Endless wind and snow had already begun falling over Shandong as well.
Ever since the Battle of Daming Prefecture ended, over the past year the entire region of Shandong had been strewn with the starved and the dying, the common people living in utter misery.
The more than two hundred thousand Han troops that Wanyan Chang had dispatched to encircle and suppress Liangshan had utterly wrecked what was left of an already-collapsed local order. Ordinary people could no longer scrape together a living at all; starving mutinous soldiers, refugees, horse-bandits, and mountain brigands had all become nearly indistinguishable from one another. Crops planted in the fields were seized and harvested by various factions before they even had time to ripen; one field of grain after another was soaked in blood, and one cartload of grain after another was inevitably accompanied by more than one cartload of corpses. Some survivors had even grown accustomed to the taste of human flesh.
The Yellow River had breached its banks several times since summer, each time carrying away a great many lives. Near Liangshan, the various armed groups living along the water had, at least, managed to extend their lives somewhat by relying on fish for food. When the two sides clashed, it was usually only over a mouthful or two of food.
After a meager autumn harvest that was, at least, better than nothing, the fighting between the two sides grew fiercest of all. Zhu Biao and Wang Shanyue led the elite troops out from the mountain stronghold and staged a ruthless raid. Two armies of Han troops south of Liangshan, each numbering over thirty thousand men, were utterly scattered, and the grain they had gathered was hauled back up the mountain to Liangshan.
Once an army was scattered, its soldiers had no choice but to become refugees, and even surviving the winter became an open question. Some of the Han troops, frightened by what had happened, drew back together several units that had temporarily split up due to inadequate local food supplies. Once the commanding officers of these units met, a number of them began quietly reaching out to Liangshan, hoping they would stop this business of “Han fighting Han.”
“…We’re barely surviving as it is. We were only driven here by Wanyan Chang. You’re tough, you’re fierce, go fight Wanyan Chang instead. There’s really no grain left around here—why bother coming after us at all… Look, if you’ll just ease off a little, we’re willing to hand over some grain…”
People caught in such a bind will inevitably do things that would make anyone laugh and cry at once—these armies, originally sent to encircle and suppress Liangshan, ended up quietly paying “protection money” to Liangshan instead. Zhu, Wang, and the others took no pity on them either; after collecting the grain, they secretly began sending men to court and incite defection among the officers in these units who still had some fighting spirit left.
Not long after the autumn harvest, Liu Chengzong’s forces arrived at Liangshan, and a large-scale offensive resumed, breaking the encirclement network around the marshes. Several units that had been half-hearted about paying their “protection money” earlier were scattered; the rest fled in defeat, retreating out of harm’s way to watch how things would develop.
In November, Wanyan Chang ordered his general Gao Zongbao to lead forty thousand troops south to deal with the Black Banner presence at Liangshan. These forty thousand men were not some hastily assembled Han rabble, but formal troops that Wanyan Chang, holding court in the Central Plains, had drawn from within Jin territory itself. Gao Zongbao was a renowned general among the Bohai people, having distinguished himself with considerable merit during the conquest of the Liao Kingdom.
In Wanyan Chang’s judgment, the Black Banner and Wu Dynasty forces in Shandong had already suffered heavy losses in the earlier Battle of Daming Prefecture and existed now in name only. Having spent the past year strangling Shandong into a wasteland, whatever forces remained there must, by now, be starved into little more than dry kindling, their fighting strength surely far below what it had once been. The only real cause for concern was Liu Chengzong’s unit, but they had already been stirring up trouble around Xuzhou, fighting back and forth repeatedly, and now numbered no more than five thousand men, their supplies already exhausted. With a proper Jurchen regular army pressing forward, even if the enemy retreated into their water fortresses and proved hard to attack directly, there was no way this campaign could end in a loss.
That, at least, was how he saw it.
In actual combat, however, in mid-November, Gao Zongbao’s first engagement with the Black Banner did end in victory—Liu Chengzong and the others fought and retreated, seemingly intending to withdraw back into the marshes. Gao Zongbao, flush with confidence, pressed his advance. Zhu Biao, Wang Shanyue, and the others had been waiting precisely for this moment of overreach; they moved with astonishing speed to seize Gao Zongbao’s supply lines and baggage train from behind. When Gao Zongbao tried to turn his army back to relieve them, the very unit he had thought he’d “routed”—Liu Chengzong’s forces—suddenly turned and showed its true fangs, launching a fierce counterattack.
