The fighting at the front had not yet spread this far, but with the rain continuing on, Zizhou City had already entered a state of half-martial law.
In the army camps near the city walls, soldiers were forbidden from going out, kept on standby for immediate deployment. Patrols on the city walls and within the city had both been tightened, and the scouts assigned tasks outside the city now numbered twice the usual amount. For the past two months, this had become the standard state of Zizhou City every time rain arrived.
Ox carts hauled supplies up from the southwest; some, without even entering the city, were handed off directly and sent toward the front. Within the city, after Ning Yi and the others finished inspecting the city walls, a new meeting was already convening.
“…As for the front, grenade reserves are down to less than twenty percent of before. As for shells, both Huangming County and Rainwater Creek have sent over a dozen consecutive requests for resupply. The dampness of the mountains in winter is affecting the gunpowder more than we’d anticipated. And the Jurchens have already noticed this state of affairs…”
“…Once they’ve noticed, it’s easy for a fixed mindset to form. According to the General Staff’s earlier plan, at this point we can start considering going on the offensive, seizing the initiative. After all, if we simply hold a passive defense forever, however many men the Jurchens can send, they’ll keep sending—Huangming County’s casualties have passed fifty thousand, and they’re still rushing men over, which means they can accept a hundred percent attrition rate. But if we go on the offensive, with all their various forces pressed together, a mere twenty percent attrition would break them!”
“…The turn of the year—both sides know it’s the most critical moment. The more eager one side is to celebrate the new year, the more likely the other side is to cause trouble for them. Since we’re already prepared not to have a peaceful new year, I think we can make the decision within the next two days…”
In the small room, the meeting proceeded to the sound of lunch being served. Li Yi, Han Jing, Ning Yi, and a few other senior leaders had gathered here, eating while they planned the coming strategy. Ning Yi looked at the map ahead as he ate, thinking it over briefly.
“In theory, the Jurchens will assume that we’ll treat the new year as a key turning point.”
He paused, twirling his chopsticks.
“We’ll guess what the Jurchens are thinking on this matter, and the Jurchens, knowing that we’ve guessed what they think of us, will act accordingly… In short, everyone will be on guard during this period. So—should we consider abandoning all offensive action starting today, to make them think we’re merely preparing? Then… on the twenty-eighth, launch a first wave of attacks, deliberately snapping their taut nerves. Then, on New Year’s Day itself, launch the real full-scale offensive. I want to cut off the head that is Huangming County…”
The others considered this. Han Jing said, “If we want them to relax on New Year’s Day, the attack on the twenty-eighth needs to be executed beautifully.”
“We also need to consider whether the Jurchens might think along the same lines as us—after all, for these two months, they’ve been the ones directing the offensive.”
Major strategic decisions of this kind were, as a rule, not discussed openly before a preliminary intention had been settled. As the small group was in the midst of debate, someone came running in from outside, bringing intelligence marked with the highest level of urgency.
The messenger delivered the report. Ning Yi wiped his mouth, tore it open and glanced at it, then set it down on the table and pushed it toward the others.
“Rainwater Creek—Qu Zhengyan’s ‘Fire-Swallowing’ operation has begun. Looks like things are moving faster than we expected.”
He picked up his bowl and began shoveling down rice. The news itself was simple enough; the others, after reading the report one by one, likewise picked up the pace of their eating. Han Jing was the only one to remark teasingly, “Putting on a calm face, are we, gentlemen?”
“Hold steady, hold steady,” Ning Yi said with a laugh.
Not long after, news from the battlefield began arriving in waves.
At the end of the tenth month of the eleventh year of Jianshuo, the war in the southwest had formally begun. In the two months since, the Huaxia Army had consistently held a defensive posture while the Jurchens directed the offensive.
But as the war progressed, the gap in combat strength between the various forces on both sides had gradually become clear, and as the intensity of the fighting continued, the Jurchen side had begun to show signs of fatigue in maintaining its supply lines, with rigidity appearing in parts of its outer perimeter defenses. And so, at noon on the nineteenth of the twelfth month, the Huaxia Army scout units that had until then been focused on harassing Huangming County’s rear suddenly turned their target toward Rainwater Creek.
At a quarter past noon, Chen Tian led three hundred elite troops in a sudden strike, cutting off the mountain road seven li behind Rainwater Creek, using explosives to demolish the cliffside and thoroughly destroy the key routes in the area. Almost simultaneously, at the Rainwater Creek battlefield, over five thousand men under Qu Zhengyan’s command spearheaded a full counteroffensive against Elili’s camp of over forty thousand.
