“Steady…”

“Watch the hooks!”

“If we don’t die today, whoever makes it back—you’re all my closest brothers from here on out.”

“Titles, land, rewards—no one’s going to be shorted… So everybody keep your heads up, and keep yourselves alive!”

Amid the low howl of the wind, the advancing figures picked their way past cliffs and rock faces. A surrendered soldier turned scout, a man named Zou Hu, followed the outlaw chieftain Ren Hengchong, hauling himself along ropes through one difficult stretch of terrain after another.

“If this goes well, the merit we win today will set us and our descendants up for generations—more wealth than we could ever spend!”

What echoed in Zou Hu’s mind was the rousing speech Ren Hengchong had given before they’d set out.

The scouting war between the Black Banner and the Jurchens had officially begun on the twenty-second of October, and by now, two full months had passed. Over this stretch of time, this group of scouts, drawn over from the surrendered Han armies, had suffered devastating casualties.

Spurred on by every kind of bounty offered for enemy heads, the elite scouts on the battlefield had, at first, shown remarkable, blazing fighting spirit. But before long, the Huaxia Army soldiers moving through the forest with practiced coordination, striking again and again with cold, calculated precision, had given them a brutal lesson in return.

Camouflage uniforms blending into the mountain terrain, observers stationed at every high point, coordinated movement between different units, crossbows lying in wait to concentrate fire on any enemy caught grouped together, landmines buried along the mountain paths in ever more well-hidden positions, even gunfire coming from who knew how far away… The small-unit tactics the enemy had specifically prepared for mountain and forest warfare gave these elite scouts—men who had made their living purely on individual skill and the ability to move through rugged terrain—a thorough and painful education.

The only difference was that the tuition for this lesson was paid in human lives.

Zou Hu’s ten-man unit counted among the luckier of the excluded scouting teams; because the area they had been assigned to was relatively less contested, after holding out for a month they had lost only two men, though they had also gained precious little in the way of credit or reward for it.

He had crossed paths twice more with Ren Hengchong, “the Blood-Covering Divine Fist,” and this outlaw chieftain, impressed by Zou Hu’s skill, had brought him along on a joint operation.

Among the various scouting units, Ren Hengchong was, in fact, an officer whom the Jurchens held in fairly high regard. Men like him were typically the ones sent to the very front, which brought greater rewards, but also far greater danger. He had originally commanded a unit of over a hundred men and had taken a fair number of Black Banner heads, though he too had suffered heavy losses along the way. Then, in an incident at the start of December, his forces had suffered a truly devastating blow.

That had been the night the Huaxia Army organized a rain-cloaked raid, gathering over three hundred men through the rugged terrain and striking at a temporary staging point held by the Jurchens along a mountain path. Perhaps because they had already scouted the area in careful detail beforehand, they swiftly took out the outer perimeter guards in the darkness and surged into the muddy camp beyond. Caught completely off guard, the camp nearly broke into full mutiny on the spot.

Had this happened on open ground, in the dark of night, people scattering and shouting in every direction would have made regrouping all but impossible. But the terrain along the mountain path prevented any real escape, and the Jurchens, for their part, reacted swiftly—two units quickly sealed off the routes front and back. The Han troops inside the camp suffered a massacre, but in the end, they managed to hold the line and drag the situation into a grinding stalemate.

Seeing their scheme had failed, the Black Banner force began withdrawing swiftly into the darkness. With the mountain roads difficult to navigate, the Jurchen officer in command judged it best to stay on their heels and press the pursuit, reasoning that the enemy, caught up in this same chaos, would inevitably pay some price of their own along the way—and so his men gave chase. Up in the hills, a few grenades detonated successfully in the rain, shaking loose the already sodden, slippery rock face and triggering a mudslide that swallowed a great many men whole.

Ren Hengchong’s group suffered the worst losses of anyone in that incident. His own disciples and followers had already taken losses before this, and after this latest disaster, several more lost their nerve and left outright, leaving him with fewer than twenty men. Of Zou Hu’s own men, only one survived.

The fighting in the mountains, by now, had grown ever more perilous, and the surviving Han scouts, having already been given a taste of just how ruthless the Black Banner could be, no longer dared venture forward with much confidence once inside the mountains. Some had asked to be allowed to leave, but the Jurchens, citing the strain on transport routes, refused to let the scouts withdraw—on the surface, at least, this wasn’t a decision aimed specifically at them; transport along the mountain roads really had grown more and more difficult, to the point that even wounded Jurchen soldiers were now being treated in camps set up near the front line rather than sent back.

