men who stood to gain something from how the battle unfolded—could be relied upon to develop this kind of proactive, self-motivated fighting spirit.

Zou Hu, thirty-two years old this year, had originally served as one of the Wu Dynasty army’s scouts, commanding a nine-man scout squad under the Wu Dynasty general Hou Ji. He had once taken part in the resistance along the Xiangfan defense line, but after Hou Ji’s troops repeatedly violated military law, they had suffered considerable pressure under Yue Fei’s command. Claiming to be caught between hostile forces on all sides and under immense pressure, Hou Ji eventually surrendered to the Jurchens.

Zou Hu had no objection to this.

He came from a family of mountain hunters, poor in his youth, but under his father’s careful guidance, he had honed considerable skill in traversing mountains and ranges. He joined the army in his teens, was physically robust, and had already seen bloodshed early on; within Hou Ji’s ranks, he had been cultivated as one of the fierce elite.

Hou Ji was a general of traditional temperament, believing that training troops required cultivating ferocity—how else could one charge into battle and kill the enemy without the nature of a wolf or tiger? Over the past decade or so, as Wu Dynasty resources had increasingly tilted toward the military, commanders like Hou Ji had gained the support of a portion of officials; under his command, it was hardly rare for soldiers to run roughshod and bully the local populace. Zou Hu’s temperament, initially rather simple and honest, had gradually turned vicious after more than a decade in such an environment.

Wolves travel a thousand li to eat meat; dogs travel a thousand li to eat filth. This world has always run on the strong preying on the weak—those who cannot pick up a blade deserve to be bullied by others.

Those of them who took the army’s pay had staked their lives fighting at the front, while others hid safely behind and enjoyed the fruits—if, under such circumstances, they themselves still got nothing out of it, that would truly be an injustice against heaven’s own principles.

The elite troops under Hou Ji had always lived by this kind of reasoning. When it came to friction and competition among ranks, this pack of vicious, ferocious wolves under his command could generally hold their own, and this only hardened their conviction all the more.

Later, when the main army was redeployed to the Xiangfan defense line and Yue Fei ruthlessly enforced military discipline without regard for personal connections, Hou Ji became one of his particular targets. The Battle of Xiangfan was already fierce enough, the pressure on the front lines considerable; Zou Hu felt that each time he was sent out—though not often—he was risking his neck to survive, and how could he tolerate people holding him back from the rear on top of that?

Later still, as the situation developed and the various camps around Xiangfan were overrun one by one, with Hou Ji surrendering at the front, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. In their ordinary talk afterward, regarding their own group’s willingness to risk their lives at the front while the court favored young, glib-tongued officials like Yue Fei who gave reckless orders, they exaggerated and embellished their grievances even further—some even claiming this Yue brat likely had some illicit affair with that promiscuous princess at court, and that this was why he’d been promoted—or perhaps some unspeakable relationship with that useless crown prince…

With the court so muddled and incompetent, how could it not fall!

After joining the Jurchen forces, life became considerably easier. Along the route from Xiangfan to Jianmen Pass, though the truly wealthy major towns were all reserved for Jurchen plunder, as an elite scout unit under Hou Ji’s command, they could still usually scrape together some profit—and faced almost no real enemy resistance. Facing the advance of veteran Jurchen commander Wanyan Zonghan, after the collapse of the Xiangfan defense line, what followed was one sweeping victory after another; even the occasional resistance proved feeble in practice.

A man born into this world, fighting wars like this—now that felt satisfying!

Everyone remarked daily to each other that they’d found themselves a good master to serve. Hou Ji had little sentimental attachment to the Wu Dynasty; having grown up poor, bullied by landlords in the mountains, he had, upon becoming a soldier, turned to bullying others in turn, long since having convinced himself this was simply the natural order of heaven and earth.

Several months after surrendering to the Jurchens, Hou Ji, speaking to the men under him, gradually found himself able to articulate some even more “reasonable” justifications—such as how the Wu Dynasty’s decay and fall were fated by heaven and earth, how the Great Jin’s rise perfectly aligned with the destined turning of the age, and how, having followed the Great Jin this time, their descendants would enjoy two or three hundred years of prosperity—one need only compare it to the Wu Dynasty to understand. Everyone, by choosing sides in time and earning merit, could secure their own place in this new world.

In short, once this war was won, it would be time to enjoy the good life!