The forty thousand troops drawn from Jin territory did, indeed, have a core of veteran soldiers as their backbone, but in terms of fighting strength, they were of course still no match for genuine Jurchen elite units. It was only now that Gao Zongbao realized something was wrong; by the time he tried to rally his forces for a full engagement, he found that whether ahead or behind, what he now faced was tempered steel through and through, with not a shred of bluff or padding to it.
Gao Zongbao even considered setting fire to his own baggage train to destroy it, but by then his forty thousand-strong army had already collapsed in a thunderous rout. Pursued and cut down along the way, Gao Zongbao finally fled back to Wanyan Chang’s camp by the end of November, insisting emphatically that their side was simply “no match” for the enemy. He claimed, moreover, that the force he had faced was truly the elite of the Black Banner elite—for instance, the assault battalion led by a man named Luo Ye, who had pursued him relentlessly the whole way, reportedly having taken first place multiple times in internal Black Banner competitions—a group both fierce in attack and solid in defense, the most impossible sort of “madmen” to deal with.
Wanyan Chang was so infuriated by this crushing defeat, and by Gao Zongbao’s bluster in trying to gloss over his failure, that he nearly smashed his own table. Over the past several months, it was not only the situation at Liangshan that had grown tense; on the Jin front too, where Liao Yiren had originally held every advantage, his forces had been retreating steadily under the offensive organized by Lou Shuwan and Yu Yulin, and he had been repeatedly requesting reinforcements from the Jurchen side.
Although Wanyan Chang’s approach to the Central Plains—both to support the war effort in the south and with an eye toward future rule—had been to squeeze it dry, draining every last bit of its potential, even he found the sheer incompetence of these puppet regimes he had propped up genuinely shocking, at this point.
They could not even muster the strength, in the end, to fight for their own survival.
After this great defeat of Gao Zongbao’s, Zhu Biao, Liu Chengzong, and the others had, in effect, come to control Shandong—though in the midst of such a heavily snowing winter, little of this change was outwardly visible. Wanyan Chang sent part of his forces south to gather up the scattered remnants of the defeated army, and ordered the various Han armies to strengthen their defenses. He himself remained stationed at Baoding, and the more than twenty thousand elite troops under his direct command likewise stayed put, making no move.
On the third of December, Baoding Prefecture lay blanketed in white, wind and snow howling. A man cloaked in a heavy fur mantle braved the storm to enter Wanyan Chang’s residence; Wanyan Chang, in the middle of handling official business, came out smiling to greet him.
The visitor was Shuliesu, the Jurchen general who had nearly died of his wounds in the great battle at the start of the year. A deep scar now cut across this general’s face, and he had lost one eye, but his tall, powerful frame still could not hide the aura of a seasoned warrior about him.
“This humble general heard of Gao Zongbao’s defeat, and couldn’t help coming to ask Your Highness what plans you have going forward for the enemy at Liangshan.”
Wanyan Chang and Shuliesu had, by now, been comrades-in-arms for most of their lives. Shuliesu was a general through and through, while Wanyan Chang, as Aguda’s cousin, had served in succession under Zongwang and Zongfu, and was more like a reliable old uncle figure by comparison. When the two met, once Shuliesu had entered the reception hall, he went straight to voicing the question weighing on his mind.
“What do you have to teach this general?”
“This humble general is willing to lead troops there myself and put down this Liangshan uprising!”
“You’re looking for revenge, aren’t you, General?”
“Does Your Highness intend to meet all change with no change of your own?”
“Of course it must be put down eventually. I’ve already ordered men to gather a hundred and fifty thousand troops within three months, to attack Liangshan once more.”
“Your Highness, forgive this humble general’s bluntness—the lesson of the Battle of Xiaocang River still stands before us. Against an army like the Black Banner, no matter how many Han troops we send, they amount to nothing more than rabble. The situation in the Central Plains has reached such a state that it does no good for the Great Jin’s reputation. And so this humble general dares to beg Your Highness to grant me elite troops. This humble general… is willing to fight with his own coffin already carried behind him!”
In that great battle at the start of the year, facing the Black Banner, Shuliesu had originally gone in resolved to die rather than lose. Who could have known that, in the end, he and Lu Junyi would trade a single blow, and their charging warhorses would leave both men alive. Ever since waking from that battle, whenever Shuliesu thought back on it, he had felt the shame of it keenly. Now, as this seasoned Jurchen commander spoke once more of fighting with his own coffin carried behind him, his face carried a grim, ferocious air of resolve and death.
Wanyan Chang understood the boldness and loyalty of comrades like this. He fell silent for a moment.