Morale was low, retreat was impossible—the only small comfort was that, for now at least, no one was about to break ranks and abandon the others. Ren Hengchong, a skilled fighter in his own right, had once led over a hundred men and, in the course of fighting, had claimed more than twenty Black Banner heads as credit to his name. Now, with fewer men left, the share of credit falling to each remaining man had, if anything, only grown larger.

But Ren Hengchong was a man of boundless energy and considerable daring. In the days that followed, he stirred up and encouraged his remaining men to try for one more windfall of glory, pulling in a few more skilled fighters to join their ranks for “a shared cause of great consequence.” He seemed to have already been planning some particular operation even before this; after the fifteenth of December, he received some piece of confirmed intelligence, and on the night of the nineteenth, as darkness fell and rain began to pour, a group of twenty-seven men who had already been lying in wait near the front line set out under Ren Hengchong’s lead.

Before setting out, hardly anyone knew what the true purpose of this mission actually was, but Ren Hengchong was, after all, a man of genuine personal charisma as a leader—steady, commanding, and both meticulous and decisive in his thinking. Before they departed, he assured everyone that whether this mission succeeded or failed, it would be their very last operation, and that if it succeeded, titles and rewards beyond measure awaited them all.

Everyone understood: this was shaping up to be something big.

But swept up in Ren Hengchong’s rousing words, Zou Hu found himself thinking that surely, at some point in a man’s life, he ought to take part in an adventure like this.

They wound their way through the rugged mountains, skirting past several watchtower positions. The weather, for once, worked in their favor—the continuous drizzle meant that many spots that would normally have been spotted by hot-air balloon observation could finally be risked in passing. Along the way, they ran into several dangerous moments; passing by one cliff face, Zou Hu very nearly slipped and fell, only to be caught by Ren Hengchong’s outstretched hand from ahead.

“Careful now—we’re all going back together!”

Ren Hengchong encouraged him this way.

By noon that day, the sky was still a heavy, oppressive black, the mountain wind howling, and the group stopped to rest by a mountain ridge. Zou Hu had, by now, a vague sense that the position they had reached had already swung around past the slaughterhouse that was the Rainwater Creek front—seemingly, they had made it around to the rear of the Black Banner Army’s own battlefield.

“Now that we’ve come this far, I can tell you all, brothers, the true purpose of this mission.”

Ren Hengchong spoke, and everyone’s hearts began pounding. The outlaw chieftain pointed ahead. “Past this point lies the camp where the Black Banner treats its wounded, and nearby there’s also a prisoner camp. Rainwater Creek is about to see a great battle break out today, and I happen to know that among those prisoners, there are men planted to stir up a mutiny when the time comes. Our target lies within that very wounded-soldier camp.”

Once he’d said this, someone caught on at once. “Ah, I see—if there’s chaos both front and back at once, once we get into that camp, we can take however many heads we please…”

But Ren Hengchong only laughed. “Ha ha, on an ordinary day, sure, I might well be tempted to grab a few extra heads for the credit myself. But this time, brothers, you’re underestimating me. I’ve had dealings with that Butcher of Men, Ning, before—I’ve had people planted in the southwest for years now. When I finally make my move today, do you really think a few severed heads are what I’m after?”

Someone’s face went suddenly pale. “A-assassinate the Butcher of Men…”

The moment those words left his mouth, the color drained from everyone else’s faces too.

Ning Yi’s regicide and rebellion, his epithet as the Inner Demon, the Bloody-Handed Butcher—these were known throughout the realm. Among the outlaws of the martial world, opinions on him varied widely; some claimed he was, in fact, no great hand at martial arts at all, but far more people believed that even if his skill was no longer literally the very best under heaven, he had surely by now reached the ranks of the foremost grandmasters of the age.

Not even Fang La, back in his day, had managed to kill him; Zhou Tong had shared a mutual respect and rapport with him; he had brought about the fall of Liangshan; Lin Zonghu had crossed blades with him several times and come away the worse for it each time; and there was even that rumored story of a single strike of the Heaven-Overturning Seal that had killed Lu Tuo outright. Were it not for the fact that his tally of deaths by scheme and strategy so vastly outnumbered the death tolls of ordinary grandmasters, people might well have been more familiar with his reputation among the outlaws of the martial world than with his infamy as a regicide.

