Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—

The roar of sound, carried on flame, bloomed one after another beneath the sky.

Bodies were thrown apart, blood sprayed into the air, the breath of flame scorched across men’s faces, broken corpses smashed into the faces of other soldiers. The war drums still pounded; some men, snapping back to their senses, charged forward with a roar, while others froze in the sudden change. An unknown dread raised the hair on every arm.

The explosions of twenty rocket shells formed an irregular curve, sweeping across the thirty-thousand-strong formation.

Then came hoarse shouts and the neighing of terrified horses.

At the instant of explosion, the effect was certainly dramatic up close, but as the flames burst outward, the brittle cast-iron warheads sprayed out in every direction. In less than a single breath, the story of the rockets had already run its course — flames burning on the nearby scattered bodies, people flung farther out, and then the range affected by shrapnel.

On the bodies of the soldiers still advancing nearby, blood spattered in patches — some from being splashed by flying blood, others because shrapnel had already lodged in various parts of their bodies.

Once the laws of physics had done their damage here, the laws of biology followed. Pain did not rise up the instant one was hit; because the explosion happened too fast and too strangely, soldiers with no time to prepare mentally only discovered their own wounds a moment later. One man sat up from the ground, the flames having charred the entire right half of his body black; shrapnel had torn apart his hand, foot, waist, and belly. He patted at the charred blackness on his body in confusion with his left hand, and then his innards spilled out… More people around him screamed in agony.

For the soldiers still in the midst of advancing, all of this happened in the span of a blink. They were still more than two hundred zhang from the front when the strike fell from the sky, and some of them did not even understand what had happened. That sensation, too, was the strangest of all.

The three thousand cavalry, riding in neat formation and circling slowly southward along the riverbank, reacted most violently of all. The rocket shells closed the distance in an instant, exploding six rounds within their ranks — after artillery had come into widespread use, nearly all the war-horses had gone through preliminary training to acclimate to noise and explosions, but in these few moments, as the flames burst forth, that training proved useless. A small-scale panic erupted within the cavalry ranks; horses bolting out of control slammed into nearby riders.

The general Xilie, leading the five-thousand-strong vanguard of the Yanshan Guard, had already begun charging forward.

In this brief span, the twenty explosions had not yet stirred up major chaos within the vast thirty-thousand-strong formation — the Jurchen soldiers within the formation did not have a wide enough vantage point to survey the battlefield. But for the battle-hardened generals in command, a sensation of chill and unknown had already swept the entire battlefield like a tide.

Xilie, turning to look all around, and Wanyan Gulu, sitting astride his slightly startled horse, both swept their eyes over the surroundings. Beneath the command banner, Xiebao himself turned to look around and caught sight of the flowers of destruction blooming across the battlefield — two of the explosions had occurred among the crowd only a few zhang from him. His alert bodyguards had already closed in around him. What filled his vision was first yellow flame, then black charred corpses, then red blood. Farther off, more chaos was unfolding.

An icy sensation gripped him — this was, in this moment, the single most tense instant of his entire life.

The world around him fell silent, his heart pounding wildly, the surge of blood counting out the seconds for him. He raised his binoculars, looked toward the rear, then turned toward the front — in the distance, that strange, tube-shaped object was still being carried out and set onto the racks by the Huaxia Army, while behind the formation, the farthest explosion had nearly reached the men at the very rear, the bridge lying at the end behind them.

The Yanshan Guard vanguard was one hundred fifty zhang from the Huaxia Army; he himself was two hundred zhang from that strangely arrayed Huaxia Army formation.

More than ten li away, amid the mountains, the sounds of battle rang out.

That year, Wanyan Xiebao was thirty-five years old. He was not a man given to extravagance and indulgence; judging from his consistent record on the battlefield, he had, over the long years, never disgraced the record and bloodline of the Wanyan clan that looked down upon all under heaven.

And so, in this brief moment, a wolflike sharpness of instinct fed back to him countless conclusions and almost a single way out.

“Signal the whole army to charge.”

Reining in his horse, he looked ahead and said this. Some terrifying possibility was boiling in his mind, to the point that he could not even hear his own voice; the next instant he drew his blade and let out a frenzied roar at those around him:

“Signal the whole army — charge!”

At a distance of over two hundred zhang, if this were a normal confrontation between two armies, running at full speed over such a distance would drain an army’s momentum directly into decline. But there was no other choice.

At the Huaxia Army’s position, by the grid-shaped launch frames, ten technicians were rapidly writing figures with charcoal pencils in their notebooks, calculating the angle adjustments needed for the next volley.

Further ahead, the artillery was loaded. The soldiers, watching the Jurchen soldiers charging toward them with all their might, leveled their rifles. Some men were exhaling deep, heavy breaths, steadying their aim, while off to one side came the sound of an order: “First squad, ready!”

Among the Jurchen vanguard, the soldiers pushing the mounted artillery were also running with everything they had — but the possibility that had once belonged to them had already been permanently lost.