Around July and August, the great army arrived at Jianmen Pass in successive waves, and the assembled Han troops naturally felt some fear in their hearts. Jianmen Pass was a formidable stronghold, easy to defend and hard to attack—once fighting broke out, most of these surrendered Han troops would likely be used as vanguard cannon fodder to lead the charge. But before long, Jianmen Pass actually opened its gates and surrendered—didn’t this only further prove that our Great Jin held the mandate of heaven?

With Jianmen Pass gone, the southwest campaign was already half won.

In October, the army passed through the pass in successive waves; Hou Ji’s main force was assigned to the rear of Jianmen Pass to guard the grain transport, while elite scouts like Zou Hu were sent in first. On October 12th, civil officials in the army registered and verified each man’s records and files—Zou Hu understood this was to prevent desertion or defection to the enemy before battle. After this, scouts from every unit were gathered together.

The mobilized elite scout force numbered as many as ten thousand men, with over two thousand being genuine Jurchen veterans; overall command of the scout forces fell to the veteran Jin general Yuyu.

“…Just the scouts alone number over ten thousand… For a war of national annihilation, this is quite the setup…”

Speaking with the men around him, Zou Hu affected the tone he’d picked up from listening to poetry recitations and operas in his idle time, his words rather glib—but in his heart, he couldn’t help but feel awed and honored to be part of it.

“…That Black Banner ahead isn’t easy to deal with either, from what I hear.”

When someone in the group said this, Zou Hu nodded and trotted out his usual saying: “Wolves travel a thousand li to eat meat, dogs travel a thousand li to eat filth. Haven’t we all seen enough of how this world works by now? The commander has fed us all these years, covered for us no matter what happened—why? Because if you’re fierce enough, you get to eat. The Wu Dynasty’s long finished—that Ning fellow really is fierce, killing the emperor like that—wasn’t it because we couldn’t stand those bastards anymore that we rebelled too? The people around you now are also the fiercest men in this world… Whether you eat meat or eat filth in the future, after this battle in the southwest, no one will have anything to say about it.”

“…Why is it us going in, while everyone else got assigned to haul grain outside Jianmen Pass? Because… this is a place only the fiercest men can enter!”

Zou Hu boosted the morale of the men under him this way, his heart a mix of fear and excitement. Having thrown in with the Jurchens, he still cared quite a bit about avoiding the label of traitor to the Han people. He wasn’t some traitor, wasn’t some coward—he was a warrior every bit as fierce and vicious as the Jurchens themselves. It was the incompetent court that had driven men like him to rebel! Just like that mind-demon Ning Yi!

Now that everyone had gathered in the southwest, this was the battlefield of the most formidable men under heaven. Once this battle was won, having earned great merit and fame, the whole realm would naturally look at him with new respect. And of course, by that point, he wouldn’t even need to explain himself to anyone—the whole world would belong to the Great Jin, and there would surely be some fortune waiting for him too.

At the moment the scout forces assembled and veteran Jin general Yuyu reviewed the ranks from the high platform, Zou Hu became certain of this. On that parade ground under review, elite fierce warriors filled every direction, front and back, left and right. The Jurchen scout corps was, at a glance, clearly the most formidable veteran troops who had emerged from mountains of corpses and seas of blood—one of the units Wanyan Zonghan relied upon most heavily.

Beyond that, the Bohai, Liao, and Liaodong Han contingents were likewise, at this moment, the most elite scouting personnel in the entire realm. Even his own group, selected from among the various surrendered armies—which of them hadn’t already had countless deaths on their hands, elite among elites? Anyone even slightly inferior was only fit for plundering and guarding grain transport in the rear, not even qualified to enter Jianmen Pass, because it was already too damn crowded here.

With a lineup like this charging forward, how could their side possibly lose?

The Jurchens announced to the scouts the specific terms for earning merit by killing the enemy, and the scout forces were soon dispatched in successive batches. Along the mountain roads stretching dozens of li, the surrounding scouts first needed to establish a defensive line stretching a hundred zhang—this was to prevent Black Banner scout forces from ambushing Jurchen generals or sabotaging the roads—while the most elite among them were sent out into the rugged mountains to search for passable paths.

The mountains surrounding Jianmen Pass made travel by cart or horse difficult, but beyond the most rugged pass at Dajian and Xiaojian mountains, though cliffs and precipices remained, the terrain was not entirely impassable. With ample manpower, if the Jurchen forces could find a narrow path through and then send the less valuable Han troops through it—regardless of how heavy the losses might be—it would completely shatter the Black Banner Army’s blocking strategy, which depended on limited manpower.