“…After the Battle of Daming Prefecture, Liangshan’s vital strength was already badly damaged. Even counting the newly arrived forces under Liu Chengzong, their combat-capable troops number no more than ten thousand-odd—the harm they can do to the Central Plains is limited. What’s more, our eastern and western armies have both pushed south and taken full advantage of the autumn harvest; all of Jiangnan’s grain now belongs to us. Whether it’s Zongfu or Nianhan, neither will face any shortage of supplies for the next six months. I do still have more than twenty thousand elite troops on hand at present, but having thought it over, there’s no need to take unnecessary risks. Once the main armies return, Liangshan and Jin territory alike will naturally be swept clean in short order—this is also… what everyone else believes as well.”
The “everyone else” he referred to naturally included the many other parties whose interests were tied up in this. This much he could say openly to Shuliesu; as for the other reasons that could not be spoken aloud but that both men understood well enough regardless, perhaps chief among them was the fact that Shuliesu served under Zonghan of the Western Court, while Wanyan Chang backed Zongfu and Zongbi of the Eastern Court.
Shuliesu fell silent for a moment.
“…On this southern campaign, what the Grand Marshal and the Spirit of the Valley have spoken of most, in truth, isn’t the difficulty of the fighting itself, but rather our Great Jin’s growing caution in recent years… Does Your Highness still remember the spirit with which our Founding Emperor first rose up? At Hubudagang, we defeated an army of seventy thousand with a mere twenty thousand men, and it was there that we forged our reputation—that ten thousand Jurchens cannot be defeated. In the old days, with twenty thousand troops in hand, we could sweep across the entire realm. And now… Your Highness, here we are, holding our ground, not even daring to go out?”
Shuliesu’s words carried a rather sharp edge to them, but Wanyan Chang, mild-tempered by nature, did not take offense. He stood there beside Shuliesu, watching the wind and snow outside the hall together, and after a while, let out a sigh of his own.
“…How could I not know what you’re saying, General?… Well then, let me think it over a little more.”
These words may well have been mere deflection, but Shuliesu did not press the matter further. The wind and snow howled in through the door, and though both men had grown older with the years, neither of them sat down through this entire exchange.
“This humble general still remembers the boldness of those days in his heart… If Your Highness makes the decision, this humble general is willing to die for the Jurchen cause!”
And yet, all the way until the following spring, Wanyan Chang never did manage to work up the resolve to strike.
The state of affairs in the Central Plains left Wanyan Chang with a bitter taste in his mouth, and quite naturally, on the other side of things, Lou Shuwan and her allies were tasting at least a little sweetness of their own.
As Yu Yulin seized city after city and Liao Yiren retreated on every front, and the heavy snow that closed off the mountain passes began to fall, though the ledgers, when tallied up, still showed the anxious strain of countless mouths clamoring to be fed, on the whole, the first glimmer of hope had finally come into view.
In September, the Black Banner Army in Shandong had quietly made its way over to Jin territory and, for the sake of supporting Liu Chengzong’s push northward, borrowed a modest amount of supplies from Lou Shuwan. Lou Shuwan scraped together what little grain she could and shipped it over to them, and in the process took no small satisfaction in giving the Huaxia Army envoy—who had come to plead humbly for aid—a proper dose of grief. She spent half a month cursing out the Huaxia Army officials to their face, and Ning Yi’s people didn’t even dare talk back, which left her feeling thoroughly satisfied on a personal level.
By October and November, once Liu Chengzong and the others crushed Gao Zongbao’s army near Liangshan, the news not only bolstered the morale of the anti-Jurchen forces in Jin territory—after seizing Gao Zongbao’s grain and baggage train, the Huaxia Army side even sent a good deal of supplies back to Jin territory as a gift in return. Lou Shuwan made an enormous profit off this investment, and seemed practically to have put on weight from the sheer satisfaction of it.
By December, the “Lady Chancellor” was in such a fine mood that she kept telling people they’d finally get to have a proper New Year this time.
In truth, in all the years since leaving Hangzhou, this was the very first time Lou Shuwan had ever brought up the idea of “celebrating the New Year” with anyone.
The southwest, meanwhile, remained shrouded in war. Throughout the whole month of November, no truly decisive changes emerged; occasional word would come out describing the fighting on both sides as either “brutal” or “grinding to a standstill.” In the eyes of the wider world, Wanyan Zonghan, the Jurchens’ pillar of heaven, had deployed his strongest forces and his most unshakeable resolve, determined to carve open a breach into the southwestern realm. And the Huaxia Army had held firm against this overwhelming, world-shaking assault, standing unmoved at the southwestern passes. For an entire month, all the outside world could catch glimpses of was the Jurchens’ own staggering casualties, and their undying will to keep fighting regardless. Given the sheer resolve the Jurchens were showing, no one doubted any longer that the Black Banner’s ability to hold its ground in the southwest had likewise come at an enormous cost.