Beside Wanyan Xiebao, the soldier responsible for relaying orders blew with all his strength on a great war horn — a deep “Wooo—” swept across the thirty-thousand-strong formation. The battle-hardened mid-level commanders throughout the army looked around them, sensing the impact that the strange explosion just now was bound to have; and so, upon hearing the horn, they too understood and accepted Xiebao’s choice.

This was a moment beyond anyone’s imagination — an unprecedented moment. In the very first instant that technology from across the ages descended upon this land, the Jurchen army facing it first chose to suppress its doubts and the fear surging up from its subconscious. Three breaths after the rousing horn swept across them, the very earth began to tremble.

Mounted on his warhorse, Wanyan Xiebao did not charge in the very front. As his hoarse, desperate roar rang out, his soldiers spread out from his view like a swarm of ants.

Human footsteps pounded the earth; the dense black mass of men, like sea-tide, like great waves, surged forward from the distance. The cavalry along the southern riverbank of the battlefield quickly re-formed and began attempting their charge — the cavalry commander on this flank was a man named Wensa, who had once faced Ning Yi in battle in the northwest; at the moment Cibushi was beheaded atop the walls of Yanzhou, Wensa had been below those very walls, watching the whole scene unfold.

In the years before he ever set foot on this battlefield, he could have found any number of reasons to look upon the Han man ahead with contempt, or at best, with mere indifference. In the days just before this one, faced with the arrogant gesture of six thousand men marching to face thirty thousand, he could still have told himself that this arrogant Han cur had finally gone mad. But the instant that exploding object crossed nearly three hundred zhang of battlefield and fell into the cavalry formation, this half-white-haired Jurchen veteran general suddenly, clearly, recalled the cold and indifferent gaze that man had once turned on him atop the walls of Yanzhou.

The great Jurchen general of half a lifetime’s campaigns, Cibushi, had been pinned down atop the walls of Yanzhou by Huaxia Army soldiers — Marshal Cibushi had still struggled even then — and Ning Yi had watched with cold, indifferent eyes as a soldier of the Zhong family raised a great blade and brought it down across that Jurchen hero’s neck. That moment, they had beheaded Cibushi in sacrifice for Zhong Lie, the West Army general who had refused to surrender and died rather than yield.

In this moment, in the field of his binoculars, Wensa could see that indifferent gaze already turning this way.

The cavalry was still in disarray; ahead, the Huaxia Army formation, made up of men bearing flintlock rifles, had arranged itself in rows forming a half-crescent — part of it still faced this direction, toward the cavalry, while further off, more steel tubes were being raised onto the iron frames. Wensa, leading whatever front-runners he could still command, began his charge.

The infantry lines closed to three hundred meters, then approached two hundred. The general Xilie, riding along the flank, saw the Huaxia Army men lower their torches — the artillery muzzles flared with light, and shells arced up into the sky.

“Heaven protect us—”

Xilie shouted at the top of his voice; the charging generals shouted along with him. Amid the roar, the shells fell into the crowd, blasting bodies high into the air.

Since artillery had come into large-scale use, the strength of formations had steadily eroded, and in this moment of the Jurchens’ mass charge, there was in fact no way to guarantee any tightness of formation. But correspondingly, so long as they could reach close range, the Jurchen soldiers would also hurl lit fire-bombs forward, ensuring the enemy, too, would gain no advantage from formation. So long as they could cross this stretch of less than a hundred zhang, an assault of thirty thousand men would be able to swallow the six thousand Huaxia Army soldiers ahead.

Some soldiers were blown apart in mid-charge, some fell and tripped their surging comrades — but even so, those whose charging stride was disrupted remained a minority.

The distance kept closing — past two hundred meters, past one hundred fifty. Some, while running, drew their bows and loosed arrows. On this side, the Huaxia Army officer holding the signal flag had still not so much as flinched, though some soldiers glanced sideways. Arrows rose into the sky, arced over, and fell — some were struck and toppled, staggering to the ground.

“Hold — ready!”

The shouted command carried in it a suppressed, bloody undertone.

At one hundred meters, the flag finally dropped, and the shout came: “Fire—”

The first row of soldiers pulled their triggers; muzzle-flame and smoke rose together. Aimed at the central column, a total of one thousand two hundred soldiers sent four hundred iron rounds surging out of their rifle barrels, like a screen flying toward the charging Jurchen soldiers.

Blood bloomed outward. A great number of soldiers, at full sprint, collapsed and rolled to the ground, but some still crossed through the volley on the front line, artillery still whistling in from behind them. Ahead of them, the first row of Huaxia Army soldiers crouched down in the smoke while the second row raised their rifles.

“Second squad! Take aim — fire!”

Another four hundred rounds swept across; more men fell in mid-stride, and then came another volley.