Since his own group’s strength was not yet fully trusted, Zou Hu and those around him were initially assigned to relatively rear-positioned fixed posts, crouching watch at high vantage points in the rugged mountains, with plenty of support nearby to respond if needed. This assignment carried little danger. As friction at the front intensified, some in the group felt relieved, while others grew restless—being elite troops themselves, most possessing formidable skills for surviving and moving through mountainous terrain, quite a few of them itched to show off, hoping to achieve some standout accomplishment.

On the battlefield, Han troops might be far inferior to the Jurchens—a bunch of worthless, undisciplined rabble, mud that couldn’t hold together. But when it came to individual skill, the scout ranks nonetheless included no shortage of men with high aspirations. Some could run through the mountains all day without tiring; some crossed peaks and ranges as easily as walking on flat ground; some excelled at concealment; some radiated such killing intent that even wild beasts would tremble at the sight of them; some set traps so cunningly designed that ordinary men couldn’t avoid them. In their day, these men had also received their due recognition, and now that they had surrendered, they naturally wanted to show off a little and give those arrogant, condescending Jurchens something to be startled by.

Heading from Jianmen Pass toward Huangming County town, at a point ten li out, there was a relatively open settlement called Shili Ji, which had by now been expanded into a military camp. Zou Hu’s squad was stationed on watch in the mountains nearby, watching daily as dense ranks of soldiers felled trees, the landscape changing visibly day by day—it truly looked as though they possessed the power to move mountains and fill seas.

Every night he rested in the camp near Shili Ji; not far off was another camp housing a different group of elites: this was the gathering place for martial-world figures who had pledged allegiance to the Jurchens, numbering some eight hundred men in all—veteran masters of the martial underworld who had, over the years, gradually submitted to Zonghan’s command. Some of them held grudges against the Black Banner, and some had even participated in the great Battle of Xiaocang River years before; the leaders among them had all earned tremendous merit during that great war.

Most of these martial-world figures were Han as well, and the two groups occasionally had dealings with one another. The martial-world men possessed considerable unique combat skills and had, in their day, been rather arrogant and condescending; the elite scouts like Zou Hu also had their own special skills, and through mutual displays, the two groups developed a measure of mutual respect. One of the leading figures among the martial-world men, a formidable master called Ren Hengchong, nicknamed “Blood-Covering Divine Fist,” hit it off well with Zou Hu. Chatting idly about the Huaxia Army ahead, he said: “That Ning Yi is nothing special. Back in Bianliang, he was cornered like a whipped dog. Even at Xiaocang River, I personally killed plenty of his little underlings.”

Only then did Zou Hu learn that this man had actually known Ning Yi back in Bianliang, and had also fought against the Huaxia Army at Xiaocang River. He eagerly sought to learn more, and Ren Hengchong told him about the fighting against the Huaxia Army at Xiaocang River, and about how he’d made an enemy of Ning Yi back in the capital, after which he’d sworn to make killing Ning Yi his life’s goal.

—Before this, quite a few martial-world figures had already fallen at Ning Yi’s hands over this very grudge. Ren Hengchong, drawing lessons from their fates, did not rashly confront Ning Yi head-on. During the Battle of Xiaocang River, he had led a group of his own disciples into the mountains and killed a fair number of Huaxia Army members there. His original nickname had been “Red Fist,” but afterward he became known as “Blood-Covering Divine Fist,” to display his dominance.

After the Battle of Xiaocang River, Ren Hengchong won the favor of the Jurchens, who secretly funded him to specialize in working against the Huaxia Army. After the Huaxia Army relocated to the southwest, Ren Hengchong had come several more times to carry out sabotage, and had never once been caught. Last year, when the Huaxia Army issued an order to eliminate traitors and drew up a list of names, Ren Hengchong found himself on it—his reputation soaring even higher as a result. This time, in the southern campaign, he had been brought along as one of the elite forces.

Ren Hengchong was a man of considerable ambition, accomplished in martial arts, and proud of his achievements through most of his life. Back when the situation in Bianliang had been in dramatic flux, the leader of the Great Radiance Sect had mobilized heroes from across the realm to converge on the capital, and Ren Hengchong had gone up as a leading figure among the martial circles of Huainan. By that time, he had already been famous for over a decade, known as a veteran of the martial world—though in truth he was barely past thirty. He was, at that time, riding high with a bright future ahead of him; among the older figures who had also come to the capital, even those whose martial skill surpassed his own, he had held in little regard.