As had been said before—if the defensive posture were maintained indefinitely, the Jurchen side would forever be able to sustain a hundred percent attrition rate. But if the offensive were chosen instead, based on prior battlefield experience, the surrendered Han troops fighting for the Jurchens would break and rout after suffering just ten percent losses; the men of Liaodong and Bohai could hold firm up to over twenty percent; only certain elite Jurchen, Liaodong, and Bohai troops could sustain thirty percent casualties and still keep fighting.
In this regard, the Huaxia Army could tolerate a considerably higher casualty ratio.
At this point, Rainwater Creek had already endured two months of assaults, and some of the Han troops assigned to continue the siege through the winter rains had already begun mechanically going through the motions, while even units made up of Liaodong, Bohai, and Jurchen soldiers had grown weary from cycle after cycle of fruitless attacks. Now the elite of the Huaxia Army struck back from the complex terrain they had originally been defending.
The resolute and ferocious offensive under Qu Zhengyan’s command chose as its first target the surrendered Han troops serving the Jin on the battlefield; almost as soon as contact was made, these units collapsed in rout under the crushing counterattack.
That year, in the late autumn outside Jiangning, Zongfu had driven a million surrendered troops to besiege the city, and had once been beaten into a catastrophic rout by Jun Wu. Having learned the lesson of the eastern front, Zonghan had increased his troop numbers using only relatively elite and steadfast surrendered soldiers. In the offensives of the past, they had played a certain role, but now, as the tide of attack and defense reversed, they could not hold out on the battlefield for long.
Tens of thousands of clashing figures pushed back the mountain rain.
The news that Eagle Beak Rock had trapped Elili reached Zizhou almost as quickly as Qu Zhengyan’s offensive had begun.
In the command post, messengers ran back and forth, and the atmosphere had already grown charged with excitement. War horses burst out through the curtain of rain, and several thousand reserve troops within Zizhou City, wrapped in straw raincoats, left the city and rushed toward Rainwater Creek. Ning Yi slammed his fist on the table and left the room.
Li Yi hurried after him from behind: “Where are you going, at a time like this?”
“It’s none of my business now. If the battle goes badly, come tell me. If we win, just go ahead and celebrate—whether you call me or not.”
He sent Li Yi away, and afterward dismissed most of the guards accompanying him as well, calling only for Hongti. “Come on, let’s go. Let’s go have an adventure.”
Hongti’s eyes showed a flicker of confusion, but in the end she asked no questions. The two of them, wrapped in straw raincoats, left the command post and walked toward the interior of the city.
Once past the martial-law zone, they found the streets nearly empty—partly because few residents remained in Zizhou, and partly because of the rain, so that only the occasional passerby could be seen on the roads. Ning Yi took Hongti’s hand and walked with her through the grey-blue streets, circling past the secluded historic site known as Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, until they stopped before a grand-looking estate.
“Li Weixuan’s private villa,” Ning Yi said, standing at the mouth of the street and glancing around furtively. “A rich man, a local bigwig. He fled when we attacked Zizhou. Left two old servants to watch the house, but later the old couple fell ill and were taken away too. I’d been thinking—we could go in and take a look.”
Hongti blinked for a moment, then couldn’t help but laugh. “You could have just told me directly, you know.”
“Where’s the fun in that, compared to sneaking in?” Ning Yi grinned. “The two of us, husband and wife—today, let’s play at being a pair of bandit lovers.”
Having been together for over a decade, Hongti of course knew that her husband often had these playful, unconventional impulses. In their younger years, on a whim, he would often act without a second thought—the two of them had once, deep in the night, been chased wildly by wolves on Mount Lüliang, with Ning Yi dragging her off into the wilderness to fool around… In the years since the uprising, with children now at their side, Ning Yi had mostly conducted himself with steadiness, though he would still occasionally organize outings, picnics, and the like. She hadn’t expected that, at a time like this, he would once again be seized by such a strange whim.
By the time the Huaxia Army had entered Zizhou, most of the local gentry and prominent clans had already fled, leaving their homes empty; some of the houses had been looted. As the fighting drew closer, the Huaxia Army had swept through Zizhou several times, and by now even the ordinary refugees had been cleared out of the city. The low courtyard walls could not stop a pair of husband and wife with such formidable skill—Ning Yi scaled the wall and simply walked along the top, then climbed onto the roof to survey the inner courtyard.