A veteran Jin soldier, sparsely haired but powerfully built, tumbled to the ground mid-run. He felt something whistle past above his head. This was a battle-hardened Jurchen veteran, one who had followed Loushi through campaigns north and south, who had even witnessed the destruction of the entire Liao kingdom — but in this moment, at the Battle of Wangyuan Bridge, a sudden numbness in his right leg sent him tumbling down onto the ground.

His shield went flying far off, his body rolling on the ground — he struggled to keep the sword in his hand from cutting himself — after two rolls, he gritted his teeth and tried to stand, but his entire lower right leg answered only with pain and a total absence of strength. He grabbed at his thigh, trying to see the wound on his calf, when a body fell into his view — a comrade who had been charging with him, half his face blown open, red and yellow splattering across the veteran’s own head.

The Huaxia Army’s cannon fire was still flying over. Only then did the old soldier think to look around at the state of things — amid the chaotic figures, countless men were falling, rolling, and lying dead or wounded, sprawled across the whole stretch of grass; only a scattered handful of front-runners had managed to close the distance to within ten zhang of the Huaxia Army’s human wall, and that wall was still raising its rifles.

At the same moment, above his head, something even more terrifying flew past.

This time, dense, thunderous roars bloomed across the entire earth.

Still the third quarter of the noon hour — the fear that had been briefly suppressed finally bloomed in the hearts of some Jurchen soldiers—

…

The second volley of rocket shells was loaded first for the three launch frames aimed at Wensa’s cavalry — this time, a full load of fifteen. At the same time, the remaining seven launch frames had been calibrated toward different distances across the thirty-thousand-strong Jurchen main body, spaced thirty zhang apart.

By now the cavalry, attempting to swing around the Huaxia Army’s front line, had closed the distance to one hundred fifty zhang from the Huaxia Army’s position, but within that short span they had not managed to spread out from one another. Fifteen rockets streaked across the sky one after another, falling into the diagonally advancing cavalry charge.

Flame and blast-wave swept the ground, dust and smoke rising in thunder. The warhorses’ larger frames took the brunt more than the men’s did; as shrapnel scythed outward, six or seven nearby horses collapsed to the ground as though harvested. On the horses closer to the blast, the wounds carved by shrapnel bloomed like flowers, dense and terrible. In the instant the fifteen rockets fell, roughly fifty-odd riders went down at once, but the area where the rocket shells fell formed a kind of barrier — in the blink of an eye, over a hundred cavalrymen collapsed in a chain reaction of falling and trampling, countless horses shrieking and bolting wildly across the battlefield, some crashing into their fellows, the chaos spreading amid the vast rising dust.

On the infantry side, more and more dense black ranks of soldiers surged forward across the two-hundred-meter distance, countless shouts shaking the heavens. At the same time, thirty-five rocket shells named “Dijiang” were fired in a saturation volley into the Jurchen infantry ranks — this was the first saturation launch, and almost every Huaxia Army technician present broke into a cold sweat; the flame and shockwave crossed and tangled together, smoke filling the air until they could barely keep their own eyes open.

Thirty-five streaks of light, like the dense fireworks of a later age launching into the sky, rushed toward the bloodthirsty tide formed by the Jurchen soldiers, and what followed, everyone present witnessed with their own eyes.

Thirty thousand men charged forward amid hysterical roars, the dark mass and the earth-shaking shouts rising loud enough to make the back of one’s head throb. Ning Yi had taken part in no small number of battles, but this — such a large-scale clash of armies on open ground after the founding of the Huaxia Army — was, in fact, still a first.

What flashed through his mind was that battle outside Bian Liang’s walls, years before — the Jurchens charging in, tens of thousands of loyalist troops routed like a tide across the open ground outside Bian Liang. No matter which way one fled, one saw only one’s own countrymen running for their lives; no matter which direction one went, no army had managed to give the Jurchens any real trouble.

Now, it was thirty thousand of these Jurchen elites, charging forward at him in a frenzy.

“…What do you suppose they’re all shouting?”

“Kill your whole family, probably.”

“…Huh.” Ning Yi nodded. “After this volley, have two launch frames aim at Wanyan Xiebao’s command banner. If he wants to run, kill him.”

The blast-wave was spreading across the ground. Under this all-out charge formation, nearly every rocket shell took out the fighting capacity of a dozen-odd Jurchen soldiers or more — killing them on the spot, or leaving them severely wounded, screaming as they rolled on the ground — and the simultaneous launch of thirty-five rockets carved patch after patch of bloody, fiery vacuum into the sea of Jurchen men.

Wanyan Xiebao had already fully grasped what significance the thing streaking across his field of view truly held. He did not understand why the enemy’s second volley had not been aimed at his own command banner, but he did not choose to flee.

He was the hero son of the Jurchen people; he would, like his father before him, wrest from this heaven and earth a single thread of life.

At this same moment, over ten li away on the mountain battlefield called Shiling, Wanyan Zonghan was waiting for the first battle report from the direction of Wangyuan Bridge…