At that time, Ren Hengchong had imagined himself destined to become a grandmaster of the martial world on par with Zhou Tong, Fang La, or Lin Zongwu. With the once all-powerful Qin Siyuan having fallen from power and the Jurchens having been driven back, the realm stood on the cusp of rebuilding, and the capital seemed a place of boundless opportunity, just waiting for him to take the stage and perform. Who could have known that afterward, a group of men would hunt down and kill Qin Siyuan, and everything would be buried in that massacre.

On that day, out in the open fields outside Bianliang, Ren Hengchong and the others had seen that mind-demon Ning Yi standing at a distance on a rise of earth, his face pale, watching them with resentment. Lin Zongwu and others had walked up to mock him; Ren Hengchong, in his heart, had wanted to step forward and challenge this rumored “grandmaster” of a great demon, his mind full of thoughts of making a grand spectacle of himself—but in the next instant, countless cavalry had come charging out from behind.

Even Lin Zongwu, the greatest master under heaven at the time, had turned and fled at that moment. Ren Hengchong, nicknamed “Red Fist,” found that against a cavalry charge, his fist techniques counted for absolutely nothing. He was struck by a warhorse, thrown to the ground, and cracked a tooth, his mouth full of blood; he was then dragged along the ground, his trousers torn away, his whole body covered in wounds. The group of martial-world figures was chased down and slaughtered until nightfall; Ren Hengchong, stripped bare, played dead among the piles of corpses—even when stabbed in the buttocks with a spear, he dared not move—and only in this way did he manage to preserve his life.

For Ren Hengchong, who had been pampered and privileged since childhood, this was the single most humiliating moment of his entire life. No one else knew of it, but from that day forward, he grew ever more consumed by wounded pride. He racked his brains scheming against the Huaxia Army—unlike the reckless men of the martial underworld, after that massacre, Ren Hengchong came to understand the importance of organization and coordinated forces. He trained his disciples to work together, striking in secret when opportunities arose, using this method to whittle away at Huaxia Army strength. Because of this, he had even once been granted an audience with Wanyan Xiyin.

Even facing the arrogant, condescending Jurchens, Ren Hengchong considered himself in no way inferior. Now that the great army had finally reached the southwest, his heart burned with the desire to once again kill a batch of Huaxia Army members to establish his reputation, just as he had at Xiaocang River years before—the fire in him was already boiling over. Speaking of this with Zou Hu and the others, he encouraged them to show these Jurchens “what it means to kill a man.”

Over the preceding days, elite Jurchen scouts probing ahead had gradually begun returning wounded, some hit by land mines, some caught in coordinated Huaxia Army ambushes—people had already begun to sense, one after another, just how ruthless the Huaxia Army could be.

Before long, they got their chance to advance.

On October 19th, the vanguard forces had already set up camp along the confrontation line and begun constructing fortifications. Yuyu issued orders to more of the scouts, directing them to begin advancing toward the border line, determined to use their numerical advantage to wear down the Huaxia Army’s scout strength and force open the Black Banner’s mountain defense line through sheer numbers.

Ren Hengchong led his hundred-odd disciples out that very day.

Zou Hu was part of a later wave. At this point, he had not yet felt too much of the weight of it all—as an already delayed scout unit, even once they reached the front, theoretically speaking, few opportunities would remain for them. The mountains of Sichuan were complex, and the passable routes were, after all, limited in number; with thousands of men divided into hundreds of waves pushing forward, there wasn’t going to be much left over for those coming later.

The mountain roads were difficult to traverse, and the pressure from the advancing elite scouts didn’t reach the front lines until two days later.

At this time, overall command of the Huaxia Army’s scout forces fell to Fang Shuchang, a man who had once wielded the “hegemon blade.” On the afternoon of the twentieth, when he met with Fourth Division Chief of Staff Chen Tian, he received the attack order the latter had brought. According to Ning Yi and Qu Zhengyan, the message was: “It’s time to begin. Blind them.”

At this point, the scout force allocated under Fang Shuchang’s unified command numbered over four thousand men in total, half of them drawn from the Fourth Division’s specially trained units under Qu Zhengyan, trained specifically for infiltration, hunting, and decapitation-style operations. The mountain roads and terrain around Jianmen Pass had already been thoroughly surveyed over the preceding six months, with the Fourth Division’s staff department having drawn up combat and coordination contingency plans for nearly every key location. By the twentieth, everything had been fully finalized.

That afternoon and evening, final preparations and a mobilization meeting were held before departure. On the twenty-first, apart from the roughly fifteen hundred men already engaged in combat in the mountains and the five hundred reserves Fang Shuchang kept in hand, a total of two hundred squad-sized basic special operations units were deployed into the mountains ahead from various directions.