Even though few among the outlaw world had truly ever witnessed the Inner Demon strike in person, it was likewise a matter of fact that he had foiled countless assassination attempts against himself. That Ren Hengchong now proposed to go after Ning Yi with a mere twenty-some men might sound bold and admirable enough in the telling, but not a few among them found themselves privately thinking that, the moment the man gave the order, they’d rather just turn tail and run.

Fortunately, amid the cold, driving rain, Ren Hengchong waved a hand. “Old Demon Ning is cautious by nature. Much as I’d love to kill him once and be done with it for good, too many others have already learned that lesson the hard way before us, and I’m not about to be so reckless. This mission isn’t aimed at Ning Yi himself—it’s aimed at one of the little demons of the Ning family.”

He pointed ahead. “Ning Yi’s second son, Ning Ji, is only thirteen this year. For the past several years, to temper the boy, Ning Yi has had him working as an assistant in the army medical corps. I’ve confirmed it—right now, this boy is in the wounded-soldier camp just ahead, with only a small guard watching over him. And I’m betting they’d never expect us to come at them this way, cutting straight through the mountains to reach the rear. Once the fighting breaks out on both sides at once, we strike together, seize Ning Yi’s son, and that alone will be an achievement beyond measure.”

The wind whistled past them, the rain still cold. By the time Ren Hengchong finished speaking, each word deliberate and measured, everyone present had fully grasped just how significant this was—hot blood surged up in them, and along with it, a chill of dread as well.

“This, this business… if we go after his son, he’ll have it in for us for the rest of our lives, won’t he…”

Someone murmured this quietly, and Ren Hengchong’s gaze swept across him. “This war right now, brothers, is a fight to the death. If Ning Yi actually manages to survive this campaign, do you honestly think, however vast this world may be, there’ll be anywhere left for the likes of us to hide?”

Expressions shifted across the group; some men’s eyes hardened with resolve. Zou Hu gritted his teeth. “Given where we are now, what other road is there left to take!”

“Exactly right. If the Jurchens don’t win this, none of us have any future left either.”

“The Wu Dynasty’s rotten to the core—brought its own ruin on itself. That’s just how the world’s turned, and there’s no stopping it now.”

“That’s right. There’s twenty-eight of us on this trip, and look, we’ve made it this far without being spotted, not one brother lost along the way. That’s got to be Heaven’s own will at work.”

After this exchange of low murmurs, everyone steadied their resolve, and the group made its way over the ridge, skirting the sightlines of the watchtowers as they pressed forward. Before long, the mountain path cut through the dim, overcast light, and the outline of the wounded-soldier camp came into view not far ahead.

Wrapped in strips of gray-black cloth for cover, they crept steadily closer. Ren Hengchong pulled out his binoculars and, hidden away in a concealed spot, studied the camp carefully. By now, the fighting at the front had already been raging for nearly half a day; things had grown tense in the rear, but everyone’s attention was fixed on the battlefield ahead, and only the occasional wounded soldier was being brought into the camp—most of the army doctors had already rushed off to the front to help there. Amid the rising steam and mist, Ren Hengchong finally spotted the very figure he’d been looking for…

…

At the Rainwater Creek battlefield, Qu Zhengyan, cloaked in a straw raincoat, had climbed to the top of a watchtower high on the mountainside, raising his binoculars to observe the state of the fighting below. Every so often, his gaze drifted past the overcast sky, mentally calculating the timing of certain other matters.

…

Near a winding mountain road some seven li from Rainwater Creek, soldier after soldier lay hidden among the soaked underbrush, using the terrain to conceal themselves.

Chen Tian moved past one figure after another, crawling up to the very front, and snatched the binoculars from the observer’s hands. “How’s it looking?”

“No change from before. The watchtower to the north—that man’s been dozing off…”

Chen Tian looked on quietly. “A Jurchen, and yet he looks so soft… heh, spoiled little rich boy, is he…”

The rain fell on and on across the foothills; at a glance, it seemed like nothing more than a quiet forested slope of scrubland, but hidden within it, men waited silently for Chen Tian to give the order they’d all been expecting.

At a certain moment, the order passed along in a whisper.

“…Get ready.”

…

The fine, drizzling rain seeped cold clear into the bone—weather like this was hardly suited for transporting the wounded, and so only a small number had been brought back to the main wounded-soldier camp behind the front lines. Few new casualties had come in so far, but the doctors at the camp who had rushed off to the battlefield now accounted for more than half its usual staff. Ning Ji had taken part in the morning’s emergency treatment efforts, and had watched three severely wounded scouts die right in front of him.