If, in earlier discussions and speculation, people had still harbored some doubt or even contempt for the fighting strength of the southwestern army, by now, the ever-lengthening duration of the siege and countersiege was more than enough to erase any such shallow doubts from anyone’s mind. With the Central Plains now fallen and the Wu Dynasty destroyed, the two forces truly deserving of the title “strongest under heaven” were now, undeniably, the two locked in combat in the southwest.
That the southwest had managed to withstand this first wave of assault was, in fact, one of the reasons Lou Shuwan found herself in better spirits these days. In her heart, however reluctantly, she found herself hoping the Huaxia Army would survive this great battle—though, of course, it would be best of all if the Jurchens and the Huaxia Army both came out of it badly mauled, a result that would surely delight the whole realm.
Amid this general mood, a small episode also unfolded on the territory under her rule—a newly risen power, seemingly from the northwest, sent representatives to make contact with her side in the Central Plains, hoping to purchase cannons, gunpowder, and other such supplies from Lou Shuwan, reportedly bringing along no small amount of wealth to bribe officials along the way.
Lou Shuwan refused.
The northwest had always been a small, largely overlooked corner of the realm as far as most people were concerned, and ever since the Battle of Xiaocang River, it had never truly recovered its former vitality. In earlier days, it had been dominated by the Zhe family, propped up by the Jurchens; the rest amounted to little more than bands of rustic outlaws who, if they occasionally tried to squeeze some advantage out of the Central Plains, invariably came away having had their claws cut off for their trouble.
With Jin territory in such turmoil lately, Lou Shuwan had no time to spare for anything else; she had only heard, in passing, that the Zhe family could no longer keep a grip on affairs there and had descended into internal chaos—which could only mean that what followed would be an inevitable free-for-all of horse bandits fighting over territory.
That this new power was seeking to purchase cannons from the Central Plains showed no small amount of both nerve and ambition, but Lou Shuwan’s own supplies were already stretched thin, barely sufficient for her own needs, let alone with anything to spare for sale. And so, without even that basic precondition, there was no room for a deal to begin with. On top of that, given how tight things already were, Lou Shuwan had worked exceedingly hard to maintain the integrity and fairness of the officials under her—maintaining the good reputation she had so painstakingly won among the common people. That this party would try bribing her officials with gold and silver antiques—rather than bringing grain and supplies, mind you—only left her with an even worse impression of them.
She turned down this group of merchants’ proposal.
Around the same time, a group with the very same purpose in mind paid a visit to Liao Yiren, who at this point still controlled a fairly large swath of territory.
With the Central Plains clearly on the verge of collapse, and his own territory under increasingly aggressive pressure from that pair of scoundrels, Lou Shuwan and Yu Yulin, Liao Yiren found himself, on one hand, constantly appealing to the Jurchens for support, and on the other, anxiously weighing his own contingency plans. The antique treasures brought by this northwestern trading party—originally part of the Zhe family’s collection—happened to be exactly the sort of thing he had a fondness for. Should he ever need to retire to live out his days under the Great Jin, he would, naturally, need to bring gold, silver, and precious antiques along to smooth the way—it wasn’t as though they’d let him bring an army and weapons with him instead, was it?
On the other hand, the fact that this party needed such large quantities of cannons and gunpowder suggested they had genuine manpower behind them, and desperate men from the northwest at that. This realization set Liao Yiren’s mind working. After each side had tested the other out, Liao Yiren put forward a new proposal to them.
On the twenty-seventh of December, in the eleventh year of the Wu Dynasty’s Jianshuo era, amid howling wind and snow that filled the sky, Liao Yiren and a group of Liao family scions watched, with a mixture of curiosity, as the cavalry column arrived out of the storm—and the towering figure at the very front of that column.
Jamukha, chieftain of the Mongol Zalanda tribe, carrying with him the will of the legendary steppe khan Temujin, formally set foot on the soil of the Central Plains on the last days of this year of countless disasters.
Liao Yiren threw open his gates to receive his guest.
“—Welcome!”
In that moment, the wind and snow howled on past.
His warm, effusive words would, in the histories written of later ages, leave their mark upon the record.