“If there were an assassin lurking nearby, this is exactly the moment they might be watching you,” Hongti said, eyes scanning their surroundings warily.
“Fair point. Let’s keep a low profile.”
Heeding her reminder, Ning Yi climbed down from the roof and proceeded through the interior of the estate, looking about as he went.
Beneath the gloomy sky, the long-uninhabited courtyard appeared dim, ancient, quiet, and desolate, yet in many places the traces of its former occupants could still be seen. This was a rather large complex of courtyards—several successive front halls, back gardens, residences, and gardens. Weeds had already sprung up in courtyard after courtyard; in some, standing water had pooled into small ponds. In certain rooms, items left behind seemed to speak of the scene at the moment their owners had departed. Ning Yi even found rouge and face powder in the drawers of some of the rooms, curiously exploring the world in which the women of the household had once lived.
Hongti followed along behind Ning Yi, occasionally taking in the living spaces herself—paintings and calligraphy hanging in some rooms, small trinkets left behind in the drawers of a study… In her days wandering the martial world, she too had once secretly investigated people’s homes, but now, with these courtyards emptied of their occupants, the two of them peering across time at the traces their owners had left behind before departing—the feeling was naturally different.
She gradually came to understand what was on Ning Yi’s mind. “Back in Jiangning, you lived in a place like this too.”
“Similar layout. The Su family had money—first they bought an old estate, then expanded and renovated it. One compound housed several hundred people. I remember thinking it was too chaotic at the time—you had to greet everyone you ran into, and it got on my nerves a bit. I remember thinking, better to just leave, better not to stay there.”
Ning Yi smiled faintly. They were standing on a second-floor walkway, able to see the small, deep, quiet courtyards nearby. “But sometimes it was rather nice too—after dinner, lamp after lamp would light up in courtyard after courtyard, and looking out at it all, it felt full of life. Now, that warmth has all gone out. Back then, it was all small things around me—Tan’er handling her affairs, sometimes bringing a few maids along, coming back late… thinking back on it now, it feels like children playing. It wasn’t long after that before I met you—you saw Xiao Chan and the others back then too.”
Hongti smiled without speaking. Ning Yi leaned against the wall. “After Jun Wu broke out of Jiangning, the city was put to the sword. Now everything is about grand affairs, but sometimes, I think, it’s more interesting to live a little in the small things now and then. Looking out from here, whether a courtyard was lived in or not, each of them, more or less, had its own small stories.”
As he spoke, he leaned back against the wall and sat down beside the walkway. The rain was still falling, soaking everything grey-blue and grey-black before them. In memory’s past, laughing girls might have once walked through these garden paths, chattering children running and playing. In the distance now, a war was underway.
Beneath the collapsed Eagle Beak Rock, blade and shield clashed in the mud, men crashing into one another, the air thick with the smell of blood.
Swung blades cut through flesh, spears pierced through bellies; some cried out, some screamed in agony, some fell in the mud, some tore off an enemy’s head and smashed it against solid rock.
Blood poured from Mao Yishan’s body. In the frenzied slaughter, he raised his shield amid the churning mud and slammed it savagely into Elili’s knee. Elili’s body pitched forward, and he swung a fist into Mao Yishan’s cheek; Mao Yishan’s body swayed, and he threw a fist of his own in return. The two men grappled together, and at one point, with a great roar, Mao Yishan hoisted Elili’s entire body into the air—with a crash, both figures slammed down hard into the mud.
Elili thrashed wildly in the water; Mao Yishan swung his fist down at him, only to be kicked away. Elili rose from the mud and charged forward; Mao Yishan surged up out of the water as well, gripping a shield he’d fished from the water, swinging it out like a bow drawn to its very limit.
A terrifying whistling sound tore through the wind and rain—half of Elili’s face was split open by the shield, two rows of teeth exposed amid the torn flesh of his mouth. He staggered a few steps, his eyes still locked on Mao Yishan, who was already charging toward him through the mud without pause, both massive hands closing like a tiger’s grip around Elili’s mangled head.
Elili’s arms fought back in reflexive resistance; the two figures stomped several steps through the mud together as Mao Yishan pressed down on Elili’s towering frame, slamming the back of his head savagely against a block of bluestone, hauling him up, and slamming him down again—three times in succession.
In the dim light, ferocious figures still clashed and killed all around. Mao Yishan took the blade a comrade handed him and, on the bluestone, hacked off Elili’s head.