That number wasn’t especially high, all things considered, but as the immediate crisis passed, the smell of blood on him seemed to carry with it some lingering trace of the soldiers who had just died, leaving his mood heavy and oppressed. He didn’t go straight to check on the tents where the wounded had gathered earlier; instead, he found a quiet, empty spot and began cleaning the various tools stained with blood from the earlier treatment, dropping the small steel knives and needles into hot water to soak.

He hadn’t finished washing everything when someone came hurrying over—there had apparently been some kind of tense development over at the nearby prisoner camp, and the soldiers stationed there had already responded. The doctor who came rushing over was there to check on Ning Ji’s safety.

“I’m fine,” said Ning Ji, then thought for a moment. “By the way, did anyone from the prisoner camp get injured by accident yesterday, or eat something bad, and get sent over here?”

In the plans laid out by his elder brother and the staff office, his own presence this close to the front line was considered highly dangerous—not only because, if the front line collapsed, there might be no safe way to escape from here, but also because, if the Jurchens ever learned exactly where he was, they might well send men specifically to attack him.

For instance, they might arrange for some of the prisoners, once captured, to feign illness or injury and get themselves sent over to this wounded-soldier camp for treatment, then, at some opportune moment, have these sick and wounded prisoners stage an uprising while the camp’s guard was down. If they ever managed to capture Ning Yi’s own son, the enemy would very likely attempt exactly this kind of tactic.

The doctor shook his head. “There was an order already—for now, we’re not handling treatment for the prisoner camp at all. The two sides absolutely can’t be allowed to mix together. So the prisoner camp’s already got a few people stationed there permanently.”

Ning Ji nodded, and was about to say something more when a shout came from outside—another batch of wounded had just been brought into the camp up ahead. As Ning Ji continued washing his instruments, he said to the doctor beside him, “Go take a look first—I’ll come once I’m done washing these.”

That nothing had come over from the prisoner camp left Ning Ji’s mood a little deflated—otherwise, he might have taken the chance to see whether any skilled fighters were lurking among them. Turning these thoughts over in his mind, he glanced out through the window of the boiling-water shelter—his elder brother had told him before that a camp’s defenses always had some flaw somewhere, and that the biggest flaw, the weakest point in the defense, was exactly where an attacker would most likely choose to strike. With that thought in mind, every morning he made a habit of surveying the area around the wounded-soldier camp, imagining, if he were the villain here, exactly where he would choose to strike from to cause trouble.

This time, as he looked out, Ning Ji’s brow furrowed slightly, puzzled.

Maybe he was overthinking it—he lowered the window of the boiling-water shelter, turned, and picked up a fresh basin from among the equipment, filling it with a new potful of boiling water before carrying it back outside.

People moved about here and there across the camp, but at this particular moment, with the rain still falling, there weren’t actually all that many people out walking around the wounded-soldier camp itself. One of the watchtowers had already been switched over to new guards, and someone had come down from a nearby cliff face and changed into white clothing. Ning Ji, carrying the basin of hot water, passed by two tents when a figure suddenly angled in from ahead.

The man reached out a hand.

Ning Ji’s brow twitched slightly, and he reached out a hand of his own. “Here, big brother, hold this for me.”

The basin tipped, and the boiling water splashed straight across the man’s chest.

Cold rain and scalding water hit the man at once; before he could even fully register what had happened, caught up in overwhelming tension, he managed to keep himself from crying out—and at his side, two other figures were already lunging forward.

Ning Ji, at this point, was only thirteen years old. He ate rather better than the average child and stood somewhat taller than others his age, but his face was still that of a boy no older than fourteen or fifteen. The two figures lunging at him with a rush of wind trailing from their palms found Ning Ji’s own left hand shooting forward first, seizing two of the lead attacker’s fingers—one twist, one pull, and Ning Ji’s body was already flying backward at speed.

With his two fingers caught, the would-be assassin found his own body being yanked bodily up into the air by Ning Ji, spinning slightly as he went; Ning Ji’s right hand, dropping down, held the small steel knife he used for cutting meat and carving bone, and in a flash, he drove it straight into the man’s side.

In that same instant, the man who had been doused with boiling water was still on his feet, while ahead of him one attacker pressed forward as the other was thrown back—his fingers caught, his whole body twisted into a spin, one arm already wrenched directly behind his back, forced into a textbook restraint hold. The second assailant, meanwhile, reached out to grab, only to find his own comrade’s chest now suddenly in front of him instead. The boy, blade in hand, had already circled around from behind, pressed the edge to his own captive’s throat, and as he stepped back, drew the blade sharply across.

Blood sprayed from the man’s throat, splattering full across the face and head of the slightly slower second assassin.

By this point, Ning Ji had already retreated two light steps, and in one smooth turn, walked straight into the empty supply tent behind him. Out in the rain ahead, one figure had already fallen.

The remaining attacker signaled urgently to the rear; someone off in the distance suddenly surged forward, kicking up mud as he raced in. The two failed assassins lunged toward the tent, and a crossbow bolt shot out from inside with a whistling snap; the assassins scrambled aside just in time, and the bolt, its shaft trailing bamboo fletching, gave off a sharp, piercing shriek as it soared into the sky.

“Damn it!”

The man who had been doused with boiling water swore through gritted teeth, only now realizing just how ruthless and cold-blooded this boy really was. His clothes had, at least, been soaked through by the rain and layered thick enough that, scalding as the water had been, it hadn’t caused any truly severe damage. But the camp had now been well and truly alerted—whatever window they had left to act was likely down to this very instant.

If they could just capture this child, they might still have a chance to escape!

He and his remaining companion lunged straight for the tent ahead.

“Come on, then!”

Inside the tent ahead, a flash of sword-light lashed out like a bolt of thunder—before the man even had time to react, his entire arm, trailing blood, was already spinning through the air.

Ning Ji burst out of the tent like a young tiger unleashed!

…

At Eagle Beak Crag.

Attackers and defenders crashed together in the rain like two colliding floods.

Climbing figures braved the wind and rain, working their way up the side of Eagle Beak Crag from the flank; several Jurchen scouts likewise scrambled frantically upward from below, while others below raised crossbows, attempting short-range shots.

The spot chosen for ignition lay within a crack in the rock partway up Eagle Beak Crag; the fuse had been laid days earlier, wrapped in specially treated paper to keep it from being soaked by the rain. The man tasked with lighting it clung to the rock face amid the wind and rain, striking again and again at his fire-striker, trying to coax a flame to life.

One special-operations soldier hooked his rope onto an iron hook already fixed in place in a hidden spot, then swung out along the rock face, using the rope to make his way across and strike at the Jurchen scouts climbing up with the aid of iron claws.

The fighting on the cliff face, in this moment, drew hardly any attention at all.

Elili merely glanced in that direction once, then looked back toward the mouth of the valley behind him, gauging how difficult a retreat would be at this point, and gave the matter no further thought.

“Attack—”

He gave the order.

Up on Eagle Beak Crag, a spark of light seemed to catch; two special-operations soldiers attempted to climb their way back down along the rock face, with Jurchen scouts giving chase from behind, trying to force them down onto level ground. Elili waved a hand toward them. “Kill them for me.”

A squad moved to close in on that spot.

Eagle Beak Crag stood silent in the rain.

Mao Yishan watched that spot. Elili watched the front line of engagement.

At a certain moment, the first dull thud of an explosion sounded out from within the rock face, followed by a series of muffled booms in succession—the dull flash of fire, wreathed in smoke and dust, traced what looked like a crooked, jagged line across the massive stone.

At this stage, the Huaxia Army’s demolition techniques still couldn’t rely on brute force alone to blast the massive stone apart entirely; instead, they had packed gunpowder into an existing crack in the rock. Once the blasts finished echoing, most of the men in the valley below who hadn’t yet joined the fighting turned to look in that direction. Elili did not turn his head. He took two deep breaths and roared out: “Advance!” The Jurchen troops ahead surged forward, their spirits soaring!

“Forget it.” Mao Yishan swung his long blade, steadying his mind. And just at that moment, a crack slowly began to open along the middle of the massive Eagle Beak Crag; a moment later, the great boulder began to slide toward the mouth of the valley. At first it moved slowly, then all at once gathered into a thundering, unstoppable force, and came crashing down!

The earth shook beneath the rain, and the massive stone, along with countless fragments and debris, built a wall of rubble more than a zhang high right across the mouth of the valley. From the other side, voices could still be heard; Elili said, “Tell them to climb over it, damn it!”

Down in the gourd-shaped valley floor, Elili’s own personal guard, nearly a thousand strong, had already gathered.

Ahead of them stood the eight hundred Black Banner soldiers under Mao Yishan’s command.

Elili raised his long blade and strode toward the front line. “No more finesse in this fight.”

For all these years, the Jurchens had never once feared battle.

Mao Yishan wiped his mouth and nose.

“Kill every last one of them!”